Guide/Tutorials?

[ZephyrSouza]

Hello,

I am a artist who has worked in Unity/Unreal and other engines over the years.

I use a mixture of zbrush and 3ds max. I have been unable to locate a proper pipeline to get assets into SL.

Is there a general guide from a basic static mesh to clothing?

A tutorial on the underlying tech for the bento avatars and how clothes work for them would be fantastic.

Edited November 6, 2018 by ZephyrSouza

[Chic Aeon]

Clothing most folks use Avastar into SL. I don't do clothes in SL so can't help beyond that.

Some SL mesh tutorials here. Probably too basic for you but there is "workflow" and importing :D.

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

 

Edited November 6, 2018 by Chic Aeon

[ZephyrSouza]

13 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

Clothing most folks use Avastar into SL. I don't do clothes in SL so can't help beyond that.

Some SL mesh tutorials here. Probably too basic for you but there is "workflow" and importing :D.

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

 

Hello Chic,

Thank you for that information. 

I will go ahead and check them out tonight.
I also looked into Avastar and shame its basically a blender project file.

Do you know of any Max compatible rigs?
Lastly in your experience how do you find the over all workflow for creating assets?

I briefly skipped through your videos and there doesn't seem to be any configging for assets.
Is that true or am I just missing something?

[Macrocosm Draegonne]

20 hours ago, ZephyrSouza said:

Hello Chic,

Thank you for that information. 

I will go ahead and check them out tonight.
I also looked into Avastar and shame its basically a blender project file.

Do you know of any Max compatible rigs?
Lastly in your experience how do you find the over all workflow for creating assets?

I briefly skipped through your videos and there doesn't seem to be any configging for assets.
Is that true or am I just missing something?

Best to get out your pioneer attitude, read the tea leaves, avoid the dangerous woogies, max has like almost no users so you wont find much on it for much of anything, but that you should be used to already right?

The wiki has most things to get you going, the forum has a ton of things that will help, including many tutorials.

[ZephyrSouza]

2 hours ago, Macrocosm Draegonne said:

Best to get out your pioneer attitude, read the tea leaves, avoid the dangerous woogies, max has like almost no users so you wont find much on it for much of anything, but that you should be used to already right?

The wiki has most things to get you going, the forum has a ton of things that will help, including many tutorials.

Max is industry standard so its being used frequently among most professional companies. Lack of max compatible resources is a shame, but not a show stopper.

Most of the tutorials/Guides ive found are out dated or lacking the supporting pictures/documentation because the links have expired by now.
Even on the wiki they have expired pictures.

If there is a standard guide that is suggested I would love a link.
In the meantime i will fiddle with it on my own and figure things out as they come up. 

[Macrocosm Draegonne]

6 hours ago, ZephyrSouza said:

Max is industry standard so its being used frequently among most professional companies. Lack of max compatible resources is a shame, but not a show stopper.

Most of the tutorials/Guides ive found are out dated or lacking the supporting pictures/documentation because the links have expired by now.
Even on the wiki they have expired pictures.

If there is a standard guide that is suggested I would love a link.
In the meantime i will fiddle with it on my own and figure things out as they come up. 

How big do you think the industry is? lol Blender has more users by a massive margin, because its not just for "the industry".

The main Wiki is the best place to start, and when you have questions or troubles ask here, there are so many brilliant helpful folks here! Reading posts will often give great insights too.

The wiki may have a few out of date places, but those would have been discussed here often if important. A lot of things are in development at the moment, so its probably not a priority to update the wiki until the new stuff and its kinks are worked out.

Here's the wiki - http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Main_Page

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

Knowledge Base - https://community.secondlife.com/knowledgebase/english/

Good luck!  Dont hesitate to ask questions in the forums.

One other thing you should know about SL, its heavily Open Source based, and intended as mainly User generated content, if you find a missing link by all means fill it, build the bridge to those few "legal" users of Max, help with the viewer code for uploading assets, anything you're good at and enjoy will most often be welcomed & greatly appreciated!

 

Edited November 7, 2018 by Macrocosm Draegonne

[ZephyrSouza]

38 minutes ago, Macrocosm Draegonne said:

How big do you think the industry is? lol Blender has more users by a massive margin, because its not just for "the industry".

The main Wiki is the best place to start, and when you have questions or troubles ask here, there are so many brilliant helpful folks here! Reading posts will often give great insights too.

The wiki may have a few out of date places, but those would have been discussed here often if important. A lot of things are in development at the moment, so its probably not a priority to update the wiki until the new stuff and its kinks are worked out.

Here's the wiki - http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Main_Page

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

Knowledge Base - https://community.secondlife.com/knowledgebase/english/

Good luck!  Dont hesitate to ask questions in the forums.

One other thing you should know about SL, its heavily Open Source based, and intended as mainly User generated content, if you find a missing link by all means fill it, build the bridge to those few "legal" users of Max, help with the viewer code for uploading assets, anything you're good at and enjoy will most often be welcomed & greatly appreciated!

 

Pretty big actually. As someone who works in the industry I know how much its used.
Zbrush, Maya, 3ds Max are the main softwares used by professional game, simulation and VFX companies.

Blender is easily accessible but the problem with it is the fact that its not the standard for anything.
Just because something has more users doesnt make it a standard tool.

I will use the docs and see what I find out.
Thank you for the links.

Edited November 7, 2018 by ZephyrSouza

[Macrocosm Draegonne]

Just now, ZephyrSouza said:

Pretty big actually. As someone who works in the industry I know how much its used.
Zbrush, Maya, 3ds Max are the main softwares used by professional game companies.

Blender is easily accessible but the problem with it is the fact that its not the standard for anything.
Just because something has more users doesnt make it a standard tool.

I will use the docs and see what I find out.
Thank you for the links.

I wasnt speaking to the standards of one particular group, only to the tiny size of it, and then consider contracts, and NDA's, that is why you will not often find much content geared towards those people, or them sharing what they're working on, or discussing aspects of a project etc.  Its why there will always be more content for Blender, because there are not only vastly more users, even Industry people too, but there are more users free to share and collaborate, and they do.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

I tend to assume that most people who use 3D studio max in SL are either abusing the educational licensing system, or simply using a cracked version.

You will find only a few tools for max I'm afraid and the last time I used them was in the sculpted prim days.

[Macrocosm Draegonne]

1 hour ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

I tend to assume that most people who use 3D studio max in SL are either abusing the educational licensing system, or simply using a cracked version.

You will find only a few tools for max I'm afraid and the last time I used them was in the sculpted prim days.

Yeah, there couldn't possibly be many official users, its only a tiny group of people that manage MAX because its such a small userbase, its an edge case app, sure then theres the masses of thieves, but they don't count, and MAX doesnt have to support them.  Which is why they probably stick with all the paid tutorial creators, teachers, institutions that will nudge their product into use, and discourage online freebie stuff that only encourages the thieves guild.

[ZephyrSouza]

2 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

I tend to assume that most people who use 3D studio max in SL are either abusing the educational licensing system, or simply using a cracked version.

You will find only a few tools for max I'm afraid and the last time I used them was in the sculpted prim days.

It is a shame about max but its not a big deal. The biggest hurdle atm is the fact that SL uses DAE which is a outdated and simply a terrible file format.
No matter what I do it wont input my textures and I haven't figured out how to apply textures ingame. I cant even be sure dae isn't trashing my UV's or not.

 

1 hour ago, Macrocosm Draegonne said:

Yeah, there couldn't possibly be many official users, its only a tiny group of people that manage MAX because its such a small userbase, its an edge case app, sure then theres the masses of thieves, but they don't count, and MAX doesnt have to support them.  Which is why they probably stick with all the paid tutorial creators, teachers, institutions that will nudge their product into use, and discourage online freebie stuff that only encourages the thieves guild.

Im not sure what your even talking about anymore. Thieves guild? The reason Max is used so widely among companies is that their art pipelines rely on it being used. Rigs, proprietary tools, plugins, scripts etc have been made to work with Max for 20+ years. There's no reason for them to go to other software. 

If anything these jack of all trade software's are going out of style and specialized tools are becoming more and more popular. RizomUV, Simlygon, Substance Painter/Designer are to just name a few.

Max/Blender are nearly the same at this point in terms of what it can do. Each has a few niche differences. Mainly with the UI and general controls.
Blender went off and did its own weird thing, while every other software i know except Zbrush has kept with the Autodesk standard.

Another big reason why Blender isn't used in the professional industry is because Autodesk owns the fbx format.
They change it every year so software like blender cant really keep up with them on purpose.
Most engines are made to work with primarily with FBX as its the most standardized format.
It contains all the information you could ever ask for and is compressed alot more that say obj.

[Macrocosm Draegonne]

1 minute ago, ZephyrSouza said:

It is a shame about max but its not a big deal. The biggest hurdle atm is the fact that SL uses DAE which is a outdated and simply a terrible file format.
No matter what I do it wont input my textures and I haven't figured out how to apply textures ingame. I cant even be sure dae isn't trashing my UV's or not.

 

Im not sure what your even talking about anymore. Thieves guild? The reason Max is used so widely among companies is that their art pipelines rely on it being used. Rigs, proprietary tools, plugins, scripts etc have been made to work with Max for 20+ years. There's no reason for them to go to other software. 

If anything these jack of all trade software's are going out of style and specialized tools are becoming more and more popular. RizomUV, Simlygon, Substance Painter/Designer are to just name a few.

Max/Blender are nearly the same at this point in terms of what it can do. Each has a few niche differences. Mainly with the UI and general controls.
Blender went off and did its own weird thing, while every other software i know except Zbrush has kept with the Autodesk standard.

Another big reason why Blender isn't used in the professional industry is because Autodesk owns the fbx format.
They change it every year so software like blender cant really keep up with them on purpose.
Most engines are made to work with primarily with FBX as its the most standardized format.
It contains all the information you could ever ask for and is compressed alot more that say obj.

lol, dont get offended, I am not concerned with what others choose, good for them, I am genuinely happy they choose what they want.  I was speaking to the fact that there are not so many things catering to them, because there are so few of them.  Not because they're inferior, or anything else you may have imagined, simply that there is not so much content and tutorials for them as there are for other more widely used apps.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

@ZephyrSouzaBack when i used max, the autodesk FBX converter tool was a requirement. I don't know if it's still the case.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

20 hours ago, ZephyrSouza said:

It is a shame about max but its not a big deal. The biggest hurdle atm is the fact that SL uses DAE which is a outdated and simply a terrible file format.
No matter what I do it wont input my textures and I haven't figured out how to apply textures ingame. I cant even be sure dae isn't trashing my UV's or not.

 

Im not sure what your even talking about anymore. Thieves guild? The reason Max is used so widely among companies is that their art pipelines rely on it being used. Rigs, proprietary tools, plugins, scripts etc have been made to work with Max for 20+ years. There's no reason for them to go to other software. 

If anything these jack of all trade software's are going out of style and specialized tools are becoming more and more popular. RizomUV, Simlygon, Substance Painter/Designer are to just name a few.

Max/Blender are nearly the same at this point in terms of what it can do. Each has a few niche differences. Mainly with the UI and general controls.
Blender went off and did its own weird thing, while every other software i know except Zbrush has kept with the Autodesk standard.

Another big reason why Blender isn't used in the professional industry is because Autodesk owns the fbx format.
They change it every year so software like blender cant really keep up with them on purpose.
Most engines are made to work with primarily with FBX as its the most standardized format.
It contains all the information you could ever ask for and is compressed alot more that say obj.

Collada was ment to be an open interchange format between all applications, the problem is that multiple versions of collada happened. FBX is proprietary, binary and undocumented, which is hell for any non commercial 3D software package to support.

The FBX library supports Collada import/export but as you realized, Autodesk has zero incentive in making it actually "good" since they are pushing FBX. Conflict of interests there.

But as i said before, the Autodesk FBX converter should help here as long as you find the right version.

Again this is mainly an autodesk problem, they have no incentive to have good collada support when they can sell FBX library licenses.

[Macrocosm Draegonne]

11 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Collada was ment to be an open interchange format between all applications, the problem is that multiple versions of collada happened. FBX is proprietary, binary and undocumented, which is hell for any non commercial 3D software package to support.

The FBX library supports Collada import/export but as you realized, Autodesk has zero incentive in making it actually "good" since they are pushing FBX. Conflict of interests there.

But as i said before, the Autodesk FBX converter should help here as long as you find the right version.

Again this is mainly an autodesk problem, they have no incentive to have good collada support when they can sell FBX library licenses.

That makes sense I suppose, its always sad to see good tech languish behind a dinosaur business model.  After all... I would bet Blender is making more money now too, and employing more developers, and that will certainly increase exponentially when 2.8 lands, MAX has nothing to compare as far as features and abilities to Blender 2.8, nor does any other app.

Edited November 9, 2018 by Macrocosm Draegonne