Skin Weights - Greyed out in upload.

[VerucaDarling]

I have this rigged mesh item. When I try to upload it into SL, I cannot check the skin weights box.  I have tried redoing it a few times and the last time I did it according to this video http://saeluan.net/tutorials/maya/rigging-a-mesh-in-maya/.  I am using maya 2012 to export the file because I was told that it already had the correct dae exporter.  What could I be doing wrong?

[Cathy Foil]

All it takes is not doing one little thing or missing a setting to make the whole thing not work.  So you may have thought you followed the video exactly but chances are you missed something.

Common mistake is to import the skeleton rig into your already open mesh file.  When you import a rig it automatically changes all the names of the bones which will mess it up.  Here is a link to a page with all the bone names.  So check all the names of the bones / joints in your rig. http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Troubleshooting

The page also has explanations of many errors you may get and what they mean.  One misspelled bone / joint name or missing bone will make the whole thing not work.

Always open your skeleton file and import your mesh not the other way around.  Always a good idea to save a few copies of your skeleton rig file as backup before you ever import a mesh into it.

I always use Export Selection instead of Export All.  When I use Export Selection I open my Outliner and click on mPelvis and then hold down my Ctrl key and click on my mesh.  After both are selected I then click Export Selection and export them.

I am using Maya 8.0 so yours may be different.  One limitation I have with Maya 8.0 is any rigged mesh I export I have to be very careful about any textures / Lamberts I apply to my mesh.  My plugin does not like it if I have a texture file linked to any Lambert.  So before I export a rigged mesh I replace all my textures with blank Lamberts.  I just name them like Lambert1, Lambert2 and so on up to eight of them.  Then I have to upload the textures separately from the mesh and rez the mesh in SL and apply the textures manually.  THe UVs hold true so applying the textures manually is not that big of a deal just a small extra step.  I don't know if your version has this limitation but it is worth looking at.

I hope that helps.

Cathy

[Luc Starsider]

Not sure how it is in Maya - I think perhaps it is an issue in the uploader - but perhaps you should check and try to include all the avatar bones in the skeleton when uploading, even if some bones are not relevant or used in your mesh item.

- Luc -

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

According to this thread from a couple of months back

Collada Maya plugin not available for Maya 2012

the exporter for Maya 2012 uses Collada v.1.4.1 whereas SL uses v.1.4.0, so you may also want to try exporting to .fbx format then using the standalone FBX 2011.3.1 converter to convert the fbx file to .dae for upload to SL.

[VerucaDarling]

Thanks for the help everyone.  What wound up working is me going into the notecard and adding the names of the joints that were not rigged and also changing the number of joints.  It's a bit tedious but better than nothing.