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:

The full transcription is on the Page Basics of Sculpted Prims

Hello, Jassers …

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!

Enjoy,

Gaia

We have just released Primstar-2-dev-125.

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)

Enjoy!

Gaia + Domino

No Comment …

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)
• IMPROVED: Documentation of the Basci shapes.

Enjoy!

Gaia + Domino

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:

1. copy the Primstar-2-dev-nnn.zip for example to c:\tools (1)
2. 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 not yet purchased, then rush to the JASS-Shop in Second Life and upgrade 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.

Hello, all;

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)
• German (Gabriele Drechsler,  Almut Brunswick )
• French (Erasme Beck)
• Italian (SLB Wirefly, Sarabell Jansma)
• Spanish (Aki GoldenRiver)
• Portuguese (Vulture Bravin – portugal, Dandara Swords – brazil)
• Polish (Identity Euler)

If you are interested, then please contact me:

• via SL IM (Gaia Clary)
• email  gaia.clary@machinimatrix.org

Notes for editors

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

Cheers,
Gaia

Hi.

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.

Enjoy

Gaia & Domino

Primstar-2 Status

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:

Sculptie Creation:

• Basic shapes creation (plane,cylinder,sphere,torus,hemi)
• 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 ):

Have fun,
Gaia &
Domino

We have created a bundle of videos containing the Blender Primer and the 4 basic Sculptie Tutorials for download in High Quality. You can get the Download-link from the Jass-Shop. (Or look for “Jass Shop” in SL search) Instead of streaming the videos and wasting your bandwidth you now can grab all 5 basic videos once and watch them in full HDI quality whenever you like.

1. The Blender Primer ( 18:09 minutes)
2. Sculpted Prims I (11:57 minutes)
3. Sculpted Prims II (12:54 minutes)
4. Sculpted Prims III (21:36 minutes)
5. Sculpted Prims IV (41:01 minutes)

All videos are delivered in HDI-quality. Please prepare for 500 MBytes of Download volume. Download has been tested with Firefox and IE8.

Enjoy
The Machinimatrix Team

What’s up ?

• 48 Go Green 2011 is an international film contest
• Goal was: Create a short film about a given eco-theme within 48 hours
• This year’s result: 320 entries, 2 Machinimas made in SL
• The 5 best films go to Cannes film festival (That is BIG!)
• Voting was public.
• We made: “O2″ in Category “Save the planet”. Here is our video:

Thanks again for every single vote of 1800 people who came to watch our film during the competition!

Have fun!
Gaia (for the Machinimatrix Team)

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If you see unexpected gap in your sculptie after import into Blender, then this Tutorial is for you: more …

All our products have now been migrated to Primstar-1.1. Please feel free to grab your personal copy from our Shop in Second Life (access information see below). We appreciate any donation for our free offers. All donations will be entirely used for supporting the Primstar-2 development for Blender-2.5. Below you find a short description about what you can expect to find in the new releases. Please also take a look at our Feature matrix for a more detailed comparison of the 4 products.

Cheers,
Gaia and Domino

Primstar-1.1.0

Primstar-1.1.0 is now available from our Shop in Second Life (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Jass/145/193/25 ) The Primstar-1.1.0 distribution contains the newest version of Domino’s scripts.

IMPORTANT: Only use this distribution if you have installed Primstar-1.0.0 scripts and know exactly what you do! jass users please keep with the jass product line!

This distribution will most probably be the final primstar-1 release for blender-2.49b. Further development of Primstar-1 has been stopped in favor of  Primstar-2 (see above) . Following fixes have been applied since Primstar-1.0.0:

• Fix for Ubuntu import of uv_calc stuff
• Debian fix for import_sculptie
• Accuracy fixes for baking sculpt maps
• Fix for display-failures of images after bake (Backport from Jass-Pro)
• Fix for Mac focus issues (Backport from Jass-Pro)
• Code compliance fixes
• Fix persistence settings for RGB range values (Backport from Jass-Magic)
• performance Optimizations in Baker
• Fix for transferring alpha from image to image (Backport from Jass-Magic)

Jass-Pub-2.3.8

Jass-2.3.8 is now available from our Shop in Second Life (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Jass/145/193/25 ) Jass-Pub-2.3.8 is a replacement build for the previous jass-2.3.6-pub release. This jass-product is built on an unmodified version of Primstar-1.1.0 and it will also be the final public Jass-release for blender-2.49b.

No further development is planned for the jass-pub product. Further development of  jass-pub has been stopped in favor of  Primstar-2 (see above). The jass-pub-2.3.8 provides in detail:

• Fully based on Primstar-1.1.0
• Installer for Windows
• Blender-2.49b included for Windows and MAC
• Python-2.6.5 included for Windows
• Prepackaged tgz file for MAC for direct usage after unpacking
• MAC version now fully equivalent to the Windows Version

Jass-Pro-2.3.8

Jass-Pro-2.3.8 is now available from our Shop in Second Life (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Jass/145/193/25 ) Jass-Pro-2.3.8 is a replacement build for the previous jass-2.3.6-pro release. This jass-product is built on an modified version of Primstar-1.1.0

Jass-Pro provides in detail:

• Fully based on Jass-Pub-2.3.8
• GridAlign Tool
• Quick Bake (ALT-r in edit mode)
• Optimized Bake tool for multi part bakes
• Jass-Library of sculpts
• Hardcoded fix for issue with scaling of Mesh exports (Collada)
• Sculpties are now embedded into the .blend-file
• Alpha mask support also in LSL Export

Jass-Magic-1.1

Jass-Magic-1.1 is now available from our Shop in Second Life (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Jass/145/193/25 ) Jass-Magic-1.1 is a replacement build for the previous jass-Magic-1.0 release. This jass-product is built on an modified version of Primstar-1.1.0

Jass-Pro provides in detail:

• Fully based on Jass-Pro-2.3.8
• Automatic Error detection tool
• Automatic Error fixing tool
• Multi part previewer
• Jass-Library of Meshes (contains 2 avatar meshes and the SL-Armature)

Today (30-January-2011) Domino Designs and The Machinimatrix agreed on a partnership to create Primstar-2, a content creation toolset for Second Life and similar online worlds.

Primstar-2 will be based on blender 2-5 (or newer) and contain tools for creating sculpted prims, regular prims and meshes. We are also aiming to merge all features of the currently available jass-2 products into Primstar-2.

Domino Marama from Domino Designs will be mainly responsible for developing and maintaining the Primstar-2 software. Gaia Clary and The Machinimatrix team will be testing, creating documentation, producing tutorials and handling the sales.

The development of Primstar-2 will be funded by the sales of Jass-2 products and by your donations. The point of sales will be the Jass-Shop in Secondlife (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Jass/145/193/25 )

Upgrade options from Jass-Pro and Jass-Magic to Primstar-2 will be available. We will shortly setup very attractive early bird offers for Primstar-2. The maintenance of all jass-products and the development of Jass-Magic will continue as planned.

We are sure that our partnership will be very productive and beneficial for all 3D-content creators. Please spread the word!

Wishing you all the best from
Gaia and Domino

Hi, all;

When i started to test Jass-Magic for the first time on a multi part project with 17 sculpties (the dragon fly from the Jass-Magic-Video ), i was totally fascinated from watching the new baker checking here for mirrored objects, there finding out inside out problems on the fly, keeping the objects in place and reporting me 13 automatically applied fixes at the end of the “Render -> Quick Bake Sculpt Meshes…”:

Yes it was a bit slower, maybe 30% so the bake took about 7 seconds with jass-magic compared to 5 seconds when using jass-pub… But it saved me half a day of fixing. And when i tried the same bake with plain old Jass-Pub (primstar) i found that part of the dragonfly jumped to another location after baking:

After bake with Jass-Pub

After bake with Jass-magic

Then after baking the project it was a one click to “Object -> Scripts -> Preview Selection as sculpties” (and 1 second to wait) to reimport the entire arrangement of 17 sculpties to blender and see how your bake result will look like in Second Life):

And when i remembered that i have to do a whole lot(!) of clicks to import the entire set to blender to preview it as sculpties and rearrange all of them manually … That alone saves me a lot of time.  So after working with the beta tool for a couple of days i decided, it deserved a nicer name and “Jass-Magic” was born.

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