Ready.... Set... Mesh!: May 2021

Not to be dramatic or anything (who am I kidding... let's be dramatic!)... But this was literally the turning point for me. My first mesh item that wasn't just a curve. I was elated. I was proud. I was ecstatic!

In the pony community, there's a sim called Whinny Hollow University. They used to host weekly classes by the same person that made the Magik Pony avatar, and I'd joined when they started the second week of it. Thankfully, they had the tutorials on their "WHUtube", and I was able to follow along and catch up quickly.

It was actually really cute, and I'm sad it never got finished. But you got a badge for turning in each piece of homework. And after like 15 badges, you got special exclusive wings that the professor had made. Unfortunately, she quit teaching after the fifth lesson. But even so, those first few tutorials were all I needed to get started on my mesh journey.

The first assignment was making a chest with an open-able lid. In the first video, she walks students through the vernacular and basics of Blender. After that, she goes into showing the students how to create the chest, some basic techniques for keeping your mesh low poly so it's optimized, creating materials, and manipulating shapes in various ways. And afterwards, how to upload it into Second Life.

I'd never used Blender for more than the horns before and was very nervous, but she was easy to follow, even if I had to pause and rewind a couple of times. I was so proud of myself, I'd made a second box to turn in as my actual homework, though it's more like a music box. I still love that thing, it's so cute!

All of May, I dove into Blender, trying out all sorts of different items after following more classes. I made pots to help practice making UVs. I made a dirt pile and hole for no reason at all.

One of the things I'm still proud of, is I made "Clopic Markers". I used the Copic Markers as a reference and tried to follow them as closely as I could. This was before I knew how to insert references, I believe, so I was just looking at the 2nd monitor with images of markers at different angles. I unwrapped them perfectly, to the point that it's easy to customize them for friends. I made a whole lot of them and gifted them for birthdays for the first year.

Goals:

• Learn how to create mesh items for Second Life

What I Learned:

• Basic vocab for Blender

• How to add and manipulate objects

• Beveling corners

• Subdividing

• Inset

• Setting materials/faces

• How to upload mesh to Second Life with decent LOD

• Creating UVs that are easy to texture

Notes:

• This really was the turning point for my confidence in creating. This had opened up a whole new world for me.

• I had looked up other Blender tutorials on YouTube, but I'd been looking for something simple just for Second Life and everything looked too complicated or intimidating. This was the perfect starting point for me.