Tutorials that have links that still work

[Jadamen]

Hi all, I have been going through reading and have found many tutorials that look like they may help, but the links do not seem to work, or they are just not what I need.

I know the basics of modeling. I have taken classes in Maya, and am converting my knowledge over to blender. I have tried creating a mesh and uploading it, but have had a lot of issues.

I have went through youtube videos and just can't seem to find the info I need.

I just want to make low impact mesh objects, can someone please point out some tutorials to better explain what I need to do to achieve this. 

Thank you so much. 

here is a link to a gif showing just what I have accomplished so far. https://gyazo.com/803747ffbf700518e1a4524d93ae3fef

[Wulfie Reanimator]

Step 1 - Understanding how land impact is calculated.

In short, Land Impact will be the highest of the three values: Download, Physics, and Server weight. Your object is mostly physics weight.

Step 2 - Joining your objects in Blender.

Your upload has a server weight of 1.5 so I assume that's 3 separate objects. You should select all of your objects and press Ctrl-J to join them before exporting. It'll reduce your headaches in almost all cases. A single mesh should have a server weight of 0.5.

Step 3 - Making your own physics shape.

Letting the importer automatically generate your physics shape or levels of detail (LOD) for you is a bad idea in general, because it does a poor job of it. I made a little mockup of your model as an example:

The absolute simplest and easiest physics model for any model is a cube. Just export a default cube from Blender and you can use it for anything that doesn't need a special shape. The cube will always match the size of the model, like this:

That dropped the physics cost to 0.36 and it'll always be that low with a cube. The thing to remember about physics shapes it that it prevents avatars (and physical objects) from entering that space. A shelf isn't something that needs to be walked in or rolled down a hill, so you should create the simplest shape you can.

At this point, your original object's highest impact is a download weight of 0.652, which would already put you safely into "1 LI" territory. But there's more!

Step 4 - Creating your own LODs.

These are important if you want your mesh to look good (or at least recognizable) from a distance. All you really need to do in Blender is:

1. Duplicate your model
2. Select edges or vertices
3. Press X and select Dissolve Edges or Dissolve Vertices

Here's a bottom-up view of the LODs I created in about 5 minutes to show that I also deleted many "underside" faces that are less likely to be seen at all, especially when the lower LODs will be seen at much greater distances where the missing faces wouldn't be noticable anyway.

Now it's 1 LI and looks good from 80 meters away with LOD factor of 1.0:

Edited May 13, 2020 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Jadamen]

Thank you so very much for taking the time to explain. I am going to go through your post much more carefully but wanted to go ahead and get a thank you written. 

[Jadamen]

so I have mostly got things down, however it seems not all my faces show properly as if they are invisible from one side. https://gyazo.com/d8ed8da6cc2650b99bd205eefe39456e

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, Jadamen said:

so I have mostly got things down, however it seems not all my faces show properly as if they are invisible from one side. https://gyazo.com/d8ed8da6cc2650b99bd205eefe39456e

Common problem. Only one side of the mesh render on upload (in Blender anyway) and during the modeling process some faces were inverted. You need to recalculate the faces as well as turn on BACKFACE CULLING so that you can see how objects "really" will upload :D. (yes, damn).

 

Heading to bed but I made a series of tutorials for Blender, low poly, game asset, Second Life mesh. They were made in 2.79 so if you are using 2.8 things will be in different places. The IDEAS however might be helpful.

They are here: 

 

[Jadamen]

thank you so much for the advice and link. I did manage to find your videos and have been watching them, they are very helpful, thank you.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

I wish the blender devs would stop thinking that backface culling is an "option", it should be on by default.

[OptimoMaximo]

Double sided geometry is a standard across the board of 3d packages to allegedly help not missing objects, for texturing both sides if needed and light emission on both sides. Perhaps a sort of preset like "game content" that enables all the relevant things might be a nice addition