In my last posting, Linden Labs finally came out with a beta viewer that would allow for meshes to be created in third party 3D modeling software, such as Maya and SketchUp, and be imported into Second Life. This is what I wanted to test out and see just how well this new mesh viewer would work in helping make the Second Life experience even more profound. And so I went about testing it, first I had to find the proper plug-in that would work with my 3D programs and that was a bit of a chore, to say the least. I ended up having to do a search in Google until I found a Collada plug-in that said would work with Alias Maya. I do not have the current version of Maya so I am stuck with Maya 7, the program I was using back when I was learning Maya at Full Sail. The plug-in claimed it worked with older versions of Maya, but when I installed the plug-in onto my computer, it only located my 3D Studios Max program...no Maya. Drat!!
Rather than let this plug-in problem thwart me, I decided to do something a little different. Since Maya can export models out in .obj and .fbx formats and 3D Studios Max can import those files, I just went about modeling in Maya and then just export the model out, where I would import it into Max then export it out using the Collada plug-in. So, I went about doing some 3D modeling. I decided to try for something pretty quick and simple, yet have some detail to see just how the beta viewer would handle the mesh. What I ended up doing was taking a cube, extruding out its sides, then extruding it down making a simple table. I figured this would be a simple enough model but yet give me an idea of how the viewer would import meshes before I went and did anything really detailed. Once I got the mesh all made and cleaned up, I exported it out as a .fbx file then started up 3D Studios Max and imported the mesh into the program.
In 3D Studios Max, I went and checked the mesh, making sure that it imported without any problems and that it was still showing the proper geometry. With that done, I exported the mesh from Max using the Collada plug-in, saving the mesh as a .DAE file that Second Life only accepts. I was now ready to get into Second Life and see just how well this will work. Stay tuned for the next posting where I talk about my results and show some pictures of it as well!
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