Daz3D has added some Sculpted Prim tools to it’s Hexagon software. You can create and texture your sculpties using Hexagon then export them directly to a TGA sculptmap for upload to SL. The modeler looks pretty spiffy and includes advanced 3D painting tools, too.
I’m excited to see more commercial 3D applications including support for sculpted prims. The more tools we have to make sculpties, the better! I’m still hoping for some native sculpty support in ZBrush. :)
How-to use PloppSL
I’ve been having a lot of fun experimenting with the free sculpted prim creator called PloppSL. I noticed on the SL forums that some people are having trouble figuring out how to use the software. Not surprising since there is very little documentation and none of the buttons or features are labelled. So I decided to crate this tutorial and walk through the program showing what at the buttons do and how to turn your 2D drawings into 3D sculpties using PloppSL.
Build in SL, via RL Apps
I found this shiny nugget via The Arch. This is a plugin for Maya, called SLTk Pro, then lets you export your creations directly to Second Life. You still must work with the SL prim set, but the plugin supports sculpted prims and sculptmap generation as well. Check out the video to see how it imports and sizes prims automatically in-world.
"SLTk Pro is designed for professional artists in order to apply their skills without any limitaion. Powerful functionalities of Maya can be utilized for object creation for Second Life, that brings maximum quality and enormous productivity gains to users."
Looks pretty dang spiffy, especially if you are already a Maya guru. The site mentions a 3D studio Max version as well. Check out the SIM tools website for more info. You can also see some samples in-world.
Dreamlines, by Leonardo Solaas, is a spiffy Javascript application that asks you for a keyword - then creates an ephemeral, dream-like image based on your word. I love the textures that it creates from the images that it finds.
Who is dreaming? The user, or the Internet itself? In a certain way, both. The program generates a personal moving picture, unique, unpredictable, and forever gone when it is finished, just like dreams. But that dream is made out of pieces taken from the subconscious of the whole net, gathered by some words of the user and the obscure logic of searching algorithms.
