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How to make an animal and make it move using Archipelis for Second Life

You can add as many movements as you like,
and control the sequences.

I use Archipelis to make a lot of animals and birds in Second Life. In this article, I'll show you how you can easily make a moving animal in Second Life by combining the output of Archipelis from http://www.archipelis.com/ with my newest database-driven Prim Animator. The clip at the right shows one possible animation out of many. It is easy to draw and make 3-D content in Second Life with Archipelis. When you combine this easy to use tool with my easy to use scripts, you can make moving, jumping, and crawling objects in Second Life.

Already know how to sculpt and build? I have is a separate post on the Prim animator here.

I am including all the scripts sculpts and textures so you can make this bird and nest for free. If you want to make your own objects, you will need a copy of Archipelis. I use Version 2. You can purchase V2 at their online shop for 38 Euros, which is about $55 US. You can also try out their demo version for free. There is an iPhone/iPad compatible version, too.

For the next step, we use an image of the desired animal. For this post, we are going to make a mother robin feeding her young. We will make it so her head is separate from the body and legs so that the bird can tilt and move her head.

( click for full size )

Side views work best because they require no editing to remove the mirrored 2nd set of eyes that appear on the back of a head.

There is also a small baby bird to model, along with the nest material we will use. We will make it so the head is separate from the body so that the babies can tilt and move their heads.

( click for full size )

We are also going to need a texture to make the nest:

Go ahead and click each image to get the big versions, and save them to your hard drive.

Now it is time to make the baby bird

Next: How to make a baby bird using Archipelis for Second Life

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