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Designing for Second Life - Where to Start?


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I've been in Second Life for over ten years. Social interaction is what first drew me to the platform. Soon after joining, I discovered the joys of in-world building using prims. I eventually transitioned to sculpted prims. Then Mesh came along. I was intrigued, but Blender was and is the only application I have access to because it's cheap....free in fact.

Blender always seemed to have a steep learning curve, which is why I resisted ever using it. However, about six months ago, I purchased a couple of Blender courses from Udemy and am feeling much more confident in the program.

But now I'm facing a dilemma. There's still a vast amount I need to learn about Blender to create things like avatars, hair, and accessories for avatars, buildings and accessories, and other types of objects. Right now, I'm not so interested in avatar-related design. I'm more into architecture and inanimate objects. So, I believe that's where my direction lies within Blender.

I know I have a lot more to learn to create those kinds of things for SL but am feeling overwhelmed by the vast amount of available Blender information. I want to continue learning. I know that concepts learned while creating an avatar might be useful in the creation of buildings, and vice-versa. But I want to maximize my education and have it proceed according to the types of objects I'm interested in creating. 

I'm posting this in hopes that others might have once felt the same and/or can share their experience with learning Blender for creating objects within Second Life. And, how to maximize that education.

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On 4/24/2018 at 5:49 PM, Gordon Nadezda said:

I've been in Second Life for over ten years. Social interaction is what first drew me to the platform. Soon after joining, I discovered the joys of in-world building using prims. I eventually transitioned to sculpted prims. Then Mesh came along. I was intrigued, but Blender was and is the only application I have access to because it's cheap....free in fact.

Blender always seemed to have a steep learning curve, which is why I resisted ever using it. However, about six months ago, I purchased a couple of Blender courses from Udemy and am feeling much more confident in the program.

But now I'm facing a dilemma. There's still a vast amount I need to learn about Blender to create things like avatars, hair, and accessories for avatars, buildings and accessories, and other types of objects. Right now, I'm not so interested in avatar-related design. I'm more into architecture and inanimate objects. So, I believe that's where my direction lies within Blender.

I know I have a lot more to learn to create those kinds of things for SL but am feeling overwhelmed by the vast amount of available Blender information. I want to continue learning. I know that concepts learned while creating an avatar might be useful in the creation of buildings, and vice-versa. But I want to maximize my education and have it proceed according to the types of objects I'm interested in creating. 

I'm posting this in hopes that others might have once felt the same and/or can share their experience with learning Blender for creating objects within Second Life. And, how to maximize that education.

Well, I was in your position a year or so ago.  What I did, and what I recommend is that you decide to make something, it doesn't really matter what, say choose a photo of a nice house in RL and choose to make a blender model of it.  You could start by following any old tutorial that shows you how to make a house.  If it is not an SL or Game Asset tutorial it will almost certainly use horrid things like subsurf modifiers, but just ignore that.  Then see if you can import your model to SL.  You will not end up with a good SL model, but you will whistle up the learning curve.  Doing it, is so much more effective than reading how to do it.

Come and ask questions in the Mesh forum, after you have something you have tried to make.

I also think it's worth following these tutorials from Chic Aeon.  They are only for simple objects, but she is cute and touches all the right buttons.  Don't just watch the vids!

http://www.slartist.com/browse-ca-videos-1-date.html

 

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3 hours ago, anna2358 said:

If it is not an SL or Game Asset tutorial it will almost certainly use horrid things like subsurf modifiers, but just ignore that. 

Rendered objects using the 'subsurf' modifier look fantastic in Blender, but it doesn't result in an efficient SL object. Yet, this particular modifier is featured heavily in many tutorials; it's what alerted me to a problem with such tutorials. Unfortunately, on YouTube, there aren't a lot of tutorials for Blender that are geared toward production for SL. 

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18 hours ago, Gordon Nadezda said:

Rendered objects using the 'subsurf' modifier look fantastic in Blender, but it doesn't result in an efficient SL object. Yet, this particular modifier is featured heavily in many tutorials; it's what alerted me to a problem with such tutorials. Unfortunately, on YouTube, there aren't a lot of tutorials for Blender that are geared toward production for SL. 

Well, there is a very good way of using the dreaded subsurf modifier in blender to give an excellent low poly result in SL.  You use a high poly model to bake it's texture onto a low poly model.  This way the actual number of vertexes imported is low, but the texture applied the faces contains the details from the high poly.

The tutorials on the Anvil from Blender Guru (easy search in You-tube) explain this in extreme detail, although in his case it is low poly to reduce scene render times in animation - but the results are similar.

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On 4/26/2018 at 3:50 AM, anna2358 said:

I also think it's worth following these tutorials from Chic Aeon.  They are only for simple objects, but she is cute and touches all the right buttons.  Don't just watch the vids!

http://www.slartist.com/browse-ca-videos-1-date.html

I have absolutely enjoyed Chic's tutorials. I only wish there were more, but that probably sounds ungrateful. 

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