Another very basic question - well a few, actually

[Phil Deakins]

I'm giving some thought to making a few very simple shapes in mesh. I've never even looked at making mesh before so....

1. Sculpties were not very good for sharp edges. I think it could be done with a bit of fiddling, but they weren't straight forward. For instance, the most simple sculptie cube had unsharp edges in SL. So the question is, does mesh produce sharp edges - not necessarily absolutely sharp, but visually sharp from quite close up?

2. Where can I find Gaia's tutorial(s) for mesh beginners? (I remember, and used, her sculptie tutorial for beginners)

3. Is Mesh Studio good enough to make a sharp edged mesh from, say, a linked set of cubes and rounded prims, so that it looks as good as,straight-edged, with some rounded-edged, prims? E.g. a flattened cube, standing vertically, with an equally flattened half cycluinder on the top edge. In prims they can look like one prim with sharp edges and an accurate curve on top.. Would they look as good, or as good as makes no difference, if Mesh Studio created a mesh of the prims?

I think that's it for now :)

[arton Rotaru]

For question 1)

Yes, you have full control over vertex normals with mesh. You can not only define any single edge hard or soft, you can also define the angle of every single vertex normal, if your DCC software supports such functionality.

[Rolig Loon]

I have no experience with Mesh Studio, but my understanding from what others have said is that it makes rather clunky, poorly-optimized mesh objects.  Whether that means that it can't make a cube with sharp edges, I do not know.  In Blender or Maya, or other 3D modelling programs, though, you can split any edge to make it into two edges -- one associated with the face on one side and the other with the other face.  That makes the edge normals match the face normals and sharpens the edge.

Gaia's tutorials for mesh are at http://blog.machinimatrix.org/category/mesh/

[Pamela Galli]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

I'm giving some thought to making a few very simple shapes in mesh. I've never even looked at making mesh before so....

1. Sculpties were not very good for sharp edges. I think it could be done with a bit of fiddling, but they weren't straight forward. For instance, the most simple sculptie cube had unsharp edges in SL. So the question is, does mesh produce sharp edges - not necessarily absolutely sharp, but visually sharp from quite close up?

2. Where can I find Gaia's tutorial(s) for mesh beginners? (I remember, and used, her sculptie tutorial for beginners)

3. Is Mesh Studio good enough to make a sharp edged mesh from, say, a linked set of cubes and rounded prims, so that it looks as good as,straight-edged, with some rounded-edged, prims? E.g. a flattened cube, standing vertically, with an equally flattened half cycluinder on the top edge. In prims they can look like one prim with sharp edges and an accurate curve on top.. Would they look as good, or as good as makes no difference, if Mesh Studio created a mesh of the prims?

I think that's it for now

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I have not used Mesh Studio, but to answer your question, if you leave the faces "flat" rather than smooth, the meshed prims will probably look very much like regular prims, as far as sharp edges.

 

Eta You don't need MS to do something like that, just export using Singularity, Firestorm, or similar.

[Phil Deakins]

That you folks. It looks like I'll try Blender. I have a copy from years ago but I'll get the current one. All I need now is the location of Gaia's tutorial for beginners. I'm hoping that someone will point me to that.

[Rolig Loon]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

That you folks. It looks like I'll try Blender. I have a copy from years ago but I'll get the current one. All I need now is the location of Gaia's tutorial for beginners. I'm hoping that someone will point me to that.

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I thought I did that ^^

Gaia's tutorials for mesh are at http://blog.machinimatrix.org/category/mesh/

[Phil Deakins]

Oh 'eck! Thank you, Rolig

[Gaia Clary]

This one is the official page for newbies:

    http://avastar.online/reference/3d-newbies/

 

[ChinRey]

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Rolig Loon wrote:

I have no experience with Mesh Studio, but my understanding from what others have said is that it makes rather clunky, poorly-optimized mesh objects.

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That is not correct. Mesh Studio is able to produce mesh at least as well optimized for SL as any other mesh application. Dong so is not staight forward of course, you have to understand both how mesh works and how the program works but that is true for all other 3D modelling software too.

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Rolig Loon wrote:

Whether that means that it can't make a cube with sharp edges, I do not know.

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It can. In fact, it's the only way it can make a cube. The limitation with Mesh Studio is that it can only reproduce as mesh exactly what you make with prims and prim cubes always have sharp normals of course.

[Rolig Loon]

Good to know, on both counts.  Thanks, Chin.

[ChinRey]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

1. Sculpties were not very good for sharp edges. I think it could be done with a bit of fiddling, but they weren't straight forward.

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I'd like to elaborate a bit on Arton excellent but rather short reply. It's a bit hard to explain without demonstrating but the normals of a mesh ( in the word's widest definition which includes prims and sculpts) tells the rendering engine which way each face is pointing and thus how much light it gets from a light source. With flat or sharp normals, the entire surface of each face is given the same amount of light. With smooth normals, the face is gradually darkenned or lightened towards the edges to match the shading of the other faces it is joined to.

Prims always use sharp normals for flat surfaces, such as the sides of a cube and smooth normals for curved ones

Sculpts always have smooth normals and the ony way to emulate sharp ones is to have two vertices at exactly the same point so that the adjoning faces don't share the same vertices.

With mesh - or maybe we shuold call it "full mesh" or something like that - you get to choose.

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Phil Deakins wrote:

3. Is Mesh Studio good enough to make a sharp edged mesh from, say, a linked set of cubes and rounded prims, so that it looks as good as,straight-edged, with some rounded-edged, prims? E.g. a flattened cube, standing vertically, with an equally flattened half cycluinder on the top edge. In prims they can look like one prim with sharp edges and an accurate curve on top.. Would they look as good, or as good as makes no difference, if Mesh Studio created a mesh of the prims?

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If you mesh with the right resolution (2/24 for the high res model, 2/15 for mid, 2/9 for low and 2/6 for lowest, what Mesh Studio produces will look exactly like the prim original. In your example that is a problem though since you can't get a smooth transition between the cube sides and the cylinder curve with prims.

[Phil Deakins]

Thank you Gaia. I've bookmarked your site that was pointed to earlier in the thread, and I'll bookmark the one that you pointed to a well.

In view of posts after yours, I may try Mesh Studio but, before I do, I need to ask ChinRey for some clarification

 

[Phil Deakins]

Thank you for your posts, ChinRey. I need some clarification about what you said in the last paragraph:-

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ChinRey wrote:

If you mesh with the right resolution (2/24 for the high res model, 2/15 for mid, 2/9 for low and 2/6 for lowest, what Mesh Studio produces will look exactly like the prim original.

In your example that is a problem though since you can't get a smooth transition between the cube sides and the cylinder curve with prims.

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I'll explain exactly what I want to make. It's a footboard for an art deco style bed. Imagine a prim cube that is stretched to, say, 3.0m wide x 0.6m high x 0.1m thick. That's the 1 prim version. Now I want to make the top 2 corner rounded, but still only 1 prim.

   ----------------
|____________|

Something like that, with rounded corners where the diagram has gaps.

Using prims, it would need 1 cube for the main part, 1 shorter centred cube on top of it, and 1 quartered cyclinder for each of the 2 corners. As an object on its own, set to convex hull, they would only count for 2LI. I don't know if they would still only count for 2LI when linked to the rest of the bed. Maybe I should try it. Also, I don't know if it would only add 1LI to the bed if it's done with a 1 prim mesh.

The clarification I need is this. Do you mean that Mesh Studio can't get a smooth transition between the sides of the 2 normal prims?, or that a smooth transition can't be achieved with normal prims? If it's the former, then normal prims would be best. If it's the former, then a mesh would be best.

Looking at the front of the obect I described:- I can imagine that combining the 4 faces (4 prims) into 1 face must be better. Is that what you meant?

I suppose my question boils down to, which is best for that purpose - 4 normal prims or 1 mesh?

 

[ChinRey]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

The clarification I need is this. Do you mean that Mesh Studio can't get a smooth transition between the sides of the 2 normal prims?, or that a smooth transition can't be achieved with normal prims?

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You can't get a smooth trasition between the curved parts and the flat ones with normal prims and that measn you can't with Mesh Studio either. The flat surfaces shouldn't be a problem, it's the curved ones that are.

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Phil Deakins wrote:

I suppose my question boils down to, which is best for that purpose - 4 normal prims or 1 mesh?

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It's not that much difference really. With four prims and convex hull you get a land impact down of 2. With mesh you can get it down to 0.5.

[Phil Deakins]

Thank you, ChinRey. I understand what you mean now. My best bet is to see what I can come up with in Blender - unless I decide not to bother, that is.