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Jesi (AN), Italy
10 posts
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Hello Modo Gurus,
I am evaluating modo (downloading the trial right now) for work related to Second Life. I wonder if you can give me some directions. Ideally, I want to model objects in modo, texture them and then export a low poly version in a format suitable for import to Second Life.
The format is very simple, a 64x64 pixels TGA file where the R,G,B channels are the vertex positions (X,Y,Z).
From what I've read on Modo, it should be possible. Can someone help and give me directions on where to look? I know I'd be spending timeless hours playing around with Modo (you know, the New Toy syndrome).
Thank you,
Roberto Lupi
(Kitten Lulu in SL)
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5/8/2007 - 2:49 PM
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Darmstadt
1765 posts
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modo will work well for painting clothing for SL avatars. You can download the sample .obj models and texture templates and paint on them, bake textures and lighting effects into the maps, etc. For modeling other objects, you will have to rely on saving out simple .obj format props using a script someone wrote to generate prims from .objs made of triangles. This is a horribly inefficient method, but SL doesn't support actual model import. Hopefully they are working on it. Someone could probably write some modo scripts to simulate the SL prims and export SL scripts to regenerate the models in SL, but it would be a very limiting way of working.
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5/8/2007 - 10:13 PM
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Jesi (AN), Italy
10 posts
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Actually, they did work on it. The result is a new kind of SL prims, called sculpted prims or sculpties, that works like I described.
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims
They are already on the beta grid and will be released shortly (tentatively scheduled for may 23rd, but it may be delayed by a week or two if they find bugs).
Message edited by Roberto Lupi on 5/9/2007 - 2:04 PM
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5/9/2007 - 2:02 PM
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Darmstadt
1765 posts
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That is VERY cool. I think we will be able to offer some very useful tools for making SL 'sculpties'. The mel script doesn't look too complex, making one for modo shouldn't be so hard...
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5/9/2007 - 9:53 PM
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Jesi (AN), Italy
10 posts
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Ok, I need to find out how to write such an export script.
I don't know much about maya (and thus mel script) and I don't know much about modo, but I am a programmer so I know the basics.
Can you tell me what is the basic strategy to bake vertex positions (a 'position map' in modo speak?) to a texture or UV map? If I know what to do, I can try to figure out how to write the script.
Message edited by Roberto Lupi on 5/14/2007 - 3:45 AM
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5/14/2007 - 3:44 AM
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Salt Lake City
193 posts
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What timing. My work has just decided to put content in 2nd life. I'd be interested to see what you guys come up with.
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5/14/2007 - 3:52 PM
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Darmstadt
1765 posts
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I think the sculpting in 301, and some of the tools for generating sculpt maps from hi-res geometry will be very useful for SL.
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5/14/2007 - 10:02 PM
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Brooklyn
1051 posts
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Quote from human2.0 :
What timing. My work has just decided to put content in 2nd life. I'd be interested to see what you guys come up with.
Likewise my company. I'm not really caught up in the Second Life thing, but I'm going to need to produce content, because my boss certainly is.
I'm a modo novice, particularly with rendering/baking options. This tutorial for blender, however, seems like it should be reproducable in modo. I'm just not sure how the RGB channels might be baked into the UV map. Anyone with a clue, please chime in. Her results are pretty impressive.
http://amandalevitsky.googlepages.com/sculptedprims
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5/15/2007 - 5:09 AM
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Boston, MA
559 posts
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-removed-
Message edited by Henry Armitage on 5/21/2007 - 11:12 AM
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5/15/2007 - 11:48 AM
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Darmstadt
1765 posts
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Quote from Rabbitroo :
Alternately, the existing normal map baker *might* work by baking the target shape onto some really simple and tiny regular primitive (something that uses up the UV space nicely). If the tiny primitve is maybe 1000 times smaller than the target geometry, the distortion versus absolute coordinates will be small
-K
The first gen. sculpties use a spherical UV map, so baking a displacement map for a tiny sphere would be a start. You would then need to do some image processing to convert the greyscale normal displacement to an RGB vector along the normal. You could probably do that by making a unit sphere sculpty, and multiplying it by the displacement.
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5/15/2007 - 12:20 PM
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UK
4040 posts
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Yeah, I've got people enquiring about SL contenet, so this thread is usefull - keep it coming :)
Modonize your workflow ...
http://www.modonize.com : The Modo community FAQ and knowledge base
Oh, and a handy place to find my scripts ...
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5/15/2007 - 12:55 PM
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Boston, MA
559 posts
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Message edited by Henry Armitage on 5/21/2007 - 11:13 AM
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5/15/2007 - 12:55 PM
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Salt Lake City
193 posts
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Good? What are you looking for?
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5/15/2007 - 1:42 PM
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Darmstadt
1765 posts
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Quote from Rabbitroo :
After doing a bit of reading, a custom shader that varies RGB based on X,Y,Z is probably the way to go. Baking this shader onto a spherical UV map would then probably yield the right kind of map for SL.
I think you could do it with layered gradients...
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5/15/2007 - 1:55 PM
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Boston, MA
559 posts
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Message edited by Henry Armitage on 5/21/2007 - 11:12 AM
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5/15/2007 - 3:29 PM
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Boston, MA
559 posts
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Message edited by Henry Armitage on 5/21/2007 - 11:11 AM
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5/15/2007 - 4:14 PM
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Boston, MA
559 posts
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Message edited by Henry Armitage on 5/21/2007 - 11:14 AM
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5/15/2007 - 6:49 PM
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Brooklyn
1051 posts
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Quote from Rabbitroo :
After an hour of fiddling around with the technique, here's what I've figured out.
The process to make an SL sculpted Prim is possible in Modo without any programming.
This is seriously cool; if your initial tests hold up with a variety of objects, the technique deserves to be mentioned on the SL forums. They're over there beating their brains out with Maya and Blender. So far, modo isn't even on their screen. But with 6,000,000 inhabitants, all wanting to produce content, it would seem that a decent number would be prompted to give modo a whirl. Particularly with the magic words "No programming." Hey, it got my attention.
Your link seems to actually load the modo file itself as text in a new window. Can't seem to download it. I'd love to see your UV maps. I'm just scratching the surface of UVs, simple stuff. This kind of thing is a bit further along my learning curve.
Nice work!
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5/15/2007 - 7:47 PM
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Boston, MA
559 posts
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Message edited by Henry Armitage on 5/21/2007 - 11:11 AM
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5/15/2007 - 8:36 PM
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Darmstadt
1765 posts
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Instead of fiddling with the illumination, perhaps you could use luminous color maps, and fiddle with the object luminosity. Then you could ignore lighting all together,
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5/15/2007 - 9:57 PM
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Boston, MA
559 posts
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Message edited by Henry Armitage on 5/21/2007 - 11:14 AM
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5/15/2007 - 10:33 PM
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Jesi (AN), Italy
10 posts
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Quote from Rabbitroo :
It looks to me like absolute x,y,z (e.g. coordinate data) is getting baked into R, G, and B. For some reason, it looks like she's inverting the "R" direction (maybe a left-hand/right-hand thing?)
The "R" direction problem was a bug and is fixed in the last update (released today). The tutorial hasn't been updated yet.
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5/16/2007 - 4:08 AM
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Boston, MA
559 posts
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Message edited by Henry Armitage on 5/21/2007 - 11:13 AM
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5/16/2007 - 7:57 AM
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Boston, MA
559 posts
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Message edited by Henry Armitage on 5/21/2007 - 11:13 AM
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5/16/2007 - 1:00 PM
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Brooklyn
1051 posts
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Quote from Rabbitroo :
New testbed ready. This uses a luminous base shader...
This is beyond helpful. Nevermind the Second Life connection, it's a great intro to the use of gradients in the shader tree, an area that probably gets postponed by newcomers to modo (like me) who get by just fine with noise layers and image maps.
I've looked at both your files; lights are starting to flicker on. There is hope. Life is good.
Thanks.
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5/17/2007 - 4:30 AM
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