UV Mapping on Blender 2.71 - UV Maps not applying correctly in Secondlife

[Lightesword Xue]

Okay, so I went to try and take a UV off of my mesh model head, and I only wanted two halves to make the face two seperate colors on each side of the head. Here was my process.

Make a seam that wraps around the head. Using CTRL held down and right mouse button. A seam wraps around the head.

Then I hit CTRL + E  and MARK SEAM.

Once I get the marked Seam, I hit A to select the whole object.

I then hit U to unwrap. And I get two perfect halves in my UV editor.

In UV editor, I go to UVS, I hit Export UV layout.

I save the PNG file.

I open the PNG file, I edit the UV map in gimp by adding my colors to it respectively.

NOW THE FUN PART!

 

I use LOCAL in Secondlife before I upload anything, and I am using A FRESH ITEM.. no values messed with.

I apply my local texture to get a look at what it'll look like.

 

MY TEXTURE DOES NOT APPLY RIGHT! It turns into a solid color. I have red and blue, the solid color is purple.

I try everything to make the texture line up.. all I get is something that would make me have an epileptic siezure.

I put the texture to Planar, and all it does is make the texture all over the place and not line up... looks like tye dye.

 

Am I doing the UV map wrong? Am I not exporting it right? Am I making my meshes wrong? I export them as DAE.. I don't do much with them upon uploading.. I don't know what to do anymore.. it has done it with all my meshes... I feel I've wasted some serious time, effort and Lindens here for uploading meshes that aren't working with the unwrapped UVs...

 

Please help.. I have worked on learning mesh in the past week watching Gaia Clary's AVASTAR tutorials.. I was able to upload my body fine.. and it textures fine.. but when I want to make a static mesh.. that's when things get haywire!

 

[Drongle McMahon]

You can use the beta grid. Aditi, for testing mesh uploads. You have to take the quiz again first. Then you get free L$ on Aditi only.

From what you say (guessing, as no pictures) one possibility seems to be that you might have uploaded the model before you did the UV unwrap. In that case, the dae file cintains no UV map, and you get a random map (actually, uninitialised data) that can have all sorts of strange effects. If that's the cause, you need to export the dae again after you have done the unwrapping.

Another common source of problems is when the Blender model has multiple UV maps. These all get into the exported dae file, but only one is used by the uploader. If it's the wrong one, the texture mapping will be wrong.

Also, you didn't mention what sort of image you exported from Gimp.

[Chic Aeon]

My thought was the same as Drongle's but again we might not have all the info.

The UV map is tied to the blend file and the dae exported from that blend file. So if you didn't export your head AFTER you mapped the UV there are no coordinates on the head to match up to the UV mapping (I am sure those terms aren't as legit as they should be but I am trying to be simple here.)

 

So EACH time you make changes in a UV mapping you need to export the DAE again so that it will reflect those changes.

Blender is NOT easy. It takes time. Try not to get discouraged. Eventually it won't seem too much like work . 

[Lightesword Xue]

I figured it out. Hope this helps anyone else.

 

To Export a UV map to .dae

1) Open .dae (or .blend) file of project being worked on.
2) Open UV Editor.
3) Edit Mode
4) Ctrl Right Click (Or alt Shift Right Click depending on simple complexity)
5) Make a full seam all the way around by Ctrl Right clicking.
6) Hit A
7) Hit U, Unwrap
8) Go to UV Editor, Go to UVs within Editor.
9) Export UV Layout
10) Open the UV Export by going to Open Image in UV Editor
11) Go to File
12) Click Export as Collada .dae

13) Go to SL - Upload Mesh, Last Tab on Mesh Window -> Click Apply Textures or Upload Textures (There's a checkbox that has something something textures beside it) And then calculate wieght and upload. Due to the textures.. I am pretty sure it costs a tad more to upload.

[arton Rotaru]

You should be ready to export your mesh at step 7) already. Textures, images don't have anything to do with the actual UV mapping of the mesh. Even more so not when uploading it to SL. Each texture you upload along with the mesh will cost you 10L$, just like when you upload textures alone.

[Lightesword Xue]

I think you missed what I said entirely. You can not upload the mesh by itself otherwise you run into what I did for issues. I made my mesh, unwrapped the mesh, then in blender I applied the uv to the mesh.. and it worked. I also found out, on my own, when you go to save your collada, there is a checkbox that pretty much skips my process entirely, but least I found two ways of doing it.  Also I use the beta grid.

[arton Rotaru]

No, I did not miss anything at all. Whatever the cause of your initial issue was, it has nothing to do with textures, images or the like. Maybe your export settings have been wrong, idk. But certainly you don't have to export the UV layout as an image, and uploading it along with the mesh.

[Lightesword Xue]

I beg to differ, I did that, it worked and the problem is fixed. Ty for your input though!

[Simplejackit]

okay this is a magic trick that works for alot of weird things that happen from importing dae files into sl.... so in blender, take your model and export it as an OBJ file... then re import the OBJ back into blender... then export that obj model you just imported as a dae file... then import into second life. idk why exactly this fixes it.. but this has worked for me on a few different issues including one very similar to the problem you are having