Why is my mesh upload different from blender?

[Daisy Starlight]

Hello Everyone,

 

I really wanted to cut down on the number of vertices this heart would have and after doing so, it won’t upload right on SL when I export it with avastar. However, when I use the regular exporter, it seems to work fine which is not necessarily of any advantage to me because, I plan on rigging it and I would need to export it using the avastar option once that is done ( I tested that using the previous model before making additional adjustments to it ). How can I fix it? Should I add additional vertices to the “V” area of the heart? Also, I baked some test textures and they won’t apply correctly on account of this issue. 

 

Please help.

Edited September 17, 2018 by No Fairlady

[Beq Janus]

That error typically occurs when the exporter (or even the viewer importer) tries to triangulate a non-planar concave N-Gon and gets its knickers in a twist.  The quickest way to test this is often to triangulate the mesh using blender just before exporting (ctrl-t IIRC). The problem you are having appears to be with the heart surface itself, the triangulation in the Avastar exporter is not dealing correctly with the V in that large N-gon surface. My slight reservation in proclaiming that for sure is that the stretch appears to be inset, does the heart have an interior surface too? The Avastar exporter does this, the algorithm it uses when triangulating is different to the one used in the default exporter (and in Blender internally) hence the different results. @Gaia Clary will undoubtedly be able to explain this. The solution is to take control of the triangulation yourself, at the very least for the problme N-gon.

Assuming I am correct, you need only fix the heart and give the exporter some hints by bisecting it vertically to remove the concave (V) area, splitting theheart in two (see my poor sketch). Another option is to highlight the N-gon and triangulate just that part (ctrl-t), leaving the exporter to do the rest later. Keep in mind that for rigging it will need to be have more vertices distributed across the falt area in order for it to deform properly. 

You certainly do not need more geometry in the V itself, keep it as clean as possible only add the vertices where you need them.

 

Edited September 17, 2018 by Beq Janus
bad grammar and ugly wording

[Daisy Starlight]

58 minutes ago, Beq Janus said:

That error typically occurs when the exporter (or even the viewer importer) tries to triangulate a non-planar concave N-Gon and gets its knickers in a twist.  The quickest way to test this is often to triangulate the mesh using blender just before exporting (ctrl-t IIRC). The problem you are having appears to be with the heart surface itself, the triangulation in the Avastar exporter is not dealing correctly with the V in that large N-gon surface. My slight reservation in proclaiming that for sure is that the stretch appears to be inset, does the heart have an interior surface too? The Avastar exporter does this, the algorithm it uses when triangulating is different to the one used in the default exporter (and in Blender internally) hence the different results. @Gaia Clary will undoubtedly be able to explain this. The solution is to take control of the triangulation yourself, at the very least for the problme N-gon.

Assuming I am correct, you need only fix the heart and give the exporter some hints by bisecting it vertically to remove the concave (V) area, splitting theheart in two (see my poor sketch). Another option is to highlight the N-gon and triangulate just that part (ctrl-t), leaving the exporter to do the rest later. Keep in mind that for rigging it will need to be have more vertices distributed across the falt area in order for it to deform properly. 

You certainly do not need more geometry in the V itself, keep it as clean as possible only add the vertices where you need them.

 

 

Thank you so much! I literally just figured out a solution. Hopefully this carries on all the way into the rigging process *fingers crossed* because, now that you've mentioned it, that may have been why it looked weird when I uploaded it after the last rig but, I thought that was because of the geometry. I wanted to split the heart in two as you suggested ( which I did try ) but, I got a little nervous that it would affect re-baking later on so I ended up using the insert tool which seems to fix the profile all together! HAHA! Thank you for your response!!! ❤️

 

P.s! I had to look at how the mesh uploader triangulated it by doing CrtL + Shift + R to realize what I was truly doing wrong, so I triangulated it in blender and then subdivided and wouldn't you know it fixed it too but, then I had a ton of vertices so, I had to scratch that solution hehe. #NewbieBlenderDiaries hahaha

 

 

 

 

Edited September 17, 2018 by No Fairlady

[Kyrah Abattoir]

Yeah as Beq said, your problem is that you are using Ngons. While it's not necessarily bad, it means that you are leaving the triangulation of the ngon completely up to blender.

Which it will do in the simplest and most efficient way possible (as in probably poorly). Try to cut everything to either 3 or 4 sided polygons to ensure a predictable result.

Also check out my normal editing tutorial if you want to get "rounded" edges for very little polygon count.

Edited September 19, 2018 by Kyrah Abattoir

[Daisy Starlight]

14 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Yeah as Beq said, your problem is that you are using Ngons. While it's not necessarily bad, it means that you are leaving the triangulation of the ngon completely up to blender.

Which it will do in the simplest and most efficient way possible (as in probably poorly). Try to cut everything to either 3 or 4 sided polygons to ensure a predictable result.

Also check out my normal editing tutorial if you want to get "rounded" edges for very little polygon count.

 

Hi Kyrah! 

Thank you for the response. Where can I find the tutorial you mentioned?

And yes, I ending up triangulating it in blender before uploading it to SL because, as you said, if I didn't control the way it was done blender would mess the entire thing up, even after using the insert tool and creating more vertices. I am happy with the end result but, I would definitely improve on a number of things as I go on.. It was a nice project. Thank you all for the responses ❤️

[Kyrah Abattoir]

I'm not sure i've seen a tutorial really it's really about using your best judgement to break down all your ngons into 4 sided polygons or 3 sided polygons. Trying to avoid creating too long/narrow ones if possible.

You can use the knife tool to create an edge between two ertices that are on the same face, and you can also select 2 or more adjacent polygons and hit F to fuse them.

Just keep in mind that Ngons are a "modeling convenience" in the 3D world only triangles exist, or quads (which really become 2 trianges in the end)

 

[Kyrah Abattoir]

15 hours ago, No Fairlady said:

 

Hi Kyrah! 

Thank you for the response. Where can I find the tutorial you mentioned?

And yes, I ending up triangulating it in blender before uploading it to SL because, as you said, if I didn't control the way it was done blender would mess the entire thing up, even after using the insert tool and creating more vertices. I am happy with the end result but, I would definitely improve on a number of things as I go on.. It was a nice project. Thank you all for the responses ❤️

I had not noticed that it fell off the first page already.