Show Us Your Sculpties!

Please down size the images when you post your results. 500px wide is good. Not 1680. My monitor is not that big.

Everyone's work is very impressive. I didn't think we'd be seeing such creativity so soon after the release of the sculpties. Even just recently I feel that the overwhelming opinion was "Sculpties are hard to make...and they're useless." And then this thread came along.

Below is an image showing a few basic creations. I think that their strength is their low prim count. 4 prim max on the toilet.

http://forums.secondlife.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=27952



Folks have been commenting here on this new feature, so I think I'll throw in my thoughts:

The CG industry has been sorely wanting 3d modeling to become a mainstream hobby. SL is making a giant leap in that direction. However, I'm wondering if sculpties were released prematurely. The good sculpties are mainly being created by people with prior experience it seems. Honestly, I had a blast experimenting with the above creations (esp. the toilet), but I found the fun came from using Maya, not SL. After creating something nice and organic and realistic in Maya, it's painful work to "fix it" (chop it into multiple NURBS, align the pieces to get rid of noticeable intersections, get the texture to work with SL's simplistic texture controls, deal with low resolution) just to see it in a virtual world. Hey, I don't want to think that I own a $7,000 package just to make freeware quality models.

It was cool to test out this unique feature, but as an artist, I hated having to "dumb down" my models just to get them to work with current web technology. So for me, it makes more sense just to stick to using Maya with its amazing lighting controls, renderer, hypershade, and mesh editing tools...plus I don't have to "pay" to view what I just made.

Having said that, I LIKE the idea of sculpties...for laymen. Which is why I believe that sculpties should have been released with an in world creation tool. All this talk about sculpties seems to have turned SL from a social community into a gallery of models by either professionals or residents with a lot of time and money and tech skills.

But keep on creating those cool objects!!! I have to admit that SL is a nice place to display models, get feedback, and bolster modeling confidence. I applaud Linden Lab for this innovation. I guess I'm just dreaming of a more efficient creation method... Sorry for the length: I'm in the industry, and I'm passionate about it.

Your Sculpted toilets and objects are impressive Indigo.
You definitely won't have problem selling those items because they are so good.
Not everyone like myself has the means for expensive 3d modeling programs or even the experience. I also made a toilet too but it wasn't as impressive or as low prim as yours.

Thank you very much, FD. Despite my skepticism, I still have a strong affinity toward sculptie modeling. Bringing this technology into such a diverse community can create powerful results and unearth unsuspecting leaders of tomorrow's CG industry. I only hope that the small circle of talented sculptie modelers doesn't make regular residents feel inadequate before they even get a fair chance to prove their content creation skills. I believe that SL's success lies in its ability to bring an obscure and specialized art form to the attention of a larger culture. So many new people are now dying to learn Blender and Maya and Lightwave and ZBrush and Max. It's exciting! Having worked through a formal 3D modeling/animating education, I know that everyone experiences a frustrating period of feeling inadequate before going on to create beautiful images. And we could reduce some of this frustration of only every SL resident could start off on level ground, so to speak. At least in terms of tools.

When it comes to imagination...you either have it or you don't.

Here is somthing to help import. It is still a work-in-progress, but very useable.

Since I got votes for the in-world OBJ importer, here is a binary to try it out:

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/oslcc/slviewer-1.17.0.12.VWR-1110.zip?use_mirror=osdn

It currently works with 64x63 mesh spheres created by any modeler exported as an OBJ file. Here are the instructions for Windows:

1) Copy C:\Program Files\SecondLife to you Desktop
2) Put the SecondLife-1.17.0.12.VWR-1110.exe into the SecondLife folder you just put on the desktop.
3) Put the file "Beta Test SecondLife-1.17.0.12.VWR-1110.exe" into the same SecondLife folder.
4) Click on the shortcut (you just moved) in the same SecondLife folder
5) Log In
6) Click on File->Upload Image
7) Find an OBJ file made by your modeler
Select it
9) If it converted fine, you will see the sculpt map.
10) Select "Sculpted Prim" to preview

http://www.contemporary-home.co.uk/images/art-car.jpg

I was looking up art cars on the internet and found this one that looks so much like a sculptie I had to post it. Art imitating art.

I love that sculpt mode, sort of an alien guy.

A few of my sculpties. Using 3D Studio Max 8 and Shack Dougalls's amazing SculptGenMax.

Still having issues with the JPG2000 importer mucking up the maps a bit.

My focus has been on architectural and furnishings mainly.

Wow, that's awesome! That'd be sick for an avatar

coolest forest ever.

Bush baby hands and feet.

http://www.throughlinedesign.com/secondlife/bushBaby.jpg
http://www.throughlinedesign.com/secondlife/bushBabyHands.jpg
http://www.throughlinedesign.com/secondlife/bushBabyHandsFeet.jpg

removed cant delete

I'm in the process of integrating SLPrims with SculptGenMax to create a unified prim/sculptie offline building environment for 3ds Max.

Anyway, here's a small 1-prim sculpture I built to represent the importer. The idea was to show that both prims and sculpties are supported.

The texturing is very rough. I didn't spend much time on it, but it still looks kind of cool.

Hi all! Here are some screenshots of my latest sculptie creation. Its an avatar of an angel with articulated wings.

Stats:
Made in Maya
160 prims total
91 unique sculpt maps (1.1mb uncompressed)
52 unique surface textures (43mb uncompressed)
Poly Count in Maya (export tesselation): 3.2 million
Poly Count in SL (no LOD): 163,840

On most people's machines, he takes 20 seconds to a minute to rez, so i kinda spoils the dramatic entrance, but im otherwise happy with it.

Let me know whatcha guys think.

-Xen

I am really digging those wings!

Very nice work. like you I find the temptation with sculpties and multi sculptie creations is to go for a maximum effect and use lots of them! In some cases they save prims but in others they eat them for breakfast. i have found that by using some normal prims it can help with load times. Also a seen on a sculpty animation thread here, you can preload a few small box prims with some of the main maps and drop it on your land before you rez the AV. Anyone who is on the land already will have the textures cashed and your av should pop into existance a little faster.

-why

Chip... since day one I have gone barefoot in SL... I sure would love it if you released the foot with toes... to wear like a shoe... my avie really needs toes...

I've been working on some mermaid outfits, sculpties with some flexi prims...

-whyroc

I've been having a lot of fun using Cel's awesome software with a special blend of Photoshop, Filter Meister, and various other tools/techniques. I made a bunch load of stuff, but these are the only ones I took a snapshot of.

Stone age luxury.

I am really digging those mermaids! Great use of the tools.

Still working on stuff. Texturing sculpts is a hard thing, yes? Much work to do, in so little time for not much money. Struggle on I will.
Is this acceptable to anybody? (I know, stupid shape.)

I may release some toes for use by shoe makers, but I think a foot attachment wouldn't look very good in general, even if it was very well textured. SL shades avatars and prims quite differently so it would be very obvious that your feet are attachments. It's possible to do very good looking toes on skins already with careful shading.

Interestingly shaped actually. I like it. =)

I made a 16/15 triangulate sphere into a cube. One was made with sharp edges and one with smooth edges.

It was intended for Modelers to make working with squares easier.

I have more if anyone is interested