Second Life and Virtual Worlds
This tutorial is intended for those people using RedPoly kits. But, anyone can learn some basic ideas on how to match skin color. Like starting with changing Windlight to eliminate extraneous color and shadows. (7:40 min)
[youtube L9HRzNfNIQ4]
I usually run my viewers on DEFAULT Windlight or local region settings. So, I haven’t needed to change my Windlight for some time. I had forgotten how few Windlight settings come with the new viewers: 36. The CalWL setting was not in my current viewer.
I came across this tutorial in my YouTube subscriptions. It is done using Maya and Photoshop. But, the technique can be used in any 3D modeling and paint program. It runs 35 minutes. I like the ideas presented. [youtube 6Wi4-fdeYyM] If you notice, this is a CG Cookie related video. The CG Cookie version is … Read more
While we wait for the Mesh Deformer people are looking for ways to make mesh clothes fit. There are some alternate methods for making clothes that change with the avatar shape. One of those is the use of Collision Bones. Some call it Collision Volumes. We have heard that method called liquid mesh in promotional stuff. It works to a point. But, how does one use Collision Volumes?
Using the Collision Bones in the default SL avatar one can achieve some measure of sizing tied to the avatar shape. The problem is getting that information from the modeling program to Second Life™.
I recently decided to buy Avastar-1 (RC2-782) and see if it could solve some problems I’ve run into with posing the avatar for weight painting. I’ve also had some problems getting custom mesh to fit my avatar. Tight skirts require everything be precise. Things weren’t as precise as I hoped. I was getting frustrated.
Avastar is an add-on for Blender sold by Machinimatrix.org for US$22. ($27 4/2017) I resisted purchasing it because I wanted to provide tutorials that provide a free path to accomplishing the same things. I’m in the process of updating my tutorial: Second Life Mesh Clothes Blender 2.6 Setup 2012 Tutorial. It’s almost a year old and a few things have changed.
Update: See Mesh Deformer Changes for an update on mesh clothing.
There are several people that make tutorials for Second Life™. Others explain aspects of Second Life. We can find their stuff in blogs, web sites, on YouTube and Vimeo, and amazingly enough in the SL Forum. Of all those the stuff in the forum seems to be the hardest to find. So, here are a couple of the forum jewels.
In modeling mesh that moves, avatars and clothes, the arrangement of the vertices and how they form loops of quadrilateral polygons is an important concept to understand. Arranging them well determines how well the model can flex. The arrangement of vertices and faces is referred to as the model’s topology.
Codewarrior Congrejo has a couple of good tutorials in the SL Forum. I think both are too good to just be buried in the forum. They will get little love from Bing & Google. Quickly they will scroll out of sight on the forum. So, I’m putting links here on my blog.
I see this morning that Loki Eliot has a post up titled: The Secrets of Mesh Landimpact. If you are not into the techy details and math, this would be a good article to read to get an idea of how the new Land Impact Costs work with mesh objects. It isn’t that Loki doesn’t … Read more