Here’s an interesting app for those of you who sometimes need to access SL on a slow/old computer. OMVViewer-light will let you log into SL (and opensim) without loading all the 3D objects and textures. You can chat, teleport, search,  and even access your inventory. Looks like it works on Windows and Linux, too. Thanks to Opensource Obscure for the link.

Rael Delcon has created a plugin exporter for the free Albatross3D modeling software that will allow you to make sculpted prims for free. Albatross looks like  a full-featured modeler and it works on WIndows, BeOS, and Linux. It even has a pretty spiffy Sculpting mode that lets you push, pull, and smooth the vertices of your object.

For now you’ll be limited to starting with a properly formatted sphere, but Rael mentions that there will be more options for cube, cone, etc as work progresses on the plugin. You can find more info about the plugin on the SL Forums and on Rael’s blog.

Great news! Always happy to see another free sculpty tool. :) I’m downloading it now, and I’ll give it a spin tonight.

I was sloggin’ through the SL Forums a couple of days ago and came upon a question about free ways to paint textures directly onto a sculpted prim. It sort of jogged my memory and I looked up a program I remember hearing about a few months ago called Blacksmith3D. I’m glad that I looked it up again, because it turns out there is a free version of the 3D painting application that you can use to paint directly onto your sculpted prims.

This free program is a ‘lite’ version of their regular 3D painting app, but it’s is fully functional and there’s no time limit. There are no modeling functions in this version, but you could look into other free options like WIngs3D or Blender to round out your free sculpty creation workshop. Definitely worth a look if you are looking for free sculpty texturing options.

Want to help with a project dedicated to improving the Second Life client software? Give the new Imprudence viewer a try.

“Imprudence is an open source metaverse viewer project based on the Second Life Viewer source. The goal of Imprudence is to greatly improve the usability of the Viewer through community involvement, thoughtful design, modern development methods, and a pro-change atmosphere.”

The Imprudence crew has just realeased a first test version of the client and is asking for feedback, suggestions, and assistance. You can get involved on many levels – anywhere from just making suggestions to rolling up your sleeves and writing new code.

This first version of the viewer doesn’t include a lot of major changes, but does lay the groundwork and get the ball rolling. It does include lots of little bug fixes and handy features; like the ability to Slice (dimple) the box and cylinder prims, the Nicholaz memory leak fixes, and fixes to the Offer Teleport button.

Please consider giving Impudence a try. This is just the sort of project I was hoping for when the SL viewer went open source and I think we could all benefit by contributing to the project.

Yuzuru Jewell, creator of the Rokuro (Lather) and Tokoroten (Extruder)  modelers, has created another sculpty tool called Tatara. This new program is a bit of a Swiss army knife, including many tools that let allow you to create sculpties in different ways.

You can use the familiar lathe and extrude tools as well, as some more complicated vertex based modeling modes. There’s an 3-view orthographic mode, one called Wappa that gives you control over the shape of each individual row of vertices, and even a mode that allows you to control ever pixel of the actual sculptmap file by adjusting the RGB values.

Tatara supports all of the sculpty types (plane, sphere, torus, etc), includes a 3D display of the object with texture preview, and also lets you see what your object will look like at the different Levels of Detail in the SL client. The interface may be a bit too technical for some, but Tatara is certainly worth a try. If nothing else it will give you a new look at how sculpted prims are constructed.

It’ costs L$4,500, or you can download a free 3 day trial. You can purchase an object in-world that will give you a serial number to unlock the full version.