Rigged mesh no joints or skin weights

[JackRipper666]

Gaia! You're a life saver! LOL Finally that's what my problem was! Thanks again! Your help is much appreciated!

[Karl Reisman]

Well I figured out the problem with my Maya files. I received a bad skeleton. So Maya users, if you do not get a  export skin weights button, it's probably because the skeleton file is bad. The legends  of the SL skeleton being finicky are indeed true. Once I used a clean skeleton from a source no longer available,  the weighting was exportable, and thus began a day long task of painting skin weights.  Then I discovered, and fixed a second problem.

The initial skin bind looked bad around the knees, I was informed that one could "move" the joints, but never rotate them. So I "corrected: the position of the knee joints by moving to where they were indicated on the mesh. It was true that you could move them and still obtain a valid export of a weighted mesh, but the knees no matter how they were weighted, they would not  be fixed.  

For this to work, you cannot move, rotate, or modify the skeleton in any way to obtain a good skin bind. I ended up using scales, and mesh deformers to push the geometry and push the Mesh so the mesh lined up with the joints. Then I deleted the history and bound the skin, and proceeded as normal.

here is that "good" skeleton file, On generated for Maya users from the days of the Mesh Beta.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15354633/skeleton.ma

WARNING:  This files units are in centimeters, unfortunately, and I hesitate to rescale the skeleton, so  in binding you need to export yoru weighted mesh at a scale factor of 100 (100 centimeters  = 1 Meter), and because the scale factor only applies to the mesh, It doesn't support bone offsets, so leave that unchecked or your mesh when worn ill looked like a crumpled up tissues, pulsing with a hideous parody of live and movement.

Maya Procedure:

1.) Open the above file, and immediately rename it as something else and save it.

2.) Import your mesh into the scene.

3.) Scale the mesh, and deform it to match the bones. Delete History on the mesh.

4.) Select the Mesh and then select the root nose (Pelvis) and choose "Bind Smooth Skin". Leave "removed unused influences" check box unchecked.

5.) You now have a  bound skinned mesh, now.

6.) Save your file as a  copy, renames it as something else.

7.)  This new file is specifically to animate the skeleton to test skin weighting and edit it.  Animate the  skeleton , including into the porn poses so as to give you  an idea of how the mesh will behave once its in the grid.

8.) Using the "Paint skin weights" tool,  and the animation slider,  scrub the animation to a certain point and then use the brush to modify the shape of the mesh into the proper  form in that particular pose.Use low opacity settings on the brush (or a tablet where the stylus us set to control opacity with pressure).

9.) A day Later, once you have made good skin weights, go to "Skin -> Edit Smooth Skin -> Export Skin weights.-> [ ] "(Click on the box). When the dialogue box comes up choose a place to save the weight maps (note this only works on a mesh where the UV Maps are  completed) name them.  Maya will ask if it's okay to write 26 files to disk? Accept that and sit back.

10.) Go back to your first copy file, the one you made the initial skin weight on, and select the mesh, and  go ""Skin -> Edit Smooth Skin ->Import Skin Weights. A dialogue box will pop up and ask you ti find the weight maps. Go to where you saved the export from the above step and there will be a file named "[File name]_weightmap".  Click on that and select open.  Maya will perform it's magic (rezzing points from 0,0,0, making the mesh look like it's transporting in from Star Trek.). If you do not get the transporter effect, and Maya appears to do nothing, that is because there is a change in the mesh itself (not the binding) between the first copy and the second copy, and you will have to start over from Step 5.

11.) Once Maya completes is magic,  click the skin, then click the Skeleton (on the root node), and select Export, and export the file as a Collada DAE File. Import with the above caveats taken into account and you should have a nicely skinned mesh in SL to wear.

Hope this Helps.

--KARL

[JackRipper666]

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Karl Reisman wrote:

Well I figured out the problem with my Maya files. I received a bad skeleton. So Maya users, if you do not get a  export skin weights button, it's probably because the skeleton file is bad. The legends  of the SL skeleton being finicky are indeed true. Once I used a clean skeleton from a source no longer available,  the weighting was exportable, and thus began a day long task of painting skin weights.  Then I discovered, and fixed a second problem.

 

The initial skin bind looked bad around the knees, I was informed that one could "move" the joints, but never rotate them. So I "corrected: the position of the knee joints by moving to where they were indicated on the mesh. It was true that you could move them and still obtain a valid export of a weighted mesh, but the knees no matter how they were weighted, they would not  be fixed.  

 

For this to work, you cannot move, rotate, or modify the skeleton in any way to obtain a good skin bind. I ended up using scales, and mesh deformers to push the geometry and push the Mesh so the mesh lined up with the joints. Then I deleted the history and bound the skin, and proceeded as normal.

 

here is that "good" skeleton file, On generated for Maya users from the days of the Mesh Beta.

 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15354633/skeleton.ma

 

WARNING:

  This files units are in centimeters, unfortunately, and I hesitate to rescale the skeleton, so  in binding you need to export yoru weighted mesh at a scale factor of 100 (100 centimeters  = 1 Meter), and because the scale factor only applies to the mesh, It doesn't support bone offsets, so leave that unchecked or your mesh when worn ill looked like a crumpled up tissues, pulsing with a hideous parody of live and movement.

 

Maya Procedure:

 

1.) Open the above file, and immediately rename it as something else and save it.

 

2.) Import your mesh into the scene.

 

3.) Scale the mesh, and deform it to match the bones. Delete History on the mesh.

 

4.) Select the Mesh and then select the root nose (Pelvis) and choose "Bind Smooth Skin". Leave "removed unused influences" check box unchecked.

 

5.) You now have a  bound skinned mesh, now.

 

6.) Save your file as a  copy, renames it as something else.

 

7.)  This new file is specifically to animate the skeleton to test skin weighting and edit it.  Animate the  skeleton , including into the porn poses so as to give you  an idea of how the mesh will behave once its in the grid.

 

8.) Using the "Paint skin weights" tool,  and the animation slider,  scrub the animation to a certain point and then use the brush to modify the shape of the mesh into the proper  form in that particular pose.Use low opacity settings on the brush (or a tablet where the stylus us set to control opacity with pressure).

 

9.) A day Later, once you have made good skin weights, go to "Skin -> Edit Smooth Skin -> Export Skin weights.-> [ ] "(Click on the box). When the dialogue box comes up choose a place to save the weight maps (note this only works on a mesh where the UV Maps are  completed) name them.  Maya will ask if it's okay to write 26 files to disk? Accept that and sit back.

 

10.) Go back to your first copy file, the one you made the initial skin weight on, and select the mesh, and  go ""Skin -> Edit Smooth Skin ->Import Skin Weights. A dialogue box will pop up and ask you ti find the weight maps. Go to where you saved the export from the above step and there will be a file named "[File name]_weightmap".  Click on that and select open.  Maya will perform it's magic (rezzing points from 0,0,0, making the mesh look like it's transporting in from Star Trek.). If you do not get the transporter effect, and Maya appears to do nothing, that is because there is a change in the mesh itself (not the binding) between the first copy and the second copy, and you will have to start over from Step 5.

 

11.) Once Maya completes is magic,  click the skin, then click the Skeleton (on the root node), and select Export, and export the file as a Collada DAE File. Import with the above caveats taken into account and you should have a nicely skinned mesh in SL to wear.

 

Hope this Helps.

 

--KARL

 

 

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Thanks Karl! I'm going to try this blender has some work arounds thanks to Gaia and Masami. But it's extremely touchy as well. Plus my mesh get's really out of wack. This might work better. I noticed the skeleton so far is laying on it's side on the Z axis if I look at it from maya's side view. It's a jumbled up mess so I been changing the radius on the joints to 0.05 instead of moving it. I'm afraid to move it around incase that might mess it up. Is thow you're working off it? Side laying down?

[Gaia Clary]

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JackRipper666 wrote:

 I'm going to try this blender has some work arounds thanks to Gaia and Masami. But it's extremely touchy as well. Plus my mesh get's really out of wack.

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Could you describe in which way the blender is touchy ? Maybe we can do something here to make it more robust ?

[JackRipper666]

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Gaia Clary wrote:

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JackRipper666 wrote:

 I'm going to try this blender has some work arounds thanks to Gaia and Masami. But it's extremely touchy as well. Plus my mesh get's really out of wack.

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Could you describe in which way the blender is touchy ? Maybe we can do something here to make it more robust ?

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I'm having trouble with parenting objects like eyes, upper jaws, bottom jaws and tongue staying parented to one bone. So as I move the head it stays with it in blender. But in SL it tends to throw my jaws tongue and eyes out behind me or on my shoulder or something lol. Also my ears tend to get ripped off so I need to learn how to paint weights in blender. That looked like it would be very easy but the way bones needed to be setup as a joint almost tends to make it very time consuming to figure out the correct deformations. Even maya though I'm in here painting weights as my avatar is on his side. In fear I'll ruin the skeleteon if I dare rotate it. I think these programs just aren't geared enough towards SL axis or something. Still making it a daunting task to successfully rig and paint weights. 

I know it's very possible to make all this work cause there is a guy on SL market selling his avatar and it's one piece mesh it looks like. Just not sure how anyone is making this complicated task easy lol! Anyway hope that helps let me know.

 

[JackRipper666]

I can confim the maya skeleton works, even added two bones for upper and lower mouth. I have same results though with blender. Can't see my eyes or teeth when it's rigged lol. Still looking into it.

[JackRipper666]

Hm.. seems I go in circles with this to no end. My parented eyes, jaws an tongue never stay parented to bones. And I kinda feel mesh is just flawed a bit to me. The old way everyone is doing most of their avatar in pieces seems much better. It just seems kinda looks better because the avatar holds up. With how flakey mesh is. I do mean extremely tedious no mistakes flakey, you're better off just building an avatar the way it's usually done. Another thing I've seen is I guess being that mesh is primarily one object. IF they ever get rigging working in SL. It could be very useful. High detail meshes don't lag at all with what does show up. So the body shows and that works ok I guess. Weight painting is part of the culprit it's almost like SL mesh it's very tedious time consuming and seems to barely work on high res mesh. I feel I've done all I can to make progress with this. 

I'm not sure how everyone usually builds an avatar I guess they build parts and attach it to parts of the body while hiding their avatar?. Anyone have tutorials on the way it's usually done before mesh was even part of viewer? I'm kinda tired of painting weights over an over and trying different rigs LOL! 

 

Here is the character I created in Maya. I'm a monster movie fan mostly of King Kong. Wanted to try something a bit more high res. The body does work at least lol. Either way I ever get it working I'll post how it works here to help others. 

 

 

 

[Karl Reisman]

First. Looking at the model. that's a nice piece of work there.

However adding bones to the default skeleton is probably why it won't import properly. As I stressed above, the Sl skeleton is finicky, and should not be messed with, Moving joints will export, but the  skin binding might be messed up ( even before the skin is bound to the bones, which what happened with mine).  Added bones will not import into SL in any case, that functionality isn't there yet.

Moving Jaws in bones is necessary, but it doesnt' exist yet, I  have heard rumors of  hack that may allow it, but Nothing concrete, yet.  But how things ought to work is that you don't "parent" the jaws and eyes to the bones for export but bind them as skinned objects to their appropriate bones and export them, Then export the body.  What I am doing with the current project,a jet pilot's flight suit, is to export the body as one object, then the floating polygons above the shoulder and breast for name tags and flight patches, and a third object for the survival  pouches, flashlight and .45 Holster. With mesh, where a piece attatches now means nothing, but it will snap to the correct bones when worn.

I have now seen a few mesh avatars in SL  in the field as ti were, and theons I have seen a few have had "sculpted" heads, and mesh bodies. The sculpted heads were so that the mouths and expressiosn would animate using the old swapping of sculpt maps techniques.  A Mesh head would be  comparatively unblinking and rigid, unless one used other techniques, So yes, mesh is currently a bit limited, but cretive folks can often use those limitations to  create good, disciplinned work.

--Karl

[Karl Reisman]

Thanks Karl! I'm going to try this blender has some work arounds thanks to Gaia and Masami. But it's extremely touchy as well. Plus my mesh get's really out of wack. This might work better. I noticed the skeleton so far is laying on it's side on the Z axis if I look at it from maya's side view. It's a jumbled up mess so I been changing the radius on the joints to 0.05 instead of moving it. I'm afraid to move it around incase that might mess it up. Is thow you're working off it? Side laying down?

 

Okay  This problem is that when you work in Maya specifically for Second Life, you have to set up your maya file to be Z -up. not the Maya default Maya Y-up. go to Window -> Settings and Preferences-> Settings, and then set the environment as Z up, and build with the X axis being  forward (rather than the Y axis now).  With those settings, the skeleton should be standing up tall on the Z axis and facing  positive  X axis.

Second Life's rules for Mesh are rigid and limiting, but one can still produce good work if one has had previous experience working with bad  game engines.

[Medhue Simoni]

Please, Please, please, do not break up your perfectly fine mesh into ridiculous parts. I would consider this a mesh crime.

I remember way back in the day, when I would sit infront of my huge 4 x 4 canvas, thinking about what limitations I would inflict onto my new painting. That's kind of what most artwork is, a person setting the limitations in his/her head. Just take a look at cubism, or even just a simple color scheme. You set up your limitations to challenge yourself.

Separate attached mesh are not the answer to the limitations you are talking about. At least, not IMHO. Eyes can be rigged, and jaws rigged can be moved without them being separate or some laggy sculpted swapping, which should never have been allowed. I made a mesh avatar recently, and I rigged the jaw, eyebrows, and tail to the neck. This means, by moving the neck, I can get all 3 different parts to move with the avatar. Of course, extra bones would be better for the tail, but at least it moves. I also made speech gestures for the avatar, so that his jaw moves when he talks.

I'm not really an avatar maker, but here is the avatar that I made. His eyes blink too, by just having the eyes as a separate face, and then changing the eye's texture in a random timer. I think the center Lycan gives a good example of the eyebrows being pulled down a bit, to make him look mad, and the jaw open.

 

[JackRipper666]

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Karl Reisman wrote:

Thanks Karl! I'm going to try this blender has some work arounds thanks to Gaia and Masami. But it's extremely touchy as well. Plus my mesh get's really out of wack. This might work better. I noticed the skeleton so far is laying on it's side on the Z axis if I look at it from maya's side view. It's a jumbled up mess so I been changing the radius on the joints to 0.05 instead of moving it. I'm afraid to move it around incase that might mess it up. Is thow you're working off it? Side laying down?

 

Okay

  This problem is that when you work in Maya specifically for Second Life, you have to set up your maya file to be Z -up. not the Maya default Maya Y-up. go to Window -> Settings and Preferences

->

Settings, and then set the environment as Z up, and build with the X axis being  forward (rather than the Y axis now).  With those settings, the skeleton should be standing up tall on the Z axis and facing  positive  X axis.

 

Second Life's rules for Mesh are rigid and limiting, but one can still produce good work if one has had previous experience working with bad  game engines.

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Cool, thanks I'm going to try this out soon!

[JackRipper666]

That looks awesome medhue! That's kinda what I been doing besides the eyes I parent the eyes to the eye bones. But the upper an lower jaws, tongue I parent to the neck bone. How are you able to create facial animations without jaw bones? Cause I always wondered how it's done with facial rigs. I know it's not exactly needing bones just something to manipulate the eye brows etc. But what about the mouth? Does your uppe ran lower jaws move to? This is actually my first model. I'm more of a 2D artist myself. Or even bones inside the tongue? I have found I can add bones but my biggest issue really is just getting my eyes and jaws to show up in inside my mesh. They go on my shoulders or just don't show up at all! LOL But yea I'd say you're a avatar maker to me if you got it all working! 

 

I did take in considerations to try and limit myself. I mean I know it's new and it's going to be difficult. But some of it it's just more than I expected. I also tested with only 10k faces the raw low poly form of my mesh to get eyes and teeth still no go yet. So I'm going to try what Karl said changing my axis. Cause I been working off it by any means to make it work. Just working on the skeleton on it's side LOL! 

 

I'm gonna keep at it and I really, really don't want to break up my mesh to parts. I'm just disappointed I'm unable to get this worked out yet LOL! I'll try to be more patient but I been at this for months lol! Ok well I'll work on this soon see if I can make another go of getting it to work. Either way hopefully this is helping others figure out their problems to. 

One thing I am positive of. I can move joints and bones to fit my mesh. Only rule for sure is. DO NOT, move that skeleton in any of the translate channels. That's where it breaks! I have successfully added two bones to the rig and got skin weights to still load. BUT, don't guarantee it will work. It's so damn touchy it could work once but never again. I have yet to make another attempt at adding bones. But also what I did to keep the skin weights showing up when I upload to SL is named it in the same naming convention as the rest of the skeleton. For example if it was mHead I would put mJawUpper and m JawLower. Anyway that's for those who might be trying this in maya as well.

 

Thanks again guys!

[Medhue Simoni]

Well, I think you have a very nice looking avatar there, and I'd hate for you to do all this work up til now and not get it working. Again, I'm really just some guy who can animate and likes to play with mesh, but I would suggest that you forget about extra bones right now. At the mesh meeting today, arbitary skeletons was brought up. YAY! At least, LL brought this up. Who knows how long before that happens. Could be months to a year.

As far as the Jaw, the lower jaw is partially rigged to the neck, the upper jaw is rigged to the head. The only real problem with this is that I can't turn the neck and head separately. To turn the head, I have to turn the neck and head together. For the eyebrows, I also partially rig it to the neck, so when I open the jaws by turning the head upwards the eyebrows get pulled down slightly, making him look angry. The more weight you put on the eyebrows to the neck the more it will pull down on the brows. Here is a pic of the Jaw rigging. Notice that the end of the lower Jaw has the most weight to the neck.

Oh, and if you get him rigged, maybe we can make a deal for me to animate him with motion capture. It would be fun to create ape mocaps.

[JackRipper666]

ah ok I see, nice idea there. Yea I'm still having no luck with some of the changes to maya I made. So far still just the body rigged.  I'll have to try importing this skeleton into blender and setting it on the SL axis to see if I can get the rest of my model to show up. I know when I was trying with blender it showed those parts but they weren't rigged to the mouth were on my shoulder. lol Yea if I ever finish it I don't mind at all if you want to animate it. Was going to try myself but I'll be lucky if I get in world lol.

 

I think part of the problem though is Maya, it tends to export a lot of garbage into collada. I usually have to export each part of the model along and also skeleton as all separate obj files. Than import them back in. Good thing is they go right back to correct orientation. So I reparent the parts I want to bones, bind the bones back to the skin, import weights on top of it that I saved before hand. After that it comes up much cleaner in the collada file. Blender don't even recognize what maya is trying to do exactly if I import .dae file into it. So I don't think it's really SL so much at this point. But Maya and Blender that can't seem to export the model as it is in the scene.

[Medhue Simoni]

Wish I could help more, but I used 3ds Max, and it was almost impossible to find a working skeleton. I must of rerigged it like over a hundred times, and it is still not perfect. I had to just stop myself, tho the werewolf does have to get is some very strange positions that stretches things quite a bit.

Good luck man, and don't give up, lol.

[JackRipper666]

Thanks Med, no problem. You guys were very helpful. But I finally figured out my problem. This really annoys me to because it's now come full circle and the work load to make this stuff usable is worse than a full time job. Something I don't even have right now infact I don't even have a technical job, so that's where all my free time comes from lately lol!

 

Ok so what finally got my eyes, tongue, teeth gums into the world was not parenting to the bones. It's actually the opposite and infact really stupid and non productive way of rigging a mesh. What you have to do is if you're a maya user that has 2011. I speak only for 2011 that's how touchy this is. But again if you're  maya 2011 user. You will have to use the skeleton that Karl has here in these postings. Again you'll setup your maya axis to Z up. Reason for this is you'll first want to be able to work off it without fighting to work on it from it's side. Maya has a different default axis I think it's Y up instead of Z. Also be very careful moving the skelton around to fit your mesh. Z is where the skelton should remain up. Or it could break it during an upload to SL and not recognize your skin weights, joints. So do your best to move your mesh and it's body parts eyes etc to the skeleton. Once it's all scaled to the skeleton you can move the joints around to get it exactly where it needs to be on your mesh. Example moving the wrist joint of the skeleton to the wrist of your mesh lining it up.

So anyway to set up your axis go Window> Settings/Preferences>Preferences>Settings and select Z up for World Coordinate System. Than save out. You should know see the skeleton facing you instead of on it's side. The camera is a little buggy in this view. Maybe you know how to setup the camera's in maya to work a little better but I don't lol.

Next I'm assuming anyone who works in maya has their Mesh done. Example just like mine. A full body mesh, tongue, teeth/gums and pair of eyes. So say you combined your mesh together with your eyes etc to scale it down to the skeleton. If you did this good! Leave it that way don't separate the mesh and parent the eyes to the eye bones. This is where I was going wrong and also why this is backwards on how you should do a mesh rig and why I'm kinda pissed about this.

 

Again anyway, once your mesh is all one solid piece all parts combined. So if you don't know how to do this spacebar>mesh>combined once you have selected all of your parts you want to be one piece. Make sure you do this step or you won't see your parts in world connected to your body.

 

Next only thing you have to do is bind the skeleton to the one piece mesh. Up top of maya all the way to the right next to you'll go to where it shows X Y Z next to attribute editor to the left of the button X Y Z cords there. Look for an target looking icon with a little drop down arrow next to it. Click that and select, select by name. A box appears type in m*>hit enter. It should select all bones in your skeleton they are all named mpelvis, mchest etc. Next top left go to animation, once you're on animation panel top right go to skin>bindskin>smoothbind and click the box next to smoothbind to get to the options. Set your options to, selected joints>closest distance>weight blended>interactive check allow multiple bind poses. Max influences I usually put 3-4 and uncheck maintain max influences if it's not already. Dropoff rate leave as default, uncheck>remove unused influences and check colorize skeleton if it's not already. Finally hit bind skin.

 

Now here is why I'm annoyed. Once it's binded you have to go through to the eye bones and paint in your weights to the eyes. So you can't parent the eyes to the eye bones and say your jaws and tongue to neck. Reason for this is collada is only recognizing one mesh. The minute you parent to other bones it's as if it see's this as separate meshes. It than only reads in the collada file one mesh when exported. This is what was happening to me. My eyes, teeth etc were getting left out in the export or SL just wasn't reading it cause it only wants a single mesh. 

So instead of just parenting parts of a mesh like your eyes to the end of the eye bones so that you can rotate them. You have ot actually weight them with painting weights just to make them moveable eyes. Really stupid and more time consuming. So again for example once your mesh is binded you go and right click over your model look for paint weights. These menu's are touchy so do it a few times if you don't see it first time. Than right click over one of your eye bones, menu should show up select influence. Make sure you're also you're in "Default Quality Rendering" or you won't see the weights on your model. Renderer>Default Quality Rendering incase you don't know where it is.

Next you'll go to the tools options for paint skin weights. Select for paint operation>replace than for value 0. If you're on your eye bone say it's left flood it with 0, If you're not sure check that you have it as a selected influence under influence in tool menu. Someimes its easier to choose your bones from the menu. Once it's selected again flood it with 0 for replace. Than check add for paint operation select 1.0 for value and paint a full 100 percent weight on just your eye. Repate that for the next eye. Now you can choose the end of the left eye bone or right eye bone joint. And rotate just the eye. It's acting as if you parented your eyes to the eye bone. 

That's why I hate this method. It can't seem to pick up parented parts of your mesh. Everything has to be a solid piece mesh. And it's hard to paint weights fully on something when I can't hide my body etc for this way of rigging. Plus you can easy start hitting area's of the inner eye socket with weight when you only want the eye. 

Also in order for this to work eventually you'll want to add more bones. I think this should be fone. But that also creates more painful working with weights and trying to only hit say the tongue  in a cramed in area.

Also the weight painting is cumbersome I really hate it. I really like saving some time with parenting objects that won't be doing much but say rotating like eyes. The tongue is different but even than it can be easily manipulated with a set of bones vs lots of weight painting to get deformations that would be nice. 

I guess i'm asking for too much too soon but I really thought this would be cool to have a solid piece avatar instead of watching people run around with a head that looks bolted on with how it's cut. Now yes it still is going to give that effect. But collada I think maybe linden should buy or something lol. I know I am asking for a lot but it's very, very touchy. it tends to pack a lot of garbage into your file or don't even pack it correctly to be uploaded to SL. So when you upload it and you see your avatar look like it went through a meat grinder it's mostly like collada failing.

 

Next thing you'll want to do is save your file. Export is as a collada dae file. Don't waste time painting weights till you know for sure you have a file you can work off of. Example you upload it to SL only to find your Skin Weights option is greyed out. Therefore broken file. I'd only go thorugh refining it after you see it will upload with skin weights.

If you get skin weights and your avatar ends up looking like a chewed up artifact when you wear it. You'll need to use FBXConverterUI. Don't download 2012 it makes more of a mess of your file for SL to not read it at all! Download only 2011 FBXConverterUi. Also make sure if you want your file to correctly read by SL. That you re-export the file as a FBX file. Than you're going to drag n drop it into FBXConverterUI once it's downloaded and installed. Than select Dae Collada for format. Once it converts it you should now have a correctly exported .dae file that when it's worn as long as you paint your weights and refine it I believe it'll show up correctly and not be chewed up. I have to finish mine still. But the good knews is. I can see all of my mesh and no longer is it all chewed up. It just needs to be fixed on the skin weights.

 

But I have done this hundreds of times already. So this should be a proven way for maya 2011 users anyway. If you run into problems I'd say just expect it. This stuff could react differently depending on how your mesh was built or where it was built even. So you might bring in something from blender but could get a different result than me. Mine was built  from scratch in Maya. Anyway finally my constant frustrations are over for now. LOL! 

 

Hope this helps and again thanks for all who contributed to figuring this one out. I hope collada starts to look at SL and maybe cater to SL more. It would be real nice if they could refine it better. At this point I don't know if I'll ever be able to keep up and be a developer. I'd have to have a job as a developer to possibly do so LOL! 

[Karl Reisman]

I would have to say on this you are essentially correct.  However you can part out pieces  of your avatar separately if you are careful about it, but you have to reat each separate piece as a separate fileand import them into SL and attach them to different attatch points. In doing soyou get to add the detail.

Also don't forget that this is Mesh so you can apply up to 9 different materials per single mesh object, and that might help as well. But your steps are correct.

This is a limited skeleton (for maya) and as yet I have not figured out how to make the proper bone offsetsm, for things like digitigrade legs. The small scale issue of the skeleton file is a  problem for that.

 

--Karl

[Coby Foden]

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Karl Reisman wrote:

Also don't forget that this is Mesh so you can apply up to 9 different materials per single mesh object, and that might help as well. But your steps are correct.

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Where did you get the idea of nine different materials? It's up to eight different materials per single mesh object, not nine. At least that's what is stated in many places.

Eight materials work fine, I haven't even ever tried to include nine materials to one mesh.

[Karl Reisman]

typo

[Sae Luan]

I never could figure out what the issue is with exporting my skirt rigged, so I am now using Blender in my pipeline.  I'd much rather be using Maya straight through, but I have tried everything I could think of, including suggestions in this thread.  >.<

[Aurelia Chauveau]

Hi Karl,

I was reading this topic because I wanted to know how to upload my skin weights etc etc, and your instructions are awesome and it works perfectly. So I wanted to say thank you so much for sharing

The only question I had was about step number 3:

3.) Scale the mesh, and deform it to match the bones. Delete History on the mesh.

When I imported my mesh, it's scale was pretty spot on, as I am creating clothes over the actual SL avatar. So I felt no need to adjust my mesh as it fit really well over my avatar model. However, when I uploaded it into SL, I did notice that when attached to my avatar, the top/torso/chest section is bent further towards the back and the part around the legs could be a bit more forwards as well.  Is this just a matter of trial and error re-positioning that mesh over the first skeleton and uploading in SL to test it out? Is the idea to get the mesh so that it sits centred over the skeleton?

Thanks again for sharing!!

Aurelia

[JackRipper666]

It's extremely touchy Sae Luan. If you're trying to rig a meshed skirt. I would say most likely won't work out of maya. I even tried to add bones to the skeleton that is provided to Maya users from the file that Karl gave me. But that file is actually same I had found from SL. Whatever Linden Labs does to make it work in their world only they know at this point I'd say. So for example you doing a rigged skirt would be like me adding bones to the basic rig. This way I could have fingers and tongue and mouth animations. Until linden labs makes this possible. I doubt it will be doable in Maya. Sorry for late replies I been so busy learning. =/ Anyway, if you do find a method please share it here. I tried to add bones to my rigged gorilla avatar and it sent my mouth across the land LOL! So I know it's very, very difficult an frustrating at this point. Blender will be your best bet. From what I can tell though. My characters doesn't look exactly the same as it did in Maya. I usually have to really work hard to make it look similar to what I had in maya. Including any mesh attachments because of the difference in proportions. I have seen a guy though supermaxtux I think is his name on youtube at least. He builds mesh avatars as well and they come out of blender. His deformations from weight painting seem more accurate then mine do to he fact Blender being free an open source seems to be where SL is trying to make everyone build. Maya is very advanced, if SL can use all it's power at this point it's very primitive and barely working. So don't let that deture you in anyway. It's not you trust me. Thanks to everyone here I just barely got this working. =/

 

Not that I think LL is at fault, I think it's awesome they are widening the scope of software that can be used and hopefully mesh will be a higher form of avatar building. Skin weights is tough though, I find if animations are slightly off or don't move your internal rig according to your meshes painted weights. It will flatten! So everything has to be built by you or someone with your painted weights in mind. Also just content creators aren't as tedious about being very accurate with bones. At times you're seeing animations litterally bending and doing things that would break your bones in RL! lol It's good to keep in mind anatomy for this one even though SL is about using your imagination a lot. Some things though should be built with some bipedal or quadrupedal anatomy in mind. This will help making skin deformations very accurate and reduce the flattening you will see at times. Unless you're very double jointed lol. Again though SL really is I'd assume tackling a complex developer side to their world. But hopefully things start to move along more smoothly for them so I can add more bones and just simply use more of a rig built by me in maya instead of a basic rig with limited options. Medhu really has done some creative thinking though, using the weight system and bones that you do have to create facial movement. Some is better than none of course. Hope this helps.

[SolasNaGealai]

did you every get your mesh uploaded and what was it?