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Importing Spore Creatures from a Collada files - how to make them multi-faced


EducatOrc
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I want to import some of my Spore creatures as animals into Second Life, however when I import the Collada file that I exported from the Spore Creature creatur, I can't seem to select individual parts to color or texture, I can only apply color/texture to the whole model.

 

Anyone tried this before?  Any suggestions on how to make the model multi-faced so I select different areas to color?

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Sounds like the model has only one material on it.  In order to assign different textures to different sections, each section must have its own unique material.  SL supports up to eight materials per model.

So you know, you can't create or assign new materials to models from inside SL.  You have to do it in your 3D modeling software, before you bring the model inworld.  I've never used the Spore Creature Creator, so I have no idea what options it might have, in this regard.  My guess is it probably doesn't give you much freedom.  Generally speaking, automated toys like this don't tend to offer the user control over fundamental 3D model properties, like material assignments, UV layouts, or even topology.  They just mix and match pre-made parts, to auto-generate a whole.  They're not true creation tools.

Do look into it, though, of course.  It's possible I'm wrong about this particular program.  As I said, I've never used it.

If it turns out that the program is not capable of granting you the requisite level of control, which I strongly suspect will be the case, then you'll need to bring the model into a better program, like Blender, or Maya, or Max, or any other full featured 3D modeling platform.  Make the appropriate changes there, and then export a new COLLADA file.

Or better yet, make your creatures from scratch, directly in one of those programs.  From glancing at a bunch of screenshots of Spore Creature Creator, and seeing some of the creatures it produces, there's nothing going on in there that couldn't be done very, very quickly in any full featured modeling program.

My advice: Ditch the toy, and learn to do real 3D modeling, in a fully capable program.

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Chosen Few wrote:

My advice: Ditch the toy, and learn to do real 3D modeling, in a fully capable program.

Whilst Chosen is right about the modeling part, you should not ditch Spore entirely. If you are modeling something from scratch then your work will go allot faster if you have a point of reference to work from. Spore offers you the ability to design a huge variety of diverse creatures very quickly and is a great tool for creating reference material.

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Please note that blender import of Collada files is not yet fully supported. Especially the import of skeleton files to blender is not yet very reliable. It may work or not. So if you have any issues with your import, then please consider to write a report to the blender bug tracker. That will surely help to get the Blender Collada Importer fixed faster.

btw, the blender 2.64 Collada exporter has been optimized to work reliably for the purposes of Second Life.

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  • 1 year later...

I had no trouble doing this directly with the exception that I needed to import the textures as individual files, they did not get imported automatically. I also needed to set the Alpha Mode to None, or to anything OTHER then Alpha Blending as this made things I didn't want transparent totally transparent.

Blender would be very useful for a number of things, and it supports Collada just fine, it even imports the Spore rig so you can pose your creatures which is terrific. Repainting your model is one  thing you could do, blending shapes of various parts  is also possible. 

For me the next step would be re-rigging Spore critters with the SSL rig so they can be avatars! The trick here is things like extra  limbs, wings and stuff that should be flexible. As I understand it the SSL rig is simply bipedal humanoid and can't be screwed with much aside from stretching of parts. This, if it  is the case, sucks and is severely limiting but something that can and should change (if it is the case still, I haven't been in SSL for a while as I do most of my work in OpenSim).

Re-Rigging can be done in Blender and should be mostly a matter of copying the SSL rig from somewhere (I can grab it from MakeHuman models) and pasting it into your Spore creature, then making adjustments for joint locations and stuff, then its a simple (haha!) matter of re-attaching it to the model possibly using weight painting if needed. The import process would be as normal for any other avatar into SSL....

At least in theory, I'm still working on this bit....

 

Cheers!

Mealea

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