Codewarrior Congrejo

2 simple answers : - once you already 'took' a screenshot and its stored in your inventorys Album folder: Doubleclick on it, open it and choose : Save As * Edit: i believe this here is the "easier way", that Marigold couldn't remember anymore =) . this way you can store them on your hard disc and easily mail them to your own mail accounts or other people. or simply directly upload them from your harddrive to Facebook. (or send them to your FB posting emailadress) - If you are making a fresh snapshot you can choose 'in the process' of making it to send it via Email: Cheers! Code

In addition to Rolig's perfect answer about the jusristic / legal points on that matter; To stay on the legal side, what you rather should do is: - Grab the default avatar, or export your personal avatar's mesh by using an older Phoenix viewer version and export it as OBJ. in 3 parts. This will give you the exact mesh as you are wearing it with all its deformations and shape morphs being aplied. (thus you dont need to reconstruct them). Tutorials on how to export your mesh that way are existant on youtube. And it's not illegal (unless you plan on using it in anything that you would create income for you - so for 'selling' your rendered images or movie would need a permission from Linden Lab) - As you already said you don't have an issue to ask the creators for permission: - In that case just ask them directly for the source files instead of illegaly 'ripping' them out of secondlife. - This includes asking the skin creator of the skin you are wearing, the clothing creators, and creators of all other textures, meshes or sculpties you want to use in your render / animation scene. If they say yes and are willing to share the source files with you, you don't need to illegaly rip them and you can ensure you have the official permissions. (plus all files already in the needed formats) Easy steps, right way to go ; )

In addition to the other answer/s; you can also do that on your own. If you are up for experimenting a bit with it: Make a new avatar-shape and play with the shape sliders and make yourself small, and try to adjust towards the generell looks and visual nature of a child. Also try out your clothing items (if you have modify persmissions) and resize them to fit onto your new child size. (just make a copy of them first to keep one normal sized version of it) Same with Hair, Shoes etc. I am allways for encouraging to try things on your own before buying. =) But of course you can go also the more comfortable way and check out the market place as the other answer suggested. No shame in it, and they have great stuff for child avatars.

Ah whatever - for complicity's sake .. I'll copy paste the Z-Brush tutorial here too. In case someone first struggles into this thread first when searching for solutions : ) - Extension 5 - Addon : Zbrush - Multiple UVs on one combined mesh - Creation, Handling, and Texturing If you want 'more texture-detail' on one combined object - and give it more then just one texture / UV, you have to create and manage different UVs. Whilst this is rather an easy task in regular 3D Programs like Blender, Maya, Max, the workflow for ZBrush is quite different. Due to ZBrush's rather limited capabilities of handling more complex UVs and also the fact that it in general mixes them all together into one texture space - if you don't know the full depth and functionality of Z-Brush and ways to work around. This tutorial will not only show you how to edit and apply different texturesin ZBrush to a mesh that has been created outsides of ZBrush with several UVs on the same mesh. It will also explain the complete workflow on how to create different UVs on one object 'in' ZBrush. In addition it will give you insight on how to actually paint on UV maps also in Z-Brush. Which is little known to the most users. The workflow is rather different from what regular 3D software users are used to when handling and editing their UVs and maps. But for everyone who ever struggled with this, and I know many do, I hope all the effort gone into this tutorial will enlighten you =) Since this is rather an extended workflow process, I will keep it mostly explained in pictures. It might be a bit harder to understand for ZBrush-Starters. And I am 'trying' to explain every button and step as well. So don't feel discouraged when you don't understand it fully in the first place. You can post questions, and I am sure many people will be willing to help and reply. This being said - let's get started: For those who don't know how: - CTRL+SHIFT+Rightclick and drag a rectangle (or a free selection shape, when you change the Selection-Tool into a lasso) this will hide the selected area. - Switch to the Polygroups-Panel and choose Group Visible to assign all visisble polygons into one group. - You can repeat this step for other parts as well. - Another option for Grouping is to use colors and paint on your model and choose Polygroup > From Polypaint. - Also Masking can be used to create groups. - The Duplicate Tool option is nested right below your Subtools in the Subtool-Panel. - Hide the original model by clicking on the Eye-Icon assigned to it in the Subtool-Panel. - To unhide all polygroups or hidden parts just CTRL+SHIFT+Rightclick on an empty spot on the canvas. - Duplicating your model will preserve the original and you need it to repeat these steps for the other parts. - To hide one of the created polygroups CTRL+SHIFT-Rightclick on it. - If you have several groups and need to hide more then one - repeat this process by clicking onto all parts you want to hide. - Once you have hidden the group/s and only the part you will work on right now remains visible: - Go to the Tools-Panel, under Geometry > Edit Topology and choose Delete Hidden this will remove all invisible Polygons from this object. - We will combine the objects later again but for now we don't need those. - To Unwrap your new partial object, go to the Menu-Panel on top of Zbrush and choose ZPlugins > UV-Master. - Don't forget to choose in the Tools-Panel > UV Map the size you want for your UV texture. - 512x512 px, and so forth. Don't forget the highest resolution for Second Life is 1024x1024 px. - In here you can either just plain unwrap it with the unwrap command, or first do some control paintings if you wish your seams to be in a certain spot. - Now press the Flatten UVs Button in UV-Master. - Now switch to the Texture Map Panel and create (with the still 'flattened' UVs) a New Texture from UV. - This is needed for later because you will now work with different textures / different UVs on the same object. - And this also will give you a visual layout of the UV map, which allows you to paint on and knowing which face is where. - Press the Clone Texture Button. - Switch over to the Regular Texture Panel (nested under the Brushes), it will now display your newly cloned Image - And choose Export on the bottom in order to save this image to your disk. - Go back to UV Master and Unflatten your UVs. Continuing with the work: - Repeat now the steps from above with a new Dulicate of the original tool. But this time hide the other part. - Repeat also: Delete Hidden, the UV-Unwrapping, the Flatten UVs, the New Texture from UVmap, the Cloning, and the Export / Save Image, and Unflatten your UVs again. - Follow the 3 Steps above. - This will now Combine your both separated and UV'ed parts back into one object / tool. Important notes at this part of the process: - From now on you will have to choose from Texture Maps, and apply the Color-Information from those onto the separately UV'ed areas on your model. - You will have to Hide and Unhide the certain parts in order to edit or apply those Maps. - Simply painting across the whole surface of the object and then creating a New Texture from Polypaint will 'not' work anymore and just result in one collapsed image. - so keep the next steps in mind when working with such a model in ZBrush. Some consideration to take into account: BUT: - Many Export-Types (like exporting it into OBJ) will break the model into separate objects where the polygroups are. This means that the Normals will have a clear visible cut between the separated parts, which is a rather unwanted effect. And vertices will have dublicates, du to being on the same coordinates where the seams meet. - Normally we create objects with several UV maps applied in other software then Zbrush, because here we have full control of joining seams and vertices and prevent them from being separate objects. And would later on import it into Zbrush to do sculpting or further editing for displacement maps and other wanted steps. Or we would take a model that had been made in Zbrush and merge the objects, remove doublicated vertices, etc. - However the DAE Format is supposed to keep them as one object with joined seams. But sometimes it fails when coming out of ZBrush, so be aware of it and inspect your mesh closely after you exported and imported it into Second Life. PS: The DAE exporter is an extra plugin available for Zbrush. (you might need to download it first)* * Forum-hiccup again, won't let me paste the link, interprets it as image . Will try to add it as reply. Back to the workflow - Creating and applying images for the UVmaps: Method 1 - Image Editor: - Since you saved your images afore, for the bottom part and the upper part, you can now take them into any Image Editor, create a New Layer and paint whatever you desire on top of it. Now the important part - how to apply the textures to the different UV parts on the model: - make sure no parts are hidden or you can't subdivide. - if the textures appear too pixelated or blurry, just go back to the step of subdividing, add a few more divisions and apply the textures again. (The more subdivisions the more clean the outcome in your viewport) - Just don't forget to go back to the max amount it should have for SL before exporting. You don' want to accidentally try to upload a model with several million polygons. - You could also preserve a copy of the merged object. - keep in mind that subdivision allways changes the lowest division shape too. (Exceptyou are working with a 'Cage') - You need the high subdivision here really just to check the visual nature of your textures. Method 2 - Painting onto UVs within ZBrush: - For those being used to use the 'Morph UV' function, Morph-flattened UVs can't be used for the following steps. - They allow you to paint rather 'temporarily' onto it but there is no way of preserving it. This is why we will work with the flattened UVs from UV master. - If you are afraid to mess things up on your original model (especially the "Undo" often breaks the Unflatten, and the propper return to your model is not possible anymore - its's a known issue): - Just make use of the Work On Clone functionwhich UV Master is offering. - and here comes the magic: - Since the Flattened UV is fully Geometry this means you can subdivide it, paint on it, even sculpt it, relax or contract areas and much more. - You can even apply former created textures to it (by Polypaint > Polypaint From Texture ) and then continuing to paint or edit it later on again. Imortant: - Don't forget to disable 'Zadd' / 'ZSub' and to enable 'Mrgb or RGB' to prevent from accidentally sculpting or subdividing the UVs in unwanted ways, and to just apply color or material information to them. (right now we need to avoid anything that subdivides 'partially' or adds height/depth to it - but smoothing and other similar functions can be used) - It has to be back on its lowest subdivision level, or it will fail to unflatten again. (the unflattening is not needed, when we only want to paint on it and save the colorinformation to a texture - but as a warning note if you want to use this procedure for other tasks) Alright, that's it - you have passed the tutorial ! ; ) Cheers! Code. (original thread here : http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Z-Brush-Tutorial-Multiple-UVs-and-textures-on-one-mesh/m-p/1938327#M19981)

Ok this little Image tutorial has been made as answer to a user's question in another thread. But since it kinda belongs into the same category i'll add it here as well. (original thread http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Keeping-faces-intact-on-rigged-model/m-p/1941665#M20043) - Extension 5 - How to give your mesh several secondlife-conform faces equals: materials in blender The examples are explained by using a jacket, shirt and buttons which are all 'one combined / joined' mesh. And answering the question how you would manage to give each an own selectable face in SL and thus the abilty to texture them individually - eventhough being one object. The tutorial implies that the UVs have been already unwrapped, and made. And we are using the regular Blender materials (not Cycles) It can also be used to learn how to assign different faces onto one object that is just 'one' ongoing mesh and not several joined meshes. So here we go: - basically you would be done here. This is all it needs to create a file that - once exported and imported to SL - would have an own selectable face for each of these parts (shirt, jacket, buttons) - But if you want to give them already insides Blender their textures in order to edit or refine them / or just check the visual nature, align to UVs etc, you have to do the following steps as well: In addition : how to achieve this completely within ZBrush, there is another Turorial from me under this link: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Z-Brush-Tutorial-Multiple-UVs-and-textures-on-one-mesh/td-p/1938327 It also contains steps on how to actually create several UVs for the same object / mesh within Zbrush, and different methods on how to handle such a model, to edit and create textures for those independent UVs and Texture maps. Cheers, Code =)

allways! never stand still, that's the death of every creative mind =)

yeah, i guess its propably due to them being all on the same UV area / one face now and possibly pulling their color information from some pixels on the same map. You can try to solve it (and along the way check what happened to your UVs and the Faces) by following this lil tutorial (as promised): If you can't work it out i can offer you to send me the blender file and i'll check whats wrong with it, correct it and send it back / or tell you whats wrong (in case the fileformats aren't interchangeable within our both versions)- i'll send you a PM here in the forum with my email, in case you want to make use of it. Don't hesitate, for me it's a small thing to do =) I am using 2.66 (and a selfmade theme) so things might look a bit different. But i'm sure you can find most of it. Or stick to my suggestion at the end of this answer to take the chance and switch now already to a later version of Blender. (see at end) - Edit: Working with the default Blender materials (not cycles) in this example: Basically you are done after these above steps, and gave your object now all 'faces' to read out when being exported to Collada (DAE) and imported into SL. But in case you want to check on your UV's and /or give also the jacket, Shirt and buttons their own textures, you have to do these steps: You can do all of this witout being afraid to screw your skinweights. It won't in fluence or break them. PS: you might want to switch to a later Version of blender (i.e. 2.65 a or even latest 2.66 a) because thanks to Gaia and others / users indirectly helping (i am sure Gaia can explain better who was responsible for it : ) ) it has now Operator-Presets for Second Life in the also now an already 'included' Collada Exporter. But i'd suggest 2.65a. Because i just tried yesterday and the bone-weight-copy original scripts apperently won't enable in 2.66, and they haven't been updated by their creator in a while, it was a surprise even to Gaia (who offers a modified version of them ) that they have been still working until 2.65. Having the latest Collada Exporter and the presets can prevent from lots issues, which the older not natively provided plugins had. PS-PS: the usability and the UI have changed rapidly since 2.49 you might find it easier to learn on a newer blender version =)

hehe you are welcome =) thats what i'm doing it for. OK all in one object (yepp depends on how they have been made, and exported if they come in one object or several ones) If you bare with me i'll make you a lil tutorial on how to create different materials / faces. One thing in need to know for that in advance - did the UVs stay intact? or have they been changed / lost after the import. (so i know if i need to include this in the help) oh and i need the version of blender you are using to m ake sure it's the same menues etc.

hey Rucy, did you export it as OBJ or as DAE from Zbrush? (i made a little 'remark' about it in my Zbrush tutorial : http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Z-Brush-Tutorial-Multiple-UVs-and-textures-on-one-mesh/m-p/1940687#M20016) One of the work arounds is to export it as OBJ, import into Blender and then you have all former Polygroups as separate objects. Now assign to each object a 'new material', ('and' a new texture for the UV map - should several parts of the mesh have different image maps). Do this 'before combining them into one mesh. (and don't forget after 'joinging them' with CTRL+J, to also choose Mesh > Vertex > Remouve Doublicates. This will remove all vertices that are doubled in the spots where the formerly separated parts are now laying on top of each other) Also ensure in this case to run a mesh > normals > recalculate outside again, an d possibly also choose 'smooth' for the normals of the newly combined object again. Another way is (if it is imported as one object) and doesnt have different materials on it, select the exact same polygons/faces as you had them grouped in zBrush and make sure to assign each of these selections to a different material.(and possibly again also to different images for the UVs, in case you want more then one texture to be used) (The way SL reads the 'faces' coming from the blender's export is by different 'materials' / and their assigned vertices/faces. Each material = 1 face. Which is similar to the polygroups from Zbrush but not the exact same)

http://vimeo.com/18335506 Specifically for SL clothes: The complete Blender documentation about all weight-tools: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Modeling/Meshes/Weight_Paint (some of them like the gradient, are only available from version 2.66 on) PS: some of the tuts are older and talk about 'boneheat' its now called 'automatic weights' in the newer blender versions (just to avoid confusion)

Heya, in addition to Nylls great answer; I know from living partially myself in that part of europe that they way 'bank cards' are used there in practice is pretty similar to creditcards. But they still are 'not' creditcards. What you need is a Visa or Mastercard issued by those banks. Those are creditcards and different from your regular bank card. Edit: if you can however not get a creditcard (due to your finacial situation or other restrictions) you can easily make use of 'paypal' (paypal.com) it is a secure payment method and many residents are using it since years, and allows you to connect your bank account with it. So, as you see no need for 'unsecure' or cost-intense other card or payment systems.

Try to change it's decsription / naming a bit. Sometimes this issue is based on the Spam filter, sometimes it's based on another event being smiliar named. Also listing similar events on the same day can case issues. If for example only a small part of the text changes over these repeating events.

Have a look here: https://secondlife.com/my/support/system-requirements/index.php? It contains a full list of all supported graphic cards. And here for all informations on Graphic Card related issues / questions: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Graphics-cards/ta-p/700073 In some cases the latest drivers can cause issues too. If you recently updated it and SL worked for your before doing so, try to go back to your older driver version.

In addition to the other great answers. Here some technical facts regarding the theft of 3D content: Yes you can rip everything that has been read by your graphic card. This includes all 3D geometry, texture maps, materials, and even light-maps etc. What your graphic card 'sees' when rendering a scene is a big bunch of Tris (polygons with 3 vertices). So basically what you could rip out when catching such a screen / scene is something like this: This should already make you one thing clear. Whoever is 'stealing' the 3D geometry, has some 'work to do' in order to make all of this 'usable' again. Next points to take into consideration - 3D objects are not only visuals, they can contain weights, skin, armature-data and more: Once a DAE file is about to be uploaded into SL it is read and converted by being passed through the mesh-assets format into an internal format. (http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Mesh_Asset_Format) This will read and store all information belonging to this file. LODs, Weights, Textures, Filecreator, Skin, Skeleton / Bonepositions etc, etc. Means to rip these it requires to read all these parts from SL's files on the server or from encrypted data-packages being send to your computer and recombine it into a full DAE file (or other usable file-types) again. Thus here comes the next thing: since we are not dealing with information only being stored locally on our computer. All assets are stored on the LL servers and computed from there, or being send in data-packages to us while processing - means we can not (not easily at least) grab all information of these, without intruding or injecting methods, or as mentioned above, by reading out the data-packages being send towards our computers. The graphic card itself can only read - as its name includes - graphical data. Thus a rip from there will mostly just contain the visual geometry and images/maps without relations. The graphic card does not compute the weights, this is CPU related in most cases (unless its a shader based vertex manipulation, or other methods- but that's another subject). It just displays and renders the things 'as-is' and where they are, based on the computed positions. Means with the most 'common' ripping methods the thief has to remove all tris from the whole scene and combine a usable model by himself again, add weights, LODs etc. Which is kind of bothersome and requires him to do almost the same work as you did. However it is still possible, yes. But it is way harder to create a full ripping method including all of the above, by reading from several sources, reconstructing file-formats etc. (Also creating a full viewer for that purpose became a bit harder since LL requires a Viewer to be authorized and identified) And far not as easy as just ripping a sculpty image from your graphic card's data. I am sure we won't see such massive theft going on as with sculpties.

1.) yes - tweaking the weights is in 99% necessary. The chances that the weights will work just 'as is' are really just luck and not reliable : ) (Note: it can work when your mesh's topology is extremely similar to the default avi's topology, when you copy the weights from it. But even then you sometimes need to tweak a bit at least) 2.) what could be happening? There are several things that could cause this and its most likely a combination of them: - you bend your mesh outwards at the back, but not enough to cover the particular shaping of this pair of jeans. - The weightpainting: the weights in this area are stronger on your cardigan then on those pants and the contraction towards the bones is stronger. - The copied weights didn't cover this spot (but I don't think that's the case here or they would not 'bend' with you around that area) Possible solution - ways to solve this: Make some 'generic', simple pants mesh of circa the same shape as these are. And these here seem to be a bit fluffed, especially around the belt area, so make sure yours are too. Best is to make yourself screenshots from those pants (without wearing the cardigan) from front, side and back-view. To see where they stick out most and how they are shaped, to recreate this with your placeholder mesh pants. (I have a feeling - by looking at the screenshot - that it fluffs out quite a bit already in the lower back, instead of just on the behind. (build them to suit the default model to get a possibly most realistic result on how the most pants will be) Then parent them to your skeleton as well. (just do it with 'automatic' weights to have a quick and dirty way of them moving along the skeleton - for your testing purposes) Shape your cardigan's mesh to cover those and not having them stick through. Now 'pose' your skeleton into generic poses that might be encountered inworld, and while doing that keep switching between the posing and the weightpainting modes to fine tune your weights until the cardigan behaves like you wanted. PS: It will be hard to make cloth that will 'suit' to any possible pants. Especially when its something 'long' as a cardigan. And taken into account that mesh-pants can have all sorts of shapes and even 'higher' placed behinds or broader legs etc. So best practice is to inspect some mesh-pants that are being sold a lot in SL, and build yourself a 'worst scenario' pants, where everything is kind of far off from the body, and 2 further ones of the most typical sold shaping / sizes (like skinny, and one for more body fat). And make 2 or 3 versions of your (i.e..) cardigan to fit those generic pant sizes (and body types). Should you still have issues, add us a screenie of the weightings to inspect if it has issues in this area. Cheers, Code =)

Thanks Rucy : ) Maybe it helps you a bit with your little 'shirt button' problem as well. (at least until you became more used to blender )

Ok here we go. In addition to my former answer - just didn't have the time before to make you the promised images. The bone positions are also something that gives you trouble. And causes some of the deformations: 1. The neck/head - the neck-top is too low. This will bend your neck in the wrong place. The neck/head joint should allways sit a bit below the ear. This is where the spine meats the skull on the backside of the head. - Yours ends up already on the chin. Might not seem much to you but can give a pretty wrong behaviour of the neck influences. - Either reposition it in the armature editmode or make the head mesh to fit the existing bone positions. - And i personally still think the skullcap is a tad too high (the forehead appears to be huge) Move the mesh a bit down on that area. - The head-bone-tip i prefer to have end mostly around the forehead, but you can leave it between the eyes aswell. Just the general influence of weights works mostly better that way for me. - The deformation of your hands is also clear now: - the wristjoint is in the wrong place, thus the hands bend towards it and might shrink/grow within certain positions. - Move either the hands a tad back, or the joints to the wrist in the armature's edit-mode. (- but still also check inworlds to ensure you don't have any bone volume sliders set towards small hands, as mentioned in my previous answer) - The bulge of the forearm muscle should allways end where the ellebow joint is. This is why your arm looks too stretched and thin. - This is why your feet bend inwards: * - Move the mesh of the legs closer to the bones, so that the bones end up being in their 'middle'. - It's hard to correct this 'offset' by weighting, when rigging allways try to ensure that the bones take a good middle position, otherwise they will tend to 'pull' your offset mesh towards them and that can give ugly results like in your screenshot. - In this case i'd suggest to move the mesh (and not the bones) since you might otherwise encounter a bit too split legs when being animated (since the bone positions are exported along for the mesh) * Ignore the knee positions i just had to redraw them when tweaking and overpainting your screenie) yours are in a good spot. For the best result: make first the changes on the bones, and on the mesh. Then delete the armature modifier from your model (without applying) Delete all Vertex Groups. And weight it newly against the Armature (i.e. with automatic weights). This will ensure that the weights will be evenly applied, based on the corrected bone / mesh positions. (makes it easier instead of trying to fix manually the misweights being applied due to offsets like in the shins and feet etc) And start from there again with finetuning the weights.

hehe I see. yeah was almost about to check after you said it - just out of curiosity - but then i got sidetracked by my own stuff again =) If Imnotgoing wasn't online in a longer time might still have been an ALT. And yes, we don't wonna fall into that male/female trap anymore, don't we? I guess everyone being as long as us on the web learned that lesson 'long' ago lol ; ) So who knows.. i'd say the suspicion still remains valid

It might also be in relation to the server maintence from today. It is currently running. Unscheduled Inventory Database Maintenance Posted by Status Desk on March 21st, 2013 at 04:28 pm PDT [Posted 4:27 pm PST, 21 March 2013] We are currently performing unscheduled inventory server maintenance. During this time, some residents may be logged off and will be temporarily unable to log in, or experience inventory loading issues. This maintenance may also disrupt transactions and logins. Please check back here for updates.

..in addition: wait until its resolved and then try to resend it (if the option still appears) or contact the merchant of the item. If he/she got the transaction / the money, i am sure they are willing to send it manually again to you.

There have been unsheduled servermaintenances today on the inventory server. Unscheduled Inventory Database Maintenance Posted by Status Desk on March 21st, 2013 at 04:28 pm PDT [Posted 4:27 pm PST, 21 March 2013] We are currently performing unscheduled inventory server maintenance. During this time, some residents may be logged off and will be temporarily unable to log in, or experience inventory loading issues. This maintenance may also disrupt transactions and logins. Please check back here for updates.

The reason I was using Mesh was to try and avoid having faces that wouldn't show good thinking : ) One more thing to keep in mind: luckily as in most 3D engines of this type, we do not have to actively render every single face. Things that appear outsides of our FOV (field of view) are being derendered, and will be updated once they reach your view again. Also several algorythms, including ray casts will try to determine which object is actually visible to you or possibly hidden behind other objects. But the more optimized and reasonable mesh creators will build, the better for all of us. (Linden labs servers, as well as for users being in need to render way too many faces) This being said: keep that mindset ! - because it's the right one =) It should never be' looks' being prefered over optimization. The look we can define heavily with textures and other procedures Regarding the SL cube / primitives. There is a reason they have more faces then we would regularly add ourselves to a simple primitive shape. Hencing the fact they need to provide the ability to be cut/ hollowed and much more. Most people forget this, when pointing fingers at the too dense appearing internal objects.

You are welcome Rolig. Good Idea to add a new JIRA, those ones have been older and as so often still in 'being investigated / workaround exists'- status, because as they obviously have seen it you could just enable : external viewer. But that's not really a solid solution IMHO. =)

You are welcome =) and as Rahkis said we won't look at you like an alien ^^ But Rhakis made a good input too. If the meshes keep flickering across your 'whole screen' then it also might be a graphic related issue and you might need to update your drivers. (If its an ATI graphic card try also in advance to disbale VBO Buffers - You can find this in Preferences > Graphics > Hardware (its a button) there is a point called enable VBO buffer , disable it. The vertigonal buffers often create weird spreadouts and spikes across the screen) If it is just regular flickering an d optically collapsing then it stays with just being bad builds. (and yes unfortunately you don't see those issues much on the 'plain white' textured versions' because its hard to visually notice the texture collapsing and such issues when its all in one color)

Heya, it generally is a matter of the quality of the mesh. If the creator who made it has not much clue of how to make 'good LODs' (level of detail) for his object , and possibly also just uses the SL algorythm figure the lower LODs instead of implementing self made ones, the outcome can be rather ugly to look at, once you step a few meters away from it. The latter also leads to the SL inbuilt algorythms to figure how the UVs have to be handled on the lower subdivisions and that mostly ends up with collapsed looking textures etc. (Depending on how good the inital ones have been) Especially when already the medium LODs are set to just calculated or not of a good selfmade quality. Regarding the question if you can change this: Only if you have the source DAE-files themselves. And not just the already uploaded mesh object. But this would require you to model yourself and edit all the LOD levels and fix all issues on these models yourself. (In that case i'd rather directly make them myself, then first paying money when i have to do the job anyways on my own ; )) So yes, aslong as you 'buy' ready made products you unfortunately rely on the 'skills' and the quality of the mesh that these creators offer. One possible way to 'avoid' such bad surprises is to look for inworld shops, some of them have examples of their meshes rezzed / or have a free version to rezz and see how it looks inworlds. PS: make sure its not related to your settings - and set your viewers LOD in teh advanced menu to minimum 4 or 5. But from what i read you did that already.