Sculpties Vs Prims

So... someone told me to switch to sculpties for building avatars. Problem is, I understand sculpties... I know how to do all sorts of things with them, and I know where I am going with the world of prims. Its so simple: just figure out what shape best makes up the form.

So I go about grabbing various 3D editors and trying my hand at doing that.

Hours later, hundreds of videos and tutorials eating up my bandwidth, and nearly every single friggin recommended 3D editor tried, I fail.

I just can't figure out how to use the darn things to make it.

So I was wondering... are prim-based things really so bad? Especially for animalistic avatars, pets, etcetera?

Thanks,

A very ego-broken Valdyr

Well, it depends on what you try to achieve (as always). Prims are good for many many purposes. Sculpties are good for organic shapes. So one might think, sculpties are also good for avatars. But sculpties have some inabilities, like "no flexies", bad physics, LOD, ...

So in general you can't make clothing (soft fabrics). On the other hand you can model avatar shapes, it is no problem to create armors, robotics avatar shapes, ...

If you want to use sculpties "only to reduce prim count", that is in general not worth the effort. So you can reduce the statement to:

"If you can solve a building problem with prims,
use them. If you can't, then use sculpties."

So, if you still want to walk your path to mastering sculpties:
There are many software systems, which meanwhile support sculpties to some extent. My advice is, just pick one convenient software depending on:

- the SW directly supports sculpties (something like: "file->export->SL_sculptie"
- the SW fits your skills (3D newbies might want to get a "click and go" solution)
- maybe you got experience with (blender/maya/zbrush/rokuro/...)
- it generally fits your needs (rokuro -> rotation symetric, zbrush -> texturing...)

You find a very good overview about what is currently available at

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims:_3d_Software_Guide

Take your choice and get prepared for some hard time of learning. It is easy to make your "hello world" sculptie, but in general it is hard to make a sculptie for a special purpose. You need practice, practice and practice

I personally am stuck with blender, so if you decide to go the blender way, you should look at the sculptie importer/exporter solution of Domino Marama. this makes your life very easy.

Have a look at the Museum of Robots robot competition, they have avatar robots on display made from either all prims or sculpties and combinations of. Maybe seeing what other shapes creators can make may help?

I just can't figure out Blender. Its UI is definitely not very newb friendly (or user friendly, but that's just my opinion).

When you make sculpties... say you were sculpting a dogs head... do you start with one sphere and go from there, and that is the only shape? Or do you use multiple shapes?

As for the link, I have downloaded everything (at the very least the trial versions of some of the ones that cost money), tried everything, looked up tutorials for everything, and find myself infinitely frustrated with all of them. One program has something I like, but two things I hate... two other programs will have something else I like, but the rest I hate... If I were a software developer I would mesh them all together, but I am not, so I won't be doing it.

Also... I got the sculptie app thing for Blender, but I don't have the .blender folder that is required to install it, so that just makes Blender a worse decision for me than it already was.

Lots of answers...but I'll throw my 2-cents in...

It's not bad to use prims. Not at all. However, if a shape simply can not be created via prims, it may be best to look at a sculpty alternative. If you yourself can't wrap your head around any of the 3d applications out there, I recommend you look into hiring someone to create custom shapes for you--they aren't *that* expensive most of the time.

Then of course, you'll want to get a texture reference material, slap that on your sculpty shape, and start to learn how to texture a sculpty map...which is another beast in itself.

My AV is extremely detailed...and it's all prim work.

Good luck.

I made more than a hundred detailed avatars. None of them uses sculpt prims. Only created sculpts for non-avatar things like bottles, glasses, chais, etc Before they existed in freebies boxes. Now I don't need to create any sculpt at all.
I think you should use sculpts as a primary tool if you are good in any of the 3D softares used for it. If not, try and try to use regular prims until there is no option but sculpts.

Sculpties are nice for some things, but for avatars I find prims are better if you can use them, as they generally cause less lag. I tried swapping some part of my avvy for sculpties that looked just as good, but the prims not only rez quicker, but give a better frame-rate. There are however some shapes that just aren't possible with prims, or which don't look very good using just prims, so they're useful there too.

I'm still learning Blender and sculpties, but I've got a basic grasp now, it's taken a while following through a tutorial to get good at modelling. The one I'm using is a WikiBook:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro

I've just been doing little bits and pieces of the book as I go, as doing it one sitting would result in me learning nothing. I think with anything it requires a lot of patience to learn these things. I personally find Blender's interface a bit clumsy, but it seems geared more towards you learning the keyboard shortcuts for most things anyway.

Just thought I would throw in my 2L in.

If you can, use sculpted prims only to create a shape that you can not get in regular prims...or even texture regular prims to look like. If you can use mostly regular prims, with a sculpted one here or there, all the better. They aren't the end all and be all, nor should they be. But they can add a lot to a creation.

So far I have had decent luck working with Rokuro and Wings 3D together...and they have been coming out pretty decently.