Downloads and Support

Prim Composer 1.1.1 is a minor release with several bug fixes and a couple of small features. TGA image uploading is fixed and there is a new maxport feature that allows bulk-uploading of textures.

Bugfixes in 1.1.1

• Bugfix 30 (Maxport): TGA textures now upload properly. Previously, non-alpha TGAs would acquire an unseen alpha layer during upload that would cause textures to fight.
• Bugfix 52 (Maxproxy): Maxproxy now exports worn items correctly.
• Bugfix 54 (3ds Max): NURBS plane sculpties now have a correct UV map so that they no longer appear inside out when imported to Second Life or OpenSim.
• Bugfix 55 (3ds Max): Sphere dimples are now imported correctly into 3ds Max.
• Bugfix 58 (Maxport): Maxport command line help no longer prints jibberish for the option descriptions.

New Features in 1.1.1

There are two new features: bulk texture upload and user-selectable image formats for baking images from 3ds Max.

Bulk Texture Upload

In response to a user request, Maxport has been modified to support the bulk uploading of images without any prims. This would primarily be useful for texture artists who need to upload large numbers of textures to Second Life or OpenSim.

Three new command line options have been added to Maxport:

--dir, --inventory-folder, and --upload-images

All three are required to perform a bulk texture upload.

• dir : specifies a directory on disk that contains the image files to be uploaded. All images in this directory will be uploaded. If you only want to upload a subset, copy those files to a separate directory.
• inventory-folder : specifies the folder in inventory where the images will be uploaded. This folder must already exist. For example, a value of “Textures” would upload the images to the normal Textures folder in Second Life. A value of “Textures/Wood Textures” would upload the images to the Wood Textures folder inside of the normal Textures folder.
• upload-images : tells Maxport that you want to bulk upload images

In addition, you might wish to use the

--noaction

option, which will cause Maxport to scan the images directory, but not upload them. This is a good way to determine how many images will be uploaded and what the cost will be. It also allows you to verify that you’ve entered the command correctly.

Here’s an example of how you might use the new options to bulk upload textures. Put this all on a single line:

maxport.exe -flp John Smith yourPassword --main --upload-images
                  --inventory-folder "Textures" --dir "c:\images"

Note: when bulk uploading images to OpenSim, you might need to clear the viewer cache to see the uploaded items in inventory. Second Life doesn’t seem to have this problem.

User-selectable Image Formats for Baking

The other new feature in 1.1.1 is the ability to specify the image format that is used when baked textures are exported from 3ds Max: BMP, JPG, PNG, or TGA.

This can be set using two new options in the Export Preferences (see figure). You can independently choose what image format will be used for sculptmaps and baked textures.