About
17 Comments »

I’ve created this Shiny Life website to share the interesting things that I do, find, and create in Second Life. I’ll mostly be presenting  Second Life tutorials, building  tools, artists, virtual art, and of course shiny objects. :D Feel free to jump into the conversation by commenting on posts or to send feedback, suggestions and ideas.   e-mail: Vlad.Bjornson –AT– gmail –DOT– com

From the first we weeks of twisting tori on my First Land, Second Life has re-awakened my love of the arts – and digital art in particular. What a fanastic place this is where we can explore all of these creative, interactive tools.  Pixels are cheap and the possibillities are endless.

Many of my SL creations have come about while exploring these tools. I love to push the basic prim to it’s limits, coaxing unlikely shapes from the seemingly simple geometries. I also enjoy using my RL nature photos as building blocks for Second Life projects. The natural shapes and colors can add a lot a character to this sometimes sterile, digital world.

Creating scripted, interactive objects is arguabley to most interesting aspect of art in SL. It’s a simple matter to create an object in here that could not exist in Real Life – the challenge is to stretch the mind and create without traditional boundaries.

- Vlad Bjornson


17 Responses to “About”
 

Hello there, i have tried to use your program sculpy maker and the plug in for z-brush but everytime i export what i have made it freezes and never does actually export it. the things iv made have 86 by 112 faces and are in .OBJ format, wheres the problem coming from?, Please Help

Cheers
BEntley

Bentley Perkins wrote on August 17th, 2008 at 4:48 am

 

Bentley: Check out my page about Sculpty Maker for a few tips: http://www.shiny-life.com/sculpty-maker/

Usually when Sculpty Maker crashes it’s because you are trying to convert an object that did not start out as one of the zBrush primitive shapes.

Vlad Bjornson wrote on August 17th, 2008 at 10:14 am

 

Dear Vlad

Thank you so much for this site. I have got a lot of inspiration here.

I am a Zbrush user too and I have watched your videos about using that program for making stuff for SL with great interest. I would like to be able to import the SL AVs to Zbrush for making textures for clothes and other things, but the AVs I downloaded acts strange in Zbrush. I know that some guy once made versions of the AVs that could be used in Zbrush, but I cannot find them anywhere. Do you happen to know where to get those .obj files? Or could you tell me how to make them? Or do you happen to have made some that I can buy from you?

Best regards from

Philosofia Clary

Philosofia Clary wrote on October 29th, 2008 at 9:43 pm

 

Oh.. now I found the AVs for Zbrush on the Zbrush site. They are made by Jason Welsh and can be downloaded here:
http://www.houseoftutorials.net/les…cleanmodels.zip

I think that somebody else than me would like to have those.

Enjoy

Philosofia

Philosofia Clary wrote on October 29th, 2008 at 11:54 pm

 

HI Philoshophia. Very nice to hear that you are finding my zBrush tutorials useful. It’s always great to get some positive feedback. :)

Thanks for the link to those avatars. You might also want to check out these ones from Second Skin Labs that are formatted specifically for zBrush, including Polygroups for the head, torso, and legs regions.

http://www.secondskinlabs.com/Downloads/downloads2.html

Stay tuned for more tutorials – they’ll be coming when I find the time to make ‘em. :)

Vlad Bjornson wrote on October 30th, 2008 at 12:03 am

 

Now everyone is talking about the American economy and eclections, nice to read something different. Eugene

Eugene wrote on October 31st, 2008 at 3:03 pm

 

thank you for the link… looks kewl… I’ll have a closer look at those.

Best regards

Fia

Philosofia Clary wrote on November 3rd, 2008 at 4:08 am

 

Hey, random question, what kind of software do you use to record your videos?

Zombie wrote on December 21st, 2008 at 9:12 am

 

Hello Vlad,

I love your site!… Quick question, would like to create zBrush obj files using my Mac OS Intel Mac and then convert the Obj files to SL scultpties using Sculpty Maker from a PC. Meaning create Obj in my Intel Mac, then move the Obj file to a PC and then use the Sculpty Maker program to create the SL Sculpty.

Do you know of any issues with this method? Just wanted to check before plunking the dollars for zBrush.

Thanks!

Paloma S wrote on December 25th, 2008 at 4:22 pm

 

Zombie: I use a program called Camtasia to record most of my tutorials. best screencast software I have found. I think they may even have a free (older) version available. I also use an app called FRAPS to capture video while in-world. It is made just for capturing from 3D games while Camtasia doesn’t work as well in 3D.

Paloma: hmm. I would have to give that one a big Maybe. :) NO experience with Mac version of zBrush. It seems like it might work, but I just can’t say for sure. Unfortunately there is not a free trial version of ZB on the Mac, yet, or it would be easy to test. Maybe a friendly Mac zBrush use rwill come along and offer to send us a simple object for testing?

Vlad Bjornson wrote on December 26th, 2008 at 12:09 pm

 

Hiya Vlad!

I gotta say that I have learned so much from you about creating sculpts for SecondLife and I have watched all of your videos. I have watched the first two videos a number of times and use them for reference.

My question to you is – I’m trying to create a sculpted shoe and I want it so that the texture that I apply doesn’t get stretched when I output it. While I could simply “paint” on the sculpt – that doesn’t fly well when I am trying to create a seamless pattern like dots or stripes. Really I want to be able to apply a tiling pattern without it stretching the texture. Is there anyway to create the sculpt in ZBrush with a texture applied that will let me see if it is stretching while I sculpt?

Currently I use 3DSMax to import the sculpts and export the sculptmap and texture files from there. I also use max to apply the tiling texture (the materials are easier and I have plans to use the 3D files elsewhere) – just FYI.

Sioxie Legend wrote on January 15th, 2009 at 8:21 am

 

Hi Sioxie. That stretching of the textures is caused when one area of the faces of the sculpt is stretched out larger than the neighbooring faces. The only way to avoid it is to be very careful about where your faces are on your sculpt and to do your best to keep them evenly distributed about your object.

You can see these faces while you sculpt in zBrush by clicking on the Frame button to the left of the modeling area. You could also test your tiling texture in zBrush. Just import it into the texture palette and apply it to your object.

Vlad Bjornson wrote on January 19th, 2009 at 12:04 pm

 

Hi Vlad,

I stumbled upon your site trying to find as much information as I can for trouble shooting Wings 3D for SL sculpties as I am a beginner at this and am running into issues. As I read through this forum I began to wonder if I might be able to post my issue here and maybe get a helpful answer so here goes.

I currently use Cinema 4D with scuplt prim templates to do the actual manipulation as that is the program I am most comfortable and familiar with. I started with the biggest object a sphere 64×63 (quad) an shaped it into the inner multiple blade fan of a turbine engine by pulling the quads out away from the sphere (not extruding or to my knowledge creating more vertices) leaving space between each blade, flattening the edge of it and then finally giving it a slight twist.

Also, I leave the rest of the sphere alone as it creates the axle and cone the blades connect to. I save that as an .fbx file import into Wings 3D and then export it once more as an SL .bmp. In wings it looks as it should but in SL the blades instead of being flattened and triangular in shape look like coned shaped tall spikes all the way around the sphere and instead of a nice smooth surface everything is all bumpy. would you have any ideas as to what it is I am doing wrong?

PsycKorious

PsycKorious wrote on July 7th, 2009 at 3:04 pm

 

Vlad can you please post a list of the initializing settings for each shape in zbrush that we can use. I seen it somewhere before but I lost it. :(

Miranda wrote on July 16th, 2009 at 2:44 pm

 

Oh also that baking textures plugin link doesn’t work anymore would you be able to send that to my email by any chance?

Miranda wrote on July 16th, 2009 at 2:46 pm

 

What a deal," I thought and purchased two of them. ,

Maxx96 wrote on October 22nd, 2009 at 11:54 am

 

Community stories about challenges we have faced, why we stood up to them — our values and our shared goals — and how we overcame them weave throughout our political beliefs and religious traditions. ,

Alex74 wrote on October 23rd, 2009 at 2:38 am

Leave a Reply