Turn any object into a Sculpty

In this tutorial I show you how you can use zBrush 3.1 to convert an existing object to a sculpted prim. We’ll be using the Subtools feature which allows you to work on more than one object mesh at a time, and the zProject brush to transfer the 3D geometry from the original shape to our new sculpty-friendly shape. I’ll also be using the Material Baker script to bake the shadows and highlights into a texture to be applied to the sculpty in-world.

The zProject brush rocks! The more I play with zBrush, the more ways I find to combine the tools to create new effects. In my first zBrush tutorial I used zProject to texture an object with a photo/image reference - and now I’m using it to transfer actual 3D data. This technique is not limited to just copying objects, either. It could be used anytime you want to copy 3D info from one object to another object. There’s also now reason that you couldn’t use multiple sculpties to convert parts of a complicated object.

If you haven’t done so already, you might want to watch my first video where I demonstrate the entire process of creating and texturing a sculpted prim in zBrush. Besides the Material Baker script you’ll also need 2k Suisie’s SculptyMaker converter program.

Sorry about the scratchy audio in this one, dunno what happened. :) You can also download a higher resolution, Quicktime version of the video.

Gaia Clary and Hussayn Salomon have created two tutorial videos that show how you can use Blender to create and texture sculpted prims. These vids are a great introduction to the process, and can help you get up to speed quickly. Blender, along with Domino Marama’s scripts, is probably the most versatile and powerful way to create sculpties for free.

Shiny 3D Input

I heard about these SpaceNavigator thingies - a 3D input device that works with SL. The geek factor was way too high and I was forced to by one. :D Big shiny button! After using this thing to cam around for just a couple of days I can’t imagine using SL without it.

This is just a quick video that demonstrates how easy it is to use the FlyCam mode with the SpaceNavigtor to make smooth, effortless camera movements.

A shotgun blast of metaverse goodies.

I stumbled on this cool weekly video series about Second Life called Metaverse Week in Review. Lots of stuff features every week with interviews, machinima, news, and all sorts of shiny virtual world goodies. It’s produced by Mal Burns who also runs a blog, the Mal Burns Annex. Mal’s a busy guy - regular blog posts, this weekly video show, and who knows what else. The sites and videos are a bit scattered, but there’s a lot of great info to be found. Looks like I found a new addition to my RSS reader. :)

One of the next big changes in SL will be some changes to the way the scripts are run on the LL servers. The back-end that executes all of the scripts on the grid will be upgraded to something known as Mono. I don’t know a lot of the nitty-gritty details, but I do know that it will be much faster. You can see a good example of how much faster by watching this video created by Blueman Steel and Babbage Linden.

You can find more info about Mono on the SL Wiki.

Here is another cool example created by Amanda Levitsky