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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I’ve been doing some research and work on safeguarding intellectual property. It’s tricky, because the tools that are available work differently depending on many factors. That said, I’ve managed to get a watermark to maintain through:

• Upload to SL
• Give Inventory to friend who verifies watermark
• Re-upload to SL
• Inventory given back to me
• Download to PC
• Verify watermark
• Upload to Beta Grid
• Rip with GL Intercept
• Verify watermark

My point to all this is to prove that we are responsible for safeguarding our own intellectual property.  It’s not reasonable to expect Linden Lab or any other entity to do that for us, but it is reasonable to expect them to apply the law once we’ve proven to them (via the watermarks) that what belongs to us has been stolen.  Half the battle is in the proving ownership.  It’s not Linden Lab’s job to deal with a he said she said, give them concrete proof.  If at that point they refuse to follow the law, and their own TOS* it’s time to get nasty about it.

I’ve got more testing to do, and could use some volunteers.  If you’ve got PS1, PS2, PS3, or PS4 and want to help out let me know.

*Linden Lab will respond to allegations of copyright violations in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA provides a process for a copyright owner to give notification to an online service provider concerning alleged copyright infringement. When a valid DMCA notification is received, the service provider responds under this process by taking down the offending content. On taking down content under the DMCA, we will take reasonable steps to contact the owner of the removed content so that a counter-notification may be filed. On receiving a valid counter-notification, we generally restore the content in question, unless we receive notice from the notification provider that a legal action has been filed seeking a court order to restrain the alleged infringer from engaging in the infringing activity.