So you worked out how to use your tools, got the mesh sitting there and have painted yourself a skin/ensumble now you want to edit the thighs of the skin (More relevant for skins I feel than clothes, but it's annoyed me there too)
You can't get there! Photoshop CS4 is great but I find it really hard to get at these hidden seams, I couldent find a option for fixing it in CS4(Maybe there is, but well...) I went the long way around and opened up blender.
Opening up the avatar.blend (A version of which can be found at primstars website.) And deleted all the unncessary doodahs, in fact deleted everything except the legs (Deleting is not necceserary, just helped everything be clean for me :D you could just use export selected instead) Now I deformed the mesh of the legs. (Not using pose, that is tricky and I couldent get it to work for CS4) Spread it out, and then exported as a wavefront obj.
Import into Photoshop - there you go, now you can easily get at the seams! :3 I only exported the legs becuase I personally don't know how to set up multiple materials for the three different body parts. Once I know this I'll upload a whole avatar mesh somewhere for anyone who needs it.
I may upload the bottom half only in a while once it's tidyed up but I'm doing so much at once it's kind of bottom of the pile :D If anyone asks me for it I'll put it up straight off, but it's a bit rough and ready.
Sunday, 14 November 2010
Monday, 1 November 2010
Making skins in CS4
Well I'm working on my skin textures again, even if things are soon going to be changing I need a step back from mesh for a while. I'm getting there but havent really anything interesting to share yet :3
Though unrelated I have this link http://tentacolor.com/sl-animation-for-blender-newbs/ - If your interested in making your own pose for something, check it out. Making a static pose is well, as easy as could be. And animating in blender is suprisingly easy. So anyway.
On with this post.
I'm currently working on a Drow skin for a new friend of mine, I'm using a photobase that I picked up pretty cheaply off of XstreetSL some time ago. (I have still got a own photoskin project on the backburner but I decided to cheat for this so she could have her skin pretty quickly :D it'll also be usefull for the Cat skin project I'm still working on.) Long and short of this post is, if your using CS4 to work on skins and are having problems with the seams (Who doesent.) Try this trick.
Take a flatened layer of your whole photo texture. (I work on mine desaturated for numerous reasons, I feel it's easier to get a good feel for the contrast and flow of pattern while not being distracted by colour.) Now use the healing brush tool (The secondary one that looks like a plaster.) this works in a similar way to the clone tool, except it copies more the grain and pattern of an area than the saturation or hue. Meaning if you have a gradient you like but it's flat, and want to put a texture ontop without loosing the shadow underneath, this will work pretty well. As with any tool it takes some getting used to and still you sometimes need to do some things the long way. But working that out has saved me a lot of time. Hope it might you too :) (I'm going to be trying this out on my next lot of cloth textures, I predict it being REALLY helpfull :D)
Well theres the skin so far (Just a head shot to show what I'm working on... Will get some proper body shots once I can be bothered to make some straps to make it PG... *Dident check if there were anti pixel nipple rules for this blog :D*
Overall going well... Should be done tommrow, needs some shading fixes on arms and back. Then I can fully layer the face for makeups, and variations of musculity and stuffs. Then it should be ready for doing lots of fun things with :3 Be officialy the first CyKi skin to be fully produced.
Ignoring the Obake skins which are still not on sale and are more likely to be remade with this texture under them in some places. (SO I feel less like an Eloh rip off) The originals I will sell at just over upload cost, I think anything else for an Eloh based skin is unreasonable, and I suggest ANYONE hard up and wanting a good custom skin tries thier hand, If only Eloh brings out a -good- new edition male one that'll be everyone set for decent rp skins...
Though unrelated I have this link http://tentacolor.com/sl-animation-for-blender-newbs/ - If your interested in making your own pose for something, check it out. Making a static pose is well, as easy as could be. And animating in blender is suprisingly easy. So anyway.
On with this post.
I'm currently working on a Drow skin for a new friend of mine, I'm using a photobase that I picked up pretty cheaply off of XstreetSL some time ago. (I have still got a own photoskin project on the backburner but I decided to cheat for this so she could have her skin pretty quickly :D it'll also be usefull for the Cat skin project I'm still working on.) Long and short of this post is, if your using CS4 to work on skins and are having problems with the seams (Who doesent.) Try this trick.
Take a flatened layer of your whole photo texture. (I work on mine desaturated for numerous reasons, I feel it's easier to get a good feel for the contrast and flow of pattern while not being distracted by colour.) Now use the healing brush tool (The secondary one that looks like a plaster.) this works in a similar way to the clone tool, except it copies more the grain and pattern of an area than the saturation or hue. Meaning if you have a gradient you like but it's flat, and want to put a texture ontop without loosing the shadow underneath, this will work pretty well. As with any tool it takes some getting used to and still you sometimes need to do some things the long way. But working that out has saved me a lot of time. Hope it might you too :) (I'm going to be trying this out on my next lot of cloth textures, I predict it being REALLY helpfull :D)
Well theres the skin so far (Just a head shot to show what I'm working on... Will get some proper body shots once I can be bothered to make some straps to make it PG... *Dident check if there were anti pixel nipple rules for this blog :D*
Overall going well... Should be done tommrow, needs some shading fixes on arms and back. Then I can fully layer the face for makeups, and variations of musculity and stuffs. Then it should be ready for doing lots of fun things with :3 Be officialy the first CyKi skin to be fully produced.
Ignoring the Obake skins which are still not on sale and are more likely to be remade with this texture under them in some places. (SO I feel less like an Eloh rip off) The originals I will sell at just over upload cost, I think anything else for an Eloh based skin is unreasonable, and I suggest ANYONE hard up and wanting a good custom skin tries thier hand, If only Eloh brings out a -good- new edition male one that'll be everyone set for decent rp skins...
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
SL Viewers
nixRight, I got tired of Emergance constantly freezing up since installing my new graphics card and motherboard. Either they are messed up or it is. Plus I was getting this strange bug where clothes looked like a mostly transparent screen shot of the SL window... yeah...
So today I have installed Kirstens Viewer and I'm just about to Install Pheonix.
Kirstens Viewer
Kirstens looks pretty, the ambient shadows and new shiny all work on my computer but theres still the chat bar issue from viewer 2.0(Ie, you cannot have the chat bar in a detached window for local chat.) And also by now it would have sto...
Er, as I was saying, it would have stopped me from typing the sentance and made me go into a new one, becuase apparently local chat users have no desire to ever string together more than about two sentances.
It's not primarily KV's fault, and I might go back to it soon. Definately very shiny :3 I also get the impression she is very much a dedicated script worker, so it seems like a solid project despite it's problems.But I need to RP damnit!
Pheonix
Reminds me of Emerald and Emergance (Well they are all pretty much Emerald afterall) But with orange put on everything ¬.¬ So much orange... But besides the ui, which is orange... >.<... (Will be restarting it in the planest one, but theres not much choice.) Works pretty well. If it's stable or not over long times or not is the question, will update...
So today I have installed Kirstens Viewer and I'm just about to Install Pheonix.
Kirstens Viewer
Kirstens looks pretty, the ambient shadows and new shiny all work on my computer but theres still the chat bar issue from viewer 2.0(Ie, you cannot have the chat bar in a detached window for local chat.) And also by now it would have sto...
Er, as I was saying, it would have stopped me from typing the sentance and made me go into a new one, becuase apparently local chat users have no desire to ever string together more than about two sentances.
It's not primarily KV's fault, and I might go back to it soon. Definately very shiny :3 I also get the impression she is very much a dedicated script worker, so it seems like a solid project despite it's problems.But I need to RP damnit!
Pheonix
Reminds me of Emerald and Emergance (Well they are all pretty much Emerald afterall) But with orange put on everything ¬.¬ So much orange... But besides the ui, which is orange... >.<... (Will be restarting it in the planest one, but theres not much choice.) Works pretty well. If it's stable or not over long times or not is the question, will update...
Friday, 15 October 2010
Victorian Mesh
I've decided I'm not happy with how victorian arcitecture tends to come up on SL, especially Victorian stuff. - I live in a Victorian terrace in real life, they put detail into everything.
Of course this isent secondlifes builders fault, up till now putting detail on a building made it unnecceserialy primmy.
But if I can make mesh which doesent over do the prims? Well thats my task for today. Working on good arcitecture. It occors to me I should be settled down into one area for making mesh, but I can't help but take a stab at building something I'm pretty familiar with!
That said, I do have some victorian (esque) dresses on the backburner, the next lot of creations may take me a few days however as this time - I'm going for making something good, not just another test run. (As mostly it seems to work pretty well by all accounts... Though there might be a problem with uploading submeshes, but I'll find out soon if that was just the one file.)
Of course this isent secondlifes builders fault, up till now putting detail on a building made it unnecceserialy primmy.
But if I can make mesh which doesent over do the prims? Well thats my task for today. Working on good arcitecture. It occors to me I should be settled down into one area for making mesh, but I can't help but take a stab at building something I'm pretty familiar with!
That said, I do have some victorian (esque) dresses on the backburner, the next lot of creations may take me a few days however as this time - I'm going for making something good, not just another test run. (As mostly it seems to work pretty well by all accounts... Though there might be a problem with uploading submeshes, but I'll find out soon if that was just the one file.)
Thursday, 14 October 2010
Boots, not so much for walking... Especially when your av is in the ground.
So I made some naff boots in mesh... Which took a horribly long time for such blobbish monstrosotys but anyway :3
I found out the long way that uploading joined objects is possible but doesent have the effect I hoped for, you need to then apply the objects to seperate locations (Drop them onto ground, pull back into inventory, put to the locations.) not great, presumably I could make the meshes one object, as you cannot reposition them anyway maybe that's the best way to do it. At the moment I would say unless your making long boots, make them as prim applied mesh instead of using the weighting features. Obviously though for boots that go up the leg, which I'll be trying later, that is really where mesh is going to show it's usefullness!
Now if only the could make mesh be like clothes layer. So that it could be rolled up and down isntead of having to load TGA's all the time, which put an unncessery extra lot of textures for people to deal with!
Changing Vertex paint...
Yesterday I experimented with what happens if you change the weighting, the long and short of it is...
:D - Everything stays at the center of your av, instead of where the bones are moving too... I can see this having interesting effects if used right but, it's not what I need.
I've decided to dearmiture the head part while keeping the newly made eyes boned. But it will be a while till I see how that turned out as blender ate my file at the critical saving point. I'll probably remake the head using more of what I now know later.
Back to the test grid with me!
:D - Everything stays at the center of your av, instead of where the bones are moving too... I can see this having interesting effects if used right but, it's not what I need.
I've decided to dearmiture the head part while keeping the newly made eyes boned. But it will be a while till I see how that turned out as blender ate my file at the critical saving point. I'll probably remake the head using more of what I now know later.
Back to the test grid with me!
Mesh and it's distortions
Well, I decided to have a go at making a mesh head for the avatar... Still not going into too much detail on the build yet. - Or at least that's my excuse for it being so bad :D
So first impressions for using as a base for avatars:
Mesh distorts, this is both a good thing and a bad one, I think to make an avatar work well a lot of efforts going to need to go into good weight painting, else your AO's going to pull your face all over the shop, though I guess simply not using weight for the head would solve that it would then loose the rezising wouldent it? (More experimentation needed I guess :D)
These distortions make it difficult to use eyes that are not mesh themselves. As such I would suggest building them into the head, or at least exporting them ready lined up and placed upon the avatar reference. (Unless removing the weighting of course.)
I'll experiment more with this, but at the moment the mesh on this head moves so badly I cannot see you even successfully putting piercings etc on - and as we all know customisability is key to an avatar on SL. Off the peg is all very well but generaly people want more than that!
Think I'll concentrate on more clothes for a while before tackling more of the avatar related builds, but at least my avvie has a mesh head now :D even if it does look like dren!
PS I'm really not sure why the face moves so much, I'm sure my human shape's face doesent move as much as that! Maybe the weight is being affected in the wrong area somehow? I'll have to examine the heat at some point.
So first impressions for using as a base for avatars:
Mesh distorts, this is both a good thing and a bad one, I think to make an avatar work well a lot of efforts going to need to go into good weight painting, else your AO's going to pull your face all over the shop, though I guess simply not using weight for the head would solve that it would then loose the rezising wouldent it? (More experimentation needed I guess :D)
These distortions make it difficult to use eyes that are not mesh themselves. As such I would suggest building them into the head, or at least exporting them ready lined up and placed upon the avatar reference. (Unless removing the weighting of course.)
I'll experiment more with this, but at the moment the mesh on this head moves so badly I cannot see you even successfully putting piercings etc on - and as we all know customisability is key to an avatar on SL. Off the peg is all very well but generaly people want more than that!
Think I'll concentrate on more clothes for a while before tackling more of the avatar related builds, but at least my avvie has a mesh head now :D even if it does look like dren!
PS I'm really not sure why the face moves so much, I'm sure my human shape's face doesent move as much as that! Maybe the weight is being affected in the wrong area somehow? I'll have to examine the heat at some point.
Getting Started.
Alright now my initial teething problems are over!
It's time to actually start making stuff... (which I should have done weeks ago but, well now it feels more pressing :D)
And here's the first actuall mesh, yeah a little underwealming I know :3 But it's just a rough trial.
I've encounted two problems, one my own stupidity and another an apparent issue with using direct copy of the weighting.
Number 1, the weighting, the AO my avvie is wearing is causing parts to glitch through the mesh, the mesh stretches just fine as you would expect it to, but when the av rocks back and forth it's causing a poking, this presumably can be solved by giving extra room at problem areas. But I tried stretching the whole mesh and the problem still seems to stay - so being more precice will be what I try next, maybe adding some extra verticies too in order to create a better weighting. (They would need extra verticices to not look so blocky anyway I think, though a bit of a cleanup in general should help with that.) - Though looking at the av in SL suggests that for what ever reason the mesh deformity of the breast area is not flowing over to the top. - A big problem. Maybe it is just the weighting, at the moment you would need to reduce the breast size or else have it poking through o.o not ideal at all! though easily remidied with using an alpha covering I would want the user to be able to have a shirt that moved with thier av's proportions for various reasons. (Especialy as I'm looking to make avatar replacements/body parts at some point.)
Number 2 - My own stupidity - I forgot to join the points after spawning the mirroring, though that proves that making multiple units with gaps between is going to be that much easier than it was with sculpts at least :3 (Though I should've guessed that.) Anyway, easily solved by joining the verticies back up...
Making shirts this way is something I've looked forward too, being able to give volume to a top without inconviencing the end user. Prims were terrible in this respect in that everything must be modded by hand, generally leaving an unpredictable and dissapointing result for the other users.
It's time to actually start making stuff... (which I should have done weeks ago but, well now it feels more pressing :D)
And here's the first actuall mesh, yeah a little underwealming I know :3 But it's just a rough trial.
I've encounted two problems, one my own stupidity and another an apparent issue with using direct copy of the weighting.
Number 1, the weighting, the AO my avvie is wearing is causing parts to glitch through the mesh, the mesh stretches just fine as you would expect it to, but when the av rocks back and forth it's causing a poking, this presumably can be solved by giving extra room at problem areas. But I tried stretching the whole mesh and the problem still seems to stay - so being more precice will be what I try next, maybe adding some extra verticies too in order to create a better weighting. (They would need extra verticices to not look so blocky anyway I think, though a bit of a cleanup in general should help with that.) - Though looking at the av in SL suggests that for what ever reason the mesh deformity of the breast area is not flowing over to the top. - A big problem. Maybe it is just the weighting, at the moment you would need to reduce the breast size or else have it poking through o.o not ideal at all! though easily remidied with using an alpha covering I would want the user to be able to have a shirt that moved with thier av's proportions for various reasons. (Especialy as I'm looking to make avatar replacements/body parts at some point.)
Number 2 - My own stupidity - I forgot to join the points after spawning the mirroring, though that proves that making multiple units with gaps between is going to be that much easier than it was with sculpts at least :3 (Though I should've guessed that.) Anyway, easily solved by joining the verticies back up...
Making shirts this way is something I've looked forward too, being able to give volume to a top without inconviencing the end user. Prims were terrible in this respect in that everything must be modded by hand, generally leaving an unpredictable and dissapointing result for the other users.
Wednesday, 13 October 2010
Mesh Todai!
I'm in the firstlook on a inventory light alt at the moment playing with meshes finally!
I've found out that Blender 2.54(beta) is not fully working with Collada export yet, it's a wip. So I'm trying a download from http://www.graphicall.org/builds/ which is supposed to be a collada ready update to the beta.
It's that or go back several versions and frankly I really like the improvements to Blender with the recent releases. They actually don't make my head bleed to use!
edit: Okay, that site has a hellava lot of files on it - so I'm digging for the right one, when I know which one it is I'll post it here o.o
I'm following the tutorial from Mechinimatrix...(http://blog.machinimatrix.org/2010/09/15/meshes-i-a-preliminary-tutorial-about-meshes/) Gives a good start if your used to modeling in blender but not to rigging. But it works mostly how you would expect, it's just the import due to the aformentioned Collada borkage that is stumping me right now!
More posts on this subject as it develops...
<3 - So happy to be working with the mesh!
UPDATE : I'm going back to Blender 2.49b for now, see if this works more reliably for our uses... Those who are currently having 'nothing turn up' the server side on sl, I'll update if this solves that too. (As I was having the same issue when exporting from 2.54.) - Okay the reason nothing turns up server side is this in responce to anothers posting...
Jonathan Linden -
"I noticed you tried this upload on "Sandbox Island." You need to be on a mesh enabled region for this to work. It is a bug however that there should be better feedback on why nothing happens."
So now I get to play musicial islands, finding a place that is mesh enabled apparently ¬.¬ on the grid that we are using to test mesh! *sigh* anyway...
UPDATE: Woo this article is starting to look like swiss cheese, anyway - Yes, 2.49b seems to be the easiest sollution currently to the Collada.
I've found out that Blender 2.54(beta) is not fully working with Collada export yet, it's a wip. So I'm trying a download from http://www.graphicall.org/builds/ which is supposed to be a collada ready update to the beta.
It's that or go back several versions and frankly I really like the improvements to Blender with the recent releases. They actually don't make my head bleed to use!
edit: Okay, that site has a hellava lot of files on it - so I'm digging for the right one, when I know which one it is I'll post it here o.o
I'm following the tutorial from Mechinimatrix...(http://blog.machinimatrix.org/2010/09/15/meshes-i-a-preliminary-tutorial-about-meshes/) Gives a good start if your used to modeling in blender but not to rigging. But it works mostly how you would expect, it's just the import due to the aformentioned Collada borkage that is stumping me right now!
More posts on this subject as it develops...
<3 - So happy to be working with the mesh!
UPDATE : I'm going back to Blender 2.49b for now, see if this works more reliably for our uses... Those who are currently having 'nothing turn up' the server side on sl, I'll update if this solves that too. (As I was having the same issue when exporting from 2.54.) - Okay the reason nothing turns up server side is this in responce to anothers posting...
Jonathan Linden -
"I noticed you tried this upload on "Sandbox Island." You need to be on a mesh enabled region for this to work. It is a bug however that there should be better feedback on why nothing happens."
So now I get to play musicial islands, finding a place that is mesh enabled apparently ¬.¬ on the grid that we are using to test mesh! *sigh* anyway...
UPDATE: Woo this article is starting to look like swiss cheese, anyway - Yes, 2.49b seems to be the easiest sollution currently to the Collada.
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