DESC 9180 – Tutorial 3 (4/9/2007) The aim of this week’s tutorial is for you to experiment with technologies for importing complex 3D models, “sculpties” or “sculpted prims”, into Second Life. A number of different modelling tools can be used to achieve this. Several of them are listed here, with some notes about their advantages and disadvantages. Try out the tutorials for your favourite modelling tools. For more modelling tools and tutorials, check out the Second Life wiki here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims:_3d_Software_Guide 1. Introductory Exercise Follow this tutorial (http://slnatalia.blogspot.com/2007/06/sculpted-prims-sculpties-second-life.html) to create a sculpted prim using sculptie textures made by other people. If you look in the library folder in your inventory, you will find the sculptie textures referred to in the tutorial. 2. Modelling Tools Overview Try out one or more of these tutorials. 2.1 Maya Maya was the first external tool allowed b y Linden for creating sculpties. Qarl Linden created a script that extends Maya and allows models to be output in a form that is acceptable for uploading to Second Life. This tutorial explains how to upload a model from Maya into Second Life: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Advanced_Sculptie_Exporter_From_Maya The process is quite tedious. More detailed instructions are provided on the next page. You may want to replace the ant in this tutorial with the balloon in this one: http://webpages.charter.net/talilal/Balloon%20Tutorial/ The ant is very complex: around 100 images costing ~$L1000 to upload. 2.2 3D Studio Max 3D Studio Max is industrial strength modelling software. You will need some familiarity with 3D Studio Max to follow this tutorial. http://www.joe-brown.net/SecondLife/SculptTut/SculptTut.html Unlike Maya, 3D Studio Max does not require scripts to upload sculpties. 2.3 Blender Blender is free software that can be download from here: http://www.blender.org/. This tutorial offers some hints on using Blender: http://amandalevitsky.googlepages.com/sculptedprims It assumes some knowledge of 3D modeling software. 2.4 Wings 3D This is free software that can be downloaded from the Web. See this tutorial for installation instructions: http://slnatalia.blogspot.com/2007/06/sculpted-primssculpties-second-life.html and this one for steps on how to use Wings 3D: http://slnatalia.blogspot.com/2007/06/day-265-sculpted-prims-tutorial-part-2.html Wings 3D is not as powerful a Blender but may be easier to learn.
Uploading 3D Models from Maya Source: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Advanced_Sculptie_Exporter_From_Maya Once you have created a model in Maya, do the following to export it to Second Life. In Maya 1. Download sculpt.mel from http://www.qarl.com/qLab/pile/ant/sculpt.mel and save it in you Maya scripts directory. For example: C:\Documents and Settings\kathryn\My Documents\maya\7.0\scripts 2. Open your NURBS model and select the objects you would like to export. 3. From the Windows menu, select general editors à script editor. The script editor will open. 4. In the script editor File menu, select open. Browse to sculpt.mel and click open. 5. In the script editor Script menu, select Execute. The Export Sculpt Texture dialog will open. 6. Select the options as shown here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Image:Qlab_sculpt.jpg 7. Click export. This will create two .bmp files for each object in your model: one sculptie texture and one -surface texture. These will be in your Maya projects directory. It will also create a sculpt.primscript file in your Maya scripts directory. 8. Now you’re ready to go to Second Life… In Second Life 1. Upload all the .bmp images from your model to Second Life. In Second Life choose Upload Images from the File menu and follow the prompts. 2. Now, create a prim and changes its name to qDynaPrim on the General tab of the prim edit dialog. In the Content tab, use the New Script button to create four new scripts. Call these scripts prim, shape, texture and transform. The code for these scripts is found here: http://www.qarl.com/qLab/pile/ant/prim, http://www.qarl.com/qLab/pile/ant/texture, http://www.qarl.com/qLab/pile/ant/transform, and http://www.qarl.com/qLab/pile/ant/shape 3. Also add you uploaded image files to the content of qDynaPrim 4. Take a copy of qDynaPrim into your inventory by right clicking it and selecting Take Copy 5. Create another prim and call it My Sculptie (any name will do) 6. Drag qDynaPrim out of your inventory into the content of the My Sculptie object 7. Use the New Script button to create a new script and call it prim script. Copy and past the code from here http://www.qarl.com/qLab/pile/ant/primscript into the ‘prim script’ file. 8. In your inventory window, create a new note card. Copy and paste the code from sculpt.primscript in your Maya script directory into the note card. Add the notecard to the content of My Sculptie. 9. Right click on the note card in your inventory and select Copy Asset UUID 10. In the chat box, type /500 primscript -script and then hit CTR-V to past in the UUID. Now hit enter. If all went well, your 3D model should start to appear…