Item looks different once uploaded

[Chizukotheone]

Trying my first upload. (Noob alert!) Once uploaded, the mesh doesn't look like it should (in preview it looks fine). Item made it maya (2011) Have also imported it to blender to check, and export as dae and still the same problem.

Here is what I'm experiencing:

http://imageshack.us/f/856/probuploadingmesh.jpg/

As you can see in the image, all the links/bangles look thick and similar and any guidance is muchly appreciated :)

Regards,

Chiz

[Chic Aeon]

I don't use Maya so can't speak to that but can say that your upload cost is WAY too high. You need to JOIN all the parts of your bangles after assigning materials to them. You can also cut the physics costs down by using a simple cube.dae (one simple cube that you exported as a dae) as the physics model. A bangle doesn't need physics after all.

 

It could possibly be that you made the skinny bangles toooooo small? Not sure as I haven't come across that problem but if things are so very thin, they seem to cause issues. Assume someone will know the answer for you. I suspect your bangles could easily come in at 1LI which would load faster for everyone. You don't need to see them at all at the lowest setting.

 

So get your server costs down by JOINING (not sure where that is in Maya) your object into one piece, the physics costs down by using a cube as your physics model and your land impact by lowering your last LOD to nothing and others ones accordingly (or making custom LODs but I am guessing you are not there yet).

 

[Even Genesis]

From what I can tell your meshes are too "thin".... and objects can stretch only to a certain extent in SL that's why they look thicker when you upload You can make them nano meshes (duplicate some faces around it, expand/move the duplicated faces a bit around the mesh and resize these duplicated faces to 0x0x0) then you will have a bigger "bounding box" and you will be able to make these pieces smaller.

But the right thing to do is exactly what Chic told you to ! =) If you join them, SL will see the whole object as one, so you will have no problems with it changing the smaller parts into minimum sizes.

[Chizukotheone]

Ok, I joined them all into one object and it worked! I wasn't aware I had to do this, so something new learned already (As well as how to join objects) Thanks

 

Though my concern now is texturing. With them unjoined I could have easily selected each one and textured it in SL (Either with a simple texture or uv map, whatever) but now they are one item, I won't be able to do that? I had a quick peek at the UV editor for the first time (Both in Maya and Blender) and with that many bangles, it sort of looks a mess and impossible task. Would it be better to upload the bangles I want to use as separate objects in SL? since there were several shapes and sizes.. and then 'arrage' them in SL and eventually link items there?

Regards,

Chiz

 

[Aquila Kytori]

Hi

You can Assign each bangle a separate material in Blender, ( SL Uploader allows a maximum of 8 materials asigned to each mesh) and then in world you can select each bangle by Face Select in the Texture tab of the edit window and give it its own colour shininess or Texture.

Here I only explain how to Assign a material to each bangle and and then unwrap all together so that they share the same UV map. This means that you can use the texture on some of the bangles and simple colours with shiny to get a gold or silver effect etc on others. It is possible to give each bangle its own UV map/own texture but for such a small item using so many different textures would be very extravagant.

First you need to mark seams on each bangle so that it can be unwrapped properly. select 1 horizontal and 1 vertical edge loop per bangle . Try to put seams where they will not be noticed when the mesh is rezzed :

 

Next Assign each bangle its own material by selecting a bangle and hitting the + button, give it a name and then hit Assign.

I gave each material a different colour but its best if you leave them white and add colour when Inworld.

Edited to add : don't use a space in the Material name , if I remeber correctly this causes errors in the uploader.

So for example bangle1 or bangle_1 is ok but not  bangle 1

 

Unwrap,   Selct all the bangles and U to open the Unwrap menu and select Unwrap :

 

Next is to clean up the UV unwrap to make it more user freindly. This means straightening the edges some . I made all my bangles the same number of vertical loops which means even though some of the islands are longer than others  if I allign by scaling the longer ones in the X axis so that the islands are all the same length i can now box select by vertical row and straighten them selection by selection. If yours has different numbers of vertical loops in each bangle you will have to select each bangle/edge in the UV editing window one at a time .

( Yes somethimes it takes longer to sort out UV maps than it does to do the actuall mesh modelling    )

 

Last thing,  move  and scale the islands so that more of the UV space is used up. I sorted mine by material number/top to bottom , Anything you do to help you remember which part of the UV unwrap corrosponds to which part of your mesh is usefull when you come to the actuall texturing in Gimp or Photoshop .

 

Thats it 

Now you need to save your UV unwrap so that you can open it in your  Image editing programme and do the actuall texturing .

             In the UV/image eiting window header :  UV's > Export UV Layout