Let's Say I Want To Make Sculpted Boots...

... and let's say that I want the easiest tool with sufficient flexibility to make them. What would you suggest?

TIA

Wings?

i would use the tools i know how to use. Lightwave 3D its is easy for me
and flexable but if you have never used it before it wont be easy for you.
have you used any 3D modeling program before?
if you have not it wil be difficult to start by making boots first.
if you want to learn to make sculptys like that use blender or wings they are free

I do not think, that there is an "easy tool with sufficient flexibility" available. Of course it depends a bit on how you want your boots to look alike... So here is my decision guideline:

1.) check for a tool, which you can easily start with and improve your skills to gain "flexibility" ...

2.) You are going to spend money on a tool ? Or you look for free tools ?

3.) Check for good sculptie suport.

4.) Check for good support in this forums

5.) Do not forget that the major part of your sculptie creation is the texturing. So you need a tool, which can do good texturing too.

So here is a list of tools, which seem to be reasonable for you and have good comunity support:

Maya (expensive)
wings 3d (free)
blender (free, also look here: http://blog.machinimatrix.org/video-tutorials)
z-brush (expensive, sort of the best/easiest texturing tool for sculpties ?)
(PS CS4) (has got some amazing texturing options, not sure if good for sculpties!)

Look here for more in depth information:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims:_3d_Software_Guide

From all tools above i know for sure, that blender supports direct reimport of sculptmaps, and level of detail (LOD). That makes life somewhat easy and comes in very handy. I can not tell for the other mentioned tools.

But for all of the products never forget, that sculpties at themself are not an easy thing. There are many many many pitfalls into which you can fall independent from any tool you use. So be prepared to take some time until you get sufficient results.

In the past, I had spent a bunch of time learning Blender, by going through tutorials. I even managed to make an object I wanted in SL, only to discover I couldn't import it. Try two was to start with one of those pre-made spheres, at which point I realized I'd have to spend my time pushing vertices around, which suddenly made building sculpties more about "artistic talent" than the "mechanics" of the tutorials.

That was when I stopped looking at Blender.

I have a feeling I'm out of luck, unless I'm willing to use sculpting tools, right? (They don't call them sculpties for nothing I suppose).

However, even with Blender and that premade sphere, the steps seemed rather convoluted to get the resulting object into SL. Is there nothing a bit more straightforward?

Sculpties, by their very nature, are "convoluted". They're a totally unique merger of something sort of like mesh modeling, something sort of like NURBS modeling, and something SL can understand without requiring any major rewrites. There's no way just to throw all that together and expect it to be neat and clean. It's going to be somewhat messy, no matter what.

Ive had had the best luck with blender. There are lots of SLers using blender and a descent amount of support. Even in this forum =))

There are some scripts which you can download here.

http://dominodesigns.info/second_life/blender_scripts.html

These make blender a much more powerful sculpty tool and help avoid making unuploadable(I doubt that's a word) things.

Watch all these tutorials. (I had to keep pausing them, while trying to keep up)
http://blog.machinimatrix.org/video-tutorials

Blenders UI can be intimidating at first. Those tutorials(combined with the scripts) will help you set blender up to make sculpts, and almost let you avoid all the extra buttons(almost).

best of luck with the boots =)

Times have changed since then regarding blender. First there was Domino Marama who has created the scripting solution for sculpties in blender. It is a full round trip engineering tool, since you can create sculpties from scratch, or import existing sculpties and modify them. The tool even takes care of LOD (level of detail calculations) which is still a crucial part of sculptie making.

Again this was true about one year ago. Today things have become very easy.
Well you still would start with a premade sculptie (sphere, torus, cylinder, plane) and then go on from there... But the process of creating/exporting/importing to SL is a snap. After you have sculpted you model (Indeed you can SCULPT in blender too, not only shifting vertices around !!) just export your sculpt-map to SL, then from the viewer import it and that's it.
Ok, you even do not need to start off with a premade Sculptie. You can use NURBS in blender and convert your results to sculptmaps. I have created a scripted solution for this particular task (based on Domino's scripts) and now going from NURBS 2 Sculpties is a matter of 3 mouseclicks (see http://blog.machinimatrix.org/nurbs2sculptie/ )

The only thing blender can not do automaticaly is to convert arbitrary meshes to sculpties ...

You might take a look into our other video tutorials. I think, together with Domino's Scripts they make you get productive in less than a day. And concerning flexibility... i think, blender is the most flexible tool i ever have seen in my life. Up till today everytime i think i have hit a border, some nice guy tells me how to get further and blender offers yet another bunch of unbelieveable amazing options...

And yes, i am a blender fan

Well yes there is Rokuro. http://kanae.net/secondlife/
There is still a free version and a very inexpensive Pro version. Both will get you sculpting in a hurry, but, you will find them limited. Especially when you want to make textures for your sculpts.

I still find myself using rokuro for quick and relatively simple shapes. But not being able to map the way the texture lays onto the sculpt is a real draw back.

Nothing to loose by trying rokuro. It certainly got me past my initial sculpty jitters. Once i mastered it, I was thirsty to learn the more powerful blender. =)

Blender is completely free and well-documented with a wonderful variety of video tutorials, printed books and even college courses based around it. It also has a large userbase in SL as a result.

Some of the commercial outfits like Maya have personal editions, but generally prohibit you from making any money off your work (so no selling what you built with it), so be sure to read the licensing if you go with something else: They're only free if your rights have no value to you.

Nope: This really is the most straightforward way. Sure, SL could accept Blender wireframes directly (since it's an open format), but then that screws everybody using other 3D modelling software.

The problem is twofold. One is that in most cases (commercial software), the vendor wins by using a proprietary format that forces you to stick with their software (and spend more money on updates in the future) to read and modify.

The other being that the format for importation into SL isn't exactly the preferred format of any software.

The problem it sounds like you were having, though, by the sounds of it, is that the two spheres weren't attached to each other in anyway. Sculpties cannot have holes.

Thanks all. I'll give Blender another try. I admit to quitting it the first time due to overwhelming frustration. It sounds like things are better now with the workflow.

After messing with a number of applications and getting nowhere, I hit on Sculpt Studio, which is designed specifically for Second Life. It costs 4999 lindens on XLStreet but I found it to be easily the best way to get into sculpting in-world since it is based on the existing building tools.

The big problem with sculpting is that even though you can produce great work with many professional and freeware applications, the sculpt maps produced are often unsuitable for Second Life unless you really know what you are doing. Sculpt Studio's strength is that it is tailored to suit the building methods and limits of Second Life using prims to set the slices and vertex points of your shape as well as using notecards to store and save the information. You can focus on getting to grips with the basics of sculpting as well as getting results - without having to learn yet another complex user interface.

The 'Sweet Sculpties' group provides excellent support within Second Life and Ghanie Lane has a five-part tutorial on the web which is well worth following through in order to get started within a matter of hours (check her picks or Google her).

The developer recently upgraded the product to function in Mono and he/she regularly supplies updates of the product. The latest version is also geared to produce oblong sculpts - which probably means diddley squat to you if you're completely new to sculpting but you will soon learn the advantages of that feature.

Having said all that, I have to agree with previous posters in that sculpting is a fine balance between shaping and texturing: it is often said that there are many ways to sculpt a prim but in my opinion there is usually only one solution that will make it easy to texture the finished item as well.

SculptyPaint is easy..

I also use Sculpt Studio and I highly recommend it.

I was just about to mention Sculpt Studio when I finally got to the bottom of the thread and found others talking about it.

I *highly* recommend Sculpt Studio. I've only been using it for a little over a week and I've already made some things that are beyond what I ever thought I'd have the ability to create. It takes a little practice, but it's very easy to learn... MUCH easier than Blender, which I'm clueless about. It is very flexible... and has a great support community and documentation. For anybody who plans on doing anything beyond "dabbling" in sculpties, I highly recommend it. If you are just dabbling then stick with Rokuro and Tokoroten.. they are totally free and very easy to use. If you get to the point where they are too limiting and you want to continue down the sculpty path I very highly recommend Sculpt Studio.

Love, there are also a handful of in-world tools for building sculpties. They are not as powerful as offline tools, but they concepts of how to build with them might be a little more accessible. Some of them give you a grid of balls that you move around, like vertices, to make your shape, while others use cross sections almost like ribs. I have no first hand experience with any of them but they should be mentioned. You can find them pretty easily on XstreetSL, along with links to demo videos and whatnot.

Since no one has mentioned it, I will. Try archipelis. It is for quick and dirty building and has an exporter.