STARTING LEARNING MESH ....

[XieNzEn Rage]

Hi. I am using Google SketchUp to start building mesh. Had to move to mesh becaue simple prim builds are not helping me out making a sale with my creations. So, I just need some help to start.  Like how do i import the mesh to Second Life? Can anyone help me out?

[Chic Aeon]

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh

 

I don't know if Second Life supports SketchUp builds.  You can use Blender of course which is free.

 

 

[Rolig Loon]

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Chic Aeon wrote:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh

 

I don't know if Second Life supports SketchUp builds.  You can use Blender of course which is free.

 

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It does, but SketchUp is really inefficient, so you'll often get way more tris than you ought to.  SketchUp is quick and easy, but not a very good modelling tool if you intend to import to SL.  Blender has a steeper learning curve, but is far better.

[Zak Kozlov]

 

Sketchup is waaaay limited!

I'd pretty much compare it to simple prim use hehe

 

I'd suggest getting Blender (Free), Maya , 3ds

Blender can be quite confusing for someone who open it first, it's UI is a nightmare, but once you master it, i find nothing compare to the speed and efectivness of its key based awesomeness

 

3D world is huge, you got modeling, animation, rendering, compositing, mapping / texturing etc

just each of those are very vast and awesome subject alone

 

heck, Making mesh for SL is a subject alone! hehe

Dealing with different LODs, making mesh low poly, dealing with a bunch of limitations that you don't have in general 3DCG. those are things you'll learn on the way and this section of the forum will be very useful

 

my point is, theres no real "it works like this" to start with i believe

You should equip yourself with buddy google, youtube, a totaly unrealistic challenge and begin your awesome journey hehe

[Chic Aeon]

Well you guys were more harsh than I was going to be re Sketchup. But glad you said what I was thinking LOL.

 

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There is no easy path.

Do your homework. Make the effort. Take the time. Learn REAL 3D modeling.

If it is just about money, the time expended will NOT most likely (unless you are a Picasso type with tons of talent) work out well for the time expended in learning. You have to enjoy (sometimes painfully) the process -- and eventually (like a year later for me) you get there and it becomes fun.

 

[Nalates Urriah]

Everyone seems to have hinted at it but not said it: Sketchup makes mesh with HIGH Land Impact costs. That will make it hard to sell your products.

SL uses Level of Detail (LOD) modeling to improve performance. this means a 4,000 polygon high detail model used in level 4 detail might be a 1,000 polygon low detail model in level 4. Reducing the poly counnt is called retopologizing. In Sketchup it is difficult to to control the mesh topology.

By paying attention to LOD you can reduce your Land Impact costs considerably make your items more saleable.

To add detail without adding polygons SL and other modeling systems use normal maps. To work with normal maps in Sketchup you need a plugin. While I have not dug into working with normal maps in Sketchup I suspect your rather limited. Blender, 3DS, Mays and other advanced modeling programs have built in tools for creating normal maps from high detail models for use on lower detail models the appear to have more detail.

Then we get to specular maps. As best I can tell Sketchup does not handle specular maps. Blender, 3DS, and Maya handle those. Specular Maps Tutorial

When entering the world of 3D modeling there is a lot to learn. YouTube and CGCookie are good sources of tutorials. If you are doing mesh clothes the SL world has just changed, or is currently in the process of changing, depending on how you look at things. We now have Fitted Mesh that adjusts to avatar shape. This means every SL mesh clothing tutorial out there is out of date. Those that teach the building of Liquid Mesh (rigging to the collision skeleton) are the closest to being current.

[Sassy Romano]

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Nalates Urriah wrote:

This means every SL mesh clothing tutorial out there is out of date.

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Oh hardly!

There's a lot to learn that can be gleaned from many tutorials that concentrate on modelling even before getting to rigging and from my brief experiments with collsion volume bones, many will be very disappointed with the results in certain areas such that rigging to the normal armature will be preferable.

 

[XieNzEn Rage]

I have blender too, by the way. I just don't understand how it works. But I got the idea to export it with COLLADA and upload it on the model option (hope I got it right.)

 

Thanks for these info my friends. I'll see if I can understand Blender too. lol

[Coby Foden]

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XieNzEn Rage wrote:

I have blender too, by the way. I just don't understand how it works.

Thanks for these info my friends. I'll see if I can understand Blender too. lol

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If you are interested to learn Blender, here are very good easy to understand and easy to follow tutorials:

http://www.youtube.com/user/AmadeoCompositions?feature=watch

 

From that page you can select this tutorials set (link below).

Highly recommended If you don't know much about Blender:

In that tutorials set there are 33 tutorials in all. After watching all of those (and practising yourself along way) I'm sure you will start to be very familiar with how Blender works.

[Gaia Clary]

Great find ! I am certain this series contains a lot of valuable information in its 33 videos with roughly 20 hours of runtime all together. very cool!

But please take care: Some information is outdated already.The series was made with Blender 2.61 up to 2.63. We now have Blender 2.69. However most but not all of what is said in these videos is still applicable.

One thing: The very first sequence in the very first tutorial of the series is about User preferences and this HAS changed significantly (to the better) since "the old days".

Now you can save your preferences while you are in the middle of an edit session and you won't destroy your startpage setup any longer with that.

You see how frustrating it is to make video tutorials ? As soon as you publish them they are already outdated. I suffer from this desease as well