Al object in second life are made in Second Life it self, with one big exception: sculpted primes. A specific texture can reshape one of the basic primes to look like a complete object. Ys, a sculpture, in Second Life terms is nothing more then a texture. However, it is hard, if not impossible to make them with a simple painting program.
Fortunately, there are a few programs capable of helping you out. See also This Second Life Wiki Page
- Blender
GPL License
Formerly a company’s in-house tool, Blender is the current king of the open source modeling programs. With all the features of the expensive programs, an active development community and even some existing SL-based tools made by Residents, this is going to be the default choice for many people. Downsides: Blender’s interface is not newbie-friendly. That combined with spotty documentation can make for a slow learning curve. - ROKURO
Lite version Freeware
Pro version is L$ 2980
This is a program by Yuzuru Jewell that lets you make the outline for an 3d object, and calculates the points laying in between. It is a simple program, and therefor is not able to make you do everything you might want, but the price is quite good for what it does.. - Plopp
free version for SL users
full program can be bought for US$19.50
Plopp is a cute 3D modeling tool designed for little kids. The makers of Plopp have now put out a free version for SL users. Imagine one of those new mylar balloons. You paint the one side with an image, and then paint the other side with an image representing the other side. Plopp then blows up the balloon and shades it. You can also import graphics from other tools (Photoshop, a scanned drawing, etc.), make a “cutout” with the eraser and inflate that. You can play a little with the lighting and with rotations. The Plopp drawing tools are very basic but keep in mind, this is for little children. Then it bakes the texture and exports the texture and the sculpt map (128×128). - Wings 3D
BSD License
Wings3D is a subdivision modeler that is easy to learn and is well suited to making sculpted prims. The sculpt import and export for Wings is easy to use. Detailed documentation is sparse, but there are several Second Life tutorials in this Wiki and on the Web.
