Hi. I just started the new tutorial about making a mesh based shoe . In the next 2 days i will create a shoe similar to what can be seen in the starting image of the shoe quest.
We have just released Primstar-2-dev-167. We have added a small but very usefull change in the handling of tiny sculpties, see “Automatic processing of Tiny Sculpties” below. Now you can have tinies and normal sized Sculpties in the same linkset and get the needed color range reduction automatically!
If you have purchased Primstar-2 then the new release is located in your Jass-inventory.
If you want to purchase, then follow the description of the Primstar-2 Early Adopters
Program on the Primstar-2 home page. Look for Primstar-2-dev-167.zip
Known Issues:
File -> Import -> Sculpty creates a Sphere
When you add a sculpty from file,
you will instantly get a new Sphere
in the 3D view.Please do not touch the Sphere.
Instead open the file navigator again
from the operator panel which appears
on the left side of the 3D view.
The panel is titled:
“Add UV Shape from Sculpt Map”
LLSD Exporter not yet functional
“New Objects: Enter Edit Mode” creates multiple unwanted extra objects
Change details since Primstar-2-dev-163:
FIX: “Memoryblock free: pointer not in memlist” This Error message appeared frequently in the Blender console
FIX: Errors on Vertex count reported in Console
NEW: Automatic processing of Tiny Sculpties.
If you wanted to create Tiny sculpts, you needed to either modify the Color range in the Bake tool, or you had to add some scaling Objects which forced a color range reduction on all Sculpted Prims in a linkset.
Now you can simply create your objects to the Blender Size. One Blender Unit is counted as 1 meter. Hence if you want to create a Cylinder of size 0.4 cm, 0.4 cm, 0.8 cm> you only need to ensure that the Object dimension is set to <0.004 , 0.004, 0.008> Blender units. Then bake your sculptmap:
the resulting sculptmap will be automatically adjusted.
Note: If your Object is smaller than 1 cm on all axes, then it will automatically maintain its scale!
The above example uploaded to Secondlife:
I placed the smallest possible cube besides a set of 4 sculpty cylinders. All 5 objects use the exact same size of <0.001, 0.001, 0.001> in SL-meters. But the sculpties maintain their aspect ration and they show exactly the size as we have used in Blender ( < 4mm, 4mm, 8 mm> )
HINT: In the Scene Property Settings you can switch Units from None (Default) to “Metric”. Then your Display shows much easier readable notation:
Change details since Primstar-2-dev-149:
FIX: Import Sculpty from File did not work
NEW: LLSD exporter (currently only exports sculptmaps/textures)
NEW: Added support for parented prims (needed for LLSD-exporter, not functional)
FIX: Library shapes opened as Spheres
Change details since Primstar-2-dev-125:
NEW: Name Sculpty during creation (also gives initial name to sculptmap)
NEW: Rename Sculptmaps during Bake (renames map to object name if enabled)
NEW: UVTex now optional on creation
NEW: Image – Import as Sculpty added
ENHANCEMENT: Improved UV mapping for sculptify
ENHANCEMENT: Sculptify now resizes the image to the smallest possible size (if needed)
NEW: Added GUI for LLSD exports (not functional yet!)
Take the following observations as a list of hints how you might possibly be able to lower the costs of your meshes.
Reducing the lowest visible LOD has high impact on resource costs. In fact it is the only way to get streaming costs down to reasonable numbers. I found that using a billboard-like approach for the lowest visible LOD gives very acceptable look, and reduces the Streaming costs.Please note that the lowest visible LOD varies with object size! For small objects up to a Bounding Box radius of ~5.43 meters (the distance between BBOX center and the BBOX corners) you can optimize the lowest LOD. If your meshes get bigger, then the lowest LOD is no longer used and the next higher LOD rules the price, and so forth until your mesh BBOX radius exceeds the size of ~43.4 meter where only the highest LOD is taken into account. Here is a table summarizing the numbers:
BBOX-Radius (smallest)
BBOX-Radius (biggest)
max cubic BBOX (example)
Lowest visible LOD
Comment
> 0
5.43
<6,6,6>
LOWEST
Costs can be reduce best with meshes <= this size
5.43
10.86
<12.5,12.5,12.5>
LOW
10.86
43.4
<50,50,50>
MEDIUM
43.4
> 43.4
HIGH
Objects above this size only use highest LOD from any distance.
So slicing up a huge object into many smaller parts and import them as a link set would be an option for making buildings etc. with less PE (i refer to Drongle’s experiments on that)
Always add a physics mesh, because the default setting uses the medium mesh as physics shape and creates a fitting Convex hull, which will probably yield very high physics costs. Better use the lowest LOD for physics or generate your own physics mesh.
Optimize your object so that it looks good with medium LOD. Keep HIghes LOD for nice to haves but not really needed details. This seems to make the overall behaviour of the objects much smoother regarding look from a distance.
Give up Quad-centric modelling. It appears to me that Triangle centric modelling gives better ways for optimizing at least the streaming costs. Not that i say “only use triangles”. Quads are good for texturing, but triangles are good for reducing. So you will have to find out what goes best with your particular object. But do not avoid triangles !!!
Learn how to make optimal UV-maps. You can get rid of MANY faces if you make a proper UV-mapping. And you can enhance the look of your mesh significantly if you know how to unwrap.
Collecting many mesh objects into one linkset reduces the PE per mesh.
If you physics cost for a link set rules the PE, then set children in your linkset to physics type NONE wherever possible. That may reduce physics cost again.
After i have been often asked which choice would be the best regarding Primstar, Jass, Blender, Python… i decided to add another article on this Blog. I hope the new Primstar Purchase Guide helps.
If you have purchased Primstar-2 then the new release is located in your Jass-inventory.
If you want to purchase, then follow the description of the Primstar-2 Early Adopters
Program on the Primstar-2 home page. Look for Primstar-2-dev-163.zip
Change details since Primstar-2-dev-149:
FIX: Import Sculpty from File did not work
NEW: LLSD exporter (currently only exports sculptmaps/textures)
NEW: Added support for parented prims (needed for LLSD-exporter, not functional)
FIX: Library shapes opened as Spheres
Known Issues:
File -> Import -> Sculpty creates a Sphere
When you add a sculpty from file,
you will instantly get a new Sphere
in the 3D view.
Please do not touch the Sphere.
Instead open the file navigator again
from the operator panel which appears
on the left side of the 3D view.
The panel is titled:
“Add UV Shape from Sculpt Map”
LLSD Exporter not yet functional
Memoryblock free: pointer not in memlist
The above warning message is currently printed into the Console window
when you add or modify or bake a sculpty.
As far as we can tell this message can be ignored.
Change details since Primstar-2-dev-125:
NEW: Name Sculpty during creation (also gives initial name to sculptmap)
NEW: Rename Sculptmaps during Bake (renames map to object name if enabled)
NEW: UVTex now optional on creation
NEW: Image – Import as Sculpty added
ENHANCEMENT: Improved UV mapping for sculptify
ENHANCEMENT: Sculptify now resizes the image to the smallest possible size (if needed)
NEW: Added GUI for LLSD exports (not functional yet!)
We found that since 2 days we got about 200 new registrations per day where our average count was 5 per day. So we have disbaled registration for now until it is clear what is going on. apologize for any inconvenience.
I am about to restart working on mesh tutorials. Here is the chance to direct me to the most wanted themes. Please vote up to 3 themes in the following Poll. And thanks a lot for your feedback.
So you have been working with sculpted prims for a while,
but still wonder why your methods sometimes work and sometimes fail ?
You wonder what is right and what is wrong about all of this ?
In this tutorial i want to let you look behind the curtains
and explain what a sculpt-map really is and how it works in detail
and what you actualy can do with sculpted prims
and what you can never do with them:
We have packed 2 new Jass-releases with fixes for some annoying bugs and some small enhancements.
If you have purchased Jass-Pro or Jass-magic or Primstar-2 then you will find the update ready for
download from your personal Inventory-Page
If you lost your Inventory Link, then you can retrieve it from the Jass-Shop. Locate the small
Octopus in the middle of the Shop. Click on it and it will help you.
Change History:
Jass-Pro-2.3.10 and Jass-Magic-1.1.3 (26-may-2011):
ENHANCED: Log output now less verbose
FIXED: LSL Export: image file names sometimes incompatible with SL-importer
FIXED: The Checktool for duplicate usage of Sculptmaps sometimes did not check
ENHANCED: LSL Export now checks that part sizes are in range [0.01 cm, 10 meter]
Note: If your parts are too far away, this may still cause issues with the generator-script!
If you have purchased Primstar-2 then the new release is located in your Jass-inventory.
If you want to purchase, then follow the description of the Primstar-2 Early Adopters
Program on the Primstar-2 home page. Look for Primstar-2-dev-125.zip
Change details:
NEW: Sculptify Objects
NEW: Auto recreate of lost images
IMPROVED: Cone Shape (first iplementation was too limited)
IMPROVED: No reset Origin when Mirror Modifier is used.
FIX: Accuracy issues with “non snapped to pixel” UV-Layouts (found after rotating UV-map)
FIX: Accuracy issues at U,V=1.0 (unexpected vertex shifts near poles)
We have just released Primstar-2-dev-111.
We have mainly completed the creation part of Primstar-2 by now.
Also there have been quite a few tests and reviews within the last 14 days.
So the new release should be stable (while still not yet feature complete)
Here is the list of the new basic shapes:
Bricks (for fractional sculpting)
Cones
Rings
Stars (for christmas)
Steps
All shapes can be interactively modified with various parameters to give you
a huge range of starting points for your sculpting.
If you have purchased Primstar-2 then the new release is located in your Jass-inventory.
If you want to purchase, then follow the description of the Primstar-2 Early Adopters
Program on the Primstar-2 home page. Look for Primstar-2-dev-111.zip
Change details:
NEW: Bricks, Cones, Rings, Stars, Steps
FIX: Wrong Normal calculations on UV shape creation
IMPROVED: Torus X/Z now merged to one creation panel
IMPROVED: Subsurf “Show on cage” enabled (the ghost object disappeared)
IMPROVED: Mirroring
IMPROVED: duplicate image pathes are now handled correctly
(save as images where wrongly cached)
IMPROVED: Precision (change from float to double)
IMPROVED: Version number now correctly displayed as “Primstar-2.dev.111″
in the Addon Modules list (was fixed to 1.2 before)
If you try to install Primstar-2-dev-nnn.zip from a filepath that contains non ascii characters,
then the blender installer will fail (at least on windows).
Workaround:
copy the Primstar-2-dev-nnn.zip for example to c:\tools (1)
Tell the add on installer to install from there
(1): Of course you can choose any directory you like as long as its path only contains ASCII characters
I am not sure when the bug appeared first. But it has been reported on blender-2.57b
We have just released another update for Primstar-2.
If you have already installed Primstar-2, then rush to your downlad link, download
the Primstar-2-dev-90.zip file and install it or update it over the existing add-on. There
is no need to deinstall anything beforehand!
IMPORTANT for windows users:
If you use your standard program folder for installing blender, then please
ensure that you install and update as Administrator!
Otherwise Blender will silently fail to install/update the add-On module.
Here are the fixes and new features for Primstar-2-dev-90:
Primstar-2-dev-90 on blender 2.57a:
FIX: Library sculpts create errors during bake.
IMPROVED: INSTALL.txt now contains quick update instructions
Important: When you install/update Primstar-2, please make sure that you have read the
Installation Manual and you have seen the installation Video. That will save you some time.
We have just released an update for Primstar-2. It is not necessary to also update to blender-2.57a
but recommended because a few nasty bugs have been resolved there.
If you have allready upgraded to Primstar-2, then rush to your downlad link, download
the Primstar-2-dev-89.zip file and take care to watch the Installation&Update Video
BEFORE you install/update. It takes you 3 minutes to watch it, but it may save you Hours.
If you are on Wiondows, ensure that you install and update as Administrator (only needed, if you
used the program folder as installation folder for blender-2.57)!
Here are the fixes and new features for Primstar-2-dev-89:
Primstar-2-dev-89 on blender 2.57a:
IMPROVED: Changed icons for some UV Shapes to improve visual clues.
You can vote for custom icons in Blender so we can make them better still!
NEW: Rasterize (grid_align)
FIX: Minimum number of allowed Faces during Creation checked
NEW: Baking in edit mode
IMPROVED: Baker shows incomplete Sculpties
NEW: Bake Sculpt Maps now remembers previous settings when recalled (saved in blend)
NEW: Prepared for Hotkey support
CHANGE: Keep Center -> Reset Origin
NEW: Allow stitching type to be changed on imports (may fix SculptStudio issues)
NEW: Library sculpts added.Attention, currently broken!!!
NEW: Ring and Cone Shape
NEW: Steps Shape With or without flattened Ends
FIX: Edge Loop deselect (blenderbug)
Important: When you instal/update Primstar-2, please make sure that you have read the
Installation Manual and you have seen the installation Video. That will save you some time.
We have prepared our Blog for multi-language support. We will continue to create all new documents in english language and we have already started to translate documents to german language. Currently we only plan to support multiple language support for Primstar-2. The decision to provide all our content in multi language will be taken in a few weeks depending on how it works for the Primstar-2 subset.
If you are interested in helping us to translate the Primstar-2 documentation into other languages, then please call us for more infos.
Our first goal is to fully cover following languages:
English (always the base document from where to translate)
It is also very important that you do never change the pages directly by just editing them out of the viewer (“Edit Page” button) . Please always go to the “Translation Interface” in the admin section first. From there edit the document you want to change. If you are unsure, then …
Please watch the new translation video . If possible please take 3 minutes to check the new way to proceed.
Important: The translation tool maintains the links automatically. If you change them, the tool gets totally confused. To fix this problem once and forever (hopefully) please check that your translations contain only absolute links (use HTML mode to see them) and always insert links to the english document (master document). Only then the translation tool knows what to do!
Right now it is almost impossible to resign in a clean way from a translation job. So once assigned to a document you will keep responsible for it. We still try to find a way how to get this sorted out. We have sent a feature request to the software creators. They promised to add that feature
Since today the preliminary development release of primstar-2 is available. You can get it from the Jass-Shop in Second Life. More infos see on the Primstar-2 page.
Primstar-2′s sculptie features are almost complete! We are planning an early adopters program that’s installable on the official blender-2.57 Release. Of course this only has a small subset of the full features of Primstar-2 but is certainly enough to consider migrating to Blender 2.5.
Currently we have the following features implemented:
U and V rotation on wrapped shapes (shifts the seams)
Support for oblongs (sculptmap ratios n:m)
Import from File (includes all basic shape creations settings)
Two UV Layouts (for sculpt map and texture)
Baker:
Single sculpt map baking (produces optimised and finalised map)
alpha channel preview (improved version)
Additional sculptie features we are currently working on (available when done):
Support for tiny sculpts (color range settings)
Multi object bakes (with optimised and aligned options)
Keep center (for both single and multi object bakes)
Build import and export (multi prim import and export)
We also have planned to support the creation, import and export of mixed builds, which may contain full textured regular prims and sculpted prims. The details about how mixed builds can be imported to Second Life (or other compatible environments) are not yet fixed.
We are aiming to be ready to release the feature complete version against Blender 2.60 but please understand that we can not yet guarantee that. We are to some degree dependant on the Blender Foundation to implement required features in Blender and until those are done, not everything we have planned can be implemented.
Primstar-2 Early Adopters Program
Shortly after the availability of Blender-2.57 we will offer access to the development version of Primstar-2. This development version is by no means feature complete and it will be given to you at your own risk and with minimal support. Nevertheless you may report problems and suggestions and we will be all ears.
The development release will be available from the JASS-Shop in Second Life. You will get a permanent Link to the software. You will find all future updates of the development release under that link and the final release will be handed out as soon as it is available.
The following is included with the early adopters program:
Get primstar-2 development release shortly after availability of blender-2.57
Get primstar-2 final release when ready
Get Jass-Magic for free now (needs blender-2.49b)
Get all upcoming Primstar-2 related basic Jass-training tutorials for download in HDI quality.
Buying now will directly support the development and documentation work!
Pricing for Early Adopters Program
Get 1000 L$ discount on final price(*):
New customer (6000 L$)
Jass-Pro customer (4000 L$) upgrade fee
Jass-Magic customer (2000 L$) upgrade fee
This offer will end one month before Primstar-2 will be officially released.
(*): The final price for Primstar-2 will be 7000 L$
Hello.
Here is a first “production” video tutorial which shows that we now have a fully working prototype of Primstar-2 for blender-2.5. This is still not at all ready for production. Too many details are yet missing. We also needed to do create a modified blender build to get Primstar-2 working on Windows.
The video below is rendered for Web-quality. But you can download the HDI-version of the video. (right click -> save as ):
