Category Archives: Materials

Blender Materials Source

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I see a new site offering inexpensive materials for use in Blender. Of course there is the question of whether those materials can be used in Second Life. It looks like they can and cannot… I’ll explain.

Cycles Material Vault

Cycles Material Vault

A Blender Material is very different than the materials we use in Second Life™. In SL we use different textures for the diffuse, specular, and normal layers along with a few settings. In Blender a material is a collection of textures and settings that work ONLY inside Blender. There are way more settings in Blender than in SL. The two material formats are incompatible. So, the material as sold is unusable in SL.  Continue reading →

Second Life’s End of InvisiPrims?

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With the release if the Maintenance Viewer (4.0.2.312269) in week #11, invisiprims pretty much died their final death. Support ended for these critters in 2011. The code that renders them invisible has been in viewers up to this release. But, with this release something changed.

Dry Dock via Invisiprim - Noted by: Callum Meriman

Dry Dock via Invisiprim – Noted by: Callum Meriman

Inviziprims were prims with a special texture that caused things behind the texture to become transparent. Rendering-wise this was nightmare and problematic. The Lindens took advantage of a happenstance of the render pipeline to get them to work. I understand Crazy Mole once built a dry dock using invisiprims (the picture). Many boat builders used them to make the water inside their boats disappear. Continue reading →

How did Second Life Change Materials?

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There are gotcha’s in this latest main SL Viewer 3.8.4, in the mesh upload. You can use more than 8 materials now. Gaia Clary has changed AvaStar to export more than 8 materials. But, the announcement of that change comes with a warning: don’t.

POTETO_BackStage Pass - surfash.bade SOME KIND OF BOUNCER MAN

POTETO_BackStage Pass – surfash.bade SOME KIND OF BOUNCER MAN

Also Drongle McMahon commented on the problem and what happens when we exceed the allowable polygon limit per material for mesh items. See: Second Life’s Limits.  Continue reading →

Tutorial: Second Life Masking

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Lildaria Resident started to do a tutorial on Masking in Second Life™. But, she found a good tutorial already exists. She reprinted that tutorial. See: Tutorial: Understanding Mask Mode.

(Image and user poofed…) Blackspot by dolletjes, on Flickr

In the tutorial it is talking about masking meaning alpha layers, hiding parts of the avatar or things in Second Life. If you aren’t clear on how this invisible, transparent, and translucent thing works, check it out. I think it will help.

If you are trying to understand how to implement ‘masking’… I think this tutorial falls a bit short. But, that may just be me not getting the ‘how to’ part of it.

Second Life: Mesh Upload

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You may have picked up from the SL Viewer news that a change is coming to the Lab’s mesh uploader. There are, I think, some nice changes coming.

WA D-Lab PICCOLI2 IN YOUR GARDEN

WA D-Lab PICCOLI2 IN YOUR GARDEN by Willow, on Flickr

As it is now, when uploading mesh we often get an error and the error message is basically useless, no help. The Lindens are working to improve that. They hope to give us a better idea of what went wrong.

Also, we are currently limited to 8 faces per mesh. That means any single mesh object can only have 8 materials. That too is going to change. The Lindens are saying if there will be a new limit just that we can have more than 8.

There is also something changing about how the various LoD models and physics models will associate with our item based on file naming. I don’t get what they are doing here as I have yet to play with the RC/Project viewer that is out.