Tutorials & Tips

from a Second Life content creator

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Exporting Your Shape from Phoenix

If you're working in a 3D Programme such as Maya or Blender it can be very useful to have an avatar model inside of your scene to sculpt or build around.

There's a number of viewers that allow you this option, but as a Phoenix and Maya user I'm going to outline the steps to export your own shape from Second Life and import it into Maya to work around.

Make sure you can see the "Advanced" menu at the top of your screen.

Select "Character" and then "Meshes and Morphs..."

Under the "Meshes and Morphs..." menu select "lowerBodyMesh".

Then select "lowerBodyMesh" again and then "Current Mesh".

Select "Save OBJ".

Repeat this process for your upperBodyMesh and your headMesh.

In Maya:

Open a new scene

Import each of the three OBJ files (Upper, Lower and Head) into the scene, one by one.

Maya will automatically line them up, you can then select them all and rotate them and move them as needs be.

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Maya Importer/Rezzer

If you're a Maya user you may already be familiar with this concept, but if not, it's really worth exploring. This object will allow you to drop your UV maps generated in Maya, along with a "Primscript" inside it and it will automatically rebuild your creation for you, as it was in Maya.

Firstly:

Rez a prim.

Name it "Receive Data".

Edit the prim and under the "Content" tab click the "New Script" button.

Inside the script, paste this text and name the script ReceiveData.

Take the prim into your inventory.

Secondly, you need to create the main prim:

Rez a prim.

Name it whatever you like "Rez Maya Scene" works for me.

Edit the prim and under the "Content" tab click the "New Script" button.

Inside the script, paste this text and name the script ReadImport.

Add a notecard to the prim and name it "Primscript".

Add the "Receive Data" prim already in your inventory inside this prim.

That's it! You've created your Maya Rezzer...

To use the Maya Rezzer:

Check the "Generate primscript" box in the exporter window in Maya.

Upload all exported UV maps into SL.

Drop all the UV maps inside your Maya Rezzer.

Open the Primscript that your generated from Maya (it should be in the same directory as all your exported UV maps).

Copy the contents of the text file and paste all of the text inside the "Primscript" notecard inside of your Maya Rezzer in world.

Once you have completed all of these steps, just click your Maya Rezzer and you should get a message in local chat indicating that it has begun working.

N.B: Sometimes I get unrezzed sculpts, or the rezzer fails on one or more sculpts and they remain cubes. If this happens I will just delete all the rezzed sculpts and click the box again to rebuild the object again.

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Using Local Textures on Phoenix

There's a really great, but perhaps little known feature for content creators using the Phoenix Viewer called Local Textures. Using local textures allows you to link SL to the texture on your hard drive. This means when working in Photoshop you can re-save out your .png or .tga file and it will be instantly updated in-world. The only exception that I have found to this is when textures are actually worn on the Avatar as layers, in this case a re-bake is necessary.

There are a couple of steps to using local textures, but thankfully they aren't too complicated so I'll quickly outline them below with the use of screen shots.

1) Rez your prim or wear the clothing layer you wish to work on.

2) Edit and go to the texture tab or edit appearance, then click the texture swatch.

3) In the texture chooser that opens up, select the Local tab. (Red arrow)

4) Inside the Local tab, select the Add button and then find the texture on your hard drive using the window that opens up. (Blue arrow)

5) Press the Browser button and a new window will open up.

6) Inside this window press the More button (this button says Less when the More tab is already opened). (Purple arrow)

7) Inside the More tab, check the option that says Keep Updating. This creates a "live" link with the texture on your hard drive and will constantly update the texture inworld to match any updates and saves you make. (Green arrow)

That's it! You can close out your windows now and get to work. Oh, and when you're done, don't forget to upload the texture in the normal way too. These are technically just temporary reference textures.

Also, this feature is available on the Imprudence viewer, but since I'm a Phoenix user I've only outlined the process for using it with the Phoenix viewer.

Good luck :)