It's my mesh, so I'll clean it up!

TheBlack Box's "Sculpt Studio" is a feat of scripting virtuosity, that uses scripted prims, in Second Life, to simulate 3D program functions.  His Mesh Studio can use sculpts from SS, prim linksets or both, to generate mesh all while inworld.

Mesh Studio is 4999 Lindens (that's about $20US, give or take); same price as Sculpt Studio.  For most SL users, building with prims is a fundamental skill you develop to make houses, furniture, clothing, hair and more.  Many are very good at building with prims.  Land in Second Life sustains a limited amount of prims you can rez before it smacks you and says, "Stop!".  The amount varies with the amount of land you own, or rent, or are allowed to rez when visiting.  Hence the all mighty quest to do more with less to maximize your prim allowance.

Notice where the arrows change scale on these shapes even when they are very simple.  The texture being applied can be seen in the lower right hand side.

Sculpts are a kind of mesh hybrid....like mesh but with limitations and LOTS of rules.  They are standardized sizes for the sculpt maps, they use up parts of the sculpt mesh to reinforce and withstand LoD changes (level of detail you see as you move away from an object inworld) or collapse rows into, what are called, poles, to make separations within a single sculpt.  The sculpt map is an exact square which means the rows of the mesh are continuous (think, first, a plane as the starting point; then a cylinder, a sphere or a torus, the four basic shapes from whence all sculpt shapes start).  You are more shaping an object than creating from the ground up.  Due to the rows all being the same size on the map, but squished or stretched on the 3D model, the textures are hard to do in just a 2D image editor; painting in 3D will greatly help this.  To do more with the sculpt, which counts as one prim against the land, we stretch and cajole the points to make more and more out of one sculpt.  This, of course, takes a toll somewhere:  LoD, texturability, smoothness of surface.

With the cylinder shaped into a wineglass (this is the outer surface only/more needs to be done to create the inside of the glass), the same "arrows" texture presents how the sculpt reshaping distorts the texture when it is applied as is; things like projection painting in a 3D program or materials are useful to avoiding distortion.

Once you generate the sculpt map, it is 1024 faces.  A good mesh modeler can do a lot more with that budget than can be done with a sculpt and it can texture far better.

I was able to make this deer head, in Blender, with 1638 faces; less than two sculpts.  It comes into SL with 1 LI.  Note the difference in the handling of the UVs (uv editor lower right) for this mesh deerhead; uvs can have many pieces, called islands, and are closer to the shapes of the mesh object.

There is only one acceptable type of sculpt map for sculpt UVs.  There is an infinite number of ways you can UV map/unwrap your mesh when it's not a sculpt.  You have the full set of tools available in your 3D program to create and build your mesh, and are basically using a small subset of tools when you do sculpts.  Finally, a sculpt works best when closer to an evenly spaced sculpt mesh, but by the nature of making a shape, the first thing we do push and pull the sculpt out of this even space to make it look like our desired object.

Still, for Second Life, there are advantages for using sculpts over mesh for some things.  So they shouldn't be out of the picture entirely.

So let's say you are interested in doing mesh, but you don't want to learn a 3D program or have tried and just don't get it.  Perhaps you have an easier time building up something in prims or need something that is specific in sizing to interact with something else in Second Life.  This is where Mesh Studio comes in.

Prim linkset on left is 22 prims (less the one added for the candle particle).  Colored surfaces (you can have eight total colors which would include the plywood or blank texture if it can be seen on the prims) create material zones on the mesh which you can access in SL, in edit, by using Select Face and applying your texture to the face as you would on a prim face.  The generated mesh was 4 LI with strong LoD.

This linkset was composed of 19 box prims.  The generated mesh was only 1 LI with strong LoD.  Boxes will produce lower LI in most instances.

You get to build with prims and turn them into mesh which will likely be far fewer LI (land impact which is the number of prims the object counts as against your land) than the original prim linkset.  Scripts are provided in the product that generate mesh in two different ways.  In addition, those with Sculpt Studio can create sculpted shapes, that may be unachievable with prims, and  vastly broaden what you can put together to generate mesh with Mesh Studio.  Sculpt Studio owners will find that a Mesh Dropbox has been added in the latest updates for just this purpose.

I will post information, tips, techniques, written and video tutorials to explain and help you get the most out of your Mesh Studio.  I'll show more on using sculpts from Sculpt Studio and how to prepare pieces for use only in SL or further work in 3D programs (I use Blender 2.6x.)  This includes the creation of static meshes and pieces that could be used in rigging for use on an SL Avatar.  Static pieces can be done fully inworld with Mesh Studio and we'll be exploring how to strengthen LoD and create physics meshes so you can go through doors, walk up stairs and stand on floors.  Rigging can presently only be done in a 3D program.

Our TAMA site has a general information page on Mesh Studio and how to get set up to be allowed to upload mesh in Second Life.  This blog will be able to address topics in more depth to make your experience with Mesh Studio enjoyable, and profitable, if you choose.  Feel free to leave comments to ask questions or suggest topics.

Happy Meshing!
~Ele