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= See Also =
[[Render Roadmap]]

= Objective =

Add variety to Second Life without hurting framerate or significantly increasing bandwidth by using textures to describe mesh objects


= Overview =

Normal prims are formed by an extrusion of a 2D shape along a path. They are modified in-world by a set of parameters that allow them to be twisted, cut, stretched, etc. Sculpties differ in that they are prims whose three dimensional shape is derived from the color values in a texture, the sculpt texture. The red, green, blue color values of a pixel on the sculpt texture are translated into the x, y, z coordinates of a corresponding mesh element of a standard object (typically a sphere). 

Basically, the standard sphere gets distorted by the information in the sculpt texture. All of this processing is done in the viewer. To the simulator, sculpties are just spheres. This means that sculpties will not promote server lag. The only down side is that the physics engine runs on the simulator, so this means that for collision detection sculpties, no matter what they look like, behave like spheres. 

Sculpted Prims or "Sculpties" launched in May, 2007. Even before launch residents were strutting their Sculpty stuff on the beta grid. The two months after launch saw the flowering of sculpties (literally, actually -- several residents have made sculpty flowers). Sculpted objects, furniture, vehicles, hair, clothing attachments (especially hats) have appeared over the grid. There are even sculpty avatars, and sculpty water. 

For more information please visit the amazing resident-created documentation: [[Sculpted Prims]]

= Project details =

Sculpties are a project of Linden Lab's ''Studio Shiny''. Qarl Linden is the creator, designer, and developer for Sculpties. Periapse Linden does some PM stuff like wrangling JIRA issues and, um, writing this. Of course all development at Linden Lab is strongly collaborative, and Sculpties would never have been rezzed without the work from other groups, especially QA, Community, and Resident Experience. 

= Roadmap =

23 May 2007 -- '''Sculpties launched'''


'''Current focus''': ''Bug fixing and other maintenance tasks.'' 

Issues we are working on or have completed:
* [https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-367 MISC-367]: Changing param freezes sculpty
* [https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1699 VWR-1699]: Inaccurate preview
* [https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1709 VWR-1709]: Sculpt texture from media
* [https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-333 MISC-333]: Problems with animated sculpties
* [https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1059 VWR-1059]: Don't display sculpt map for no copy sculpties. 
* [https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-666 VWR-666]: LSL gives torus params for sculpty
*[https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-259 MISC-259] [https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-866 VWR-866] [https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-236 MISC-236]: Compression artifacts
* [https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-876 VWR-876]: Sculpt texture low priority 
* [https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-883 VWR-883]: Graphical textures missing from library
* [https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-827 VWR-827]: Torus problems after sculpty 
* [https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-858 VWR-858] [https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1110 VWR-1110] [https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1111 VWR-1111]: Importers requested for various filetypes

'''Sculpty Phase 2''' consists of the following three items, some of which may be built by resident developers:
* [https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1452 VWR-1452] linkset capture to sculpted prim
* [https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-866 VWR-866] adjust jpeg compression to improve sculpty accuracy
* [https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1335 VWR-1335] improve sculpty degenerate surface detection

'''Possible future enhancements''' to sculpties
* [https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2615 VWR-1336] enhanced support for small sculpt maps
* [https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1336 VWR-1336] use streaming media image-feed to drive sculpties
* [https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-698 VWR-698] ''(and related)'' create in-world based sculptie editors
* [https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims:_Importing Imports] - Better Sculpty importing tools.
[[Category:Sculpted Prims]]
[[Category:Linden Lab Projects]]