New steps... Skins!

After a small little venture into sculpted prims, my next venture is into making skins. I have already made my first skin, and I will continue to make a few more before I present them to everyone through this blog. It was lot more challenging than I thought, especially since I don't know how to use GIMP well enough. If only GIMP has some automapping function that allows me to set specific anchor points on a photo, then shift those anchor points around to distort the photo to fit onto the UV map...

First Sculptie

I made my first sculpted prim. And have a problem.

As you can see here, this is actually a katana, made from a 16x15 sphere. I made it using Blender, exported to the OBJ file, opened the OBJ file with Wings3D, and exported it from there to a sculpted texture for use in SecondLife. I also used UVMapper to create a UV map of the prim, and used it as a template to draw a test texture for the sculpted prim. As you can see, the texture did turn out quite well.

The problem is the sculpted prim itself. The original object in Blender looks like a katana. The OBJ imported into Wings3D looks like a katana. But once it has been exported as a sculpted texture, and uploaded into SecondLife, it just doesn't retain the original shape. I wonder if anyone knows why. The tip of the sword is distorted. And so is the hilt guard. While the hilt guard should be a flat disc (and looks so in Blender and Wings3D), it is distorted when uploaded. The blade should be slightly curved with a sharp tip, but it ended up being distorted too. I guess it has to do with exporting to a sculpted texture. I tried the tutorials on baking textures in Blender, but they came up with flattened shapes as well as weird protrusions.

Anyone knows what to do?

Sculpted?

The recent craze in SecondLife seems to be sculpted prims. After all, what used to require lots of prims and even more prim torturing can now be accomplished with ONE single prim. But then, unless you have experience working with 3D software, it may be easier to stick with simple prims, rather than try to make the same thing out of a sculpted prim.

Just what are sculpted prims? Basically, instead of the standard cubes and spheres, sculpted prims loads in a texture map that you create. If you make a texture map of your avatar (using the OBJ files that SecondLife provides for free on their download page), you can even make a sculpted prim of yourself (or at least, the basic avatar in SecondLife). With a bit of imagination, you can even make a 3D mannequin out of sculpted prims! But that is a challenge best left for the experienced 3D artist.

With no prior knowledge of 3D programs, I am still finding my way around with regards to sculpted prims. My first creation should be a simple katana, which is currently what I am trying to do. I am using Blender, though it is VERY hard to use. But once you get used to it, things get slightly better. Wings3D seems like a simple enough program to use too, but while it looks like a simple program, the interface is not easy to get used to. And if you are thinking about creating textures to use on your sculpted prims, you will probably need UVMapper to create a texture template of your sculpted prim, so that you can use it to paint a texture using your favourite paint program (GIMP, Photoshop, Paint, etc.)

Watch out for my first sculpted prim!

RL vs SL: 1-0

Wow, Real Life really does wonders. I have been busy of late, and have not had time to do any designing, so for those of you out there looking for additions to my creations, sorry! It will be a bit more time before I can find time to come up with something. However, I did do up a simple T-shirt design, for use as freebies/free gifts to hand out. Once I have some time, I will put it up in my stores in-world, you can go there and get a copy for yourself. Meanwhile, do look through my previous creations and who knows, you may just find something that you might have missed out in the past.