Prim Composer promises to continue the revolution for how content is developed for Second Life, letting developers compose scenes in 3DS Max, import them to Open Sim for free testing, and then seamlessly import them into SL.

At least, that’s the promise of its developer, who is planning a Q2 release which extends previous work on SculptGenMax and SLPrims for 3DS Max. Based on looking for a cost effective way to test and demo builds without the need for land ownership in SL, the developer increased the focus on greater interoperability with Open Sim:

Support for OpenSim will require a change in the way prims are exported by Prim Composer to Second Life (and now OpenSim). Previously, my focus was on building a LSL-based importer which would be augmented by libsecondlife to allow easy uploading of the images and notecards needed by the LSL script.

With OpenSim in the picture, this is no longer a viable option, since LSL support in OpenSim is very limited. At some point in the future, LSL will work for this, but not right now. Essentially, this moves the focus from LSL to libsecondlife. Now, the entire import process will be driven by libsl.

The product will:

Export all or part of the 3ds Max scene to Second Life or OpenSim via an automated libsecondlife bridge.
WYSIWIG: shape, size, rotation, and relative positioning of prims is preserved. Grouping is preserved as linked sets. Support for texturing is planned, but not yet implemented.

World Attributes: world attributes such as permissions and physics can be set in 3ds Max and are preserved during the export process.

Definitely a project worth keeping an eye on, and look forward to taking it for a test drive. Cross-linkages to OpenSim will soon become standard protocol, and anything that can improve the production pipeline for firms using standard 3DS and development processes might be further attracted to Second Life with this development.