Blender and Sculpties - Conceptual Overview?

Hi,

I've been playing around with Blender for a couple of months, on and off. Did some of that noob to pro tutorial (until the exercises started getting less complete), and even managed to build my own little object, which I then found I couldn't import into SL.

I've looked at some tutorials for converting objects into sculpt maps, and they didn't work for me.

Because I don't understand the concepts. I've never used a 3D program before. This is all new and alien to me. I'm a coder.

Can somebody explain, or refer to a good source, for just enough education (not a series of mystery steps) to get properly started?

Seams, UV Maps, unrolling, spheres, shape keys... Gah!

Stupid question: what about subsurf'ing and smoothing? Do those modifiers/options translate when you create the sculpt map texture?

Or do people really have to start with premade spheres, cylinders, and planes, and sculpt from there? The sculpt tools seem so... imprecise... to me.

If my post is coming off as exasperated or frustrated... I can't imagine why.

Yes, you do need to start with basic geometric shapes to make sculpted prims. Heres a basic tutorial on setting that up for Blender http://amandalevitsky.googlepages.com/sculptedprims

If you are looking for an precise way to edit the shapes use the edit mode (tab key) instead of sculpt mode. Bring up the object properties window (N key) which will let you view and edit specific information all the way down to the properties of individual vertexes. When editing points you can use Grab (G Key), Scale (S Key), and Rotate (R Key) followed by the axis that you want to perform the operation on (X,Y, or Z key Once for global twice for local) and then type in the amount for that operation. For example if you select something and type "RXX90" you will rotate what you selected 90 degrees on its local x axis.

By using the edit tools you can make very precise and specific modifications to the shape and then switch to sculpt tools for more organic shapes. Just be sure not to extrude or perform any other modifications that would change the UV mapping of the shape.

If you don't mind using a prerelease build of Blender then my scripts generate the base sculpties and you won't need to uv map or use the sculpt map material.

So it's simply:

1) Add - Mesh - Sculpt Mesh, select the type you want and press OK
2) Move verts to model
3) In edit mode Go to multires level 1 select all faces. Open the UV Image window and create a new 64 x 64 image. Go to object mode and multires level 3
4) Render - Bake Second Life Sculpties
5) Save the sculpt map
6) Check console for LSL snippet with scale info

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The Blender Basics video tutorials on http://blenderunderground.com are a good introduction to Blender in general.

Thank you both for the tips. I'll try that pre-release. Looks very helpful.

Which download do we need on that site?

I'm guessing you mean the graphicall.org site?

The patch the script relies on was committed to trunk on the 3rd of Feb, so any builds later than that will work. You just need to pick one for your platform.

If you are doing your texturing in Blender then one with the tiles patch is extra handy