Blender 2.8 Terrain Tutorial

I think this is a handy tutorial for those of us that need to make terrain. Some time ago, years, I went through this exercise for OpenSim. This is much easier.

There is a lot of texturing beyond just creating the geometry. I doubt the texturing can do much for those of us making terrain for Second Life™.

At 11 min in, he gets into importing terrain with buildings. This is way neat.

Making Slink Sizes

In December Siddean Munro made a video of how to easily make the various Slink sizes.

I think the video shows how easy and quick it is. So, I continue to be baffled at why so many provide only Hourglass sizes of their products. Especially when discussions in the SL Forum show growing support for the Slink Redux bodies.

If you are a Slink Original wearer, Physique or Redux, and your designer isn’t making the sizes you need, send them a link to this article.

Second Life News Week #31

General News

XXX Original Event – This is an adult event… shocking, I know you wouldn’t have guessed… All sexy stuff and a load of free stuff (it all lands in the Objects folder) for Maitreya and Slink (both O & H). Plus, some of the free gifts have Standard Size versions included. There is a good percent of guy-stuff there too. And a few gag-gifts that are funny.

Aline Passiflora over on Fabulously Free caught my attention and I followed a link to the event, which ends August… something. The events are on-going. Only this event set of stuff will disappear. You do need to join the free XXX Event Group (SLURL) to get the free stuff.

Nal - Watching You

Nal – Watching You

Blender 2.8 ReleaseRelease is planned for the end of July, which is today Tuesday.

You will be able to get the new Blender here.

Hangars Liquides – Seems the sims have been saved, at least for a time. The crowdfunding effort has made over 55% of the goal. So, the sims will live past the end of July.

However, the full goal has NOT been reached. So, if you can, donate. Continue reading

Last AvaStar Update For Blender 2.79

AvaStar is updating. This is the last set of fixes and improvements for AvaStar targeting Blender 2.79. The next release will target Blender 2.8. This is significant because Blender is undergoing a radical change. Those of us with work-in-progress are likely to stay with 2.79 for some time. I probably won’t change over until my current projects are complete. So, I want as good a version of AvaStar as possible.

Blender 2.8 Pre-Alpha Splash Screen

Also, I will keep 2.79 on my computer for a long time in case I have to make a change in a project made with 2.79.

Machinimatrix made this announcement.

We are at the junction point!

The plan for the near future is:

– Release Avastar 2.6 around 13-july-2019.
– Plan for Avastar 2.6 to be the last release for blender 2.79.
– Start the final migration from Avastar 2.6 to Avastar-2.8 for Blender 2.80 around 15-july-2019.

Since Avastar is a huge Addon we currently can not tell when the migration will be done. We try our best.

cheers, Gaia

Continue reading

Blender 2.8 – Beginner’s Tutorial

Blender is in Beta and it seems everyone is making tutorials. Once you open Blender 2.8 you’ll know the previous tutorials are out of date to the point of useless. So, here is a nice video for total noobs.

BLENDER 2.8 BEGINNER COURSE: ESSENTIALS

Blender 2.8 Alpha Splash

This is a web page with written information and four short tutorials. Then a second page with 4 more tutorials.

The instructions cover the ‘archive-type’ install on Windows that is now the default Blender install. I’ve used the archive-type install for years allowing me to have various versions installed at the same time. With 2.8 I suspect many will want a 2.79 version and 2.80 installed. One for production and one for learning.

Blender 2.8 Beta Released

The new Blender 2.8 is out in Beta version. The user interface is drastically different. Selecting, changing modes… drastic changes. Better? Probably. It would have been nice if Blender worked this way long ago. I think it is more intuitive for the Blender nubie.

Here is a long video showing the new Blender 2.8 Beta.

You’ll find so much changes. I expect Blender 2.8 will initially be unusable until we learn all the changes.

Bookmark the video. You’ll be wanting to come back to it to see how things are done.

AvaStar 2.5 Released

A new version of AvaStar is out. The official announcement is here, AVASTAR-2.5 IS OUT. There is a link to the download on the page. You will find the detailed release notes link on the download page.

There are the ubiquitous bug fixes, of course. There are also a good number of improvements in how things work and how the user interface is set up. Check the announcement to get the overview.

Naufragé

Naufragé (castaway)

This release still targets Blender 2.79.

If you have been watching the various announcements and demos of Blender 2.80, you know it will have a very different user interface. I assume AvaStar will have to redesign its interface too. So, this update might be a version to skip… or not. It is sort of learn the AvaStar UI changes now and Blender 2.8 UI changes a bit later and AvaStar 2.6 (?) revised UI after that.

So, my current plan is to stay with Blender 2.79 until I see an AvaStar revised for 2.80. Unless there is something in 2.80 I just MUST have… which I doubt at this point. Deal with just one period of relearning the UI’s. Or not… Just depends on where I am in my projects… and mood.