Sculpted Industrialism

In recent days I have been observing many fellow artisans upon the Grid - well, I flatter myself that they are my fellows, I am a child playing with plywood and glue compared to most, but nonetheless - writing and speaking on the subject of Sculpted Prims, the new magical lumps of clay sent to us from the heavens that promise to make our fruitbowls that much more interesting. Initially I suspect this will result in little more than an enormous number of bananas, vases, goblets, fancy table-legs and so on, but given time they will likely become common in the primary markets on the Grid, those being furniture, clothes and body parts.

A bold new age of fruit

I, myself, have not been sculpting prims. “Why is this?” I hear you ask in my imagination (in all likelihood you care not a jot but I will tell you anyway). Firstly, the line of products manufactured by Ordinal Industries are pretty much all mechanical and sharp-edged, and sculpted prims really are not terribly good with harsh lines and suchlike, being by their nature rather softer and more organic in appearance. I am sure that a few details (for example, the holster for the Webley mentioned previously) would be better done with sculpted prims but I imagine that the point at which this becomes essential will be the point at which I am actually able to operate the tools.

Which brings me to my second point, which is that I really do not have the time to master that horrible item of torture, Blender, and I have neither time nor resources (or at least I am certainly not willing to spare them) for Maya, the only package for which an official exporting widget exists at the moment. It is certainly not the matter of a few spare hours to learn how these things work. I previously took Blender cautiously out of the drawer and opened it up when I was investigating the creation of animations, as I was told it could be used for this (perhaps mistakenly) and quickly put it back with a puzzled then scared expression on my face. I made a more concerted effort recently but quite frankly, the sheer number of buttons in irrational places, the bizarre and essential keyboard shortcuts, the inconsistency between elements of the User Interface… I was not encouraged.

My previous investigation of animations would have been entirely curtailed had it not been for my discovery of the excellent program Avimator (now developed as qavimator), which is an excellent free tool and extremely quick to master, particularly if your desired animations are limited to small actions, poses and incidental movements. This is the sort of program which is needed in the context of Sculpted Prims to maintain the Grid as a place where anyone might learn any of the basic skills to at least some extent. Clearly if one must learn Blender or Maya before sculpting, it divides us firmly into “does it for a living” and “doesn’t do it at all”, and that division in society is enough of a problem as it is.

At this early stage it appears as if the program “Wings3D” might turn out to be some sort of easily-accessible version, but I am unable to judge this. My stubborn and slightly insane insistence on using an “Apple” as a tool - and a Core 2 Duo Apple at that; two cores, what is the fruit world coming to - means that I am finding it practically impossible to use the plugin developed. The latest version fails consistently when asked to do anything, the last previous version to work does not support the plugin, and compiling from source… well, I am not a newcomer to this sort of endeavour but it has been a complete nightmare and an unsuccessful one at that.

Still, residents of the Grid are a resourceful and innovative bunch, and I have little doubt that someone, somewhere, will come up with something, somehow. I will keep an eye out, but in the meantime, continue to make things with the usual prims.

On that note and to end this piece with a little self-promotion, I have been working on a series of industrial tools - all in the very early stages of design - which I will illustrate….