SB3Utility Tips: Using workspaces effectively

Workspaces are more than just a temporary place to copy things from one object to another, or to import objects or animations. One of the most powerful features is their ability to store entire objects and can be loaded quickly by simply dropping the workspace onto SB3U. The following are some ways I use SB3U workspaces.

Templates

As mentioned, workspaces can store entire objects: textures, materials, animations, meshes, and frames (and maybe more that I don't use)

There are several common operations that a modder would do when making xx files, such as

• Clearing out an xx
• Adding dummy materials
• Adding dummy frames
• Adding dummy meshes
• Re-using certain meshes

These can be quickly accomplished by creating templates.

1. Clearing out an xx

Since we can't create our own xx files, nor can we create our own frames or materials, we can only work with existing ones.

When adding a new object, you probably want to work with an empty xx. That is, one dummy materials, no textures, and only the All_Root frames). The material is used to copy more materials (which we can regard as "creating" materials)

You have the option of keeping empty xx's in a folder and simply creating a PP, which works well.

Alternatively, you could take an existing xx file and clear it out with the following workspace:

• Frame Hierarchy: All_Root. Target Frame: All_Root. Framename: All_Root
• Material: dummy. Merge with existing materials: No
• Textures: dummy. Merge with existing materials: No.

The dummy texture is there just so the texture hierarchy appears.

When you add/replace, it will replace the entire xx with everything in the workspace, effectively removing any existing items.

2. Re-using meshes

This is useful when doing clothing mods, and especially useful when you need the skeleton. Adding a mesh to the workspace retains all of the information for the mesh, including bones and skin weights. By keeping these workspaces around for each character, you can quickly create copies of the skeleton for bone copying needs.

3. Adding dummy meshes

When replacing meshes (this is useful when your object contains bone and weights), you need to specify a mesh in the xx. Your template would consist of a single frame that contains a mesh. It doesn't matter if the mesh is composed of one face; as long as you have a mesh.

Once you add it to your xx, you can import meshes easily.

Quick XX support

Since I can access workspace functions using Quick XX, you can mass-create frames. For the example of adding dummy meshes, if you're importing an object that has 20 meshes, you will need to create 20 dummy meshes. With Quick XX, you will (eventually) be able to get a list of all of the mesh names that need to be added, and simply bring up the dummy mesh template and use Quick XX to create the dummy meshes.