This is going to be a very basic tutorial, I am not going to cover super efficiency, texturing, UV Mapping or anything like that, although if you want your steps to be bloody useful, you’ll want to learn those aspects. Nor will I deal with reducing vertices, removing doubles and other tricks, although they’re useful, I’m not a teacher, I work in education but I’m not a teacher! Really what I want to do here is show how useful Mesh can be by demonstrating how to create a basic set of steps that will come in at One prim. Ideally Torley would be doing this with friendly greetings, however I’m not Torley and I’m not friendly!
I should also point out here that if you don’t know how to login to the beta grid, you should learn to do so! The beta grid is great for playing with Mesh as you don’t pay for uploads there, so perfect your Mesh on the beta grid. Details on how to login to the beta grid are here, but please note, you’ll need to pass the Mesh quiz for the beta grid too, even if you’ve passed it for the main grid!
Ok so to start with we need to open Blender, then press the N key so we get the properties up, which will show this menu:
The x, y, z dimensions work just like they do in Second Life, you have to do something to make them ideal, but it’s just like setting them in Second Life. For my steps I’m going to use settings of 0.750, 3.000 and 0.500 for my x,y,z settings, which is a nice size for step, choose whichever settings you think work best but remember this is for just one step.
So now my dimensions look like this:
Note the scale settings, they’ve changed from the default, so I need to put that right, I press CTRL + A and select scale:
Now when I look at my settings, the scale is 1.000 for x,y and z:
After making those changes I now have a step! Hurrah!
However I want a set of steps, so to do this I’m going to use the array modifier. Select the spanner (or wrench if you prefer) icon:
This brings up the object modifiers. I want the array modifier:
Now I need to change some settings, I will select a relative offset of -1.000 (largely because I’m too lazy to rotate my view) and a constant offset of 0.500, 0.500 is the height of my step, so each step will be 1 unit away and 0.500 above the last step:
Now having done this, I can see my set of steps taking shape:
Ok so now I decide I want ten steps in my set of steps, horses for courses here, whatever you feel is best. To set ten steps I simply keep upping the count number in the array modifier:
Now make sure you hit apply, otherwise you’ll be disappointed when you save the object and re-open it! I now have what looks like a set of steps:
Now I’ll save it as a .blend file and then export it to COLLADA format so I can import it to Second Life:
Now at last I can get to Second Life, actually once you’ve got your head around this, it doesn’t take long at all… honest! Texturing and UV Mapping on the other hand……. anyway on to Second Life. The beta grid is the best place to play with Mesh uploads (as I said already but it really is), you don’t spend real Linden dollars there for a start, you’ll know you’re logging into Aditi (beta grid) because you’ll see a sign like this on the login screen:
Uploading is done the same way as it is on the main grid, however rather than uploading a texture, you upload a model. Now for this demo I’ll take quick options, once you get experienced you’ll want to set your own LOD (Level Of Detail) and such like, but for now, we’ll do the basics. I’ll use my model for the highest LOD and then set the next LOD to use the same, I’ll leave the others. LOD basically dictates how a model looks from further away, personally I don’t believe in setting my LOD for people who want to look in from three sims away, that’s a waste of resources. Anyway, the Mesh uploader will look like this, and my model looks like a set of steps in the preview window, your model looking like it should is always a good sign:
Next I need to deal with the physics shape, the more experienced you get, the more you’ll appreciate why physics shapes can be basic. I’m really just creating a ramp here, so I’ll use the basic tools available to me, I’ll analyze my model and then simplify it, which shows my physics shape as a ramp, when you’re more experienced you’ll appreciate the benefits of creating your own physics shapes…. I’m not more experiened yet so I do it this way!
Hopefully you see the difference between how my model looks and how the physics shape looks. Now I click upload, rez it inworld and voila:
Checking the properties for my model, it is indeed the one prim model I aimed for:
The model can be textured, but as I didn’t add materials or engage in UV Mapping, Second Life treats this model as one face:
Not the end of the world, but far from ideal, really, you need to learn about UV Mapping and adding materials in Blender, adding materials is the easy part, UV Mapping is a huge pain in the arse! Anyway, hopefully you can see why Mesh can be useful in Second Life! Now, where’s my Beer!