What on earth is this shining project on the Jira? Alexa moved my Jira about the region setting that allows or disallows Mesh on a sim not working to the shining project …. a rather disturbing looking project complete with an icon of someone doing a “Here’s Johnny” impression!
Anyway Mesh is the talk of the Second Life related forum and blog crowd at the moment and I’ve been having a very slow dabble with Blender, seriously, can we have bigger days to go with these bigger prims. The tool of choice I’ve decided to use for Mesh is Blender, this is largely because as a hobbyist Blender gives me the most options, I’d love to have Autodesk Maya but unless Autodesk sponsor me that ain’t happening, there’s no way I’m buying such an expensive tool with my artistically challenged hands at the mouse and keyboard, maybe one day if I find I can utilise 3D builds nicely I will. However for those with large pockets and good skills, Maya is highly regarded but it’s not really suitable for noobs.
Anyway I’ve been looking at a few video tutorials on Blender, they are handy but I like to read instructions at times rather than pausing videos and I’ve gone back to a handy resource I looked at a while back when I was considering trying my hand at sculpties.
Blender 3D Noob To Pro is available on Wikibooks and has been updated since I last looked at it. Last night whilst going through the starting tutorials I picked up some extremely handy tips that I hadn’t seen on the video tutorials I’d looked at, being as the book does go from noob level it should be expected that it has handy basic tips but I found myself understanding how to build a roof, yes I am at that basic a level with Blender but this was a good breakthrough with Blender as my early aims with Mesh will be to replicate some of my basic builds in Second Life and making a simple roof is quite important, indeed making a overhanging roof looks like it will be a boost to my builds!
The good thing about working out how to build the roof was that it got me thinking in terms of editing cubes inworld and using top shear etc. to change the shape of cubes, so things start to slide into place in my mind, and with my mind that’s a bloody good effort.
So I’d definitely recommend that absolute beginners read this book, it has some basics about 3D modelling in general which is useful information to help you get your head around what Mesh is and what 3D modelling aims to achieve, it is a long book so you’ll have to be patient but those extra steps and tips will be beneficial if you persevere.
Blender tutorials alone won’t be enough to make you a proficient Second Life Mesh creator, but they will give you a damn good grounding. There are extra steps and considerations for Mesh in Second Life and for that I recommend you read the Mesh Forums and Mesh Wiki which has absolutely loads of information about bringing Mesh to Second Life and is well worth reading, if you have questions take them to the Mesh forum.
I have plenty of questions formulating about Mesh and Second Life, such as is it better to import individual components of a build rather than one joined up build but I’ll be keeping an eye on the resources to see what people say about that, there are a lot of resources around this project and Mesh looks like it could finally sell Viewer 2 to the masses, even if it is called Viewer 3 these days!