Documentation by TAPgiles

Sculpt

A sculpture is one of the main objects in Dreams. It is a 3D object to be rendered, physically simulated, or collided with.

For rendering, Dreams uses a combination of flecks and a hard inner body (sometimes referred to as the “hull”). The inner and outer parts of rendering can be adjusted separately. The more loose the flecks are, the more of the inner body can be seen through the flecks. (Pk)

A limited number of sculpt surface flecks can be rendered at once. A limited number of sculpts can cast shadows from the sun.

# Convert to Paint: Use this context menu button to convert all selected sculpts and sculpts within selected groups into a painting object that contains the flecks from their surfaces. (Meaning, the selected sculpts are deleted, and 1 unique painting is created.) (Ml)

If there would be too many flecks in the resulting painting, attempts are made to convert a lower-resolution version of the sculpts.

If lowering the resolution doesn't bring the fleck count down enough, the action is cancelled and a message is shown to the creator.

Paintings can be used for special visual effects that sculpts cannot do. For example, having a lower opacity.

The origin point is preserved for the new painting object, but shapes that were mirrored or had kaleidoscope enabled will not have those features applied to the new paint strokes created from those shapes.

# Edit Sculpture: While 1 sculpt is selected, use this context menu button to open the selected sculpt in Sculpt Mode for editing.

Or hover over it with the imp, and use the scope-in shortcut to begin editing.

# Memory: Costs 0.0061% of the things limit per sculpt instance. (Mm) This holds all settings, and so those settings can be changed as much as you wish without affecting the things-cost of the object. (Tg) (Pk)

Data used to render and simulate the surface shape costs Sculpture Data. Editing a clone can make the clone unique, and therfore use its own block of thermo. (Tg)

The physical collision of a Movable sculpt costs on the Sculpture Physical Shape limit, depending on how many collision spheres are used for its simulation. The number of spheres for a sculpt can be adjusted with its Physics Cost setting.

Cloning a sculpt doesn’t add to the graphics thermometer, so cloning sculpts out is fairly cheap. However, each clone made will cost a tiny amount of gameplay. (Pk) So if you make too many copies of anything, you could end up using way too much thermo.

Because of this, it’s preferable to share the load between graphics and gameplay thermometers by creating a medium-sized sculpt and cloning it several times but not too many.

For example, if you make a single sculpt of a small roof tile, and clone it 100 times to cover a large roof, it will have low impact on the graphics thermometer and high impact on gameplay thermometer. (Tg)
On the other hand, if you made a single sculpt containing 100 tiles, it would have a high impact on the graphics thermometer (the sculpt covers a larger 3D space) and low impact on the gameplay thermometer. Either of these situations could make it very difficult to add more things to the scene.
To lower thermometer use on graphics and gameplay, you can make a larger sculpt of 20 tiles which would have a much lower impact on the graphics thermometer than the full 100-tile roof. Then you could clone it 5 times to cover the entire roof, which would have a much lower impact on the gameplay thermometer. And, having shared out the load, you’d have a lot more spare memory for more graphics and gameplay objects within the scene.

# Outer Properties

Settings for the overall look of the sculpt, including the flecks.

# Tint

The colour of the tint applied blended with the spraypainted colour of the sculpt itself.

When the Tint Amount is at 0% and then the colour is set, the Tint Amount will be set at 50%. Note that this doesn’t happen when recording with a keyframe.

# Tint Amount

How much the tint colour affects the final colour of the sculpt.

0% doesn’t apply the tint at all. Closer to 100%, the tint will affect colours less saturated and closer to middle-grey. Reaching 200%, the tint will override the colours completely.

# Original Colour Saturation

The colour saturation of the sculpt itself.

Applied before tinting.

# Hue Cycle

Adjusting the hue cycle rotates the colours it gets from its edits. But not its tint, etc.

For example, say there is a spraypainted patch of red, and a patch of blue. Now add a Hue Cycle of 90 degrees. The red will shift around to blue, and the blue will shift around to green.
This makes adding customisation to change the colour of a character very easy. (Tg)

# Shinyness/Roughness, Maxyness/Metalness

# Glow, Emit Light from Glow

# Cast Shadows

Dictates when shadows will be cast by this sculpt. (Pk)

# Luma Noise

When on, adds subtle random variation to the colour of the surface of the sculpt. (Ml) (Tg)

# Inner Properties

Similar to the Outer Properties, but applying to the inner “hull” of the sculpt beyond the flecks. (Tg)

Has the settings: Colour, Colour Amount, Original Colour Saturation, Hue Cycle, and Glow.

# Fleck Properties

Ruffles the flecks on the surface of the sculpt.

# Looseness

As the looseness increases, flecks become larger. When too large, some disappear to make room for other large flecks such that the surface has an even arrangement of flecks no matter what looseness the sculpt is set to.

# Fleck Perspective

The parts of the sculpt that are further away from the player’s view appear looser, depending on how high this setting is.

Good for making fluffy things stay looking fluffy/flecky even at a distance.

# Neatness

With higher neatness, flecks on flat surfaces align to a grid. On curved surfaces, they follow lines but there is no obvious grid to align to.

Each fleck will move to their closest grid point, which can result in multiple flecks stacked on the same spot.

The Looseness setting also affects fleck positions, so at some values the grid won't be so neat. At the following looseness values, the grid is spot on regardless of the sculpt’s detail level:

0%14.4%28.572%42.858%57.143%100%

# Effects Tab

Individual settings, one for each Fleck Effect.

# Physical Tab

# Movable

Causes the sculpt to be physically simulated.

# Visible

When on, the sculpt will be visible in the scene. When off, the sculpt will not be visible in the scene.

Note that something can be invisible and still be collidable or cast shadows. This switch only affects the visibility of the sculpt and nothing else.

# Collidable

Makes the sculpt collidable to other movable objects.

# Friction

Affects how the sculpt reacts when it would scrape against an object that it collides with. (Pk)

# Bounciness

When the sculpture collideswith the surface of another sculpture, its direction will reflect off the surface, and its speed will be preserved by the amount dictated by the bounciness setting.

For example, a ball is heading for the ground at 10 m/s, and its bounciness is set to 60%. When it hits the ground it will start moving in the opposite direction at 6 m/s.

# Squashyness

How deformed the collision spheres can become from their original positions. At a non-zero value, the sculpt is rendered based on the positions of the physics spheres.

The rendering of the sculpt will stretch along one axis that best fits the physics spheres’ current form.

# Density

How dense the sculpt is. The weight/mass used for physics simulations is the volume of the sculpt multiplied by its density.

Note that this does not affect physics gadgets (eg. Follower); only physically simulated collisions will be affected.

# Ignore Gravity

When off, the scene’s global gravity will affect the physics simulation of this sculpt if it is movable or a containing group is movable.

When on, global gravity will not affect this object’s physics simulation.

With “ignore gravity” on, custom and controllable gravity can be added using a simple Mover. (Tg)

# Imp Interaction

How the imp will interact with the sculpt.

# Physics Cost

Changing this setting on an applicable sculpt shows the sculpt’s collision spheres within the sculpt for 2 seconds. To see these spheres permanently, and colour coded for the performance cost of the sculpt, use the Test Mode’s Physics heatmap.

# Collides With Tab

Which labels are required on a sculpt to collide with this one.

# Camera Blocking Mode

How the built-in camera reacts to this sculpt, while following a possessable controller sensor. (Ml)

# Labels & Ownership Tab

# Labels

Has no “Unlabelled” switch. For an object to be considered unlabelled, it must have no labels switched on.

# Detected

Sends a signal while detected by a Trigger Zone. (Tg)

# Player Ownership

Sets and gets the player that owns this sculpt.

# Audio Surface Type Tab

# Audio Surface Type

Which audio surface type this object will send through the Collision wire as an ID when another object impacts with it.