(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.
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The interface will appear slightly different depending on the primitive that’s currently selected. The primitive type may be changed in the same location as the Second Life UI: in the upper-right corner of the Prim.Blender interface, under “Type.”
For boxes, cylinders, and prisms, the interface will appear like this:
For spheres, the interface will appear like this:
For tubes, rings, and tori, the interface will appear like this:
And for sculpties, the interface will appear like this:
None of this should be unduly surprising, with the exception of the sculpty interface (which will be covered in another tutorial)
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For those that haven’t used SL’s internal editor: primitives are described as a series of parameters applied to basic shapes: box, cylinder, prism, sphere, torus, tube, ring, and sculpted at the time of this writing.
These parameters describe permutations of the basic shape. For example, twist applied to a cylinder will create a corkscrew shape around the Z axis of the basic cylinder shape.
All primitive types, with the exception of sculpted prims, can be altered within Second Life™ using these parameters. Sculpted prims, on the other hand, require a special image map that can be created with this tool.
Basic primitive operations and “prim torture” will not be described in these tutorials; far better examples of this behavior may be found here.
All primitive types are available in Prim.Blender, with the exception of trees and grass, as these cannot be easily scripted at the time of this writing.
After all, we’re here to build without having to log in, right?
—-
Instead, we’ll cover the portions of the interface that aren’t known to someone that uses SL’s internal building tools.
These fall into three distinct categories:
We’ll cover each of these in turn.
—-
Features of Blender useful in Prim.Blender
While attempts have been made to put the most useful commands in Prim.Blender itself, several Blender features may be used with Prim.Blender. Some are restricted, however.
The full commands for all of Blender’s functionality can be found in the excellent documentation for Blender itself, and are not necessary for building with this tool.
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Here’s a short list of features that are compatible with Prim.Blender:
Press G once — “Grab” — move the primitive
Press R once — “Rotate” — rotate the primitive
Press S once — “Scale” — scale the primitive
Tap X,Y, or Z once after the above to move, rotate, or scale in a given direction
Tap it again to move, rotate, or scale in a local direction.
Left-click: Place cursor (position to spawn new primitives)
Right-click: Select this prim, or a group of prims
Ctrl-Z: Undo an operation (Blender 2.46 required; only works with Blender position, rotation, and scale)
X: Delete a primitive
Camera (if no mousewheel, use numpad 2 and 8):
Mousewheel: Zoom Camera
Shift + Mousewheel: Translate Camera (up and down)
Ctrl + Mousewheel: Translate Camera (left and right)
Ctrl + Alt + Mousewheel: Pan Camera (left and right)
Mouse 3 (mousewheel button) + mouse movement: Free camera
Certain advanced features, such as adding textures through Blender itself, shape keys, adding cameras and rendering options, CAN be used, but will NOT be saved through the Prim.Blender interface. To save these changes, save the entire scene using Blender’s internal save command.
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These internal Blender operations are not supported by Prim.Blender:
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UI Components not seen in the Second Life™ viewer
Several components of the Prim.Blender UI do not appear within the client viewer. The most obvious of these include the Object name dialog (upper-right), Level of Detail slider (pictured next to the Type button), as well as the Copy, Mirror, Save, Load, and Exit buttons at the bottom of the UI.
Most of these are fairly self-evident:
In addition, a helpful image at the top of the UI contains every primitive type, sans random grass and random tree. These can be used similar to SL’s version, to create preloaded primitive shapes.
—-
That about covers it! Mouse around, make some shapes, and get used to the interface. Create a new building, an avatar, a space ship, or a simple pair of shoes.
Or if you prefer, a whole lot of random shapes:
Then save it to disk and import it into SL!
Or, you can move on to the next tutorial.
—-
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.
—-
The interface will appear slightly different depending on the primitive that’s currently selected. The primitive type may be changed in the same location as the Second Life UI: in the upper-right corner of the Prim.Blender interface, under “Type.”
For boxes, cylinders, and prisms, the interface will appear like this:
For spheres, the interface will appear like this:
For tubes, rings, and tori, the interface will appear like this:
And for sculpties, the interface will appear like this:
None of this should be unduly surprising, with the exception of the sculpty interface (which will be covered in another tutorial)
—-
For those that haven’t used SL’s internal editor: primitives are described as a series of parameters applied to basic shapes: box, cylinder, prism, sphere, torus, tube, ring, and sculpted at the time of this writing.
These parameters describe permutations of the basic shape. For example, twist applied to a cylinder will create a corkscrew shape around the Z axis of the basic cylinder shape.
All primitive types, with the exception of sculpted prims, can be altered within Second Life™ using these parameters. Sculpted prims, on the other hand, require a special image map that can be created with this tool.
Basic primitive operations and “prim torture” will not be described in these tutorials; far better examples of this behavior may be found here.
All primitive types are available in Prim.Blender, with the exception of trees and grass, as these cannot be easily scripted at the time of this writing.
After all, we’re here to build without having to log in, right?
—-
Instead, we’ll cover the portions of the interface that aren’t known to someone that uses SL’s internal building tools.
These fall into three distinct categories:
- Features of Blender itself
- UI components not seen in the Second Life™ viewer
- Sculpty operations
We’ll cover each of these in turn.
—-
Features of Blender useful in Prim.Blender
While attempts have been made to put the most useful commands in Prim.Blender itself, several Blender features may be used with Prim.Blender. Some are restricted, however.
The full commands for all of Blender’s functionality can be found in the excellent documentation for Blender itself, and are not necessary for building with this tool.
—-
Here’s a short list of features that are compatible with Prim.Blender:
Press G once — “Grab” — move the primitive
Press R once — “Rotate” — rotate the primitive
Press S once — “Scale” — scale the primitive
Tap X,Y, or Z once after the above to move, rotate, or scale in a given direction
Tap it again to move, rotate, or scale in a local direction.
Left-click: Place cursor (position to spawn new primitives)
Right-click: Select this prim, or a group of prims
Ctrl-Z: Undo an operation (Blender 2.46 required; only works with Blender position, rotation, and scale)
X: Delete a primitive
Camera (if no mousewheel, use numpad 2 and 8):
Mousewheel: Zoom Camera
Shift + Mousewheel: Translate Camera (up and down)
Ctrl + Mousewheel: Translate Camera (left and right)
Ctrl + Alt + Mousewheel: Pan Camera (left and right)
Mouse 3 (mousewheel button) + mouse movement: Free camera
Certain advanced features, such as adding textures through Blender itself, shape keys, adding cameras and rendering options, CAN be used, but will NOT be saved through the Prim.Blender interface. To save these changes, save the entire scene using Blender’s internal save command.
—-
These internal Blender operations are not supported by Prim.Blender:
- Copying (Ctrl-D) of primitives; use the Prim.Blender interface for this
- Mirroring (Alt-M) of primitives; use the Prim.Blender interface for this
- Altering the name of a primitive outside of Prim.Blender’s interface
- Mesh editing on non-sculpties
- Texture coordinates on non-sculpties
- Material settings for internal Blender objects
- Arbitrary mesh exporting; several tools already exist for this purpose
- Dupliverts and Crowd Simulation
- Particle settings
- Scene settings
—-
UI Components not seen in the Second Life™ viewer
Several components of the Prim.Blender UI do not appear within the client viewer. The most obvious of these include the Object name dialog (upper-right), Level of Detail slider (pictured next to the Type button), as well as the Copy, Mirror, Save, Load, and Exit buttons at the bottom of the UI.
Most of these are fairly self-evident:
- Object Name: Allows you to specify the name of the primitive, when imported
- Level of Detail: Specify the current level of detail to display for a primitive. This has no import implications; this is simply a convenience function for testing detail changes of a given prim. Ranges from 1 (cardboard cutout) to 12 (processor-rending insane), with a default of 3.
- Mirror (X, Y, Z): Mirror along a given axis. May be done around a prim’s local axis, or global relative to the origin.
- Copy: Copy a primitive and all of its parameters, and places that copy at the location of the Blender cursor (left-click). Combine with mirroring to get a mirror image of an object.
- Save: Save all of the prims in this scene out to disk
- Load: Load prims from disk into the current scene
- Exit: Exit Prim.Blender. Does not exit Blender itself.
In addition, a helpful image at the top of the UI contains every primitive type, sans random grass and random tree. These can be used similar to SL’s version, to create preloaded primitive shapes.
—-
That about covers it! Mouse around, make some shapes, and get used to the interface. Create a new building, an avatar, a space ship, or a simple pair of shoes.
Or if you prefer, a whole lot of random shapes:
Then save it to disk and import it into SL!
Or, you can move on to the next tutorial.
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