Later versions of Maya and multiple materials

[Milla Michinaga]

I've been desperately trying to get my one mesh (a dress) to upload to SL with three different materials.  I get it working fine in Maya 2013 - my UVs and materials behave as they should and I'm able to bake out textures fine.  The trouble happens when I go to upload to SL.  I only get as far as the mesh model accepting multiple textures in SL, but it only ever displays one of them. 

What could be going on? Could it have something to do with the newer version of Maya and how it exports to .dae? 

Thanks, 

[Cathy Foil]

I am using Maya 8.0 and I get an error if I try to upload mesh with multiple textures.

The way I get them to upload is this.  I make my mesh and UVs and apply all the textures to my mesh in Maya.  I mainly use Lamberts for all my textures.  Once I get the my mesh looking the way want I then select each of the meshes faces for a particular Lambert and then hold down my right moue button and "Assign New Material".  I make the new material a Lambert. (NOTE: Do not add any kind of texture file to the new lambert. It is the texture file that is messing up the DAE file.) I repeat the process for each material in my mesh.  You should now be able to upload your mesh and since your mesh has no texture files you will have to upload those textures manually and then rez your mesh in SL and apply them.

A few things about the new Lambert materials with no 2D texture files.  Under the "Common Material Attributes" the "Color" slider is default is at 50%.  This will make the face in SL of the mesh 50% transparent.  You can change the Alpha setting in SL manually or in Maya just move the "Color" slider all the way to the right making the box next to the word "Color" turn white.  You can also click on the white box and change its color and when you rez your mesh in SL that face will have that color though you can edit the color in SL just like any other prim by selecting the face and changing its color back to white so your textures will look normal.

I haven't really played with any of the other settings in "Common Material Attributes" so not sure what would happen or if it works with other materials like Blinns or Phongs.

I hope this helps.

Let me know if this works for you.

[Milla Michinaga]

Hi Cathy :matte-motes-smile:

Thanks for replying.

I tested your method with a plain cube. I made one UV set for all the sides and a second UV set for the top and bottom and then applied 2 different Lamberts  (one red and one blue - no texture files).

Unfortunately, I still get the same problem in SL - the cube can take more than one texture in SL Edit Window, but it only displays one at a time. Its like it can only have one UV-map and its the one that I applied last in Maya. Infact the cube uploaded completely blue, which was the last material I applied to the top and bottom.

So frustrating!

 

[Milla Michinaga]

I'm now thinking I should try the route of exporting to FBX first and then use the Autodesk FBX standalone converter to convert to .dae.  My question now is how does the FBX converter work? I've downloaded it and installed but but what is the workflow?

Thanks

[Cathy Foil]

I tried to do exactly like you said you did and upload it to the SL grid and got an error.  I then tried uploading a simple sphere with just the default material lambert and it too got an error so something really seems to be wrong with the upload on the SL grid.  

It is very well possible that there is nothing wrong with your DAE files but SL is messed up.  I logged onto LL Beta Test Grid and had no problems uploading any of the DAE files that the regular SL grid wouldn't.

On the Beta Test Grid also called Preview Grid also named Aditi you can upload mesh for FREE.  It will say you paid L$ when you upload but it doesn't really take any L$ from your account.  You will probably notice the balance of L$ shown in the upper right corner is different than what you see when you log onto the regular SL grid Agni.

Here is a link to instructions on how to log onto the Test Grid:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Preview_Grid

Hope that helps.

Cathy

[Milla Michinaga]

Thanks for the tip Cathy! I'm going to try the test grid out this weekend. For this current dress, I've given up and moved all the textures to one single material - not ideal, but I need to get it finished. I really hope this problem gets solved soon!

[Nomasha Syaka]

Hi Cathy,

 

I have been reading this thread with interest. I have a problem with this: I am using Maya 2012 and everything export well but with multiple textures on a single object I have to export it as an .fbx then convert to collada in FBX converter 2011.3.1. This is indeed the only way I can achieve to make a mesh with multiple faces.

Problem: I lose minor detail in the mesh in the process and this results in a poorer qulaity mesh. Any ideas?

I wonder if I am able to change the built in collada converter in Maya 2012 to an earlier version  - even if I could, I have no idea if it would help?

Love some feedback.