Noob basic Blender question

[Venus Nurmi]

Hi everyone.

Ok, the bad part of teaching yourself a program like Blender is that I have to come here and ask questions like this lol. English is not my native language and I'm still not used to what things are called in Blender, so bear with me.

When you add a mesh in Blender it has this organic feel but in the edit mode you also see this pink thing around it with the control points. This pink thing, whatever it's called, does not have the same shape than the actual object.

I'm making a wing which looks pretty but when I use the UV unwrap/project from view, what I get in the UV window is the shape of the control points pink thingie, making it hard to know where things are gonna end up in the sculpty.

Is there a way to make that pink thing have the same shape than the wing? And also, how's that pink thing called? lol

Thank you so much for your help :)

Noob out!

[Jacki Silverfall]

The pink thing means your in "edit mode" and I don't think there is a way to make it part of the sculpty. They are simply control points like vertices and such.

 ETA you can go to "Object mode" to see how your sculpt is doing. but I know it can be hard to see at times.

Hope I'm correct on this.

[Jacki Silverfall]

http://blog.machinimatrix.org/3d-creation/video-tutorials/sculpties-basic-tutorials/

This is a great place for tutorials. Thought it might help.

[Venus Nurmi]

Hi, thanks for your reply and yeah I watched the great vids at Machi.

I actually don't want the pink thing to be part of the object but to have the same shape so I know better what I'm doing

[Jacki Silverfall]

Maybe there is a way to make it or your sculpt a different color then you could see it better? Hummm. Someone who knows the program better than I will be able to help further. Wish I could be more help to ya.

[Venus Nurmi]

No problem, thanks

I'm sure I saw how to do it on a vid in youtube, but can't find it anymore sigh...

 

[Luc Starsider]

The pink thing is the actual mesh. As Jacki say, you change the shape of the sculptie in edit mode by manipulating the points, edges and faces of the mesh. It sounds like you also have a subsurface modifier on your mesh. The subsurface modifier is showing your mesh as having more faces than it actually does - simply said - and make it appear smoother than it seems from how the mesh itself looks. This is very simply explained, and probably not entirely correct. I don't have a complete grasp on how these things work, and how to explain them correctly. Hopefully this is not to far off.

But I do know that you can get the 'pink thing' to follow the shape of the surface in the way you want it to. Locate the modifiers panel, find the part that looks like the picture, and press in the little circle I marked. Then you should be able to see it the way you want.

ETA. I highly recommend you go through some of the tutorials you find on the site Jacki linked to above. It will teach you the basic about sculpties - what you can and can not do, as well as how to achieve the results you want.

- Luc -

[Venus Nurmi]

*drops on her knees*

OMG Thank you!!!! That is exactly what I was looking for!

Luc, you are my hero! lol

[Luc Starsider]

Oh, I wouldn't know about that...

I also wanted to say - you may know it already - that you cannot uv-unwrap a sculptie or a texture for a sculptie in any way not following the rules. I mention it because you talked about uv projection from view in you OP. The uv-map for a sculptie is, simply put, a flat, square plane that has to stay that way even if you shape and form the model itself. The texture you want to put on the sculptie also have to use the same uv map to display correctly in SL. You can, for the purpose of creating the texture, make a uv map for the texturing task, but to import to SL you have to bake the texture using the same square, flat uv map as you use for the sculptie itself. Again, this may not be explained well or a 100% accurate, but not far off, I hope.

- Luc -

[Venus Nurmi]

Hi, thanks, yeah I was following a Machinimatrix video tutorial and could get my wing in world just as I wanted

And to the last person that replied with the name starting with Q that I can't see cause I'm replying to Luc and don't want to double post (lol): that sounds like a good idea, I'll play with it later.

Thanks a bunch guys!!!!

[Luc Starsider]

That's great, Venus!

As Qwalyphy says, sculpt mode let you shape the model without being in edit mode. Some of the sculpt tools add or delete topology from the model - which can't be done for sculpts - but find tools that don't do this and go nuts!

In a couple of months, though, you will be able to make 'proper' mesh objects for SL. YAY! Then you can use all the tools available in Blender, and have none of the restrictions of sculpts to take into consideration. More info here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh

- Luc -

[Venus Nurmi]

Oh yeah I read something about it, I can't wait. Specially to see what ppl that really know how to create 3D objects come up with!

Now.. care to check my other post about transparent textures in Blender? LOL

[Luc Starsider]

You *can* see what people are doing with mesh already on the beta grid. Info here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh

You can download the latest development viewer for mesh from here: http://automated-builds-secondlife-com.s3.amazonaws.com/hg/repo/mesh-development/rev/232686/index.html

The viewer will log you in on the beta grid automatically. (You can choose the grid from the login screen in any viewer by pressing Ctrl+Shift+G and selecting Aditi from the grid menu. Agni is the main grid) Using that viewer you can also upload mesh models yourself if you want to.

If you log in on the beta grid, search for Mesh Sandbox  and go to one of the ones that comes up. Fly around and see what you can find.

Regarding texturing. I wish I could help you, but I'm really not very good at that. I'm struggling with it myself, and don't think I can help you with that, to be honest. Best leave that one for someone who knows...

- Luc -