May 25, 2007 by Nobody Fugazi
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As I mentioned over at KnowProSE.com in my entry, 'Sculpties Killed the Prim Torture Star? Maybe. Maybe Not', I've been playing with Blender and have had some success in making sculpties.
Are they a big deal? No. Well, yes, you can make funky shapes that are organic, so yes, you can do some cool stuff with them. But no, they aren't so cool. They're kludgey when it comes to using them - you can't torture these prims, and they cannot be made flexible. They might be good at shaving a prim here and there, but don't expect your textures to play nice on your sculpties unless you make the sculptie with the texture... and you have mad skills like that.
Sculpties did not kill the Prim Torture Star. In fact, to me, it seems prim torturing highlights just how easy the pre-existing prim torturing system in SecondLife is. If you hold a gun to my head, I can make a sculptie, but you better give me a good reason to make one. Single prim vases and bananas just don't work too well. Maybe table legs, I suppose, but... textures become a funky thing, especially on tapered objects. Some say that this is not that big of a problem since the same problems exist for regular prims - but regular prims also have textures which suit them already out.
It certainly isn't worth buying a copy of [w:Autodesk|Maya]. But maybe mass production of genital sculpties will happen. Maybe that was the point.
Oh, and there is a Second Life Sculpted Prim Contest where you can win a... real t-shirt... if you show off your mad 3 dimensional rendering skills. Wow. Fortunately, I'm caught up on my laundry so I don't need another t-shirt. Maybe [w:Linden Lab] will give away t-shirts for whoever has the best voice too. Start your voice training now, just in case...
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Couple of comments
Couple of comments here...
First off, I think prim torturing does not mean what you think it means. I know you seem to think it sounds cool, but it's certainly not the standard usage of the prim editing controls and editing prims is NOT the same as torturing prims.
Are sculpties a bit deal? An emphatic YES they are. They represent a paradigm shift in the way some prims will be created, as well as substatial prim savings for those that are parcel size challenged. What you see currently for sculpties on the main grid are, more than anything, just a taste of what is in the works. Yes they will be made to be flexy, editable and will have more base shapes to work with (torus, etc..). As far as texturing, of course normal tiling textures are not going to work in many cases. That would be like saying, "Oh noes! This building texture looks crap when I use it for texturing clothes!". Learn what a UV map is, and why people who do high end clothing and skins (you know, the kind where the seams actually match) are able to do so. It's called skill. This is a platform where the actual person sitting behind the keyboards skillset matters, after all.
Scoff at them all you like, those of us that already understand NURBS (no that is not a plural, it's an acronym) know and can see very clearly where this is going and the impact it will have on the grid for the better. Feel free to miss the train of course... your choice. Personally I think in a few months you will look back on what you have written and wonder why you were so short-sighted that you did not recognize the significance of this... to say nothing of the fact that you wrote it all down to display to everybody.
HAHA, Good one! Since the
HAHA, Good one! Since the new sculptie prims, I've spent two weekends learning the Blender interface and basic modeling, and spent this Saturday learning how to crete UV maps. Now that I have it I'm so proud and exhilarated. I can do a lot with my mesh skills now, but I will keep going to attempt to learn NURBS in Blender to make even better sculpties.
Let those shortsighted individuals go about their business. This will be another thing to separate those who put in the effort to learn skills and those who will pay us for having said skills :-)