Can I import textures with the mesh?

[Pamela Galli]

If I apply textures to my model in Blender, can I import the model with the textures? And if so what settings would I use?

[Rahkis Andel]

Yes.

Which settings you use depends on how you apply the textures to the model. If you use "Include UV Textures", you need to apply the textures to your mesh in the UV editor. Select the verts of your mesh you want to apply the texture to, then select that texture in the uv editor.

Including textures from materials picks out textures, as expected, that are set to your materials.

[Pamela Galli]

Ah, got it -- thanks so much!  What a timesaver that will be!

[Gaia Clary]

You know that there are a few caveats with uploading textures along with a mesh ?

 

1. These textures can not be reused in Second Life because you have no access to them from your Inventory.
2. You can later replace the textures on your object by other textures. But then the originally imported textures get lost.
3. This does only work for static meshes. Rigged meshes there is a bug which was repeatedly been reported as fixed. And it worked only for a very short time after Mesh was first released. But since then i never heard of anybody who was able to import a texture along with a rigged mesh.

Actually i even know why it happens. The textures are referenced differently when a mesh is exported with weight data. And the SL Importer obviously only looks up the texture references for static meshes.

But in any case you always can upload the textures separately and assign them to your objects within SL. At least as long as you work with a small number of objects. The upload costs are identical.

Btw, if anybody has successfully uploaded a texture with a rigged mesh, then please, please, please(!) let me take a look into that .dae file. I promise to fix Blender Collada exporter if it is an exorter problem!

[Drongle McMahon]

"These textures can not be reused in Second Life because you have no access to them from your Inventory."

I do, at least in the standard viewer - they appear in a subfolder of the Textures folder with the name of the object. So for an object called "thingy" it's in Inventory/Textures/thingy/thingy - Texture 1; .../thingy - Texture 2; etc. If you upload the model again, you get another subfolder with the same name.

Another problem with including textures in uploads is that if you always do it, you get to pay the L$10 per texture every time you upload a new version of the mesh, even if the textures haven't changed. Also, you pay again and litter you inventory if you use the same texture on multiple models.

[Bhakti Mimulus]

I almost always import my texture with the mesh because whatever I make is usually just for me. However, I have a question about this. Is it true that you can only import UV textures with meshes if your object has only one UV map? For instance, if I clone a texture onto a full UV map from front view and side view UV maps, will the texture still upload? When I have trouble importing such textures into SL, it is really hard to get rid of the additional UV maps, just Xing them out does not do the trick. Instead, I have had to append the object to a new file, reUnwrap it, and apply the completed cloned texture, then it uploads into SL.

BM

[Gaia Clary]

The Blender Collada exporter has an option to only export the active UV Layer. This is automatically enabled when you use the Second Life presets. it always worked for me.

@Drongle: Thanks for the correction. Good to know that ! And .. maybe its time to cleanup my inventory again

[Bhakti Mimulus]

Thanks Gaia,

I have not tried it in a while. I will try again. Maybe this was an update to the exporter that I missed or since I last tried it. I have finally starting baking my textures, once I found out how.

 

BM

[Ferd Frederix]

Your textures should also be a power of two, such as 256x128. Mesh upload with texture will not rescale the texture to a power of two like a regular upload will, you get a white border, and you waste the upload fee. You should do this anyway as a good practise to get the best possible texture, but I sometimes forget to check.

[HotBoy Ampan]

The title of this forum bought me here, I was searching something like " Can I Import tthe textures from second life to blender" Because i have importated avatar, then uploaded as mesh, but all i get is white mesh avatar with no skin, i dont want to use any other skin i want to use the same skin my avatar has in SL, so the question is , is it possible to use the same skin or texture on my mesh which is converted from shape to mesh using avastar. I did put this question inworld forum of avastar blender but that did not provide any clear help. thank you.

[Gaia Clary]

You can not use SL skin Objects with mesh characters, even if the character has been cloned as exact replica of the SL Avatar.

However, if you have the skin textures on your computer, then of course you can upload these textures to Blender and use them there. And you can upload the textures to SL as well and texturize your character with them in SL as well.

[HotBoy Ampan]

Thank you Gaia, its clear now, a link to any tutorial if you have on how to imprt texture for mesh, and how to texerize a mesh in second life will be helpful. ty

[Gaia Clary]

the second video in that list might be helpful.