Pixel Bunneh

I’m always looking for easier or better ways to handle UV unwrapping and texturing. Complex objects can be a real challenge to add graphics to, and Second Life sculpties are probably the biggest pain in the rear of all. Because a sculpted prim is actually dependent upon the UV map being a precise shape, you don’t have the option of moving parts here and there on your map to make texturing easier. Enter CS4 and its 3D capabilities.

And hey, since it’s Halloween I’ll do this tutorial on a witch hat

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The Blue Mars Item Editor is really just a scaled down version of the CryEngine2 Sandbox. To use items in the editor you need Collada .dae files which aren’t all that widely used outside of game development.

Design applications that support Collada include Maya, 3ds Max, Blender (free), Lightwave 3D, Poser, Cinema 4D, Softimage, Modo, Sketchup (free), Meshlab (free), CityEngine, Strata 3D, and Daz Studio (free).
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Well, sort of a tutorial.  This pertains to 3ds Max only – as that’s the only thing I’ve tested in so far.  3ds Max 2010 has a built in Collada exporter, if you have an older version you’ll need the plugin.

It’s necessary to reset the pivot point every time you make location changes:

Reset Pivot Point for Blue Mars

Set it to 0,0,0.

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