Up to date tutorials for uploading full body rigged mesh and adding on skin textures?

[Risenhelldemon]

All the tutorials I found are either out dated or cut and I cant find the next part... I know the part up to skin weights and alpha masks but I dunno the rest... like how to add on textures and stuff. All the stuff I got on market place were sperated into parts so I was also wondering would I need to devide a mesh into parts to wear it? Ack sorry I've never uploaded anything onto SL before and XD was afraid I might get stuff wrong ;-;

[Wulfie Reanimator]

You can log into the beta/preview grid where you get free money to spend on uploads and whatever. That way you can test your mesh before you actually bring it to SL.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Preview_Grid

The reason why most mesh bodies are divided into many parts is because a single mesh can have only 8 faces, and that's not enough if you want to have "alpha sections" like all mainstream bodies do.

[OptimoMaximo]

15 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

The reason why most mesh bodies are divided into many parts is because a single mesh can have only 8 faces, and that's not enough if you want to have "alpha sections" like all mainstream bodies do.

Actually, the main reason for rigged meshes to be split in sections is the limit of 110 joints influencing a single mesh. That's why avatars that don't use alpha slices are being split anyway in at least body, head and hands as separate meshes. 

[Risenhelldemon]

23 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

You can log into the beta/preview grid where you get free money to spend on uploads and whatever. That way you can test your mesh before you actually bring it to SL.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Preview_Grid

The reason why most mesh bodies are divided into many parts is because a single mesh can have only 8 faces, and that's not enough if you want to have "alpha sections" like all mainstream bodies do.

 

23 hours ago, OptimoMaximo said:

Actually, the main reason for rigged meshes to be split in sections is the limit of 110 joints influencing a single mesh. That's why avatars that don't use alpha slices are being split anyway in at least body, head and hands as separate meshes. 

Ahh I see thank you : D

So if I decimate the the high poly to really low I might be able to fit it haha
 

Also if there a tutorial to seperating the body parts? I sculpted my mesh body in one object and I'm scared to mess around with the high polys

[OptimoMaximo]

1 hour ago, Risenhelldemon said:

Also if there a tutorial to seperating the body parts? I sculpted my mesh body in one object and I'm scared to mess around with the high polys

Sculpted models aren't intended t be used as is in game engines. You should retopologise it with consistent and reasoned edgeflow to make it renderable in realtime, texturable and easy to split. 

Moreover, in order to upload a model to SL, its vertex count should not exceed 65536 vertices, which doesn't mean that every split part should get that number, anyway. It's the file encoding limit given by math and binary encoding. 

1 hour ago, Risenhelldemon said:

So if I decimate the the high poly to really low I might be able to fit it haha

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear on this point. A joint is a bone in the avatar. There's nothing to decimate there. 

On the other hand, decimation gives results that are good for retopology because it lowers the number of vertices retaining good amount of surface detail, so that your app doesn't choke on those, say, 6 million verts while you work on retopoing it. It is in no way meant to get a usable model for animation (and the process of Rigging belongs to the animation department of works), let alone for texturing of a character. Might go well for rocks and stuff like that, but characters... Mmmhhh nope. 

Before the whole thing of "but with retopo I lose all my hard sculpting work" etc etc, if your app chokes on the character in a empty scene, with no rendering going on, no textures to load, no environment around, within a standalone app that can use all the resources it can take from your system, just to draw the vertices positions and the surface on screen... Do you think that it would be a good idea to put that model in a realtime rendering environment, where there are other things to render, textures to load, other characters that also need to be deformed along with the skeleton, lights and so on that take resources on the user end? 

[Risenhelldemon]

4 hours ago, OptimoMaximo said:

Sculpted models aren't intended t be used as is in game engines. You should retopologise it with consistent and reasoned edgeflow to make it renderable in realtime, texturable and easy to split. 

Moreover, in order to upload a model to SL, its vertex count should not exceed 65536 vertices, which doesn't mean that every split part should get that number, anyway. It's the file encoding limit given by math and binary encoding. 

 

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear on this point. A joint is a bone in the avatar. There's nothing to decimate there. 

On the other hand, decimation gives results that are good for retopology because it lowers the number of vertices retaining good amount of surface detail, so that your app doesn't choke on those, say, 6 million verts while you work on retopoing it. It is in no way meant to get a usable model for animation (and the process of Rigging belongs to the animation department of works), let alone for texturing of a character. Might go well for rocks and stuff like that, but characters... Mmmhhh nope. 

Before the whole thing of "but with retopo I lose all my hard sculpting work" etc etc, if your app chokes on the character in a empty scene, with no rendering going on, no textures to load, no environment around, within a standalone app that can use all the resources it can take from your system, just to draw the vertices positions and the surface on screen... Do you think that it would be a good idea to put that model in a realtime rendering environment, where there are other things to render, textures to load, other characters that also need to be deformed along with the skeleton, lights and so on that take resources on the user end? 

Ahh I see, sorry I'm definitely in no ways knowledgble in this subject I've just started 4 days ago haha but there was this tutorial that I saw where they uploaded a whole mesh body with rigging in one piece, so I had thought I am able to do that as well with a low poly and smooth shaded mesh? I tried uploading a head first and it worked, but yeah definitely not sure about the body and the inner mouth. But yeah I meant decimating the mesh itself into lower polys I'd had to at some point anyway its lagging my PC as well

As for retopology, Imma just procrastinate and leave that uhh off for another day XD all of these technical terms and skills are over flooding my brain ;-;

Ahh also, on a side note, does Blender's rigify addon work with SL bone rigs? I am not quite sure.

[OptimoMaximo]

3 hours ago, Risenhelldemon said:

there was this tutorial that I saw where they uploaded a whole mesh body with rigging in one piece, so I had thought I am able to do that as well with a low poly and smooth shaded mesh?

That depends from how many bones were included. Most likely, that was a tutorial made before Bento was introduced, which added fingers and face bones. So if the total amount of used bones is under 110,you'd be able to upload it in one piece. This is the Rigging limit. Then the mesh limit, so make sure that the whole mesh totals a number of vertices under 65536. For a naked avatar it's way too much anyway, you should be able to get a good and detailed character with quite less. 

Don't procrastinate too much on the retopology skill, it's an essential skill to improve your creations, making them not only more efficient, but also easier to work with while not losing quality. 

[Risenhelldemon]

6 hours ago, OptimoMaximo said:

That depends from how many bones were included. Most likely, that was a tutorial made before Bento was introduced, which added fingers and face bones. So if the total amount of used bones is under 110,you'd be able to upload it in one piece. This is the Rigging limit. Then the mesh limit, so make sure that the whole mesh totals a number of vertices under 65536. For a naked avatar it's way too much anyway, you should be able to get a good and detailed character with quite less. 

Don't procrastinate too much on the retopology skill, it's an essential skill to improve your creations, making them not only more efficient, but also easier to work with while not losing quality. 

Ahh I see, I found this bone guide

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Project_Bento_Skeleton_Guide

That totals to lower than 110 so I think thats fine? at most thered be a bit more tail bones but that wont be a problem ^^ Thank you~

And yeah haha i'll def get to that soon when I make another model and add in the details rn im just working on UV mapping and texturing ^^

[OptimoMaximo]

11 hours ago, Risenhelldemon said:

That totals to lower than 110 so I think thats fine?

The avatar also has so called collision volume bones, necessary to get the shape sliders to work when you edit your avatar shape. Without those, mesh won't resize along with your avatar shape. Depending on what you're after, that may or may not be an issue whether those are included or not, but when those have to be included, a skeleton totals around 150 bones. 

[Risenhelldemon]

18 hours ago, OptimoMaximo said:

The avatar also has so called collision volume bones, necessary to get the shape sliders to work when you edit your avatar shape. Without those, mesh won't resize along with your avatar shape. Depending on what you're after, that may or may not be an issue whether those are included or not, but when those have to be included, a skeleton totals around 150 bones. 

Ahh I see, thank you~ :DD

I can just detatch the head cuz I've sculpted it on a seperate object than the body ^^

Thank you for helping me out :DD

[Beq Janus]

On 4/1/2020 at 12:00 AM, Risenhelldemon said:

That totals to lower than 110 so I think thats fine? at most thered be a bit more tail bones but that wont be a problem ^^ Thank you~

Just to restate something that was on those pages but you may have overlooked based on what you said, I may just have misread your meaning. You cannot just "add more tail bones", the bones in the body are all you have to work with, your body must use the same skeleton, SL does not allow us to define our own skelly. You can (to some extent) re purpose bones for other things (but be aware that this will restrict users from using other assets with your body that rely on those same bones. 

[Risenhelldemon]

On 4/10/2020 at 9:20 AM, Beq Janus said:

Just to restate something that was on those pages but you may have overlooked based on what you said, I may just have misread your meaning. You cannot just "add more tail bones", the bones in the body are all you have to work with, your body must use the same skeleton, SL does not allow us to define our own skelly. You can (to some extent) re purpose bones for other things (but be aware that this will restrict users from using other assets with your body that rely on those same bones. 

Ahhh I see. XD I did not know that so that was really helpful XD was about to make my own skelly thankk

[ZoeDuvall9]

I have just upgraded to mesh, and I am completely confused. What are layers? What are appliers? I am very non-tech savvy, and need a 'Beginners Guide'. HELP please