Wings 3d Tutorial Series From DemonEye Designs

Hey all ^_^
Originally I was just going to essentially do one video, the video to accompany the quick tutorial I wrote a couple days ago on making a sculpted unicorn horn in Wings 3d.

I've decided to make use of what little skill I have, and make a few more, though only the unicorn horn tut is done so far.

I'll be covering a few things, from very basic sculpties in Wings3d, to some use of multiple tools to get the desired effect, as well as a couple of in-world building tutorials. I'm hoping my tutorials prove useful for all concerned ^_^

If you ever see a problem in any of my videos, please send me a PM here, an IM in-world, or an email at [email]Okiphiarayna@gmail.com[/email]

Alrighty, the first reply to this thread will be my first tutorial, the Unicorn Horn in Wings 3d!

Have fun and e creative!

Needed materials
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Wings 3d version 0.98.36 with the Second Life sculpty plugin installed
Tut32grid.wings file from DanielFox's tutorial here: /8/70/210675/1.html
A basic knowledge of wings3d


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I recommend that yu have watched DanielFox's tutorials first, he does it a little better than me and some of his techniques are used in my tutorial.

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Useful commands:
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X,Y,Z - Switch to that axis view
A - Aim camera at selected objects
Shift+a - Frame selected objects with zoom and camera aim
V, E, F, B - Switch to Vertex, Edge, Face, or oBject selection mode
Space - Deselect all
R - Reset view to defaults
O -Orthographic view
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One important step you will need to perform before following along with this tutorial: in Wings, go to Edit, Preferences, Advanced, and make sure Advanced Menus is checked.

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http://www.veoh.com/videos/v1683759yyJFY3YN

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Also, the link to the SLImageUpload page on the SL wiki is:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SLImageUpload

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A couple extra tips!
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For a more 'traditional' horn, make a lot of bumps rather than the three big ones I have. It will give a little bit better of a twist look

Save often! In any work space, saving helps a ton. With wings 3d, also export often. Before it's finished even, you should export to a 32x32 or 64x64 sculpt map, that can be updated if you need to.

-Okiphia Rayna

Sorry about the delay, I had some problems uploading the video. Takes me a couple hours, and the first try ended up not working.

I don't know the reason for the yellow striped in the video, I know it's annoying...but.. I really don't know how to solve it =( If anyone happens to know, please let me know!

This video is BIG! You can maximize it with pretty good quality still as I captured and uploaded at my full screen resolution. (1280x1024)

Have fun and good luck!

The next tutorial I plan to have out by Monday, an introduction to some sculpty tools and freebie modelers that are usable for sculpted prims.

I plan to include:

Sculptypaint
Rokuro
Tokoroten
Nomi
Moment of Inspiration
Wings 3d
HM2Sculpt in conjunction with photoshop
PloppSL

Also SLImageUpload, and my reasons for using it over in-client lossless uploading.

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There will be a brief segment for each tool, showing how to sculpt something simple, and a segment uploading with SLImageUpload, just one lossless file, and all items made in the video will be shown in world.

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I am only doing these tools because I have used them and know at least generally what I'm doing. I'll try to highlight some of the pros and cons of each tool, as well as have a bit of information in this thread regarding what each is good for.

Good luck, and thanks for reading ^_^

Thank you Okiphia! Great tutorial.

If you haven't noticed yet, the audio is out of sync with the video at about 1 min 55 sec - the audio description trails the video. I didn't see any yellow stripes. The resolution is great - everything is clearly seen.

For anyone wanting to download it from the stage6 site, I didn't see any easy way to download it, maybe I missed the d/l link. But the divx web player has a triangular arrow that opens the divx web player's preferences. Click that and you'll be able to find out what temp directory the player uses. When the video is all downloaded you can then copy the divx file somewhere else on your computer and give it a .divx extension.

As mentioned in the video, Daniel's tutorials
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5695483392055008122
are probably necessary for a Wings3D beginner before tackling this tutorial.

Due to the sync problem I couldn't follow the last instructions about defining a bounding box so I'll have to review Daniel's video too. Other than that, the horn I did with your tutorial looks OK.

Thanks again. I'm looking forward to the next ones.

Thank you! Wasn't aware of the sync problem, checking it out. I'll see if I can get that fixed!

Also, if you create a stage6 account, I believe you have the option to download content, which can then be played using the DivX tools. (Not certain, haven't yet tested)

EDIT:: Alright, looks like the video is out of sync from the start actually, I'll be checking it a bit more to make sure, and I'll be re-uploading to see if it fixes it.

EDIT 2:: The re-upload will not be complete until tomorrow, I will also be uploading it to youtube to see if that is any better. I hope to have a final and properly synced version up by tomorrow evening

Sorry, I was unclear about the lag. Yes, the audio is out of sync with the video throughout and the lag in the audio is about 1 min 55 sec behind the video.

Youtube will probably compress it so much that the menu items, commands, won't be legible. If stage6 still has a problem with the sync you may also try Jing from http://www.jingproject.com (it needs its own recording application available for download at the site).

Thanks a bunch for that ^_^

An yeah that's why I used stage6. I'm assuming though that m internet crap-ness has caused me to lose some quality in the upload, so.. still uploading

I'll try Jing if Stage6 doesn't work.. hope the recording software is good

Jing is OK, it has its own quirks, and it needs a relatively newish pc with MS' NET framework installed. If it's not on the system already it will prompt you to download it from MS and install it.

I'd suggest veoh too, for uploading better quality videos than youtube, but they now force users to download a veoh player to play videos longer than a certain number of minutes, and they don't tell you if the whole video is viewable on their site or not.

I hope you have high upstream bandwidth and thanks for all your effort.

I have .net framework and a high quality machine lol.. no worries there... and ill try EVERYTHING!!! lol

ANd my net is actually kinda slow uploading, took me two hours to upload to stage6. I might shove the vid on a portable hard drive and use my schools t1 tomorrow...

The post above for the unicorn horn tutorial has been updated with a new link to the video.

I've changed from Stage6 to Veoh. Seems that the conversion to the divx format took some of it off, plus Veoh seems to upload faster for me.

Thanks very much to Daz Karas for the alert and information!

Now I can begin work on the second tutorial, which I still expect to have up by monday, December 24th.

-Okiphia

EDIT:: The change to Veoh has lost some of the video quality, however, it shouldn't be enough to deter fro the tutorials. The video is at the same resolution as before, perhaps on a smaller screen than mine it would look better, I don't know.

Have fun!

Sorry about the lack of the next tutorial so far, been dealing with a few problems. At the moment my main account is stuck online, and i cant access the forums with her any more anyway. So I'll be using this account to continue this series, and plan to have the second tutorial out by tomorrow evening.

Apoligies, and have fun!

Hello! It's time for another DemonEye Designs Building Tutorial!

At the moment, I'm having trouble uploading th video for Part B of this tutorial. Part A is educational as a standalone, but the two do complement each other. I will add a post with a link to the video when I finally get it uploaded.

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For this tutorial, I'll be dealing with various programs, and what is possible with a sculpted prim. I will also answer the question of 'Can my favorite program do sculpties?".

Alright, here we go!

First of all, what is possible with a sculpted prim, or sculpty? Quite a lot, but at the same time, they are extremely limited. I am not the most knowledgeable person on the technical aspects of sculpties, so I can't tell you the exact reasons for our limitations, but I can tell you some of what is possible.

First of all, you cannot use sculpties to make a Mega Prim. When you import a sculpt map, it is applied to a normal prim. The mesh is still restrained to being within the bounding box, which has a limitation of 10x10x10 metres. If you scale a sculpty to a bounding box in your modeler, and then scale it larger, SL will simply scale it back down until it fits into the box, possibly also distorting the shape.

Sculpties CAN however, be used to make tiny prims. While the in-world building tools are limited to a size of 0.01 on all sides, sculpties don't necessary fill the entire bounding box. Technically, I believe you could make infinitely small prims using sculpties, though at some point the practicality would be void. Because it is impossible to have a sculpted prim as 'perfect' in shape as a normal prim, most people just torture prims to make tinies, and not use sculpties.

Sculpted prims can be used to make irregular shapes. That was the original intention, to have a medium that could be used to create prims of shapes not as possible with normal prims. Sculpties are capable of much more diverse shapes, but are not capable of ANY shape. They are limited to a set number of vertices, and if more are used in the creation, then the original shape will be lost to something similar.

Sculpt maps are not created in-world. While there are some in-world tools for making sculpties, they are all created out of world in actuality, and result in usually a .bmp (Bitmap) or .tga(Targa) file. For the best results, sculpt maps are uploaded at a resolution of 128x128 or smaller. This is because most sculpt maps are uploaded Losslessly, which does not work properly for larger maps.

Lossless uploading is a term used t describe uploading while losing as little data as possible. Larger files are incapable of being properly uploaded this way... though I don't know why. The difference between a lossless and normal upload, when dealing with sculpties, can be enormous. Because of the nature of sculpt maps, when uploaded and losing data, the shape can be distorted. It ranges from just being a little lumpy to being completely wrong, depending on the sculpt itself. When you losslessly upload, you will always have a more exact recreation of the model you started with before the upload.

You can do a lot with sculpties. People have created amazing things with sculpties, but at the same time, have been unable to to some extent Because of the limitations of sculpties, you are still only able to create medium quality creations with one prim. Using more prims, working together, you can create extremely high quality objects in SL, in a lot fewer prims than previously possible. But it comes at a price.

Each sculpty takes up considerably more resources than a single normal prim. I don't know the exact differences..it depends on the shape. If you can do something in 4-5 prims, with about the same quality as a single sculpty would provide, and you have the prims available.. use the normal prims. It will cause less lag, and loading hundreds of sculpties at one time can be extremely slow.

Sculpties are also limited in quality depending on distance. Sculpties have (I believe) three levels of detail. When close, they look how they should, but as you move farther away they lose detail to you, to preserve resources. Sculpties are rendered client-side, so will only cause lag to the player, not the server.

Now then.. Can Your Modeler make sculpties?

Yes. Almost certainly. The most common file types for 3d models are .3dm and .obj. There are resident-made tools for both of these, called 3dm2sculpt and obj2sculpt, that will change a file of its type to a sculpty. Most mainstream programs also have plugins to make it easier. 3ds Max, Blender, Maya, and Wings 3d are some of the most common modelers used for sculpties, and have the best documentation on the method used for each.

No matter the program, there are a few rules you will always have to follow. Some of these would be that a single sculpt must be made out of an object with only one surface. Another big one is the number of vertices and faces. Some plugins will not export to a sculpty unless the number is correct, others will allow it, but the detail kept will be decided by the program, and is not necessarily predictable.

For more detailed info on how to do it with your program, search this building forum, or ask if you cant find anything. In all likelihood, its very possible with your program. I have yet to hear of a modeler that it is impossible to create sculpties with.

The rest of this tutorial is in video form. It is showing some various specialty tools, the pros and cons of each, as well as a little about the more mainstream modelers. For each, there is a very short show of how to use it, unless I don't know how

Video will be posted when it is uploaded.