The advent of an illustrious age of sculpted prims!
Friday, April 27th, 2007 at 1:44 PM by: TorleyAmidst all the serious news on this Official Linden Blog and the hard work we do on critical problems because we love our community, we’d like to take a moment to share with you something fun, something useful, something good for making digital fruits + veggies… and much more.
Well what the hey is it? =^.^=
Some of ya may’ve followed the infectious intrigue @ Cubesque.com and CubeOverload.com… more info @ Second Life Insider and 3pointD. And leading up, like any good story, any well-crafted piece of narrative, after such SUSPENSE must come REZ-OLUTION!
*string cue plays* We’re proud to present to you…
SCULPTED PRIMS!
FOR THE DISCERNING TASTES
OF IMAGINATIVE AVATARS
» Read the FAQ (peruse finer details, ask questions on the Discussion page)
This fulfills a number of longtime content creation wishes. Curved corners on boxes? Yus! Better organic shapes? Yesiree.
And freakin’ booyeah, it’s the first new prim type (not counting flexis, we luv u too!) since the ring in 1.5.
Magic or sufficiently advanced technology? You be the judge —
Turn this:
Into this!
AWAKE! BE ORGANIC! EXCITE! AND go beyond cutting and twisting… SCULPT!
Words fail me, so watch this video, starring our very own Qarl Linden, artisan and kindly purveyor of ze sculpted prims:
» Download a higher-quality version (4.3 MB)
More details, documentation, and cool content by YOU — the Residents of Second Life! — to follow when this is available in the not-so-distant future.
Together we rez,
The Linden Family
April 27th, 2007 at 1:48 PM
OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG.
/dies
April 27th, 2007 at 1:51 PM
Sounds great! I look forward to it not working.
Like trying to open a texture or script currently.
Soon we hope to have 40,000 online unable to do anything.
Keep up the wood gork!
April 27th, 2007 at 1:52 PM
Thanks for announcing it officially! This is the biggest thing since lights and flexiprims!
April 27th, 2007 at 1:52 PM
*speechless*
just…….. wow.
April 27th, 2007 at 1:52 PM
HOMHGHGRTWER#
Wow. That’s gonna change lots of stuff….
Gonna be great for physical objects with the prim limits! Make stuff look a lot better!
April 27th, 2007 at 1:54 PM
YES!
been waiting for this day!
absolutly amazing!!!
April 27th, 2007 at 1:54 PM
thats funny …
will i just wanted to give a hands up the market group that was use object out side the secondlife ..this one of there pages :
ehab-beek@yahoogroup.com
ps.. to me hes try to make secondlife look bad ..
April 27th, 2007 at 1:55 PM
I am seriously impressed. This will be a major upgrade in the way things look in SL
April 27th, 2007 at 1:57 PM
/me wants a zbrush exporter ;D
April 27th, 2007 at 1:58 PM
gasp!!
April 27th, 2007 at 1:58 PM
btw… when do i get to use this awsome new feature?
and any word about seeing Flash in SL?
April 27th, 2007 at 1:58 PM
well…..such a negative thing right at the start of comments. second life is like watching a elephant paint a house. no matter what, some one will complain that he misses a spot. never mind that he does it at all. and now he is bringing a plate of cookies with him. well i will not poop on the cookies. i will say thank you and i look forward to playing with this new toys.
April 27th, 2007 at 1:59 PM
I wish SL was looking more like the below picture than the top picture, unfortunatley even my friends list looks like the top one, it would be nice if things weren’t quite so…..updated
April 27th, 2007 at 2:00 PM
Major Applause for this. Something that should over time, totally change the way much of sl looks, and greatly reduce the number of prims needed for many types of builds.
Have the ppl who did this talk to the folks who should be fixing this place - PLEASE LOL
DRD
April 27th, 2007 at 2:00 PM
Yay! Something new for LL to break.
Will this be, before or after a Havok physics upgrade, mono and/or upper alpha sliders on skirts?
April 27th, 2007 at 2:02 PM
This is great! Nice work on the invention of yet another prim we’ll all have trouble rezzing:) I appreciate the hard work and dedication applied to this newfangled technology, but can we apply that technology towards making the stuff that doesnt work right, well….work right?
?:)
April 27th, 2007 at 2:02 PM
Its finally happening? mesh editting prims? All hail the lindens!
April 27th, 2007 at 2:03 PM
Wow… I have to admit, I heard about it and I didn’t believe it. I didn’t think you guys would go through the work to impliment something like this but I was very wrong. And I couldn’t be happier. Thanks for this!
April 27th, 2007 at 2:05 PM
This sounds most excellent. I’m a sculpture/builder, and have made many things, but taking into consideration no matter how detailed an item is made with standard prim it never is quite hitting the mark of realism. Many come close but there is no mistaking that they are made by prims. Even the great starax’s work which was brilliant still had the “prim” look to it. I’ve been waitin from the day I’ve joined to see a more advanced, freedom of creativity with prims. Good luck with this venture I truely hope it works. I can see this paving the way for many new creations and the over all look of SL.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:05 PM
Let me get this strait,,you can’t handel the server load you have now and rather than fix that you add more load???Folks you need to fix it,before you find something new to screw up.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:06 PM
O.O OMG!! never again will I use 17 prims to make a curved box! lol THOSE DAYS ARE GONE!!!
/me …. puts normal prims on a miniture sailboat and waves goodbye
April 27th, 2007 at 2:07 PM
Excellent news! Look forward to it.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:08 PM
Wow. can you maybe think about an exporter for an open source cross platform 3d program? Or, wait.. which one of those is already those things, blender?
April 27th, 2007 at 2:08 PM
*listens* =D =D =D =D
(And I want Flash in SL so we can watch YouTube inworld! Har. Don’t have more info on that yet but I’ll be more than happy to spread the good news when it comes ’round…)
Life, and Second Life is too short to let inflexibility get ya down, so SCULPT IT!
April 27th, 2007 at 2:09 PM
Ok… nice for something in between… lol
But shouldn´t you try to solve the present problems… so we all can stop loosing our money, we spent to our buisnes?
Still group tags do not show in objects, or group cannot be set to the objekts…. well this time you really did it LL. So this time we lost 2 days….. ok its a game… ha ha….. really sad
April 27th, 2007 at 2:10 PM
WHOO! This is AWESOME! Can’t wait for it!
(And, the video was filmed in your local testing grid, right? It doesn’t exist in the active grid, right? Don’t tell me we have to use the new LL exclusive alpha to use it for now! xD)
April 27th, 2007 at 2:11 PM
[...] Well, they call em “sculpties” - or sculpted prims… [...]
April 27th, 2007 at 2:11 PM
Have I died and gone to heaven?????
April 27th, 2007 at 2:11 PM
P.S.: For YouTube videos use GooTube xD That way you can put the .flv link as a video, and .flv is not an active flash file, so viewing it is possible in SL.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:11 PM
Great to see such a good advance Im curious on the details of how the sculpt textures themselves are going to be made…… Will it be easy to pick up and that its a great advance but i’m hoping its not overtly hard to go about making our own sculpt textures or are we limited to the scope of what you allow in that light??? More details would be good to know
April 27th, 2007 at 2:11 PM
Very nice, with this we can make alot of fruit and who knows what else. But with the advent of this super cool new feature, will additional prim packages be offered for sim owners or more prims allotted per sim?? Wont be much of a great new feature with the prim limits as they are, and detailed fruit baskets would be nice but not if they take up prims for larger builds.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:12 PM
YESSSSSS!!!!!!
April 27th, 2007 at 2:13 PM
My big question is, will alphas make hollows?
April 27th, 2007 at 2:13 PM
Nice work! It could revolutionize the look and feel of avatars and places in SL. I can’t wait to see what happens when sculpted prims colonize the metaverse.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:13 PM
Someone PLEASE pinch me, as I think im dreaming (figured out im not dead, as the poastman jst handed me todays bills!)
April 27th, 2007 at 2:14 PM
While this is an exciting prospect, I doubt it will really replace the oldschool prim approach in a lot of builds. For one thing, sculpting a mesh is HARD. I’ve done it, and the things I created are nothing compared to the things I’ve made with prims. Secondly, and most obvious, there’s a lot of things broken in the software, so a new feature is likely not going to work at first, or will be accompanied by new bugs. Third, even if you can manage a half decent mesh, normal mapping is weird and not all programs support it. It’s mostly only the “big boys”, the excessively expensive programs like 3DS MAX and ZBrush that already handle it. Most hobbyists are going to use things like Wings and Blender, which either don’t support normal maps. But even then, that issue is moot if sculpted prims are using a native format that no other program can currently create. So many are going to be limited to sculpting bananas and mushrooms until converters for the cheap/free programs are done, which could be a very long wait.
Not that I have anything against mushrooms or bananas mind you. I’ll be playing with them like I did when flexiprims came out
Oh, one more thing. Servers are still broken in-world. Fix em.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:15 PM
G’day Torley
Thanks - I think this is a step forward, I might even get into building furniture instead of houses.
Naturally I am not going to purchase any of the Amazing Fantastic Content Creators new builds using this feature, for fear of losing all my money when I rez the item in world and it disappears. And I would just have to say “oh well, there’s US$100 bucks I just spent on new furnishing, but that was my choice and LL / SL don’t support that problem”.
I know you are excited Torley, but have you (or any one else at LL) really been inworld doing what the regular folk do for 4-5 hours a night and then 12-16 hours a day on the weekend? (Like trying to rez things / losing a heap of stuff you just paid L$5000 for / trying to script then losing it all in a sim crash / trying to find support through your friends list that is NOT working)?
No, I think you (and your collegues) probably spend most of your time helping people via chat. Which is great, but you don’t really spend a “day in the life of” a regular resident.
Any ways - I do look forward to seeing the lovely content this will create and yes I REALLY look forward to curved corners on boxes too!
Hugs
Alex
April 27th, 2007 at 2:16 PM
Torley,
Any word on the prim watermarks or any of the other ideas that were thrown around to better assist with IP protection as it applies to prim creations?
Perhaps there will never be a 100% foolproof measure to keep copiers from stealing others creations, but the implementation of something/anything that can further offer some type of IP protection for prim creators would go a long way toward maximizing the potential of outstanding LL introductions into the SL building tools such as this.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:18 PM
Does this mean we can log in more often, not crash when TPing and so on? YAY!
April 27th, 2007 at 2:19 PM
One step closer to RL can’t wait to get there.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:19 PM
The mentions - We provide an exporter for Maya, and hopefully exporters for 3ds Max, Blender, and ZBrush will be available soon. We also have plans to provide a sculpt editor within the Second Life viewer.
I have a tool for blender and Max, neither work very well and require a script in world to import.
Where is this Maya export tool hiding????
DRD
April 27th, 2007 at 2:20 PM
As a builder, this new feature gives me serious wood.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:20 PM
I hope some work is done on making a Blender exporter for this… I think it should be a high priority within this project, since if the only plugin is for Maya, people who want to use this feature will have to either buy Maya for several hundred dollars… or steal it.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:22 PM
I don’t care if it’s broken in a dozen different places…I want this on the main grid as soon as possible so we don’t lose it!
April 27th, 2007 at 2:23 PM
Oh give people with crappy computers a break! Sure, cubes and cylinders may not look as nice as these sculpted prims, but they render a lot faster! There is no way my old Geforce 3 Ti 200 will be able to handle large amounts of these crazy things and I’ll have to upgrade my hardware, or just give up Second Life.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:24 PM
3pointd.com said ‘The scultped prim takes its shape from information encoded into the color channels of a texture’
so does that mean that the transparent part will be phantom and the rest not? so e.g., if it’s a banana, will the avatar be able to hold it?
April 27th, 2007 at 2:24 PM
Hello, I’m very excited about the new possibilities, but, I think that it’s important that the Maya etc exporters only become available several months after the viewer’s sculpt editor, so that “current SL builders” have time to learn and become able to compete with all the 3D professionals who will import their work into SL.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:25 PM
This is the coolest thing since “edit linked parts”…
#_#
April 27th, 2007 at 2:26 PM
This is so brilliant! Kudos to Qarl! Anyone can create a texture and a texture can be easily LODed. You sidestep proprietary formats and sim-killer billion-point prims in one shot!
April 27th, 2007 at 2:28 PM
This is gonna create a BIIIIG gap between builds & objects made by the REAL 3D modelers & regular folks who don’t have 3DS Max etc for a while XD
It’s also gonna mean a BIG advance in reducin LAG over time since ya wont have ta use so many prims…just take more hours sculpting the mesh, then add (A MUCH SMALLER AMOUNT) of Prims to it in-world…WOOO
April 27th, 2007 at 2:29 PM
OH S**T. You’ve really gone and done it now, made up for all the up/down BS we’ve been dealing with. Bring this on! Now isn’t too soon or too late
I wanna have some FUN building again!
Woot!
Can’t Wait!111
Laz
WTG!!!!
April 27th, 2007 at 2:30 PM
Nice feature but PLEASE:
FIX the current bugs before adding more things !!!!
April 27th, 2007 at 2:32 PM
You just made my day! It’s good to have something nice coming along.
So tell me, can this be flexible?
April 27th, 2007 at 2:32 PM
….finally.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:34 PM
oh! and does it mean that texture animation can be used to make objects morph? since the sculpted prim is defined by a texture, then the shape can be changed dynamically…..
April 27th, 2007 at 2:39 PM
No doubt this great new thing will be plagued with multiple delays, arcane bugs, inscrutible misbehaviors, bizarre interactions with other features, and of course innumerable crashes. But I welcome it with glee! Thank you THANK YOU Linden Labs for continuing to try difficult things and offer greater creative opportunities. I’ve developed enough sense of humour about Second Life that I can accept living in perpetual Beta, for the sake of just such delights as the one you are now dangling in front of us. Oooooo I can hardly wait. WOW!
April 27th, 2007 at 2:40 PM
All of this new stuff is lovely but about as useful as hip pockets in underpants if people cannot playing the firggin g game. How about fixing things. In the two years since I started the game play of this thing has deteriorated to the point where everything is a xchore, that is if it works at all. I for one am on my way out. I can’t see the use of any of these upgrades if you can’t actually enjoy them. I used to teach and build. Now I do neither because of the problems SL has. I sued to sail and fight for fun but gave it away when moving became an impossibility in sims with more than a dozen people. All you advances and corporate sponsorship is worth nothing if all the players wise up and leave you. You will be stuck with 20K of free alts camping the hell out of the place. Not something I imagined would be the end resxult of what a great game/simulation/sendonc lifestyle whatever. Hard to have a lifestyle when you are as good as frozen in place.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:40 PM
Can’t wait for this new prim. It will almost be as good as being able to import objects from external programmes such as 3dmax…..that would really be something
April 27th, 2007 at 2:41 PM
@Miles: That your gForce 3 handles SL at all, even SL two years ago, is pretty impressive. It’s that old. Might I suggest something in the gforce 6 range, which start around $50 these days?
Also, suggested order for exporters: Blender (hard to learn but it’s free and everyone can get it), 3ds Max (what I’m trained on, probably the closest in popularity to Maya), SL in-client tool, “other”.
I think some SL designers also use Lightwave allready for texture burning and such, so there may be demand for that.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:43 PM
Seems brilliant! I hope you also explain the colors and nice tricks to do nice not-random stuff %).
I can see now.. the sex industry will thrive!!!!
April 27th, 2007 at 2:46 PM
Quick points:
* To those who don’t think I spend enough time on a day-to-day basis inworld, please see my blog, including the inworld explorations. Read that about a month back and make a better-informed decision. It’s only fair you get to examine the evidence, yes? =)
* Flexisculptie prims ARE hoped for, not coded yet but, I can imagine what that does for inflatable balloon market and of course, glorious fashions. I’ll make sure Qarl and Cube Linden see these comments so they can followup with the tech accor-ding-ly!
* Re: Broken stuff post-1.15… I hate it, you hate it, we all hate it. I’ll not be redundant, I and fellow Lindens are updating and resolving bugs on our Issue Tracker (also linked to from the left of the blog). New news on latest issues will be posted on this very blog, like this.
* Re: IP and better object IDing, Cube added an inspect feature, one step on the road to identifying your creations.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:47 PM
I can hardly wait.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:50 PM
lots of sl texture artists (clothing+skins) use Zbrush. Yes, Lightwave, 3dMax are big names, but its not what a lot of artists *in SL* were using up till now.
I can think of a few big skin designers offhand that are Zbrush users, besides myself. It’s right next to mudbox in popularity for this sort of thing. indeed it is designed for “sculpting mesh” like almost no other program.
so put it high on your list of exporters to do list
April 27th, 2007 at 2:50 PM
64×64 pixels doesn’t sound much if you’ve never heard of pixel art! lol
:D 
:D 
April 27th, 2007 at 2:51 PM
Normally I take a very Linden friendly approach to things that happen in world, but I have to say I have mixed feelings on this new feature to be implemented.
I use maya and lightwave and I love working with those progs but when I came to sl I had to put them aside to build objects inworld because tehre was no exporter and no plan for one. This just opens the door for full import and when that happens, its time to kill the inworld object creation because the implication is the imported objects will be of superior quality than the in world built ones due to the capability of these programs.
I’m all for a prettier sl, and I realize we already need to import textures from photoshop and things from poser or daz for anims, but one of the hallmarks of sl is building structures and objects was done in world, leading to collaborative efforts, all this is going to do is increase time in which we spend off world, creating objects now.
And going from what I’ve seen in all the videos from linden and about linden, is this something that was really thought through? The larger implications?
I’d love to use less prims and import meshes but once done, then we almost need to revamp the design system to include inverse kinematics and bones and the lsit goes on and on until before you know it, the ease of SL in most areas, goes away and it becoems the realm of 3d designers with the powerful home rigs necessary to just create something fucntional and then where is the community left?
I’m all for prim building, I’m all for added realism but please PLEASE consider the balance to maintain what we have community and creative wise verse the whiz bang.
Otherwise, you might as well just integrate maya or houdini and then alot of people are going to be turned off by complexity verse the relative simplicity.
Thanks for your time.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:55 PM
@Hypatia: I’ve lusted over zBrush myself but I wasn’t aware that it had caught on in the SL community. Shows how out of the loop I am.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:59 PM
So I can’t TP, have just tried to relog but can’t get back in. When I am in I can’t IM groups and everyone looks like they’ve been dipped in gray paint…. rather than checking the bug reports and fixing our problems you’re inventing more ‘would be wonderful’ items that wont work as they should.
Please do excuse me for not being as excited as I’d like to be
April 27th, 2007 at 3:00 PM
[...] with the (rather obtuse) announcement on the Linden blog, let me try and see if I understand what this means to us [...]
April 27th, 2007 at 3:05 PM
Yummy :). I have ideas coming out my ears already.
I do have one question though: In all the examples and from what I understand of how the texture is used… are shapes with holes in them possible? For instance, can I make a ring?
April 27th, 2007 at 3:13 PM
Torley, dear
I’m not impressed. Please sort out all the bugs that prevent me from having more than 30 minutes a session before crashing my computer completely ; and then, if you insist, announce this self-indulgence of rounded corners on prims, okay?
Yes, its all very exciting. But don’t you have ANY sense of proportion?
I am paying you $195 a month and can’t even get sharp-pointed prims reliably!
Christi
April 27th, 2007 at 3:16 PM
Yeah agree with msg 66, if the creation fun for not pc-guru’s will be gone then I think lot’s of folks will just give up.
Try to make it so that the in world building is to do for everybody and not just the guru’s.
Keep up the goodies
April 27th, 2007 at 3:16 PM
Oh I’m so happy with this! WoweeZowee!
April 27th, 2007 at 3:16 PM
Also, I can say from experience: 3ds max, Blender and the like do not require super fast computers. Blender can run “okay” on something as old as a Pentium III, Max does just fine for me on a nearly 4 year old computer (1.4 ghz Athalon CPU, and even the crappy integrated graphics works for them in a pinch). If your machine can run SL, it can run a 3d modeling program. The major hurdle for these is price, with the exception of Blender which is free.
Acutaly, I have a technical question for the devs: for those textures in the demo, did you have to do a full unwrap on the model in the 3d program, or is it something more simple? Can you do full unwraps? (For the non-technical: unwrapping is the process of turning a 3d mesh into a flat template that defines how an image is displayed on the model; for you clothing designers who use the AV templates, LL has done that step for you.)
April 27th, 2007 at 3:18 PM
OMG.
the day this comes out im gonna make a pizza prim XD
i am litteraly going to count the days until this comes out!
April 27th, 2007 at 3:22 PM
Another great innovation. It just deepens my idea about LL: a great team of developers and a .. ermm .. [not so] great team of operations engineers. Guys, you rock! just buy a book about software engineering lifecycle and look up the following chapters:
- Staging and Configuration Management.
- ITIL
- Fault Tolerance
oh, and .. get a good database engine!
April 27th, 2007 at 3:22 PM
@Elle - for seams, there’s not much out there to use in the way of 3d texturing apps that does the job easily for a reasonable price. I bought Zbrush several years ago to morph my 3d meshes and generate normal maps, plus paint the odd texture, for that it was worth every penny - of course now I use it also for SL for skins and clothing in addition to photoshop.
I model meshes in Silo, it’s just more comfortable for me. Some modeller friends of mine swear by Modo and have dropped Lightwave like a hot potato pretty much. Fashions change in 3d software all the time. I never did like Max much, though I know its popular in the gaming industry. SL is a bit different though, in that it never, until now, was able to use mesh models easily.
I’m curious about the uvmapping, there’s limits to what you can sculpt with one prim without a huge amount of texture distoriton. But it’s surely going to make things a lot easier for organic modelling. It’s going to lower the amount of prims for a model, that’s for sure. I’m really psyched about this feature. First time in a while something has got me real excited about SL again.
April 27th, 2007 at 3:25 PM
I think that the new features are nice, but I’m going to have to be honest here. I think there is a lot of effort going into programs like voice, and sculpted prims, that could be better directed at clearing up year-old bugs. These new prims are going to be hard to impossible, for average Joe Citizen to work with, and with no export capability, and no support out there with any graphics programs available, its really just another toy thats going to be exclusive in world, and isnt going to help SL as far as I can see atm.
I love to see inovation, and I love to see new features. But there are some serious issues in SL that are a year old that still arent being addressed, let alone the nightmare of this last release we all have to live with. I think those should have a higher priority.
I think the more likely scenario here is that IBM or Toyota or one of your other cash cows started crying about prim limitations, so this became a priority over everthing else.
Please, folks - take a month, one month, and throw everyone onto bug fixing - it will make a better SL and it isnt going to put you behind the power curve. After all, you dont have any real competition out there.
April 27th, 2007 at 3:27 PM
@66 this will still happen since most people dont know how to use these programs or the programs arnt affordable or easy enough to use. Thats the better thing about the tools in SL themselves they are easier for people to pick up. I know some pro modeling stuff but it’ll never really allow full exporting as its limited to a certain scope in some sense so that it doesnt create mass lag. Allowing direct exporting from maya for a sphere shaped object would be hellish you and i both know that. Mesh wise yes its a trick but its still not easy enough for everyone to do.
Yes some people are going to have better looking builds because of this but the people that know how to use the in world prims better then others have the same edge.
April 27th, 2007 at 3:29 PM
Torley says >>* Re: IP and better object IDing, Cube added an inspect feature, one step on the road to identifying your creations.
This is great Torley, it’s definitely a step in the right direction. It especially can become a great deterrent to copiers if it can be made widely known. I’m not as interested with the “Gotcha” as I am with the “Don’t even try it” of it all. But I’m not really sure many people know about this. Maybe it can be made more widely known to everyone.
April 27th, 2007 at 3:32 PM
Great news… *clicks on 26 prim racer, selects ‘delete’*… really great news
April 27th, 2007 at 3:33 PM
“stuff is lovely but about as useful as hip pockets in underpants ”
Now that would be handy indeed!!!
See, one persons “totally useless” feature is anothers “OMG”.
/me is starting to think the Lindens could announce Everything is working properly, all features function and you can have 1000 people decked out with 1000 prims each on their attachments and someone, somewhere would post to the blog:
“why can’t you get it right?”
Sculpted prims…. The giant green hand heard my prayers last night!!! Thanks Giant Green Hand!!!
April 27th, 2007 at 3:44 PM
@77 it’s impossible to protect geometry 100% period. If you can render it you can grab the geometry in some method or another with or without a watermark and this would in some way create more issues just by having that active on objects. The fact of it is if you render it it can be copied in some form or another and this has been proven in the past most people are nice enough not to go out and do this but it does happen. The copiers only apply if they simply add a single prim to make it list them as the creator. If they rebuild the thing piece by piece its a bit harder in that light. Watermarks dont prevent this and if you dont want something taken apart and examined it should be no mod in some light ……….
How i’ve learned to use prims was taking other people’s things apart and looking how they were made rebuilding pieces of them and then reworking things to make the designs better then the originals. Geometry itself in SL is kinda weird in that light because if you make something of the same style it may look overtly similar if thats the way you find works best but it may not be a direct copy. Its a shame when people turn around and copy something directly and sell it…. But there is a useful way for copying (so long as your actually rebuilding the object yourself) that helps people learn.
Watermarks wouldnt be a deturrent because the fact of it is there are ways to prevent your things from being modded at all…
April 27th, 2007 at 3:45 PM
*bowdown*
That’s awesome.
The SL Renaissance begins…
April 27th, 2007 at 3:47 PM
This is super! So how soon can we begin learning this new technology?
Thanks!
April 27th, 2007 at 3:48 PM
Weeeeee! Awesome! Do they come in a box too? Where are the tutorials? Can I do this without taking three years of 3D modelling classes and buying extremely expensive software? Or is this a case of featuritis as Lourdes Laysan fears?
Oh and everything I’ve built so far will look so crappy… but then again; I’ll be making abstract sculpture the next months since i’ll be f***ing around with the sculptextures just to see what happens. I’ll give the prims very deep titles, wear my big black glasses and baret and I’ll be making tons of L$! Yay!
April 27th, 2007 at 3:50 PM
To the above i never sell these rebuilds (i dont even sell stuff in SL short of lessons for clothing and tattoos i do…) dont have a shop and i give the tattoos out more then I sell them cuz thats just who I am :). Anyways there are deterrents out there for the way alot of people copy things but they are still going to do it. People still grab water marked textures and use them. But as far as this announcement goes to someone like me it shows a big advance in terms of what can be done in a virtual world.
This is a sign of good things and to people complaining about LL not working on bugs. Keep in mind this is like a 1 or 2 person project not every single linden is sitting there working directly on this.
April 27th, 2007 at 3:52 PM
Just got done watching the movie, and I’m amazed by what’s going to be able to be done with this change. I’m also saddened because, more than likely, I won’t be able to appreciate it. For the last two weeks I’ve been unable to so much as walk in a straight line. Since the new release, I can’t log in at all. It’s frustrating to know that there’s the possibility for this great SL experience but not to be able to be a part of it.
April 27th, 2007 at 3:58 PM
Miles Rotaru: Buddy if you’re running that kind of equipment a full system upgrade IS LONG OVERDUE. Please don’t hold back progress for the rest of us simply because you refuse to adapt.
To the Lindens: I’m not sure why so many people complain, from my experience the support and frequency/quality of updates in SL are generations ahead of … nearly the entire MMO/Virtual worlds market. I am not refusing to admit that there have been mistakes, I have experienced them just as often as everyone else. However, after ‘playing’ SL I am not able to turn back and ‘play’ normal games anymore; They simply can’t support my creativity, ambitions and desires. SL is the future of creativity and sculpted prims are a very strong step forward. It will have bugs (maybe even thousands) along the way, but in order to be the pioneers in this new age of creation we have to stay strong, patient and most of all CIVIL towards the people who wrack their brains trying to get this all work.
To Those Who Can’t Stop Complaining:
Programming a system like this, and TRYING to fulfill compatibility with such a wide range of systems and user-types is GOD DAMN HARD!
If you can’t deal with the bugs and think you can do ’so much better’ lol… let’s see you do it. Scurry off and develop a system with comparable capabilities that has absolutely no bugs and don’t come back here to complain until it’s done. *ROFL*
April 27th, 2007 at 4:00 PM
On a related theme, I have a few ideas on other prim types here:
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~laemi/prims.html
Maybe not entirely useful but might provide some ideas ;-D
April 27th, 2007 at 4:02 PM
I’m thunderstruck … this is what I was looking for all the time. I couldn’t find it when exploring Blender, but this is … sooooo cooool.
Give me a date, just a release date for this feature, please …
Imagine … changing texture .. changes shape … flexible ?? Aaargh, I must be dreaming …
April 27th, 2007 at 4:03 PM
just OMG!
I have to go and change my pants now….
April 27th, 2007 at 4:03 PM
Can’t wait to try it. SL will never look the same
April 27th, 2007 at 4:04 PM
ooohhhh… i can’t wait for this.
April 27th, 2007 at 4:09 PM
Great. They provide an exporter for Maya, only. Maya retails for just shy of $7,000 USD.
http://estore.autodesk.com/dr/sat3/ec_Main.Entry17C?SID=19515&SP=10023&CID=0&PID=897518&PN=1&V1=897518&CUR=840&DSP=&PGRP=0&ABCODE=&CACHE_ID=1158750000311508
April 27th, 2007 at 4:14 PM
all you people who are upset about your “builds” being eclipsed by this prim type - sorry but your average prefab builder is likely not affected by this at all. For most architectural building (think “prefabs”), variations on the regular prim types (especially the cube) are still your best bet.
those of us who have a background in organic modelling - think “sculpting” - this is a boon. It will make organic models much easier to make with far fewer prims.
April 27th, 2007 at 4:15 PM
/me Bows down to Qarl and Cube and all who make for a better world. You know it’s good.
Stop whinging
April 27th, 2007 at 4:17 PM
i need a 3dmax exporter! now! please….
April 27th, 2007 at 4:18 PM
It’s about bloody time!!
But seriously, thanks guys!
I’ll may now be able to make something that even my grandmother will appreciate, nevermind recognise!
April 27th, 2007 at 4:22 PM
*76 Lina said “Yes some people are going to have better looking builds because of this but the people that know how to use the in world prims better then others have the same edge.”
I’m just saying Lina, that the lionshare of sl is in world builds from what Ive seen and yes, some objects may look better than others, but it would be my hope that there would be a balance otherwise what ends up happening if eventually a full mesh import is made available.
However my first choice (and granted this is entirely academic at the moment) would be not to have that implemented, instead having the inworld tools upgraded but not over-complicated.
I realize there are better builders out there than others and scripters and texturers and animators and what not then some others, but thats the way of things. But when we start unleveling the playing field in such a fundamental manner, thats when i would step up and say we have a problem.
And thats my two cents. Thanks for your comment on that… and yeah, I know exactly what you mean about imports being a nightmare of meshes.. I don’t even wanna think about how that would run at present and I encourage Linden not to either :0
~L
April 27th, 2007 at 4:28 PM
What happened to the Havok update.. Did this take over?
April 27th, 2007 at 4:29 PM
Yeah we arnt at the computing / readily available internet power to make a full mesh import work properly =/. Well without it looking like rubbish *cough* There.com *cough* But yeah i dunno how many people are 3d modeling pro’s or 3d mesh pros and the like that it’d even become that unlevel. The people that know how to use the current SL tools have it better off in that sense at the start anyways. Still rounded cubes = good regardless :).
April 27th, 2007 at 4:30 PM
Nice stunt! Sensible implementation with sensible limits, in my oppinion (and always assuming I did understand the faq right).
I love you ^^
April 27th, 2007 at 4:31 PM
Oh. ’scuse my oversight. The UNLIMITED version of Maya is $7,000 USD. The lesser “COMPLETE” version is a mere $2,000 USD.
April 27th, 2007 at 4:31 PM
gah to the above well the computing power is there just ……… The number of things being able to be rendered (when working like SL) would be rather low…….
April 27th, 2007 at 4:33 PM
Woo!
This is wonderful news! I am getting myself a copy of Maya ASAP, I can’t wait to play with this. This is really gonna be the next step in the evolution of Second Life’s aesthetic; finally, no more organic approximations of shapes! Within the good builds in Second Life, everything will look exactly like it ought to be.
But the best part, is that these builds will be that much more complex and detailed. Because it won’t take 3-10x as many prims to make complex organic shapes, anyone with some skill in 3D rendering can pretty much go to town!
Cheers! Wonderful news, thanks everyone at LL!
April 27th, 2007 at 4:36 PM
Agreed Lina. It’d jsut be a huger drain on graphics rendering cardware
I’m not against sculpty mesh objects, I just don’t really think it needs to be taken beyond that because the sculpty meshes are I think the barrier wall of how far that thought needs to go.
Otherwise, eesh… problem city.
Good discourse though, its good to see another person here calculating further permutations with some grounding int he limitations
April 27th, 2007 at 4:37 PM
I agree it doesnt need to go past what they are doing now and it really cant at the moment =/
April 27th, 2007 at 4:38 PM <