Importing Textures with Mesh

[HenryAyruma]

Helllo Everyone !

I built a structure using Maya. It contains Lambert textures storing Difuse and Normals.

Also, It contains Blinn Textures with Difuse, Normal and Specular.

But when I export to DAE_FBX (Collada), I just can see my UV with difuse and all the others layers are being ignored.

Any clue ?

[arton Rotaru]

The Diffuse map is the only texture that the SL importer will recognize.
Most of us do import the mesh without any textures. Then testing/tweaking all the maps with the Local texture feature. And when all looks good, bulk uploading all the textures finally.

[HenryAyruma]

tyvm, Arton !! I just suspected about it !

[StarlanderGoods]

On 2/8/2022 at 1:58 PM, HenryAyruma said:

tyvm, Arton !! I just suspected about it !

You can also bake the textures, since I would bet the majority of SL users are only going to be able to see the diffuse map.

[HenryAyruma]

50 minutes ago, StarlanderGoods said:

You can also bake the textures, since I would bet the majority of SL users are only going to be able to see the diffuse map.

Ty, @StarlanderGoods ! Yeah ! I made some tests, but we are talking about a large structure....I mean: A Large mesh. A house in particular...

I was reading on this same forum that baked textures may not be a good idea for large structures. But I decided to make some tests....

First: Looks like a texture cannot be more bigger than 2048 and after upload, it turns 1024 (whyyy ??? OMG !!!) ...so, this will be bad, poor resuliton when applied to the mesh InWorld.

And second: since we have just 2k of resolution and probably the file size is bigger, looks like SL automatically reduces the quality of the texture itself. So, floor tiles, for example with is a small thing will become blurred. 

Do you have some tips to supply me based on my difficulties ? It's the 1st time I produce mesh to SL and I am knocking my head on the wall to handle the limitations.

Edited February 10, 2022 by HenryAyruma

[ChinRey]

7 hours ago, HenryAyruma said:

First: Looks like a texture cannot be more bigger than 2048 and after upload, it turns 1024 (whyyy ??? OMG !!!)

Because a scene in SL typically has thousands of textures. An average computer today can manage about 600-700 1024x1024 textures or about 150-200 2048x2048 ones before it strats to struggle. Even a top notch game machine can only handle three times as many and some older computers can only manage a quarter of that.

There are several techniques for texturing efficiently for SL. I'm in a bit of a hurry right now but I'll try to remember to post some tips later today if nobody beats me to it. Just let me just say that every 3D platform, Blender, Unity, UE4, Roblox, SL, opensim etc., etc. is different and require different solutions. Some are more different than others but in any case, even if you're the ultimate content creation expert on one platform, you still have to learn the basics when you switch to another one.

Edited February 10, 2022 by ChinRey

[tomm55]

2 hours ago, HenryAyruma said:

First: Looks like a texture cannot be more bigger than 2048 and after upload, it turns 1024 (whyyy ??? OMG !!!)

If I am not wrong, then the maximum size of a texture in SL is 1024x1024:

Quote

Maximum texture size - 1024×1024 pixels
- All Second Life textures are constrained to powers of 2 (e.g., 128, 256, 512).
- Some textures inworld have a resolution as high as 2048×2048; this is due to a previous limit that was higher.
- We strongly recommend you use as small textures as possible because larger ones consume more memory and take substantially longer to load.
- Where large textures are being forced by import to only 512×512, lower your ...> Preferences >...> UI Size under 1.0, to increase import size to the max 1024×1024.

Minimum texture size - 4×4 pixels
- This means that there are nine possible image dimensions: 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, and 1024 pixels, either horizontal or vertical.

(source: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Limits)

If you need more, then you have to use multiple textures.

Edited February 10, 2022 by tomm55

[HenryAyruma]

44 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Because a scene in SL typically has thousands of textures. An average computer today can manage about 600-700 1024x1024 textures or about 150-200 2048x2048 ones before it strats to struggle. Even a top notch game machine can only handle four times as many and some older computers can only manage a quarter of that.

There are several techniques for texturing efficiently for SL. I'm in a bit of a hurry right now but I'll try to remember to post some tips later today if nobody beats me to it. Just let me just say that every 3D platform, Blender, Unity, UE4, Roblox, SL, opensim etc., etc. is different and require different solutions. Some are more different than others but in any case, even if you're the ultimate content creation expert on one platform, you still have to learn the basics when you switch to another one.

Yep ! I agree....as I mentioned....It's my 1st time creating mesh for SL...so I am learning Your tips will be very valuable for me indeed

Actually I am creating an assumption that difuse/normals/etc are not suitable for large structures due such limitations. Maybe, instead import a single and huge mesh, it may be more appropriated to slice the mesh in groups of materials and upload each mesh and then generate one difuse for each one. 

[ChinRey]

3 hours ago, HenryAyruma said:

Actually I am creating an assumption that difuse/normals/etc are not suitable for large structures due such limitations.

People argue about that. I do occasionally use normal and specular maps even for large surfaces but not on a regular basis. When  it comes to alrge surfaces like house wall and such (but also for smaller details) you should consider whether baked shadows and such are worth all the extra pixels at all. Maybe a tiled texture would be better? Or maybe a middle way with horizontal tiling and shading only along the top and bottom? The latter is what I usually go for for such things but each case is unique and there are lots of exceptions.

I forgot to mention this thread btw. There should be some good tips for you there.

 

3 hours ago, HenryAyruma said:

Maybe, instead import a single and huge mesh, it may be more appropriated to slice the mesh in groups of materials and upload each mesh and then generate one difuse for each one. 

You can have up to eight materials on a single mesh in Second Life.

There are, however, several reasons apart from texturing why it's often a good idea to split a big complex mesh into several smaller ones. The two most obvious ones are that because of the way SL handles LoD and land impact you generally don't want to mix large and small tris in the same mesh and you that you want to use quasi-instancing (such as using several copies of the same window for a building) whenever possible. A little bit more about it at #24 on this list.

Edited February 10, 2022 by ChinRey

[arton Rotaru]

2 hours ago, HenryAyruma said:

Actually I am creating an assumption that difuse/normals/etc are not suitable for large structures due such limitations.

Normal/Spec maps work perfectly fine on large structures. You just have to go with what ChinRey says, seamlessly tilable textures for large surfaces.

[Aquila Kytori]

As others have already mentioned it is almost always best to use seamless tileable textures on large surfaces and apply them to the mesh inworld. The parquet floor texture you show is a perfect example of this. If it comes along with normal and specular textures then they to can be applied directly onto the mesh when rezzed inworld.

At the moment you seem to have all the UV's layed out into a single UV space. For large objects using a single 1024 x 1024 texture, the result  is bound to be a low resolution pixilated surface texture.

A single mesh object can only have 1 UV map but can have up 8 material surfaces. These materials faces can be mapped to a single UV space or each material mapped to its own UV space. (or a combination of both). This means instead of a single 1024 x 1024 texture it can use up to eight 1024² textures. That is a lot more than you are using at the moment but .........

......... it would still be better to assign your mesh several material faces and set the UV's out in such a way that they can be assigned (smaller) tile-able seamless textures inworld. Result is higher resolution using smaller textures.

 

An example using a ground floor mesh comprising of only inner walls and floors:

In the first image all the walls and floors uv's are mapped to a single UV space:

If this is used for baking the result can only be low resolution textured surfaces when applied to the mesh:

 

If instead the mesh is assigned different materials for each of the walls and floors, UV unwrapped and edited ( each UV island (shell) is edited, rotated if necessary, so that its bottom left hand corner is at U = 0 and Y = 0 in the UV space, then all islands selected and scaled up together until the top of the walls are at Y = 1 ) so that seamless textures like your parquet floor can be directly applied inworld the result will be much higher resolution textured surfaces :

 

Uv's extend beyond the 0 to 1 UV space.

 

The overlapping uv's (layers) will look a mess but will sort themselves out when assigning textures to material faces inworld.

 

 Note that the exact number of repeats for the tileable textures will be set using the SL inworld build editor.

Edited February 10, 2022 by Aquila Kytori

[Quarrel Kukulcan]

11 hours ago, HenryAyruma said:

Looks like a texture cannot be more bigger than 2048 and after upload, it turns 1024 (whyyy ??? OMG !!!)

SL textures are 1k x 1k max. Different viewers let you upload up to 2k x 2k (or possibly higher with debug settings), but the image will be downscaled using linear interpolation. It will also be JPEG-2000 compressed onto LL's servers no matter what file format you upload.

[HenryAyruma]

 

Thanks to everyone !!! After all I figure out that you can apply normal and specular even after upload the mesh...

So, how I managed this...

- Upload the mesh and include textures
- Upload the normals/specular
- Select each material texture PER FACE and then apply the normals

When I started this topic I did't know that when you upload a mesh with textures, this will create a folder containing the difuses for the mesh. Also I did't know that each material on the mesh means "face" in comparison with standard prims. So, you can, for example edit the texture of a mesh, select tecture edit per face and when you click, for example, in a marble texture, all the marbles aill be selected all at once all over the mesh.

 

And by the say..this is the final result

After all, all of this was my lack of knowsledge how mesh behaves in SL  But I really appreciate all the support that I received. Incredible community !!!

Edited February 26, 2022 by HenryAyruma

[arton Rotaru]

15 hours ago, HenryAyruma said:

After all I figure out that you can apply normal and specular even after upload the mesh...

If I had known that you were THAT new to Second Life, my reply could have been more elaborate probably. Sorry for that.

[HenryAyruma]

26 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

If I had known that you were THAT new to Second Life, my reply could have been more elaborate probably. Sorry for that.

Well..more or less..my 1st account was from 2006....I am used to be the owner of Ayruma Homes...A huge and popular brand in the past...But I stay away from SL for more than 10y...

In other words: Noon again   But it's a happynes to learn once again...SL alway made me happy

 

take care, bro ! thanx for everything