Nano Meshes? How Do I Make Nano Meshes?

[Iccarus Infinity]

Hi there guys!

I am back with another question/problem. I've been working on a pair of earrings and they need to be quite small but the problem is that even when I scale them down in Maya and upload to SL the meshes are limited to 0.0100 meters on the XYZ scales. This would be fine except that it squishes my mesh. For my mesh to look proper it has to be a lot larger in scale.

The obvious question here is: How do I make my mesh object look right in SL while being tiny? Is there something special I have to do in Maya or in SL when I'm uploading it?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Medhue Simoni]

Gaia Clary has a nice video on how to use Avastar to make tinies.

[Iccarus Infinity]

Yea I'm not trying to make tiny avatars or an object for a tiny avatar. I'm trying to make a mesh object that can be scaled smaller than the default 0.0100 meters on the XYZ axes.

[Chosen Few]

Add some extra invisible geometry to the model, so that the whole becomes larger than .01M.  All you should need at a minimum is a couple of perpendicular triangles. 

I'm not able to test at the moment, but in theory, SL shouldn't care if individual polygons are smaller a centimeter; it should only care about the size of the model as a whole.  So, in Maya, just add whatever extra geometry you need in order to make the whole thing larger than a centimeter on each axis, and you should be all set.

[Aquila Kytori]

Hi

This question was asked a couple of weeks ago aswell. As chosen has already said add some extra geometry (1 or 2 triangles) to make the overall size (bounding box) of your mesh bigger and give them a separate material which you can then make 100% transparent when rezzed in SL.

Then , in SL, you will be able to scale down without distortion so that the visible part can be a lot smaller than 0.01 meter.

Explained in pictures here : http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/When-exporting-from-blender-to-SL-how-to-reduce-to-make-a-tiny/m-p/2038219#M21886

 

 

 

[Iccarus Infinity]

Tried that and I'm getting some weird effects when I upload the mesh to SL. Even though I've assigned a new material to the new triangle I created and made it transparent in Maya, in SL the whole mesh goes black when I try to apply the texture to the main object. I also made the triangle use a transparent texture in SL as well but I'm still getting a black object.

 

EDIT: I managed to get the texture appearing correctly but the little triangle I added seems to be sharing that texture globally and when I try to make it transparent the entire model goes transparent. Ugh, what am I doing wrong?

[Min Barzane]

Use one material on your object and nother on your triangle,tha way you can make triangle 100% transparent without messing up object texture (remember you can use up to 8 materials in 1 joined mesh object)

[Iccarus Infinity]

I did assign another material to the triangle. It's still not working...

[Ron Khondji]

Did you use "Select face" to change the spare triangle texture and transparancy?
If not,then that is what you´re doing wrong.

[Iccarus Infinity]

Yep I did select face. Still doing it... I imagine it's something I've missed in Maya but I don't know what...

[Aquila Kytori]

hi again

For someone to say where you are going wrong you really need to explain your workflow . But in the mean time ..........and i'm NOT a Maya user     .........

 

Create a cube in Maya, select 3 of the cubes faces , right click and select Assign New Material. From the menu choose Lambert,  give it red colour and change the material name to Red .

Repeat for the other 3 faces, making them blue and give them the material name Blue.

Upload to SL

Rez and Edit the uploaded cube....... are you able to make, for example the red faces invisible without changing the blue ones ?

 

[Trix Easterwood]

I hope someone can help, I'm reading this thread and it appears to have the answer to my question, I'm just not quite sure what you are saying <grins> sorry

I successfuly created a nano mesh the other night and it must have just been dumb luck or I've since managed to change some setting because I have not been able to do it again. I watched the video I followed again and again and I'm pretty sure I follow the directions exactly, but, then I don't get the same result...soooo something is obviously wrong with my method.

I creat the mesh and scale it down below the 0.01 limit usually into something around 0.005 or so then I create a new mesh box around it at the default Blender size of 2.0 X 2.0X 2.0 scaled at 1 X 1 X 1. Then, I remove vertices until I have three with the axis for one passing through the object, I create a face on that axis (a triangle joining the three). I export it as a Collada and upload to SL...all seems the same as with the successful attempt except for those numbers in the object size box.

I can video my steps or show screenshots of the Blender screens, but, it appears that there is something in this thread about how to get that larger box to be recognized in the high LOD and that is where you are losing me.

I've included a picture of the  nano mesh and one of my many failed attempts...I've been struggling with this now for a few days, I would be most grateful for any help.

Thanks in advance

[Drongle McMahon]

Can't see from your pictures, but this is a poissibility ... You have to make sure the nanamesh and the extra triangle are arranged in such a way that their combined bounding box is large enough in all three dimensions. So, for example, the bottom left arrangement here will not work because one dimension is still too narrow to squash enough. The arrangement above it has the triangle moved perpendicular to the shared plane, making the bounding box larger in that dimension. The one on the right achieves the samee effect by rotating the pair so that the shared plane isn't aligned with the axes. This will not be achieved by rotating the object, as that will rotate the bounding box too. In Blender, this can be assured by Apply Rotation and Scale. I don't know the equivalent in Maya. Of course the whole thing requires the nanomesh and the extra triangle to be part of the same mesh. If you accidentally leave them as two separate objects, they will each have their own bounding boxes, and so the whole vthing fails.

[Trix Easterwood]

Thank you, I'm not sure how you get those two seperate items to be joined, I understand that they are both within the same bounding box area. I'll try to reproduce what you've done, but, I am at present lost about the why and the how.

I did complete a video about my process and included a link to the video I originally followed which actually had the mesh created to make the bigger box and fool the linden uploader passing through the object that was being uploaded.

My process is here

the one I followed (in French) is here

I assume from your diagrams that in this case it is the torus in the lower area that you intend to use in SLand that the triangle in the upper part of the illustration is what is used to expand the area. 

Hey, what I'm doing isn't working so I really appreciate the help, giving it a try, thanks

 

[Trix Easterwood]

/me cries

I like so give up, going to bed

[Aquila Kytori]

hi

The "nano" mesh and the extra triangle/face have to be the same mesh object for it to work.

Watch again the French tuto and at 1:47 you will see that he adds the cube in EDIT mode .

Thats where i think you are going wrong .

 

 

Also get into the habit of aplying scale and rotation before exporting to Collada.  (In Object mode, from the header Object>Apply>Rotation and Scale.)

One more thing when in the Collada export window go to the Export COLLADA panel  ( lower left of the screen ) and check the Selection Only box. This means only the object/objects you have selected to be exported will be exported .

note: If necassary you can Join to sperate mesh objects in Blender by shift selecting them both and then using the Ctrl+J shortcut.

 

[Drongle McMahon]

Help ... someone from Mayaland, please explain how to join two objects into one.

[Trix Easterwood]

OMG, oh my God, OMG

That was sooooooooo it! Switching to Edit mode before adding the cube made all the difference

Great catch, Aquila!

Thank you so much for sticking with it for me. :matte-motes-big-grin:

a Kudo to you, wish I could give more than one!

Yes, that's a 0.01 X 0.01 X 0.01 prim next to the nano mesh and the mesh is not at its smallest

[Trix Easterwood]

@Drongle

I don't know Maya at all, but, here's a link to a You Tube video that combines two objects (think that is the same as join).

[Drongle McMahon]

No Problem, not for me. ... I thought the op was using Maya. I could have given Blender instructions.

[Trix Easterwood]

The video is for the instructions in how to do it in Maya

[Uriek Burali]

Would anyone know how to in Zbrush4R5 perhaps? 

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

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Trix Easterwood wrote:

OMG, oh my God, OMG

That was sooooooooo it! Switching to Edit mode before adding the cube made all the difference

Great catch, Aquila!

Thank you so much for sticking with it for me. :matte-motes-big-grin:

a Kudo to you, wish I could give more than one!

 

---

I did for you, since I didn't have to make my own thread and giving Aquila and Drongle kudos is one of my new purposes in SL. ;-)

[Bouttime Whybrow]

i know this is an old thread but when i went looking for how to make a tiny mesh i found this thread quickly and it had the answers i needed right off. one user was having trouble with the extra geo turning black in world and stuff so i thought i'd offer what i think was the problem in case others find this thread and end up with the same issue. i'm pretty sure that since the user already had made the mesh completely, when they added the extra geometry they forgot to give the added geo UVs. if a mesh or part of mesh is lacking UVs nothing can map to it......like color,alpha or textures. in zbrush, as far as i know, if you add geo after the object already has UVs, you have to unwrap it all over again.......meaning new UVs. i'm sure in an unwrapping program or probably in maya there is a way to add UVs to pre existing UVs.