Seems like a fairly chaotic time in SL these days. I have not spent a lot of time in-world over the last few months, but I’ve still kept up on the virtual news. I’m optimistic about the mysterious changes mentioned recently by Philip and other Lindens. I think our virtual world could use a little shaking up. Can’t push the boundaries from your comfy chair. :)
For content creators the upcoming mesh and shadow support should nearly close the gap between what’s possible visually in SL and a modern 3D game. I know that LL have plans for the more aetheric aspects of SL, too. Growth, community, usability. I’m looking forward to these changes. Change in SL always seems to provide us with new, fun challenges.
As with most of my hobbies my interest in SL waxes and wanes as I tinker with half a dozen other projects. I started this post to make apologies for ignoring the site, even though I really have nothing to be sorry about. :) Shiny Life is what it is. I’m happy that people are still using the site, watching the tutorials, and discovering the things that I share with you here.
I’ll continue to post whatever shiny bits that I come across. I’ve mentioned more zBrush or Sculpty tutorials – but I probably won’t be doing any more of those until the Mesh import feature is available. Then we can have a blast using ALL of zBrush’s tools to create our shapes. Sometime soon I will get to some of your unanswered questions and post much-requested links to the Material Baker script and the oblong-sculpty version of 2k Suisei’s zSculpty plugin.
Viva la SL!
hi Shiny!
good to read your blog this morning as well, dude. I wanted to mention – and perhaps request – a tutorial on texture mapping with zBrush. not just polypainting, as i had seen an advanced tutorial on using the projection master for just such a purpose. As you know ZBrush released version 3.5 this past week. with it comes enhanced zspheres usage, and low and behold the projection master, which i heard was legacy to zBrush is still there. I hope this new version sparks your interest enough so we dont have to wait for SL’s mesh changes to be implemented, though i’ll be watching your blog for more info.. cheers!
I was wondering whether we’d be able to use zbrush to make the mesh textures whenever they decide to bring it out.
Dan: Hmm. I assume that we should be able to use just about any of zBrush tools for the upcoming Mesh Import feature. Depends on what sort of limitations are imposed but I think that the aim is to allow most any 3d mesh to be imported – within certain resolution limitations I’m sure.
I just took a look at the new zBrush 3.5 last night – on the pixologic website anyway. haven’t updated yet but those new zSphere sketching tools seems pretty cool. Another vistor (Taarna Welles) left a comment recently about using SculptyMaker with zB 3.5.
http://www.shiny-life.com/sculpty-maker/
ByteDreams: I do have one video that shows how to use the 2D style painting tools to paint directyl on a texture, rather than the polypainting. It also shows off the ImagePlane plugin which is very useful.
http://www.shiny-life.com/2008/08/15/video-demo-image-plane-plug-in-for-zbrush/
hi Shiny!
good to read your blog this morning as well, dude. I wanted to mention – and perhaps request – a tutorial on texture mapping with zBrush. not just polypainting, as i had seen an advanced tutorial on using the projection master for just such a purpose. As you know ZBrush released version 3.5 this past week. with it comes enhanced zspheres usage, and low and behold the projection master, which i heard was legacy to zBrush is still there. I hope this new version sparks your interest enough so we dont have to wait for SL’s mesh changes to be implemented, though i’ll be watching your blog for more info.. cheers!