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Yes. Sculpties are likely to take more time and more professional experience/skill to create, since they require fairly extensive knowledge of 3d modelling tools. An analogy to this is the fact that a good-quality texture requires the creator to have extensive graphic design skills. The sculpt texture is small enough that snapshotting the "preview" is likely to give a fully-defined version of the texture in question. However, the same doesn't apply to the "normal" textures on a modifiable prim, because snapshotting the preview is unlikely to give a decent-quality facsimile of the texture.
Remember that, a year or so ago, when "ui scaling" came about, people discovered that huge UI scale values could allow the texture preview window to grow big enough to show a full-sized view of the texture. This was treated by LL as an exploit and a patch/fix was expedited. The decision seemed to be based on the fact that it was fairly trivial to reproduce the texture in a nearly pristine form. I think that argument applies to the sculpt texture preview, too. As a side note, a quick fix for this issue for those who know how to create proper TGA alpha layers is to load up yoru sculpt texture into PSP or PhotoShop and create an alpha channel that hides the entire texture. Sculpties ignore the alpha channel when forming the geometry while making the sculpt texture appear as blank within the texture preview window.
I originally heard this idea from Tmp of the SecondCitizen forums here Note, alpha channel may find use in future sculptie rendering updates. Odds are it will lean towards changing transparent ones if it happens.
Given that the current behavior is consistent with non-sculpty objects we aren't going to change the interface.
Normal mod prims can be "copied" from the volume parameters Lex Neva's comments are salient, however there is a work around for those content creators who want to hide their sculpt textures. 1) Make the sculpty no-mod. With regards to Elbereth Witte's caution, Qarl Linden says that the above workaround is safe even with future use of the alpha channel. Such use will also have a prim property bit to toggle, and that bit will be off for all older sculpties – backwards compatibility. "Given that the current behavior is consistent with non-sculpty objects we aren't going to change the interface."
This makes no sense because a sculpty object is created via a different method than a regular prim. Indeed, given the method of regular prim creation, one could assume there is not even copyright there to be had by someone twiddling the dials. (apologies to those who wish to have more copyright on their procedural prims than you do - you don't) However, sculpties are created in a process of sculpting in an external program, in that respect they are not essentially different from creating textures except that they are 3d models rather than 2d images. it is only the difference between 2d and 3d that distinguishes a sculptie from a regular texture, ergo sculptie textures should be treated like their 2d texture cousins, and not like procedural prims. There is no reason why their textures should be easily copied, to do so is to defeat the texture permissions system for sculpties. I still failed to see what's the need in showing sculpty texture on Edit window. And beside what others already said, I must fire back a question:
"What is a use for the Sculpt Preview box on Edit window?" If you can't find an answer for that, the 'feature' should be taken out. Yes we can copy prims using the parameter boxes, but they are required for Creator and User to edit the prims. What is the use for the sculpt preview box? It is not likely anyone can Decode the sculpt from the picture. And thus it is no use at all. You Linden said to make it consistent. I ask what use the box is for. And who will benefit from it. Sculpt creators? No. They can't edit or understand the sculpt there anyway. Buyer and users? No. They hardly care what a sculpt texture is, or what a sculpt is. Thief? YES!!! So from the reason above, I has to come to an assumption that Linden Lab is either: Thank you. I would just like to add that I could support a preview option that showed an approximation of the 3D shape, perhaps a properly rendered version of what can now be viewed when previewing an intended sculpt texture upload? (As opposed the the present preview showing a PLANE type rendering of all sculpt textures).
The present preview window seems to have no other benefit other than the fact that it reuses existing code and requires no significant reprogramming, certainly a benefit to LL management, but of no value whatsover to residents, be they builders or legitimate customers. The only other beneficiary of this set up appear to be talentless thieves and those who would like to represent themselves as having talents they have not earned, further undermining any confidence residents might have that they are not engaging in the purchase of contraband or other kinds of useless and dubious materials. There is very little practical use I can imagine for the existing preview window, aside from giving someone a chance to compare the selected texture to one's (perhaps shakey) memory of the intended UV map being applied to the prim in question, during editing. That same information can be conveyed just as readily with a much smaller representation of the texture, rather than the present one, which appears at a resolution something like 400 percent of actual size. Well, not resolution, since it is still the same tiny image, merely stretched to make it seem large (or to fit the predefined square window already programmed to display ordinary texture). Given that changing the basic dimensions of a sculpt-type prim can create radically different effects, and that purchaser modifications will likely be essential to making sculpt-types practical in attachment and clothing design applications, especially, it is important that modification of the the dimensions of a sculpted object be separable from modification and unauthorized copying of the underlying geometry of a UV map itself. I would also second my agreement that sculpt textures clearly fall in a different class of intellectual property than even the most creatively tortured of basic geometries possible in any single prim. In the meanwhile, one more suggested workaround that might help in some cases would be to link any sculpties one wishes to protect into assemblies with other prims, allowing size modifications on the linked assembly but not on its component parts. Please correct me if that method will NOT be protective in some cases, while still allowing customers to resize items that may require custom sizing for each avatar or other application. I do realize it will limit stretching the items in a single dimension. The method would only allow gross resizing, proportional in every dimension. Just noting Periapse pointed me here (thanks!) after I missed this earlier, and I'll be referring future Residents who ask this way so they have more context.
Re-resolving this bug. Linden Lab has already stated their position on this.
Thanks, Gigs.
For those still dissatisfied please note that there is a feature request Never in my (second) life before have i heard a linden made a comment that made as little sense as this..
I'm quite shocked by the: " Normal mod prims can be "copied" from the volume parameters Because one thing can be easily 'copied' (which is illegal (DMCA)in the first place), this means we should NOT make it harder to copy something else? Ok, if there was any way one could 'modify' sculpt shapes with this sculpt map, it would make sense...but there isnt Yes, with normal prims it shows the parameters. There is a reason for this: Normal prims can be ADJUSTED (to fit clothes for example). Showing no parameters would not be handy without paramters. Also, normal prims can be modified ' WITHOUT' copying the prims. The only way a sculpt map can be adjusted is with an external 3D program, using the screenshot method. I thought the only 'legal' permission people had (if they dont have textures of items) was to edit them INSIDE second life, not outside... Azadine Umarov made a very good post too, i feel the same way. Could a linden give feedback on these comments? We protect all our Sculpt maps with the alpha channel, however it is not a fix. Recently, users have been using a third party program to intercept the source textures and reupload them and resell them under their own name, thus forcing to have to take drastic measures outside of SL to protect our works. Selling items as no-mod is nearly impossible for some types of objects that users need to modify the size of the object. There is no purpose of displaying the sculpt map in mod items, if a user wants to give away their sculpt maps, they can freely include the texture with their objects, but as of right now, we have no reasonable way of protecting them other than making the item no-modify which, as I stated earlier, is an inconvience to more people than not being able to view our copyrighted sculpt maps. Screenshotting visible sculpt maps is also a copyright infringement to creators, that supports piracy, and I am shocked a Linden would condone and support such an activity.
"Recently, users have been using a third party program to intercept the source textures and reupload them and resell them under their own name"
Exactly, and this feature would do absolutely nothing to stop that. No technological solution can. Re-resolving... again.. Please don't reopen this issue as Linden Lab has already stated their position on it. It is trivial to copy someone's hollow twisted cube geometry that they spent 13 seconds creating, so let's make it trivial to copy their sculpt that they spent all day creating. (But if they resize the UI to zoom the TEXTURE preview, THAT'S AN EXPLOIT, so we'll fix it.)
Yes, someone can use an interceptor to steal the texture, so let's make it easier for the majority who don't have that program to steal it. This is like saying "don't bother locking your car because someone can pick the lock or smash the window." Is this what passes for critical thinking these days? Hey Huns and everyone else that is complaining about sculptmaps being visible in the build menu, the simple solution as wa pointed out by at least one other poster is to apply an alpha channel to the image BEFORE you upload it to SL, the addition of an alpha channel will visually hide the sculptmap when viewed in the build menu (meaning you can't copy it by just taking a screenshot!!) you can also add a 'watermark' of sorts to the alpha channel to further identify the sculptmap as something you created, aside from that if you don't want people to be able to view the sculptmap in cases that don't have an alpha layer applied then set it to no-mod just like anything else you don't want people to make copies of (and yes I know this is not a perfect solution, hackers will almost always find a way around things). In short take some responsibility on your own end and apply an alpha and watermark to the sculptmap BEFORE you upload it if you don't want it copied! There are dozens of free image editing programs available now that support working with .tga images (Targa format) which offer you the ability to add an alpha channel and to add a 'watermark' to it. One good example is Paint.NET, it's totally free and supports alpha transparency.
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Bug
Resolved
Critical
Sculpt map images should NOT be displayed on mod items to prevent theft.
Ordinary prims with mod perms can be copied by duplicating the given dimensional data, sculpties by duplicating the sculpt texture. This situation is tolerated by creators of attachments who grant mod perms to allow resizing to fit individual avs.
Are there reasons that sculpties are somehow different, or require special treatment? I'll leave this open for a while to gather feedback / votes.
Note: please restrict comments to the issue of visibility of the sculpt texture. Justification for creating a "resize only" permission should be entered as a new feature request.