Chic Aeon
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Posts posted by Chic Aeon
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You CAN get much of the look of normal maps and specular by using Blender Cycles (or equivilant) instead of Blender Render and learning how to adjust the nodes for the amount of "bumpiness" and "shine" you want. This almost limits the real need for normal and specular. I almost never use a normal map now as they can have some pretty disastrous effects under certain lighting conditions (really ugly).
So that might be something you would want to look into if you are not already using cycles render. Other than that I would say that using very SUBTLE materials textures would be the best plan. Test under many Windlights, not just the one you use most often
. Always a good plan.When materials were first enabled not many could see them, now I go along with the over half but I have never seen any statistics either.
I think the most important thing is to not RELY on a normal map to convey the shape of the object. Again, testing what it looks like without advanced lighting on is the key. It is a delicate balance. Cycles (or if you use software other than Blender then the equivalent) helps a bunch. Then most people see the item in the same way.
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Were you both racing to answer? LOL.
THANK YOU. Obviously that isn't something I look at often as my stuff is always very "light".
Whew. Smarter now
. Yes there is a big backdrop in the scene (although not visible) for Cycles baking refelictiveness (a primmy thing if it would be inworld) as well as the lights and such. And to be honest, on my screen those numbers are SOOOO tiny I didn't notice them until I took the screenshot with the SNIP TOOL (oh so a favorite and used often).
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So I was looking at the difference between a sphere and a cube with a sub surf modifier applied.
I am VERY puzzled over the count that shows up in the top bar of the subsurfed (is that a word?) cube. I did an upload test and the uploader has a much more sane count.
Can some of you super techie folks explain why this is so off? Thanks.
Maybe it is just tooooo early for me.
Screenshots.
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I know this IS confusing and is for everyone so don't feel badly.
It has been years but if you can find your member console for Aditi (it looks just like the one for the main grid) you can often take the mesh test from there. I can't seem to find a link to GET there using Google and I haven't actually been there in years --- but the important thing so far as mesh uploads is that even if you can GET to the Sandbox (not all that difficult and Aquila has explained) you will not be able to upload mesh without completing that test FOR ADITI.
Maybe someone who has been to that member console of late can help with that part.
Meanwhile I found a newish video on the beta grid while looking for the other stuff for you. Might be helpful.
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You will need to complete a NEW AND SEPARATE mesh upload test for the beta grid. Sometimes it is difficult to even FIND that tast in order to take it. Sometimes it doesn't appear on the page where it should be.
Here is the link to the wiki page. Currently the link to take you to the upload test apparently goes to an unsecure page? That's the message I get from my browser. Anyway, it's a start. It took me a long while to get it worked out so you won't be alone in the hassles.
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Preview_Grid#Uploading_Mesh_on_Aditi
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WELL RIGGED mesh hair will not enter you body -- or only on the most strange poses. Note the caps. Try the demos with your AO at least to see how it works for you. And yes, STYLE will have a lot to do with it also. But there are tons out there that work very well.
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Chin Rey answered you perfectly.
From a fashion standpoint, you just toss a lot of stuff. Boots will often still work, Many things with long sleeves, many pants. Your mesh body depending on the one you pick will alter the shape of your body even if you use the exact same shape. So some tweaking there will be needed and things you have saved in one size (often what I do to save on inventory space) will often not fit.
If you bought things with a redelivery terminal then you might be able to get another size that way.
You WILL be starting over to a big degree. I got my Lara body a year ago and then there were only a few shoes that fit -- all were Slink back then. Now happily I have a nice wardrobe of heels and sandals and such.
Note too that note all tattoos with appliers will work "easily" with all bodies. Omega system requires a second part so I typically opt for things specificially made for my body.
It is pretty complex -- even just from the fashion perspective
. Good luck.Pay PARTICULAR attention to the alpha masks on various bodies. You may find that one works with more of your clothes than another. They are NOT the same.
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On the mainland sand turns into grass dependent on the elevation. You cannot "retexture" mainland (other than adding a prim or some terrain cover as already mentioned). What you MIGHT be able to do depending on your land is RAISE the land with the terrain tools. Land near water level is grass but as you move up in elevation it turns to grass.
That is your only NATURAL method and it will be dependent on your lot. You can only terraform a bit on mainland, but I have successfully turned sand to grass on one end of a larger plot.
Good luck.
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Firestorm is a wonderful viewer and my viewer of choice for many years. That being said it is NOT easy on your system, so don't expect better performance. Turn your graphics setting down to medium or whatever you need for it to work. SL is a hungry gal when it comes to graphics
.Good luck and glad someone told you about disabling lights. There are Firestorm classes which will help if you decide to keep using it. If you are still having issues you might want to try a 1.23 based (old style) viewer like Singularity. Those are typically easier on your system and the only one I can use on my old laptop.
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Unfortunately the DMCA process has its own issues and your friend may not want to go into that. Make sure they know the ramafications before executing.
YES, it is an unfair process on the Marketplace. So many rules are broken every day and reviews which "should" be taken down are not while other that IMHO should stay are removed. What the party line is and what happens in actuality are often very different things.
Full perm folks take that risk for sure. Others do too. I have alerted a few content creators about their works being stolen. Sometimes it gets resolved without a DMCA. And then again there are plenty of FALSE DMCA's file (almost worse than the other end of the spectrum).
Your friend might want to contact the person selling the goods. That would be my personal first step. There is an off chance that they don't know they are doing anything wrong. To some folks "full perm" means "I can do anything with it". They never bother to read the EULA.
I wish I had an answer, but until people start becoming more honest (only some of course) I see no way around this issue. It has been going on for years.
PS. IF the person in question is selling the items as mod - copy and NOT as full perm, then under MANY liscenses they would be legal. That is TACKY for sure but still follows many of the EULAs out there. It wasn't really clear from your post what perms they were selling things with.
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Often best to start out with something simpler than a house (or a dress) when learning 3D modeling. There are lots of tutorials on the web. Some work for 3D game platforms like SL and some do not.
If you don't mind reading instead of watching, there are some start at the beginning tutorials made just for the SL type of virtual world here.
Good luck. Don't expect to build a castle in a week
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New location. Smaller and sleek but many new and favorite filming and photography sets are available. All the info is on the MOSP blog. Photos and links to the various spots are in the top link bar. http://machinimasl.blogspot.com/
Come make some art!
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Congrats!
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Just wanted to add that it is REALLY important that you learn this if you are going to make houses. Unfortunately there are quite a few great designers out there that simply skip the whole physics thing and just put in invisible cubes which ups the LI and really makes the house look bad when you click on it.
So read. Try and if you have questions them post back here (with pictures) and someone will help you.
Basically -- make a SUPER SIMPLE phsyics model for you house (lots of photos of that I suspect; I use cubes).
Upload that physice dae file as your PHYSICS model in the physics window (upload from file choice).
Choose Analyze and you will see your model wrap around your house (hopefully -- if it looks wrong in the upload window then you did something incorrectly
. Backtrack and try again.)When you get your house into world, choose PRIM in the Features tab on a dropdown menu (sorry not in the viewer right now). THEN you should be able to walk through your doors and into the corners of your building.
BE SURE AND TEST.
The beta grid is your friend.
Good luck.
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Well since no one has answered you I will take a stab at this. BUT these are just guesses. I have had high rez snapshot checked for 8 years and I set all sorts of special things in Phototools. I "think" that it takes a png type file instead of a jpg or something like that. Some research in Google says that it enables high rez snapshot (well duh) and that it doubles the size of the photo (it doesn't do that -- any longer anyway,) but it MAY double the pixels. As far as I know there is no reason NOT to have it checked. I typically take 5000 x 2690 and then crop and resize down.
I THINK that shadow smoothing is now on the photo tools in Firestorm (maybe the Linden viewer too?) If it is the setting I am thinking about, it has a tendency to crash all but the heartiest machines. The shadows do look better but not worth crashing. You can also choose OPTIMIZED under Avatar Shadows in Preferences and this helps if you have any crashing issues. I doesn't change the shadows too much --- BUT now that I think about it, I have been having a nasty flicker the last couple of weeks and the new server codes may not like that feature. It is definitely something to do with shadows for me. So I think I will change that setting and see if it helps stop that nasty flicker.
So good that I at least tried to answer. Good luck.
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Many people have Linden Homes and mainland so you SHOULD be able to buy. Since you are premium, chat up the support folks and see if they can do something. You will likely need to put in a support ticket to fix this OR it might have just been a "bad day" as we have seen those lately
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I have your same card and Win10. I have NO ISSUES
so it isn't a universal problem.I, however, turned off ALL the bells and whistles except "let my recording device work" when I installed Win10 as it is very VERY invasive. I told them NOTHING and run Win10 just like Win7 with a few extra perks like a better Windows Explorer. So you might look up some articles on all the parts of Win10 that track you (and of course have applications that need to run in order to do that). It took me well over an hour to turn all the applications off and opt out of things when I first got my computer. Most folks don't do that of course, but I had already researched so took the tim.
I hear a lot about issues with Win10 but if you go to the trouble to do your homework and make some decisions on what aps you let invade your privacy you will likely have a better experience. There are of course all sorts of OTHER things that can lead to the crashing issue -- software incompatability at the top of the list.
Just saying that it isn't happen for all the folks with your card and Win 10
.Good luck.
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I just want to get this clear in my head since I have read a lot about it here but have happily had no issues.
Is the reason why I have no issues::::::
A. I only upload less than eight materials (typically 2 to 4 - using Cycles so materials are pretty much necessary)
B. Am using an OLDER version of Firestorm which I believe doesn't recognize the new uploader code?
Note, the spaces in material name issues isn't Universal as while I seldom add spaces after so many years of NOT adding spaces, I just did and everything worked just fine (3 materials).
So IF you only use 8 or less materials is there still an issue on a current viewer? And is this just for SOME (Mac versus PC for example - different viewers etc) or for everyone.
Thanks for the clarification. I think I have read all that has been said since the change took place but I can't say I am clear on things
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Just wanted to state that BAKING doesn't necessarily put all textures into one map. Someone could easily make an item with say four materials -- EACH mapped to fit a texture plane (let's hope 512 or 256
). Each material "could" take a separate texture -- just like putting on a separate texture on each side of a prim is possible. Personally I try and get all my textures on one map, but we each work differently. So a material (in the 3D modeling sense) equals and opportunity to make inworld changes (textures, specularity and normal, glow, transparency, tint etc). That same four material object could take only ONE texture and the materials added could be needed for other reasons (listed above) OR for changing colors or textures via a script.
The textures could certainly all be on one map either by baking with textures in a combined way or by baking an ambient map and then adding different textures to various parts of the map and using MULTIPLY in graphics software to bond the two together.
This wasn't necessarily a comment to the OP, but I thought some folks might be confused by what was mentioned.
EDIT: And I guess I should add that baking a map doesn't stop you from using regular (unbaked) textures inworld. You can slap a texture on a baked item easily. How successful that will be would be dependant on the quality of the mapping. Again, so not my thing - the gal seduced by gorgeous textures, but certainly doable!
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I just wanted to mention that it IS possible to do what you are saying with mesh. One has to think simplistically of course and keep the poly count down. I just got a goregous bed with five pillows, comforter and many pieced wooden bedstead with lots of details, shadow prim (could have been a rug) and WITH animations that is two LI (I would mention the designer but I don't think we are supposed to).
IF someone linked a whole set together and kept the poly count down it is doable. The piece of furniture could actually be 1.499 and still be counted as I LI by the current method.
In order to do this the mesh needs to be simple to start with and likely have custom lODS (or it may be simple enough not to need those - who knows).
I have actually made a couch (six cushions for three sitters) chair and table all under 1 LI (linked). I certainly could have added a simple rug (a plane) if I had wanted. Not everyone is going to be thrilled with the inability to move furniture around though
. So there are trade offs. Also you can only have 8 materials in one object so there is that limitation but it isn't a big one.
I work in Blender so can't speak to your program
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Well of course I had no idea what I was doing but it worked out swimming. I did try a mixed shader with the diffuse/glossy but it didn't seem to do much. Will look at that again.
I actually DID have the AO turned off in world (happily the file was open in another window) mostly because I never fiddle with that.
Will play with Emission. Thanks for the input!!!!
I was AMAZED how well it came into world. Really never expected that, so a good thing to add to the mix when you want a gorgeous glossy.
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Can the Ambient Occlusion node in Cycles be use as part of a combined bake? Info seems both sketchy and confusing. I understand it use in setting up a scene for a render but I also found mention of it being used in a node structure for a material output but that was the end of the comment.
Hints? :D. Maybe for increasing the ambient shadows for more dramatic baking? Will experiment but breadcrumbs are good.
Thanks.
Edit: So I did some experiment and it does "seem" to give a good effect for some things and could be handy. In my tests it worked much better with the glossy shader than the diffuse. It DOES (as I had read) brighten your scene a LOT so I had to compensate with my brightness and contrast shader.
Here is the node structure and screenshot (note that materials are not in their final state and texture scale hasn't happened -- just starting the project). Hence the pixelated look on the "wood" LOL.
It SEEMS like it should show up in the bake but it will be awhile until I get there.
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Just wanted to note (and I just skimmed but didn't see it mentioned) that #1 Tier goes retroactively so in order to have reclaimed your tier from the group it would have needed to happen a month(ish) ago. And if you give up premium you will get charged for the last month of land use AFTER you give up your status. So you need to give up your land a month before leaving (friends learned that the hard way). That last was mostly a general comment, not to you but important to know.
Also -- and a friend of mine really got hurt on this even though he CALLED the LL accounting office and asked (they gave the wrong answer) --- your tier payment date starts from the first time you ever bought land (or I am going to assume your donation date). It has nothing to do with when you buy the current land. So if your tier date is the 25th say and you buy land the 24th you end up paying for a month you didn't use this. You should be able to check your tier date in your account on the web. Plan ahead if you can.
I don't think many folks understand that until they get caught in the red tape.
Good luck. And yes, if you shop for land well you can get it cheaper buying off the grid than at auction. So unless there is a reason to want that specific piece you will probably be better off sluething the map or ads.
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The bounding box will depend on the physics model (or lack there of) of the mesh.
If a designer used a "cube" as the physics model then there would be no "air" between the legs; the bounding box would be the top of the table down to the ground directly underneath the table top.
If a designer used a specially made physics model that "wrapped around" the legs and table top then it would act like a real life table. (It is a bit more complicated than this but that's the general answer)
If a designer let the uploader "make" the physics model it would depend on which setting they chose. Many designers tend to just upload all furniture on lowest (not me
) so in that case it "might" act a bit odd like it is partially phantom. I am guessing you may have run into that.
. Always a good plan.
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Why has Linden Lab chosen to insult its existing Second Life user base?
in General Discussion Forum
Posted
Seems to me that if you're developing a new product in addition to your old product, the people happy with your old product should be the last ones you should ask how it should be. You should ask the people who thought they'd want your old product but decided they didn't want that product after using it.