[sldev] Re: New Sculpty Features

[Jacek Antonelli]

On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 2:16 PM, Karl Stiefvater <qarl at lindenlab.com> wrote:
> 3) most practically - by simply rotating the model first before you generate
> the sculpt map, you can effectively mirror along ANY plane (not just the X,
> Y, and Z planes.)  this is the preferred method since it gives you more
> freedom.  (and as such, you can see how a single mirror option is more
> "fundamental" than the other ones.)

I was all confused about this. "What's so special about the X axis?" I
was imagining the use case as existing sculpties being the target for
this feature (in other words, sculpties that were designed without
consideration for axis orientation).

But then it hit me that it's more about _new_ sculpties, which can be
designed with this feature in mind (or old ones that can be updated).
It's true that in the vast majority of cases where symmetric sculpties
are wanted, they're symmetric on a single axis. *brain goes "click"*

So I see now, and agree that a single axis is "sufficient" for almost
all uses. For special cases where it's not... well, they'll just have
to fall back on the manual mirroring-before-export that we do now.

> it really has nothing to do with the extra two characters "_X".  :)

Really? I pictured you going, "I'd sure love to add Y and Z... but
then I'd have to type two extra characters. Meh." Hehe. ;-D

Just out of curiosity (and because it _would_ be kinda handy), how
much effort would it be for someone to add Y and Z? Is it something
that could be added further down the road without a big fuss? I could
picture it possibly being really easy (copy & paste, swap two cells in
a transform matrix or such), but maybe I'm just being naïve. :-)

 - Jacek