Sculpted prim
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A Sculpted Prim (or Sculptie & Sculpty) is a Second Life 3D parametric object whose shape is determined by a texture. These textures are called Sculpties or Sculptied prims. Sculpted prims can be used to create more complex, organic shapes that are not possible with Second Life's prim system.
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[edit] Technical details
A Sculpty is a standard RGB texture where the R (red), G (green) and B (blue) channels are mapped onto X, Y, and Z space. Sculpt Textures are similar to normal maps, but instead of encoding surface normals they encode surface positions. They are also similar to displacement maps, but instead of a single scalar distance we have three values — one each for the X, Y, and Z coordinates. Sculpt Textures are also very similar to parametric (e.g. NURBS) surfaces. See Sculpted Prims: Under the Hood article for details. Minumum recognized size is 8 x 8. Maximum recognized size is 128 x 128. larger can be uploaded but will be treated as an image and compressed.
The UV map is embedded into the sculpty on creation. When uploaded into the Second Life asset server banks, and rezzed, it will form the shape imposed up it. However, the actual texturing must be done in a separate file. And the map for this will be based on the conceived shape. For example, a liquor bottle would have its label on its forward face. However, there is only one face on a sculpty as it is either a sphere, torus, cone or cylinder. (Cubes also exist but the texture covers all the precieved faces so the rule applies). For the liquor label it would be located on a specific section of the lower left quadrant.
[edit] Current implementation problems or limitations of Sculpties
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As of March 1, 2009, serious limitations on Sculpties include the following.
- There is some JPEG2000 compression of all uploaded texture files, even those in lossless TGA, BMP, and PNG format except at 128 x 128 now. A lossless checkbox will prevent any compression and works to 128 x 128.
- Cache bugs sometimes cause regular textures as well as sculpt maps not to load fully to their normal detail level or even not at all; forcing the cache to re-download them by doing "mirror-unmirror" fixes it which proves this is a cache/network issue that hits sculpties the hardest.
[edit] External links
[edit] Free Sculpted Prim creation software
- (see also: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims:_3d_Software_Guide)
- Blender with the Domino Designs scripts
- Wings 3D with the sculpty plugin
- InWorld Sculptor Tool Kit
[edit] Commercial Sculpted Prim creation software
- Hexagon by Daz3d
- Autodesk Maya
- Autodesk Media and Entertainment's 3ds Max
- Inivis AC3D
- Moment of Inspiration (MoI) (save as a 3dm (opennurbs) file and use 3dm2sculpt to convert to a sculptie)
- NewTek LightWave 3D
- Pixologic zBrush
- Strata 3D
- Sculptie-O-matic transform inworld linksets into sculpties directly
- TheBlack Box - Sculpt Studio
- ROKURO(lathe) - Sculpted Prim Maker - A simple NURB curve maker and revolver (a "lathed" object is one that is perfectly symmetrical around the center axis)
- TOKOROTEN(extruder) - This Program makes Sculpted Prim texture .tga file of the pushed-out/extruded objects (makes cookie-cutter style shapes)
As of mid 2008 the maker of Rokuro ceased making either available for free. It is now L$2500 or $8 US
- Pixel Lab SculptyPaint - Sculptie Making Tool.
