Sculpties and dolphins — what's the connection?

Posted on: May 31, 2007

I have an affinity for finding connections, and in recent days, when I came across sculpties inworld, more often than not, they were… dolphins.




These pictures depict a few of more I've seen, created by different Resis. The one I was first given was by Zed Zeddmore, who used a script to cycle through sculpt textures, leading to a rather hypnotically animated lil' critter.

I know this could lead to a meme — what's your take on it? Are there other sculptie trends (aside from fruit) you're noticing? And as you may've surmised, the truely potent punch comes when you combine sculpties + WindLight.

Creds on photos go to Chie Salome, Marianne McCann, Adec Alexandria, and tahnee Languish via Snapzilla.

15 Responses to “Sculpties and dolphins — what's the connection?”

  1. Kamael Xevious Says:
    May 31st, 2007 at 9:04 PM PDT

    I suspect, though I can't prove it, that the reason you're seeing so many dolphin sculpties is that it's one of the tutorials in the Blender Wiki. Just a thought.

    Kam

  2. Kei Mars / Miss K Says:
    June 1st, 2007 at 12:10 AM PDT

    There seems to be no porpoise to it…

    See what I did there..? :p

  3. Benja Kepler Says:
    June 1st, 2007 at 12:16 AM PDT

    One of the first sculpties I made with Rokuro was a beer bottle….

  4. Daedalus Young Says:
    June 1st, 2007 at 7:44 AM PDT

    I see a lot of normal images turned into sculpties. And then people say, ooh, this looks like a stick, or anything :P

    Other than that, I've also seen a lot of hearts, which is also understandable, as it was the first thing I thought of making too (but decided not to, after I saw it was already being done).
    I think dolphins just have a simple shape to make. And because it's been an example already (I think everyone has seen it), people will try and make a dolphin too, to test their skills. Again, that was what I thought when I first saw the animated dolphin. And again I decided not to make one because I saw so much already :P

    The first thing I made was a small cup. I noticed a lot of drinking stuff too. And the very first day I noticed most sculpties were made Shiny too (as was mine)!

  5. Adec Alexandria Says:
    June 2nd, 2007 at 12:17 PM PDT

    thanks for using the dolphin pic on here and the SL blog! ..and noticed you have the one of me and Gillian with dolphin too .. lol

    ..well I thought I'd better recreate the photo for flickr, just the same with a little PS work :p

    ..lovin' windlight and sculpties!!

  6. Torley Says:
    June 4th, 2007 at 7:42 PM PDT

    @Kam: Intriguing theory.

    @Kei: Very punny of you.

    @Benja: Beer bottles get me thinking of Adobe Dimension, way back in the day… it let you extrude objects into 3D, not unlike some of what Rokuro does.

    @Daedalus: Gosh, what am I missing, I haven't seen a heart yet! I've been making 'em with rotated cybes and cut cylinders for too long. Shiny + WindLight looks soooo beautiful, as proven by Adec. :)

    @Adec: And you are welcome! Thanks for coming by and saying so! Various Lindens saw your dolphin + sun and I was like "Sculpties + WindLight get married, film at 11"! =)

  7. bloke de france Says:
    June 5th, 2007 at 2:05 AM PDT

    there were some marvellous sculpties - over at the Hidden Talents section at the Relay Hope sim on Sunday, my one prim sculptie spinning ufo proudly, er, spun. Proudly.
    also there were giant Hula Baby dolls, columns, light thingies, odd looking mushroom things, flower looking things and i saw some marvellous sculptie plates made by the person who did the sculptie heart that poofed out of the end of the domino run.

    and why do sculpties take up so much physical space ?

    oh, and the sculptie ufo didn't take kindly to having a follow script in it and decided to fly off into a neighbouring sim for an impromptu invasion.

  8. Torley Says:
    June 11th, 2007 at 6:59 PM PDT

    @bloke: As to why "and why do sculpties take up so much physical space ?", perhaps there's some psychology to this. They're new and fancy, so makes sense to show them off in grand, even gaudy ways.

  9. bloke de france Says:
    June 13th, 2007 at 6:22 AM PDT

    it's one of those odd things - they do appear to take up physical space around them, ie, you can never walk on one, but on an invisible shape above them, same applies to sitting on one. It could be related to the Rokuro.

  10. Daedalus Young Says:
    June 13th, 2007 at 2:10 PM PDT

    bloke, that's because Sculpties have something other prims don't have: a specific texture. The physics engine on the server doesn't download the sculpt texture, so it doesn't know the shape of Sculpted Prims. Therefor it assumes basically a sphere as shape. Most Sculpties are no spheres of course, so the simulated physics are different than how you'd expect the Sculpty to behave.

  11. bloke de france Says:
    June 14th, 2007 at 1:05 AM PDT

    however, (we worked it out !), on the Rokuro, if you fill as much of the 'box' with the shape you've made and then scale it in edit, you don't get invisible space problems (if you've ever been stuck inside the sculpties hidden 'force field' once you've scaled it upwards in edit. then you'll know how annoying that is.

    Re: physics, we're using sculpties a lot for our next relay for life playzone ( for want of a better word ) I can report that the sculptie barrel race is indeed stomach churning (and fun)

  12. Daedalus Young Says:
    June 14th, 2007 at 6:14 AM PDT

    Yes bloke, if you make a sculpty that fits most of the bounding box it's in, it's shape is far more like the server assumes it, thus the forcefield is less noticeable. When you make something smaller than that, in any of the three dimensions, you will notice it more. I will talk about this in my upcoming Sculpty Video Tut. For which I'm still gathering footage :P

  13. bloke de france Says:
    June 14th, 2007 at 6:27 AM PDT

    if you want to sit high above a spinning ufo or walk over a bug torley textured fungus, i'm the only frenchbloke on Sl. we've made sculptie penguin bowling(tm) hehe.

  14. Torley Says:
    June 18th, 2007 at 3:55 PM PDT

    Lively discussion, Daedalus and bloke.

    Sculpties are so freakin' exciting to me. I've played a bit with Rokuro and want to do more… gotta find the time. It seems to be one of the easiest entry points to creating sculpties, at least lathe-style ones which are symmetrical. Reminds me of that movie Ghost, you know, Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore on the pottery wheel… hehehe. (Oh gosh, I hope someone reenacts that scene, complete with "Unchained Melody"!)

    And yeah, their bounding boxes aren't what you'd expect them to be — we do hope to improve that in the future, too.

  15. Becca Says:
    July 18th, 2008 at 1:47 PM PDT

    ok…is it just me? how the heck do i register with Rokuro?

Make a Reply