Importing objects made off-world

OK, I talked to one of the Lindens through Live Help, and he told me such was impossible, but I'm going to ask anyway.

Please, is there some way to write a script, perhaps in conjunction with third-party software which would reside on my computer, to allow us to create content off-world and import it into Second Life? I'm not talking textures, but actual prims.

For example, Daz 3-D uses primitives. I haven't used it a lot to verify exactly what types of prims it uses, but I already know one of them is a cube. We'll use that just for the purposes of this example.

If I make something in Daz 3-D made entirely from cubes, why not have a way to take the information about the component prims and convert that information into something SL uses, copy and paste it into a notecard, then rez an object in-world with a script to do the necessary work, drop the notecard into the contents, and give the script a command to rez the prims required to create that object?

I'd think it must be possible, if someone could figure out how to convert the information from another program into something SL could use.

Edited to add another thought I forgot. It should also be able to save the necessary textures in a format SL can use such as TGA, so they could be uploaded and applied to the needed prims (perhaps even include something in the notecard specifying the name of the texture, so they could be uploaded first before the prims are created?)

Search this forum for "Offline Builder", "Maya to Second Life", and "OBJ Importer".

Thanks for the reply, Chosen. I checked out the threads on Blender and Maya. Haven't looked at the one for OBJ importer because it sounds like that one is extremely prim-heavy.

There is still one issue that seems to be missing, though. Textures! I gather from the thread that the one for Blender would leave me with nothing but wood prims, and it doesn't look like the one for Maya will act any differently.

Maybe I'm just too much of a n00b, or perhaps blind, but I fail to see what the point is of building off-world if you still have to do your own building work in-world once the prims have been created. It can be difficult finding the right prim to apply that marvy texture you uploaded to, when they all look the same.

[Edited to correct some stupid typos that wormed their way in]

I am a total newbie. I read the threads about off-world creation possibilities and if I understand correctly the whole philosophy of this approach, you must do the texturing inside the SL.
I did not studied the scripts and/or programs, but I suppose that if you are creating something off-world, your program has no idea how the prim will be rendered in SL, where is up, where is down and what mapping will be used.

As a total newbie, I also was a bit confused, because my first approach was something like "Where is the menu option for Softimage (3DSMax, Maya, Wavefront etc.) model import ?"

But the fact of life is, that you have a really limited and stupid modeller (and the modeller is stupid, the real parametric CADs like Solidworks are about something else. At least, they knows about NURBS, projections, sketches, extrudes, holes, hierarchical assemblies etc.) inside the game.
So, if you want to create something, you must use the tools which are available. Texturing really is not a problem. There are more serious problems in SL. The lack of hierarchical structures and inverse kinematic is one of them. Or the impossibility to create/use models based on 3D meshes.

SL's interpretation of UV mapping is a bit wacky from what I understand. The task of translating the mappings from more standard modeling programs to SL's proprietary repeat/offset settings is quite difficult, from what I've been told. I'm not a programmer, so I don't really understand why (seems pretty straight forward on the front end), but that's what I've heard from those who understand these things better than I do.

Anyway, a few people have experimented with tools to make texturing for SL easier. Personally, I feel the easiest thing to do is just to use Photoshop intelligently with the inworld tools, but if you feel like investing the effort to learn Maya, you might want to check this out:

http://www.qarl.com/qLab/?p=18

LL are concentrating most of their efforts on their servers and server security. I don't expect any major improvements in the client anytime soon, although there is a beta client out with some very minor improvements.

The issue of third party clients is a bit sensitive right now because many residents are traumatised by realizing the reality of the server/client model, and its inherent lack of security. However, I believe that this area will not get any major improvement until someone (not LL) does come up with a new client.

Possibly all true, but I'm wondering what this has to do with the topic at hand. We've been discussing 3rd party building/texturing applications, not any proposed improvements to the SL client, and not 3rd party clients (which don't even really exist). Care to explain how your post relates?

As stated in earlier posts, someone is working on a script for converting stuff built in Maya to SL builds. Search these forums for that thread for details. Maya is pretty expensive though, as I understand it. And I don't think the current release of this tool supports textures at all. At this time, it also only supports about half the possible prim types in SL.

No. DAZ|Studio uses polygon mesh constructions. They have a plug-in for DAZ|Studio that makes some simple shapes that look like SL prims, but they are not, mathematicly or in terms of textures, the same thing. (I've been a DAZ user since early Beta stages.) What DAZ builds can't at this time be translated to what SL builds.

DAZ|Studio can be used to make .BVH animation files, and has limited uses for previewing clothing and avatar skin textures. But I doubt you'll be able to import builds made with the DAZ version of "prims" at any time soon.


None of the off-line building methods that I have seen so far can do any sort of texture import.