Sunn's World: "Celebrate Life" Artist at Karuna

7/07/2009

"Celebrate Life" Artist at Karuna

It is a great pleasure for me to be involved as this month's "Celebrate Life" artist at Karuna, a beautifully designed, peaceful, and relaxing island. Karuna's primary mission is to "celebrate the lives of those dealing with HIV/AIDS and making information, support, and creative services available in the SL community." Visiting the island, I discovered that "Karuna is a word taken from an early Indo-Aryan language and embodies the desire to remove harm and suffering, and bring about the well-being and happiness of others."

As this month's artist, I have displayed a sampling of my artwork—photos on the cafe rooftop, sculptures along the riverwalk, and illustrations lining the island's "healing path." As I was setting up my work, I was struck by how much heart I felt within this sim—this is a special place in SL where people care for each other.

I highly encourage you to visit Karuna, not just to visit my artwork, but to share in the warm spirit that suffuses the island.

Many thanks to Jenaia Morane, Karuna's Project Coordinator, and fellow artist Sledge Roffo for inviting me to participate at Karuna. Jenaia wrote a very nice piece about me on her blog, Days of Our Second Lives.

Karuna is funded by a grant from the National Library of Medicine written by Lori Bell, Director of Innovations at the Alliance Library System in East Peoria, Illinois. If you are interested in helping out with events at Karuna, consider becoming a "Friend of Karuna." Contact Jenaia Morane in SL for more information...

Blender Zen...

Blender — open source, sculpty creation tools
• Blender Quick Start reference guides
• Blender User Interface basics
• Blender Hot Keys in gruesome detail
Machinimatrix — informative, entertaining Blender video tutorials
Primstar — Blender scripts for SL sculpties
Sculpt Blend — sculptie troubleshooting tips and tricks for SL
The "tab" key switches between Object and Edit modes. Use Object mode to see your solid 3D object. Use Edit mode to select vertexes on your object for sculpting.
When in Edit mode, the "A" toggles between Select All and Select None of your vertexes. Otherwise, right-click to select a single vertex, and shift-right-click to select additional single vertexes.
The "B" key allows you to select many vertexes. Click B once to lasso-select a single group of vertexes, and hold down B to multi-select additional groups of vertexes. Press ESC to exit "B" mode.
The process for sculpting selected vertexes of an object involves using the following keys: S (Scale, or grow/shrink), G (Grab, or move), and R (Rotate).
Using your keyboard, you can Scale, Grab, and/or Rotate selected vertexes along just the X, Y, or Z axes quickly and precisely. For example, to rotate selected vertexes 90° around the Y-axis, just type "R Y 90 enter". If you make a mistake while typing, just press ESC and try again.
The number pad on your computer keyboard is essential for Blendering efficiently—it controls the view of your object. Num1 (front view), Num3 (side view), Num7 (top view), Num5 (change projection), and Num/ (change global/local view) are my favorites.
To start a new object, go to the Add menu and select Mesh—>Sculpt Mesh, then change the settings as needed in the dialog box. My preferred Add Sculpt Mesh settings: Cylinder, 32 X faces and 32 Y faces, Multires with 2 Levels.
I like to change my starting cylinder a bit before working with it: first, I rotate 90 degrees in the Y direction (R Y 90), then stretch/scale it in the X direction by 32 units (S X 32). This gives me a 32x1x1 cylinder which is convenient for further manipulation--it has nice, 1-unit segments in all directions.
You can get more precise control over the placement and position of your vertexes and cursor by pulling up tool palettes. In Edit mode, try View—>View Properties and Mesh—>Transform Properties (see image).
The Pivot pop-up menu in the 3D View toolbar is great for controlling the rotation point of selected vertexes. Set pivot to "median point" to rotate around the center of your selected vertexes.
It is important to understand levels of detail (LODs) and how to maximize them so sculpties look good at any zoom level in SL. Useful tutorial here.
Sculpt maps need to have final resolutions (UxV) of 4096 or 8192 total pixels. Lossless compression issues occur during upload with smaller sizes. See here for details.
When you are finished editing your object, you are ready to create a sculpt map for SL. To bake your sculpt map, switch to Object mode, split your main workspace into two windows (3D View on the left side, UV/Image Editor on the right side), select your object, then choose "Bake Sculpt Meshes" from the Render menu. In the UV/Image Editor window, save your baked texture as a .tga file (from the Image pop-up menu). When uploading your file to SL, be sure to check the "Use lossless compression" box in the upload window.
I made a random, bumpy plane using Select—>Random (33%), then Grab Z (G, Z) from the 3D View window a few times. I smoothed the outer border using Select—>Non-Manifold, then Scale Z (S, Z) to scale those outer points down to "ground" level.
You can "trace" objects on Blender by using a background image on the canvas and grabbing/moving/shaping your mesh vertexes along the edges of the image. It's almost like using a piece of string to outline an object. Use View—>Background Image… from the 3D View window.

Sunn's World

7/07/2009

"Celebrate Life" Artist at Karuna

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