Am I the Only One who Thinks Sculpties are Ugly?

heyas;

when sculpties roared onto the scene, i thought they were really ugly and over-used. i thought this might just be because i couldnt make sculpties, myself. jealousy, you know.
but now i can make sculpties, and some very nice, smooth sculpties. and i STILL think sculpties (for the most part) are UGLY.

okay, some simple shapes, some optimized shapes, are very nice. they texture well. i dont mean that sculpties are ugly, just because they are sculpties.

i just mean that chewed-up-looking stuff with stretchy smeary textures looks... REALLY UGLY.

and people go ga-ga over these really ugly sculpties. i just don't get it. ugly horse legs with smeared out, stringy hocks; ugly heart-shaped couches with crooked texture edges; ugly tree branch lumps with stretched textures....

the other day, someone showed my friend a sculpty house. she went ga-ga over it. it had to be THE worst sculpty i've ever seen. i mean, yeah, a 'one prim house' is a lovely idea! but who wants a 'one prim house' that looks like some dilapidated boards leaning loosely against each other, with big gaps between them and the roof, and a crooked roof with crooked tiles.... okay, maybe it was the LOD and i was 50 meters away, but is having a 1 prim house worth it looking like a shack if you get one parcel away from it?


just, i don't see it. i prefer the clean lines of prims.

You're definitely not the only one.

I've seen some great sculpties, an some great uses for sculpties. Unfortunately, I've seen a lot of examples of people trying to get too much out of a single sculpt, or other cases where they just havin't come out very good. I'm guilty of this as well.

/me clutches her sculpty shoes and glares at Bloodsong

Everybody is making sculpty shoes, pants legs, shirt cuffs, hair, etc. On my computer, from a distance, the sculpty will disappear, or appear misshapen. I have been going out of my way to avoid purchasing sculpty items for that reason. I figure I can't be the only one seeing them this way.

I can see your point, but of course some prim shapes come out looking lumpy and weird too, depending on what you are trying to create there are no easy answers .The biggest problem I have with sculptie shapes is the lag issues. If they didnt create lag they would be a wonderful thing. When I was on my older computer some areas with a lot of sculpties never even rezzed at all and I saw only round shapes everywhere. Now I see them mostly fully rezzed but sometimes they do take a long time to rez ... what is with that round shape you see before they rez anyway? I think you are right the one prim aspect of the sculpties is one reason they are so popular. We have to conserve all the prims we can when we own land.

Elinah

They have their place and are easier to make for some shapes but you did point out the major draw back, they are much harder to texture that basic prims. Well done sculptie trees are amazing. Quick and easy one prim mushrooms are easier to texture to look good for garden acents or farie settings. I also like the rumpled effect you can get for pillows and cushions again with a single prim, but then there are a lot of lesser quality pillows out there. Just like clothes. Everybody has to learn somehow.

Mine to... I have several pair of sculpty pumps I use in my designs, and if I look at distance they do show foot through. However, at close range you can't beat the shape/style. I also see this in a lot of hairs that are non sculpty.

I am mixed feelings on sculpties. My main issue is when they are rezzing -particularly attachments on avatars- that some people are just giant grey globs...

There are just some shapes no matter how hard you try you can not reproduce with normal prims or hundreds of them...

The sculptie starts off as a ball. The texture you put on the sculptie basically says were to move that part of the ball. The higher the color value the further out it is moved.

For a little more detail ...
Colors in the computer are made up of Red, Green, and Blue. They are defined by 3 numbers usually written in LSL scriptes like <0.4, 0.43, 0.02> for example. Coordinates in a sim look a lot like that as well being X, Y and Z locations.

Now, the ball is a base shape all points the same distance for a single mid point. Drop on the sculpite's texture and each one of those <r,g,b> values says where to move that point on the ball to from it's original location.

Does this make sense to you or have I only made it worse?

More extreme, I'm afraid: I've never seen a sculpty I liked. Not once.

Doesn't mean I haven't used some, made some, and even bought some. But I can only just barely tolerate any of them, and only put up with them for the massive prim savings (as with trees, as mentioned).

The process of rezzing is just way too slow and unpredictable. (As for LOD, I gather there's some way to at least predict what bizarreness will happen there, but I could never convince myself it was worth the trouble, since there's no predicting when or if anybody will rez any detail beyond a squashed sphere anyway.)

And of course, structurally, they're perfectly useless.

For a while, I sometimes wore sculpty hair and sculpty shoes, but I eventually realized that different viewers were taking randomly long intervals to rez these things, and, well, if I wanted to look like a complete dork for untold minutes upon arrival everywhere, I could just outfit myself from the Library folder and save a lot of trouble and L$s.

I frankly wish they'd just go away altogether.

Like any tool or artist's material type, Sculpties can be wonderful or they can be horrid. It definitely takes some time and effort to learn to texture a sculpty well, and for that matter to DESIGN a sculpty so it can be textured well! You can't just slap a texture on them and expect a miracle.

It also takes extra effort to make a sculpty that doesn't distort badly as LOD changes come in with distance, but again, with effort on the part of the designer of the sculpty, much of this can be eliminated.

Some of my Furry avatars make incredibly good use of sculpties, and they are very professionally textured. I haven't noticed many problems with their appearance at a distance, either.

The easiest form of sculpty to make is based on a sphere. But there are other sculpty prim types that can be set with LSL. I have some nice rippled river water that is made with a planar sculpty.

DIGITAL BLASHPEMY! (and not the CG avant garde art kind either)

GRAB THE TORCHES & STOKE THE FLAMES!!!!


But on the serious tip (ho ho ho)...

I HAVE noticed "overuse" of sculpties in some vehicle models, that ruined a project that probably would have looked fine if the same builder had made it with standard prims...thing like that.

There's also "overuse" ( IMO) of sculpties in a lot of landscaping I've been seeing.

...even *gasp* at Grendel's Children, in the outdoors areas. When I say overuse in this since, I mean yeah, the rocks look better, but when you stack them up...all of the space that APPEARS to be covered by these prims isn't, so users end up walking into holes they can't escape from except by TP, etc.

I love sculpties myself...and have ever since they were introduced. Actually before that even...remembering some GREAT work by Chip Midnight and many others, in the "Show Us Your Sculpties" thread.

...but like "bling", everything in moderation. (actually I hate bling in SL, so much so that I took the bling scrubber script to almost every attatchment I had ever collected, even if it had a "bling off" script, the day that script appeared on these Forums)

Aw Honeybear -- I'm gonna have to send you some more shoe crack huh

Sadly, Qie, I see them multiplying with alarming frequency.

I honestly believe they're a large part of my on-going lag problems. I have the fastest computer, best graphics card, and while I have wireless which contributes, it's where there's a lot of sculpties around that I really have issues.

LOL CC...You know I love you, but only if they're prim

in some cases sculpts can look nice and texture nicely

these wedge shoes I textured the part across the foot so that it will change color on command yet that part is only 1 prim.
I also textured in the stitches around the sole...

Sculpties are not all they are cracked up to be, but they are good when used well. The house example sounds like a ridiculous idea to me. They can be used very well, and they can be used badly.

One of the worst thing about them, imo, is that they change shape in the viewer at varying distances.

Yes I must admit when they fist came out I was thrilled and shot off to make a few.Now I am wary,they are not crisp enough for my taste and I use only a few, mainly rocks and some rustic stairs.In general, sculptys look like sculptys look like sculptys,if you get my drift.

Adding to what I said before: I've also watched Robin work on sculpties, particularly her tea set. She spent a ton of time on it, mostly fighting the LOD so it would still look okay at a distance and not fall apart. Seems like that takes a ton of work to get something really worth it.

a house made from a sculpt sounds awful

I agree they can be used well, or badly, pretty much like everything else in SL

yeah I hate that they change shape are varying distances too which is why I tend to keep a low draw distance and ignore things in the distance

I think flex adds more lag to me than sculpts do

and don't even get me started on that god awful bling crap

I don't know if it's changed or not but I used to find them change shape a little at not many meters away - 10m or less - and that was with very simple sculpties that I made.

never saw changes that close, for me it was usually a bit aways, like 20 to 30 meters or more (I just kinda filter it out now, and hardly notice it much, or.. maybe it has changed, not sure)

Is that what you guys are referring to when you say LOD (what is LOD)?

I think they're a bit overused..

Some things sculpties are really good for, though. Flowing water can look WAY better when done with them. Plants I'm not so sure about as they usually look sorta alien to me - alien is fine sometimes but when it becomes the norm, it's a bit much. IMO.

Some artists have done some really great work with sculptures, if you're into that. Light Waves and Masterful Escape being two that I'm always looking for new pieces from, even if I can't afford to buy them. :\

Part of the problem is that the really good sculpties seem to take far more skill, patience and expensive software than normal prims do.

Level Of Detail. The resolution - similar to the number of pixels on a screen.

ah thank you
learn something new everyday

heyas;

yes, good sculpties are good. bad sculpties are just godawful.

i saw the other day in the advanced/debugging menu somewhere, to turn off LOD. i didn't try it, though.


i have also noticed a great many people have a terrible time getting sculpties to rez at all. i truly believe it is the 3d rendering capability (or lack thereof) of their video cards. i do (real) 3d work, so i have good 3d rendering, and sculpties for me usually pop right up.
i really CANT believe that its the 'sculpt texture loading.' after all, how long does it take a 64x image to load?? gotta be something in the rendering components.

however, no one listens to me, of course.