The video you described is actually Second Life resident and designer Robby Dingo, constructing the guitar that was used by Suzanne Vega’s (yes the musician) Second Life avatar for a virtual streaming concert.
Second Life’s modeller uses “prims”, essentially primitives that can be transformed, cut, twisted, tapered, etc. In fact, it is very easy to use, but you cannot export objects created in SL for use in other applications. It is intended for users to create content (to which the creator owns the intellectual property rights) for use inside SL, usually sold to other SL residents for actual money. Many people make a living designing content for that purpose. Users can create and upload textures, audio, animation, and write scripts that make SL objects actually do things, in addition to the primitive building tools provided.
Second Life does not support the upload of geometry created in other applications, however today marks the release of a new SL update that includes a new feature: “sculpties”. These are essentially displacement maps used to “sculpt” SL’s simple primitives into unique geometry- a first for Second Life. Many designers are already using a plugin written for Maya to export these baked textures, which can then be uploaded to SL and used to sculpt primitives into specific shapes, usually for use in creating larger more complex linked objects.
As you might imagine, ZBrush has got to be the very best starting point for creating these sculpt textures, and it has been reported that an exporter for ZBrush is “coming soon”. Frankly, it could not come soon enough to satisfy me. I’m investigating ZMapper to see if it has this capability. If anyone has information about using ZBrush to create sculpt textures without first exporting to Maya, I would very much like to know about it.
Those of you who so easily dismiss Second Life for not being ZBrush should understand that the content is user-created, and varies from good to bad to ugly. Some really gorgeous work has been created with its admittedly limited (but intuitive) toolset, and that toolset is about to get a lot more powerful. This means big money for SL content designers.
As for its performance being abysmal, you’re right about that, but that’s largely because they’ve gone from a few hundred thousand subscribers to 7 million in the course of the past year alone. PayPal even accepts the L$ (Linden Dollar), Second Life’s form of currency, as legal tender.
Don’t be so quick to knock what you don’t comprehend. Besides, if you were so keen to play outside, you wouldn’t be sitting in your parent’s basement posting to this thread.
For those interested in “sculpties”, here is a link to the wiki on the subject:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims:_3d_Software_Guide
And here is a link to the aforementioned guitar-building video:
http://secondlife.com/showcase/
Happy sculpting!
