sculpty letters

Would Sculpty letters work for overhead signs on a SURL, and who makes them?

I'm not sure who makes them,

But since textures don't show up on the overhead map, I would reason that sculpties won't show up either since they are a texture.

I have been working on some sculptie letters, but I have not tried them to see if they show up on the map.
Another issue is that they can only be 10m tall, which isn't particularly big for showing up on the map.

contact me in world I have made some very complicated logo's along with some normal lettering.

(check out TVP LLC island for an example (unfortantly most of the really kewl ones have been taken down)

You can apply sculptie textures to a megaprim.

Yes I thought about that, but then you can't resize it other than using a megaprim that happens to be the right size.

sadly.. mega-prims do NOT render correctly on the map. (well cylinders anyway.)

I'd suspect that sculpts (being newer than the map) will probably render as Toruses or Spheres on the map. Another thing to keep in mind, your average prim maxes out at 10x10.. on the map 1m = 1px. (as i recall).

Actually, now I'm itching to test this. =) I've got a Sculpt-W... let's give it a whirl.

Edit: Okay I've created a 32x32 (x40) giant red sculpty W, a 20x20(x.05) yellow one, and a 10x10 green one on my land in "Lost Angles". It's going to take a few days for the map to update... but we'll see.

cant wait to find out! I would like to add a sign but my lot may be too small anyway.

Oh, right. They show up like a big ol' cube.

=o.O=

I have no idea if it will work but I know who makes sculpty letters, my dear friend Elzbiet Meili of Skyhighatry Designs, makers of Snurbomatic. Rockin chick that girl is.

Actually, Huge prim "circles" seem to show up as hexagons.

Ah, okay. Don't have a big enough plot to keep a larger sphere rezzed.

Either way, still useless for sky letters . . .

Well, I'm still willing to give the sculptis the benefit of the doubt until this test is over.

Hypothesis: Sculpties, if large enough, could be used to make "map signs". If combined with so-called "huge prims" the prim costs for such signs on the map could now be cost effective.

Evidence in support: Any prim, 1m or larger will show on the map. Large costly constructs of tinted prims have been used to make map graphics. Certain elements of taper and cut are also visible in very large prims shown on the map.

Evidence against: huge prim "circles" display as hexagons. This suggests that the LOD on the map is VERY low indeed. Generally, the map software doesn't support object textures, so it may not download ANY textures.

Unknown factors: Sculpted prims are really new. The map's "snapshotting" software is really old. Sculpts may not be understood. The Sculpt prim was based off the Torus type (as I recall) and sculpts MAY just show up as torii. Even if they are understood, the map software has that texture limitation. It's possible that the sculpt map might not be grabbed at all, resulting in a "spherelike" prim.

Test: The test began on 3/6/2008 and the test deployed 3 objects to the parcel located at secondlife://Lost%20Angles/20/20/280/

1 32x32x40 Huge prim (tinted red)
1 20x20x0.5 Huge Prim (tinted yellow)
1 10x10x10 Normal Prim (tinted green)

These objects were installed at an altitude of 280m. Each object was changed to a spherecal-mapped sculpt (default type) with a "sharp" sculpt map which renders to display the letter "W".



Results: (not yet available)

Results: Well, it took a few days for the map to update, but here are the results



Analysis: The Sculpts, regardless of size, seem to render out as either spheres, or torii on their sides. it's hard to tell. The visual appearance of the prims, is vaguely octagonal. The smaller 10x10x10 prim seems more like a sphere. This seems mostly due to it's small size and the blurring of it's details.

Conclusion: Sculpties AREN'T a viable solution for map-writing.

Try SL Exchange... I bought a sculpted alphabet from there and they are really nice.

Spheres most likely, considering that's how they render before textures load.

Thank you for trying! I'll work on regular prim letters.

My plot may be too small to recognise anyway, perhaps I just need a Huge Fancy K.