Your dream sculpty program?

If you could snap your fingers and have the Ultimate Sculpty Program, what sort of things would it do? What sort of things would it do differently from other sculpty programs? What things *wouldn't* it do that bug you about other programs?

Keep in mind I'm not asking what you'd like sculpties to do that they don't do right now in SL - so nothing about how you'd like to improve sculpties as rendered by SL, but just suggestions on how you'd prefer to work with them.


.. and no this isn't just entirely theoretical, but I won't comment further at this point.

N°1 Full MacOS version

Some kind of sketching interface such as fibermesh is pretty high on my wants list

http://www.cg.tu-berlin.de/fibermesh.html

Sound effects are high on my things that should be removed list.

Hi Daniel. First: thanks so much for your wonderful video tutorials. You may not have had many replies in those specific threads, but please be sure that there are A LOT of 'silent' readers that appreciate it very very much. I for one was thrilled with the tuts.

About the sculpty program. What frustrates me most is that 3D-models look great in Wings and Maya, but turn out wrinkled in sl. I know that cannot be helped up to a certain level, but for me predictability would be the most important thing for a sculpty program.

Further I'd like to see the same modelling interface as the in-world edit tools (as a starting point of course, 3D-modelling needs much more). And of course all the features mentionned above lol.

Are you planning on creating such a program?

This is my dream too. I love the mac but it is such an obstacle for using freeware/shareware. I wish I could use the utilities available for lossless uploading to SL for my sculptie maps. I am using the RC viewer but it does not appear to make any difference.

If sculpting objects in Blender3d looked just as good as in Sl (no bending over backwards with uv mapping correctly), I'm all set.

Could there be a command that "adjusts" the sculpty mesh to optimize it for SL? That is, it moves the mesh around so that large quads are on flat parts, and small quads are on angle-ish parts.

Similarly, is there some algorithm that could wrap a proper SL mesh around an exisiting object. Meaning, one could use extrusions or collapses or whatever, and then finally say, OK, convert that to a proper sculpty.

Better yet, make an object, select some of it's components, and sculptify them. Select a few more components, sculptify them.

Have you played with Plopp? What I like about it is it's totally different approach to 3D. For those who haven'tried it, you draw a 2D front and a 2D back (or left and right) and then Plopp blows it up like a mylar balloon. Lots of cool possiblities, and you can make some funny stuff. and it is really easy. (It the outputs the sculpt map *and* the texture, which you upload to SL and it often looks like crap.)

This already exists. It's called Maya, plus Qarl's "uber" sculpt exporter, and the LibSL importer. My only beef with the importer is that it's command-line-only, no GUI, which is moderately annoying. Other than that, it works perfectly.



Also already exists in Maya (and others, of course, but since we're talking about one all-inclusive program, I think it makes sense to keep strumming the Maya harp since it does both Number 1 and Number 2 so far).



Hey, Maya does that too.



Maya again.



One more time, Maya.



Definitely Maya (best help file I've ever seen).



Yup, Maya's got that.



Maya again. If I'm reading the Fibermesh page correctly, you can do the same thing either with lofts from curves, or with wire deformers.



It's almost like sculpties were designed by a Maya user, isn't it? Oh wait, they were.

My "wish list" is comprised of just one thing. Someone please make a GUI for the LibSL importer. Pretty please.




Oh, and Paolo, a couple things:


This is not a problem with your 3D modeling program, but with SL itself. It happens when the sculpt map textures do not upload losslessly like they're supposed to. LL's working on it. In the mean time, the LibSL uploader does work losslessly. Use it. You'll be amazed at the difference.



I'm not sure how this would be useful. The in-world tools are based almost entirely on adjusting parameters, tweaking numbers. Making sculpties requires moving vertexes around, which is is almost completely unrelated.

As far as the non-parametric tools, like the manipulator arrows and scaling handles, virtually all 3D modeling programs have those.

If you really want to build an interface identical to SL's though, again I'll say Maya would be the program to do it in. Everything in Maya is based on a central scripting language, including the interface. You can modify any aspect of the program any way you want if you know how. Adrian's Maya To SL tool, which is still in the works, would be an example of a start towards what you're talking about.

...the in-world sculpty tool? There should be something, something standard, basic, and intuitive...

Such as, you upload or draw a texture template which has regions called front, back, left, right, top, and bottom. Sort of like a clothing template. (This is Plopp like, where you can have front/back *or* left/right.)

In each of those parts of the templates you put a 2d image. At least one, the rest are opitional.

When you apply these to the outside of a sculpt prim, the tool generates a sculpt map to make that object. After all, if I send front/back/side views to a human artist, she would be able to make a sculpty.

Aftwards, you can push or pull on small regions of the sculpty (like the Wings magnet tool) to clean up the details.

I suspect it will be a VERY long time before we see any in-world sculpting tool, if indeed we ever see it at all. I don't think that's a bad thing, by the way. I recently talked at length about this in another thread. I'll refrain from going over the same stuff here, as it's slightly off topic, but if you're interested, the post is at /8/ca/213570/1.html#post1704769

Wow, thanks guys for all your suggestions. Great stuff. Keep it comin'

As far as I see it there are three main approaches to making scultpies:

A) Model independently, and try to convert the result into a sculpty by reprojection
+ Method works reasonably well for organic shapes
+ Uses a somewhat normal workflow with all the powerful tools of professional 3d apps at your disposal
+ Source mesh can be easily used to bake textures, lighting & ambient occlusion
- Results are often significantly different when finally imported to SL
- No control over final vertex arrangement

B) Model off a primitive template for export to sculpty
+ Can use most basic modeling tools in programs such as Wings
+ Final geometry will look identical in SL
- Can't use advanced modeling tools that introduce new faces
- Modeling technique must preserve vertex ordering

C) Construct sculpt map via 3rd party tool or photoshop
+ Very precise results
- 3rd party tools (tokroten, rokuro) limited to specific effects
- modelling sculpties in photoshop requires extensive planning & repetitive calculations

I'm not so much interested in A, since I think workflows have been established already that do A quite well. Its unlikely you'll ever beat maya/blender/zbrush with a proper plugin. Add in the cost and/or steep learning curve of these applications... and frankly, I like controlling individual vertices snd making geometric shapes. So I'm thinking more about a combination between B and C.

So what is my dream sculpty program? Not so much a replacement for all other tools, but basically the ultimate sculpty 'helper':

- WYSIWYG. The 3d preview would show you, at all times, *exactly* what your sculpty will look like in SL, factoring in 8 bit precision - and allow you to toggle between the different LOD settings to see how your sculpty will look over distance.
- Use SL's axes. Use SL's texture parameters. No surprises!
- Vertex level control. Tweak any vertex and see the result immediately.
- Bounding box control. Don't assume I want the model centered at origin or the bounding box tight around the model. Give me control!
- Multiple sculpty support. Let me work on two sculpties at the same time, specify their height, width and position *without* changing the sculpt map. Export LSL scripts to duplicate the scene in the editor.
- Texture painting. Painting in photoshop, going back into a 3d program, refreshing the texture to see changes - seeing its off, going back into photoshop, tweaking it - its clumsy and frustrating! Give me a simple paint program that immediately updates the texture on the model. 3d painting would be a plus, but even a simple realtime texture update would be a great benefit
- Automate double-sided sculpties. Paint alpha on two textures simultaneously for easy onion peel effects
- Automated lossless uploading to SL
- FAST. OpenGL. Native code.
- Multiplatform. Hi2u OSX
- Handle any image format within reason
- OBJ (&3DS?) import & export

oh, forgot one thing:

- Free

Chosen, this is not a contest. Its perfectly fine to suggest features you'd like to see in a sculpty program that already exist in others. So yes, Maya is wonderful, thanks, we've got that established

I wasn't trying to imply that it was a contest. I was simply pointing out that pretty much without exception, all the "dream features" people are asking for are not dreams at all. They already exist, all in one single program.

My point is twofold:

First, why continue to dream a dream that has already come true? I can't see how that makes any sense.

Second, I think it's extremely beneficial when people ask for features, to steer them towards tools that have the features they're looking for. Not to do so would be neglectful and irresponsible, in my opinion.

Chosen, thats your opinion - if Maya is your "Dream Program" - awesome. Congrats on finding it. But please respect others who may not dream your same dream

Consider that Maya is a very expensive program - not everyone may qualify for an educatational discount, and the PLE is restricted against commercial use - so you cannot legally use it to make sculpties for sale. Not to mention it may be largely overkill for some people - if PloppSL + 1 or 2 new features is someone's dream sculpty program, why tell them to use Maya?

By all means point someone to Maya if someone is specifically looking for a feature that Maya has but you don't need to beat them over the head with it by repetitive quoting.

Sorry Daniel, but I just can't see any difference between "I want my dream program to do ____" and "I can't find a program that does ____, so please tell me where to get one". To me, those two sentences are 100% synonymous. People generally don't dream just for dreaming's sake alone. A statement of desire is always a request for that desire to be fulfilled. Knowing that there's an answer and then willfully failing to providing it is, as I said, neglectful and irresponsible. It's almost mean.

It's not that Maya's "my dream program", and that I'm such a fanboy that I have to go and steal this opportunity to promote it. I'm sorry if that's the way you prefer to interpret it, but that's just not how it is. There are actually plenty of problems with Maya (unrelated to all this) that have been pissing me off for years, and where those things are concerned, I recommend different solutions. It just happens to be that everything everyone has asked for so far in this thread are things that Maya does.

Look, if this were a thread dream tools for basket weaving, and I happened to know of one that fit everyone's description, I'd mention that too. There's nothing wrong with that. I really don't understand why you seem to think there should be.

Now, you are certainly correct that Maya is very expensive, so not everyone will have access to it. Low cost was not a feature that anyone mentioned though. Had anybody at all said "My dream program should be free" or "My dream program should be cheap to buy", I obviously would not have suggested Maya in regard to those requests. But nobody did.

So let me put it like this. If YOUR dream program should cost less than Maya - awesome. Congrats on wanting that. But please respect others who may not dream your same dream


Anyway, let's not derail this by bickering. People, please continue to post your dream features. If Daniel and I can't see eye to eye on how your comments should be answered, that's fine. If I happen to know of programs that fit what you're looking for, I will tell you. Daniel, I'm truly sorry if that bothers you, but as I said, I think it would be wrong for me to withhold such recommendations.

Of course there's a difference

"I want a fruit that is red, but tastes like an orange"
"Here, have this apple, its red."
"But..."
"You asked for red fruit didn't you?"

I do apologize for coming off like I don't value your input, certainly I do. I just don't anyone to be scared away from offering their opinion here.

That said, is there anything that you could mention that bugs you about Maya as relates to your workflow making sculpties with it?

Chosen, is that the http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SLImageUpload you're talking about?

That argument doesn't hold up at all. What you said before was that there's a difference between saying "here's what I'd like to have" and "here's what I'm asking for". Now you're talking about the difference between "here's what I want" and "OK, I'll give you half of what you asked for". How are those even remotely the same thing?



While I appreciate the apology, I must point out that the only one who's currently scaring people away form offering opinions is you. I offered mine, and you chastised me for it. If you want this to be a free discussion, let it flow freely.

I seriously doubt that my mentioning that there just so happens to be a program already in place with the features already mentioned would discourage anyone from posting additional desired features. Your reaction to me, and our ensuing argument over it very well might though.

Thanks Paulo, but unfortunately, no, it's not what I was asking for. That one only uploads the sculpt maps. The LibSL uploader also creates the prims, applies the maps, and assembles the whole model for you.

Domino - That fibermesh stuff looks really cool! Sure, there are other ways you might accomplish the same results, but often a natural interface like sketching makes such things more accessible to more people.

It's interesting, Daniel, that you don't list much in terms of its capabilities as a 3D modeler. Is that the sense in which you describe it as a "helper". That is, one would use some other program to do the basic 3D modeling, export it as an obj or some other standard format, and then use this program to bridge the gap between what the modeling program produced and the finished sculpty in SL?

I'm pretty happy with Wings as a modeler, so my 'want list' probably doesn't include much modeling stuff for that reason.

The perfect modeling program for me has an easy to use, intuitive interface that doesn't require hours to learn, doesn't require the use of keyboard shortcuts or burries features deep in menus or overwhelm me with choices. For the time being Moment of Inspiration fills that niche for me.

Chosen: This? https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Importprimscript

Interesting idea, but don't run it in a sandbox or you might get your sculpty stolen before you can take it!

on a related note, is there technical reason that SLImageUpload and this program can't generate inventory items?