10 Essential Building Habits that make your Second Life easier!

Hello Fellow Builders!

I know it's been a while and much has happened - in fact, I had this entry sitting in my drafts for more than a year. Omg! But now I got it done and I can finally share it with you!  💪

 

During all the building I did, I have developed certain habits that helped me in my workflow. Some of them, I learned from other builders, others just came naturally with the process. But what all of them have in common is that they make your life as a builder so much easier. So just in case you might not know them, I list them here for you. 

And without further ado, let's dive into it!

 

1. Name your prims

Do you also just start building when you have an idea?
Ikr, it's so easy: something pops into your mind, you build it, texture it, link it and script it and then you pick it up without a second thought.
Then you want to rezz it, or pass it on to someone, and you look into your objects folder and there it is: "Objects" all over the place! But which one of them now is your carefully crafted build?

You can easily avoid this by naming your prims right from the start. When you rezz your first prim, give it the name of your project. It doesn't really matter which name you pick, as long as you can associate it with your current build.

When your project gets bigger and more complicated, try and name prims similarly which belong together.
For example, if you build a cave with plants and waterfalls, you could name the waterfalls "Waterfall 1 - top layer", Waterfall 1 - bottom layer", the plants "Plant 1 - inside", "Plant 2 - inside", Plant 1 - outside" and the cave prims "Cave - Roof", "Cave - Wall 1" and so on.
These are just examples, of course. Name your prims however you want, but do name them.

This way, you have a much better overview and you will have it a lot easier to find the right prims when scrolling through a linkset.

When you're done with your project and everything is linked and saved, you still can rename your build to the name you want to give your finished project. 

 

2. Always have a spare prim to shift-copy

Those who have attended my classes know that I often start a class with: 

"Rezz a prim and shift-copy it up along the blue arrow.  Name the upper copy 'Next Prim'."

Then I continue with the lower prim and start the build. The "Next Prim" stays above the build and gets shift-copied down until we don't need any more prims.

Now why am I doing this?
The answer is very easy: I keep a spare prim right in the center of the build.
Whenever I need a new prim, I have it right there and it's already adjusted perfectly in case you need a centered prim. I can also already give a property, for example set it to the Physics Shape Type "Convex Hull" in case I build a mixed linkset with mesh pieces.

3. Create an own folder for your project

Especially when it's going to be a bigger project, you want to have all your assets in a special project folder. Create subfolders for textures, sculpts, mesh objects, scripts and so on. Copy the stuff you need into them, so you have everything right at hand and don't have to search your inventory all the time.

When you develop your project, you probably have a certain style or texture scheme for your entire project. Just imagine you'd have to dive into the depth of your inventory 20 times for this special texture whenever you make a new prim...  you will be happy to have all things in one place, it will save you so much time.

After your project is done, you can either delete all the subfolders or pack them up in boxes if you want to keep things together. This way, you keep everything organized and save your inventory from flowing over.

 Oh, and you can of course nest boxes, too. 👍

 

 

 

4. Log your progress

During your building process, you might want to save things before making major changes.The easiest way to do this is to just take a copy of the build (or the script) into your inventory.
The disadvantage is, of course, that in time, several versions of the project will pile up in your inventory and you might soon lose the overview of which one is what.

 To avoid that, you can either name them differently, like "Cave", "Cave with Water", "Cave with water & Plants" - or your give them version numbers, like "Cave 1.0", "Cave 1.1", "Cave 1.3".
If you make a major change, just change your version number to "Cave 2.0" and go from there.

This way, you will always have a full development log in your inventory and can easily go back to a previous step without having to search for ages. When your build is done, you can either delete previous versions and only keep the last one (if you're sure you won't be needing them anymore) or you can box them up to save room in your inventory.

Honestly, for me, as soon as I have deleted that previous version I was so sure of that I'll never need it again, I end up rebuilding it, because I find something I still have to fix or change. So yes, I keep all the versions - no matter how many they are - until I'm done with the build.

5. Restore to Last Position

So when we have to re-rezz to fix stuff, our viewer gives us a great option: Restore to Last Position!

Whenever you pick up a prim, it's last position in the world gets stored and if you are somewhat close to the last position the prim had (same sim, same parcel), this will bring it back to the spot where it was before. 

This works for a single object as well as for linked or soft-linked objects.

 

There is one downside to it though: it only works if the parcel you're in includes the <0,0,0> coordinate of the sim. When you build on a big sandbox, it's usually no problem as they mostly have the entire sim dedicated to the sandbox, so the 0-spot is included.  

When you're on private land, like your own parcel, and you don't have rezz rights on that spot, this trick might not help you. In that case, I recommend to put things into a rezzer as soon as possible, especially when you know it's going to be a bigger project. 

You can still easily exchange the linksets in the rezzer, just pick them up and replace them in the box. If you don't change the root prim during the building process, you don't even have to record the position again.

6. Log your Rezzer's Channel Numbers 

Talking about rezzers... whenever you make a new project using a rezzer, you want to create a new channel number for each of your projects.  After having done that a few times - at least if you are as disorganized as I am - you'll soon hit the point where you stand there and wonder if you have used this channel number already or not. 

 

 

So, the easiest thing you can do is to keep a notecard where you log all the channel numbers that you used and what builds you used them for. I keep this notecard in the folder with my rezzer system and update it as soon as I use it for a new build. Easy-peasy.

 

 

 

 

 

7. Seat your avatar

Does this happen to you too? You move your camera around your build and try to come close to a certain point and - wham! Your avatar makes a movement - possibly with the AO still on - and runs right into your view. Or you select another prim in edit mode and the avi turns into it's direction, waving it's fancy flexi hair all over your screen. Well, in one or another way, we all know this problem, right?

So yes, we want to restrain our avatars when we're building. Tie them down! No more dancing around in our sandbox, no more walking into our screens, no more avatar footprints in our fresh concrete! NO SIR!

And guess what? All we need is a simple wooden box. No scripts, no animations, no fancy textures, no mesh. Nothing is required other than a simple SL default prim. Rezz the prim, right click on it and sit. Problem solved. And the best thing of it? If your avi then still is in the way, you don't even need to go out of edit mode. You just select the box and move it out of the way, with avi and everything. 

Of course, as builders, we might feel that a simple box isn't enough. Yes, go for it. Create that fancy building seat you always wanted to have. Make a throne. A great villain chair. Or a hammock. A carpet with a waterpipe. Whatever suits you. As long as your avatar can sit on it, it's perfect! 

 

 

8. Use your camera

Now as we have our avatar seated: Learn to use your camera. We can't walk around our build to see it from all sides (and we don't want to either!). Instead, we want to use our camera independently to see our build from all sides, quickly zoom in and out, orbit around it and so on. 

Nothing does that easier for us than our keyboard camera controls. Essentially, this is the ALT-key and the left mouse button. Hold them both down and move the mouse... you'll soon get the hang of it. 😎 

What, you think there's more to it than just that? Ok, well, yes, there is - a little, maybe.  I'm going to make a tutorial for this soon. In the meantime, here you find the official description of the SL camera controls. 

9. Use your keyboard shortcuts

We all know CTRL+Z to undo the last step. It's one of the mightiest spells in the book and it works almost everywhere. How often do we wish we would have this in RL!

But beyond this, there are so many other shortcuts you probably didn't know. For example, did you know that CTRL+Y would re-do the last step you just undid? I didn't. I actually only very recently learned this.

I admit, when you're very used to working with your mouse, you might feel a bit uncomfortable using keyboard shortcuts. But I promise, you'll get used to them very quickly and they will really enhance your workflow.

I personally tend to move, rotate and scale things into place freely, using the move, scale and rotate tool. I used to go with the mouse all over to the edit window to select the tool I want. It took time, I had to refocus from the build to the edit window and I had to move the mouse away from the pivoting point of my camera. Now, I keep staying in "move" mode and just press CTRL for the rotate tool and CTRL+SHIFT for the scale tool. No need to move the mouse, no need to refocus, no need to break my workflow. It really saves me so much time!

Here's the official list of keyboard shortcuts for the SL viewer.  They also should be seen as hovertips or directly incorporated in your edit window, so you can take them from there, too.

 

10. Remove your scripts

 

Oh how beautiful is the virtual world with scripts. They enhance almost everything. As soon as things move, squeak or bling, they become so much more vivid. That's why we love scripting our stuff. 

 

But did you know that many scripts which cause steady effects on prims can be totally removed without losing the effect? 

Yes, it's true. Many effects, such as sound loops, particles, prim rotations with llTargetOmega, texture animations and several others become prim property when they start and will stick with the object. 

 

Removing such scripts can reduce the script load of a sim significantly. Even if there are only a few removable scripts in your build, every little bit helps. So when you're done with your build, take your time to go over it and remove all unnecessary scripts out of your prims before you pack it up for sale.

 

 

 Well, that's it for today. I hope this list is somewhat helpful and you feel inspired to try some things out. As usual, let me know what you think in the comments and I always love to hear about your current building projects. Have a wonderful time and see you again soon!

Wolf Song

 

Linking prims to mesh? No Problem! - A Guide to mixed Linksets

One of the most notorious myths in Second Life is that you can't link prims and sculpties to mesh objects. It will shoot your Land Impact through the roof and might even crash the sim you're on. 

Well, I do this all the time. 

 

Um, NO, I'm NOT crashing any sims (or at least not so far...)! But I do mixed linksets a lot. In fact, there is hardly any build I make that doesn't contain mesh parts and I still love sculpties, they simply do have their purpose, even in times of mesh.  And I tend to always link as much as I can - it's so much nicer if you have only 1 object to handle instead of several. Even if you put them in a rezzer, the less elements you have in there, the more likely it is to rezz properly. 

 

Of course, like in every myth, there is some truth in it: 

When you link prims and sculpts to mesh objects, there is always the chance to have one or another prim or sculpty that doesn't behave well in the linkset and makes the LI go up higher than expected. But in most cases, this can be avoided by following a few simple rules when linking your mixed build.

 

Example:

This beautiful antique bookstand that we make in the Spell Book Class consists of  5 single elements: the table, the bookstand, the book, the candle and the wick. 

 

So in this build, we have 2 sculpted prims, 2 regular prims and 1 mesh object. 

All 5 objects are linked and together, they add up to an LI of 4. 

So yes, it's perfectly possible. And I would like to encourage you to experiment with it. It is often a big benefit to pick your building tools like a surgeon would pick their instruments. Every tool serves their purpose, none is "better" than the other one. Mesh is great but sometimes, a prim is better, depending on what you 're building. Sometimes a sculpty is the best choice you can make. I promise, we will look at these differences in an extra article soon. 😁

 

By the way, these rules also apply whenever you want to use ALM materials in your prim or sculpty builds. ALM materials (normal and specular textures) can significantly higher your LI when used on prims or sculpts. Like, a simple prim sphere with ALM material textures can end up with 800 LI or more (YES, I know how it sounds but it's TRUE! Check it out here!). 

Now, let's jump right into it and see what we need to know when we want to mix our prims.

Rule #1: Set your prims to Convex Hull

This is the first and foremost rule when you make a mixed linkset: ALWAYS set all prims to Physics Shape Type "Convex Hull" when you plan to link them to mesh.

To do this, select your prim, go to Features Tab and pick "Convex Hull" from the Physics Shape Type menu. 

 

This is absolutely necessary as mixed linksets can really mess up your LI when fortune does not favor you. 

By doing that, you can also already see if your LI is turning out to be a problem. It will show as soon as you have set the Physics Shape Type, so you will already get a clue if it works out or not. 

 

Caveats:

There is one downside of the "Convex Hull" trick though: 

As it will cause SL to use simplified physics, it also will ignore  all holes and hollowed shapes. You probably know this from sculpties: Even if they look as if you could walk through, their physics are one big block, so you have to set them to phantom to be able to use holes that are in it. 

This problem only affects regular prims though. Sculpties ignore all holes anyway, and mesh objects usually ignore holes, too - unless the creator cared to make custom physics for them. The good mesh creators do that when it makes sense - but the vast majority doesn't. 

 

Rule #2: Pick a very simple object as your root prim

Always try and pick either a mesh part or a very simple prim (like a box) as the root prim.

If the mesh part is not made by you, you want to take one of your prims, so it shows your name as the creator of the build. Boxes and cylinders are the simplest prims you can add (boxes are still better than cylinders though).

 

If you have the permission to upload mesh to Second Life (you need to go through an approval process on the  Second Life website), you can also create a simple mesh object for yourself with your name as the creator. In another article, I show you how to make a mesh cube for Second Life with nothing more than your viewer. 

First Troubleshooting:

If you have a very complicated prim, like a heavily tortured torus or a very detailed or big sculpt, it might shoot up your LI even though it's set to "Convex Hull". You usually see that right away on the LI of the object in the edit window - but sometimes, the actual LI needs a bit to update. Peek at the free LI on the land when you change it, this often updates much faster and will give you a direct clue if your LI goes up, down or stays the same.

If you have this troublemaker as a child prim, you can try and set it's physics shape type to "NONE" - that often fixes the problem. 

BUT...
Physics shape type NONE only works on child prims. You can not set the root prim to have no shape. If you try, you will get an error message. It's no big deal though, the rest of the build will still change to Physics Shape Type "None". Just the root prim will stay what is was before. And yes, it will stay whatever it was before, so if it was Physics Shape Type "Prim", it will still be "Prim" and this can potentially cause trouble. 

 

So this is why we want to have a prim with simple physics as the root prim: it won't cause any problems when set to "Convex Hull" and it most likely doesn't affect the linkset too much, even if we don't pay attention and have it set to "Prim". 

Note:

Physics Shape Type "None" also sets the prim to "Phantom".
This is a nice and easy way to set single objects to Phantom in a non-Phantom linkset but it only works if it doesn't mess up your LI.

Sometimes, we want to have "holes" in our builds, e.g. for doors, hallways, etc. 

Holes in prims or mesh are ignored with the simplified physics of "Convex Hull". If we want the object's physics to behave like the object looks, we have to set it to Physics Shape Type "Prim". This can cause serious trouble though, especially if we use complicated prims or ALM materials, so we'll have to be really careful with it.

Sculpted prims will always ignore holes, no matter what. If we have hollow sculpties in our linkset, we will have to make them "Phantom" in one or another way to be able to walk through them.  

In former times, there used to be scripts with a phantom hack, that allowed us to make single prims phantom within a linkset. There still are some that work, but it's often wonky and it requires a script in every prim (though the can be removed without changing the effect - but when you change the linkset, this might break.). 

Physics Shape Type "None" does exactly this thing for us. Of course, we will need objects that defines the physics then or we could just walk through the walls or fall through the floor.

Now... what if our LI is still too high?

 

1.) Search your linkset for another troublemaker - probably there is another prim that you didn't expect to cause high LI.
If in doubt, just set the whole linkset (except for the root prim) to Physics Shape Type NONE and see what happens to your LI.

2.) Check the mesh you use. Some mesh is really badly created or is uploaded with too high LoD settings, so it has a very high LI by itself. Unfortunately, there is no way to fix bad mesh inworld.

3.) Check the scale of your build. The bigger the mesh, the higher the LI and sometimes, it just needs to be a little bit smaller to lower the LI significantly (especially if the LoD of the mesh is very high!).

4.) If the LI is just a little bit higher as you would like it, you can always try to add a few more simple prims or mesh parts, like a few decorations more or something simple that enhances your build. Sometimes, the LI just rounds up and you can add quite a few more prims and still keep the LI.
Just experiment... ;)

5.) If everything fails....
Well, there are cases where there is no further option than to leave things unlinked. In this case, make 1 linkset for all mesh objects and another linkset for prims and sculpties. If you need things to be partially phantom, make a 3rd linkset for all phantom objects. You can then use a rezzer system (like Builders Buddy, for example) to make it easy to rezz your build or keep the linksets soft-linked.

 

 

 

Ok, that was it for today. I hope this helped a bit to demystify mixed linksets. 

I really want to encourage you to experiment with mixed linksets as all SL objects have their purpose and there's no reason to drop helpful tools form your toolbox only because they appear outdated or complicated. 

Please tell me about your experiences in the comments  and also let me know if you have further questions or have some more additional information about it. I would really like to know what you think. 

Have a wonderful day and I'm looking forward to hear from you,

Wolf Song

Protect your sculpt maps with your logo - A Gimp Tutorial

 

 

Hello Folks! 

 

Have you ever wondered how people get their colorful logos on a sculpt texture? 

Besides creating truly unique sculpt textures, it's also an elegant way to promote your brand and protect your precious sculpties from copybotting.  

 

Well, for me, it was always a big mystery and I really wanted to know how people do that. 

Of course you can buy an expensive tool that does this for you. But as I'm notoriously short on money, this was not an option. I had to find out how to do this by hand.

And hey, in fact, it turned out to be super easy! All you need is a graphic program that can handle transparency and layers to do it yourself in a few simple steps. In this tutorial, we will be using Gimp, version 2.10.24. You can download the newest Gimp version for free here: Gimp Download

 

 

So, what do we need? 

1.) A sculpt map

First, you need of course a sculpt texture. In my example, I used a simple single rock sculpty I created with the jasspub plugin for blender 2.4. I know it's old but it's still the best free tool around.

Note: 

Your sculpt map needs to have a resolution of at least 64x64 pixels or your logo will appear very blurry. You can carefully scale them up but I recommend to not scale them beyond 128x128 pixels to keep texture loading times reasonable.  The bigger you make your texture, the longer it will take to load and the more client sided lag it will cause for your customers. A resolution of 64x64 or 128x128 should be fine, even for a more complex logo.  

 

This sculpt map is 64 x 64 pixels in size, so big enough for the logo we're going to use today. 

If the reference pictures of the sculpty and the logo itself are looking a bit blurry in the process, it's because they're very small and in order to work on them, I zoomed very far into them. 

It was debating to use textures with higher resolutions for the blog but I decided against it. I think it's better that you see right away how the real thing looks like. 

No worries, they might look blurry when zoomed in so far but when you see them in their normal size, they'll look fine.

 

Some sculpt maps created with SL inworld tools are having a format that is only a few pixels wide, like 64x8 or something. This ratio can't be changed without distorting the sculpt and unfortunately, it's almost impossible to put a logo on it (believe me, I have tried!). 

In any case, it's advisable to try out your logo version of the sculpt locally to make sure it works well before you finally upload it to Second Life.

2.) A logo

Then you need a logo. Best results you will get from a clear black logo with a transparent background and sharp outlines. It shouldn't have very delicate lines or be too detailed as this could turn out unrecognizable in the outcome. 

In my example, I used a simple black picture on a transparent background I found on pixabay. 

 

 

The simpler you keep your logo, the smaller you can keep the original sculpt texture. Our example logo would work perfectly fine on a 64x64 sculpt texture. If you include text or other finer structures, you might want to go with 128x128 pixels.

 

This is already all we need - besides Gimp (or any other graphic design program that can handle layers and transparency). 

 

 

Now let's start

Step 1: Prepare your sculpt map

Open the sculpt map in Gimp. 

If your logo picture contains very fine lines or text, you might want to scale it a bit up, but please take into consideration that, the bigger the sculpt map, the more loading time it will need for the viewer. 

Best is to keep it as small as possible. In any case, it should NOT be bigger than 128 x 128 pixels. 

 

Make sure to also keep the ratio of your sculpt map. Changing the ratio will distort and break your sculpty. 

In fact, also just increasing the size without any change of ratio can break the sculpt in some cases, so try and keep the original size of your sculpt map if possible. 

For our Lotus Flower Logo, 64 x 64 pixels are perfectly fine.

 

Step 2: Duplicate the sculpt map layer

 

Make a copy of your sculpt map layer, so that you have 2 of them in the layer stack. 

You can click on the eye-icon beside the top layer in the layer window to make it invisible for now. 

Step 3: Set the lower layer to Opacity = 1.0

 

Select your lower layer and go on the slider on top of the layer window. where it says "Opacity". 

Either use the slider or double click on the number and set the Opacity to 1.0. This will make the sculpt map invisible for the human eye - but the color information of the single pixels is still there.

Note: 

This trick, we can use to protect our sculpt maps which are too small or don't have the right ratio to put a fancy logo on them. In this case, we don't need a second layer but just set the opacity of the sculpt map to 1.0 and export the result. 

Uploaded in Second Life, the sculpt map will appear totally transparent and can not be copybotted. 

Due to the remaining color information, it will still work as a sculpt map though. 

 

After you're done with this step, set the top layer to visible again by clicking the eye icon beside it. 

Step 4: Prepare your logo

 

Open your logo in gimp in a new window. 

If it's bigger than your sculpt map, go to "Image" in the top menu and select "Scale Image". 

Scale it so that it fits into your sculpt map.

In case of our Lotus flower, I kept the ratio of the flower and scaled it to 64 x 50 pixels. 

 

If you like it better, you can also unlink the little chain besides the height and width values to break the ratio and scale it to 64 x 64. The logo will get stretched into the new size of course - which, in this case, is so little that it hardly matters, so just go for what you like best.

Step 5: Copy it into your Sculpt map as a new layer 

 

When you're happy with the size of the logo, go to "Edit" > "Copy" (or CTRL-C) to copy your logo. 

Go back to your sculpt map and create another layer on top of the layer stack (press Button 1. in the picture).

Go to "Edit" > "Paste" (or CTRL-V) to paste your logo into the sculpt map picture. It will be floating over the new Layer.

You can now move it around until you like where it sits.  When you're happy with your layout, anchor the floating selection (press Button 2. in the picture). 

 

Step 6: Cut out the logo in your sculpt map

Logo Layer:

Have your logo layer selected, go to the "Layer" menu and select "Transparency" > "Alpha to Selection". 

This will select all the visible parts of the picture. 

 

Now click the eye icon beside your logo layer to make the logo layer invisible. 

As you can see, it's outlines are still selected. This selection will stay until you change your selection, so it will apply to all layers you're working on. 

At this point, we could actually delete the logo layer entirely. All we needed was the selection from it, not the layer itself.  If you prefer to be on the safe side, you can keep it but make sure it is invisible. 

If it later appears on our finished sculptmap, it will break the sculpty.

 

Sculpt COPY Layer (middle layer):

Switch to the upper sculpt COPY layer (the middle layer in the layer stack). 

As we don't want a "negative" version of the logo, we need to INVERT the selection to be able to cut out everything that is NOT our logo.  

Go to the top menu and click "Select" > "Invert" (CTRL-I).

This will invert our selection so that everything is selected EXCEPT FOR the logo. 

If the outline of your picture seems to be moving or flickering, your selection is inverted correctly. 

 

Alpha Channel:

Before we now cut out our logo, we have to make sure that our Sculpt Copy layer actually has an alpha channel. An alpha channel allows us to make the texture partially transparent. If a layer doesn't have an alpha channel, it will just make areas without color white instead of transparent. 

 

Go to  the "Layer" menu and select "Transparency". In the new menu right on top, it says "Add Alpha Channel". 

If that is greyed out, you're fine. You already have an alpha channel, so you can just leave that menu. 

If it's available, please click on "Add Alpha Channel" to enable transparency in your sculpt map copy layer. 

 

Finally: Cutting out the logo

After making sure you have an alpha channel on your Sculpt Copy layer, you can cut out your logo. 

Go to "Edit" > "Cut" (CTRL-X).

 

It should look like this now: 

 

 Step 7: Exporting your sculpt map

Now it's time to export your sculpt map, so you're able to use it in Second Life. 

The important thing here is that we have to make sure that BOTH sculpt map layers are set to VISIBLE. 

Even though the lower layer is not visible to the human eye and appears transparent. we still need the color information of those almost transparent pixels, so it HAS to be visible when we export the picture. 

 

The Logo layer (the top layer), however, should NOT be visible. 

Either we delete it to make sure that it doesn't show up on the uploaded picture, or we set it to invisible by closing the eye icon. Both ways work fine. 

 

Exporting: 

Go to "File" > "Export As". 

In the new window, pick the save location, and a name for your new Sculpt map. Make sure to enter the suffix .PNG behind the filename. 

When you're done, press "Export" on the bottom of the window. 

 

Note: 

In Gimp, you can save your files in a lot of different formats. You can determine the file format by typing the according file extension directly after the file name. 

In this case, we need to save it as a .PNG - file as this format supports transparency and also has the capability of saving the color values of transparent pixels - the very feature we relay on for our fancy sculpt map protection trick. 

After we have hit "Export",  we will get a list with options.
You can leave everything on default, but you need to check the box "Save color values from transparent pixels".
This is essential - without this, our trick won't work. 

 

Remember how we set the lower sculpt map layer to 1% Opacity? Even though the layer now appears invisible, the colors are still there. That's also why we had to make sure that this layer is visible on export. 

So with both Sculpt map layers visible, the logo layer either deleted or invisible AND "save color values from transparent pixels" CHECKED, we can hit the "Export" button. 

And here is our fancy new sculpt map, with logo, ready to be uploaded to Second Life! YAY!

Step 8: Uploading to Second Life

Yesyes, I KNOW you know how to upload stuff to Second Life, no worries. 

 

oh... you don't?

Well, it's easy: In your viewer, go to the top menu and select "Build" > "Upload" > "Image".  

There's just one thing that is important when it comes down to uploading sculpt maps though:

You need to check "Use lossless compression" in your upload window.

 

 

When you upload your sculpt map, you will have to pay the upload fee of 10 L$. 

So make sure you try your sculpt maps locally before uploading them, in case the sculpt turns out distorted. This can happen with very complex sculpties. If you don't like the outcome, rework the sculpt map with a simpler logo or just set it to 1% opacity without any logo, that usually fixes it. 

 

But... why does this work??

Well, it's actually fairly simple: 

Sculptmaps use a color code to define a 3D-coordinate. The Cartesian coordinates X, Y, Z get transported into the colors Red, Green, Blue. This way, every pixel has a specified color that tells it's place in space. 

Our sculpt map still has all it's colors all over the map. Parts of it are fully visible (the parts of the logo) while other parts (the parts around the logo) are almost - but not entirely - transparent. They do, however, still "know" their color values. 

The trick is to save these transparent color values during export. The .png - format allows us to save the color values of transparent pixels, so the colors are still saved in the sculpt map, even though they appear transparent to the naked eye. 

Sculpted prims take the color values of a sculpt map and transport them back into local coordinates. They don't check for transparency, just for the color value of each pixel.

 

This is why it is so important to save the color information of transparent pixels on export as a .png file and also why we have to use lossless compression on upload into Second Life. If the color information of the transparent pixels gets lost or compromised, it will break our sculpty. 

That's it! 

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and I could inspire you to protect your sculpt maps with fancy logos. Please let me know your experiences in the comments, I'd be happy to hear what you make with it. 

Also, if you have further questions or something during the process is unclear, just drop me a line in the comments. I'll be happy to help. 

Have a wonderful time and see you soon,

Wolf Song