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| abstract:The tutorial gives a more in depth introduction to the most important modelling tools in blender and shows some nice tricks for the every day usage of this tool. One highlight is the description of the primstar multi-sculptie export tool and the corresponding Multi-sculptie-Generator in Second Life. We assume, that you have seen the preceding tutorial parts I and II. But we still provide enough background information, so that even blender newbies should be able to follow the process. The tutorial works for blender 2.49b and Jass-2 |
intended audience:
- Creators of “sculpted prims” for Second Life and similar environments
- Blender novice (low/mid level skills)
prerequisites (*):
- download: jass-2 (binary distribution, contains blender-2.49b, python-2.6.4, primstar-1.0.0 and more)
related tutorials:
- Blender primer (First steps in blender)
- Sculpted Prims I
- Sculpted Prims II
- Sculpted Prims IV
Separate Downloads:
(*) If Jass-2 is not an option for you, you can download the prerequisites separately:
Transcription
Hello and welcome!
In this tutorial I will introduce the proportional-edit tool
to add some bumps and wrinkles to the top-hat
and make it look a bit more interesting.
I will add some more sculpties to the hat
and during the ongoing course of this tutorial
i will also introduce global-view and local-view.
And i show you how you can add vertices to your object
by using the loop-subdivide tool.
We will also see how we can temporarily hide vertices.
and once we are finished with our model
we will see how we can examine a sculptmap on-the-fly
and how we can transfer a complex object from blender to Second life with almost no effort.
Let us start with proportional-edit. So what can we do with it
and where can we find it?
The function can be enabled in edit mode
by clicking on the circular icon at the bottom of the 3D-viewer
and then selecting connected in the upcoming selection box.
Let us select a single vertex to see the tool in action.
As soon as the vertex is moved or scaled
a white circle appears around the center of the selection.
The mesh behaves as if it where made out of rubber
and the circle shows the influence range of the tool.
You can change the range with the middle mouse roller.
The bigger the radius of the circle is,
the more vertices will be moved along with your selection.
So this function allows us to move single vertices around
and move adjacent but un-selected vertices very smoothly
along with our selection.
proportional-edit also applies to rotations and scaling.
Until now we have used smooth Falloff
which happens to be just the default setting for the proportional edit-tool.
Now i will enable random Falloff
which will give me an easy way to introduce some random-buckles to the object.
I select one vertical column of vertices.
Then i scale the column down a tiny bit.
At the same time i roll the middle mouse wheel downwards towards me
until the mesh starts to bump up and down randomly.
I turn the wheel slowly until i find a pleasing shape.
Now i click on the left mouse button
and as result we eventually get a bumpy top-hat.
Let us do one more tweek and switch the tool to linear Falloff.
I select the top edge-loop and scale it up a bit.
You might need to reduce the influence range now
by rolling the middle mouse button upwards
until you can see the white circle again.
Adjust the influence range to your needs.
But be warned. It may take some experimentation time until you can work with it fluently.
Remember that you always can press the escape key to revert your last modification.
Now turn off proportional-edit.
And also take a look at the top pole.
The pole vertices have unintentionally been separated while we randomised the hat.
Let us correct this by selecting the pole vertices and scale them down to zero.
Maybe we also need to move the vertices up or down a bit
to avoid a large bump on the top.
And at the end we get sort of a western top-hat.
It now looks like it is owned by doctor Doolittle.
Now let us add a sculpted bow and let us start with a torus shape.
Go to object mode
Then press the space bar to open the mesh menu
and navigate to add – mesh – sculpt mesh.
Change the shape selector to torus X.
And set the torus radius to 0.1
Then build it.
Well, the new object is partially hidden by the hat.
so let us move it along x until it is infront of the hat
and then go on with modelling.
But we also can hide the hat for a moment.
blender has got something for you here.
Go to view and there you see
that currently Global View is selected.
In Global View all objects of the current scene are displayed.
as soon as we change to Local View
blender will hide all unselected objects.
Hence since it is currently the only selected object
we only see the torus now.
Of course all hidden objects unhide again as soon as we switch back to Global View.
If you have a number pad then you also can use the division-key (%) to toggle between the views.
Now while keeping in Local View go to edit-mode and select side-view.
Ensure that all vertices are selected
and flatten the object along the z-axis by a factor of 0.25.
You can do this by first pressing the s-key, then enter z ,
and finally enter the value 0.25 directly from the keyboard.
Proceed in the same way for all subsequent modifications.
Now scale the object up along the x-axis by a factor of 4.
go back to side-view, select only the middle vertices at the top
and move them down to the object-center.
Do the same with the middle vertices at the bottom. This time move the vertices
up towards the center.
Now go to top view, grab all of the middle vertices
and scale them down along the x-axis by a factor of 0.3 .
Go back to object mode and add another torus.
This time set the radius to 0.2 and build it .
rotate the object along z by 90 degrees.
scale the object down by a factor of 0.25
then scale it up along the y-axis by 4.
Also scale it up along the x-axis by 1.3
and finally scale it down along the z-axis by 0.5 .
Now examine what we got so far.
we face a problem here.
We see an undesired intersection of the objects.
So let us try to correct this now.
To solve this issue
it would be nice to get some more vertices near the intersection.
And again blender has got a helper tool for us named Loop Subdivide.
But hold on! We have to keep in mind that sculpted prims have a fixed face count.
We can not simply add vertices because this would violate the rules.
On the other hand we are currently not working with the sculptmesh but with
a control mesh. The final sculptmesh will be created during bake time.
And the good news is that the primstar baker tool will take care about the correct
transformation from the mesh to the final sculpt-map
so that the Second Life constraints are fulfilled at the end.
But this does not mean that you can add or remove arbitrary vertices in your model.
However the Loop Ssubdivide tool is sculptie friendly
and we can use it without getting into trouble.
We also can use the image editor to directly monitor the changes in the sculpt-map.
Select the bow and go to edit mode.
Go to the UV-image editor and enable the button “Sync UV-and-mesh selection”.
This makes it easy to see what happens.
Now we will see the Loop Subdivide tool in action.
go to mesh – edges – Loop Subdivide
Or use a shortcut by pressing the control-key, followed by the R-key.
Every time when you position the mouse near to an edge
blender will calculate a new loop which passes through this edge
and cuts it into two pieces.
Move along your object until you find a convenient loop.
Then click the left mouse-button. Now the new loop will be created.
And again by moving the mouse you can move the loop around
until it is located exactly where you want to place it.
then left click and your new loop is added to the mesh.
Deselect all vertices and watch what happened to your sculpt-map.
The new loop is seen in the sculptmap as additional row of vertices.
You immediately see that we have increased the vertex-density
where we added the loop.
And this is exactly what we wanted to achieve:
Have more vertices along the critical areas of the sculptie.
I will show you this again in a moment.
But let me introduce another very usefull feature of blender beforehand.
We can temporarily hide selected vertices of an object.
And this can help us here
to get a clearer view of what happens on the model.
deselect all vertices.
then select all vertices which you want to hide.
You can do this at best in Side View.
Now press the h-key. Immediately all selected vertices disappear
and now it is much simpler to work with the remaining faces.
Please select again the Loop Division Tool by pressing the control-key
followed by the r-key.
Now it is much easier to find good loop locations.
click the left mouse button again and shift the new loop to your desired
location.
Now select both loops. Hold down alt
and right-click on the first loop.
Then hold down alt and shift,
and right-click on the second loop.
Scale up both selected loops along x
until they touch the adjacent sculptie.
then select the outer vertices of the loops,
move them along z,
and scale them along x until they fit nicely.
You also can select the top-most vertices of the loops,
enable proportional edit
and move them up a bit so that the bow fits even better.
At the end press the alt-key, followed by the h-key,
to unhide the hidden edges.
You can add some more enhancements to the bow if you like
but that is up to your personal taste.
For me it is good enough as it is by now.
Let us now bake the sculptmap, and see what happens.
After you have baked the sculptie, there is a nice trick to immediately
see the results. go to object mode. and select top-view.
then go to image, import as sculptie.
Move the new object a bit along x.
This is almost what we can expect to see in Second Life later.
But there is a small but important difference about
how the objects interact with the environmental lighting-system.
but blender has yet another option to help us here.
Please locate the link and Materials tab.
There select the set smooth button.
Now your object sometimes turns partially black. This seems to be a blender-bug.
If you see this to happen then switch to edit mode
and immediately return to object mode.
The black parts should be gone.
Now we see what we will get in second life and that does not look
too different from the original object.
Please be aware
that the smooth-button not only
makes your sculptie look much better in the viewer.
there is another very important issue here
which you must know about.
The “set-solid”
and “set-smooth” buttons
define two different lighting models.
And this setting directly influences the way how textures are baked.
For the moment let us say, that the “set-smooth” option will make the sculptie look
very much similar to how it would be seen in second life.
And let us keep with this mode for now.
I will get back to this in the next tutorial.
Let us now go back to Global View and adjust the size
and rotation of the bow relative to the hat.
I will go to top view first, then also try to scale, rotate,
and align the objects in other views.
It may take some time until the objects are all in position.
Ok, we have eventually created a satisfying shape for the hat. It is made out of 3 sculpties
instead of only one. And this is the moment where we start getting into real trouble.
How can we transfer the 3 sculpties into second life ?
And how can we keep their relative positions , sizes , and rotations intact?
Now there is another nice trick which is again introduced by primstar.
You can automate the setup of your sculpties in second life, but We need to do some
preparations beforehand.
first, go to object mode.
then select all your objects by holding down the SHIFT key
and then right-click them one by one.
Now go to object – parent – make parent.
This makes the least selected object the parent of the others.
if you select only this parent-object,
then all its children will follow any subsequent transformation.
Now we will prepare the export of the entire object group.
select all objects by right clicking on them
and holding down the SHIFT key at the same time.
Then go to: object – transform properties.
a small window opens.
There you see the current rotation and scaling values of your parent object.
The rotation values should all be zero here and scaling should be set to 1.
If these values are different we might end up
with unexpected rotations when later rezzing the objects in second life.
You can clear the values without modifying the object itself as follows:
go to: object – clear-apply – apply scale/rotation to Object-data.
Now all object rotations have been set to 0 and scaling is set exactly to 1.
And now the primstar baker can do all the rest for you.
still keep all objects selected.
then: render – bake sculpt meshes.
Keep with the default settings and bake.
It is important that the objects get baked at the same time,
because now primstar will calculate a precise vertex-alignment of the objects.
This is not very important for the hat but later we will see
that we can use this feature to create precisely fitting multiple sculpties.
I will get back to this in a later tutorial when we examine precise sculpting.
After the baker has finished you can control the results by examining the sculptmaps
one by one. Just select each individual object then go to edit mode and see that the sculptmaps have been created.
Now go to your local disk and create a new directory. You can create it at any place in your system.
go back to blender. then navigate to: File – export – second life LSL.
A file selector opens. Navigate to your just created empty directory.
Then click on the export-LSL button.
If you now check your just created directory,
you will find all sculptmaps there
and besides them
there will be one single LSL-script.
It is time to enter Second Life and create a prim.
Rename this prim to “Primstar”. take care to name it with a capital P, and take it to your inventory.
Now Create another prim and place a copy of the primstar-prim into it.
Then import the sculptmaps and put them into the inventory of the primstar-object.
finally create a new script in the object.
Open the generated LSL-script on your disk by using any text-editor of your choice
then cut’n paste the script content into the just created script inside the prim.
save the script and close the second life editor.
The Prim-Generator will immediately ask for the permission to link objects.
Answer “yes”.
Now click on the primstar-object to start the generator.
And watch how the object will be created from scratch.
finished. Your object has been rezzed and all proportions are intact.
And even the parent/child relations have been used
to create the corresponding link set .
We are now at the end of this tutorial.
We have learned about the proportional edit tool.
We have used Local View and Global View for easy editing.
We have used the Loop Subdivide tool
to add more vertices at critical areas.
We know how we can temporarily hide vertices.
We can examine a sculptmap on the fly.
And we can get back smooth surfaces after reimporting a sculpt-map to blender.
And we can transport a set of objects from blender to Second Life.
The next tutorial will entirely be dedicated to texturing the model.
Until then please take your time and improve your modelling skills by applying
what you have learned in this tutorial.
Have fun, and see you later!
Your tutorials have taught me nearly everything I know about Blender! Thanks so much for all the time and effort you put into these!
I have a problem related to a process shown in this video. I’ve made a multi-sculpt object (a boot) and when I tried to export everything via LSL, it gives me a script for each piece instead of just one script. I tried just having the parent mesh selected when exporting as well, but that didn’t work. I’ve followed every single step word for word here, so I don’t know what’s wrong. Any idea?
Hello Gaia. Can you help me with lsl exporting. I’m still can’t get one lsl file for multi part sculpty but for each mesh. I tried different ways. I’m using Jass-PUB. Should it work in Jass-PUB?? Thank you.
you have to parentize the parts to a set. just select the set, then object -> make parent
then bake the set all at the same time (select the set in object mode, then render -> bake sculpt maps)
Finally export to LSL. You should end up with one LSL file containing the definition of your set.
I did it and it’s not working. It’s eighter not baking or just exporting many lsl files. I saw a lot of tutorials and commentaries on that problem and still can’t change it.
please contact me in Second Life. I want to understand what your problem is.
The video’s are great, but as a noob, I have gone through them one at a time, and frame by frame followed along. This video unfortuantely has me shaking my head. As a new learner, I am constantly stopping, rewinding, then doing it again. 4 hrs later I am still only 11 minutes into the video and have totally messed up my bow. I know that you learn through trial and error, but is there any chance you can slow this one down some. Maybe break it into two videos? The element that seems to be missing in the training of this is that we are new and still have to think or look up the commands you know so well. Perhaps you could put them on the screen like you do the size commands. That really helped a lot. In the meanwhile, I will keep plugging away at this. Restart the bow. My sculpt map is now a very distorted black and white only field. Sighs. Again, thank you for your time doing these videos, I hope my noob feedback helps to improve them even more.
I seem to be getting stuck on small things. How do you select a vertical column? You don’t say how; you just do it. And is there anywhere all these little short cuts are listed?
The first two tutorials worked fine, but it seems there are some heavy changes in jass pub 2.3.8 which is based on blender 2.6. I don’t know the reason, but at the end where the sculptmaps should be created, this won’t work properly and with the generated LSL-Script I’ve got not the same result as in the video. I’ve tried it several times (more than 5), with always the same ugly result – not nearly the result in the video.
I like the tutorials, because it’s my first try to make sculpts for Second Life and also the first time I’m using blender. Is it possoble to add to the end of the transcription what have changed to newer Blender versions? Some funktions like crease and proportional edit don’t work in the same way like in jass-pub 2.3.8.
The video has been created using Jass-Pro (I realy forgot to mention that, apologize) The free version of jass (and also primstar-1) uses a different approach when baking multi part sculpties. This basically ensures best resolution only for the biggest part. Smaller parts of a build degrade with their size decrease.
For Jass-Pro and Jass-Magic the sculptie baker works a bit different and the decrease in quality does not vary more than 50% among ALL parts regardless of their size. So for the Hat tutorial you will see that the bow and tie get baked (by jass-pub) with very rough surface, while the hat itself bakes nicely. When you bake the same build with Jass-pro all parts look nice.
Here is a comparison: http://blog.machinimatrix.org/jass/jass-2-3-pro-for-windows/ You need to scroll down a bit.
Hi, ive been following your tutorials, and even coming back for refreshers and learning more! Thank you so much for these tutorials!
But, (isnt there always one?) ive followed the steps for setting the parent, baking all sculpts at once, save them to file, clearing the scale/rotation data, and the next step, export to LSL…a few seconds into the export i get a pop up directing me to the python console, which yields the following error: RuntimeError: could not save image (no image buffer)Im lost… any ideas?
your surfaces intertwine where you see the black spot. examine the mesh closely at that area and you see exactly where “above” and “below” get exchanged. This happens when your mesh surfaces get too close to each other. Note that this problem only appears when surfaces of the SAME mesh get too close. Meshes of differnet objects can intersect without problems (although in general intersecting meshes are not a sigh of good quality. But in SL we often are forced to intersect).
Please, someone knows what is this bug? I was scaling with proportional connected and started to appear according to the scaling proportion… http://twitpic.com/32oea6/full
Thanks!
This is not a bug. You have got the lower side of the tie pushed through the upper part. Now you see the back part of the lower side. Since this is not rendered, it is shown in black. When you would import this object to SL you would see the “inside out effect” appear exactly where you now see the black part.
Workaround: There is none. You have to take care about where your faces get pushed while you scale in proportional edit mode. Just avoid surfaces to touch or intertwin…
hint: in edit mode grab some of the vertices in the black area and push them down a bit. The area should get smaller. But i am nit sure if the resulting shape is what you want…
Correct, I didn’t see that I was doing wrong! Thanks a lot, sorry, Gaia!
I made this obi using your tutorial (after working through the top hat), but I made the top section by duplicating the bottom. I’ve tried fixing it, but I’m afraid I’ve broken something because now the wide belt section imports into SL as…well….not a wide obi belt….what did I mess up, and how do I fix it?
[file]/wp-content/upload/obi.blend[/file]
You have reset the UV-map of the biggest part. I have no idea how that happened. I guess you reset it unintentionally.
When you use Jass-2.3.4-pro or newer, then fix is easy:
go to object mode
select the biggest of your three parts
object -> scripts -> sculptify objects
And your object is fixed.
When you use jass-pub or the original primstar distribution it is a bit more complicated. There is one issue with “sculptify objects” when the object is already a sculptie (which is the case here):
go to object mode
select the biggest of your three parts
delete the uv-texture (named “sculptie”)
object -> scripts -> sculptify objects
go to edit mode
select all vertices
go to the uv editor
select all vertices
in the uv-editor: r 90 (rotate the uv map by 90 degrees)
create an image that fits to the UV-map ratio
And your object is fixed.
Ahh…you are a lifesaver, that worked great – thanks!
Hi Gaia! Thanks a lot for the tuto! I’m having problem with the tie objects. The texture of these objects looks very different from the normal – http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/5065/blendertiesculptieerror.jpg – and when I upload to SL, the hat is perfect, but the 2 objects from the tie are distorted. Thanks a lot.
Hi, rod;
You probably use Jass-pub or (blender + primstar-1.0.0) which is almost equivalent. Those versions of the software do not have the enhanced multi sculptie baker. The enhanced baker is one of the major benefits you will get from jass-pro.
However there is one workaround (i have not tested it, but it should work):
Do not parentize the objects but still bake them all together. When you export them with LSL exporter, then you will end up with three LSL scripts (one for each part). As far as i know these scripts will create the parts with correct scaling and rotation in world. Then you only need to readjust the relative locations of the objects. Or you could do the rescaling/rotation step by hand if you prefer.
Oh, ok! I’ll look for the full version! Thanks a lot for your attention!
That workaround does not work, I have the same problem as Rod and I am still trying to solve it.
Well, yes, you are right. It won’t work because the baker does not take care about the parentizing. So it indeed should create the same results and you will not gain anything.
Then your only option is to bake the parts one by one. Then import the parts and align them by hand.
I know this is a lot to ask…but as a dumb beginner, when you say to do something in the later tutorials and assume that we already know, in these places a link to where we can learn how to do that in an earlier transcription or videw would be very helpful.
For instance, “selecting one vertical column of vertices”…I may have to stop watching the vid and figure out how to do that.
Similarly, is there anyway to synchronize the video to the transcription, at least at key junctions so I can go to video corresponding to the transcription? A lot of times, I look in the video at the Blender instructions in the left bottom corner, since these fill in some gaps for me.
I am using Win 7, and opening the tutorial and Blender at the same time, side by side and this helps a lot, but sometimes, I may not see all of the Blender window.
Ouch! TYVM Gaia
Hello Gaia . My problem is the export to sl step.
I select all prims in Object mode- Make them Parent – Hit N and if the value in transform properties are not correct I Hit Clear/apply etc….- Next I bake all mesh in the meantime having them all selected, I do the export to SL….but when I look the the folder one of the mesh is missing.
Even if I am a registered user I cant log in (it seems there is a glitch here) and I can not enclose a blend file.
I am sending it to you at gaia.clary@machinimatrix.org.
Next : center of a sculpt –> I think it could be useful if you explain it in a tutorial…too often after modelling a sculpt and importng it in sl the center is faraway from “the true center” of the sculped prim.
If I choose to click on “New Center” can i still use the multiprim export to sl function?
Last thing : i sent to you a notecard in world about a donation. Pls check it out.
TYVM in advance
You have assigned the same UV-image to two different sculpties:
- the top part of your boot uses the image “Cylinder.001″
- the middle part of your boot uses the image: “Cylinder.001″
- the heel uses the image: “Cylinder.002″
So the baker bakes all parts but overwrites one part later and you end up with 2 sculptmaps only. The best way to avoid this sort of problems is to always rename your items in a meaningfull way. Then duplicate associations are automatically avoided. In your case: Just go to the top part and assign a new image of the anticipated size of the sculptmap to it (using the UV-image editor) and your problem is gone.
Could you please explain more detail on this. Do I need to bake each object before link it as parent?
3.) Do all objects you have selected have a UV map named “sculptie” ? If an objct does not have this UV map it will be silently dropped from the export…
Please advice, coz nothing happens on my second trial again :/.
umm.. Many possible issues can cause your problem. Here are some ideas:
1.) you have lost your uv maps: check that each sculptie has a uv map named “sculptie” (edit mode, F9, under mesh tab)
2.) you got a uv-map but it is not sculptie compliant (edit mode, select all vertices, look in UV-image editor and check that the map is a perfect checkerboard, note: All maps look the same except for the ratio (u/v in the case you create oblongs)
There can be many other reasons why you fail. You might want to drop your .blend file here so we can take a look at it … or send it to gaia.clary@machinimatrix.org that wil also be processed.
Good luck to you
I did all the part, but when i am at the last part bake and save to the local drive, I do not see any file at all ? Please help what is wrong or what i had missed out. Below is the part that i dont see in my local drive.
Thank you
“Now go to your local disk and create a new directory. You can create it at any place in your system.
“go back to blender. then navigate to: File – export – second life LSL.
A file selector opens. Navigate to your just created empty directory.
Then click on the export-LSL button.
If you now check your just created directory,
you will find all sculptmaps there
and besides them
there will be one single LSL-script.”
1.) Have you created an empty folder on your harddisk ? blender will NOT create this folder if it does not exist.
2.) Before exporting have you selected all objects you want to export ? If you do not select any object, blender will silenty do nothing.
3.) Do all objects you have selected have a UV map named “sculptie” ? If an objct does not have this UV map it will be silently dropped from the export…
I hope this helps a bit to locate the cause of your problem ?
Ty so much Gaia . It is a great tutorial. May I ask you which program do you use for the speech generator? I do videotutorials for Italian but often I prefer to use subtitles because when i record my voice…it seems I am a drunk Donald Duck…lol
Sp when is the texture tutorial coming up? These are very helpful and clear (although the generated voice might be a bit annoying to some) and helped me remember some of the basic tricks I’d forgotten about in blender
I’m just not that much down with combining it with SL, so any followup tuts would be nice
Ah, you have not not seen that the new tutorial has just been released this morning …
Concerning the robot voice, yes we know this is a major issue. But there are reasons to use an automated voice. I probably will write an article about how the tutorials are created and what made us decide to use a text to speach system.
enjoy
I prefer the speech generator, Gaia. I have problems understanding English accents in many tutorial videos but not these. Thank you so much for all the effort you’ve put in to creating such brilliant video tutorials. It must be very time consuming.
on “Adjusting the parts” I cannot do the step after baking the sculptie.
Let us now bake the sculptmap, and see what happens.
After you have baked the sculptie, there is a nice trick to immediately
see the results. go to object mode. and select top-view.
then go to image, import as sculptie.
Move the new object a bit along x.
I am able to bake the sculpt, and I see it to the right in my UV/Image Editor.
However, when I select “Import as a Sculptie” NOTHING happens.
what makes it stranger is sometimes I quit, come back in and it works again.
To make sure I save the sculptie as a .TGA view it in photoshop (looks like a good sculpt)
I open secondlife, upload the texture, they come up fine.
If i use the Blender script under import “Second Life Sculptie” it will do nothing.
Even stranger sometimes quiting fixes this…
this becomes a bigger issue in “Automate Setup in SL” where you ask to run scripts and nothing seems to happen or some sculpts just don’t bake. I think my Primstar scripts are broken, and I don’t know enough to fix them.
Have you taken a look at Jass-2 ? That is blender plus primstar, ready istalled. It might help you to fix your issue. One possible cause of not finding your sculpt may be this:
Objets are always “rezzed” at the 3D cursor location. So if you have positioned the3D cursor somewhere far away it may appear as if your sculptmap was not created… So alwys make sure that you can see the 3D cursor before you “import as sculptie” …
yes I have this same problem, I can never see the object after doing the “import as a sculptie” I do plan on starting from the start again and if I still cant get it to show I’m planning on sending you or ele the blend file.
WOW super great tutorial. You have a lot of work invested in this!! Vielen Dank dafür !!!!!!!! I have learned a lot from this so far.
Hi, I have some problem with export to sl. Its quite counterproductive:/
see at http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/3244/blenderproblem.png
Any ideas how to fix it?
Btw these tutorials are really good. Thanks for them. They are very useful:)
I tryed what you said to Seven Paragorn, but I think it isnt the same problem:[
here is my file...
[file]/wp-content/upload/hat.blend[/file]
1.) the tie: (first picture)
that looks like the wrong stitching type in SL. check on the object tab of the SL editor. I think you must set stitching type “torus”. Then you will get at least the torus like form.
2.) quality: (both pictures)
it appears to me that you have 2 problems:
2.1) You may have rotated the bow and the tie in edit mode. Remember that the nuber of possible vertex points is very limitted. So when you rotate an axis symmetric object, you get non symmetric derivations from your object shape. You better model along the 3 axes to avoid that. and only when your model is finished, switch to object mode and rotate your elements there. Rotations applied in object mode will be recognized by the SL-exporter and applied to the object AFTER it was rezzed in world. While all rotations applied in edit mode will be fully baked into the sculptmap and suffer from the spatial lack of resolution. Please check the video tutorial again. You will see that i have done all rotations in object mode.
2.2) When you bake multiple objects the smaller ones will be mapped to the grid that belongs to the biggest object. So if you have one big object and 2 small objects (like in the hat example), the spatial resolution of the hat is used to create the bow and the tie. Thus the resolution of the smaller objects suffers quite a bit. At the moment there is only 1 way of getting away with that: bake the objects independently and rescale them later after they are imported into SL. With the hat, the bow and the tie it is doable without much effort. But if you have more complex objects, the readjusting in world quickly gets a night mare.
Note that i will add a modified baker tool whith enhanced baking quality for the smaller parts of a set to the Jass-2 premium release. (i must admit that i used that enhanced baker tool in the tutorial without thinking about it. I will eventually remake the tutorial and point out this issue!
3.) The UV map of the bow
I noticed that the bow’s UV-map is somewhat spoiled. But i was able to repair the map. You need to ensure that the sculptmap is rectangular and formed like a checker board. IN your uv map some vertices have jumped “out of the grid”. I just moved them to where they apparently belong.
In the UV editor i checked the 2 options:
UV -> snap to pixels
UV -> layout clipped to image size
Then i adjusted the wrongly placed uv vertices back into the map. The resulting bow came out as expected.
I hope that helps a bit.
Oh thanks a lot! It was the 2.1 problem:) Next scupted models I will make as you said in 2.2. But I faild in point 3. :[
Next model bring me another question. In 1st picture ( http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/3244/blenderproblem.png ) you can see cube (standart) transformed in to the “something”. The top of the cube and the bottom is connected together (select 2 vertecs, scale to 0) and here is the question, how can I make smoothed object with clear transition? When I have “Set solid” and (Shift + E set to 1) is ok (img 2), but when iam try Smooth it looks like img 3, its bad. And when iam setting Shift + E option… is look like img 4. I know, that this can be created with cube – tunnel, but i want more holes in one one sculpt.
Your tutorials have really helped me to get around in Blender, so thank you veeeery much!
I only one slight issue that concerns multi-sculpt export. In my case, I got a sculpt consisting of several very similar objects that are slightly different from each other (take as an example the ribs of a human body). So I duplicated the first part and adapted the clone to my needs.
But if I export them into a directory (after baking of course), I got only the script and one of the duplicated objects as .tga-file. Is there a way to get every single object baked separately and saved as such other than doing it piece by piece? (I’ll definitely need the script to allocate all those parts later on)
Also naming them individually got me no result.
By default primstar reuses the sculptmap of copies. This is what you see: It creates just one sculptmap. And the content of the sculptmap is the result of the youngest bake. If you want to create sculpties with different sculptmaps, you will have to assign a new inmage to each sculptie. You can do this in the image editor:
- Just select each of your sculpties and then switch to edit mode.
- then select all vertices
- in the UV editor create a new image of the same size as the original sculptmap (e.g. 64*64 pixels for the default sculptie). It may be wise to name this sculptmap accordingly.
-bake your sculptie to the new image
- go back to object mode and select the next sculptie.
repeat this procedure for all sculpties you have. However you will need to do this only once. Then each of your sculpties will be baked into its separate sculptmap. I did not mention this because i myself am a bit unhappy with how primstar deals with multiple copies. It is a good approach in some cases. In other cases (like yours) it make not much sense…
Hello! I have done the Roman column with your tut (I write it rather here, the RC is older tut and Im not sure, if you still look at new replies) but at the end when I was trying to use loop subdivide, it reported me error and wrote “unable complete action with multires enabled”. Dont you know, pls, what does it mean?
We get comments in the order of appearance, so new comments get to us just in time regardless of where you place them.
To your problem:
When you created the sculpted prim you had the option to use subsurf mode or multires mode. In our tutorial we have selected subsurf mode with “simple subdiv”. You have selected Multires mode. That’s the difference. In multires mode you can not subdivide. If you can not restart from beginning, you still can “apply multires” then continue with the tutorial. But you then might get into other trouble at the end. So i recommend to restart with subsurf mode enabled.
Wery good tutorial. Thanks.
Pls, it is possible to do surface textures for sculpties by unwrapping and importing to Photoshop or GIMP? The same way as for normal meshes? Thanx…
Duh!
Sorry for the false alarm….just pressed ctrl + Tab and selected “vertices”.
Exits stage left limping
First congratulations on your tutorials… as a complete newbie to 3D modelling they’ve been a lifesaver!!
Everything has worked fine up to this point, with great results imported to sl, but in this tutorial I have to select vertices and have a view problem. From the very beginning I haven’t been able to see vertices in edit mode, only edges. Up to now this hasn’t impeded progress but on this tutorial its brought me to a grinding halt. Could I have accidentally changed something in settings or do I have a faulty installation? I’m using the latest versions of Blender and primstar.
The tutorials so far have been great!
However Im having a bit of a problem with this last part. Everything worked perfectly for me except my sculpties look distorted. I have tried importing each piece individually. And I have made sure that lossless compression is checked when I import. But there’s no difference. Here’s an image of the sculptie that makes up the center part of the bow on the top hat. As you can see it does not look smooth at all. http://www.flickr.com/photos/46491133@N04/4524594836/
Am I missing something here, or is this a bug?
in order to better understand what problem you face, you could either attach the .blend file here (if you are a registered user of this blog), or send it by email to gaia.clary@machinimatrix.org I can take a look at it and probably i can tell you then, what’s up with your model.
[file]/wp-content/upload/tophat_1.blend[/file]
Here’s the blender file I was working on. Thank you for offering to take a look.
Examine your .blend file carefully as follows:
go to object mode
- select the hat
- switch to edit mode and lookup the image name: “Torus X.001″ in your case
- switch to object mode and select the bow
- switch to edit mode and lookup the image name: “Torus X” in your case
- switch to object mode and select the tie
- switch to edit mode and lookup the image name: “Torus X.001″ in your case
So the tie and the hat use the same sculptmap in your setup.
Workaround:
- go to object mode
- select the hat
- switch to edit mode
- in the UV-image editor select IM: Cylinder from the image selector box in the footer
- save your .blend file (to keep the setup)
- goto object mode
- select all 3 parts
- Render -> Bake sculpt Meshes (keep with the default settings)
- File -> export -> Export to Second Life LSL
- grab all the 3 sculptmaps therein and put them into the primstar generator in Second Life
- update the LSL script from the one you find in the export directory
- touch the generator
- hopefully get something reasonable
Note, that the quality of the smaller parts is not as good as the quality of the hat itself.
As a workaround bake the sculptmaps individualy and get prepared to adjust the parts after they
have been generated. If you are lucky, you only need to rescale them
It worked, thank you very much!
Okay, i love these tutorials. I have had no problem using them or following along up till now. For some reason when i turn on proportional edit, and i try to scale a single vertex and scale it, the entire hat gets larger and i do not see the circle in the tutorial.
What am i doing wrong?
When you do not see the circle, then probably the range is very huge (and the circle has fallen off screen). In that case you can do one of 3 things:
enable proportional edit mode
press the G-Key
now:
- if you have a mouse whell, roll it upwards until the circle reappears.
- alternatively press the Page down key until the circle reappears
- aternatively if you have a number pad: press the “3″ key until the circle reappears…
Unfortunately there is a subtle bug in blender which sometimes let the falloff range stick to infinity until you restart blender. This happens to me about once per month or so and nobody ever could find a way to reproduce this.
I hope you guys cover more also intermediate and advance level tutorials eventually.
the tutorials will get more advanced shortly
the texturing tutorial is on its way. followed by a tutorial about how to make fine glas ware. I also have got a “shoe making tutorial” on my list and some more. But i am afraid that at least some of the new tutorials will be available only for purchase as we slowly need to cover at least our production costs.
I hope that helps a bit and it whets appetite
Great tutorial! If I may ask, is this the way to export 3 scultps as 1 (I mean for 10L)?:) Sry If the question seems stupid and I misunderstood something:)
sorry, no! You still have to import all sculptmaps and textures one by one (or in a bulk upload). The main point here is that you can reassemble all parts in Second life without effort. If you would just import the sculptmaps without having the generated LSL-script at hand, you would need to readjust scaling, rotation and relative locations of the parts manually. And this is a tedious job. So the main benefit of the LSL-exporter is the generation of the LSL-script.
Thank you, thank you for this fantastic tutorial!
I’m not exactly the fastest of learners but this has been great! Your latest tutorials were miles better than your old ones. I can’t wait for your next tutorial. 
But where is the text-editor in Windows folders choice? I have XP and there is not any function like this, so I cannot open the script… Hmmm, it doesnt matter, anyway, if I link the object in Blender or in SL…
Hi, Jergon.
* Thank you for the hint with the broken comment layout. It should work again now. Apologize but we are in the middle of a remake of the website. We decided to do it directly on the blog so sometimes things get broken.
* About the linking of objects:
- Please note that the LSL script not only links the object. Indeed the Linking is just a nice add on. The true value of the script is its ability of resize/rotate/transform the parts of the object to their final location/scale/rotation values.
Here is an attempt to give you a better description:
- Please ensure in blender, that you have selected your objects in object mode and that you have selected all of the objects at the same time by using SHIFT then right click on all objects you want to have in your selection.
- After you have added the parent relation as shown in the video, ensure again that everything works correctly by selecting ONLY the parent object, then look if it moves along with its child objects when calling the grab function (“g”)
- Now File -> Export Second Life LSL
- You should find the LSL script in the export folder.
- Open the LSL script with any text editor you have. You should have wordpad and notepad by default. other editors will work too. If you have firefox, then just open it then drag the LSL file right in to the browser, that will also work.
If nothing works for you, you can create some screenshots where i can see, what exactly you try to do and attach these images to your comment (or send it to me via email to gaia.clary@machinimatrix.org ) I will take care about that as soon as i can.
I hope that helps a bit.
Cheers, Gaia
Hmmm, as I understand, its not possible at all to link object in Blender and upload it as only sculpted prim to SL, is it? This part of tutorial was a little bit confusing, sorry…
And why these comments are cut on the right side? It isnt very nice to read…:-o
Nice tutorial. But I still cannot import to SL linked object – this part with parents doesnt work, unfortunatelly. I still need to import object one by one…
Doesnt know anyone what REALLY should I do to link more sculpties to one?
Fantastic tutorial… I just thought the old ones were great but the last three on sculpted prims are really far better… Continue so and thanks a lot.
Thank you for this tutorial! I have learned a whole new way to organize my work flow now. I was doing the export/import steps based on a video a found on youtube. While that seemed easy, what you have shown in the video above will save me a huge chunk of time. Thank you for all of your detailed tutorials.
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