Blender to SL (Vertex Parent) Problems

[VinnWong]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently designing a vest. I've created some buttons for the vest and since I don't want the buttons to deform when the vest moves with the avatar, I have used vertex parenting to attach them to the vest.

In Blender, after rigging the vest itself to the armature then vertex parenting the buttons to the vest, I tested the deformations in pose mode and everything was OK.

However, after I upload it to Second Life, even though the rigging of the vest to the armature works, the vertex parenting of the buttons don't. Instead of attaching themselves to the vest, they are attached to the hand of the avatar when worn.

Does anyone know how to make objects like buttons and pockets that will not deform but are still attached to the main shirt or jacket in Blender? I would really appreciate some guidance in this matter.

 

Many thanks

[Chosen Few]

SL has no way of understanding that kind of heirarchy.  Remember, your modeling program is a completely different type of environment from any destination platform you may be modeling for, whether it be SL or any other.  There are all kinds of things that work in the modeling environment that will not work elsewhere, including the one you just discovered.

All SL knows about are bone influences (weights) on the rigged model's surface (skin).  What causes deformation of any part of the skin is weight applied from more than one bone.  Therefore, if you don't want those buttons to deform, you have to make sure they're each influenced by only one bone.  This will somewhat limit the places you can put them, and the range of animations you can use.  If they're in less than ideal locations, and/or if you use animations that were not designed with those rigid buttons in mind, the buttons could end up disappearing into the body, lifting away from the body, or traveling across the body, as the avatar animates.  In other words, they'll act just like any other rigid attachment.

There's no perfect solution for this.  You're going to need to pick your poison.  I'd suggest that in most caes, allowing the buttons to deform a little is less of a sin than allowing them to move separately from the rest of the skin, but obviously that answer will be a little different for each model.

[VinnWong]

Thank you very much Chosen Few. It was good to understand more about these limitations that you mentioned.

 

I was wondering if anyone knew how to transfer material information from Blender to SL. I see lots of mesh clothes with multiple faces for separate UV maps. I'd like to do this too.

 

I've assigned parts of an object as a different material already and I exported it to collada. When uploaded to SL, the mesh is considered as one material and I cannot seem to select individual materials with the select face function.

 

I was hoping if someone could be kind enough to let me know what I'm doing wrong. I have read the Second Life Blender guides for multiple faces and I'm not sure why the multiple material informAtion isn't translating into Second Life.

 

Many thanks

[Drongle McMahon]

If your mesh has two materials, they should automatically be present after you upload. Assuming you are using Blender 2.6x, try these steps. Deselect all vertices, select one material at a time in the materials panel, then click Select underneath. Does that select just part of the mesh? Set each material to a different colour in the material panel. Can you see the colours on the mesh in Solid display (set with the sphere button under the 3D view)? Export with the material colours showing, upload and rez. Do you see the coloured parts in SL? These are the faces and should be selectable individually if you check the "Select faces" checkbox. If you drop a texture on the mesh, it should only go onto the face you drop it on.

Note that if one material is only on hidden faces, then you won't be able to select that face or drop a texture on it.

You can check the collada file by opening it in a text editor and seeing how many occurences of "<polylist" there are. For each Blender object, each of these describes a part of the mesh carrying a separate material. The material should be named after the "<polylist" and before the next ">". (This will be different if you are using an old Blender with the python exporter script, which uses "<triangles" instead.)

[Gaia Clary]

Basically you assign up to 8 materials to different parts of your mesh model. Of course you have to UV unwrap the model but thats about all that is neaded. Just export the model to Collada and it should work.

These 2 tutorials might be of some help:

http://blog.machinimatrix.org/optimizing-meshes/  (a bit outdated, but basically still correct)

http://blog.machinimatrix.org/from-uv-map-to-multiple-textures/

The first one is more like a general overview and it explains making texture faces only very briefly. The second one is more about how you can bake multiple textures for a model with multiple materials. However your question should be answered there.

 

[VinnWong]

Hi everyone. Thank you very much for all the suggestions and help.

Unfortunately, I am still unable to translate this material information into Second Life for some reason.

I am currently using Blender v2.65.

I have created the materials and assigned them accordingly. I have even changed the colours of them to make sure that they are different materials. As shown below:

 

 

I saved it as collada and using the Second Life Rigged Preset Option. Then I uploaded it into SL's Beta Grid Aditi with "include skin weights". I rezzed it on the ground and this is the result:

 

I am very puzzled to why this material information did not translate. If anyone notices something I have done wrong. I would really appreciate your insight.

 

Many thanks

[Coby Foden]

For rigged mesh clothes you need to upload the textures separately.

Then apply the textures on the vest inworld to the appropriate faces on the mesh.

Done.

 

[Drongle McMahon]

Did you try selecting a face and setting the colour? (or applying a texture).

Did you look for and count the "<polylist"s?

Did you try uploading the same file without skin weights to see if that was different?

 

[VinnWong]

Hi everyone, 

Sorry my example must have not described my problem very well.

 

The second image shows that I am unable to select the separate faces. After uploading to SL, the vest appears to only have one face.

 

I checked the poly count it's <polylist material="Vest-material" count="245">. I'm not sure how this would help, I'm really not very good with these scripting things.

 

I also tried uploading it as it is without it being rigged. It still only appears to have one face.

 

It seems like a simple task to many people, I am extremely puzzled about why it's not working for me. I have assigned the materials in Blender to separate vertices. When I click on "Select" in the materials panel, it selects the vertices that I've assigned it to accordingly. After I upload it SL, they all appear to only have 1 face. I cannot click them separately using "Select face".

If I'm doing something wrong, please let me know.

Many thanks

[VinnWong]

Thank you everyone for all your help but I have finally figured it out. I was under the impression that the different faces would appear highlighted differently. Like as in the root prim being a different colour. But that was only for mesh uploaded with different objects. I was able to actually select the different faces but the change in selection highlight was so subtle I had no idea it was actually working.

 

Thank you very much everyone, I'm glad that it has been solved but also a  little embarrassed at over looking something like this. Thank you everyone for the help.

 

Many thanks

Vinn Wong

[Drongle McMahon]

Glad you solved it - it was too puzzling.

In case anyone is still wondering, I was not concerned with the count value in one "<polylist", which you show, but with the number of polylists - that is the number of times you find "<polylist" in the whole file. The reason was that there should be one such list per material (for each object, if ther are more than one). So counting them could have indicated whether there was a problem with the export or a problem with the reading of the exported file. That is no longer a question.

I'm still puzzled by the fact that the materials were not coloured in the rezzed object as they were in Blender. They normally are for static meshes. Maybe the material colours don't work for models with bone weights even if they are rezzed statically? Trhat's why I asked if you had tried the upload without weights.