Over on the Insert Funny Name Here blog there is a new basic Materials Tutorial for those SL’ers building with prims.
See: Grown Up.
To learn how the new maps work see: Specular Maps Tutorial.
Materials
Flat Berry
Last Thursday Strawberry Singh did a tutorial on how to make a cutout for making Flat Whoevers. See: Making a Flat Cutout for Second Life using Photoshop. The tutorial is simple and straight forward. You get everything you need to know to make a decent cutout. But, there are some Photoshop tools that make the process much easier and provide a much better result.
The new Photoshop CC and CS6 (think it is in CS5.5 too) have a feature called Refine Edge. If you are trying to trim hair or fur out of a background, you have to learn about this tool. Check out the 10 minute video.
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The video is made by Howard Pinsky. It is on the pro side, which for me means no rambling, tangents, or umm-haa’s. It is to the point, clear, and crisp. I subscribed to his channel. If you use Photoshop and are still learning, and who isn’t still learning, then this is a good channel for you.
More on Second Life Mesh
Loki Eliot has a post up about his experience with mesh: Materials Post Mortem. It is a good article. You can visit the region named Escapades to see what things Loki has built.
Loki is pointing out some of the problems when trying to build for ALM-Enabled people and ALM-Disabled people. (ALM = Advanced Lighting Model) I think it becomes clear builders are having to decide if they will build for ALM-D or ALM-E. Building for both degrades both.
Materials
Juicy Bomb has a nice example of hair made using the new Materials System. It is really nice. I’m looking forward to seeing more of this type of hair.
There is also a cute picture of her in a Tulle Skirt. I’ll have to go check out that skirt and see how the demo behaves.
See the article: Monso, Lizzy hair.
Second Life Materials Experiments
Toysoldier Thor has a blog post that went up a couple of weeks ago. I missed his email telling me about it, an overactive spam filter, until today. For those that are new to 3D modeling and texturing of models, Toy’s article is a good starting place. Check out the 8+ minute video for a quick overview.
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Toy’s blog has more information in a post: My Experiments with New SecondLife® Materials System. If you are new to this, it is worth your time to read the article and watch the video. The video is somewhat a quick summary of the blog post.
Second Life Materials Bugs
I’m enjoying the new Materials enabled SL Viewer. But, some people are running into problems. Here is what’s coming up:
MATBUG-171 – Shiny objects or objects with reflections look shiny white. Description: When I activate the Advanced Lighting model in the viewer for the materials features, all shiny objects and objects appear shiny white as if glow was very high. — ATI Radeon HD 4870 OpenGL Engine 2.1 ATI-1.6.36