1. Clearly.... they haven't been paying enough attention to Sculpty prim at all.

Get Blender & Wings 3D, they are free to use.
And there are more tools than Maya today.

However... sculpty prim aren't even easy to work with.

"You will be outdone by fools who run Google searches and import other peoples work, and simpletons who really don't understand the creativity it takes to do what you have done."

Actually... it's not even that easy to convert any polygon models into a sculpty prim at all. At first, long before we could get our hands on them... I did thought dumb lazy selfish people would do that... but sculpty's limitation itself proves that task is not feasible.

I've had many years of modeling under my belt (a lot of modded games modeling)... and sculpty is a bitchy one to work with. No matter what tools you have... Even if I had Maya, it's still hard to work with.

The structure of the sculpty polygon model is fixed, can not be cut, UV mapping, or even assign polygon faces in you own way. You only can move the vertex.

I'm looking forward to sinking my time with sculpted prim and I'll be damned if people complains & force LL to remove them.

Indeed you will be forgotten... if you don't keep up with prim designing. They are many free tools out there, use it or lose it.

Posted at 1:05PM on Jun 14th 2007 by Nacon

2. x2 on what Nacon said

Posted at 1:18PM on Jun 14th 2007 by Neural

3. You kind of make it sound like everyone doing sculpties is importing stock shit, Moo. :P

I actually have yet to see any stock models easily pulled in to SL. Even if someone were to do that, they would have to put more effort into re-adjusting and breaking up the models than it takes to just rebuild it from scratch.

Any examples of this effortless sculpting?

Posted at 1:59PM on Jun 14th 2007 by Tekilah

4. Don't make me beat you, Anna. I'm quoting the teens. I did not offer my opinion in this piece.

Posted at 2:07PM on Jun 14th 2007 by moo Money

5. "Teen Gridders don't have many options as far as programs go. They don't have the money to invest in Maya."

This is simply not true. Blender is free. Wings3D is free. Moment of Inspiration is free (for now). There are a whole host of resident-created sculptie programs that are free. You don't need Maya to make sculpted prims, and I'm not quite sure why people think you do.

Posted at 2:09PM on Jun 14th 2007 by Miriel Enfield

6. Okay, love you. Just making sure. :)

Posted at 3:10PM on Jun 14th 2007 by Tekilah

7. I think that the sky is not falling due to sculpted prims. And especially not until the physics are fixed; for example, a meter-high apple will not let you get closer than about a meter to it -- this means that you can't have a physical sculpie couch that's any use, for example.

When I have time, I've been working on learning one of the free sculpie programs. I think there's plenty of time for those of us who aren't graphic designers professionally, to get up to speed on them, and that includes teens.

Posted at 3:14PM on Jun 14th 2007 by Cyn Vandeverre

8. What, they've never heard of Blender? If they can learn how to build in SL, they can learn how to use Blender.

Posted at 3:30PM on Jun 14th 2007 by KirbyMeister

9. Rokuro is a wonderful free tool for MacOSX too -- and make your sculpties Phantom so you can get close to them :)

Posted at 3:50PM on Jun 14th 2007 by kz

10. Aaargh. Sculpted prims are just another tool in the builder's kit. As many others have pointed out, there are free tools that can create them.

In theory, you can build anything from a (huge) number of (mostly tiny) blocks; think numerical integration... but like cutting a tin can with something on a late night infomercial, you wouldn't want to. Yes, it's a technical tour de force, and yes, that builders in SL have managed to do what they have with the limited set of pre-sculpted prims is a tribute to their determination and ingenuity... but sculpted prims are an opportunity, and an advance. We have enough Luddites as it is; please don't add to their number.

Posted at 6:47PM on Jun 14th 2007 by Melissa Yeuxdoux

11. Sculpties are just another tool for the creation of objects in Second Life. They have their limitations, but so do prims. People have learned to work with the limitations of prims to spectacular effect. Sculpties cannot be used for everything, and creators need to decide where they work best. As for the tools to create them, it has been mentioned above that there are many free tools available its just a matter taking the time to learn the process. Sculpties are not the end of the world, but the attitude that is presented in this posting may be.

Posted at 7:46PM on Jun 14th 2007 by Mars Rickenbacker

12. Many of the very creative, talented, and expressive artists in the Blender community are teens. The sort of work they are capable of, using freely available software, is far more sophisticated than merely making sculpties (you can see for yourself by visiting the Blender galleries and forums).

Age and being a teen really shouldn't be any sort of restriction in an environment which is so enabling, and it's a fallacy to think that sculpties are out of anyone's reach when already so many have mastered scripting and skeletal animation.

Posted at 8:31PM on Jun 14th 2007 by Amanda Levitsky

13. still, they still have to pay to upload each "model", and those who are good with sculpties can make some models that would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to do with just regular prims (and even that would probably need some math as well lsl knowledge), basicly sculpties kinda made stuff easier for the elite in a way that the regular low budget joe can't compete

btw, I made a few two (perhaps more, can't remember for sure) proposals on jira that would help with this issue, one was to allow in world edition of sculpties, and the other was about doing "meta-prims" (like metaballs)

Posted at 9:26PM on Jun 14th 2007 by TigroSpottystripes Katsu

14. oops, I got distracted and didn't mention that if someone wants to get the links for those proposals without having to search on jira, plz let me know and I'll post them here (the "E-Mail me when somenone replies to this comment" doesn't seem to work for me once I confirm my comment, so email me or IM me in SL and I'll go find the links )

Posted at 9:54PM on Jun 14th 2007 by TigroSpottystripes Katsu

15. "still, they still have to pay to upload each "model"...basicly sculpties kinda made stuff easier for the elite in a way that the regular low budget joe can't compete"

At current exchange rates, that means an added what, 2.7 cents per prim?

Also, for the things sculpted prims are good for, it takes far fewer of them than the old style prims. (Example: a friend of mine has dolphins that cavort in the water. Those built with old prims: 20 prims. With sculpted prims: two, and one of them is only needed to determine the path the dolphin takes. The dolphin shape itself is just one prim.

Given that the SL user population is people who can afford a reasonable speed computer, and if they're seriously into it a fairly high end graphics card, it's kind of hard to imagine a "low budget joe" SL user who couldn't afford the literal pennies required to upload the pseudo-textures that determine sculpted prim shapes.

Posted at 11:55AM on Jun 15th 2007 by Melissa Yeuxdoux

16. You're not a teen whose parents won't let them use payment info, Melissa. They sign up and get NOTHING. It's easy for Main Gridders to justify giving a friend 10L, but 10L to the teens is like 100L to us.

Posted at 12:18PM on Jun 15th 2007 by moo Money

17. I wouldn't want to hand over my credit card details to my teenager, either. But I probably would be happy to buy them a gift certificate for Second Life. Is that even possible?

Posted at 12:29PM on Jun 15th 2007 by Cyn Vandeverre

18. I don't think it's possible. Their situation over there just breaks my heart. I bought Lindens over there last month and it told me I had a limit of $10 USD per day. I believe they can raise it, but yeah it's one thing to put in CC info for like World of Warcraft, but it's another when they can buy and buy and buy. $10/day is $300 USD a month. I'm sure there's a monthly cap, but even if it was $150, that's still a huge financial hit for something you weren't expecting.

Posted at 12:54PM on Jun 15th 2007 by moo Money

19. Fun comment. Our vehicle sims share the same terraforming with the MG. Actually, a fair part of the MG just got ghost copies to the TG. The only exception is that that little island in the lake is the rarest parcel... ever. (I like to think so.) It's buyable, in a lake, with not much other inhabitated land nearby. It's like heaven on a parcel.

Posted at 8:53PM on Jun 15th 2007 by Ben Lineker

20. That _is_ a shame.

Is there some way that skilled teen builders can offer their stuff for sale on the main grid, so they can accumulate funds to put towards things like uploading textures? Maybe it would also be good to have some kind of apprenticeship, scholarship, or mentoring program.

Posted at 8:30PM on Jun 15th 2007 by Melissa Yeuxdoux