[Update: You also do this with the Firestorm viewer. Just Export your prim object using the Collada format. Details here on the Firestorm wiki.]

This is pretty cool.

The most recent version of the Singularity viewer (version 1.8.1) adds a particularly interesting feature:

Wavefront (.obj) and Collada (.dae) Export by Apelsin, Inusaito, and Latif Khalifa – Allows export of your creations into Blender, Unity3D and other modeling applications and game engines

This means you can now take a prim-based object from within Second Life or Opensim and export it to your hard drive as a mesh object (either .obj or .dae file format).

Here’s a short video showing exactly how it works. Watch me create a prim-based lamp in Opensim, export it as an .obj mesh file to my desktop, drag it into the Unity3d editor, and then publish it on the web in ReactionGrid’s multiuser Jibe world.

This is great for folks (like me) who still love to build with ye olde prims yet need to create models that work in mesh-based environments. I can’t wait for the texture mapping feature to be completed (UPDATE: As of today, TEXTURE MAPPING WORKS! You just have to save your object as .DAE. Scroll down for more info.)

Nicely done, Singularity and Opensim developers. Very nicely done.

Take care,

-John “Pathfinder” Lester

——————————–

UPDATE 8/15/2013 @4:45pm EDT:

Latif Khalifa just gave me more details about texture mapping:

I’m working on improving the Collada exporter by adding texture import. I have already implemented it in Radegast which I will use as a prototype for what it will look like in Singularity. If you want to to check it out, download Radegast nightly build. Then once logged click on the Objects menu which will bring up a list of objects nearby. Right clicking on an object there will give the option to save as .DAE. You will see the window like this (the left part):

After importing to Unity3D it will look like this (textures and all):

Thank you Latif for this great info and amazing dev work.

——————————–

UPDATE 9/19/2013:

Texture Exporting now works in the latest release of Singularity!

Much improved Collada exporter, which now has the ability to export textures, apply texture parameters such as repeats, offset and others to the exported UV map, combine prim faces with the same texture and color into one submesh and optionally skip transparent faces (Latif)

For more details on how texture exporting works, see this very helpful guide.

——————————–

UPDATE 8/1/2014:

You can now do all this with the Firestorm viewer. Just Export your prim object using the Collada format. Details here on the Firestorm wiki.