Sculpties Killed the Prim Torture Star? Maybe. Maybe Not
Submitted by Taran on Wed, 05/23/2007 - 02:20
Yup, it is official. Aside from the time off of SecondLife tomorrow which is notably of very short notice - which will may fix some bugs that people have had their virtual thongs twisted over, the sculptured prims are coming to... well, to... to give people to build stuff outside of SecondLife (which is cool) and utilize their 3 dimensional software skills.
I mean - everyone has those, right? So everyone will be uploading froody textures of all sorts of prims if they follow the authoritative wiki page on sculptured prims. Either people will run out and get copies of Maya (because if one guy at Linden Lab has it, everyone does - horse dead, stopped beating here) or will get one of the Free 3D Modeling apps pointed to. If you're ahead of the curve - good for you, enjoy the supremacy you have and go ahead and sell those sculpted prims for exorbitant prices because you had to pay for the software licenses. Well, if you had Maya laying around.
Sculpted prims are going to impact the economy - anyone who can rez a prim should know that. It is one of those unspoken truths that has not made it into the mainstream that I can tell. Instead we keep seeing the same fruit platter and told how cool it is. Well - it is cool. What sucks is that if you've been torturing prims full time, you may be hitting the tar pits. It isn't that torturing prims isn't fun - it really is - but it is that sculpties are going to be taking over the known metaverse to make things look better. And the average user buys stuff based on... not how much effort went into it... but how good it looks. And of course, that means... prim torturing as we know it will be changed forever.
Will we be able to torture sculpted prims? I haven't read anything about that. Can they be made flexible? I haven't read anything on that. I don't do the beta grid when it is available simply because I have enough problems on the regular grid and I do, despite what people may think, have a Life. We'll find out tomorrow after the update.
What I do know is that this will directly impact many things in SecondLife which are being sold. Many things will become antiquated tomorrow after the update - hours of effort making things for fame and fortune (or like me, plain old fun may well be down the toilet. Is the sky falling? No, it is once again falling laterally. But do we expect the sculptie kidz to play fair in the market? I don't think they will. Heck, we still have people charge a lot of money for mega prims - which are freely available.
Let us flip that around. Do we expect them to be rewarded for their ability? Sure. But who knows? We'll find out. It will be a matter of time before they are everywhere, and many things built in SecondLife become... inventory database load. Hair? Maybe. Shoes? Maybe - almost definitely. Genitalia? Probably. Heck, prim breasts will probably be out almost immediately.
What to do? Well, you adapt - or you die. So I've been playing with Blender, inspired partly by Amanda's outline of creating sculpties with Blender. Unfortunately, for we-who-never-used-Blender-before and we-who-can't-spell-spline, she makes some leaps that require some pharmaceuticals and instructions. Get your own pharmaceuticals. But read Blender 3D: Noob to Pro. Good stuff, because the Blender 3D interface is alien at first - and so is all the lingo.
What's my plan? Well, for one, I'm not going to be dependent on other people to do sculpted prims. Once you get past the interface and the different language spoken, it is doable. Have I created any masterpieces? No. But here's a hint when it comes to sculpted prims: even the junk might be used imaginatively. What will I do with my junk? Probably put them on full mods on slexchange as I make them, or put them out at YourSecondPlace.com (SLurl), or both. If I get good at it
The real use of sculpties won't be them standing by themselves. It will be about what one does with them... and even then, they may end up being more limited than the hype surrounding them.
I'll still torture prims. I like to hear them scream.
The sky isn't falling in...
...but man, this is going to make a massive change to the SL economy, and to be honest I have no idea what direction it's going to go.
On one hand, it could well mean that content creation becomes more concentrated in the hands of a relatively small number of people. These guys have the time and dedication to work with Maya/Blender/Wings a lot and get amazing results.
On the other hand, it will probably lead to a massive reduction in prices for non-sculpty and simple sculpty goods - and that will reduce prices as a whole. For a lot of people simple stuff is good enough (ask any virtual escort about the number of freebie dicks they encounter :) ) so they'll stick with those.
Interesting times!
Yeah, man...
There's gonna be a shift. How that shift happens... we'll see.
Reduced price for prim objects...
It might reduce price for non-sculptie objects, but it won't lower land price and will make it harder for them to pay their land.
Blending
If you're getting started with Blender you might be interested in this open models page: http://ogoglio.com/models.html We use the models in Ogoglio spaces, but they're standard .blend and .obj files and they're are licensed for reuse.
Cool, Trevor
Lots of people will be looking for such resources... as I get them I'll share them.
Still wrestling with the interface to some degree, though. Blender's a pretty powerful app, I'm still learning.
I'm looking forward to it
I've read the Wiki, and I though, hey, cool, meshes, finally!
It'll do stuff to the economy, but mostly I shrug at that. After all, Internet time goes WAY faster than real life time. (It's seven "dog years" to one year, but way more Internet years.) Look at the real life... when the automobile came in, it introduced problems (car accidents, global warming), but also opened up tremendous opportunities. And was an economic disaster for buggy whip manufacturers.
It's progress.
I've played a lot with Blender before. The procedure for turning a blender model into a sculpted prim texture looks a little Baroque, but I'll probably start playing with it at some point. In any event, it should become possible to make *much* better stuff with this new tool. I think it's a great thing that will be a huge net positive.
If you're a prim torturer who's whining about losing your way of making a living and saying that it was bad of Linden to just introduce this-- stop acting like the RIAA! Adapt when the world changes. Just think of how much capability this new thing can bring, and then use your creativity to make good use of it.
-Rob
'Mostly Harmless'
Having played with Blender over the last few days, what I can say is this:
They ain't so hot.
No flexi. No torturing. Pretty useless for a lot of stuff.
As far as the, "If you're a prim torturer who's whining about losing your way of making a living and saying that it was bad of Linden to just introduce this-- stop acting like the RIAA!" - well - the RIAA is a bunch of recording companies, not a group of artists (no matter how much they pay artists to be spokespeople). So I don't think that fits.
We're talking about the content creators being affected by a new way of creating content. This isn't just a different medium, as is the case with the RIAA, MPAA and BSA. It is a little like television an radio, thus the Buggles reference implicit in the title. It is a new way of creating content, and therefore I do take issue with 'stop acting like the RIAA'. And I do take issue with making light of concerns of people who have spent months working on things which might have been devalued by this.
But they won't be, and I'll tell you why. Compared to regular prims, sculpties suck. Their use is very limited. :-)
Nice chatting with you inworld, btw.
In the end...
Like expected, not many peoples can afford 3D software, yet few freebies do exist and for sculpties purpose. Yet like said, I was too expecting again a gigantesque ravine between professionnal and commoner about working prims... it hasn't. There is very few sculpties used and mostly for faint fold details (necktie?) in clothing. It may improve some object looks, but it still texture doing most of the job about 'good looking'.
Well Sculpties are used here
Well Sculpties are used here and there but the detail they can have is to slim to completely replace prims and nothing likely will unless LL somehow figure out a way to bring full poly models into SL which is unlikely. Maya and 3ds Max and alot of 3d Software out there isnt made for the general masses.... In fact They are made for the commercial industries (kinda like photoshop but 3d..) It was never bound to have the impact people though it would and many people are using them in conjunction with standard prims etc. They are another tool at our disposal but for me personally are worthless till they can hold more detail...
Old-School Prim-Junkie
I'm a High-prim automaker in SL, and have seen some of the sculpty cars around. Mostly at stores tho, and NOT at the local tracks. Makes you wonder if they sell at all, or if they drive so badly that people are embarrased to even TRY them at a local track.
Another thing I would like to mention is that prim-torturing is an art. Downloading a sculpy-map yahoo'd from a car-gaming site, and applying that to a prim ISN'T. Show me one of those Sculpty-car makers that can do what I or Abacus Mimistrobell can do with prims..We make um rawk babe!!
Prim-junkie to the end~~
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