Mesh

#SecondLife News Week 16

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I’ve been busy with other things, so I’m a bit behind. Also, while there is news, there isn’t that much exciting news. But, here is what’s up.

Pathfinding

Andrew Linden was busy enough with Pathfinding fixes, creation, and changes he could not make the Sever/Scripting User Group (UG). I suppose that is a good sign.

Content Creation

Falcon Linden is supposed to have a new UG up tomorrow, Thursday, April 19. It will meet in the Pathfinding sandboxes at 4 PM PDT/SLT in ADITI. There is a Pathfinding Project Viewer. It is probably a good idea to use it if you attend the meeting.

Falcon has not added an office hour/user group entry to the wiki. So, I doubt many new faces will be there. Plus the 4 PM time in ADITI is going to cause problems for those of us attending Andrew and Simon Linden’s Server/Scripting group that runs from 3 to 4. It will take some time to log off AGNI and into ADITI. So, lots of late arrivals.

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Beginner’s Second Life Mesh Tutorial

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Gaia Clary has 3 new tutorials out from a new series of mesh tutorials for Second Life® users new to mesh. This tutorial series starts with the basics of mesh and defines what vertices, edges, faces, polygons, and quads are. I think it is a great series for anyone considering building with mesh and unfamiliar with 3D modeling.

New Machinimatrix Tutorials

There are 10 videos on the new Mesh Path page at Machinimatrix.org. All but the 3 Coffee Cup tutorials I have seen before. Some use Blender 2.49 and other various versions up to Blender 2.62. The new Coffee Cup series uses 2.62.

It may be subtle but, the Coffee Cup tutorials are about 3D modeling concepts more than they are about using Blender. Additionally, the overall focus is about modeling for Second Life. The other 7 video tutorials take one farther into modeling for Second Life.

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#SL Content Creation Week 15

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I was curious if the Lindens knew how many people use features like AO (ambient occlusion in this case) and Sun/Moon shadows. So, I asked them. Seems they do not track that information. There assumption is that people will be using shadows and AO.

Content/Mesh Creation UG

The consensus of those at the meeting, some top content creators, is that baking shadows into textures for use in SL is probably a poor idea.

With ambient occlusion the consensus is to include AO in the bake. It seems several have the opinion that the viewer’s AO is weak enough that it needs help.

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#SL Blender Clothes Retopology

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In my reading I came across an excellent video on how to simplify models. Masami Kuramoto posted the information in the SL Forum. Video Tutorial on Retopology in Blender. 14 minutes of excellent information.

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If you are making Second Life clothes, you need to see this tutorial.

The first tip ralusek provides stumped me. He is not using a key/click display and he went fast enough I missed it even after rewinding three times. I couldn’t get it to work. It is just too handy not to figure out.

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Avastar Rigging and Animation

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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.

[youtube P81l1NP3yck]

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Second Life news Week 14

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There are some interesting bits of information coming out. I have some here from the Content and Mesh UG.

Sketchup

This is Google’s famous tool for building 3D models. It has a low learning curve and quite a bit of ability. Using it came up in the Content and Mesh Meeting Monday.

Content/Mesh Meeting

It seems people are building things using Sketchup and bringing them into Second Life. All works well until they UNLINK them. A 100 prim Land Impact can jump to 500 prims. The reason is Sketchup makes a model as lots of small parts. When one unlinks the parts all the less than 1 prim costs that were being added together while linked, have nothing to add up with and thus round up to 1. The round up kills the prim savings.

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