Prim Counts - Old Skool and Sculpty

Would someone please explain the difference in Prims between Sculpty and resgular (old skool?) builds. Perhaps take a few examples. A basic bed with the usual stuff, a spiral staircase and a 6-room 2-story house. On the latter would you build each story then attach the two after?

What exactly defines a prim in each case?

1 month in-world and counting

15 prim steps compared to 1 prim steps.

7-15 prim dolphins compared to 1 prim dolphins.

You're not really asking questions that can be answered. The difference between a sculpty build and a regular build is simply that one uses sculpted prims and one doesn't. Obviously you have to know that already though, so what is it you're really trying to ask?


You could, or you could build it all at once, or you could do it through any other method you could think of. It's entirely up to you.



I can tell you what defines a prim, but I'm not sure what you mean by the "in each case" part. A prim is a prim is a prim. Whether it happens to have been used as a part of a bed or a staircase or a house or anything else does not change what it is.

The word "prim" is short for "primitive". In geometry and 3D modeling, a primitive is a basic shape, such as a cube, a cylinder, a sphere, etc. In SL, geometric primitives are used as building blocks for nearly all things.

For an easy example, think of something like a snowman. To build one in real life, you'd stack three large snowballs to form the head and body, and then you'd attach a couple sticks for arms, some dark stones for eyes, and a carrot for a nose. In SL, it's exactly the same (except you're not using snow, of course). To build the head and body, you'd stack three spheres and color them white. For the arms, you'd attach a few cylinders, colored to look like wood. For the eyes, you'd use a couple more spheres, colored black. For the carrot nose, you'd use an orange cylinder, tapered to a point at one end. All of these things are primitives. The same objects in a different configuration could make a piece of furniture or a flower or a hat or whatever else you can think of. They're all still primitives though, no matter what you make out of them.

So called "sculpted prims" can be described most simply as prims that have been reshaped through the use of a third party modeling program like Maya or 3DS Max. For example, you could take that orange nose, and sculpt a few bends and bumbs into it to make it more realistically resemble a carrot. Instead of perfect spheres for the snowballs, you could make them lopsided. Etc., etc., etc. (Of course, the practical uses of sculpties go way, way, way beyond just these simplistic examples, but what I've said here is the easiest way to answer your question, I think.)

One advantage of sculpting in this manner is that it allows you to save prims in most cases. To bend that carrot using ordinary prims, you'd need to line up several small ones to form the bent shape, but with a sculpted prim you can do it with just one. Make sense?

This is helping. I first logged onto SL about 7 weeks ago. A couple weeks in my motherboard fried itself but not before I started reading about sculpies and Wings 4D. So, while I waited and waited and waited I started playing with wings. watching Torley's demos and reading. I am not up to speed with the language and so on totally but learn quickly and have made all the tutorial shapes and a couple things besides.

My question came from reading and kind of understanding the prim count issue but not so I can verbally explain it. The way I think I understand it is if say you start out with a cube and by manipulation can turn it into a bed without adding any other basic shapes and having to attach them you are within one prim. Is that correct or are there other rules?

The spiral staircase as an example. Say you start with a cylinder and (a huge supposition I guess), and can loop-cut and mold all the pieces about you could end up with a single prim?

I have other questions about this but do npot want to bore anyone at higher levels. As for prior experience. I have made textures seamless and otherwise for years and years for use with websites and so on. I have not uploaded anything to SL nor have I built things with any other programs than the basic SL tools and Wings 3D and few enough of them as well. If anyone feels like being a mentor let me know. I promise I am not a vampire just want to verify my interpretation if what I have read is correct or not and refining a couple procedures.

Thanks for your time everyone,
~~PF