Save as Collada Questions...

[Summer Logan]

Is there a successful way/method of saving prim as collada and reuploading as mesh?

The reason I ask is because I've attempted quite a few times to right click a prim build and saved as collada....took file into Blender and made adjustments...then saved again and reuploaded...which does work...however textures that were perfectly placed/lined up before are not lining up perfectly after. Usually the texture params save decently but more times something will be rotated by 90 when originally it was 0 rotation. 

Like when texturing a box all textures will be at 0 rotation except one or two sides after uploading have flipped to 90 rotation. 

When saving as collada I have checked marked consolidate textures, skip transparent and apply texture params

 

Any suggestions on how to properly make this work is appreciated. Even if I had to do an extra step in Blender, however I'm still new to a lot of stuff blender can do so if possible give steps I can follow. Thank you!

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, Summer Logan said:

Any suggestions on how to properly make this work is appreciated. Even if I had to do an extra step in Blender

I'm not familiar with the rotating textures issue. It seems a bit strange since as far as I know, Firestorm's Collada exporter taps directly into the render engine and should export exactly the same as what is displayed on the screen.

But that being said, to make any sensible mesh from those dae files you need to do quite a lot more than one extra step in Blender. Rotating the UV map is just a minor task compared to everything else.

[Chic Aeon]

Agree with ChinRey

Are you exporting WITH texture parameters? I am assuming so.

From there you need to get rid of TONS of vertices, get rid of doubles, JOIN of course as you would just be uploading a linkset again which would be very much the same so far as land impact in many cases as what you exported. 

Suggest that creating in this manner is an OK starting point if it works for you, but you really need to know some Blender basics INCLUDING how UV mapping works (which seems to be your most obvious issue). 

Some info here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8u00idO1kA&list=PLnUjXtZrc64laa7-1NUSY8pjXedwQj7kn

 

[Summer Logan]

Yes Chic Aeon I've does everything with Texture Parameters, Removing Doubles, Joining etc. 

It's just the texturing issue...I know somewhat about UV mapping but I wasn't exactly sure the steps I need to take... I don't want the 1 wrap around texture for all sides...I wanted to drag and drop SL textures like before and then just do a simple line up with the Planar Mapping.

Sorry if this doesn't make much sense...hard to explain for me

[Christhiana]

Hi there Neighbour

I missed your inworld IM. But Chinrey and Chic seem to have given you some good answers already. I can recommend watching some of Chic's video tutorials on blender. They are a good starting point to learn how to model directly in blender from the start, which I would highly recommend.

[Pierre Ceriano]

14 hours ago, Summer Logan said:

Is there a successful way/method of saving prim as collada and reuploading as mesh?

2 methods to my idea :

• Don't modify anything on the uploaded shape, and don't touch anything on the UVs in Blender, and then upload as it is. You will have to play with the upload window in order to deal with the best land impacts/LOD ratio OR
• if you want to modify the uploaded asset in Blender, you will need to unwrap the UVs again. If you want to approach the texturing method on prims, maybe use the "Project from view" and "Project from view Bound" methods after you did put the said faces to unwrap in front of you (numpads).

[Chic Aeon]

6 hours ago, Pierre Ceriano said:

Don't modify anything on the uploaded shape, and don't touch anything on the UVs in Blender, and then upload as it is. You will have to play with the upload window in order to deal with the best land impacts/LOD ratio OR

 

I wasn't testing YOUR idea LOL but it turns out that won't work without some extra steps. Likely you, like "I", never do this

Meanwhile:

I didn't fine ANY texture rotation on the hollowed cube. It uploaded exactly like it was the prim model.  I did NOT use consolidate textures -- not sure if that made any difference. 

Anyway I did a simple test and took screenshots along the way but there are only a few important ones as I think I found AN issue. 

BUT for the sake of "why you really don't want to do this" I guess I will paste most in. 

Here is the before and after photo of my simple test:  Left prim, right mesh. 

 

In this case the wooden area (prim 1) took the textures perfectly. The second prim didn't keep the texture parameters at all. 

 

You can see how very messy this came in here:

I thought the problem with MINE (not the OPs) was that there were two different map names -- but no, that wasn't it. 

In MY case (and most any that I can think of) it was a too many materials. So OF COURSE there need to be NEW materials designated replacing six or seven in EACH PRIM with ONE -- or in the case of something more complex, several "prims" would have the same material designated. 

So after cleaning up the mesh, then materials need to be assigned (and thought out ahead of time obviously).

When there are too many materials (more than 8 ) the uploader now splits the mesh AT ITS WHIM. So even joined the mesh becomes a linkset when it gets uploaded to SL. 

Somewhere in here is likely part of the problem of the OP?????   Well maybe, maybe not, but it is a good example of why it is better to use saved prim linksets for SIZING  

 

Anyway, experiment done. Hopefully helpful to someone along the way. Off to that day job. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Summer Logan]

Thank you for helping me, I really appreciate it.

I will take and post pictures of my steps so maybe that will help show maybe I am doing it wrong.

[ChinRey]

21 hours ago, Pierre Ceriano said:

2 methods to my idea :

• Don't modify anything on the uploaded shape, and don't touch anything on the UVs in Blender, and then upload as it is. You will have to play with the upload window in order to deal with the best land impacts/LOD ratio

No, no, no, no and NO!!!

Firestorm exports the prims exactly as they are presented to the render engine and each prim becomes a separate mesh. If you reupload unmodified, you get the same as the original prim build, only with higher streaming cost, worse LoD and physics models and occasionally messed up UV mapping. In other words: you end up with the worst of both worlds. Much better to just keep the build as prims, possibly use the convex hull trick to get the land impact down to what it would have as mesh.

The Firestorm team is very careful to state that the collada export function is only intended for backups and not really meant to be a mesh modelling tool as such. Some builders have found ways to turn it into a useful tool but it takes extensive modifying before upload for it to make sense.

Edited May 1, 2018 by ChinRey

[Anna Nova]

What Chinrey said.

In the early days of my adventure in learning mesh, I would frequently make a  prim model, export it with Firestorm, and import it to Blender.  I didn't know Blender very well then.  So all I could do was to decimate each item, and join them, then export them as .dae.  On import it was hit and miss if I could texture them acceptably, usually not.

It soon became apparent that you either use an in-world tool like Mesh Studio to convert prim to mesh (you can use Blender on those meshes to improve things - but it also often screws up the texturing), or you build from scratch with a proper 3D program like Blender.  I invested the 2 years of learning into Blender.  Never looked back.

 

[Summer Logan]

Ok here are my pictures to show the steps I'm taking, @Chic Aeon You want Consolidate Textures checked because then 1 texture no matter how many times you've used it counts as 1 face...when you uncheck that each side of your project considered a separate face even when using the same texture...that's probably why you said yours was to many materials. If that makes sense

Here is my prim build

 

Here is what the textures are supposed to look like on the final project.

 

This is how I texture before exporting...I make all the stuff you can't see or not supposed to see is invisible. I used two different wood textures to create two faces instead of 1 on the wood parts and I made the "glass" part complete opaque so it's not skipped on export.

 

My export window or "save as" window 

 

Ok now in Blender...This shows how the project is many objects...so I ctrl J to link everything together and make 1 object.

 

Here is the window in Edit view with the messy verts and tris

 

so I do Alt J while everything is selected to turn everything into quads

 

Then I do limited dissolve to simplify the mesh

 

Also remove doubles, as you can see much cleaner and low verts!

 

 

Now to upload...I am using firestorm viewer if that matters...here are the settings...I didn't bother changing the LoDs because this was just a test on the texturing aspect. I could have raised the numbers higher infact!

 

These last two pictures show after applying the textures...using the planar mapping to line everything up...it's all messed up just on the 1 side which is sooooooo annoying as all other sides are perfect!

[Summer Logan]

Also want to add, I've tried different steps in blender as for cleaning up the verts and even leaving the verts as they were after joining them...but nothing made a difference...all  the same results.

 

I honestly feel if I could get this method to work...I wouldn't need to use a prim to mesh "tool" within SL...I honestly don't like using server based "tools" like that anyway because anything can happen to where you can't even use the "tool" anymore and then it's wasted money. I don't know a whole lot about Blender...but I love doing the Prim to Mesh...I love being able to size up my builds according to my avatar or other furniture...I know Mesh can be resized but not without changing the LI

Edited May 1, 2018 by Summer Logan

[Chic Aeon]

Well that is a great set of screenshots for sure :D. And hopefully someone will have the answer. I had no idea what consolidate textures did so thanks for that. When I do a sizing thing in the future (I actually usually use a MESH "prim" to keep those materials slightly sane :D)  I will USE THAT! 

Since there are very few of us (many not any) that use this feature purposefully for CREATION -- YOU may be the "beta tester" so to speak. Even when you hand map your item Blender sometimes turns textures that you want to be linearly based (as in wood) the wrong way. THEN you simply have to turn that part of the UV map around so that it is going CORRECTLY.  You also need to make sure that your textures are in scale with each other. I use a black and white grid for that sometimes. 

It SEEMS like your only solution will be to remap a bit adjusting the textures.  Since there are no screenshot of your UV map, it is hard to tell what you did for that part of the process.  If you haven't looked at my little tutorial on UV mapping there may be some hints in there.  

Maybe someone has "the answer" but as I said, I don't think anyone who frequents this board uses "prim to mesh export" for anything other than rough layouts for sizing. That window (which is very nice) wouldn't take long at all to make in Blender :D.   Hence, you can sort of get our smiling quandary. 

Not sure if you care but here is some mapping info. 

And I hope you get this worked out!!!! 

 

OH. A PS as I thought of this and then forgot to put it in the post --- did you apply ROTATION AND SCALE before unwrapping -- or exporting if you didn't map at all (not sure how that could work but who knows)?  That might help.  

 

https://www.slartist.com/blender-mapping-basics-prep-and-review_6e7c6515c.html

Edited May 1, 2018 by Chic Aeon

[Summer Logan]

Thank you so much, I did bookmark your YouTube videos I just haven't watched them yet. I currently don't do anything with the UVs in Blender as I don't really know how to. However I have tried Unwraping UVs and UV Smart Project I think it's called...but it still gave same results...granted....I just hit the Unwrap UVs button and that was all I knew how to do...same with Smart UV Project...I selected that option and it OK but that's as far as I went.

I do look forward to watching the YouTube videos as I'm a visual learner and your right I might find something in there that will help with my situation. Would love that once I eventually figure this out I could make my own Video Tutorial to show/teach other people.

[Summer Logan]

Here is the Models if you want to play around with them.

 

First one is the export from SL no changes made

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ru1jkmsjc15rg5v/FramedWindow (primtomesh).dae?dl=0

 

This one is after doing steps as listed above to clean up the verts and mesh but have not done anything with the UVs. As you can see in Blender though 3 materials are listed which is correct.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0xybugf5bc8knag/FramedWindow (lowerverts).dae?dl=0

[Chic Aeon]

The UV Smart Unwrapper (or whatever) is NOT your friend. LOL.

But hopefully most of us learn that fairly soon. I certainly used it at the beginning and SOMETIMES it was OK, but often times SO NOT.   

When I did MY test I didn't change any rotations in the prims so that is possibly why I didn't have any issues.  I am thinking if you want to actually use that window, you will need to remap it :D.  

UV mapping is indeed HALF (or sometimes more) of the project). Happily I LIKE doing it as it is a bit like a puzzle. 

Once you get through the beginning videos you can whip up that window WITHIN Blender :D.   

 

Good luck.

 

[ChinRey]

3 hours ago, Summer Logan said:

Ok now in Blender...This shows how the project is many objects...so I ctrl J to link everything together and make 1 object.

Did you remember to rename the UV maps before you joined them?

The Firestorm exporter gives different names to the UV maps for each prim and the uploader can't handle that.

In Object mode, select the Object Data tool (the triangle with vertices in all corners, then select the prims one by one and rename the UV map. It doesn't matter what you name them, as long as it's exactly the same for each and every one.

 

Also, remember to apply Rotation, Scale and Location (Ctrl+A in object mode) before you export. Uneven scale can also cause UV issues. Make it a habit to do that right away, just before or after you join the meshes, that'll save you a lot of headache int he long run.

Edited May 1, 2018 by ChinRey

[Summer Logan]

Thank you so much! I'm going to try all this right now and get back to you.

Do they all get the same name even if it's different materials?

Edited May 1, 2018 by Summer Logan

[Summer Logan]

It worked perfectly!!! @ChinRey you completely saved my project!!!

Renaming the UVmap in the object Data was the key!!! This is so awesome don't need a prim to mesh generator!!! WUUUUUUU

 

So anyone else who'd like to try prim to mesh use my steps and ChinRey's steps and it's perfect!

Edited May 2, 2018 by Summer Logan

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, Summer Logan said:

This is so awesome don't need a prim to mesh generator!!!

Unless you want to save time that is.

But anyway, glad to hear you sorted it out!

Edited May 2, 2018 by ChinRey

[Anna Nova]

6 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Did you remember to rename the UV maps before you joined them?

The Firestorm exporter gives different names to the UV maps for each prim and the uploader can't handle that.

...

BIG light just came on!  That's why everything I ever exported to blender and cleaned up like this needed a complete new UV-map.  The one it came out of the Firestorm collada export with ... got dumped by the  uploader!

Extremely useful thread.