Sculptie Dev

When Qarl Linden was first pitching the sculpty idea inside LL, there was substantial concern that without an in-viewer editor, and with only a Maya exporter, the sculpties were too "raw" to be released. Qarl argued that LL ought to put them out anyway, and let our advanced residents use them as they could.

What LL didn't expect was the avalanche of resident contributions that bring sculpties to the masses. From tutorials to walk-throughs to plug-ins to external applications, the SL community has really come through. Qarl says, "Bravo. And thank you."

This page

The purpose of this page is to coordinate all the future work that we needs to keep sculpties evolving. Below is a list of a variety of sculpty bugs/tasks/projects that still need work in the second life viewer. They range in complexity from day-long projects to multi-month projects. If you happen to be a decent software engineer, have a copy of our open-source client, and are bored, then please take a look. Perhaps there's something in here that "moves" you.

Qarl "Father of the Sculpty" Linden makes this promise: "As a developer on the "inside" of LL - I'll do my part to enable you guys to extend/advance SL in the ways you want. First up is a small change that, had it existed six months ago, would have let the OSS community implement their OWN sculpties. Hopefully, with changes like these, you won't need to wait for LL to implement the features you want."

Tasks

Completed

• Importprimscript Import an entire assembly of sculpted prims, standalone software.

In-progress

• SVC-112 Remove the access control from ParcelObjectOwnersRequest

Looking for implementors

• VWR-866 adjust jpeg compression to improve sculptie accuracy
• VWR-1335 improve sculptie degenerate surface detection
• VWR-1336 use streaming media image-feed to drive sculpties
• VWR-698 (and related) create in-world based sculptie editors
• VWR-1452 linkset capture to sculpted prim
• Sculpted Prims: Importing - Better Sculptie importing tools.
• SVC-350 create new "extra prim parameter" type for open-source (outside LL) use

Discussion Topics

• What should the in-world sculpty maker be like?

Projects

• Generic 3D model to sculpty converter
• Better organized free sculpties
• Multi-prim object to sculpty converter
• Scriptable interface
  • There is already some support for python in the viewer, but it is not exposed at this time. This would help extend features for the projects and tasks listed above. It would help develop these features separate from viewer builds, so that would allow new scripted features or updated scripts to be released separately from the main viewer. VWR-1110 is one that I'll move on first to introduce the exposed python module. I also want to point a package that supports python for Maya. Blender is also already based on python. I know other script languages have been suggested, but based on what is already supported, Python is the best choice for now. Dzonatas Sol 11:54, 28 July 2007 (PDT)

Promote Your Work

If you've released a sculpty-related tool, whether in-world or out of world, you can list it at Sculpted Prims: Resident-made Tools. This page has been spun off from the 3d software guide for space and can now allow for a greater variety of tools to be listed there.

For tools and tutorials relating to 3d modeling software, list them in their respective sections at Sculpted Prims: 3d Software Guide.