Half Past Null

(The following is an ongoing series of tutorials for my offline builder tool, Prim.Blender. For the tutorial index, click here)

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Setting Importer Permissions and Creator Tags


From the previous tutorial, you should have been able to import your creations from Prim.Blender.

Normally, this would be the natural end of these tutorials.

However, and perhaps irritatingly, there is a step that’s very commonly overlooked when importing objects: setting the correct permissions and creator tag for imported objects.



This is a critical step for creators that wish to receive credit for their work, and is very often overlooked when using resident building tools.

Using old revisions of the Prim Mirror as an example, I receive at least one comment every couple months attributing work that was not mine to me, because a resident used my tools and forgot to set themselves as creator.

Don’t make this mistake.

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(The following is an ongoing series of tutorials for my offline builder tool, Prim.Blender. For the tutorial index, click here)

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Saving and Loading Blender Scenes with Prim.Blender

So let’s suppose you have a lot of work invested within Blender itself, and can’t save all of it as .prims.

Or, let’s say you don’t feel like hitting the “Save” or “Load” buttons twice every time you want to work.

Enter the ability to save your work as a .blend file!



Actually, this is much easier than one might think.

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(The following is an ongoing series of tutorials for my offline builder tool, Prim.Blender. For the tutorial index, click here)

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Textures

From the previous tutorial, you should now have a decent grasp of how Prim.Blender functions.

This tutorial shall cover texturing. It’s not done yet (because texturing still requires a ton of testing), so please be patient.



The ideal workflow is to do texturing entirely within Blender and then “bake” the desired image for import into Second Life.

In practice, this must be done manually in Blender, due to the myriad texturing techniques available. Many of these are covered in Blender’s wonderful tutorials and documentation.

Once your textures are set up just the way you like them, you can save the scene as a .blend file, preserving all of this information for later retrieval.

Read the rest of this entry »

(The following is an ongoing series of tutorials for my offline builder tool, Prim.Blender. For the tutorial index, click here)

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Once the build’s done, it’s time to import your creation into Second Life!



Most of the work is completely automated, especially for sculpties.

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(The following is an ongoing series of tutorials for my offline builder tool, Prim.Blender. For the tutorial index, click here)

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Sculpty editing is more than a little weird.

A sculpty, or sculpted prim, is the brainchild of Qarl Linden, though the practice he uses has been suggested before.

Think of sculpties as elaborate origami; you’re given a surface with 32×32 faces to fold into any shape you please. These “folds” are then saved as an image file, where each color’s RGB data represents a direction: red for X, green for Y, and blue for Z.



If I just lost you, don’t worry: making them is easy with the right tools.

Such as, say, this one!

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(The following is an ongoing series of tutorials for my offline builder tool, Prim.Blender. For the tutorial index, click here)

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Basic Usage

From the previous tutorial, you should now be able to access the basic Prim.Blender screen:



For those that have used SL’s internal editor, the majority of the commands should be very familiar.

Read the rest of this entry »

(The following is an ongoing series of tutorials for my offline builder tool, Prim.Blender. For the tutorial index, click here)

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Prerequisites:

We’ll begin by downloading a copy of Blender from their main page:



Begin by browsing to www.blender.org, as shown above. Go to the download page:



… and download the latest copy of Blender for your OS. If given the option, use the download with the latest version of Python.

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Prim.Blender is a tool for building Second Life™ works offline. While the tool is made to be as simple and user-friendly as possible, a bit of documentation can go a long way.

What you’ll find here are useful tutorials to cover the rough patches: installation, basic usage, importing, and advanced tricks that may otherwise be strange or obscure.

So, without further adieu:

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• Prim.Blender: Installation


• Prim.Blender: Basic Usage


• Prim.Blender: Sculpties


• Prim.Blender: Textures


• Prim.Blender: Blender Scene Saving and Loading


• Prim.Blender: Importing


• Prim.Blender: Setting Importer Permissions and Creator Tags

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Have ideas for a tutorial?

Email me your idea, posting, or link, and I’ll post it here with full credit.

I’ve added a new Tutorial section in preparation of the Prim.Blender: How To Use It series, as well as a few sites from past and present.

Prim.Blender has also been updated to 0.5.4, with a *ton* of fixes for Windows users.

Full changelog:

- Added new params: Faces and multires (previously hardcoded)
- Added new GUI components for faces and multires values
- Added “Reset Mesh” to sculpt type options
- Fixed default Prim.Blender.blend file for a GUI bug with new objects
- Performed additional regression tests
- Added Windows XP to tested OSes
- Fixed a bug related to not having a full Python installation present
(we now warn the user and catch exceptions as necessary)
- Fixed a directory bug on Windows
- Reformated this text file back to DOS mode to be readable by Notepad.exe
- Updated .prims save output to DOS mode to be readable by Notepad.exe
- Fixed a bug where changing the mirror mode would nuke sculpty meshes without warning
- Changed default LOD back to 3

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Enjoy!

The importer for Prim.Blender has been posted to Sourceforge, as well as the source section of this site.

Built copies are available here:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Great%20Pubnico/23/71/93/

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Happy 4th of July!

(Even if it’s technically the 5th on the server’s clock)