Archive for the ‘Second Life’ Category

Sculpted Prim Wine Glass

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

A wine glass is one of the first things most people make when they learn to use a 3D program. It’s fun and it’s easy.

Making a sculpted prim wine glass for Second Life is equally fun. In fact, it’s almost exactly the same except you need to UV map it before you upload it. A simple cylindrical map will do. Here’s a video to show you how using AC3D.

Wineglass Video
Click to download video

The step-by-step:

  1. Draw a polyline that will form the outer edge of your wineglass.
  2. (Optional) Use the spline tool to make your polyline into a smooth curve.
  3. Revolve the polyline around the Y axis 360 degrees. The more segments you use the smoother it will be, but the more polygons. You don’t need very many polygons, so don’t overdo it.
  4. Using the UV map tool, apply a cylindrical wrap around the Y axis.
  5. Export!


Here are the UV map settings I used.

When you import it into SL, be sure to set your mapping mode to cylindrical. If you don’t, the top and bottom of the glass will be solid instead of hollow.


Set the Stitching Type to Cylinder.

Download the model here.

How to Make Two Shapes from One Prim

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

Many times people ask me if it’s possible to create two disconnected shapes from one sculpted prim–without resorting to alpha maps. The answer is yes, you can! It can be a little tricky depending on the shape, but it absolutely can be done. Today I’ll show you how using the AC3D exporter.


Two disconnected shapes made with one sculpted prim.

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Adventures in Suffugium

Wednesday, February 20th, 2008

I was recently introduced to the delightfully-dystopian SL build of Suffugium. The New World Notes describes it as “Donald Trump meets George Orwell”, and I’d have to agree. It’s dark, oppressive and a lot of fun. There’s plenty to do and explore–to clarify for you cynics, that’s plenty of non-porn things to do–from avoiding the roving police drones to wandering through the twisting sewer maze.


All visitors are requested to give a handscan id. Don’t worry if you miss it; the police droids will find you for an obligatory scan soon enough!

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Areum Starport

Tuesday, February 19th, 2008

Well, I finally broke ground on the starport in SL.

I started with some robot minions. I figured this is going to be a big job, so the first logical thing to make is some help.

The second thing I made is a crate. 😀

Practical Use of Virtual Worlds

Friday, December 14th, 2007

From Reuters:

Instead of jetting over to Bali for climate talks, Edward Markey (a Democrat from Massachusetts) will use a 3-D animated version of himself to address the conference at 9.30 am on Wednesday Bali time. It is estimated Markey will save 5.36 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions by doing this.

Watch the speech or the Q&A.