2565. Submitted on 2007/9/8, 22.00 h by :
Simple sculpt methods
So you wanted to make sculpties but got scared off by complicated tutorials and 3D drawing programs like Blender, Wings3D, or even Maya? Here's a simpler alternative that allows you to start making sculpt textures within a few minutes.
![[image]](http://www.arduenn.com/img/sculpties/Sculpties1.jpg)
Sculpties are Second Life 3D objects the shapes of which are defined by so-called sculpt textures.
An extremely simple way to make sculpties is by using the Rokuro program (Windows/Wine and Mac versions are available for download). It allows you to design a lathe profile by clicking and dragging interconnected dots:
![[image]](http://www.arduenn.com/img/sculpties/RokuroScreenshot1.jpg)
Just click an drag the blue ots to define your shape. You can choose from a set of 32, 64 or 128 dots.
When you're done drawing your flute, vase, lampshade or whatever, you can save the coordinates as a text file (just copy and paste into a Notepad or TextEdit file) and let Rokuro save your sculpt texture as a bmp image, preferably 128 x 128 pixels. Finally, you can import it into SL for your new sculptie:
![[image]](http://www.arduenn.com/img/sculpties/SculptieToadstool1.png)
Or you could save all the drawing trouble and use the above image instead and start planting those shrooms.
Rokuro allows you only to make lathe type objects. Sculpt textures can define much more complicated shapes, such as the tilted cube in the top example. There's another method for making these, but it's slightly more complicated. Read more about it in the comments section.
![[image]](http://www.arduenn.com/img/sculpties/SculptTextureBlobby.png)
![[image]](http://www.arduenn.com/img/sculpties/SculptTextureSpiky.png)
![[image]](http://www.arduenn.com/img/sculpties/SculptTextureMushroomAsymmetrical.png)
![[image]](http://www.arduenn.com/img/sculpties/MoreSculpties.jpg)
1. Arduenn commented on 2007/9/8, 22.38 h:
Simple sculpt methods continued
There's another program to make sculptie textures. The program's a bit unusual and has quite a steep learning curve, maybe even more so that the usual 3D design programs out there. But within a few minutes you could make things like a sculptie cube by using PovRay (dowloads available for Windows, Mac and Linux). And that's wat we want here: instant happiness.
PovRay is a script-interpreted 3D renderer. It reads shape definitions in text files and turns them into images.
I made a script for previewing a shape (copy paste into the PovRay editor field). Povray will turn the example into the following image:
It looks a bit squeezed here, but it's a sphere with a tilted cube in it. You can alter the aspect ratio settings in PovRay's preferences window to make it look rounder.
The sphere is added to serve as a boundary guide. Your sculptie shape should not stick out of this sphere. The outstanding parts will not be included in the final sculpt texture.
You can modify the sculptie shape part within the preview script to your own needs, but this may require some more reading. When you're done defining your shape, you can cut and paste the shape code into a final texture script, such as this one and start rendering again using PovRay (set to 128 x 128 pixels). PovRay should automatically save a PNG or Targa image:
Here it is, the cube texture made with PovRay.
Why a cube? You could make a cube in-world far more easier. But this one you can stretch into a pointy spiky thing, which cannot be done with normal cubes.
Got questions? Add them below. And otherwise start rendering.