Creating a Pearl Effect with ALM Materials

 

Oh yes, we all love the lighting possibilities ALM (Advanced Lighting Model) offers to us. Just think about the beautiful shine light creates on surfaces, especially combined with detailed bump and specular maps. Or the stunning effects you can create with the projecting feature. It's just plain awesome and super fun to play with!

 

But did you know that it is even possible to create a realistic Mother-Of-Pearl effect with ALM?  

 

I actually found out about it by accident when I was too lazy to make a specular texture and just used the diffuse texture that was almost, but not quite, grayscale. On the surface of the model, which I had colored so dark that is was almost black, suddenly all those faint colors of the texture appeared in the soft shine of the model. And yes, I was stunned!

 

Of course I had to test the effect if it was really working or just the result of my imagination and ... wow, yes, it did work, and it worked greatly. And of course, the next thing I did was turning this new and exciting feature I had just learned about into a class.

That's how the "Pearl in a Shell"- class was born and this is the build we make during class:

No worries, I won't run you through the whole class now. If you want to make the fancy build, you can always join me inworld for it, right? Here, we will just go over the light effect and work ourselves into a bit more detail than we could in class. 

 

I. Preparations

 

First of all, we will need a prim. 

It doesn't matter much what prim we use, the effect will work on all surfaces. I personally prefer rounded shapes to emphasize the shine depending on the angle of the incoming light. 

Caution:

Please take into consideration that all prims  and sculpts with ALM materials are treated like mesh in Second Life and should be set to Physics Shape Type "Convex Hull" in the Features Tab of your edit window. If you don't do that, you can easily get a very high LI (Land Impact). 

In fact, when I developed the class build above, I forgot it at some point and ended up with 871 (!) LI. 

Yes, 871. Eighthundredseventyone. On a build with 3 prims. Ouch!

 

What, you don't believe me? 

Here's the proof:

I think we can agree that we don't want this. So whatever prim you use, please make sure it is set to Physics Shape Type "Convex Hull" in Features Tab. 😉

 

So for now, I will use a simple sphere and set the Physics Shape Type to "Convex Hull". 

 

Secondly, we will need a Pearl texture. 

Well, basically, we can use ANY texture for the effect, but as it's sort of an iridescent effect you find on pearls, we'll just use a simple mother-of-pearl texture here. 

The one below, I created from a picture of a seashell that was originally made by Illuvis on pixabay. Feel free to download it from here and use it for your own projects if you like.

 

 

Last but not least, we need to have ALM (Advanced Lighting Model) enabled in our viewer. 

By default, it is disabled in most viewers, so you might have to switch it on. In Firestorm viewer, you find it in Preferences > Graphics > General. It's a checkbox under "Shaders". 

Make sure to press "OK" before you close the window to save the setting. 

 

If you have an older system, it might impact your performance, so you probably don't want to leave it on all the time. If your system can take it, it is well worth leaving it on. Many builders use it to enhance their builds and some effects will be totally invisible without it. 

To be honest, since I first switched it on, it never went off again as it adds so much to the overall Second Life experience. 

 

II. Creating the effect 

 

Ok, we have a prim, a pearl texture and ALM enabled. We're ready to go!

 

Select your prim and open the Texture tab. 

All the settings we need for this effect will be in texture tab. Size and shape of the prim or mesh piece don't matter at all. 

 

1.) Texture (diffuse)

For "Texture (diffuse)", we select a plain white texture.  

This texture is accessible directly in most viewers. Just click into the little texture box on the left side of texture tab and select "blank".  Press "Ok" to confirm. 

If you don't have this feature in your viewer, you can use any other plain texture you have in your inventory. If you color the pearl black, you can even use any other texture you want, it won't harm the effect at all. 

Color:

Color the prim in a dark color. Black will give best results but a dark grey will also give a fine effect. 

The darker your color, the more distinct the effect will turn out. 

Though you will get best results out of black or grey, but please also play with other colors to see the potential and limits of the effect. 

Here, you find a few examples how it looks on different colors: 

 

2.) Bumpiness (normal)

To create this effect, we wouldn't really need to use bumpiness at all. It does make a difference in some settings but it's not so very significant, so feel free to skip it if you like. 

If you want to use bumpiness, you will get best results when you use a blank bump map, like we did for the diffuse texture above. 

Check the checkbox "Bumpiness (normal)" in Texture tab of your viewer. 

Click into the grey texture box and select "blank" from the window that pops up. 

 

If you don't have the blank option in your viewer, just leave the bumpiness on "None".

The pearl effect will be just as beautiful, not worries. 

3.) Shininess (Specular) 

The Shininess and texture we use as a specular map will be the essential key to the whole effect. 

You might have used texture sets before which include different textures for Texture (diffuse), Bumpiness (normal) and Shininess (specular). While bump maps are usually blue with greenish/brownish/pinkish structures, specular maps seem to be just a monochrome grayscale version of the diffuse texture. As a matter of fact, those specular maps are not much more than a map that tells the surface where to be more shiny (bright parts) and where to be less shiny (dark parts).

But Shininess can do so much more:

If you use a colored specular map, like we're about to do, you will see that the map does not only show higher and lower shine but also includes the colors that are embedded in the specular map. This behavior is the base for our pearl effect. 

Check the checkbox "Shininess (specular)". 

Find your pearl texture in your inventory and drag it over into the grey texture box under "Shininess (specular)". Alternatively, your can click into the box and select the texture from your inventory there. 

 

Shininess Settings: 

The settings of Glossiness and Environment will affect how your effect looks in the final outcome. 

Depending on which effect you want to create, I recommend the following values: 

 

Glossiness:

Higher glossiness values will cause a smaller and sharper area to display the shininess at a time, while lower values will make the effect appear on a wider area but also appear more dull. 

Good glossiness values are between 30 and 70 but can go higher on flat surfaces. 

 

Environment:

Higher environment values will give the prim a stronger overall reflectance while cutting the colorful shine a bit down. Lower environment values will make the object appear more silky and give the color effect more room. 

Good environment values are between 10 and 20 but again can go much higher on flat surfaces. 

 

III. Enhancing the effect

 

All ALM effects depend - of course - on 1 factor: Light!

At the moment, our effect might not look very spectacular as it only uses the SL "sunlight" which usually doesn't give the best of result, coming to prims. On flat surfaces, it can happen that we don't see any change at all but just a black boring surface. 

To further enhance our effect and make it as stunning as possible, we can add further light sources. 

Just 1 single light prim makes a big change and if another prim wouldn't really fit into our design concept, we can just make it invisible. The emanated light will not be effected by color or shape of the prim. 

So let's add a light prim to our pearl: 

Rezz a new prim and set it to Physics Shape Type "Convex Hull" in Features tab. 

As you might want to link it to the build at some point, this is important in order not to mess up your LI. 

Still in Features tab, check the "Light"-checkbox. 

You can leave all other values at default, it's fine as it is. Adding color to the light would tint the whole effect in the color of the light. It might look good on some effects but can also take away from the specular texture you used.

 

When you now move the light box around, the shine effect will move with it, according to it's angle to the light prim. It will also change when the camera or avatar moves around it and changes it's angle of sight towards the light and the pearl. 

 

With the new light source, you can also see the differences between the Shininess settings a lot better and pick the perfect setting for your effect. 

 

I hope you enjoyed  this article and it inspired you to play a bit with Advanced Lighting Model effects and the use of Material Textures in Second Life. Let me know what you think in the comments, I'd love to hear about your experiences and projects. 

 

Have a great time and see you soon,

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

Make a simple mesh that shows YOU as the creator - WITHOUT a 3D modeling program!

 

 

We all love mesh. Mesh is great and as a serious Second Life content creator, you will sooner or later include mesh objects into your builds or even want to make 100% mesh items to sell to your customers. 

Of course, not all of us are great 3d modelers, let alone own or know the fancy programs that would be needed for it. 

So what do we do? 

Yes, we BUY our mesh. From people who are good at making it and kind enough to sell them to designers, creators and all the others who are not so good at making it. 

 

So here is a big THANK YOU to all the full perm mesh creators who are willing so share their great work with us and allow us to use it for our creations. We're super happy we have you guys! 

But now, as we have all the great mesh pieces, made awesome textures for them and assembled them to a beautiful build, we're bumping into the big problem: No matter how we link them, they won't show OUR name as the creator. 

 

But that is what most fullperm mesh creators demand from us. As they don't want to deal with the complaints of our customers, they of course want us to stand up for our creations. 

And honestly, we do want the credits for our designs, too, don't we?  

So do we now have to mess up our fancy 100% mesh build by adding 1 regular prim? Do we have to list it on marketplace with the tag "partially mesh" - only because of this 1 single prim?!  Oh nooooo... 😩

 

BUT... here's the GOOD news:
You can make our own mesh root prim without even touching a 3d modeling program. All you need is your viewer and a hard drive! 

Ummm... well, there is one downside: Not ALL viewers do support this feature though. The official Linden Lab viewer does not - but almost every other 3rd party viewer does, so if yours doesn't work, just try a different one. 

So, what do we need to do then?

 

Make a mesh cube from a prim box in only 4 Steps

Step 1:  Rezz a Box

 

 

First, we need a prim. I recommend a simple box, as it's the most simple piece available and usually works best as a root prim due to it's low poly count. It will still be higher than a cube made directly in a 3d modeling program but it will be low enough to serve us well as a root prim. 

So, in Second Life, rezz a BOX. 

 

 

Step 2: Save as Collada

 

Now we need to download this box to our hard drive. Yes, Second Life allows us to do that, even in the right format.  We can't export any textures we don't own, but we don't need them anyway. All we need is the object itself really. 

Right click on your box to bring up the menu.

Click on "More" until you see "Save as". 

Click on "Save as" and then select "Collada". 

 

 

Step 3: Select the texture settings

 

In the export window, UN-check "consolidate textures".  

This will give your mesh box the same faces as on the prim box in Second Life, so your mesh box will have 6 faces to texture differently. 

If you leave it checked, the whole box will only have 1 face and the texture will be applied on every side of the mesh. 

Check "Apply texture params".

This will keep the texture settings as they are on the prim. When it comes down to texturing, your mesh cube will behave just a regular prim box. 

 

You don't need to export the textures that are on the prim. All we need is the object itself. 

 

When you're done with the options, hit "Save as" in the export window.

This will save the prim as a collada file on your hard drive.

Step 4: Upload the collada file as mesh object in Second Life

 

Note: 

If this is the first time to upload mesh to Second Life, you might need to enable mesh upload on the Second Life website. In order to do that, go to the Second Life website and log in to your account. In your "Account" tab, go to "Mesh Upload Status" and follow the instructions there. After you have completed that, you can go ahead and upload your mesh box. 

 For more detailed information, also check the official Second Life Knowledge Base.

 

In Second Life, go to the top menu and select "Build" > "Upload" > "Mesh Model".

Select your saved Collada file (.dae) and open it. 

This will open the mesh upload window in your viewer. 

 

Basically, we would be ready to upload it now. If we don't make any further specifications, the uploader will calculate all necessary values for us, so you could just go ahead and click "Calculate weights & fee" right now.

If you're fine with the default level of detail and physics behavior, you can just skip the following paragraphs. Just hit the "Upload" button and you're done.  👍👏

Done! Yay!

 

or... not?

However, if you want, you can customize (and improve!) the SL behavior of your cube quite a lot in the uploader.

Let's go over the most important stuff: 

 

Physics Model:

 

The physics model refers to the SL physical behavior of the mesh, where it has holes, where it is solid and so on. For more complicated mesh pieces, you might want to make your own pyhsics model. Note that the more complicated and higher your physics are, the more likely your object will have a higher Land Impact (LI). 

 

For our simple mesh box, "Cube" would be the best choice.  It will give us solid, yet simple Second Life physics. 

Once you have hit "Cube", you will notice that our box in the preview window will turn blue. This is the physics model that gets displayed in blue in the uploader. 

Level of Detail:

 

The LoD (= "Level of Detail") settings determine how stable our mesh will be when seen from further distances. 

Highest:     displays all details, seen from close distances. 

Medium:    seen from further away

Low:            seen from even bigger distances

Lowest:       seen from far, far away

The higher the level of detail is (especially on long distances, lower and lowest), the more Land Impact will our mesh have. 

In case of our cube, we can apply a rather high LoD as it has so few triangles that it hardly matters. Even at higher LoD settings, we still can make it quite big before it's LI starts to increase. So we can make it pretty stable if we want to. 

I would recommend the following LoD-settings for our cube:

Highest:     Load from file 

Medium:    Use LoD above

Lower:        Use LoD above OR Generate, Triangle limit = 54 (half the triangles of the LoD above) 

Lowest:       Generate, Triangle limit = 0 (as few triangles as possible)

 

Once we see 4 green checkmarks beside the LoD settings, we can go ahead and click "Calculate weights and fee". 

Uploading:

 

In the lower part of the upload window, we now see how much Land Impact our mesh will have at the current size (this can change when we scale the object inworld!) and how much we have to pay to upload it.

Our cube should only have 0.5 LI and cost 11 L$ to upload. That's as low as it can get. 

 

When you hit "Upload" now, your mesh gets uploaded into Second Life. 

Please note that you will have to pay the upload fee from your L$-Balance.  The mesh will go into your objects folder under the model name shown in the uploader. You can change it there before uploading if you want - but you can also change it inworld later, so it doesn't matter. Your uploaded mesh will always be fullperm for yourself.

 

 

That's it!

 

Congratulations, you have successfully uploaded your own mesh cube, without even touching any 3D-modeling software. 

 

 

Please note that mesh, no matter how simple, will change it's LI according to it's size. Our cube, we can scale up quite a lot before it will become more than 1 LI but eventually, it will increase. Linking your mesh can decrease the total LI of the linked build, compared to the total LI of the unlinked pieces. 

But what am I telling you - you know this already. 

 

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. I wish you very happy building and enjoy your 100% mesh builds with your name as the creator! 

If you have further questions or suggestions, please leave a comment, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

See you next time,

Wolf Song

P.S. 

To all our clothing creators: 

Once you have added your awesome new root prim, please take your time to pick a suitable attaching point for rigged clothing. Do not just leave it at Right Hand. 

We all have accidentally double clicked on some random item in our inventory before, and thus, involuntarily  worn it - at the default attaching point "Right Hand".

This usually causes another item worn in the same spot to be replaced. If we now are wearing our clothing in the right hand, chances are that we suddenly stand naked in a place we better shouldn't. Be so kind and save us from the embarrassment by picking a different attaching point. 

Thank you! 😅💗

The Daily Tortured Prim: The Leaf

This is a series of beautiful and helpful things you can make out of a simple prim - Volume 4:
Create a leaf from an SL default sphere.
It's easy, just rez a sphere and change some parameters - and the best thing of all:
It's free and full perm, so you can do with it whatever you want!

A few years back, I had the idea to create a leaf boat for a fairy theme I was working on.
I searched the entire grid and the marketplace for a sculpted leaf that would fit my purposes - but everything I found either didn't have the right shape for a boat or simply was unaffordable.

After many hours of searching, thinking and discarding, I was almost ready to give up the idea of a leaf boat until I stumbled over this beautiful leaf shape, made from a simple - and even free - sphere. It was absolutely perfect for my boat project, and after that, I used it in different builds many, many times. Now I hope, you will find it just as useful.

And here is how it's done:

Rezz a sphere and name it "Leaf".

Object Tab:  
Size: x = 0.75, y = 0.25, z = 0.5
Path Cut: B = 0.0, E = 0.5
Hollow = 95.0

Twist: B = 180, E = -180 (Please note the MINUS!)

Isn't it beautiful? 😍

Due to the bad torture we did to our poor sphere - especially because of the twist we gave it - the texture faces are a bit tricky though.
The 2 main faces are partially on the inside and partially on the outside of the leaf, while the other faces partially overlap in some spots.

But if you use a seamless texture on all sides, it still looks wonderful.
In this example, I have used a seamless leaf texture I made myself - but you can use any seamless texture you like, just let your imagination run freely.

I hope you liked today's leaf project, please let me know what you think of it in the comments below.

Save the prim! 👍
Wolf Song

The Daily Tortured Prim: 4-sided Panel

This is a series of beautiful and helpful things you can make out of a simple prim - Volume 3:
Create a 4-sided panel from an SL default box.
It's easy, just rez a box and change some parameters - and the best thing of all:
It's free and full perm, so you can do with it whatever you want!

Sorry guys, I have been a bit busy, so I had this little break in my daily series - but hey, there's life out there and somtimes it gets so catching that you get infected instantly. ;)

But now I'm back and here is our next tortured prim:

The 4-sided Panel

We all know those fancy mesh panels that have several faces for different textures on a flat front.
They are very handy for multi-item-vendors, for example.
But did you know you can make this out of a simple SL default box, too?

Here is how it goes:

Rezz a Box and name it "4-sided Panel".

In the last episode, where I showed you the Nail, I already pointed out how important it is to name your prims, even if it might be a bit effort.

Object Tab:
Size: x = 2.0, y = 0.03, z = 0.5
Path Cut: B = 0.2, E = 0.71
Hollow = 33.0

There is our 4-sided Panel. That was easy, wasn't it?

Texture Tab:
Texturing these 4 faces is a bit more tricky though, that's why I give you an example here.

The faces 6 and 7 are easy, they display the full texture at default setting, so you don't really have to change anything on them.

The faces 1 and 4 are a bit more tricky, so I'll provide some working numbers here:

Face 1 (the green face):
Horizontal Scale = 5.0
Vertical Scale = 1.0

Ok, this one was easy, but the next one is a little bit harder: 

Face 4 (the blue face):
Horizontal Scale = -19.0 (Please note the MINUS!)
Instead of entering the minus, you can also just enter 19.0 and then hit the Mirror button (the little arrow beside the Horizontal Scale), it will have the same effect.
Vertical Scale = 1.0

Horizontal Offset = 0.55
Vertical offset = 0.0

Now there you have your 4-sided panel.
It will be very handy in case you want to make a 1-prim vendor for 4 items for example or just display 4 different textures in your home, shop or club.

Please leave me a line about how you used the 4-sided panel in your projects. Also, if you have suggestions on what you would like me to show you, please leave a comment, I'd be happy to hear from you.

Have a great day and see you all tomorrow for the next tortured prim.

Save the prim! 👍
Wolf Song

The Daily Tortured Prim: The Nail

 

This is a series of beautiful and helpful things you can make out of a simple prim - Volume 2:
Create a nail from an SL default tube.
It's easy, just rez a tube and change some parameters - and the best thing of all:
It's free and full perm, so you can do with it whatever you want!

Yesterday, when I showed you how to create a basic necklace, I already mentioned the advantages of SL default prims, so we can just go ahead and make our nail.

Instructions:  

Rezz a Tube and name it "Nail".

Note:
It's always helpful to name your prims.
In more complicated builds, you have a better overview and you avoid filling up your inventory with "Objects".
Also, in case you lose a prim, you can define your area search better and find the prim a lot easier.


Object Tab:
Size: x = 0.1, y = 0.1, z = 0.1 (you can adjust the size later to make the nail fit to your project)
Hollow = 75.0

Hole Size: x = 1.0, y = 0.5
Profile Cut: B = 0.5, E = 0.88

And there is your nail, easily made from just one happy prim and ready to be incorporated into your building projects.
Below, you find the parameters of the nail again, shown in the Firestorm edit window:

Thank you for watching and stay tuned, tomorrow there will be the next tortured prim.

Save the prim! 👍
Wolf Song

The Daily Tortured Prim: Basic Necklace

This is a series of beautiful and helpful things you can make out of a simple prim - Volume 1:
Create a basic necklace from an SL default sphere.
It's easy, just rez a sphere and change some parameters - and the best thing of all:
It's free and full perm, so you can do with it whatever you want!

In times of the mesh hype, we often forget about the good old prim.
Of course mesh is powerful, beautiful, detailed and often a smart solution - but sometimes, prims give us a great alternative.

Though they seem obsolete, they do have advantages:
1.) As Second Life's basic building blocks, they are stable and fast to rezz.
2.) They are free!
3.) Everything you make out of prims, is your creation (with your name as the creator!) and you're not bound to any TOS of the original creator. You can sell them, share them and give them away for free and full perm if you wish.

Plus, you can create surprisingly many different shapes from them, simply by changing their parameters. That's what we so lovingly call "prim torturing". 😁
But as there are no real instructions on how to get all the different shapes out of a prim, how do we start? Try and error, of course, always is a solution - but it takes so much time...

So I decided to make a little guide for the most useful shapes you can make out of a simple prim.
There will be a new prim every day, so stay tuned and keep checking in.

Today, we're making a basic necklace. Yes, you can make that out of a prim!

Let's start on it!
Rezz a sphere and name it "Necklace" (or any other name you find suitable - just name it somehow that you know what it is when you have it in your inventory).

Object tab:
Size: x = 0.175, y = 0.175, z = 0.23
Rotation: x = 0.0, y = 270.0, z = 40.0 (the rotation is not really needed but this way, it sits right for us to go on and decorate it with some sort of pendant - or whatever we want to do with it)

Path Cut: B = 0.0, E = 0.5
Hollow = 95.0

Twist: B = -144 (please note the MINUS!), E = 360 (NO minus!)
Dimple: B = 0.088, E = 0.108

And voila: you have a nice necklace that just waits to get attached to your avi. :)

Now have fun decorating the necklace and creating a beautiful piece of jewelry.

Tomorrow, we will make a nail from a tube, so make sure to drop in again and check it out.

Save the prim! 👍
Wolf Song