Geenz Spad from the Exodus Dev Team is chairing a new user group. Oz Linden will be the liaison between the group and Linden Lab. He may be at some of the meetings. But, since 3PM SLT is 5PM EDT it is late for him and after hours.
The stated point of the meeting is to find ways to improve rigged mesh and other content. A secondary emphasis is how to improve the viewer to help with content creation.
The first meeting will be a good one to attend.
PS: Squirrely Wrath is accepting donations of nuts… only the food kind. No wackadooles.
The direction I’m going with tutorial is toward making clothes and weight painting. But, this tutorial will provide information for those building both objects and clothes. I am limiting this tutorial to just the modeling and the tools we need for making the model and the lower poly models we need for Second Life.
#1 – Modeling in Second Life
This is not your standard tutorial. There are loads of modeling tutorials. Making avatar clothes is a special type of 3D modeling. There are a number of tricks to be learned, especially for making Second Life® clothes. I’m going to focus on the things I had a hard time figuring out how to do.
I’ll lay this tutorial out with indexing so you can quickly find the various tricks. I need that because I tend forget a step here and there and need to look it up.
Index
Page 1 – First Decision – Which shape to use. Page 1 – Deformer – What it does. Page 2 – Modeling – Start the modeling tools. Page 2 – C-Select – A better select tool. Page 2 – Redoing Topology Trick – Snap with a good video. Page 2 – Snap – Details on using snap. Page 3 – Scaling – How to use Alt-S scaling. Page 3 – Shrinkwrap – How to use shrinkwrap. Page 4 – Triangles vs Ngons – Getting into Ngons and Bsurface. Page 4 – Bsurface – How to use Bsurface. Page 4 – Grease Pencil – Needed for Bsurface. Page 5 – Reducing Poly Count – Needed for LoD’s. Page 5 – Dissolve – Tools for reducing poly count. Page 5 – Using Images – How to use pictures and images to guide your modeling. Page 5 – How to Model – Some of the Second Life requirements. Page 6 – How to Model – The outline. Page 6 – Summary
I hate slow paced, rambling video tutorials. I’ve found some that are pretty good. I’ll include those where appropriate. After them I’ll add explanations. Sometimes they leave out the most basic but necessary steps. Even after a couple years of using Blender I’m going: how did they do that?
You may notice some of the newer animations in Second Life are getting better. There is motion capture to thank for some measure of improvement. Another contributor to the improvement is Avastar, a for purchase add-on to Blender.
One of the other handy features of Avastar is the ability to handle rigging a mesh. So, clothes makers and those making other objects rigged to the avatar will find Avastar a handy tool. I think this video gives one a good example of what it can do.
I’ve been using NVIDIA driver version 285.62 for quite awhile. I needed to update a clients machine and noticed a new update was out for my machine, 295.73. So, I got it and updated my computer.
The install has dramatically changed. Along with the drivers and Control Panel comes 3 add-ons for Photoshop; DXT Compression, Normal Maps, and Scripts.
Photoshop Plug-in
DXT Compression
This is a Photoshop plug-in that allows Photoshop to open and save Direct Draw Surface (.dds) files. Simply said these are files used with DirectX to provide efficient textures, They are not much use for Second Life users, which uses OpenGL.
I see that Charlar Linden, the facilitator for the Mesh Upload group, has broadened the focus of the UG (user group). The more official name is Content Creation/Mesh Upload User Group. The group meets Mondays at noon (PST/SLT) in Borrowdale, Nyx Lindens place. Check the group’s wiki page for meeting time and location changes. I expect this location and time will be good for some time to come.
The wiki page contains the meeting agenda. Residents can add items to the agenda by logging in and editing the wiki page. The agenda is 99% plain text, so it is easy to edit.
The post is also somewhat an official announcement that the Mesh Project has shifted from development to maintenance mode. I suppose that is some type of milestone.
The post appears to be worded to generate conversation on what the group should be focused on. As there has been less to discuss about Mesh it is becoming obvious that time is available for other topics. You can join the conversation here: Mesh UserGroup expanding to cover wider Content Creation agenda – input needed.
