Mesh is on the grid, although not officially released, so getting ready for Mesh is an important step, although as I’ve said before the prim is far from dead and Mesh will have problems, especially early doors, with viewer compatibility. I’ve been looking at Mesh and settled on Blender as my tool of choice, which you can read more about here. I’ve chosen Blender because Autodesk Maya, which is a fantastic 3D Modelling tool, is expensive for a noob to 3D modelling like me, it is of course aimed at professionals, which I’m not. Another popular tool is Google Sketchup, but from what I can see the free version is for personal use only, so Blender is the tool that gives me the most options at the best price, in this case nothing but donations should be forthcoming.
First things first, anyone who tells you 3D modelling is easy is talking cack, trust me on this, it’s not easy, inworld building with prims is definitely easier to learn, however Blender is a powerful piece of software from what I can tell, now you may be like me and rush head first in and then bang your head on the wall and then follow a process like this:
- Excitedly download the program.
- Open it up and stare at a cube.
- Look at the menus and think “WTF”.
- Read some tutorials and think “WTF”
- UV Mapping? “WTF”
However fear not, because I have fearlessly sought out some half decent tutorials which have allowed me to upload a mesh cube with a texture on it … it’s a start! I will share some of the useful tutorials with you.
A sensible starting place is the official wiki Mesh section, another place worth keeping an eye on is the official Mesh creation forum on the Second Life forums. These are important resources to bookmark and have lots of information as well as allowing you a place to ask Second Life specific questions. There will be Second Life specific issues with Mesh, so definitely keep an eye on these resources. However they won’t get you far into Blender, for that I went elsewhere and referred back to these resources.
A thing to note, you will need a degree of patience to follow these tutorials, but hopefully like me you’ll hit the point where you think you’re starting to understand it and see the potential. A good place to start is KatsBits which has some good guides and step by step tutorials into designing a chair, this covers learning menus, manipulating objects, adding materials and the hellish UV Mapping. One tutorial in particular that I found extremely useful was the one on double sided mesh. This is extremely important for Second Life, 3D modelling programs are smart, they try to save rendering costs by not showing faces that people won’t see as it’s a waste of processing power. However in Second Life we’re a bit more interactive and will look inside of buildings, outside of buildings, underneath buildings, furniture and what not, so it’s important to understand ways for people to see textures on both sides otherwise someone will walk inside your lovely mesh building and see no walls when they enter it!
The official Blender website has an education section that is very useful and has a tutorials section with lots of links to other resources, these include absolute beginners tutorials which are worth going through as Blender has a lot of options but the tutorial that got me excited about possibilities and potential of Blender was this modelling a building video from Blender Cookie, which is a damn useful site. The tutorial video shows you how to extrude, make loops, cut, add objects etc. and although it’s an hour long and will take you longer as you’ll want to pause and go back, it’s worthwhile, it might be worth doing it over a series of sessions.
Another tutorial that I found extremely useful is this one on UV Mapping, UV Mapping is not an easy concept to get your head around initially, basically you should be looking to flatten out your 3D build so you can texture it, this video shows a technique that takes you through adding a material, adding a texture, unwrapping the mesh so you have a UV Map and linking it all up so that you can render your build with a texture on it.
Finally some other tips, to upload mesh you’ll need to have payment information registered with Linden Lab and you’ll have to pass the intellectual property quiz, which is linked to your account page on the Second Life website. Then you’ll want to upload and I recommend you first join the Mesh volunteers group and try it on the beta grid, for details on how to access the beta grid go here. There are mesh sandboxes on the main grid but the upload costs are live now, it will cost you Linden dollars to upload on the main grid.
Most of all though, have fun, if it all looks too complicated take a break and then come back to it, there are some powerful features here.