Blender 2.8 to SL workflow

[Rale Snowpaw]

Hello everyone.  I have been using Blender 2.79 for a couple of years now.  My basic workflow to SL is as follows, Model and save, then scale the creation to a useful in world scale.  Then I unwrap, the model as best I can, and try to ensure that it will take a texture without too much stretching.Then I will save a UV image map.  Then I will go into materials, and assign my faces with colors, so I can apply different textures to different faces in second life.  Lastly, using "blender render", I bake the file, and then export it to second life.  I have been trying  to use blender 2.82 lately to learn to use it.  Modeling using 2.8 actually seems smoother.  But after modeling, I am kind of lost.  They took away my "blender render" and I don't even know how to bake anymore.  I have used cycles render before to make a photo or picture.. but can someone help me with the work flow for 2.8 to second life?  Must I use "cycles render"  Can someone give me the work flow steps after modeling with 2.8 to get my mesh into second life and be able to texture it properly?

 

[ChinRey]

28 minutes ago, Rale Snowpaw said:

...

Then I unwrap, the model as best I can, and try to ensure that it will take a texture without too much stretching.Then I will save a UV image map.  Then I will go into materials, and assign my faces with colors, so I can apply different textures to different faces in second life.

...

I feel bad about saying this since it doesn't answer your question but that is not the way you do it! Not unless you use texture repeats inworld to "dial up" different parts of the UV map for different textures that is. You need to fill up the UV map for each texture as much as possible so: first assign materials, then UV map each of them separately!

As for your question, I get the impression you prefer to still use Blender render and if that is the case, why not simply stick to 2.79?

[Extrude Ragu]

8 hours ago, Rale Snowpaw said:

Hello everyone.  I have been using Blender 2.79 for a couple of years now.  My basic workflow to SL is as follows, Model and save, then scale the creation to a useful in world scale.  Then I unwrap, the model as best I can, and try to ensure that it will take a texture without too much stretching.Then I will save a UV image map.  Then I will go into materials, and assign my faces with colors, so I can apply different textures to different faces in second life.  Lastly, using "blender render", I bake the file, and then export it to second life.  I have been trying  to use blender 2.82 lately to learn to use it.  Modeling using 2.8 actually seems smoother.  But after modeling, I am kind of lost.  They took away my "blender render" and I don't even know how to bake anymore.  I have used cycles render before to make a photo or picture.. but can someone help me with the work flow for 2.8 to second life?  Must I use "cycles render"  Can someone give me the work flow steps after modeling with 2.8 to get my mesh into second life and be able to texture it properly?

 

 

Typing from memory:

Create a new material in 2.8 and assign it to faces the normal way.

Underneath, under base color you got a color and a dot on the right. Click the dot, select 'image texture', new image texture. That'll be the texture you're gonna bake too. 

Head over to render tab. If it's set to evee set it back to cycles. You should now see the Bake section where you can bake ao etc as before. 

[Rale Snowpaw]

Thank you both for your replies.  I understand I may not be doing it "right".  Blender was hard for me to learn, with few people willing to even say the words "second life".  I am not even sure what a "texture repeat" is, but handling the materials the way I do in 2.79 allows me to assign different faces, up to eight,  to the object I have created.  So, when I bring the object into second life, I simply choose "faces" in the edit mode, and apply my textures to those faces.  The reason I don't want to stick with 2.79 is I will continue to fall further and further behind the power curve.  Most tutorials already are for 2.8 and above.  lol, but I am not surprised to find I have been doing it wrong all this time.  I do thank you for your help and advise.

Extrude Ragu  Thank you so much.  I will create something simple with 2.82 today, and try to follow your steps.  I really appreciate it.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

A word of warning on the whole baking process. Far too many creators turn their brain off and bake everything, which leads to hillariously bad texture memory situations, like 300+ Mb of texture for a house that would use 5-10% of that without baking.

[Rale Snowpaw]

Guilty as charged, Your Honor!  Tbh, I have never really understood what I am in fact baking, or why for that matter.  I have just learned, perhaps erroneously, that before you can bring an object into second life, and have it texturable, you  have to bake it.  It is not that I am turning off my brain, but I have never had anyone explain it to me, or even broach the subject.  If there are links explaining these concepts of how to properly bring our models into second life, I would dearly love to read them.  I have no formal education in computer science, graphics, or animation.  I am just trying to bring things  into second life, that reflect my best effort. 

If I don't bake a part of my mesh creation, won't that prevent me from texturing it?  And, I do appreciate your comments, even if I have to admit I don't fully understand them.

Edited May 1, 2020 by Rale Snowpaw
addition of comments

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

1 hour ago, Rale Snowpaw said:

If I don't bake a part of my mesh creation, won't that prevent me from texturing it?  And, I do appreciate your comments, even if I have to admit I don't fully understand them.

It's unwrapping, not baking, which is needed to make a mesh textureable inworld. Baking turns all of the appearance bits (like colours, shadows, lighting, etc) in Blender into a 2d texture useable outside of Blender.

The UV images you're saving are useful for alignment and placing if you prefer to make your textures outside of Blender in software like Photoshop or GIMP. It doesn't sound like you're doing that, but it is another option. I prefer it as it gives me more control for fine-tuning. Which approach is best depends in part on what it is you're making.

Texture repeats is just changing the number of times a texture shows on a prim or mesh. The default is 1 but can be changed to anything. Practice with a rezzed prim inworld if you haven't (Edit, Textures tab, Repeats Horizontal and Vertical). They can be very useful and greatly reduce the amount of texture memory needed.

It's all confusing and there's a lot of jargon to keep straight. Ask questions and we'll do our best to help clarify things.

 

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, Rale Snowpaw said:

Guilty as charged, Your Honor!  Tbh, I have never really understood what I am in fact baking, or why for that matter.  I have just learned, perhaps erroneously, that before you can bring an object into second life, and have it texturable, you  have to bake it.  It is not that I am turning off my brain, but I have never had anyone explain it to me, or even broach the subject.  If there are links explaining these concepts of how to properly bring our models into second life, I would dearly love to read them.  I have no formal education in computer science, graphics, or animation.  I am just trying to bring things  into second life, that reflect my best effort. 

If I don't bake a part of my mesh creation, won't that prevent me from texturing it?  And, I do appreciate your comments, even if I have to admit I don't fully understand them.

You do NOT need to "bake" your texture IF you plan to use regular tiling textures on your object in Second Life.  You only only to UVMAP the item. Defining area on your model and unwrapping lets you apply your textures inworld (which seems to be what you are doing).  

I definitely understand that you want to learn the 2.8 version of Blender and I agree (for you :D).  That being said, I made a full set of tutorials for modeling in Blender for SL and Opensim -- something you don't find often as Blender is used for many many projects and platforms.  Personally it seems like you are learning from videos that have little to do with modeling game assets (what we need for SL) and that can be dangerous as well as time wasting. 

 

So I suggest JUST WATCHING some of my beginning segments of the tutorials to get the idea behind modeling and the steps needed to get items into SL.  Don't try and follow along as the interface is very different and it will -- I suspect -- be confusing for you. But I am guessing that a lot of confusion about what you need to DO (not exactly how to do it) will be answered in those videos. 

Here is the playlist. 

https://www.slartist.com/browse-the-tutorial-chic-videos-1-date.html

You want to start at the beginning and look at the ones with the BLENDER icon on them. They are numbered but backwards like a blog in this list.  I hope that helps some.   

[Rale Snowpaw]

I will look at it all.. Thank you, seriously, thank you.

[Rale Snowpaw]

Bitsy,

I really appreciated and enjoyed your comments.  Most of the textures I use, I buy from the MP.  I do make some using gimp, although  admittedly not very often.  I really like how you've explained things.  I will copy and keep.  Thank you

[Da5id Weatherwax]

some useful bits and pieces for baking textures in blender 2.8 with cycles for use in SL....

• The texture node that is the target of your bake does not need to be connected to anything. It just has to be the active node and have an image assigned.
• The target of your bake does not have to have the same UV mapping as you used for any other images that contribute to the material. Just make sure you get rid of any other UV maps before you export the collada. The one applicable to the bake target must be the only one the model has when you upload it.
  • Note that this is also useful for combining multiple blender materials in to a single SL material. You lay out the "SL UV" as if those multiple materials in blender were a single material, lay out the UV(s) for the contributing blender materials as you see fit. Make the image target for all those blender materials point to the same image and bake with the "clear image" option unchecked. Post bake, you create a new material fed by the textures you just baked, select all the materials you want to combine into it and assign their faces to the new one, then delete the original material slots from the model.