Sculpties are the new clip art

Posted on: July 12, 2008

Assemble your own sculptie tree or flower out of these parts!

Quality presets count for a lot. From Powerpoint presentations to Photoshop plugins to Environment Editor (WindLight) settings in Second Life, presets bridge the gap between “I don’t know a damn thing about this” and “I’m well on my way to learning confidence!”

When presets are poor, as Powerpoint templates are so often targeted to be, they do a horrendous disservice to the tool they’re representing. Perception-wise, creative potential and possibilities cut down by large chunks, and poor presets may even turn someone off from dipping in deeper with a product or service. Poor presets are as much a deterrent to further progress as quality presets are encouragement.

Clip art is a type of visual preset for those who can’t draw, or don’t want to spend the time to. For the crafty and/or subversive, clip art (rights willing) provides an easy base to remix, adapt, and improve upon.

Second Life is seeing the rise of sculpted prim clip art, useful shapes designed to be textures and arranged into finished products. From weapons to sofa cushions to gemstones — there’s a whole category on SLExchange! —  sculptie clip art makes it easier for the uninitiated to make stuff. Especially in the absence of a built-in-sculptie editor — but don’t forget some Resis have created admirable tools.

A ripe market exists and I celebrate those who achieve popular pathways to smoother advancement, even mastery of Second Life skills. There’s no shame in using and reusing presets if they get you where you want to go. If they need changes, mod ‘em, and move on.

5 Responses to “Sculpties are the new clip art”

  1. Pandora Wrigglesworth Says:
    July 14th, 2008 at 12:11 AM PDT

    Since a sculptie, a sphere, and a torus all use about the same number of vertices, sculpties are a highly efficient method of modelling in Second Life. Sure, they take a few more seconds to download but the framerate from one sculptie should be a lot better than the framerate from the 10 spheres and tori needed to approximate the same shape.

    Now if only sculptie could flex, perhaps with simple two-bone, spring-based physics….

  2. Lhynnan McDonnell Says:
    July 15th, 2008 at 12:19 PM PDT

    here here for fexi sculpts!

    *thinks* altho the time it took me to learn to use NORMAL flexis … oh my head! (but that was mostly my inability to comprehend which side was the 'anchor'… that al over now… the screaming *****WHY WONT IT WORRRKKK!!!?!?!?!?****** is now reserverd for my infantile forays into LSL)

    …

    if what you're saying is **MORE (and better) FREE CONTENT** I wholeheartedly agree

    *=^.^=*

  3. Henrik Svendsen Says:
    July 16th, 2008 at 7:21 AM PDT

    I would LOVE to use sculpties, only problem is that I'm broke low on money, so textures are a bit expensive :(

  4. revol basevi Says:
    July 17th, 2008 at 2:30 PM PDT

    I cant get your presets to work. I had them on my old computer but I cant get them now. I have looked everywhere for answers so sorry if this is not the place to ask. thanks for any help.

  5. Torley Says:
    July 20th, 2008 at 1:15 PM PDT

    @Pandora: While you're here, let me compliment you on your creations… 20% chance of kittens w/parachutes and all. ;)

    @Lhynnan: At first, I didn't know how to use flexis until wiggling it around and going, "Ah!"

    And yeah, I agree with "more and better free content", it elevates the so-called bar and opens up higher-quality paid content.

    @Henrik: It's true that's a dependency, but L$1000 is less than US$5.

    @revol: WindLight presets? I'll be glad to help, email me at torley at lindenlab dot com and please let me know at which step in the instructions ( http://snurl.com/windlight ) things fail.

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