What are the social implications of sculpties?

Personally, I was surprised at how fast this came online, and if the trend continues version 2 - with alternate topologies is just around the corner. I see this as a harbinger social change than technical - yeah, you can make a lot of cool stuff with sculpties, but what does it do to people and how they interact?

The two things that strike me are that prim counts are fundamental to how SL operates, and that people seem to have an appreciation for the limitations of prims. With sculpted prims in, will this fundamental change? Do you need a ton of land when your fancy couch is only 1 prim (=> lower land demand/prices?) and will you appreciate a 300 prim sculpture, when you can do something similar with just a few sculpted pieces. Reduced prim counts could mean much less lag in places like crowded clubs. OTOH, does your new low-prim hairstyle need 50 additional sculpt textures to define its shape?

The fact of the matter is that SL is significantly business based, and sculpties have the potential to raise the build-quality bar up a long ways. How much harder will it be for a newbie to start a building business? Will it drive some people out of business? (maybe even a few of the big players?) What happens when someone with access to a lot of 3D models imports them en masse? Will sculpted items be super premium and exist in a new market segment? or will it be the norm and force older stuff into dollar-store land? Will the SL content business become more professionalized?

Lest I ramble on forever, I'll cut it short there. I guess my question for this forum is - who else is concerned/interested in these issues, and what do you think will happen?

I agree with your observation that sculpty-prims will initially be a barrier to entry, but eventually in-world tools will be present that will allow one to create them without using expensive third party software. And yet, only that third party software will be able to produce accurate texture maps for these new prims.

So the very best sculpty prim objects will always be made by people with skills and financial resources that tower over those of mere mortals, the way it's set up, but other people will still be able to make at least some use of them in time.

What this does is to stratify business in SL - as with the real world, it will be ruled by the technocratic elite.

Just my heavily biased opinion, of course - as always, your mileage may vary.

I always wanted Maya, or other high end 3d software to play with, and maybe a new rl car. I am sure sculptys will hopefully allow me to aquire one......maybe both.... I am so excited about this. It is true though those of us with experiance modelling in 3d are going to be light years ahead of those without...at first..

I think it is much like anyone who makes clothing now needs to use a graphics program. My first few outfits were made with sliders, purchased/library textures and a few prims. Six months later, I've learnt the ins and outs of my program, how to shade, use layers, alpha channels, etc. It was a steep learning curve at first, but it was very rewarding.

I don't expect to learn 3D modeling overnight. But I want to learn it. To call sculpties exciting is an understatement.

I think you'll see an eventual change in the economy more than anything social. High prim builds will be considered obsolete for the most part (although there are good deal of things the sculpties CAN'T do at this point) and I think you'll eventually see a ton of freebies that were once considered high quality items.

This'll all be eventual. I think there will be a slow transition to a sculptie dominated market due to the fact that there WILL be bugs after today's downtime and there will be a lot of people slowly figuring out Blender and Maya and whatever else might be used.

I, myself, have been designing new lines of products with the sculpties in mind.

As far as land, I don't think you'll see too much of a difference because it doesn't matter if you're using 100 or 100,000 prims, everyone wants enough room to walk around!

I think we will see some server loads lightened as people make the transition to a sculptie dominated society. That'll give us plenty of room to cram more features with bug into the system!! YAY!

Can anyone give a definitive answer on how sculpties affect the collision wireframe of the object?

There will be broader economic impact once sculptie adoption hits critical mass. HOWEVER, people in this game are greedy! More, mORe, MORE!! is the standard. You get land hungry. You get prim hungry. The only time reality hits is when the dent in the pocketbook is deep enough!

I think I'll make skyscraper apartments for cheap with a 10 prim limit and a sculptie shop on the bottom so people can buy their couches and whatnot from me and not worry about the prim limit!

I'll be the first slum lord in SL!!

from http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Talk:Sculpted_Prims
The sculpties are approximated on the server as a flattened sphere.
The physics bounding box is slightly smaller than the visible prim (about 2-5%, which was hardly noticeable on small prims, like 0.5m, but on 10m prims it was as drastic as being up to my knees in prim)

Communist Revolution!
Long live the Proletariat!

lol

coco

Just as some retailers now make full perm sit poseballs and textures and building kits for those who can't make them as well for their own businesses; so too, some people will create full perm sculpties for reuse in sl constructions. Kits have always been a big thing in SL, I think premade full perm sculpties will fit into this market place very will. Those of us who have more taste than talent needn't fear this new and exciting innovation.

EthanH

Well from my experience in things graphical (a hobby I've had off and on over the years) & my understanding (without having used them myself) of how scuplties work. I'd say you'll still probably have to model a couch with more than 1 sculpty, a chair could be down as 1 sculpty and keep correct collision attributes though... The biggest change is to things like jewelry, hair, or anything else that was made high prim before like that (vehicles maybe?). Those should be doable with far fewer 'sculpties' than prims and look good...

- The "top end" of building will get higher; you'll need to be a 3D professional as well. From what I'm given to understand, though, this isn't that much of a change.

- Building classes will be damaged - this is a real concern of mine. The universality and sociability of building will be weakened.

- Baked textures will become much more common, since the way many 3D packages handle sculpted prims, once you have a sculpt texture making a baked texture is just a matter of turning on/off a few shaders.

By the way, there is really no need to buy Maya if you want to make sculpties. If you want high-grade software, I understand that Lightwave or Modo are more highly recommended for beginners who want to focus on creating model shapes, and I think Modo lets you paint clothes onto an avatar as well.

I don't see an overnight revolution. Sculpties are not the answer to all the of the prim intensive builds of SL. Where they will make an impact is in furniture, avatars, statues and other organic shapes. Buildings are not going to be affected at all, a 100 prim house is still going to be a 100 prim house. The other thing to consider is that you are limited by textures as well. Only those people who are really good at creating textures are going to be able to manufacture the custom textures that will make a sculptie look like it has more than one face, apply shadowing and lighting effects, etc... The skill curve to me seems to stay the same. People with a high degree of existing graphics skills have always had an edge in terms of content creation in SL, but that has never stopped someone with a creative eye and the determination to master the toolset from becoming a success.

You know, except for furniture and other static things, I don't know how much sculpties will ruin the world the more I think about it.

My stuff has a lot of moving parts and is connected to different parts of the av so I'd probably only be using sculpties for the more awkward "retarded egg" type shapes that I wish I could make now.

I think there could be a decent business in custom sculptie making for those of us who don't have the cash or patience to get into 3d modelling software.

I'd pay L$2000 to have a full permission major part made by someone that knew how!

From my experiments with sculpties, it's painfully obvious they have a lot of limitations. The predictions that high prim builds will vanish is fanciful. Sculpties will help reduce the number of prims needed for some items. But they won't replace normal prims, especially where flat surfaces and 90 degree angles are concerned. Sculpties are like marshmallows, puffy, squishy and organic. Many items don't lend themselves to this kind of prim.

I can only speak from my corner of the world, but doesn't everybody? Most mechanical looking things may use standard prims still, however they will benefit from dabbles of sculpted prims.

For example, a sailboat may remain mostly unchanged. You don't need a sculpty to make a mainstay, or a hatch. *Most* of a boat's hull would not need to be sculpted, except the bow (depending on the hull design). We can save one prim per cleat and make more accurate looking cleats with sculpties. The sails can and will be curved looking (FINALLY!), and in fact animate to "billow" depending on wind speed in the case of Tako boats.

Oh, and it's time for real speedboat hulls, instead of using sphere halves.