sKulpt aims at being (someday J ) the modern reincarnation of the ancient but beloved Amiga 3D modeling and raytracing software Sculpt Animate 3D / 4D by Eric Graham and Byte By Byte.

Sculpt was (and still is) a model for simplicity and ergonomy, and many pictures were drawn by it, in amateur and professional contexts.

Furthermore, it was cheap, although it packed many features and was almost bug-free.

I would still be using it nowadays if…

• Its modeling windows were compatible with RTG screens (Sculpt is restricted to PAL non-lace screens),
• It was compiled for the 040 or the 060, or even better the PPC, taking advantage of the orders of magnitude higher calculation speed of these processors (over the 68000 and the 68020, the only two processors for which Sculpt is available)
• It used the 3D hardware available on the Amiga for a realtime preview,
• It enabled use of textures.

SKulpt will someday cover these features, if I have enough spare time to finish it… Or maybe you, since I provide the source.

At the moment, sKulpt is in a very early state of development, yet supporting :

• RTG support (any screen compatible with Warp3D drivers)
• 060 and PPC versions (both compiled with StormC v3, awaiting for StormC v4 w/GCC to have a good optimization). PPC version requiring WarpOS.
• use of 3D hardware (work well with both CyberVision 64/3D and B|CVisionPPC)
• use of textures (PPM file support only at the moment).

I’d say around 30 to 40% of its features are implemented and available. Although many more are actually in the code. This is because I first developed sKulpt on the PC, under Direct3D v7, with the scope of porting it back to the Amiga afterwards (developing under Microsoft’s Visual C++ v6 is much faster than under SAS/C, and when I started the project, I did not know about StormC, which I bought since !).

Same menu structure as in Sculpt 3/4D, same features at same place (a number of them not yet available under the Amiga version, mostly those requiring a dialog box, since the dialog box engine is not finished on the Amiga).

Able to load, view and rework Sculpt 3/4D scenes, except paths and object names. All the provided sample scenes are actually original Sculpt 3D demo scenes.

Able to save / load its own file format.

Able to save Microsoft’s DirectX X file format.

Modeling in windows (top, face, side) :

• top, face and right wireframe projection views, with exactly the same gadgets as in Byte by Byte's Sculpt3/4D, providing grabber, panning, zooming in / out, vertex and triangle creation,
• real time volumic and lighted 3D perspective view, using Warp3D (Direct3D on the PC), updated as you modify your model or move target / observer or change face or material or lamp properties

Modeling with 5 cursors :

• main (blue cross), moved by dragging with the move
• secondary 1 (small blue x), moved by shift-dragging
• secondary 2 (small blue +), moved by control-dragging
• observer (little white cross), moved by right-Amiga dragging (middle- and left-button dragging on the PC). You can also set the camera at the main cursor position with either ‘t’ or the menu entry.
• camera (little white v), moved with right Alt dragging (tight- and left-button dragging on the PC). You can also set the camera at the main cursor position with either ‘o’ or the menu entry.

Camera and target are always linked by a white line.

These ease triangle creation, which is available with :

• 3 selected vertices
• 3 cursors if there is not exactly 3 selected vertices

Vertice creation is made at main cursor location, either with the point gadget or with 'P' key.

Modeling with tools (not all available at the moment) :

• selector (either menu or ‘s’). Select all with ‘>’
• de selector (either menu or ‘u’). Unselect all with ‘<’
• magnet (either menu or ‘m’)
• curve (either menu or ‘c’. Finish a curve with ‘f’ after having added points with ‘p’)
• extruder (either menu or ‘x’)
• spline
• grabber (either menu or lower left gadget or ‘g’)

Release the current tool with either menu or the space bar.

Reposition all windows with the ESC key.

All selecting, editing, transforming features of Sculpt 3/4D (not all available at the moment).

Able to draw 3D as solid, wireframe or vertices.

Very sophisticated mesh triangulation engine, based on the Triangle project, supporting holes, optimization and more.

On the PC (soon on the Amiga), the following are also available :

• spin selection around an axis (to make revolution surfaces)
• editing of material and texture properties
• editing of light properties