A little help for a new builder?

[shadow Tyne]

I've only managed to build something once. I made a dragon head that wound up being 30 prims. It gave you a cookie with you touched it. :D It was very simple and a little ugly made comepletly with SL basic prims.

The current model I'm trying to make is a horse that will shift it's limbs, bob it's head, and flick it's tail. I've seen one way where it has all it's limbs attached but some are invisible?

Now I want to make something a little more complex. Figuring my prevous success in a CAD program through a class would give me a good enough start I could start making sculpted prims. So a trip to the internet and I now have two programs. One is Blender 2.5a for 64 bit Windows. The second is I guess one made specially for easy building for games. Called Curvey 3D.

Next I tried looking at other 3D models to see what they did. I see the polygon one (I think thats what it's called) and I started with Curvy 3D. The problems I've encountered so far.

My lines aren't steady enough. There is no button for a straight line maker? The wiggly lines are making divits in the prims. The instant rotation is a little annoying. Is there a way to toggle that off? Where is the straight line tool? Dx

Suddenly went from 'auto rotate' to making a cylinder around the line I draw. What?

Doing from front view or perspective view when I add a face to attach to the side view it is made like.. Worlds away from the actual face. Can't seem to move it. Ugh.

At this point my patience runs out and I swtich to Blender. I checked a youtube video for 'how to' and this guy took a picture and like.. Traced it and then the modle became 3D when he started adding faces. That looks like a good way, so I find a tutorial and try to follow it, but it doesn't work. Problems I have aarre

I can't rez any base objects. Where is the scew and uh.. morph.. I can draw but it doesn't do anything.

So many buttons. X_X I have no idea what any of them does. Am I missing a special version? Why can't I do what that guy did? All the Tuts I find seem to be outdated. From here I can't do anything because I can't make anything and I've been screwing with the buttons and nothign is productive.

 

So... Anyone think they can help me? At this point I'm about ready to pull out my hair. Online tutorials are proving to be either outdated or complex and hard to understand.

 

[Rolig Loon]

Well, for a start, that's a very hard way to make sculpted prims.  Sculpties are like origami.  You have a sheet with a fixed number of vertices and you fold and stretch it to make whatever shape you want.  You can't add or remove vertices/faces.  You can certainly use Blender to do that, but the easiest way is to download JASS-2 (which lincludes Blender, Python, and the plugins to make Blender generate sculpties for use in SL) and use it. You'll find everything you want, including a whole mess of tutorials, at http://blog.machinimatrix.org/jass/ .  Just start wandering around in the web site to find it all.

On the other hand, if you are not truly interested in sculpties but in making 3D mesh objects that you can import as Collada (dae) files, pop over to the Mesh forum and start lurking in their conversations. Mesh is coming to the main grid one of these days. It may be better suited to your project than sculpties are.

[shadow Tyne]

I guess I'm really not sure exactly what I want to make. I know I want an object, and I know I want it to move and such, I just don't know how to get there.

Do you think that Meshes or Sculpties would be a better way to get that? I'll try Jass and see what I can do with that.

[Rolig Loon]

Whatever you decide, I'd suggest starting small.   Large goals are great; baby steps are best for learning.  :smileywink:

[shadow Tyne]

Heh, yeah. Maybe get a square that moves around first. Thank you for your help! ^^ With anyluck my invention will one day be all the rage in SL.

[hibit Spad]

Hello Shadow,

 

 

First off The video tutorial you wre watching,  was it for blender 2.5 or was it for blender 2.49?   There are alot of tutorials out there for the older Blender and you have to be careful you dont grab the wrong ones.

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Blender#External_links

has a listing of good places for tutorials.

 

Also somethign to be aware of is that learnign to use Blender and learning to make Sculpts is not the same thing.As was already mentioned making sculpts requires some special techniques inside of Blender. 

 

Start with the tutorial list, and search out the blender groups in SL.  Also there are two groups that offer inworld training on how to use blender.  Blender probably has more resources for learning how to use it then most other programs out there.  Some people say that is because Blender will do more. 

[Jaylin Wytchwood]

For animating, i suggest you look at "Puppeteer" at Marketplace.