Questions from a newbie about shoe creation

[Kyrah Abattoir]

2 hours ago, Butler Offcourse said:

Thank you very much @Kyrah Abattoir for your reply! Much appreciated! 😊

Oh basicly it works like a layer mask in a painting app, black parts hiding and white parts showing. Thank you very much, the nodes in Blender are the part of a deep ocean to dive! lol But I will, sooner or later! 🙃

Yup you got it, and you can draw masks by hand, or generate them on the fly (various noises, pointiness, cavities, etc etc...)

For all intents and purposes, node graphs are essentially visual shaders, you are building a mathematic equation to drive the properties of each rendered pixel.

Edited February 27, 2021 by Kyrah Abattoir

[Aquila Kytori]

7 hours ago, Butler Offcourse said:

 Tho there is something I did not understand. Doing the inner and outer soles with Ngons. If I am not mistaken, Ngon is a face generated by 3 vertexes, so a triangle, so you created the inner and outer soles with a triangle in the beginning?

In mesh modelling an Ngon is a polygon with more than 4 edges/sides.

  Triangle 3,  Quad 4,  Ngon anything more than 4.  "N" is any number more than 4 and "gon" = sides.

 

Why Fill in the soles with Ngons ? Because i'm lazy.  🙂  And I wanted the insole to appear raised up a little to indicate it is not part of the inners. Having the insole as an Ngon (a single face) makes it very easy to insert an edge loop with an even offset close to the outer edge.

Below is the workflow but with all the other parts of the shoe hidden:

 

7 hours ago, Butler Offcourse said:

guess I could join the parts together by clicking on Ctrl+J or it was J, something like that but inside the model, when i go to edit mode, they would still be separated objects, so I should apply a Boolean as well? What is the advantage of joining them together at this stage that I had started modelling separately?

 

Ctrl+J

No, no booleans. Joining just would make sense in my workflow........... and you are going to join them all into a single object at some point aren't you?

Before joining make sure that each objects UV map has the same name. all the same name results in a single UP map after joining. If they have different names then there will be more than one UV map in the list of UV's after joining.

 

 

Edited February 27, 2021 by Aquila Kytori

[Butler Offcourse]

Hello @Kyrah Abattoir and @Aquila Kytori and thank you very much again for the replies! 

@Kyrah Abattoir . " node graphs are essentially visual shaders, you are building a mathematic equation to drive the properties of each rendered pixel. "  This is an interesting way of thinking/describing, I never thought like that, well, I will have to get more familiar with the nodes in this case, thank you very much! 

@Aquila Kytori , thank you very much for taking the time to screenshot, paste and post all those screenshots to explain your workflow, I really appreciate the effort, thank you so much! 

Yes yesterday after asking to you the question, I watched a video about topology, repotology and changing the directions of the loop curves which I am still having difficulty to understand it but experimenting to try to learn. And in the video they were showing the ngones and also they were showing different type of vertexes, I guess they were called E Poles (with 3 edges connected) and N Poles (with more than 4 edges connected) , so now I guess this is going towards the more intermediate level of modelling other than my beginner level, so I get to learn those as well to make better models! 

Well, I never thought about joining my objects at the end, as It was uploading just fine even when they were several parts. What is the advantage of joining to upload to SL if there are any? All the faces I see on my model when uploaded to SL are the different layers/parts that I have in blender and if i upload it all joined, I would only have one face as a result? Does this have a positive effect on the performance about lag even if it is minor?

Thank you very much!  

[Aquila Kytori]

2 hours ago, Butler Offcourse said:

All the faces I see on my model when uploaded to SL are the different layers/parts that I have in blender and if i upload it all joined, I would only have one face as a result?

No.

If you joined all 5 objects with Ctrl J then you would still have 5 materials on the joined object in Blender and 5 material faces when rezzed inworld.

The thing you have to take care about is that all the objects have the same name in the list of UV's before joining them.

 

In the screenshots below

• 3 objects,  Cube_Red,  Cube_Blue  and  Cube_Green.
• Each cube has its own single material assigned to it, Red, Green and Blue.
• Each has been UV Unwrapped but each has the same UV name, UVMap.

First screenshot illustrates the above :

 

 

We select all three objects and join them with Ctrl J so that they become a single object :

• One Object, named Cube_Blue (because it was Cube_Blue that was the last selected when selecting the three.)
• All three materials are still assigned as before.
• There is only one UV map in the list.

All is good.

 

In the next example everything is as before except that each object had a UV map with a different name. (before joining).

Now, after joining there are three UV maps for this object. A mesh object for SL can only have one UV map and up to 8 materiel faces.

 

What happens if we upload this new single object with the 3 UV maps ?

When rezzed we will find that the object still has 3 selectable and tintable faces but only one of them will be able to have a texture correctly mapped to it.

In the example below the object was exported with UVMap_Red selected and it is this material face that has the correct mapping. The other 2 material faces have thier UV's all mapped to the UV  space coordinate  X=0  Y=0.

 

 

2 hours ago, Butler Offcourse said:

Well, I never thought about joining my objects at the end, as It was uploading just fine even when they were several parts. What is the advantage of joining to upload to SL if there are any? All the faces I see on my model when uploaded to SL are the different layers/parts that I have in blender and if i upload it all joined, I would only have one face as a result? Does this have a positive effect on the performance about lag even if it is minor?

Walking about with shoes made as a single object  or shoes as a link_set of 5 objects ................hmmmm ?   I think I would pass that question along to a lag specialist, someone like @ChinRey 

 

Edited February 28, 2021 by Aquila Kytori

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, Aquila Kytori said:

Walking about with shoes made as a single object  or shoes as a link_set of 5 objects ................hmmmm ?   I think I would pass that question along to a lag specialist, someone like @ChinRey 

Oh kay, let me see... what's the question again?

4 hours ago, Butler Offcourse said:

if i upload it all joined, I would only have one face as a result? Does this have a positive effect on the performance about lag even if it is minor?

Short answer: If it's regular mesh, almost certainly yes. if it's fitted mesh, definitely yes.

I'm not sure if I should post a long answer, it'll probably end up being very long.

[Butler Offcourse]

Hello @Aquila Kytori and hello @ChinRey, thank you very much for your replies!

@Aquila Kytori , thank you very much for your detailed answer as usual, much appreciated and wow now I realized that I was doing all of my export process wrong, or let's say harder. What I was doing was this:

- I was unwrapping each model/part separately. And all of them were called UVMap by default and not intentionally. Then I was creating a new UV Map in the object properties menu and I was selecting all the parts in object mode, then I was going to the edit mode with them all selected, I was unwrapping it again on the second UV Map that I was calling Bake. This was letting me have all the islands of each part on the same UV Map creating me a UV Atlas and then I would bake on that UV map, delete the old UV Maps and save/export it that way.

But, doing the way you are telling me, would let me doing it in a more straight forward and simple way as they are joined, all the uv islands would be on the same UV Map. I have just tried it with two cubes and it is interesting. 

This morning I was playing again with some organic shapes, similar to shoes, did from one one piece, subdivision modified applied immediately as your workflow and then deleted some loop cuts , then added seams, unwrapped it almost perfectly, added a texture on it and it looks flawless! Well, at least to me unexperienced eyes. I even made less cuts than what I did on my shoe and I faced very few UV stretching. 

I realize that I always forget to apply the transforms. Actually in the beginning I had forgotten and the unwraps always looked ugly. Then I applied the transforms.. miracle..magical.. it looked almost perfect right away the unwrap that I did afterwards.

I also played with the proportional move and I feel more comfortable using it now. I've also found out about this add on called Looptools, enabled it, the Space and Relax commands of it seems very helpful to modify the vertexes in a more coherent way. Do you guys use it? Is it better to fore yourself and learn to make all those vertexes align nicely in 3 views manually? or is it ok or good to use such add-ons?

Just posting some screenshots, for feedback. Now I will try to remodel the shoe from one piece, like you did, to see if I manage to do any better than my first attempt of modelling the shoe. I feel almost sad to throw away what I did earlier as I had tried so hard to adjust it to the feet perfectly but well, it is a good exercise to do it and I want it to be efficient, optimized and good looking, hence why I am typing here and asking for your advices and I do really appreciate that you are walking me thru this process.  

Here's the screenshots of my weird organic shape from this morning: 

 

 

EDIT: Actually I did not touch the shoe and I have tried modelling a boat really fast to try some beveling techniques..etc lol And I was thinking, actually I don't need to remodel the shoe, I can take my body shape and then model on that part the sole and the rest, afterall I just need to model the sole/insole and the heel and all the rest I can keep as it is. Yes, I will do like that.

 

@ChinRey , thank you very much for your reply  I had no idea what fitted mesh means, I made a short search and what I understand is that those are rigged meshes, if i am not mistaken. But what I understand from your answers is that in both cases, it has a positive effect on the performance, regardless if it is minor or not. So.....I have to do it in single piece then! Guess what.. time to restart modelling the shoe 😅  Thanks!

 

Edited February 28, 2021 by Butler Offcourse

[Quarrel Kukulcan]

5 hours ago, Butler Offcourse said:

Here's the screenshots of my weird organic shape from this morning:

 

 

FYI, you don't want to run your UV vertices all the way to the edge like this. Leave a small margin if you want to avoid bleedover. SL always wraps textures at the edges, so a UV vertex with a coordinate all the way at 0 or 1 doesn't mean "use the pixel at that edge", it means "use a 50/50 blend of that pixel and the one on the opposite side" (because that vertex actually lies on the border between those two pixels).

 

Quote

I had no idea what fitted mesh means, I made a short search and what I understand is that those are rigged meshes, if i am not mistaken

Fitted Mesh refers to the extra bones LL added to the basic skeleton to allow mesh bodies & clothing to respond to more body shape sliders. If you rig something to just basic & Bento deform bones, your mesh object will only respond to some sliders and may not match the shape of the wearer's other objects. (The list is at http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Project_Bento_Skeleton_Guide#Controls_supported_via_Fitted_Mesh). Fitted Mesh rigging requires a special source rig with extra data or a dedicated tool like Avastar.

[Butler Offcourse]

@Aquila Kytori , Hello!

As I had stated on my previous post, I restarted from the body, and modeled in one piece now! First I immediatly applied the subdivision, then deleted certain loops, but not much. Then I extruded the lower edge in Z towards down and then Between the 4 vertexes I used the F shortcut to create faces  for the sole. But I may scale in X and Y a bit outwards the sole to add a touch of light between the leather and the sole, this way it looks too much like a continuation but then if i decide to use the materials, I can do that on the high poly version for baking and add the normal on this version and create the effect without causing triangle increase. Then for the insole with the same technique, I scaled in Y and X a little bit and then extruded upwards, scaled a little bit again in X and Y and created faces with F. Then the heel faces just selected and extruded and then alligned the vertexes in Z with s+z+0. So far, this way, the result is 1916 vertexes without the pipe. It is far from your 1400 but much better than my  other seperated model!  Here's a screenshot:

EDIT: @Quarrel Kukulcan , thank you very much for your reply and kind explanations, much appreciated!

Yes actually those are all preliminary, so I will pay attention to not to go to the border because if I understood right, if I am so close, the texture could be "cut" , am I correct?

And for the fitted mesh, thank you very much for the link, once I finish the modelling and unwrapping to a satisfactory level, I will read it once I am in the rigging part. I was thinking of rigging it for the Ebody mesh body that I have been working these shoes on and also offer an unrigged version for people who likes to wear it on their shapes, bodies as they are pleased as I do not have any other body dev kits yet.

Thank you again!

Edited February 28, 2021 by Butler Offcourse

[Quarrel Kukulcan]

26 minutes ago, Butler Offcourse said:

Yes actually those are all preliminary, so I will pay attention to not to go to the border because if I understood right, if I am so close, the texture could be "cut" , am I correct?

You can end up with artifacts like this Photoshopped example:

[Butler Offcourse]

Ohhhh now got it!! Then I will definitely will leave some space on the borders! Thank you very much for the heads up! Much appreciated!

[Kyrah Abattoir]

Another thing on UVs, not everyone will agree on this, but avoid rotating your UV islands at 45° or other weird angles unless you have the perfect gap to fill, try to keep your island width/height lined up with horizontal or vertical if you can.

You can also stretch your islands non-uniformly to better fit your UVmap, and reduce gaps (which you can't do with diagonal parts)

If you only have those two islands (represented as my blue rectangles), they can easily packed into a 512x1024 rather than a 1024x1024. Typically the more islands you can cram in one map, the more options you have to make it as tight as possible. Slightly non-square pixels are usually fine as long as you don't exagerate.

As @Quarrel KukulcanMentioned you need a gap between your islands, my personal rule is 4 pixels from the texture edge, and 8 pixels between islands themselves (this is to still have a buffer for partially loaded textures at 1/2 and 1/4 resolution)

Oh and a last thing, it can be beneficial to shrink down less important UV islands, the inside of the shoe will almost never be seen under normal use, same for the sole, so you can shrink them a bit if it gives you a better fit, to favor the parts that people will see the most. Again, don't exagerate, but i have lots of models where the "inner" areas are basically at half resolution.

Depending of the texture you can sometimes get away with completely non-uniform scaling, if the texture details are mainly going along the horizontal or vertical axis (ribbed pipes, creased leather, etc...)

Edited February 28, 2021 by Kyrah Abattoir

[Butler Offcourse]

Hello @Kyrah Abattoir , thank you very much again for your explanations, much appreciated!

Normally, till now, I rotate mostly 90 or 180 degrees, I tries the 45 degree (more or less) once, but I'm doing mostly straight. But the 45 degree or weird angles i had used on my previous experiments when I wanted to feel a small gap with an unimported or simple part. Why wouldn't you rate it tho? Because it becomes harder to alligh?

Ok, If I do the UV Map as your blue boxes suggests, as you said, I can get away with 512*1024 but 512 wouldn't be low resolution and less crisp compared to 1024? And when I upload the 512*1024 texture to SL, wouldn't it be stretched by SL?

Yes, from the posts that I received here about the UV islands, I started to shrink the less important/visible parts but sometimes i keep the big if there is free space that can not be filled with other parts, such as  where there is the opening of the shoe from where the foot enters, and since that island was the part of the exterior body, I kept it very big but obviously I ended up with a big, empty round shape inside it. So, I kept the less visible part big to fill that space.

 

 

[Eirynne Sieyes]

What an amazing thread! As someone barely scratching the Blender surface, I want to thank the student and the masters for creating this. What a treat to watch the masters work and closely explain while the (to me uber advanced) student brings up issues. This thread is a keeper that I will periodically re-read.

Kudos to each and every one of you!

[Butler Offcourse]

Hello @Eirynne Sieyes , thank you very much for your nice message and compliment much appreciated! 😊 How this thread turned out, I was thinking the same as you, that this could be useful for many other people who are getting into mesh modelling as my masters, have answered many questions that I could not find a lot of info online! Full of valuable advices from them and I am very grateful for that so I think that this thread would help many others like me. 😊 I am happy that you are enjoying it, and I would like to advice you to check this thread as well:

They have been giving many advices here too, I am sure that You will like it too!