What do you think about sculpted prims?

Okay, I'll recant: I don't really want sculpties to go away. For one thing, it would turn the ground level of all my parcels into forests of ginormous cucumber-mutants (kinda like they are now for viewers without the sculptmaps cached).

If I leave aside my complaint about sculpties not melding seamlessly with non-sculpted prim surfaces--really an issue of the desperate need for better regular prim geometry, for which sculpties just aren't the solution--probably the biggest limitation is surface texturing for purchased sculptmaps, as others have mentioned. For anything but the very simplest maps, the only way to do this is to import the sculptmap back into a 3D graphics program and map on a texture there--at which point the value added by the purchased sculptmap is negligible.

Illustrating both the limitations and possibilities of surface textures on sculpties, I threw together a little freebie full-perm "burning barrel" (betcha never saw one of those before ) set out near the center of Shinsa. The fire uses an animated flame texture on a single sculpted prim. Even though it's an incredibly simple sculptmap bought on SLX (originally intended for plants), it took me hours in the Gimp to slice up and splice together an animated flame texture to map on the surface. (I'll be happy to release the surface texture if anybody is interested.)

Oh, and yes, on that one both the flame and sculptmap textures suck: I wanted it to be a freebie, so there had to be no restrictions on redistribution, which pretty seriously limits the choice of sculptmaps. That's not surprising because for most purposes, releasing anything full-perm that contains a sculpted prim is vanishingly close to redistributing its sculptmap.

I am in with the "don't like" crowd.Even though the time to render is a pain it's not the main reason.I think it's the texture complexity that puts me off.
When possible I stay away from sculpts.
I have bought packs and made a few myself but in general am disappointed with both.

1) I do not think sculpted prims are essential to SL in any aspect.

2) The biggest problem is that for some people they never load

3) Sculpt Packs (which i purchase) are the Flying Spaghetti Monsters gift to those of us lacking in the talent and patience it takes to make sculpties. They seem pretty good so far.

4) More jewelry: My face pierces total 555 prims of which about 450 are chains - i would like to try sculpted chains which could possibly replace my prim chains.

My first beef is that sculpties are not used in moderation in a lot of places. If I go to a store or mall that lots of sculpties rezzed for display, my poor lil' machine drops down to about 5 fps. I have to try to avoid sculptie laiden areas. I can deal with a slightly above moderate amount of rezzed sculpties, but too much is too much.

My second beef is density usage. Oh, you made a chamfer box and are using it as a couch cushion. Too bad that over half of the mesh can't be seen. What a waste. Maximize. Put it where it matters.

Other than that, I like them. And one of these days I'll get to play with oblong sculpties.

My opinion as a prefab builder is this….

I don’t think sculpties are essential as I got along for years without them and made a good living. However now they are here I plan to make the best of them in order to keep up with my competitors

The problems with sculpties have already been covered in this thread so I won’t go over that. As a prefab builder I use them sparingly to compliment the existing tool set. They get used for door knobs, banisters, railings, hot tubs light fittings, nothing too big or serious as I worry about others load times. Prefabs need to be accessible to everyone to generate the maximum return so I am still very wary. I have made a 100% sculpted prefab and it is amazing, but I am afraid to sell it due to the amount of uneducated people who will complain that it doesn’t rez properly or fast enough, This is obviously not my problem but that will not stop people complaining as they don’t know any better. So it’s on the shelf at the mo. I’m using them allot more in landscaping and for organic shapes and trees plants etc and I think they are much more suitable to landscape and environments than they are to prefab buildings.

Sculpt packs, I love them. When sculpties were introduced I vowed to learn Blender, Maya, Wings, all of best 3D packages. I was afraid the prefab market would be transformed overnight and I would be left behind. So I tried… and I failed. Don’t have the time, patience of inclination. I can use wings 3D and I can use that popular in world sculptie creator (cant remember what its called) but my sculpties do not compare with those made by the better creators in SL yourself included. So full perm sculpt map packs are my saving grace. I have probably spent hundreds of thousands of LS on packs in the last year and deleted 80 %– 90 %. of them because they are not good enough or not suitable for my applications. But the ones I have are sorted into Sculptie viewers to make them easily accessible and are well worth the money, they are excellent.

Now I have calmed down and realised that sculpties aren’t going to change the world overnight I am allot more selective of what packs I purchase. I like it when you include baked ambient light and shade textures as this helps me make my own custom textures. More and more people are doing this now and it’s becoming a requirement for me to make a purchase. I like packs specifically made for certain shapes. So I want to buy a pack of 100 arches. Another pack of 100 rocks. Another pack of 100 tree components. I don’t want mixed packs, I don’t want to waste money on stuff I won’t use anymore and will just delete.

My ideal sculptie shopping experience would be to go into a sculptie superstore and to see every single sculptie rezzed. I then go round and create my own packs, getting a discounted price on 50 maps, 100 maps etc. Nightmare to manage and set up but that is what I want. Alternatively if I was happy with the designers overall quality from in world demos then I would be happy to create my own packs via a website and to purchase through pay pal. People could then pick and mix their own packs. I think there is a gap in the market for this.

I like sculpties As other posters have said, they're great for shoes and other organic shapes. I've got two great pairs of sneakers and a pair of cowboy boots that I don't think would look nearly as good had they been done with regular prims. I'm not so impressed with sculpty hair though. I bought one once and rarely wear it as I look pretty ridiculous with all those blobs sitting on my head til it rezzes. Give me good old flex hair anyday.

Yes, they can be overused on builds, but I have also seen some pretty incredible builds around the Grid that use them to great effect. All in all, I'd say the effect of sculpties on SL has been favorable, but I wouldn't say that they're "essential" (except of course for shoes).

One of the nice things about old school prims is that the collision properties are built in to the prim.

I find it disappointing to try to walk on sculpted prim rocks, for an example, and walk right through and into them, which happens a lot with sculpted prims. It's an immersion killer.

sculpts would be nice if they would rez faster than 1 minute for a 32x32 map. that is ridiculous

also the lod settings are too aggressive

What Qie said....well except I don't hate them or want them to go away...... I just think they're great for some uses.....but pretty much impossible and impractical (if possible at all) for other uses. I have some sculptie furniture that I do love.....but it's in my home and it rezzes fairly quick for 'me' because I have a good machine.
I have some sculptie shoes...again, not bad....pretty cool.....kind of get tired of them turning into blobs every so often......same with my sculptie horse....neat critter....but very unstable I do love my sculptie rocks......and I think for landscaping they offer a more natural looking form.
But....then again...it's a really a pain to deal with the bounding box. I get around it to some degree by placing pose balls so people can at least lounge on the rocks around my waterfall.....but that feature is truly downer if you want to do a large area of landscaping.

I think they're alright.....but I agree, again with Qie, that more non-sculpted geometry options would be a lot more useful overall. Oh and sculptie hair! WHAT are they thinking! LOL Yeah, I wanna look like I have playdough on my head....love it! LMAO

This is why I don't think the OP's suggestion of sculpted prefabs is a great idea...you'd need too many collision prims to make it worthwhile.

>>1) How essential do you think sculpted prims are to SL?

Fairly important. They are just the beginning. We can't be screaming "platform looks five years old" and not do something about it. We need more sculpt-like things, not less. We need SL to look like CryEngine2 at *very* least. Soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1ELRWTXQ1g


>>2) In general, what are the biggest problems you see with sculpted prims when using SL? If you avoid purchasing sculpted products, what are the main reasons?

Sculpt load issues, load issues and load issues.


>>3) If you purchase full-perms sculpt packs, what are the most important features, and what features do you see lacking? Inclusion of high-quality textures, baked ambient and lighting to be used to make your own, numerous variations in shape and style of sculpt components, and ability to be scaled down small are some possible features.

Mainly it's not what's in the pack, but whatever crazy thing I need at the moment that just isn't out there in sculpt form. Organics are the biggie.


>>4) What sort of sculpted products in general would you like to see created in SL with extremely high quality and efficiency beyond what you currently see? From your knowledge of using SL, what products do you think could best benefit from being sculpted?

Plant sets of very specific biomes. Desert plant set. Woodland set. Alien set. Rural countryside set. Rainforest set. That kinda thing.

Machined items also would be cool - thing is, a lot of these aren't too difficult to do using regular prims. Maybe something like valve handles might be worth doing.

Regarding plants: the load times have really made it tough - two prim trees are 'lollipop trees' that never rez in even after half an hour to a lot of people, I've found out.- I'm now sort of thinking the ideal trees are about 10-15 prim, planar branches and sculpted trunks, because when they fail for someone with crummy bandwidth its not so glaring.

If you are building a prefab or any building out of sculpties I would suggest using 100% transparent regular prims to make the collisions seem realistic. You save a lot of prims anyway using sculpties so a few well placed invisible regular prims can give you the solid surfaces to bump into in key areas.

I'd like to add that the main advantage of sculpted prims for me is that they allow you to mitigate one of the negative consequences of Windlight: the unfortunate increase in the effect of lighting on prims. Many prim-based objects that looked fine pre-Windlight look horrible in the exaggerated contrast that Windlight creates. SL really needs to introduce "materials" so that prims can be designated as having a rough, matte, fuzzy, or otherwise low-contrast surface.

As I specialize in low prim furniture, sculpts are very important to me. They can just make things possible that cannot be reached without using many prims. They are pretty essential for other uses as well, they make SL look simply better.

The biggest problem though is the load time of the maps. If the viewer would load the sculpt maps before the textures, it would already improve things a lot.

As for full perm sculpt packs, I think what is out there is already great, and reasonable priced. And if I need other forms, I simply discuss my needs with sculptors from who I know they create great quality
One thing that is almost invaluable, are detailed texture maps. makes creating custom textures a lot easier then it is now. Though by using a grid texture I do pretty well in making textures, if I really want to.

Pricing as Rha mentions, is not an issue for me in general. If you take for example 3000 linden for a perfectly shaped shoe, just calculate how many shoes you have to sell to earn it back. With 150 linden a pair you only need 20 sales to break even, while the sculptor only has that 1 sale to you and has to trust the fact you do not spread your full perm sculpt map around.
Imagine, i general I pay at least 1000 linden for a full perm sitting animation. In order to make some diversity, I need at least a dozen. So that's a lot of chairs and couches to sell

As for how detailed you can get with sculpties, I sell 1 prim sculpted lamps that are amazing in detail. Really amazing. The foot, the hood, the light bulb, and even the small bars to attach the hood to the rest of the lamp are there. And that all in 1 single prim! Together with a perfect texture (map was delivered in the pack!) they look superb, and very promising to what can be done with sculpts.

Very true


Not so true. Rendering cost, as in the amount of work needed to calculate and display an object or group of objects, has very little to do with the number of prims involved and almost everything to do with the total number of polygons/triangles/quadrangles/faces/vertices involved. Depending on the complexity, some single prim sculpts can be complete render hogs, which is where groups of easy to compute basic shapes do render faster, especially if they're set to phantom.


Again, true... but it's the amount of calculations the object evokes that determines whether or not it causes slideshows for others, not the number of primitives used to make it with. Same reason a twisted torus is much harder to calculate than one that's not twisted.

i love sculpties .. and at first used the fullperm packs..
but now i am making my own.. i realise they can be so much better with their own texture applied in Zbrush and then shadows and lighting applied. in this way a more smooth sculpt can be given more (seemingly) 3D details. This in turn makes a more stable sculpty as well.
too much manipulation is not a good thing. making them yourself also lets you control the bounding box.. and keep it as tight as possible

i love the way they make furniture look soft..

but if mesh ever came to SL.. i would be very very very happy.
Sculpts are very limited. there are many bad sculpts out there... (as well as awesome ones)

I also do realise the limitations.. not everyone can make them.. the learning curve is steep..
but its the same with a lot of things in SL.. skins, hair... even really good clothing..
so it keeps the cost of buying sculpts high.. but there is an aweful amount of work put into really good sculpties.

I now look down on every builds/attachments i see that insist in using normal prims to make stuffs like cables, nails, nuts, bolts, trims, and other curvy/detailed shapes that have little/negligeable collisions requirements.


you can make in a single sculpt and it's dedicated texture something that would take 50 prims with normal prims, hell you can even make several aparently detached objects still with a single sculpt.

Making good sculpts and their matching textures isn't that hard but it require time and discipline wich i wish prim builders would take, or at worst leave content creation, scupted prims are more efficient in their use of resources as they force the designer to do advanced techniques like low polygon modeling and texture sheeting if they want their scult to look any good.
here are a few of the things i make with sculpts:
http://kdc.ethernia.net/wp-content/uploads/snapshot_002.png buckets and teapot, 1 sculpt each
http://kdc.ethernia.net/wp-content/uploads/snapshot_024.png broom , 1 sculpt
http://kdc.ethernia.net/wp-content/uploads/match_002.png matchboxes, 1 sculpt each
http://kdc.ethernia.net/wp-content/uploads/snapshot_0024.png hat, 2 flexiprim, 1 sculpt


and here, tutorial for making sculpted prims in 3dsmax
http://kdc.ethernia.net/?page_id=342



To me sculpted prims are the future of sl, the only improvements i wish is more stitching modes, like "moebius strip" ,a "two sided" option, different topologies (8*32 , 16*32) and some way to use flex on them.

I was not around before sculpties, so I can't imagine my SL without them. I love them!

a) Texturing them. Yuck.
b) The fact that they behave like spheres. Double yuck.
c) As mentioned, rezing time... not a problem for me but I worry how my sculpted objects appear to others.
d) They appear different in different viewer versions... WHY???? (No, don't answer that, I really don't wanna know, I just wanna use my Nicholaz without sculpties looking crappy.)

The inclusion of shaded textures is great for using solid colors, but I don't know how to use them (ie, use an outside program to add a fabric/wood/whatever texture without it being distorted). Some kind of instructions or tutorial about how to do that would be GREAT and worth paying for.

My personal weakness is for outdoor stuff such as landscaping bits (tree, ground, water, etc.), but there are so many other possibilities with sculpties.
* body parts for non human avatars...
* realistic pets/wildlife...
* linked/chained shapes such as shelves/planks/links - especially some that are NOT perfectly geometric; for example, a plank bridge or stairs that was a little warped like real wood that has been worn and weathered...
* mini-packs of much more specific shape types, such as Porky mentioned above. For example, I might want the 6 furniture feet shapes but not the 44 other shapes that come in the pack. This would also be a bit less intimidating in terms of cost than a mega pack.

And rezzing requirements?

Sculpted prims can take 15 minutes to rez, if you have many of them. Avatars using them look like an anatomical model of fat cells until they do. Sculpted prims are also effectively no-mod: once you've made one, it's done, so I tend not to buy stuff using sculpts unless it's pretty much the sculpt that makes the thing desirable and it *can't* be made with regular prims.

(naturally, of course, I won't buy no-mod content made with regular prims either unless it's something far beyond ordinary)

If they brought a sculpt-map editor in-world and let you modify sculpts you had modify rights to (even if they changed you L$10 to save those modifications), then that would make a huge difference... but right now sculpts are at best second-class prims.

Absolutely disagree with you there! From the full perm sculpts I buy, 80% is never used, but the 20% that live up to my expectations beat any normal prim. There are real gems among them.

Even full perm sculpts are effectively "no mod".

ya it's like mega prims you can do everything to them but change their sized and with sculpties you can't do anything but change their size lol
it gets worse with sculptie mega prims hahahahah

Yeah, with sculpts, what you (eventually) see is pretty much what you're gonna get. Admittedly, I'm more interested in prims-as-UI than as pretty objects, so if it can't be scripted it's kinda boring to me. So I'm probably idiosyncratic in my disappointment with just not having much that a script can change about a sculpt. It can paint and slide them around and load another sculptmap (which better have been pre-cached as a secret surface texture somewhere in view). And make them throb, I suppose, if one doesn't mind some script lag. But no cutting or hollowing or dimpling or twisting or tapering or skewing or... well, all the stuff scripts do all the time with regular prims.

On the plus side, the 1.22 viewer series (now in RC) does let us know where on a prim a touch has occurred, so (as with all prims) sculpties will be able to act as control surfaces (with llDetectedTouchUV(), for example).

I think sculpted prims are a useful addition to SecondLife's building tools. They have pros and cons that you have to weigh when deciding to use them. Their strengths are in making natural (non-geometric) objects, making low prim versions of things (stairs), making things that would be just near impossible or horribly complicated with regular prims.

My main experience with sculpted prims is in the hair and shoes that I have bought. The main problem I have seen is the time needed for them to fully rez. I usually have to wait a few seconds for the prims to go from a sphere to the proper shape. The time usually depends on how many other textures are a loading. The worst experience with sculpted prims was when I flew into a sculpted forest and the place looked like a jumble of spheres and jagged alien shapes. I occasionally run into a boat, car or structure that looks like a jagged mess.

I realize that this may be partly due to the rendering power of my computer but sculpted prims can't be turned off like windlight.

I do make sculpted prims mostly for my personal use. I wish there was one kind of unified tool that LL would provide to make sculpties. Making sculpted objects differs so much from making regular prim objects. Gone is the instant ability to sketch out a prim object and the general 'building' aspect of SL. It's like throwing a big blob of clay amongst your lego blocks.

As far as prefab sculpted objects made for designers. I think those are great. The only problem is not finding enough or the exact object you need.

What i find funny is
that the entire "against them" crowd seems to be consisting of people

Who have never created a decent sculptmap before.
People who buy "packs" and then wonder why the result is mediocre.

What it comes down to is:
Just because you dont know how to use them properly, doesnt mean it cant be done

If youre using imprecise software to create them, and get a lumpy or "soft" result
its not the fault of sculpties themselves but of the creator

Are we going to badmouth regular prims now , just because of the ugly things people have built with them?

The same applies to the "No-Mod" whiners.
I can mod sculpties no problem.. i import the sculptmap,modify it, and export again without any hassle.

Texturing Sculpties is more difficult than regular texturing yes.
But again, just because you lack the skills, its a bad thing?
i have textured even the most complicated sculpts merely in PS or GIMP by using a mesh texture.

Free Tools for sculpty texturing are available

I have a feeling a lot of the present resentment towards sculpties is coming from
"Traditional" builders who are either unwilling or just too lazy to keep up with the current developments, and see sculpties as a "threat".

Rez time is an issue,admittedly, but these are things that need to be resolved with the client.
For me , most sculpts rez instantly.

As for rendering cost
a Sculpty has exactly the same as a torus
Need i mention those 255 tori chains and jewelry?

So my question to those critical of sculpties is:

Are you really criticizing sculpties or just your incompetence to create them as you want them?