Online procedural shape generator

[ChinRey]

I was looking for a tool to genrate super elipses, found more than I bargained for - a lot more - and though others might enjoy it too:

https://drajmarsh.bitbucket.io/supershapes.html

The shapes can be exported in Wavefront, Standford or STL format, all importable to Blender. You probably want to use Wavefront though since it preserves a basic UV map.

Unfortunately the curve resolution is fixed at an insanely high level for game virtual world use. You have to be prepared to do some serious simplification first and since the meshes are triangulated, simple edge loop decimation can be rather awkward for the more complex shapes. Even so, it may be a really useful tool and in any case, it's fun to play with.

Here's a quick-and-dirty vase I cooked up from one of the shapes:

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What makes me a bit sad though, is that these shapes are prims. They use different seed curves and different modifiers than SL prims but the basic principle is exactly the same. It could have been sooo easy to add some of these curves and modifiers (plus a ton more I can think of) to SL prims. I do understand why LL had to keep it extremely simple back in 2002/2003 and I'm amazed at how much versatility they managed to get out of such a limited system. But today even a smartphone can run rings around what counted as a high end graphics/game computer 17 years ago. Such shapes could easily have been created with an in-world bulding tool with a much gentles learning curve than mesh, the streaming cost would be a fraction of what the same shapes would need as mesh and unlike mesh, they can be easily simplified to generate LoD models and even to adapt to various hardware. If only LL had done more to upgrade the unique features SL had right from the start rather than simply keep bolting on replicas (often of dubious quality) of whatever new functions were fashionable with the big game engines.

I've been talking about the unreleased potential of prims (and sculpts) in the forums before and I know lots of people here have been confused about that. This is a tiny little exapmpe of what I had i mind. There's a lot more to it but at least it should give the general idea.