Grown Up

I learned the coolest new trick today.

We keep hearing about materials in mesh, and awesome new mesh clothes and furniture and other items being “materials ready.” Well, that’s awesome. But guess what. Materials can go on regular prims, too. Which means that if, like me, you’re not a mesh creator, but you do like to create other things in-world, you can still create materials-ready stuff. And they can look like that background above. Check it out.

BIG CAVEAT: you have to have advanced lighting and shadows enabled for all the following to work.

Build a prim. You know how to do this already. Now, edit it, and open up the Texture tab. You’ll see that it looks pretty different from the way it has looked for years and years. Notably, you’ll see a “Materials” option (it’s already set) and next to it, it says “Texture (diffuse).” Change that to “Shininess.”

Nothing happens, but you see off to the side there’s a texture box. You can either drop a texture in that or set it to blank (I can’t see a difference between the two options) (Edit: see below!). For now, set it to blank and start playing with the options it gives you.

You’ll see I added a color here, but nothing happens. That gets interesting later. I promise. Now, go back up and change “Shininess” to “Bumpiness.” This is the same old stock LL bumpiness map, with one interesting change:

…you can add a texture. Adding a texture here does really cool things, as you can see. Play around with it, add textures. Have fun. Afterwards, add the same texture to the normal texture input, and you’re done.

Almost.

Remember when I added that color to the Shininess menu, and nothing happened? Check out what happens when I shine a light prim on it:

Yeah. This is so cool.

Have fun, guys!

Edit: There is a difference between dropping a texture into the texture box on the “Shininess” tab and setting it to blank. The texture is what is reflected when a light (either the sun or a spotlight prim) shines onto your new object. Now, when I say “reflected,” it’s not properly reflected as in cast the way a mirror would, but it’s still pretty cool. I can’t give you a real feel for how it looks in a static picture, but here: this prim has no texture on it except under the Shininess tab.

Neat, huh? Now. Go play with it. Do it.