LOD uploads as a cube instead of mesh

[MSTRPLN]

Hello, i'm making a spotlight model for a building i uploaded yesterday.
The building itself went flawless without errors, all LODs named correctly etc.

But this one gives me some strange behavior.
Some info (3 seperated parts, 2 of them will be copied in-game for more spotlights on the rails)

3DS Max:
Default mesh:


LOD2:


Names:


Materials:


All looks fine here, LOD has same number of materials, just different polycount.
I only did 1 LOD for this example because the error happens on the first LOD already.

Secondlife:


Error: Material of model is not a subset of reference model.
This happens due not the same amount of materials of the LOD, i get that.

What i don't get is why the spotlight part of the LOD becomes a cube all of a sudden, we've seen the LOD mesh.
I have no idea how to fix this. I've tried reopening 3DS max, restarting my computer, RE-making the LODS, Reset XForm but nothing seems to help.

Sincerely.

EDIT: This does not happen when i export without the Rails

Edited January 11, 2020 by MSTRPLN

[Beq Janus]

Peculiar...

how long are the rails?

if you import the DAE for just that LOD into 3DS or another 3d program does it look fine?

[Chic Aeon]

On 1/11/2020 at 3:10 AM, MSTRPLN said:

Hello, i'm making a spotlight model for a building i uploaded yesterday.
The building itself went flawless without errors, all LODs named correctly etc.

But this one gives me some strange behavior.
Some info (3 seperated parts, 2 of them will be copied in-game for more spotlights on the rails)

3DS Max:
Default mesh:


LOD2:


Names:


Materials:


All looks fine here, LOD has same number of materials, just different polycount.
I only did 1 LOD for this example because the error happens on the first LOD already.

Secondlife:


Error: Material of model is not a subset of reference model.
This happens due not the same amount of materials of the LOD, i get that.

What i don't get is why the spotlight part of the LOD becomes a cube all of a sudden, we've seen the LOD mesh.
I have no idea how to fix this. I've tried reopening 3DS max, restarting my computer, RE-making the LODS, Reset XForm but nothing seems to help.

Sincerely.

EDIT: This does not happen when i export without the Rails

Well I hit a wrong key. TWICE. Must be tired. SURE I am tired actually.   Didn't mean to paste all this in again. 

 

Anyway, I have had issues similar to this when the uploader (even the Linden uploader for those that automatically say "upload in Linden viewer) simply cannot figure out a model.  What I did was what you did in your test. I divided the mesh and uploaded separately. You could also upload as a linkset  --- OR I suspect change the design some so that the uploader won't get so confused.   I have no idea WHY only that is does happen occasionally with apparently no fix. And always on "strange shaped models -- even with perfect physics models. 

 

If there is an actual answer to this I will be very interested to know it.  Good luck. 

Edited January 13, 2020 by Chic Aeon

[MSTRPLN]

19 hours ago, Beq Janus said:

Peculiar...

how long are the rails?

if you import the DAE for just that LOD into 3DS or another 3d program does it look fine?

18 Meters, i have not tried to upload the .dea back into 3ds max yet. I've decided to upload the rails seperated and the 2 spotlight parts too (as a linkset to eachother) that worked just fine.

[Beq Janus]

21 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

If there is an actual answer to this I will be very interested to know it.  Good luck. 

Out of interest, @MSTRPLN and @Chic Aeon am I correct in noting that the model does not appear to be triangulated in 3DS (and in the cases that you have observed such things Chic)? 

In Blender, you can choose to triangulate in app, triangulate on export, or just leave the quads/ngons and let SL sort it out. I have found that on occasion the SL attempts to triangulate can be bizarre and so I typically triangulate before I export so I know where I am at. I have no idea how 3DS workflow stands on this matter, but could it be that you are hitting that same issue, SL triangulation going off on some weird adventure?

[Chic Aeon]

8 minutes ago, Beq Janus said:

Out of interest, @MSTRPLN and @Chic Aeon am I correct in noting that the model does not appear to be triangulated in 3DS (and in the cases that you have observed such things Chic)? 

In Blender, you can choose to triangulate in app, triangulate on export, or just leave the quads/ngons and let SL sort it out. I have found that on occasion the SL attempts to triangulate can be bizarre and so I typically triangulate before I export so I know where I am at. I have no idea how 3DS workflow stands on this matter, but could it be that you are hitting that same issue, SL triangulation going off on some weird adventure?

Typically I don't triangulate before export. I "have" with a specific problem -- but not THIS problem as I recall. I haven't actually had any upload  issues lately so that is good.   Certainly worth trying I guess.   The things that I had problems like this with were NOT high poly, but they were "odd shaped" as in this example. It seemed like the uploader just couldn't understand what to do  LOL. That's all I've got, sorry.   As said, I just split the model up and then it was fine.    Maybe the OP would want to try the triangulate and see if that solves things.  

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, Beq Janus said:

I have found that on occasion the SL attempts to triangulate can be bizarre and so I typically triangulate before I export so I know where I am at.

All triangulation algorithm will produce undesired results every now and then and the uploader handles quads and convex ngons just as well, or even better, than the two algorithms Blender uses. However, if you triangulate before you export, you can correct the result manually and that's not possible if you triangulate on export or import of course. Also, the uploader can not handle concave polygons at all, that's when you get those bizarre results.

[ChinRey]

6 hours ago, MSTRPLN said:

I've decided to upload the rails seperated and the 2 spotlight parts too (as a linkset to eachother) that worked just fine.

I think it's farly clear what happened was that the uploader swapped the LoD models for the rail and the spotlight. The reason why this isn't obvious in the preview is that each LoD model is automatically scaled and relocated to match the high model it is assigned to.

I can't say why this happens. I've never looked at it in detail, I've learned not to trust the uploader and never ever upload linksets myself.

[MSTRPLN]

On 1/13/2020 at 11:30 PM, Chic Aeon said:

Typically I don't triangulate before export. I "have" with a specific problem -- but not THIS problem as I recall. I haven't actually had any upload  issues lately so that is good.   Certainly worth trying I guess.   The things that I had problems like this with were NOT high poly, but they were "odd shaped" as in this example. It seemed like the uploader just couldn't understand what to do  LOL. That's all I've got, sorry.   As said, I just split the model up and then it was fine.    Maybe the OP would want to try the triangulate and see if that solves things.  

I see that the dae (fbx export) has triangulate turned on, i've turned it off and triangulated myself (select all vertex and connect). This had however no difference to uploading, it's still the same.

[OptimoMaximo]

Triangulation is needed only in case of non planar faces (quads that are either concave or convex) which the uploader graciously and nicely interprets as holes in the mesh. That's the only user case I stumbled upon that needs triangulation either before or on export

[animats]

On 1/13/2020 at 3:49 PM, ChinRey said:

I can't say why this happens. I've never looked at it in detail, I've learned not to trust the uploader and never ever upload linksets myself.

Uploading of linksets is so broken that you can upload the same .dae file twice and get different link order. It really is random.

If you're uploading in Firestorm, there are messages in the Firestorm.log file showing which lower LOD models matched which higher LOD models.  Unfortunately, you don't get those messages in the user interface, just in the log file.

The uploader badly needs attention. It should be possible to create one .dae file with all the LODs and links and have it upload properly. Worth looking at now that Blender 2.8 is out, with a saner user interface and "collections".

[animats]

Here's my wish list for the uploader:

• Remove the requirement that all LODs must have the same textures. Just limit the total number of textures. Then you can have low levels of detail that have baked images of the higher levels. Like, flatten out the details of clothing and replace with an image and normals. The SL file format can represent this, because it does so when you auto-generate a lower level of detail. Beq Janus has the details.
• Make linkset uploading work right. This random order thing is silly.
• Make texture uploading with mesh uploads work right. That seems to be broken.
• (New) allow uploading all the levels of detail and physics in one file. Use the same center for all of them, so they align; don't resize and recenter each LOD on its own bounding box. Limit the bounding box of the lower levels of detail and the physics model to the size of the top level, plus a tolerance, to prevent griefing.
• (New) if you upload the same texture with the same creator and owner, reuse the UUID and don't charge for the upload. (Technically, this can be done easily by creating the UUID from a hash of the content and metadata.) This eliminates the cost penalty for uploading textures with meshes. If possible, don't charge mesh upload charges for uploading the same mesh with new textures, so you can re-color in Blender or Maya and re-upload at lower cost and overhead. Make fatpacks in Blender and Maya, with baked lower LODs.

Goal: You build it in Blender or Maya, and when it looks right, you upload the whole thing, and it looks the same in-world.

This will encourage making better LOD models in Blender/Maya, because the uploading process will be less fussy. Blender and Maya have better LOD tools than the uploader, and can do things the uploader can't, like bake detail into a texture and normal map.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

1 hour ago, OptimoMaximo said:

Triangulation is needed only in case of non planar faces (quads that are either concave or convex) which the uploader graciously and nicely interprets as holes in the mesh. That's the only user case I stumbled upon that needs triangulation either before or on export

For normal mappers, triangulation is a must too.

[OptimoMaximo]

2 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

For normal mappers, triangulation is a must too

I never triangulate any object but I use normal maps extensively, and there is no difference whatsoever if smoothing groups are applied correctly (on edges instead of faces smooth shading) and unchanged after the baking. 

[Kyrah Abattoir]

I never said it was obvious (blender here).

[Beq Janus]

On 1/13/2020 at 11:49 PM, ChinRey said:

I think it's farly clear what happened was that the uploader swapped the LoD models for the rail and the spotlight. The reason why this isn't obvious in the preview is that each LoD model is automatically scaled and relocated to match the high model it is assigned to.

I can't say why this happens. I've never looked at it in detail, I've learned not to trust the uploader and never ever upload linksets myself.

Ha! yes, I never spotted that, good spot.

I can explain why it happens. It is because people rely on "old mesh asset" rules too often, and then it bites them in the bum. 

For each component in a link set in the HIGH model, the viewer will try its best to find a matching model in each of the object sets passed for the remaining LODs. it prefers to do this by following explicit naming rules link in the HIGH is called "donkey", it will look for a link in the medium called donkey_LOD2, Low called donkey_LOD1 and lowest donkey_LOD0. It is also the only way to get physics to associate properly with linksets (donkey_PHYS).

If that fails, then it falls back to legacy matching which is an expectation that the linksets are in the same order. as Rey noted, this was almost certainly not the case here.

Animats, notes that you are not always guaranteed the same results, this is true in practice but pretty random, there are technical reasons why, that are beyond this thread really (it is to do with the storage method used in the viewer) there may be extenuating circumstances that make it worse/more likely. I may get back to have a round two of "improve the uploader" sometime. I do have a nearly working blender addon that does the exports, but it's sitting in my todo queue behind viewer stuff and RL.

[ChinRey]

On 1/15/2020 at 5:38 PM, MSTRPLN said:

I see that the dae (fbx export) has triangulate turned on, i've turned it off and triangulated myself (select all vertex and connect). This had however no difference to uploading, it's still the same.

Yes, the triangulation thing was a bit of a digression and didn't really have anything to do with your original question.

[MSTRPLN]

On 1/15/2020 at 7:57 PM, animats said:

Uploading of linksets is so broken that you can upload the same .dae file twice and get different link order. It really is random.

If you're uploading in Firestorm, there are messages in the Firestorm.log file showing which lower LOD models matched which higher LOD models.  Unfortunately, you don't get those messages in the user interface, just in the log file.

The uploader badly needs attention. It should be possible to create one .dae file with all the LODs and links and have it upload properly. Worth looking at now that Blender 2.8 is out, with a saner user interface and "collections".

I purposely screenshotted the default SL viewer (that i use for beta grid) to overcome comments like "Its because you use firestorm" etc.