Mesh tips for Mac user needed

[Jo Yardley]

Ok, I'm just about ready to start experimenting with Mesh.

Which mesh software should I get?

I tried Sketchup but for some reason it is not responding.

I did look at the page on wiki but there are a lot of possible programs I can use but it doesn't say if they are capable for Mac or not and I'd rather have advice from other users anyway.

Bit overwelmed with all the options.

Sorry for sounding like a complete noob... but when it comes to Mesh, I am one.

I want to learn how to create buildings with mesh, not clothes, if that makes a difference.

[Aquarius Paravane]

Get Blender, which is free from blender.org. There are plenty of tutorials for blender modeling both generally and specific to SL on Youtube. Blender 2.5 / 2.6 are much the same, and have a different and less forbidding user interface than 2.4. Scale and axes in Blender 2.5++ are the same as SL (1 meter = 1 meter, Z is up, axis colors are the same).

[Jo Yardley]

Thank you!

Got it, found youtube tutorial for dummies and am now experimenting!

[Pamela Galli]

I am a Mac person.  I have been learning Blender, because I did not know of anything better, and it was free.

 

If I had to do it over, I would invest in learning Cinema 4 D.I have heard nothing but good things about it from Mac users, or anyone else. There are several in this forum who use it, sometimes along with Blender.

 

I don't know if it is me personally or my computer or Blender, but I have just had many many many problems and bugs and corrupted files. I would have been happy to pay well for something more reliable and less frustrating.  But as I say it could be me or my computer, or that all 3D programs are crap.

 

 

[Luc Starsider]

I too am a Mac and Blender user. It's a great combination which works very well in my experience. As others have mentioned, you can find a wealth of tutorials for Blender online. One of my goto places for tuts is http://www.blendercookie.com/.

Another big advantage is that there are lots of people using Blender for mesh in SL - far more people than is using Sketchup, I believe - so getting help with issues is rarely a problem.

For static mesh, using the latest versions of Blender is not a problem. Collada exports work very well. For rigged mesh, which you say you have no plans on making, there are a few issues in the latest versions. Nothing that can't be worked around, but still...

- Luc -

[Mikki Miles]

go for Blender

[Jo Yardley]

Blendering away as we speak, cheers all!

[Maeve Balfour]

Welcome to the wonderful world of mesh, Jo! It's a vast subject, and can appear daunting at first, but it's DEFINITELY worth persevering with the learning curve and coming to grips with. The sheer freedom it will bring you in creativity, especially in the construction of buildings like you mention, make the initial headaches worthwhile.

I love your Berlin sim - and I can assure you, if you eventually convert it to mesh, you have the potential to save VAST amounts of prims overall. Myself, I am currently exploring methods in creating low LI buildings (Land Impact (or in basic terms, the equivalent prim count)), and will be posting here in the forum my results for others like yourself to gain the knowledge from. I have rezzed an example build-in-progress (nowhere near finished yet), which if you like you can visit to get an idea of the potential land cost/prim count savings mesh can make - when it's designed economically. (This build I will be updating as I go along with proper textures etc, so feel free to drop back occasionally to see how it progresses).

Coordinates: Tintoria/43/126/3969

But I won't flood you with information overload - you are just starting out on your wonderful mesh journey. My suggestions for what to do and learn in general are these:

1: Find a program you are comfortable with modeling in. Most modeling programs by their nature should be able to create polygon meshes, and output to standard formats (OBJ and DAE files etc).

2: Learn how to create mesh models. It's a big subject, but a FUN one too if you take your time and learn how to handle your program's tools.

3: The "scary" part - UV mapping. This is where you lay out your mesh like a dressmaker's pattern, and designate how textures are wrapped onto it. It's a big subject, but essential to learn, if you want to make effective mesh models. Not as scary as it appears though - you just need to approach it logically etc.

4: Setting material zones. These work like faces on a standard prim - which lets you define sections of a mesh to react like prim faces - each face can have totally separate textures etc (in the same way as the texturing section in the SL build menu works for prim faces). Often overlooked, but materials inside of SL can be your best friend!

5: Learning how to make best use of the SL mesh importer. This is the menu where you bring your meshes into SL. It's not a huge task, but definitely worth taking time with to understand its functions.

6: Learning how to optimise your meshes for best usage in SL. This can be a tricky subject, but when you nail it, you will make SERIOUS savings over equivalent prim builds. I know your Berlin sim will benefit hugely from mesh when you learn the ins and outs of optimisation.

So yah, those steps there, while sounding a bit heavy, are not as bad as they might appear. Just the overall essential skills you will need to make best usage for mesh creation for SL (and many of these skills are useful OUTSIDE of SL too - mesh workflows tend to be universal in the large part).

Feel free to ask as many questions as you need to - there are plenty of people in this forum who will be only too happy to help out (myself included).

Have fun! :matte-motes-smile:

[Jo Yardley]

Thank you very much for that!

Yes, the main reason I'm interested in mesh is to build buildings that have more details and use less prims.

And as you may have noticed, I'm a bit texture mad and love adding lots of high quality historical textures.... not very good for fast loading... but I can't help myself

So for starters I'll be trying to build facades of buildings and see how I can make em looking good.

I've started with a tutorial on youtube, i'll keep you all updated and wil defenitely come bother everyone when I get stuck

[Maeve Balfour]

In regards to textures, mesh when used creatively WITH clever UV-mapping can be hugely beneficial too - both in terms of texture economisation AND in reducing the equivalent prim usage (depending on the situation).

I won't bamboozle you with the ins and outs of UV-mapping yet (the way you cut up a mesh to display textures)... that can come later on when you are sufficiently along the learning path.

But consider an example like this: Say, you had 32 posters you wanted to display, each a square of about 2mx2m (not a normal poster shape, but just a simple example to keep this description brief)... With clever UV-mapping, you could create a 512x512 pixel image, divide it into quarters (each quarter 256x256 pixels). So each texture would be FOUR posters. Multiply this by mesh's capability to have up to EIGHT material zones (each material can be a totally separate texture). So, 8 materials x the 4 poster images per texture would give you 32 poster textures.....

Now the exciting bit: You can create FOUR mesh squares, and each can be UV mapped to match the four different poster sections on the textures. Those four squares are then duplicated EIGHT TIMES, and each duplicate set is given a different material setting (like faces on a prim). So now EACH of those squares can appear to hold a totally separate poster image, due to the way the UV-mapping is set up, combined with the materials to multiply the effect.

LOL, probably getting a bit technical there, but.... What it means, is that you now have 32 posters, which you can spread around any way you wish within a 64x64mx64m area (the maximum mesh size allowable). Ideally, you would have a mesh room in your modeler to use for reference when placing them etc. Once the positions are set, you simply save out the poster squares as a single mesh object (WITHOUT the reference room mesh you may have used - JUST the poster meshes themselves). From my own experiments so far... a 32 poster mesh like this tends to only cost about 1LI (or ONE PRIM). So just an example like that is an indication of the HUGE benefits mesh can have, especially if used creatively. You could apply this effect for windows, decals/stains on walls (with alpha channels) etc etc.

(I'll post a proper tutorial of this in the forums here when I get a chance to do it properly).

So yah.... LOTS AND LOTS of huge benefits! :matte-motes-smile:

[Jo Yardley]

I SO LOVE POSTERS!!!!

Sorry for shouting, but you just made my brain go into super drive.
Mmmmmmh can't wait to plaster vintage 1920s posters all over Berlin!

[Maeve Balfour]

I love your enthusiasm Jo! Your reply just made my day :matte-motes-smitten:

As I said in my previous post, my example was just a very basic, quick example. I would guess with cutting UV shapes into more poster-like dimensions, you could probably get SIX poster shapes per 512x512 texture (two rows x 3 rectangle uprights per row); with my rough rule of thumb of 100 pixels per metre in SL for nice image quality, if you kept your poster height to around 2m each, the image detail would be reasonable (especially for general "atmospheric" detail posters) - I guess this is subject to personal opinion, and mayhaps for important posters which have a higher need for detail, you could increase the pixel count per metre (using larger resolution images etc, though the tradeoff would be increase load time - all a balancing act and personal preferences).

Upping the stakes a little, if you instead opted for 1024x1024 pixel textures for your posters, but maintained the same 256pixel heights per poster, and UV-mapped your mesh to suit, you could in theory quadruple your poster count per mesh. (A rough guess, say, 24 poster images per texture, multiplied by eight textures/material zones... would equate to 192 posters in a single mesh object)... However, keep in mind that the triangle count would increase in your mesh as well, so the resultant LI (prim cost) would increase as well... but not by very much, especially depending on how large the volume of your mesh ends up being inworld. Still... even the increased triangle count would still be a relatively simple mesh object in complexity, so it would still be TINY in prim cost compared to rezzing 192 PRIMS to do the same effect. Making a haphazard GUESS... I would think it would cost well below 5 prims (probably MUCH lower) - I will have to try this out when I get a chance, and post the results.

So yah... my apologies in advance if I set your creative brain into too much overdrive, Jo! :matte-motes-wink:

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

I won't deny there are benefits of being able to put multiple textures on one canvas, but it's not as exciting as you describe. With normal prims we were able to do that, all you need to do is set the texture repeat to 0.5 and the offset to 0.25 for a 2x2 canvas. or 0.25 and 0.125/0.375.

I think the fact you can have one sided posters is more exciting, saving a lot of prims by getting rid of unused geometry.

I am a bit worried about the texture load though. If as you say one poster object as described is 5 prims (my guess is as good as yours, so let's go with that) and you assign a 1024x1024 texture to it, every 5 prims cost you 4 MB of texture memory once fully loaded. You could rezz 3000 of these objects on a full sim. 12000 MB won't fit any graphics card currently available. This is not a problem with the technique by itself, but a problem of using lots of big textures. If you settle with 512x512, the texture load is a fraction of that, but still a whopping 3000 MB, go with 256x256 and your graphics card is probably able to load everything on the sim. 256x256 won't allow a lot of posters ofcourse... If you are planning to reuse the posterprim throughout the sim (using the same texture), the problem ofcourse also gets smaller. Or you can ofcourse compensate the thing by duplicating textures for bricks and streets and whatnot on other prims.

[Maeve Balfour]

True that, Kwakkelde... however with mesh, you can place those posters however you like within a mesh's volume space... so you can spread said posters across multiple walls, even across multiple separate rooms, within the maximum allowable 64m3. THAT is what I find exciting - the freedom that brings, especially in using mesh to add extra texture detailing via decals on otherwise bland surfaces - can do a lot to increase visual diversity at a relatively small LI cost. (The multi-poster mesh would be set as phantom, to allow AVs to wander within its volume space unimpeded).

:matte-motes-smile:

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

What you describe with the 64 meter prims can also be done with normal prims. It's the mesh geometry that should get you excited, both in primsaving and shape, not the UV mapping. For rectangular objects UV mapping has nothing more to offer than offset (which is a way of UV mapping).

[Maeve Balfour]

I probably didn't make it clear in my wording I guess - I'm talking about using the UV-mapping to create multiple posters/decals per image COMBINED WITH the creative use of the mesh geometry... as in, separating up the equivalent UV spaces on the related mesh faces, and then spreading THOSE PIECES of mesh geometry around ... which will let you place the decals / posters at complete random in 3D space. My concept is to use these posters/decals as OVERLAYS on other mesh surfaces (slightly offset to be visible etc).

(I'm probably not writing clearly at this time of night LOL).

:matte-motes-confused:

EDIT: And yah, as you mentioned in your earlier post.. obviously texture load has to be taken into consideration. Moderation in texture usage is always important... my idea is to allow for a nice texture display via responsible texture usage, while at the same time saving in the equivalent prim cost of spreading those said posters around. By no means am I wanting to encourage rampant texture overkill, rather, just a method to achieve a nice visual result AND save on prims at the same time.

Phew - time for me to sleep!

LOL, and EDIT on YOUR EDIT BELOW: No offence taken whatsoever Kwakkelde! Your point is completely valid AND valuable! (using textures with care and moderation).

:smileyvery-happy:

:matte-motes-smile:  :matte-motes-smile:

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

Ah in that case we agree it's the geometry and not the UV mapping that makes the difference:)

Using one canvas for multiple textures has ofcourse two other advantages, small as they might be for most people in most cases... You can save upload costs by a factor "number of textures on one canvas" and all posters will load at the exact same time. The second one might also mean some savings in streaming time between servers, not sure. I can imagine it takes slightly more time to fetch and process 4 512 textures than a single 1024.

btw, you could also just use the entire multi-texture canvas on all posters, then apply a repeat and offset to them. That way you can make variations in layout. This does sound rather difficult when working with more than 8 non square textures though...

EDIT (on your edit) I didn't mean to accuse you of texture overkill:)...but what you describe is a possible way to use too many textures.