Decomposition

This might be totally impossible, but is there a way to show of gradual decompostion. Such as like global warming melting a glacier or a dead body decomposing. Sounds wierd, but I wanted to ask to ease my curiosity.

I imagine you could build the decomposing objects in pieces
and gradually hide them from the outside in over time so it
appears to decompose...

Or, build it complete at each stage of decomposition and hide
and reveal the stages over time...

I see what you mean. I would a timed script and at different times tell one prym to hide...right?

Sculpty map animation. Nontrivial.

You make a series of sculpty maps, with the prim decomposing in each map. Use a script in the object to periodically change the sculpt map (using llSetPrimitiveParameters(), I believe). The result won't look terribly smooth, either. The object will revert to an ellipsoid (streched sphere) when the sculpty map changes, for any user whose viewer hsan't finished downloading the new sculpty map.

:l...how would this look like, is there a link....head hurts.

Have you ever made a scupty?

If not, search the builder's forum about that. It's not easy. If you're still interested, let us know. The scripting part isn't difficult.

Thanks, this would be my first time trying this out. I'll check the library but what should I look for? Sculpty map animations?

The first thing to do is study the sticky called Sculpty Tools and Tutorials at the top of the Builders' Tips forum. That will give you an idea of the immensity of the challenge ahead of you and some pointers about how to start learning. There are some good free tools for creating scultpties. Almost all of them require a lot of careful study before you can make anything useful, but you can have fun working away at them.

Wow, there is alot to get down, but I will read it. I'm better at adding things to script and fixing them than starting them, so this might be the best for me. Thanks

with the sculpty method, you can bypass the ellipsiod phase by creating a smal interior object that uses the next stage map, though this will only help at a lower speed of change

Nobody ever said Void wansn't clever!

there are also some sun times scripts in the script acchive on this forum too. You maybe able to modify one of the variables in the growing plant scripts, that may be somewhat concievable. to use the gradual movement of the sun to cue various scripted effects. it would gradually decompose 6x a day. just an idea, the SL client can be scripted to monitor the movement of the sun.

I can't claim credit for the idea... it's the same method used in a large number of vendors.... pre-render the next image on a hidden face (or not so hidden face), poof, no lag in display time focus.