Sculpted prim

A Sculpted Prim (or Sculptie) is a Second Life 3D primitive object whose shape is determined by a texture. These textures are called Sculpt Textures or Sculpt Maps. Sculpted prims can be used to create more complex, organic shapes that are not possible with Second Life's prim system.

A Sculpt Texture or Sculpt Map 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.

Sculpted prims work with UV maps. Instead of making an object with a certain, very distinct shape, it is possible to take an object with a very generic shape and use the texture file to tell it where to move vertices. That way the polygon count stays low and things still look good.

For more technical details see the links below.

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
• 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)
• InWorld Sculptor Tool Kit
• Pixel Lab SculptyPaint - Sculptie Making Tool.

Commercial Sculpted Prim creation software

• Inivis AC3D
• Pixologic zBrush
• Moment of Inspiration (MoI) (save as a 3dm (opennurbs) file and use 3dm2sculpt to convert to a sculptie)
• Autodesk Maya
• NewTek LightWave 3D
• Autodesk Media and Entertainment's 3ds Max
• Strata 3D
• TheBlack Box - Sculpt Studio

Current implementation problems or limitations of Sculpties

As of July 25, 2007, serious limitations on Sculpties include the following.

• There are only 8 bits of data used for each X, Y, and Z point in the UV maps, instead of 16 bits.
• here is some JPEG2000 compression of all uploaded texture files, even those in lossless TGA, BMP, and PNG format.
• Level of Detail (LOD) for displaying sculpted prims is set to the integer 3, which corresponds to capping the visual detail displayed in the Second Life client at 64x64 sized uploaded sculptie textures. This problem can be fixed but because of the compression during upload, greater detail can lead to more visible anomalies on the object.
• Sculpted prims are only 'seen' by SL's collision system (serverside) as misshapen spheres, meaning they are very limited in practical use and are best reserved for non-structural decorative elements. They are only fully (visually) rendered 'clientside', in the user's browser.

See also

• UV mapping
• NURBS
• Polygon mesh
• Normal mapping
• Displacement_mapping
• Parametric surface

External links

• Second Life Wiki: Sculpted Prims
• Second Life Wiki: Sculpted Prims: FAQ
• Second Life Wiki: Talk:Sculpted Prims
• How to Make Sculpted Prims with Blender
• Video tutorials about sculpted prims with blender
• Blender and Second Life
• How to Make Sculpted Prims from Existing 3D Models with AC3D