Tutorials

On Various Subjects

Second Life Mesh Tutorial

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Second Life Mesh
Second Life Mesh

Those into sculpties will or should know the name Gaia Clary. Gaia makes sculpty tutorial videos and runs the Machinimatrix.org blog. Gaia also makes JASS, Just Another Sculpty Studio.

Gaia has a new, and to me surprising, tutorial up. This one includes how to export your avatar from Second Life and get it ready for other mesh work.

The tutorial is for those making mesh avatars and clothes. Plus it is a way to export your custom avatar for use in Blender or 3DSMax. It goes on to cover attaching the mesh to the avatar armature and weighting the mesh so it deforms correctly with joint movement. 

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Editing Terrain or Raw Files with Photoshop

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Photoshop
Camera Raw Open

I needed to edit a terrain file for one of my regions in OpenSim. Trying to smooth the terrain with the terrain editing tools in viewers just was not working. Whether one is targeting OpenSim or Second Life it is the same process. Photoshop is where the challenge is, getting a terrain.raw  or terrain.r32 file open in Photoshop. This article shares the information I found and avoids a lot of the link rot that has set in on this subject.

Terrain and Camera

When searching Google one quickly realizes there is more than one type of RAW file. RAW files are used for images files created by many scientific applications… and especially digital cameras. When searching for terrain tutorials on Google use the negative term –camera (minus sign/dash and a word) to exclude information about camera raw files.

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Second Life 2.2 Appearance Editor

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SL Viewer 2.2
Avatar Menu

With the new 2.x viewers in Second Life lots has changed. Editing one’s appearance is one of the big changes. I have yet to decide of it is better or worse. Whichever, it certainly is different. This is my attempt to sort out how appearance works. I expect the viewer to change quite a bit over the next few weeks.

Getting into the Editor

In the 1.x viewers (SLV1) it was easy to find the editor, just right-click the avatar and select Edit Appearance. Everything is there. I guess it could be intimidating.

In the Second Life 2.x viewers (SLV2) the logic for getting into Appearance Edit changes. The process is more goals oriented. For techie types familiar with computers the idea that one wants to change a dress or their shape means look for an avatar editor. Less geeky types probably don’t think of looking for an avatar editor, they just want to change the dress. The Lab did usability testing and supposedly this was a significant problem. I just don’t know.

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Myst-Uru Modding

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Uru Modding
3DMax w/Plasma - Uru Modding Tool

As slow as a mountain turning to sand the online version of Myst is going open source. A step forward was taken when Cyan Worlds, Inc., the creators of the Myst series of games, placed the game back online in February, 2010. See: Play Myst Online (Free)

Another step was taken when Cyan released the binary version of their Plasma plug-in for 3DMax (versions 7 only). This allows fans to mod the game. Well to a point, there are complications both technical and license-wise. Those things are to be resolved somewhere along the road to open source.

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