Blender

Free Textures

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When modeling I am often looking for just the right texture. I skip looking for textures in Second Life™ simply because it is too hard to look at what is there. Some Third Party Viewers have better tools for managing textures and there are texture managers for sell in SL and the Market Place. But, I find them slow and awkward.

I usually browse over to CG Textures. They have an easy to browse collection of textures. Some are great and some are crap. Most require some serious work before they can be used and many lack the supporting files; normal, specular, occlusion, etc. But, they are free, with a daily download limit.

RenderTexture.com
RenderTexture.com

A new site I came across is RenderTextures.com. They also have free textures and Terms of Use I can live with. 

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Blender 2.66a Dynamic Topology Tutorial

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This is a 15 minute video on Dynamic Topology. It shows the difference in how we work with and without it.

[youtube HKuOIfNKz8g]

This tool can be used for adding AND REMOVING polygons.

This tutorial also shows using the Symmetry tool that is part of dynamic topology.

Once you see the tool in action, you’ll understand how handy it will be.

(There is a bug in the current Chrome Developer. The URL does not always update. It depends on how you move from page to page. On YouTube the URL sometimes fails to update. I’ve been able to reproduce the failure, but not consistently. So, I got the wrong YouTube ID for the original posting and didn’t preview the post. It was short. Sorry.)

Second Life Review – Blender 2.66a Released

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A new version of Blender came out March 6: 2.66a. You can download Blender here. If you are not using the Archive Version install, save yourself some hassle in the long run and use that install.

There are release notes for Blender 2.66a. The notes are mostly about bug fixes. The release notes for Blender 2.66 are about the new features in this version of Blender.

New Blender Release 2.66a
New Blender Release 2.66a

One of the new features is the addition of: Dynamic Topology Sculpting. Previous versions have sculpting tools that only allow you to move existing vertices. The dynamic tool will allow the addition of vertices as you sculpt. I have yet to try it, so I am not sure how it works. I imagine this will be handy for modelers targeting Second Life™.

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New 3D Modeling Tool – 123D Catch Review

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I came across an article on a new way of building 3D virtual worlds. (Thanks Hamlet NWN) Well, may be not so new, it came out in 2011 I think. But, the process, new to me, is being used to create the independent adventure game: Rustclad. The development team has a video out showing the process they are using and early scenes from their game.

[youtube pj-Gpe2oh_4]

You can see they are using a more organic style than we typically see in Second Life™. Sculpties were introduced to Second Life to enable the creation of this more organic style. I am not sure we have ever taken advantage of sculpties as intended by the creator of them: Karl Stiefvater (Qarl Fizz, formerly Qarl Linden). May be I’ll ask him some day.

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CG Cookie New Blender Animation Training

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If you are interested in character animation you probably know about CG Cookie. They have a load of free and pay-for tutorials. All the basic information is free. The advanced and time saving stuff is usually pay-for. So far, everything I’ve paid for I have been happy with. I haven’t paid for all that much, but I have paid for some.

Recently CG Cookie put up a new YouTube video: Animation Toolkit – Training Series for Character Animation in Blender. It is promoting their release of the new training series.

[youtube XAY3JbI4jBs]

This series gets into things that cannot be imported into Second Life™ with the BVH import. Gaia Clary’s Avastar is progressing toward what I think is the best all around tool for making mesh clothes and animating avatars, human or non-human. One of its better features is the ability to create .anim files that the SL Viewer can import. The .anim file format allows one to use more of the animation features found in Blender.

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