In defense of the sculpt

[ChinRey]

I've heard so many people saying sculpts are outdated now that we have mesh. But take a look at this:



18 big boulders, decent LoD, useable physics, 4 LI. Try to make that with only mesh!

This is a sculpt/mesh combo btw. 16 boulders made from a sculpt, the remaining two and the physics for all 18 is a mesh.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

I agree with you that sculpts are not outdated.  While I like mesh it doesn't always have a lower LI or rez faster than traditional prims and sculpts.  All three prim types have their place in a builders toolbox IMO.

[ChinRey]

---

Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

While I like mesh it doesn't always have a lower LI or rez faster than traditional prims and sculpts

---

Prims are always faster to rez than sculpts or mesh. In theory they shouldn't be but they are, probably because the SL viewer is optimized for prims. I got a revelation recently when I visited a Linda Kellie build on one of the lesser grids. The prim count was too high for a Second Life sim and the build wasn't particularly light on texturing either. Yet my computer could easily manage 50% higher fps than it's ever been able to achieve in SL.

One of the main reasons why so many sculpts are slow to render is that sculpt maps tend to be oversampled. A sculpt map must have 4096 pixels, not more and not less but for some reason most of the common sculpt programs produce maps with 16384 pixels - some even more - and that adds a tremendous lot of lag. As far as I know, Sculpt Studio is the only sculpt program that makes correct maps that don't need to be edited before they are uploaded.

Another issue with sculpt maps is of course that you are stuck with 1024 vertices, nothing more and nothing less. As a rule of thumb, you have to put at least one third of the vertices to good use before it may make sense to use a sculpt rather than a mesh. (My boulders use 847 vertices btw).

Then of course there are the issues with UV mapping, normals, LoD, 24 bit vertice coordinates and so on. All these factors seriously limit the usablility of sculpts but when they work, they can do wonders.

[Drongle McMahon]

"you are stuck with 1024 vertices, nothing more and nothing less"

Not quite true. Although of somewhat limited use, smaller sculpt maps yield fewer vertices. The oblong maps with 1024 verts are really very useful though. Details of all the numbers are in this very old post (post 40 in thread).

[ChinRey]

---

Drongle McMahon wrote:

Not quite true. Although of somewhat limited use, smaller sculpt maps yield fewer vertices.

---

Another little detail they just plain forgot to mention. Presumably sculpts with fewer vertices will be less render heavy and I can't help noticing that they can have better LoD too. But such details were never important to LL of course.

I'll need a fresh supply of sarcasm if we're going to keep having discussions like this, I think I'm running out of it.

Anyway, thank you again, Drongle! This is really useful info even today for anybody who wants to build efficiently in SL. Back in the days before mesh it would have been vital.

[Dain Shan]

Depends on what you call a "Decent LOD"

 

Also you said it yourself.. its a sculpt / MESH combo.

 

[ChinRey]

---

Dain Shan wrote:

Depends on what you call a "Decent LOD"

---

Better than 99.99 % of the meshes for sale in SL.

An item this size will have its first theoretical switch point at more than 100 m distance even with RenderColumeLoDFactor set at 1 so it's almost impossible to mess up the LoD even if you try.

 

---

Dain Shan wrote:

Also you said it yourself.. its a sculpt / MESH combo.

---

Yes, and that's an important point. In this case I needed mesh for the physics and then I added two extra rocks to the mesh since they didn't increase the LI anyway but it's not about whether prims, sculpts or mesh is the best. It's the combination that is the best - together they offer far more options than either of the three does on its own.