Sansar Tutorial: How to Tint an Object in a Scene

One of the new (and somewhat controversial) features of this latest release of the Sansar client software is the ability to retexture objects. This ability is strictly limited to objects which you have already placed in a scene, and you cannot take the retinted object back into your inventory. Also, you are not allowed to retint avatar attachments or clothing, only stand-alone items in your scene.

Before you do anything, please read the Keyboard Shortcuts document to refresh your memory of the different keys that you can use when editing a scene.

Now, let’s go through this step-by-step with diagrams. There’s enough information in the official Materials Editing and Shaders document to completely overwhelm a novice, so we’re going to do something very easy to start: simply recolouring a mesh object.

First, click the My Experiences button in the upper right-hand corner of the Sansar screen, and select an experience. Once you have done that, open your inventory, and select the mesh item you want to put into your scene:

Retexturing Objects A 31 Dec 2017

(Hopefully, Linden Lab will soon create a folder system for inventory items! Having to scroll through everything on one level is rapidly becoming very unwieldy!)

Now, select Scene Objects from the Tools menu:

Retexturing Objects 1 31 Dec 2017.png

Left click on the item you want to recolour to highlight it in the editor window, and then right click to pull up a submenu. From that submenu, pick Materials:

Retexturing Objects 2 31 Dec 2017.png

Now, you will see a Materials Settings window, We’re going to skip over all the materials and shaders options for now. Scroll down to the very bottom of the window to the Tint options:

Retexturing Objects 3 31 Dec 2017.png

Now, you can either enter the RGB values into the three boxes if you have them, or you can just click the eyedropper icon next to the RBG boxes, and then select a colour from the colour-picker square. Once you have done that, remember to save your changes!

Retexturing Objects 4 31 Dec 2017.png

Congratulations! You have now successfully retinted a mesh object in Sansar!

If you want more information on how to use materials in your mesh objects, there are two very helpful Sansar experiences you can visit to learn more, in addition to the detailed Materials Editing and Shaders document I referred to earlier:

 

Scene of the Day: Learn to Create Materials

Well, now that I’ve got the whole T-shirt making procedure down pat, it’s time to start cranking the printing presses…

Nobody Knows I'm SWANZ

…hmm, maybe I’ll make dozens and dozens of similar-looking mesh objects, and make each one a different primary colour….and fill up the Sansar Store with them!! *evil laugh* *rubs hands*

(Picture taken at Learn to Create Materials, by Azriel Drumheller.)

(Some background if you didn’t get the joke.)

Pick of the Day: Learn to Create Materials

Learn to Create Materials 4 13 Sept 2017.png

Learn to Create Materials is a different kind of experience. It’s meant to be a introduction on how to create your own materials for use in Sansar. The spawn point is located in front of a large sign which explains:

Creating your own materials is actually very easy. Here we’ll discuss what a material is and what it’s made of. When you look around in this virtual world, you’re seeing materials all around you. The easiest way to explain them is that materials (also called shaders) create all the colors on the surfaces you see. They determine if something is blue, green, or red. They make things shiny or metal. They can also add small details like bumps in the sidewalk or make bricks appear to stick out of a wall.

The experience is broken up into separate bays, each bay focusing on a particular topic. The first bay provides an introduction to the basics of light and colour:

Learn to Create Materials 3 13 Sept 2017.png

Later bays talk about such things as albedo maps, normal maps, and roughness maps.

Learn to Create Materials 1 13 Sept 2017.png

This is a great idea, and very well executed! Bravo to Azriel Drumheller for creating this useful three-dimensional tutorial!

Learn to Create Materials 2 13 Sept 2017.png