Entering into the World of Mesh using Blender and etc.

[Lightesword Xue]

Okay, so I'm looking at my program here, Blender, looking blankly at the screen..

..I see that I have no idea where to begin with this mesh crap.

 

I have nothing really,.. looking at the guides and stuff.. some of them act like I already got the stages set for mesh and guide me as if I have everything I need installed.. installed. I don't.

 

First what programs do I need? Do I need to download anything further? Add any scripts to the Blender, if so what ones? I have blender set to make sculpts currently... which.. don't think that helps me much.

 

So I heard I need: COLLADA.. okay.. yea.. looked at it, and that's all new to me.

 

So who ever knows anything about Mesh and how one may start making mesh items for avatars, drop me a line.

 

I need to know:

 

1) What program I need to use first. (To make the mesh model or etc)

2) What program I need to use second.  (To put stuff onto the model or etc)

3) What program to texture the finished mesh item.

4) Any freeware available for mesh, and how reliable it is.

5) If I can use Blender since I've learned it so far...

6) ....and any other tidbits like the ups and downs of mesh. 

 

 

Thanks in advance and links to other helpful areas on this site or others would be nice.. I'm flooded to the brim with information.. none of it's organized. 

[Gaia Clary]

I very brief answer:

Blender is just fine. Blender can do ALL you need to do for meshes. You do not need any extra addon, no scripts. You may want to use a texturing program instead of Blender and maybe also a 2D image editor like gimp or Photoshop. 

For character meshes (rigged meshes) its a bit more complicated, because of a bunch of issues with the SL viewer as well as with Blender. more on that below.

Here some advice:

 

• You will need a bit of time to get used to how 3D modelling really works.
• So take care to understand how to do modelling, texturing and optimizing your meshes for game engine usage.
• Be aware that (IMHO) the most complicated issue with mesh design is the texturing. If you have left texuring aside as magic art, now it is time to learn it. It is important!
• Rigged Meshes need even more skills. Especially mesh weighting is an issue.
• Good news is that meshes is streamline technology and you will find tons of tutorials out in the web.
• Bad news is that most tutorials expect that you already know what they are talking about .(
• I have made a few tutorials on meshes and they may give you some insight: http://blog.machinimatrix.org/3d-creation/blender-meshes-trail/

If you are interested in rigged meshes and if you have the newest blender 2.6 at hand, you can also download the brand new version of my avatar-workbench for Blender 2.60  which i have updated just a moment ago with a modified character rig which works with Blender 2.6 (thanks again to masami Kuramoto for this hint !)

[wrable Amat]

The itsy bitsy spider crawled up the water spout.

Down came the rain, and washed the spider out.

Out came the sun, and dried up all the rain,

and the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again.

SL wiki + Blender wiki + a lot of time and trying......

Think of it like going up to your favorite professional sports athlete and saying "Show me how to win that game"..

You can not really learn anything when it comes to art and creation,you just have the skills  or do not.You can learn the tools and all the parts involved,but the end result will only be of your own making.

[Siddean Munro]

Gaia's link is the best place to start, then go to YouTube, search blender introduction and work your way through everything you can find. There's an excellent blender training series on cannedmushroom's channel that has helped me a lot. Once you get the basics and start getting familiar with the terminology, you will have a better idea what you need to be searching for. Blender wiki is also good, and there are other sites like blenderguru and blendercookie worth working through.

[Nalates Urriah]

Gaia's video tutorials are some of the best. They are not for the total newbie to Blender.

Start with Blender Noob to Pro. Or visit Amazon and order a book. 

There is so much to understand that if you are starting cold, it can be very fustrating. The new Blender 2.5 version and 2.6's are much easier to learn. The user interface changed between 2.4 and 2.5.

I've been lerning Blender for years. Blender is reasonably easy, if you understand the underlying concepts. With the concpets of how 3D modeling works you will likely be lost. Trying to learn comcepts from Blender and how to use Blender to accompish something is not going to work well.

I have some tutorials up in Tutorials Clothes and Blender.

And see news on Mesh in Second Life.

[Pamela Galli]

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wrable Amat wrote:

The itsy bitsy spider crawled up the water spout.

Down came the rain, and washed the spider out.

Out came the sun, and dried up all the rain,

and the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again.

SL wiki + Blender wiki + a lot of time and trying......

Think of it like going up to your favorite professional sports athlete and saying "Show me how to win that game"..

 

---

---

---

Okay, so how do you make a robot?  :smileytongue:

[Lightesword Xue]

Thanks all! Although wrable Amat's comment made no sense, I think they missed what I was trying to say.. it's not even close to what I was asking, but that's fine. Opinions are welcome of any sort. 

 

I do have experience in Blender, I will look into the suggestions you all have given me and see where it gets me! 

[hibit Spad]

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Blender

 

Has a list of of good tutorial sites for Blender.

[Ashasekayi Ra]

Which version of Blender do you plan to use? You will need a slightly different workflow depending on the version. But, here are some links that might be helpful in general.

Here are some LL pages with information:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Exporting_a_mesh_from_Blender

A playlist of tutorials that deal with the combination of Blender and SL Mesh: http://www.youtube.com/user/ashasekayi#grid/user/2A3AF00B41F652ED

Some top Blender modeling sites:
Canned Mushrooms YouTube Channel:
These playlists have a class format:

Blender 2.5 Training (Modeling 1)
http://www.youtube.com/user/cannedmushrooms#grid/user/2BA5BDF79FF50122

Blender 2.5 Training (Texture Materials and UV Mapping)
http://www.youtube.com/user/cannedmushrooms#grid/user/AB4DF1F21A33CB3B

Blender Cookie:
http://www.blendercookie.com

Blender 3D Design Course:
http://gryllus.net/Blender/3D.html

 

[Nacy Nightfire]

You wrote:

I need to know:

 

1) What program I need to use first. (To make the mesh model or etc)

To begin with, the first program is SL.  Second on my list would be Blender since you mentioned you have some experience with that program..

2) What program I need to use second.  (To put stuff onto the model or etc)

Blender. You can fairly easily skin a model to the basic avatar rig that is readily available to be downloaded.

3) What program to texture the finished mesh item.

Blender.  Although if you have another graphics program you are comfortable with use that, also. 

4) Any freeware available for mesh, and how reliable it is.

Blender.  What's somewhat tricky is the various versions of Collada export and how well SL shakes hands with them. There's alot of updates about this on the mesh forum. You can do a search to research this and follow for future updates as well as attend the Monday update meetings.  Some folks are using MeshLab for it's features, I'm not familiar with it however.  Loads of folks are using Gimp for texturing.  All free.

5) If I can use Blender since I've learned it so far...

Yes.  A large percentage of us use Blender.

6) ....and any other tidbits like the ups and downs of mesh. 

This entire subforum is jam packed with general an specific tidbits, I recommend you pick a topic and do a search. Then at the point when you have a project specific question, ask away!

[Lightesword Xue]

6) ....and any other tidbits like the ups and downs of mesh.

 

From what I know so far, the mesh can be more expensive to upload, I even hear complaints it's rather expensive.

I also hear there's a way to make a polygon count lower and still keep detail, which makes the upload less expensive? If that makes any sense to anyone.

 Aside from that I know that some viewers still don't use mesh yet.

It'll be nice once I figure out this stuff, again thanks for the help, and please try to be considerate of me, I do have experience in Blender USING sculpts, not mesh, which is why I made this thread. I have searched and it's like poking around vomit to get something good.. it ain't happening well for me.. But with everyone helping me in this thread, I do appreciate it.. hopefully I'll get the hang of this stuff and start making my new mesh products. 

[Ashasekayi Ra]

As for upload expense, the more triangles it has the more it will cost to upload. Also, a rigged version of the same mesh costs just a tiny bit more than its un-rigged counterpart. That being said, I haven't uploaded a piece of clothing that cost more than around 25 L yet. The 25 L item was an 18th century reproduction of a gown.

As for  lowering costs, that is a complex topic. The final cost of your item is the lowest weight out of download, server and physics. To cut down the download cost while maintaining visual quality of the levels of detail switches, you'll need to create your own LODs. It helps to aggressively cut the amount of triangles by a factor of 4 as you go down in detail. This is helpful for small to medium sized objects. If you have a large object, you'll need to focus more on making a high LOD the smallest amount of triangles possible because the lower LODs become more irrelevant the larger the item becomes.

As for physics, this is another place where you'll want to manually do the work in your modeler. Of course, you want it to have the least amount of triangles needed to represent the collision shape you need. Curves are not your friends here. It helps to decompose them in the SL uploader as well. 

As for server weight, you are basically safe unless you plan to make the item physical or to add a script to it. 

Another issue is that large mesh can have a large land impact (LI)  cost. So, it can help costs if you work in a more modular fashion and break them up.

[Nacy Nightfire]

I'm sure everyone is happy to help where they can and for the most part folks here are exceptionally considerate of everyone else, even when the same basic questions are asked repeatedly.  The forum search engine is an excellent way to do some good research, and is an important tool for catching up on what's happening with mesh. I use it constantly to keep updated .  Very general questions about mesh are very difficult to answer and you will most likely get unsatisfying generalized answers or get pointed in the direction of the many great tutorials out there, even if you didnt' specifically ask for a list of tutorials.

There is always the beta grid to freely test out your mesh and determine for yourself if there is any basis to all the rumors and complaints you have heard about mesh being expensive.   It won't cost you anything but time to try it out.

Sculpties ARE mesh as far as mesh skills are concerned, but they are limited.  Mesh can do so much more.

[Siddean Munro]

I have not noticed significantly higher costs uploading meshes.  Most of my meshes are between 11 and 50L, compare that plus the 1-3 textures I need to upload to the same cost for a multiple piece sculpty item and it's associated textures, and a reasonable tri-count mesh is actually cheaper to upload.  Don't do your testing on the main grid of course, there is Aditi for that so you don't burn through your L's