When Linden Lab urged people to download the Materials viewer recently, the blog post also included some links to some very useful resources for content creators. Once again I find myself plugging The Good Building Practices Wiki.
Materials can be very shiny, but you don’t want them too shiny, they can be funky, but you don’t want them too funky. Now whereas the Good Building Practices Wiki isn’t going to turn you into an overnight star in the content creation stakes, there are some very useful Materials related pages there:
- Alpha Modes Do’s and Don’ts
- Second Life’s light model for materials
- Case Study – Katana using normal and specular maps
- Case Study – Example wood crate using materials
- Case Study – Sequined bear using materials
Now bear in mind that some of those case studies are older than others, the Katana case study was one of the first to appear and things have moved on. Also bear in mind that Brooke Linden is adding sequins to her Linden bear with this new system ….. that’s what it says, honest! Although it looks like Runtai Linden was roped in to help there too.
Personally I’d suggest starting with the example wood crate, not just because it’s a nice one to get your head around, but also because it has links to Wood Workshop (Windows only I’m afraid), which is a free seamless wood texture generator. There are also links to Gimp, which is a free paint/image package and there’s also a link to an add in for Gimp that creates normal maps. Therefore not only is it a nice case study, it also introduces nice tools for your creations too.
Now there’s still a lot to take in, but it’s good to see Linden Lab taking a lead here by providing resources. The Good Building Practices Wiki is a work in progress and I’ll be interested to see their advice on a retro refit for buildings to make them pathfinding friendly. When it comes to Pathfinding and buildings the biggest issue I see is linksets, as Pathfinding works on linksets not individual prims.
However that’s for the future, for now, there are materials to play with, and possibly tear your hair out. However if building and texturing isn’t for you, then watch the video to get an idea of how this could be a very good step for Second Life. I can’t embed that video, the embed code is blank, hmm! Anyway, it looks good!