Comments on: Creating and Using Shadow Maps

By: Raycaster

Raycaster — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 05:46:49 +0000

Hello Murgy,

Yet another amazing tutorial exampling your impeccable skill. As for me however i’ve seen to come across a rather recurring problem after baking the ambient. I tend to see small triangles of black after i do a ambient bake. I was wondering does this have something to do with my sculpt or is just a blender error?

By: Murgy

Murgy — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:31:55 +0000

I don’t think I quite understand what you’re asking, or what you mean by “baking the paint”. In Second Life, the sculpt map is defined in a completely different tab than the texture.

As far as “how” you paint the texture, I sort of expect people to either know how to use a painting program or look up tutorials on how to do that. If you have specific questions, I might be able to answer them, but something as vague as “how do I do it” I can only answer by saying “Open it up in a paint program and paint” which I already say in this tutorial.

By: x900lbGorillax

x900lbGorillax — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 04:35:53 +0000

I’m assuming this is how you start out the process for texturing a sculpt. I guess what I’m confused on is how are you suppose to paint it? An you’d have to bake the paint you do I suppose cause the UV map is being used to define the sculpty shape in second life. I know mesh is now here but it lacks functionality with not having enough bones for moving fingers or say facial expressions. So I’m trying to figure out this sculpt way of creating an AVI. I have done Mesh AVI but I think I’d like to try the old way also. Anyway thanks for tutorial hope you can reply on how that would be done. I like Maya but I guess I could figure out blender to try this for painting sculpts if Maya is unable to do this.

By: Rai

Rai — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 17:39:14 +0000

Hey, great tutorials thanks to them i tried making sculpts again and succeeded this time xD

Anyways i had problem with baking ambient occlusion and i couldn’t find answer here so i googled a bit and found answer. Now i know the answer i think you should mention it here, but i might be wrong i’m a novice at this: my problem was that for some reason ambient occlusion was turned off in rendering (no idea why) so i had to go to world tab and turn it on. Before i did it whole image rendered was black and no matter what settings (i even through i broke the blender xP) then turned it off and bam there it was with no problems.

By: Murgy

Murgy — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 02:23:20 +0000

If its not giving you any sort of error it could be that the mesh somehow got turned inside-out. Easiest way to tell with sculpties is to import the sculpt into SL and see if the sculpt looks inside-out in world.

But you can also just turn the mesh inside-out again and see if that fixes the problem. For a symmetrical mesh like this, you can do it by going into Edit Mode, selecting all your vertices, then pressing M > X (mirror along the X axis). Then bake the ao again. Another way to do it is by flipping your normals, but your sculpt will still be inside-out in SL and you’ll have to correct that in world.

By: Paradoxical

Paradoxical — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 05:00:35 +0000

Hey Murgy,
I did want to thank you again for your work on this fantastic tutorial. I have since had more success with Blender following your guide, but I’ve hit another snag. I’ve made a quick Booney Hat to showcase the error I’m getting, for some reason the base of the hat itself renders Ambient Shadows perfectly. How ever, the small embossed band does not render anything at all. I’ve bound the new image as correctly as I can tell, (making it in Edit Mode with all of the vertices selected and applied multier) but for some reason, when I go to bake the image, it calculates for a while (like it would normally if it was actually writing shadows) and turns the entire image black. It does not make any sense. The base sculpt renders in the cast shadow of the object, but it refuses to bake the objects shadow itself.

Any ideas?

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/163/78373174.jpg/

By: Aeris

Aeris — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 11:25:02 +0000

the way around it… to Mirror the mesh to x local. It brings up the object inside out, but it renders the ao map correctly,. Plus, it renders the sculptmap properly (not inside out, either). Double Win!

By: Aeris

Aeris — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 07:42:04 +0000

HI and thank you for your excellent tutorial, which has single-handedly helped me overcome my frustration with sculpts for SL.
I have a problem though, with the ambient occlusion:
When I copy an item ( say, a sleeve), mirror it to go on the other arm, do some finalising sculpting… my lovely sleeve is ready. However, when I try to bake an ambient occlusion on this mirrored object, it comes out near black, there is a little bit of grey but it seems like the whole thing is inside out (i.e. parts that should be light, are dark, and vice-versa). Which makes sense considering it is a mirrored object. Is there a way to get the ambient occlusion to work properly in this case? Thanks in advance. Best wishes, Aeris

By: Murgy

Murgy — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 16:01:31 +0000

Find the Tab labeled “Multires” in the Edit buttons and switch the Level to 1. If you’re having trouble finding the multires tab, try doing a Google search.

Also keep in mind that I’m still using Blender 2.49. If you’re using Blender 2.5 or higher, then I can’t help you much with the interface.

By: Amber

Amber — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 18:25:21 +0000

I dont understand how to switch to multires level 1