Tuesday 8 May 2012


Tura is learning to make mesh.

After completing the harness sculpt from last time with the mirror image shoulder strap, it fitted well, until I raised my arms to shoulder height. Then my shoulders poked right through the straps. Just walking around made the waist belt bob around most unrealistically. Something like this is only really going to work as mesh. So I downloaded the latest Blender (and noticed how many older versions I had that I'd never used) and googled up some tutorials.

I used Ashasekayi Ra's tutorials on exporting one's shape from SL and importing it into Blender. Two cautions: you need an old version of Phoenix to do the export as described in the first video on her playlist. 1.5.2.1185 can do it, later versions and current Firestorm don't seem to have the feature. Apparently removed by decree of Linden Lab. (Her second video gives a different export method that is available in current Phoenix, but depends on having a certain plugin for Blender.) If you're new to Blender, as I am, get version 2.49b to follow the tutorials or none of it will make sense -- Blender's UI changed drastically with version 2.50 and the current version of those tutorials is for 2.49.

So I have Tura's shape broken free of SL. Next, wade through the Blender wiki trying out everything until the feeling that I'm doing embroidery while wearing boxing gloves goes away. Say what you like about Linden Lab, but they did a good implementation of viewpoint navigation and adjusting size, shape, and rotation of objects with a single mouse button and a few modifier keys.

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