Creating sculpted Prims with Blender
abstract:The tutorial shows in easy steps, how to create an object with blender and export it as a sculptie map (uv texture) for usage in Second life. We assume, that you have basic knowledge about the blender user interface. But we still provide enough background information, so that even blender newbies can follow the process. You need to download blender 2.46 if you want to reproduce the process. The script mentioned in the tutorial can be downloaded at http://dominodesigns.info/downloads/second_life/import_sculptie_svn.zip
Watch the video here:
High quality download sculptedPrims.wmv
Transcription
Welcome to our first blender tutorial. We want to show you how you can create sculpted prims for second life using blender. And besides this we will also show you how you can create surface textures for your sculpties.
We assume, that you have already downloaded blender and you got at least some experience with the
blender user interface. Furthermore we will assume that you use blender version 2.46, the current stable release.
Special thanks go to Amanda Levitsky who has provided a very good tutorial giving us a fair amount of
insight. But at the end it was the solution provided by Domino Marama, which we found the most convenient of all. Domino has created some very nicely working scripts and we are going to use them in this tutorial.
So let us begin by installing these scripts now. The scripts are available from domino’s website at
http://www.dominodesigns.info/downloads/second_life/import_sculptie_svn.zip.
Be sure, that you grab the newest version. If you want to know the whole story, read the second life forum at
http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=203571
Once you have downloaded the zip file, you will have to extract the contained scripts to the blender scripts directory. If you are running on windows, this usualy can be found at
c://program files/blender foundation/blender/.blender/scripts
After you have installed the scripts, start blender and you can begin your sculpty art work right away. We have choosen to create a safety helmet which is very easy to make.
So we can concentrate on the technical part. We will use blenders plain and simple “out of the box” configuration in this tutorial. So let us first remove the default cube object by pressing ‘x’ and then click on, ‘erase selected objects’. Now we are ready to create a new object by clicking:
SPACE -> add -> mesh -> sculpt mesh.
A dialog opens where you can choose among 4 different sculptie types, namely sphere, torus , plane, and cylinder.
We recognize that a helmet is almost equal to the half of a sphere. So, here we go and begin our work with a full sphere, and then transform it until it looks like the desired result. We can make our life easy. Let us load a picture of our helmet. For this purpose click on
VIEW -> background image
A new dialog box opens. Here you verify that you want to “use background immage” . Now you can click on the upcoming load button, and select a background image from your hard disk. We have provided a picture of the helmet in this tutorial, so we are going to load it now.
Here it is. Let us now move and scale the object a bit.
Note, that a sculpted Prim always contains exactly 1024 vertices. Not less. and not more. Exactly 1024. The predefined sculptie shapes can in fact only be sculpted and bended but the mesh itself must be kept unchanged. But we will show you in a minute how to create a half sphere without changing the mesh topology. (remark: With Domino’s Script we have more freedom, since his algorithm automatically creates the correct sculptie maps, even if the source object has got “a wrong mesh”. We do not know the exact implications of this, so we will investigate this in our next tutorial)
Our object is currently seen from the top. Let us change this so that we can see the sphere from the front. This is achieved by clicking on
VIEW -> front.
Maybe it is time for a little more practical information about the blender user interface. You can select all vertices by pressing “a”, on the keyboard.
- Pressing “s”, enables scaling up and down, in parallel to the mouse movement.
- When all vertices of an object are selected, you can move the object by pressing “g”. The object then follows your mouse movement.
- Stop moving by clicking the left mouse key.
Now we will take care of the lower half of the sphere. I will select proportional editing using the “connected” mode. This will move all selected vertices plus all vertices which are nearby.
Please check that you also have disabled the button, “limit selection to visible”.
Now i select some of the vertices at the bottom of the sphere and move them straight up, using the keyboard keys: g z .
I can change the deformation range with the page up, and page down keys. Do you see \stress=yes how the sphere gets deformed?
Now it already looks like a cap. We will make a few more changes until the helmet shape is finished.
- You also can limit the scaling to one axis only. If you want to scale horizontal, press: “s”, followed by “x”, which constraints the scaling to the x-axis.
- If you want to move the object along the x-axis, use the key “g”, followed by “x”.
You see here, how all these functions operate in concert.
- By pressing “b”, you can select only one, or a few vertices. You will click the left mouse button, and hold it down, while dragging over the screen.
- Remember: if proportional edit mode is on, moving the selected vertices
will also move all connected neighbours. The range of influence is controlled
with the page up, and page down buttons.
In a few moments we will have finished the sculpted prim. Then follows, what people normally find to be the most complex part in sculpty production: rendering the UV texture.
We promise, it has become very easy now. It is only one additional click away. Honestly. But we want to give you some more usefull details before.
since we are going to work with UV maps now, it is a good idea to also open the UV-image editor. We show you how to create a split screen, so we can see the UV map and our object at the same time.
This will become very handsome in the next part of the tutorial, but hold on.
- First move your mouse button to the upper part of the screen until you see a double headed arrow key.
- After pressing the right mouse button a small window appears.
- Select “split area”. a vertical line appears and follows your mouse movement.
- move the line around until you have found your preferred split point,
- then click the left mouse button.
- Now you see two windows showing the same content.
- In the right window go to the “window type selector” and choose the UV image editor.
And now comes the magic part. Go to
Render -> “bake second life sculpties”.
Your sculpty map appears in the right side window. You can scale it up a bit to see some more details.
And now finally open the image sub-menu and save your map to your hard drive.
Now it is time to inspect the just created sculpty in second life. Be sure you use lossless compression, Otherwise your sculpted prim might look a bit broken.
Please send us your feedback to the SL forum at http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=257428 .
Thank you for reading,
Gaia and Hussayn
May 20, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Hey, people, GREAT WORK. I Love this tutorial so much, and I really support you. Hope there are going to be more of these.
Thanks a lot!
June 6, 2008 at 4:51 am
[...] Creating sculpted Prims with Blender « machinimatrix Another really great video Blender tutorial on sculpties, but more generic and doesn’t allow use of NURBS. (tags: secondlife sculpty tutorial blender) [...]
June 10, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Hi, What a nice ! Thank you very much.
I explain ” How to make a Sculpture Prim in Blender” for Japanese beginners in my Blog.
They are not good at English and CG technical terms.
I really want to introduce this site and script for Japanese.
well…I would have to need them into Japanese…..
So how do you think ?
June 10, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Hi, Joy Kurosawa
We can do two things:
1.) You can provide us a japanese sound track (voices only). It should be exactly as long as the video, the format may be .mp3 or .wav . Since we do have the production files, we can easily assemble a japanese version of the video and post it here in this blog (refering to you as the translator)
2.) You can use the pics in the text tutorial and create a japanese text version and post it in this Blog (refering to you as the translator)
If 2.) does not proof feasible, you still can create your own version of the textual tutorial, release in your own blog but refer to our blog for reference.
regards, hussayn
June 11, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Thank you so much your quick reply.
I will try to my own version of the textual tutorial.
Because they need much more fine explaination , i think.
regards, Joy
June 22, 2008 at 10:35 am
Hi!
Thank you so much for your valuable contents foy user to make sculpties with blender!
It is so much fun and amasing!!!
So, I have a fevor to you now.
I introduce some blender topics and show same technics to make sculpties in my own blog. And also, I recentry introduce your website in my blog.
So many people who want to make sculpties in secondlife appliciate your site, and more people want to read your contens in our native language.
Would you allow me to translate your contents in my bog?
So, when I publish my japanese contents, I ofcourse make links to your website(becouse your tutorial videos are so much valuable! I want many user to see them!) and write that my japanese contents refer to your original contents in english.
Thank you.
June 25, 2008 at 3:02 pm
[...] content creation for the upcoming Second Life machinima “We only live twice” « Creating sculpted Prims with Blender Precise sculpted prims: “Level Of Detail”) [...]
July 3, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Hi!
Great tutorials, they are easy-to-follow and it’s a great idea to also provide transcripts of them.
Two comments on this particular tut:
1) It says: “Note, that a sculpted Prim always contains exactly 1024 vertices.”
Should it not read “1024 faces” instead of vertices? When I use Domino’s template sculpt meshes Blender reports having 1056 vertices and 1024 faces.
2) It says: “We have provided a picture of the helmet in this tutorial, so we are going to load it now.”
It seems that I cannot find the mentioned picture of the helmet. Anyone?
Otherwise: Keep up the excellent work!!
Thanx so much,
Willi
July 5, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Hi, Willi;
thank you very much for your comments.
Your first remark about the vertex count is correct and we already published a corrected video version a few days ago. The text version has not been updated yet. so i will take care about that now
Your secnd remark is also valuable. We originally intended to release a zip file containing all files we have created/used during the video tutorial, but we decided not to do that, mainly because we want to avoid any potential copyright violation. Hence the wording is a bit missleading. It should be “we used the following picture” instead of “we provided …” I will take care of this too.
We expect to release newer versions of the tutorials once in a while. All improvements to wording and videos will be added as they come in and your remarks will find their way into the tutorials
thank you again for your time!
July 13, 2008 at 8:47 am
@salticandy
Hi, sorry for the late answer. We have absolutely no problem if you want to translate the transcriptions of our videos. We would only want to know, where the translations are located on the web, so that we can link to them and we would want to get a backlink to this blog here.
Another option would be, to create translated voice overs. If you send us an mp3 or wav file, we can edit the videos and release them on this blog.
July 14, 2008 at 10:45 am
Dear Hussayn,
Thank you so much for your reply.
I saw same answer in your blog.
And I made transtated contents in japanese language.
I made some images and comment for my blog. Because newbie to blender will need some image with easy explanation.
But, the original contents are yours, and I wrote down that explanations in my articles, give links to your site.
I appreciate so much for your contents!!!
They are so usable and nice!
Followings are links to my articles which refers to your contents.
————————————-
1)Sculpted Prims with Blender ( 27-June-2008 )
= http://tonbo.slmame.com/e292589.html
————————————
2)Surface Textures for Sculpties with Blender ( 30-June-2008 )
= http://tonbo.slmame.com/e293656.html
————————————
3)Precise Sculpties: “Level Of Detail” ( 4-June-2008 )
= http://tonbo.slmame.com/e304116.html
————————————
By now, 3 articles are released.
I think that movie versions are better for user, but I can’t speak and make any voice contents.(*^^*)
I hope japanese users will see my blog, and then, come to your blog.
So, they will understand what you mean in video with my help contents.
That will make the users confortable and helpful.
And more, they will see newer articles in your blog!
Thank you so much!
August 29, 2008 at 11:49 pm
I can’t get ANY background image to show up. I am in top view. I have tried jpg bmp and png which is used in the tutorial. I have tried 1024 x 1024 500 x 500 and even smaller, nothing. Any suggestions?
August 29, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Also, when you said put the scripts in C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\Blender\.blender\scripts that is supposed to already exist. It doesn’t for me. I am using blender 2.47. I am not allowed to make a .blender folder either. So I made my own folders to see if that would help, still nothing, the scripts didn’t work. I put them in the main directory, still didn’t work. What am I doing wrong?
August 30, 2008 at 12:04 am
To the above, I got the scripts to work. I had to use winzip and just put the address of where I wanted the files to go there, then it made the .blender folder for me. So all the scripts loaded up.
August 30, 2008 at 9:23 am
Hi, Precious;
Concerning background images: background images can only be seen in top/front/side view. As soon as you move the viewing angle a bit, the background images will be discarded, but they come back as soon as you go back into top/side/front view. Maybe this is what causes your problem ?
Concerning the .blender directory. The location of this directory depends on how you have installed blender. I recommend, that you watch the “instaling blender tutorial”. There we describe a way to install your personal scripts-directory. This allows you to install different versions of blender on the same machine, yet keep your scripts at one place, and never loose them when you upgrade blender.
Good luck
September 10, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Very good tutorial and we appreciate your efforts in putting these together. Where can I find the background image of the helmet? Thanks.
September 16, 2008 at 3:21 pm
@highlander: The background image of the helmet is under copyright, so we can’t publish it. But i am sure, there are enough even better examples available. Just a hint: The left side is a mirrored copy of the right side of the helmet. I added the text “jass” using an image editor, and then i used this as input for the texturing video.
November 2, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Awesome tutorial!! I am having so much fun going thru them all now. I am so glad Gaia and Hussayn and whoever else is involved took the time and effort to do these tutorials. I was on the verge of giving up and just not knowing what was possible then finding your tutorials gave me enough info to start experimenting and learning. You all rock!!!
Vin
November 19, 2008 at 12:38 pm
I agree with every who has wrote on this wall, the tutorial is perfect. however i do have a problem! Every other creation i have tried baking as a second life sculptie has not worked. For instance i designed a wheel to use on a car in second life but when i try baking nothing shows in the UV editor screen. Sometimes it makes me choose a sculp type (sphere, torus etc) and other times in says python script error but other way I can’t bake anything else for secondlife use. I know the information I have given does not go in to detail about the python script but can some one help me please?????
November 19, 2008 at 2:33 pm
p.s the error that shows in the console is “face has no texture values”
November 22, 2008 at 7:55 am
I’m having the same problem as Zacko, occasionally the sculpt will just fail to export entirely. I have found that sometimes I can save the scene as a .blend file, restart blender, and then it will work, but not always. It tells me to check the console, and I get this error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “”, line 543, in
File “”, line 515, in main
File “”, line 390, in updateSculptieMap
RuntimeError: couldn’t load image data in Blender
anyone care to comment? This has been driving me nuts for weeks.