| abstract
| - A Sculpted Prim (or Sculptie) is a Second Life 3D primitive object whose shape is determined by a texture. These textures are called Sculpt Textures or Sculpt Maps. You can use sculpted prims to create more complex, organic shapes that are not currently possible with Second Life's prim system. A Sculpt Texture or Sculpt Map is a standard RGB texture where the R (red), G (green) and B (blue) channels are mapped onto X, Y, and Z space. Sculpt Textures are similar to so-called "normal maps", but instead of encoding surface normals they encode surface positions. They are also similar to displacement maps, but instead of a single scalar distance we have three values — one each for the X, Y, and Z coordinates. Sculpt Textures are also very similar to parametric (e.g. NURBS) surfaces. See Sculpted Prims: Under the Hood for details. Sculpted prims work with UV maps. Instead of making an object with a certain, very distinct shape, you take an object with a very generic shape and use the texture file to tell it where to move vertices. That way the poly count stays low and things still look good. For more technical details see the links below. Sculpted prims, if implemented properly, may draw the attention of more professional animation and movie feature production skilled 3D artists to Second Life as a useful place to display game, movie and advertising graphics and 3D special effects.
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