Workflow for texturing in Blender and import to SL

[Anna Nova]

I know how to make something in Blender. I know how to make a UV Map, and manipulate it to get something I can export and paint. I know how to import the texture I made into SL and apply it to faces I put on the mesh in Blender.  I even know how to upload the texture into Blender, and bake it onto the mesh in Cycles using nodes and the lighting and camera to get the results I want.

But what I can't find is how to export a collada (.dae) from Blender with the baked texture on (in?) it, so that the texture is still there when I import it to SL.  The Blender exporter says it can include textures (I tick the box), and the SL Importer (Firestorm for me) has a tick box for 'include textures'.  But nothing appears.....

I have spent several happy hours searching these pages, and using duck-duck-go to search the internet, but so far my search terms are not yielding anything useful.

Could some kind soul point me at that workflow please?  I'm using Blender 2.78a and Cycles, and I'm making architectural items, not clothes.

[arton Rotaru]

I don't use Blender, but I gave it a quick try. I assigned a Material to the selection. Added a texture from my harddrive. Export > Collada > Operator Preset > SL + OpenSim Static. Ckecked Include Material Textures.

Imported with the texture applied on the object.

However, since the 10 L$ for the included texture are paid each time you appload an iteration of the mesh, and appling a texture manually in-world isn't that big of a deal either, I seldom (actually never) upload a mesh with the texture applied. It's also the diffuse map only, normal and specular maps aren't included, and have to be uploaded and applied separately anyway.

[Anna Nova]

Thanks for trying to help.  I've come to the same conclusion - the flexibility of keeping the upload separate is valuable.

 

[arton Rotaru]

Actually I did a few more tests yesterday, out of curiosity (and it doesn't hurt to get more familiar with Blender either ). The object I imported with the texture was under Blender Render. With the Cycles Renderer it didn't work for me either. And then Blender quickly annoyed me to death, with it's freakin data block behavior. It exported previous selected textures instead of the one I had chosen. It jangled my nerves rather quickly and I closed it down for good.

Perhaps some of the Blender Gurus might have an idea?

Until then, uploading textures separately is what we all primarily do.

[KatyProxima]

I'm able to upload mesh incl. textures to SL when I assign each baked texture directly to the surface uv map in the UV Editor.

The real problem appears when you have multiple objects using the same material (e.g you have multiple walls using the same bricks mat.). Then, even though you assign all baked textures and they are displayed correctly in Blender textured viewport, the Collada exporter just assigns one texture to all objects after export.

I have just reported this as a bug here https://developer.blender.org/T51259

[KatyProxima]

Finally, I've created my own python based Collada exporter for Blender that fixes both issues https://developer.blender.org/T51288 and https://developer.blender.org/T51259

It enables me to export static mesh objects from Blender including all baked textures assigned to the active UV layers, exactly how they are visible in the Blender textured viewport. And then, I can upload my build directly to Second Life without the need to apply textures manually, which is a nice time saver.

Only minor drawback is the need for pycollada module that is not a part of official Blender, so must be installed into Blender's folder (eg. Blender/2.78/scripts/modules)

I put my script here: https://github.com/meshlogic/blender-addons/tree/master/collada-exporter-sl

[Love Zhaoying]

23 minutes ago, KatyProxima said:

 

Finally, I've created my own python based Collada exporter for Blender that fixes both issues https://developer.blender.org/T51288 and https://developer.blender.org/T51259

It enables me to export static mesh objects from Blender including all baked textures assigned to the active UV layers, exactly how they are visible in the Blender textured viewport. And then, I can upload my build directly to Second Life without the need to apply textures manually, which is a nice time saver.

Only minor drawback is the need for pycollada module that is not a part of official Blender, so must be installed into Blender's folder (eg. Blender/2.78/scripts/modules)

I put my script here: https://github.com/meshlogic/blender-addons/tree/master/collada-exporter-sl

 

This sounds like a big accomplishment, I hope many adopt your changes and give you feedback. While I am not a mesh creator, I follow the posts to learn and it seems like you have created a way to skip a few steps. Congratulations!