Questions re Maya 2014 & uploading Mesh to SL

[Amilia Zabaleta]

Posted this in another thread, but thought I'd start it anew to see if I can get more input.  

...(was very happy to find out about)  re. direct export to .dae files in Maya 2014.

Having said that, I'm having loads of trouble with the Maya 2014 to SL transition on my new, fabulous and expensive machine.  I am trying to figure out if it's a Windows 8 issue, an "old files into new" issue (the "export to OBJ, then reimport" scheme), or a material/LOD issue.  Or did  I forget to check the right box when I reinstalled 2014 on the new machine?

I did copy over my old settings into Maya 2014 - so that part is working right.  The biggest problem has been that the steps that worked pre-new machine aren't working anymore.  Of course I'm still learning, but what could be so radically different at this point?  The two most difficult issues have been getting the following warnings when I export to Collada:

"The plug-in will tessellate meshes with smooth mesh preview according to corresponding preview division levels maya error message"

and:  "While reading or writing a file the following notifications have been raised.  Warning: Null not supported by COLLADA. Node tiarabasetrial will lose its geometric information. The node transforms will be saved."

And then when trying to upload to SL: "material of model is not a subset of reference model sl"

Any insights (constructive, please) would be much appreciated.  I want to get back in the groove.  I guess the main question is, is there a way to "wipe clean" the model to get it to work?  Much thank yous in advance..

[Nalates Urriah]

It has been a couple of days...

People tend not to answer questions twice... plus asking again in a new thread tends to draw a lot of repetitous answers, the same ones or similar to those in the initial thread. It also annoys a number of people contributing to the forum in an effort to help people.

If you feel you really must open a new thread, it is a good idea to link back to the first one. Some will take the time to read it and add anything new.

[Cathy Foil]

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Nalates Urriah wrote:

It has been a couple of days...

People tend not to answer questions twice... plus asking again in a new thread tends to draw a lot of repetitous answers, the same ones or similar to those in the initial thread. It also annoys a number of people contributing to the forum in an effort to help people.

If you feel you really must open a new thread, it is a good idea to link back to the first one. Some will take the time to read it and add anything new.

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I think you are being unfair and too hard on Amilia.

The original thread Amilia is referring was originally posted by Aurelia Chauveau way back in March.  Not a single person responded to Amilia's reply so her own questions and issues were never answered.

Original thread: Maya 2014

Since Amilia's reply to Aurelia's thread was on 08-21-2014 and the original thread started 03-16-2014 it is no wonder only about 15 or 16 people saw it since by now Aurelia's thread is well off the first page of the Mesh Forum.

It makes complete sense why Amilia posted her reply as a new thread.  Her questions have a much better chance of being answered. 49 people so far have read her thread.

My guess why she hasn't gotten many replies is not due to people not wanting to help her or post an answer twice but because it is Summer and the forums always slow down this time or year.

If you really feel like you must give advise I suggest you do a little bit of research before criticizing someone.

 

Now Amilia I am going to do my best to try and help you.  I don't have Maya 2014 and can't really tell by the errors that you are getting what the problems so I can only give you general advice with Maya.  I wish Chosen Few was still in SL.  He is a Maya god in my opinion.

1. Do a search on you new computer in your Documents folder for a file named userSetup.mel.  If you don't find it search your whole C drive for it.

When you install Maya onto a new computer the userSetup.mel isn't created automatically.  It is often created when you install a third party plugin so if you had any third party plugins installed on your old machine they won't work on the new machine unless you copy over the old machines userSetup.mel as well as all the other files associated with the plugin.

2.  You do not want to use the open source Collada plugin.  You want to use the fbxmaya.mll plugin that should be in your Plugin Manager.

3. Do a test with something very simple like a cube that only has the default Lambert applied to it.  Export it as a DAE file and upload it to SL or the SL Beta Test grid.  If that works try applying different Lamberts to different faces.  If that uploads fine associate a texture file to the new Lamberts and try uploading that.  

4. If all of step 3 works on the new machine then it is a problem with your particular mesh.  Export your mesh out as an OBJ and start a new scene and import the OBJ into it and export it out as an DAE and try and upload it.

I hope that helps.

Cathy

[Amilia Zabaleta]

Thank you, Cathy, for your reply and for sticking up for me.  I tend not to post too many questions on forums, so consider me a newb to that, but your response to Natales was spot on for my reasoning for creating a new thread.  Also, thank you for all your suggestions, they were very helpful.  Your fourth suggestion was the best, the problem is with the mesh I had made (probably on incorrect settings, plus I think the mesh was a little poly-heavy) so I've had to figure out work-arounds, and the obj export/import trick helps zero some of those settings out.  Any other input would be great.

And what did happen to Chosen Few? His comments were a little...not sure what a good word for them would be...but he really seemed to know his stuff.

Again, thank you Cathy.

[Cathy Foil]

Hi Amilia,
Glad I was some help.

If your mesh has too many vertices it won't upload.  Here's the limits for mesh:

                                      Lower Limit                                 Upper Limit               

Number of vertices	n/a	65536 vertices per LOD for each	n/a	n/a
COLLADA file size	n/a	Maximum mesh asset size after compression is 8 MB, roughly equivalent to a 256 MB Raw COLLADA file.	n/a	n/a
Bone influence weights per vertex	n/a	4	n/a	n/a
Number of materials per mesh	n/a	8	n/a	n/a
Number of materials per face	n/a	1	n/a	n/a
Physics weight for a vehicle	n/a	32.0

Here's a link to the wiki page:  http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Limits

As for Chosen, the reason he left was because the change in the TOS a year or so ago.  He couldn't log into SL or agree to the TOS because he had done some contract work for some US federal agency creating some things for them here in SL.  I think it ws the FBI but not sure.

Anyway for him to agree to the TOS would break signed contracts with the US Federal government and he would have been in a lot of hot water.  See the changes in the TOS last year, if you agreed to them, gives LL full rights to anything you create in SL or upload to SL.  Chosen could not give LL those rights without being in violation of the contracts he had signed so he couldn't log in.  Not even with an alt account just to be sure.  See right now if LL went ahead and used those items that Chosen created for the Federal government LL would be in big trouble not Chosen.

The sad thing is the minor changes that were made recently to the TOS still gives LL permission to do whatever they want.  It was more or less just lip service by LL.  I guess Chosen just finally gave up waiting for LL to come to their senses.  Either that or when he couldn't even log into the Forums without having to agree to the TOS he simply can't post to the forums anymore either.  It is really sad.

[Drongle McMahon]

"If your mesh has too many vertices it won't upload."

It's quite likely it will upload, but then it will have serious material problems and eventually lots of holes. This is because the 65k limit check is never actually reached in the code. So it doesn't stop the upload. Details here. (Unless they finally fixed it?)