How do people make low prim count mesh stuff?

[SwiftXShadow]

I am trying to make something really simple with Sketchup, i know it is far from an optimal tool but i want to make a simple thing, yet it ends up coming with like a 36 land impact! I have seen on sl marketplace people making full houses or other things for 1-5 prims yet i make something this simple for liek 36.
I would upload the save file of what i made so you guys can look closer what i do wrong, but it wont let me upload a .dae file

[Chic Aeon]

There are two answer to your question :D.

 

Choice #1 -- they are making very C***y mesh that falls apart viewing because of very bad LODs. And possibly their mesh has no physics (can't rez inside the house, walk through walls etc.

Choice#2 (MUCH BETTER) is that they actually know what they are doing. LOL. I have never used Sketchup but do know it has LOTS of problems uploading to SL (and other platforms). I suspect that your curved wall that LOOKS like a simple curved piece is ACTUALLY made up of many smaller pieces (too many) and is causing part of the land impact issue.

The other thing is that you need to learn how to upload ANY model (not just sketchup) and that has to do with choosing (or making) LODs for the different distances of viewing and the settings people have chosen in their viewer. There is also a BIG physics issue and that could be the "cost" of your model.

For more help you need to give us more info such as a screenshot of the uploader window with the costs of each of the areas, a screenshot showing the ACTUAL number of vertices used in your model (I am assuming there is a way to see that in Sketchup). 

 

I would guess that your model should come in between 5 and 7 land impact with good LODS and correct physics. Just looking at the picture and of course SIZE makes some difference but that looks fairly small. 

 

We are happy to help but there isn't enough info so far. 

 

[Klytyna]

I've never used sketchup, and never will. However I do remember seeing somebody work with it some years back as part of a games modding community.

This guy had used sketchup for 3 months, was entirely self taught from spewtube videos on sketchup, and was knocking out "hella kewl space ship and space station models for the mod" in about 2 hours per ship, using NOTHING but the extrude tool. He thought he was a "leet 3d moddeler".

He never did understand why the 2 actual game modders/modelers on the team were typically taking 20-30 HOURS to convert each of his 2 hour meshes into usable game resources, including ...

Importing to a REAL 3d modeling application

Taking the whole damn mesh apart

UV mapping pieces

Assigning material zones

Reassembling the whole damn thing

Poly count reduction

Converting to tris

Making convex hull physics hitboxes from scratch

Exporting from the real modeling application to some ancient shareware that had the only working "game file format exporter"

Reexporting from that to the game file formats after correcting loading fubars

Making game file format materials libraries from the textures

Hardpointing the models

Writing the xml files needed to import the models into the game as functioning resources

Testing the stuff

Redoing half of it over from scratch to fix the fault, etc., etc., etc.,

...

Seriously, find a free or cheap modeling application, learn to use it, read the info in threads here, forget Gurgle Skrewup...
 

[Anna Nova]

5 hours ago, Klytyna said:

... from spewtube videos ... forget Gurgle Skrewup...

I'm beginning to think that Google is the cause of all our woes.  And I was blaming Microsoft!

(sent over TOR, via an encrypted VPN)

[ChinRey]

6 hours ago, SwiftXShadow said:

I am trying to make something really simple with Sketchup, i know it is far from an optimal tool

It certainly isn't an optimal tool. I think it is possible to make optimized SL mesh with Sketchup but you're really really fighting against the odds there.

The most basic secret for reducing land impact without reducing the quality, is to get rid of all the superfluous polys and vertices and Sketchup is notorious for making "dirty" meshes with lots of those.

You also have to control all LoD models and the physics model. Do not ever use the "Generate" option for the mid, low and lowest levels and also make a separate physics model for your mesh.

Beyond that, browse through the old posts in this forum. They are by far the best resource for learning how to make mesh for Second Life. There are so many tricks and techniques we can't possibly list them all here and in any case, it'll take time to learn even th most fundamental ones.

As for 1 LI houses, don't aim for that quite yet. As far as I know, there is only one builder who has made good quality houses with land impact that low and it took me four years of hard work studying, experimenting and learning before I did those.

[ChinRey]

9 hours ago, Klytyna said:

Seriously, find a free or cheap modeling application, learn to use it, read the info in threads here, forget Gurgle Skrewup...

Google doesn't own Sketchup anymore. They sold it five years ago.

Sketchup isn't a bad tool for the work it was meant to do: entry level computer assisted design and standalone modelling for hobbyists -  the kind of work where it doesn't matter if it takes a minute or five for the computer to render the model. But in Second Life or a game or other dynamic 3D environments, we can't wait for minutes for each and every item to load - a second is far too slow. We need lean, mean, fast, efficient low poly meshes and Sketchup was never intended to produce that.

Edited December 19, 2017 by ChinRey

[SwiftXShadow]

10 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

There are two answer to your question :D.

 

Choice #1 -- they are making very C***y mesh that falls apart viewing because of very bad LODs. And possibly their mesh has no physics (can't rez inside the house, walk through walls etc.

Choice#2 (MUCH BETTER) is that they actually know what they are doing. LOL. I have never used Sketchup but do know it has LOTS of problems uploading to SL (and other platforms). I suspect that your curved wall that LOOKS like a simple curved piece is ACTUALLY made up of many smaller pieces (too many) and is causing part of the land impact issue.

The other thing is that you need to learn how to upload ANY model (not just sketchup) and that has to do with choosing (or making) LODs for the different distances of viewing and the settings people have chosen in their viewer. There is also a BIG physics issue and that could be the "cost" of your model.

For more help you need to give us more info such as a screenshot of the uploader window with the costs of each of the areas, a screenshot showing the ACTUAL number of vertices used in your model (I am assuming there is a way to see that in Sketchup). 

 

I would guess that your model should come in between 5 and 7 land impact with good LODS and correct physics. Just looking at the picture and of course SIZE makes some difference but that looks fairly small. 

 

We are happy to help but there isn't enough info so far. 

 

I am so new at this i dont even know what this means "For more help you need to give us more info such as a screenshot of the uploader window with the costs of each of the areas, a screenshot showing the ACTUAL number of vertices used in your model"

but when u  were talking about curved wall it did seem wierd on SL, when i put the physics in the curved walls have a LOOOOT of lines that i never seen before and i dont know how to remove them. Is there some other program that is easy to learn and i can make simple stuff like this except better with like 3-6 prims.

Edited December 19, 2017 by SwiftXShadow

[Anna Nova]

2 hours ago, SwiftXShadow said:

I am so new at this i dont even know what this means "For more help you need to give us more info such as a screenshot of the uploader window with the costs of each of the areas, a screenshot showing the ACTUAL number of vertices used in your model"

but when u  were talking about curved wall it did seem wierd on SL, when i put the physics in the curved walls have a LOOOOT of lines that i never seen before and i dont know how to remove them. Is there some other program that is easy to learn and i can make simple stuff like this except better with like 3-6 prims.

The lines show you where Sketchup has divided the wall into triangles.  In SL everything is made of triangles (tris), the simplest flat 2D object.  Most 3D modellers use Quads to model, basically a quad is a plane with 4 corners, so you see people talking about Quads and Tris.  Each Quad gets split into 2 Tris for SL.

The back wall you can see is a rectangular object, each face made of 2 tris.  But the curves are made of a number of quads, each face now 2 tris.  In all your mesh contains 320 triangles, and that is actually quite good.

However, some of them, the ones on the top of the wall, for instance, are very small (see the 3 Black Dots - error markers - that's the reason it will not let you upload it), and SL hates small triangles, because they take a lot of computing power to work out.

From where you got to, press the 'Calculate weights and fee' button, and show us what it says.  The 3 numbers next to the fee are the interesting ones.  Simplifying a lot: Download is the cost of copying your mesh to a viewer - number of triangles is important here; Physics is an estimate of how hard it is to work out if some other object has hit yours, this is where the shape and size of the triangles matters; and Server is how much resources the Sim Server has to expend to rezz the object. Land Impact is just the highest one.

As this is low poly already (320 tris)  your problem is going to be physics.  So you need to find a way to make much simpler physics model, one without those tiny tris on the top of the wall.  One way would be to take this collada (.dae) into Blender (it's free, but a massive learning curve for you) and strip the mesh down to just the outside faces of the wall, possibly halving the number of faces too, and then using that as physics.  But this is definitely going to be hard for you without some Blender experience - there are great video turtoials though, I can recommend Chic Aeon's (search that name).

AND I should add, we all started where you are.  It is possible to learn this stuff, even if we are not all as talented as Chin, Chic and Klytyna.

Edited December 19, 2017 by anna2358

[SwiftXShadow]

1 hour ago, anna2358 said:

The lines show you where Sketchup has divided the wall into triangles.  In SL everything is made of triangles (tris), the simplest flat 2D object.  Most 3D modellers use Quads to model, basically a quad is a plane with 4 corners, so you see people talking about Quads and Tris.  Each Quad gets split into 2 Tris for SL.

The back wall you can see is a rectangular object, each face made of 2 tris.  But the curves are made of a number of quads, each face now 2 tris.  In all your mesh contains 320 triangles, and that is actually quite good.

However, some of them, the ones on the top of the wall, for instance, are very small (see the 3 Black Dots - error markers - that's the reason it will not let you upload it), and SL hates small triangles, because they take a lot of computing power to work out.

From where you got to, press the 'Calculate weights and fee' button, and show us what it says.  The 3 numbers next to the fee are the interesting ones.  Simplifying a lot: Download is the cost of copying your mesh to a viewer - number of triangles is important here; Physics is an estimate of how hard it is to work out if some other object has hit yours, this is where the shape and size of the triangles matters; and Server is how much resources the Sim Server has to expend to rezz the object. Land Impact is just the highest one.

As this is low poly already (320 tris)  your problem is going to be physics.  So you need to find a way to make much simpler physics model, one without those tiny tris on the top of the wall.  One way would be to take this collada (.dae) into Blender (it's free, but a massive learning curve for you) and strip the mesh down to just the outside faces of the wall, possibly halving the number of faces too, and then using that as physics.  But this is definitely going to be hard for you without some Blender experience - there are great video turtoials though, I can recommend Chic Aeon's (search that name).

AND I should add, we all started where you are.  It is possible to learn this stuff, even if we are not all as talented as Chin, Chic and Klytyna.

If i try to calculate as it is then i get an error msg like so.

 

If i click analize first and then choose quality preview it will go through and look like this. When i bring it to SL and make it into a prim so the physics work, then it turns into a 36 land impact

 

I already did try to make a physics file which looks like this

 

But when i use it, then it looks like this as if everything is a giant box. Analzing does not make it any better

 

 

Edited December 19, 2017 by SwiftXShadow

[Chic Aeon]

Your physics file is WAY too complex for SL and I have no idea how you might go about making one in Sketchup that would work. 

The bottom line   which you might have guessed by now is to abandon Sketchup and go to another 3D program. Most folks here use Blender because it is A. Free, B. Well supported, C. Free LOL and a few of us because it is open source and we like that idea.

There are tons of tutorials on the web for Blender. Not all (only a few) are for things we can use in Second Life.  So should you decide to learn Blender, I made some starting videos that are JUST for Second Life (and Opensim) and hopefully they will help a lot. The start at the VERY beginning and continue on into house physics. 

The are here: https://www.slartist.com/browse-the-tutorial-chic-videos-1-date.html    They are published like a blog so the earliest starting videos are at the end but they are numbered. You want the ones with the BLENDER icon on them. The others are for prim building.

And we DID all start where you are and many of use remember well the angst and hair pulling while learning (and still learning).

Your screenshots were just the kind of thing we need to help here on the forums. So you got that part down. Along with starting to learn from scratch (a house is NOT the place to start LOL) I suggest just reading the posts in the MESH forums -- even if you don't understand them at all. 

I read them all five years ago and while they didn't help with what I was doing at the time, I did REMEMBER seeing things on problems that I encountered later --- and that helped in its own way. Also when you have a specific problem you can use the forum search  to perhaps find an answer.

 

BUT you will find almost nothing on Sketchup so time to switch software.

 

[SwiftXShadow]

4 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

Your physics file is WAY too complex for SL and I have no idea how you might go about making one in Sketchup that would work. 

The bottom line   which you might have guessed by now is to abandon Sketchup and go to another 3D program. Most folks here use Blender because it is A. Free, B. Well supported, C. Free LOL and a few of us because it is open source and we like that idea.

There are tons of tutorials on the web for Blender. Not all (only a few) are for things we can use in Second Life.  So should you decide to learn Blender, I made some starting videos that are JUST for Second Life (and Opensim) and hopefully they will help a lot. The start at the VERY beginning and continue on into house physics. 

The are here: https://www.slartist.com/browse-the-tutorial-chic-videos-1-date.html    They are published like a blog so the earliest starting videos are at the end but they are numbered. You want the ones with the BLENDER icon on them. The others are for prim building.

And we DID all start where you are and many of use remember well the angst and hair pulling while learning (and still learning).

Your screenshots were just the kind of thing we need to help here on the forums. So you got that part down. Along with starting to learn from scratch (a house is NOT the place to start LOL) I suggest just reading the posts in the MESH forums -- even if you don't understand them at all. 

I read them all five years ago and while they didn't help with what I was doing at the time, I did REMEMBER seeing things on problems that I encountered later --- and that helped in its own way. Also when you have a specific problem you can use the forum search  to perhaps find an answer.

 

BUT you will find almost nothing on Sketchup so time to switch software.

 

I actually have blender because the video where i learned to use sketchup said to export the file in sketchup and then import with blender and save with blander and use the blender file for sl.
But blender looks way too complicated...

Also not trying to make a house, what i want is that piece u see there, its an addon to a club building. So that thing i have there is really the finalized object

Edited December 19, 2017 by SwiftXShadow

[Chic Aeon]

8 minutes ago, SwiftXShadow said:

I actually have blender because the video where i learned to use sketchup said to export the file in sketchup and then import with blender and save with blander and use the blender file for sl.
But blender looks way too complicated...

Also not trying to make a house, what i want is that piece u see there, its an addon to a club building. So that thing i have there is really the finalized object

Well I have no more advice then   Perhaps there IS someone on the forums that uses Sketchup. IF the high cost is because of the physics model then you "might" want to look at the video on house physics. But yes, Blender is complex. However it does WORK :D.  You might also just put an add in the WANTED section showing what you have and get someone to make a physics model and upload for you. IF this is the only thing you plan to make. 

Good luck!!!! 

 

[Rolig Loon]

1 hour ago, SwiftXShadow said:

But when i use it, then it looks like this as if everything is a giant box. Analzing does not make it any better

 

 

I don't have the faintest idea how to do it in Sketchup, but it looks as if your physics model and your mesh may not be scaled and rotated the same way. (And way too complex.)

And yes, Blender is complicated.  Any decent program for doing 3D modeling is.  Modeling is not a simple task. A shortcut program may make it look easier, but at the cost of creating poorly optimized models that are not well suited for dynamic on-line environments, as you have discovered.  Even after a few years at it, I'm no whiz.  Like Chic, though, I keep watching and learning from the real experts who post in this forum.  Baby steps ....

Edited December 19, 2017 by Rolig Loon

[Aquila Kytori]

hi

Your simplified Physics model should have worked (unless somhow it got rotated and or scaled differently along the way).

The faces at the "door" opening that join the interier to the exterier walls could have been deleted.

If you like you could import both your visual mesh and physics mesh from sketchup to Blender then save that file and upload it to http://pasteall.org/blend/.

Then paste the new URL (its the same but with 5 numbers at the end) here and i will take a look at it fo you .

[SwiftXShadow]

23 hours ago, Aquila Kytori said:

hi

Your simplified Physics model should have worked (unless somhow it got rotated and or scaled differently along the way).

The faces at the "door" opening that join the interier to the exterier walls could have been deleted.

If you like you could import both your visual mesh and physics mesh from sketchup to Blender then save that file and upload it to http://pasteall.org/blend/.

Then paste the new URL (its the same but with 5 numbers at the end) here and i will take a look at it fo you .

this is the model of it, it has a few changes from the original namely i deleted 2 of the walls
http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=48562

 

and this should be the physics

 

http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=48563

[Aquila Kytori]

As mentioned above Sketchup is not ideal for creating mesh for SL.

The "model"  mesh was imported into Blender as 16 separate objects and the "Physics" mesh 9 objects.

Rule number one for physics states that each mesh object must have its own corresponding physics mesh object. !

After joining,  cleaning up, removing excess materials (8 max for SL), UV unwrapping and redoing the physics mesh......you can find the visual mesh here  http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=48565

and the physics mesh here : http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=48566

Important, This Physics mesh is not designed to be Analyzed.

In the physics tab of the mesh uploader load up the Sketchup_PHYS mesh and don't touch any of the other buttons found there ! ! !

When rezzed and edited so that the Physics Shape Type is prim the LI should be 2.

 

 

 

[SwiftXShadow]

23 minutes ago, Aquila Kytori said:

As mentioned above Sketchup is not ideal for creating mesh for SL.

The "model"  mesh was imported into Blender as 16 separate objects and the "Physics" mesh 9 objects.

Rule number one for physics states that each mesh object must have its own corresponding physics mesh object. !

After joining,  cleaning up, removing excess materials (8 max for SL), UV unwrapping and redoing the physics mesh......you can find the visual mesh here  http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=48565

and the physics mesh here : http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=48566

Important, This Physics mesh is not designed to be Analyzed.

In the physics tab of the mesh uploader load up the Sketchup_PHYS mesh and don't touch any of the other buttons found there ! ! !

When rezzed and edited so that the Physics Shape Type is prim the LI should be 2.

 

 

 

thats insane form 30+ to 2 prims, how on earth did u do that and how long did it take you to do it? Is there some youtube tutorial that would explain how to do what you just did with bender? 
I find it really easy to draw up stuff with sketchup and then maybe i could learn to fix it up with blender like you did.

I did however notice that the textures do not work anymore, probably because on sketchup i had it set which parts are different pieces for textures but whatever u did reset it. I do know it is somehow possible to do that thing too with somehow setting texture type or something on blender lol.

Edited December 20, 2017 by SwiftXShadow

[Aquila Kytori]

23 minutes ago, SwiftXShadow said:

I did however notice that the textures do not work anymore

Ooooooooops I forgot to delete the other UV maps in the list . This one will be ok, its designed to use repeating tilable textures http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=48567

 

I had  intended to explain how to clean up your meshes but .........soon realised it just would not be practical (to many steps involved) for someone who doesn't know Blender basics .

And if the truth be told it would have been easier and quicker to have redone them from scratch

I tried Sketchup a couple of years ago but because I had already learnt some Blender I wasn't willing to spend the time to understand how it works so never got very far .

If you want to create meshes for use in SL then you just have to put in the time and learn Blender. If you start with very simple things and stick at it, eventually it will become as easy as Sketchup is to you now.

And my advice to someone learning Blender is always the same , get a notebook and pen and write the key board shortcuts down etc as you learn them  The very first entry in mine was a rough drawing of a cube with lines ponting to a vertex, edge and triangle, face and polygon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[SwiftXShadow]

1 minute ago, Aquila Kytori said:

Ooooooooops I forgot to delete the other UV maps in the list . This one will be ok, its designed to use repeating tilable textures http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=48567

 

I had  intended to explain how to clean up your meshes but .........soon realised it just would not be practical (to many steps involved) for someone who doesn't know Blender basics .

And if the truth be told it would have been easier and quicker to have redone them from scratch

I tried Sketchup a couple of years ago but because I had already learnt some Blender I wasn't willing to spend the time to understand how it works so never got very far .

If you want to create meshes for use in SL then you just have to put in the time and learn Blender. If you start with very simple things and stick at it, eventually it will become as easy as Sketchup is to you now.

And my advice to someone learning Blender is always the same , get a notebook and pen and write the key board shortcuts down etc as you learn them  The very first entry in mine was a rough drawing of a cube with lines ponting to a vertex, edge and triangle, face and polygon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is there some mode on blender that basically lets me geometrically draw my shapes, and then drag them into 3d ?

[Aquila Kytori]

1 minute ago, SwiftXShadow said:

s there some mode on blender that basically lets me geometrically draw my shapes, and then drag them into 3d ?

Yes; You can "draw" with vertices in 2D then when you are happy with your shape extude upwards .. to make it 3D ........ thats  how I would usually create a building. (and many other things)

but to do that you need to understand a little of Blenders interface and how to navigate around the 3D vieport. Spend a few hours just watching  Blender for beginners videos.

If you miss out on the basics you will very quickly get frustrated and give up.

 

[Chic Aeon]

4 hours ago, Aquila Kytori said:

And if the truth be told it would have been easier and quicker to have redone them from scratch

LOL. I just redid my very popular "filler buildings with shops" from  -- well at least three years ago. They are still fine and still very usable and still sell very well ----

 

BUT BUT BUT -- they just aren't as PRETTY as they could be. So took them all apart after exporting via viewer since I had NO IDEA where that old file was (I try but it gets messy in my file explorer). I made each texture separate and baked them all and it is so very "real" looking now. Only two textures - one for the building and one if you want to use the fire escape. So major improvement there too. 

WE DO LEARN AS WE GO ALONG -- and three or more years at maybe 8 hours a day is a LOT of learning LOL.

But yes, it WOULD have been easier (and I have seen this before on other projects) just to rebuild. But, sometimes there is the "nostalgia" factor and maybe something like 3D Genealogy LOL. Who knows. 

 

But your comment made me smile! 

 

[Memo Opaque]

Did you set "lowest LOD" as 0 ? Sometimes it makes big drops on LI. It is better to make 0 than having a very broken shape with less triangles. When your object is big, even you can set "Low LOD" as 0 too. Because big object's highest/high/low/lowest LOD distances are longer. They break down after longer radiuses. If it is a small object, it is not wise. You can experiment it.

[Chic Aeon]

2 hours ago, Memo Opaque said:

Did you set "lowest LOD" as 0 ? Sometimes it makes big drops on LI. It is better to make 0 than having a very broken shape with less triangles. When your object is big, even you can set "Low LOD" as 0 too. Because big object's highest/high/low/lowest LOD distances are longer. They break down after longer radiuses. If it is a small object, it is not wise. You can experiment it.

In one of the first screenshots (not the first set) it has download cost at about 6 which would be reasonable. When changed TO PRIM it became much higher -- so it is a physics issue. 

Lots of shots, lots of chatter LOL. Easy to miss, but yes your insights are certainly true. You really don't need to see a big building FOUR sims away *wink*. 

 

[Memo Opaque]

15 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

In one of the first screenshots (not the first set) it has download cost at about 6 which would be reasonable. When changed TO PRIM it became much higher -- so it is a physics issue. 

Lots of shots, lots of chatter LOL. Easy to miss, but yes your insights are certainly true. You really don't need to see a big building FOUR sims away *wink*. 

 

Ah, yes i just looked at it fastly . But does he have to set it to prim as long as dimentions are bigger than 0,5 m. and uploaded as unanalysed ? I know result is not very perfect but close enough.

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, Memo Opaque said:

Ah, yes i just looked at it fastly . But does he have to set it to prim as long as dimentions are bigger than 0,5 m. and uploaded as unanalysed ?

Yes, he does. If he keeps it as convex hull - which is what it is uploaded as, the whole mesh will be a single convex hull. Think of the convex hull s a shrinkwrap around the whole building - rather inconvenient if you want to be able to get inside it.

 

16 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

Lots of shots, lots of chatter LOL. Easy to miss, but yes your insights are certainly true. You really don't need to see a big building FOUR sims away *wink*.

You never know. somebody may come along with draw distance set to 1,000 m. There's no point in reducing the lowest LoD model for an item like the one we're discussing ehre anyway since it won't make any difference whatsoever to the land impact. Once the dimensions of the mesh exceeds 10 m or thereabouts, the lowest LoD model is no longer included in the LI calculation.