SculptyWear?
SculptyWear?
The Muism group gift jacket was a popular blog item a few days ago (link, link, link). I am not a member of the Muism group so I cannot comment on that particular item, but it seems from other posts as well as these that there is a love-hate relationship growing with sculptywear. The style is often fantastic. The wearability is sometimes lacking.
Avatars, just like our real life counterparts, are of various shapes and sizes. Even the very best clothes designers can’t make prim objects that fit everyone perfectly. So many of the designers have begun putting out demo models of their sculptywear item which is a wonderful help. Some demos are mod, some not, but if they fit you perfectly — or close to it — you can buy with confidence.
The upside of sculptywear is that the design possibilities seem almost endless. I have no idea HOW they do it, but it is amazing. The downside is that sometimes, no matter what we do, we just can’t get things to fit. It seems like the more complex the sculpty is and the more pieces it takes the place of, the harder it is to modify. Simple sweater necks and cuffs almost always work for me.
The advantage of the older style prims that are linked is being able to edit just ONE of the pieces without influencing the others. With sculpties we are often resizing a large and complex item. We get the offending area to fit and that throws off another – LOL.
There was a gorgeous short jacket that I wanted and the designer had very nicely made two versions (one for bustier gals – a category I do not fall into). No matter what I did, it didn’t work. But her demo gave me the chance to try it and that was great.
We give up a bit of fashion FOR fashion with sculpties in a lag situation. I suspect that you have been to events where some of the people never got the large gray balls off their feet, head, hands etc. 
But once they rez? Heaven.
I have also heard from a friend who runs around with the techie crowd that sculpties are actually polygons (I hope I have that correct) and actually take up six more times of the server’s energy than a regular prim. Maybe someone knows the scoop on this and can explain it more.
I guess my personal decision will be to use sculptywear carefully — much in the same way I use multiprim jewelry and leave it home when I go places that will be crowded. And enjoy every shapely nuance when I am in a calm and stable environment.
And you?
Credits: Everyday Tote by ETD, Sassy Sweater by Nuclear Boutique, Pepper Capris by Bossa Nova, Socks by PixelDolls (shortened), Untied Sandals by Shoes Simply Shoes, Melange Bracelet by Tekelili
In theory, sculpties do not take more rendering power server-side. The servers (at least used to) use standard sphere prim physics for sculpties. The client, though, uses an extra texture to distort a sphere into the sculptie you see– the sculpt map — and therefore has to fetch an extra texture from the storage servers. I’d assume it takes more processing power on your client’s side to apply the sculpt map to the sphere as well.
In fact the Muism jacket worked relatively easily, which pleasantly surprised me. I have a lot of trouble with all-sculptie jackets, and sculptie upper-sleeves, though, which mostly seem to be designed for smaller avis with thinner arms – and I haven’t the patience to keep fiddling with the sculpties til they work.
Like the picture
I have stayed away from sculpties in my designs (both clothes and household) for a few reasons. One is simple laziness in that I don’t want to learn another program or spend a smallish fortune on software ( I do believe there is a free program but it is not calling to me either – smile). The biggest reason for my aversion I guess is that in clothes they often don’t fit me easily and sometimes not at all.
I will say that you can make some great looking shoes from sculpties but personally I can’t deal with the gray balls with their ball babies attached before they rez. I have a fast DSL connection but can imagine it is even more problematic in laggy places on slow ISP speeds. So for now (I never say never) I am going to stick with the old prims which can be GRAY but at least shoe shaped even in the worst scenarios. Well, in the WORST scenarios I guess you just have the “another object is pending” message and a REALLY ugly shoe shape on your foot – LOL.
When things are working perfectly at Phil’s Place and the ISP though — sculpties can be IMPRESSIVE!!!! My virtual hat is off to the designers who have taken the time and effort to learn something new.