If you left-click anywhere on the blackboard, the currently selected knot (red dot) will jump to this position and mCJLathe will rebuild the smooth curve.

The listbox shown below contains the list of the positions of the 5 control knots that define the curve. The position of the currently selected knot (red dot) is highlighted.

The lower left corner of the blackboard is at ( -0.5, 0 ) and the upper right corner is at ( 0.5, 1.0 )

This lisbox is where you can change the currently selected knot (red dot).

So if i click on the third row of the listbox...

... i can now move the middle of the curve around

Pressing the Insert Knot button will insert a new control knot just after the currently selected knot. This new knot will become the currently selected knot.

Pressing the Delete Knot button will delete the currently selected knot.

The 5 snap buttons will move the currently selected knot to the snap position

So far, each time we moved the first and last control knots, something prevented us from moving it away from the mirror line of the blackboard : the two Weld checkboxes were checked. If we turn the Weld top option off, we can now move the end of the curve anywhere and our bottle can have an opening at the top!

The "Closed Curve" checkbox will weld the first and last control knots together. this will help you create ring objects.

When you start mCJLathe the blackboard's backdrop is a gray 8 x 8 grid. You can change this to any square image you like using the "Load Backdrop" button. To return to the standard grid, use the "Grid Backdrop" button.

To save and retrieve the curves you built, use the "Save Curve" and "Load Curve" buttons. The Curve files are in fact text files which could be modified by technically minded people ( no i didn't say nerd ).

example: the Utah Teapot curve shown above

type    mcjLathe

vrsn    2009.11.25

twld    true

bwld    true

nsds    32

nsgs    4

note    vertex coordinates: first column is x second is y

note    X must remain in the [-0.5,0.5] range

note    Y must remain in the [0.0,1.0] range

v    0    0.25

v    0.1796875    0.25

v    0.2359375    0.25468749999999996

v    0.246875    0.2796875

v    0.303125    0.40625

v    0.2265625    0.6609375

v    0.20625    0.7046875

v    0.175    0.7125

v    0.090625    0.7234375

v    0.0453125    0.74375

v    0.0375    0.7765625

v    0.0484375    0.825

v    0.03125    0.8421875

v    0    0.846875

( the spout and handle were built using "flexithings" found here: http://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/flexithings )

The ".obj num sides" slider lets you specify how many sides the lathed object will have. i found out that 32 sides gives a very smooth appearance.

the "subdivide segments" slider sets the number of times the curve is subdivided between the control knots . The yellow dots along the curve shown on the blackboard represent those subdivisions. So a high number of subdivisions like 8 gives us a very smooth result while a value of 1 gives us a rough (but very lightweight) result.

example: the bottle from the previous example with ".obj num sides" = 8 and "subdivide segments" = 1

and to the right with ".obj num sides" = 32 and "subdivide segments" = 8

The Create and Save .obj button is the moment we've been waiting for!

mCJLathe, builds the object, and writes it in an .obj file , under the name you chose.

This .obj file can then be imported back into Daz Studio ( File/Import/Wavefront Object (.0bj;.obz)

the number of polygons (faces) of the resulting object is given by

number of faces = ( number of knots - 1 ) × number of subdivisions  ×  number of sides

for the body of the teapot we had

( 14 knots - 1 ) × 4 subd × 32 sides = 1664 faces

an object with only 1664 is very "light" on Daz Studio's shoulders

in comparison, the Daz Aiko3 figure is 74000 faces

and in unrelated trivia, 1664 is the year when the Kronenbourg a popular lager, was first produced

The""Save as SL Sculpty"" button lets you export the object as a 64x64 pixels image that SecondLife can read, meaning, yes, that your creations can be tele-transported into SecondLife verse :)

and since the proof is in the pudding, here's our bottle in the demo area of the world famous "help Island" of the SecondLife Universe!!

For best results, save your sculpty using a lossless image format like bmp, tga or png ( not jpg ).

This little 64x64 pixels image when uploaded to SecondLife for $10L, then applied to a "prim" becomes the bottle you saw on help island.

And here's the textures (by me ) which prettify pbjects so much :)