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Chic Aeon

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Posts posted by Chic Aeon

  1. AKERUKA has quite a few male mesh heads if you haven't tried them. Can't vouch for any as I am still not happy with the male bodies :D so my "guy" version of me is still in system avatar mode. Happily "he" doesn't get all that bare all that often *wink*.

     

    Good luck.

  2. I have made large mesh off sim surrounds with fairly good success. Since you won't be walking on them you can use the lowest physics possible and if you keep them as simple as possible (no sub surf modifiers etc) and let TEXTURES make up the terrain it works nicely.

     

    The prim count will be more than with sculpts but I personally HATE HATE HATE that coming into a sim and being inside a low flat HUGE sphere while the sculpt rezzes. I have a new very fast computer and fast connection so I can only imagine what it is like for folks with less power.

     

    If you have seven sims, you can definitely afford some "prims" (again my point of view - I have always hated sculpts).  You will want to make the low hills and link those to a root prim that is placed on the land area. The root prim (can be a cube or an artful rock or pretty much anything) can be turned invisible or sunk in the ground as you like. Rez your hills ON the land, add the root prim of your choice and THEN move things off sim.

     

    It will of course look more realistic if you make several versions of the hills (you will need to keep them under the 64 meter size and cluster them) and stagger them around the area.

     

    Choices are good :D

  3. Well presumably you have the link to the application form. If not, it is here: https://www.projectsansar.com/creatorpreview

     

    "Word on the street" and pragmatic insight suggest that only highly skilled creators (possibly well acquainted with many disciplines) will be chosen. Since it has been stated officially many times that folks working in Maya will be the ones first invited with other 3D modelers possibly added later, that seems like a pretty big criteria -- the Maya thing with a good looking portfolio and or a good sales - exhibition record.

    It also seems that you need to have a well-defined project to work on to be heartily considered.

    Only the Maya part of this info is official and of course that might have been changed. But unless you are up in the top tier and perhaps with a few "teammates" I suspect your chances are very low.

     

    Patience is a good thing :D.

     

     


  4. Ahnue wrote:

      Is this because a link set was taken apart and not relinked? 

    If you have your house unlinked now, that could be the issue.

     

    Here's the thing and I will try and explain it sort of technically LOL which I am not all that good at.

     

    Each piece of mesh has three parts to its land impact. You can see these by clicking on the "More Info" button in the build menu.  Download weight, physics weight and server weight. 

    Download and physics weights vary but server weight is always .5 (half a land impact point). When an object is LINKED all of the various weights are added together.   When unlinked, the lowest any  single object can be is .5 which ROUNDS UP TO 1. So for example you can link a .5 land impact picture frame to another one and they will be 1 land impact. Unlinked they will be ONE EACH.

     

    So for a more complex example like your house, you can have a linked object that has 30 parts. The lowest it can be when linked would be 15. When unlinked the lowest is can be is 30.   It could be MORE than 15 or 30 of course depending on the complexity of some of the pieces of mesh. There are many times when building a complex item such as a house that the builder can keep adding bits and pieces to the final build and get NO land increase. I just love that. It's like a bonus. 

     

    Even if you take a prim build house made up of cubes and change it to convex hull in the features tab you lower the land impact by half. This will only work on houses with indivual walls and doorways of course or you get that "can't walk into the house" issue.

     

     

    • Like 1
  5. Nothing has changed except that the uploader will now split a mesh with more than eight faces into parts. Before it would just not upload some parts (this is as I remember from one occassion - I typically haven't used many materials until I switched to Cycles render).

     

    Since you stated that your object is one piece in Blender, then you need to limit your materials to 8 or less OR purposefully divide the mesh into two parts and upload accordingly. 

    IF you can, use the same materials on more pieces. You can put several textures on ONE texture within you graphics program (like a checkerboard) in accordance to the size and shape that they need to be for the parts the coorispond to.  Then you can have one material with various texture LOOKS. These of course will be changed together so if you are using specular or normal maps (or tinting or shine etc) think about which ones can go together in a combined texture.

    If your item is indeed smallish, you should be able to get it down to one land impact.  Make sure that the lowest LOD is very very low. Use a cube for your physics model maybe :D.

     

    Here is a good link on LODs from this forum long ago.

     

    https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Simple-mesh-pillow-13-prims/td-p/2482869/page/2

     

     Edit: Probably the most important thing in general that I forgot to say as it seems so obvious is that SL requires LOW POLY modeling in order to get low land impact. So stay away from the sub surf modifier and similar modifiers as much as possible and get rid of any extra edge loops that you can after applying the modifiers.  Don't follow tutorials that are meant for those needing RENDERS and not game objects. They will just get you into trouble *wink* unless you know what NOT to follow.

     

     

     

    • Like 3
  6. The rez and open the box idea is pretty old (like 9 years). These days often (not always) you WEAR the "box" (oftentimes it looks like a present or a shopping bag or whatever).   THEN you sometimes need to TOUCH the "bag, box etc" to open it into your inventory. Sometimes the boxes unpack themselves.

     

    MOST times there will be information in your CHAT window telling you to 'touch to unpack" or "the items has been unpacked - please delte me" etc.

     

    So with that info give it another try.

  7. I agree. Not the house. The furniture.

     

    I have decorated at two story fairly large house with 100 land impact and had it full and very "House and Gardens" even with some outside touches -- so it is possible. Look at the land impact of your furniture. You can typically get a LOT of decor items at 1 land impact and extremely nice lounge chairs for 3.

    Check the venues as well as some of the popular shops that sell low prim furniture. You can have a great time decorating! 

  8. Uploading things full perm is just the same as uploading anything else. While permissions can be set in the viewer before upload, they can also be changed afterwards, so your final permissions are not an important part of the upload process.

     

    You need to set (or make your own) LODs for upload. For a picture frame it will likely not matter :D. BUT you do want to make sure that someone can see your picture frame when using LOD 2 or 1.25 or whatever you decide is the level you are "building for".

     

    I suggest uploading your item using several different settings in the upload panel. Again, custom LODs are considered better, but small steps at first.  TEST TEST TEST to notice what the differences are. Change your LOD settings (Firestorm has an easy method in the Quick Preferences Panel if you use FS) and not how things fall apart if your LODs are not good.

     

    A very old but still relevant is a vide called "Kettle Quest". Look that up and learn about LOD making and settings.

    http://blog.machinimatrix.org/optimizing-meshes/

     

    Just so you know, there are tons of picture frames out there to buy full perm, but a picture frame IS a good beginner project. Likely most of us made those when starting out.

    One of the best things you can do is to go through this forum and read the posts. Even if you don't understand what they are saying always, it will give you a background of sorts.

     

     

  9. **** FOR NEW FOLKS HERE ****

     

    Sorry but I feel I really need to respond to this post. The rental agent may certainly have some better values available but this is not one of them.

     

    So beware.

     

    You can not turn around in a 4 meter space -- especially if you are new. So be sure and see the demo before renting and check others.

    You would be paying $3 a prim which isn't unreasonable but 10 prims is almost nothing.

    And this is what really got me:

     

    "Alternatively, if you are a premium member, you can buy this house and land for L$698 (the cheapest 48 sqm parcel available at the time of this post)."

     

    The reason it is the cheapest in that category is that it is a rediculous category. You pay the same amount of tier (free for your first 512) for 48 meters as you would for 512. You can often find 512s for LESS than a linden a prim (so $512 for a 512 or even less).  So there are TONS of better deals out there.

     

    So new folks --- DO SOME RESEARCH!

    BTW -- I do not have land for rent. I am old and have a fairly good reputation as someone that tells the truth. So I am not the competition trying to trash this person. I have no idea who they are. I just don't want new folks to think this is the standard here in SL.

     

     

     

     

  10. In general you can RENT much cheaper than paying tier these days (not even considering the cost to buy). The best deals are mainland and there are a few companies that basically rent a a buch a prim per week.

     

    So for example a 300 prim parcel would be 300 a week which is much cheaper than tier UNLESS you get together with friends or alts and buy land for a group. If you want an apartment, there are some pretty nice ones for about $2 a prim per week which includes the house and very nice neighborhoods.

     

    Check the classifieds and go exploring. It is great fun.

  11. It is going to be very difficult to find a commercial homestead (less prims than a regular sim and doesn't hold a many visitors) as most homesteads are residential or LOW commercial and not that many are adult.

     

    So you best bet will likely be the mainland adult content Zindra. If  you are buying you should have no trouble. The last time I looked over there most of the continent was for sale (yes almost all yellow and quite surprising).   By the way, a typical lot would be a 1024 with 234 prims for $5 a month with your free 512 discount. The next step up would be a 1536 with 351 land impact. I think that is $8 a month tier again with the free premium tier bonus.   Make sure you check the amount of tier you will pay before buying. There are breaking points of you are on mainland and paying directly to Linden Lab.

  12. Changing your shape yourself: 

    https://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Controlling-your-avatar-s-appearance/ta-p/700709

     

    You can also buy premade shapes (some are free on the Marketplace).

    In order to change your skin you need to buy a skin (some are free for group members).

    To add feet and hand enhancers you BUY them (almost always Slink) but I would suggest waiting a bit and then perhaps buying a complete mesh body which works much better.

     

    You can only "reshape" clothes that are made from prims and sculpts, not mesh which is the standard now. To learn how to reshape "prim" clothes if you want I suggest a few basic building classes which really everyone needs :D. NOTE that some non-rigged mesh attachments like hats and a few shoes can be adjusted. Rigged mesh that move with the body cannot -- hence ALWAYS try a demo.

     

    Current eyelashes, fingernails and toenails come with mesh bodies and heads. Older style you can buy attachment for the eyelashes. Fingernails and toenails are "appliers" for either you hands and feet attachments OR you mesh body (many brands of those to try out).

     

    Have no idea about the LIFE hud. It sounds like a "game within a game" thing but no idea.

     

    Good luck.

     

    MUCH to learn. A little bit at a time is good.

     

     

     

  13. I don't make mesh clothing but I can tell you that most fitted mesh is not smaller. GOOD fitted mesh fits all bodies perfectly or close to perfectly depending on the skill of the modeler.  Some need no alpha layers at all.   So if you are having an issue it is not an inherent one because of the "fitted mesh". 

     

    I suspect that some searching will get you quite a bit of info on the making of fitted mesh and I understand from folks that DO make fitted mesh that looking into the Avastar tutorials might be a good plan.

     

    So far as designing for other bodies, you need a developer kit. Also from what other have told me  -- it is not easy to get some developer kits. The people making the bodies seem to want to make sure the folks that GET those kits actually know what they are doing -- and that seems a sound idea to me.

     

    So learning how to make BASIC fitted mesh is most likely the best plan. Then when you can show that you can do that, you may be able to join in with those deveoloper kits. 

  14. While I haven't made a lot of hair, I like the finished product of cylinders (or another 3D shape) over planes.  Unless you have a ton of planes, they seem less than convincing (at least the ones I have seen). The folks that I blog for seem to use a 3D shape of some kind and I love their hairs.

    From my point of view (again I don't do this often) the solidifier and duplicating and flipping are often very close to the same thing. I suspect that which one would be better would depend on your shape.

     

    2. i uploaded some of my attempts at making hair to beta grid, and it cost about 290L$ to upload the mesh. is that considered reasonable? about how much, on a rough estimation, would it cost to upload mesh hair to second life?

     

    NOOOOOOOO. Not good. LOL.   The uploader has three sections that count for the land impact.  Download, Physics and Server.  

    If Physics is the issue, use a plain cube as the Physics model (browse choice, find the dae cube you have saved, use it).  If it is SERVER -- then you likely need to JOIN all those pieces of hair before exporting. Most often it might be DOWNLOAD, and there the last LOD should most likely  be set as low as possible. We can't really see an avatar well half way across the sim, no reason to see the hair of said avatar :D.

     

    Most of my uploads, even fairly complex ones are 1 land impact ($11 or $12). Hair is "small" so it gets a break on that part of the equation. Go back to the beta grid, see what category the offending number (highest) is in and adjust your method - settings accordingly.

     

     

  15. Just adding to this thread with an example. 

    Most of my round building (see post above this) did better LI wise as unanalyzed, but there was a HUGE difference in this balconey. 

     

    Using the same balconey file and same physics model dae the analyzed one on the left is 2 -- the unanalyzed is 13.  

     

    THEY ARE BOTH 2 in the UPLOADER; the difference happens when changed into prim which is of course needed here.

     

    So from now on -- until I get a better subliminal idea of which is better for different shapes and complexities (or whatever) I am just going to test both ways :D

     

    

  16. As far as I know there are no uses for diffuse maps in SL. The texture pane takes SPECULAR (light reflecting) and NORMAL (bumps) maps.

     

    I doubt that Linden Lab will change Windlight to support one program, but this is a resident forum so they don't typically read comments here execpt in the technical (server) areas.

     

    You can make specular maps with Shader Map 2 or Crazy Bump and I believe there is a plug in for Photoshop that is free. Not all software makes things good for our world here.

  17. Yes search is your friend (search for size and price) and unless it is protected land or waterfront you shouldn't spend more than a linden a prim. You can often get for less :D.  OR look around the map. Find what size yellow square is 1024 and you can click on most to see their price. You can learn a LOT from a map photo.

  18. Super clever on the stairs and LODs girl!   I personally am not fond of stairs at all but I will remember that for the future.

     

    I have been doing much more experimenting on the beta grid with analyzed and unanalyzed and find that unanalized often works as well as the other method AND is lower physics. Now most of the time my physics is way lower than my download but I did make some improvements (and hopefully learned a few things that I will remember in the future ). 

     

    The uploader really likes QUADRALATERALS (not a big suprise) and normally I am in that straight line mode -- but I have been working on a steampunk build and the only rectangular pieces in there are windows and doors LOL.

     

    So to reply to Pamela's question -- I think the only way is to TEST the differences. I imagine that eventually one "gets a feel" for things just like lighting and Cycles but  it might take awhile judging by my experiences.

     

    Long ago and far away Drongel (at least in my memory and my stickly note) said "cubes not touching - analyze - change to prim". That's what my sticky says still. Of course I was VERY new then and likely missed a whole lot of what he was trying to say. So I am glad at least that I know now to try both ways while I am working on reasonable LODs at long distance (I check at 2. Anyone using 1 ? Well they will need to be closer than a half a sim away LOL.

     

    Here's my house in progress. I made it four times actually. Beta grid, Opensim, Beta Grid (with upgraded model from Opensim testing) to Agni. Whew.  

     

    It is currently at 46 without the "fire escape" stairs in the back and the lights that will go in front (they are 1 li so not a big deal).

     

    I am pretty happy with that.  About half that in Opensim with the same files  but the rules are different there.

     

    

  19. Thanks. I did remember the walkable hills part.

     

    I made a pretty complex building with many interior walls and doorways. And while my physics model "appeared" to be correct, ONE doorway (a very wide one that was not going to get a door -- so an archway really) repeatedly filled in half of the walk through area. I decided that it was likely the uploader (both SL and OS) got confused with a lot going on. I took the piece out above the archway and it worked as expected.

    So good to know my guess "may"  have been correct.    Most of the time my download weight is the highest (almost always really) so I haven't had any big issues with the physics weights.

     

    Thanks!

     

     

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