• Building - PBR - Second Life

    PBR in #SecondLife – Chic Aeon

    September 24, 2023 - By 

    Chic Aeon raised an interesting point on the transition to PBR: On the plus side folks that are still building using inworld tools (prim builds) will have new options for a better look and that might encourage some new users to become simple creators. There was definitely something –well just GOOD — about building out on the sand box starting with a cube. Yes, I think so. I uploaded my coffee mug today to the test grid, Firestorm PBR viewer, but using the current materials workflow. It was gorgeously glossy. Uploaded for realsies, normal Firestorm, and it was harder to…

  • Get Excited and Make Things - the crown image is made of wrenches
    Blender - Chameleonic Possessions - Create - Gimp

    Channel Packing Tool #specularworkflow for #SecondLife or #gameassets

    September 23, 2023 - By 

    While doing homework for the coming #glTF workflow in #SecondLife I struggled with #channelpacking textures for manipulating how light reflects off of materials in a game engine. It’s easy in Photoshop, harder in GIMP. There used to be a plug-in for extracting different kinds of “maps” from images, but it was easy to screw up. The manual method is tedious; you can’t just plop a texture into an RGB channel, you have to make each greyscale. This open source tool might be helpful, and the aiaicapta.in is cited in the SL wiki as authoritative. The same site also has a…

  • Chameleonic Possessions doodle
    Asides - Wordpress

    Making a few small adjustments…

    September 16, 2023 - By 

    I have both a self-hosted blog that uses WordPress, and a “backup” blog hosted at wordpress.com, and because WordPress’ “Jetpack” requires connecting for social media purposes, it’s sometimes too easy to double post to social media sites. Just now I made some adjustments because a single post to my self-hosted site created 2 Mastodon posts. I turned off the new built-in Mastodon connection, which apparently influenced both blogs, and will use the old Mastodon plug-in. Maybe later I’ll connect this blog to the Fediverse directly, but for now will see if Things Blow Up this way. The social crossposting part…

  • THINK do it right the first time! PLAN AHEA D
    Asides

    Learning #Blender with #BlenderGoon for #SecondLife – V2.4 Make a signpost in Edit mode

    September 16, 2023 - By 

    Here’s a simple old fashioned signpost that might be useful for someone in #SecondLife, created in #Blender. The tutorial covers inset, extrude, scaling on specific X Y or Z orientation, and other fundamentals. At the end Goon uploads his model to the test grid of Second Life (that is, the cost to upload is actually free, you use play money on the test grid). He’s still assigning simple colors to the object and not using images – that’s coming up. I’ve turned on more crossposting links so I’m really hoping this isn’t posting multiples to Mastodon, as I have a…

  • Steampunk robots dancing cheek to cheek
    Asides

    Learning #Blender with #BlenderGoon – Enabling and Installing Add-Ons

    September 10, 2023 - By 

    The video is titled V2.1 Blender 3.0 enabling and installing add-ons, but these steps apply to ANY current version of Blender, don’t be put off by the low version number. Putting this post in my SideEye column. Goon (Goonther Blackcinder) is a #SecondLife resident who teaches at #BlenderSchool inworld at (SLURL) GoodVibes There’s an active Discord group – there’s an invite link in the school landing area. You can support his work on Patreon at this link.

  • 3D Fridge object now faces the right way out
    Blender - Second Life

    Learning #Blender with #BlenderGoon – V1.5 Building in Object Mode, uploading to #SecondLife

    September 10, 2023 - By 

    Now we’re getting somewhere. I’ve recently created objects with the standard “primitives” in Blender, so for me this is still review. It was still a struggle but eventually I produced the required lesson objects and got them uploaded into the “test grid.” GREAT SUCCESS. After taking a long break for some RL errands yesterday, I was able to produce the two objects from the lesson… and during Goon’s discussion of uploading to SL, he mentioned he was skipping some “checklist” steps. And yep, one of those steps was to check for flipped normals. The soda cup and straw is fine,…