Gamthalion Raymaker

Hey Astrid. UV Mapping in maya is not always eazy or fast for that matter. To make fast good UV maps try to import the model to roadkill or zbrush to UV map it then import it back to maya.

Hello every one. In adission to the first post "Cheers very loud for someone trying to help" There is an easy very simple way to transport skin weight maps from the original SL avatar to your new mesh. All you have to do is load the SL rig that you can download from the wiki or the SL market place, Import that in to the scene your working on. Then with out doing anything select the default SL avatar "not the skeleton" then select your new mesh and go to skin /edit smouth skin / copy skin weights. All the default SL weight maps will now be transferred to the new mesh binding it all to the collision bones. If you check it by selecting any join in your outliner you can see the M bones have no weight maps only the collision bones have now the original SL avatar weight maps. Another thing that helps, you can not change the orientation of the joints this is very important, if you do need to rotate a joint make sure you select the entire hierarchy within the group, so if you need to rotate the legs select the hip joint and rotate from there but do not touch any thing below the parrent joint. Sample, your leg has a few joints hip knee lower leg and so on, the entire leg is grouped, all the joints in the leg are child to the hip joint that is the parrent of the leg. so in this case you can rotate the hip join to rotate the join in the foot because the hip joint is parrent and all the children will move with it, the legs joint orientation will remain the same and will deform like it should. move the foot join only and you change the join orientation in relation to the pattent join and you will have weird deformations in SL. Does not work exactly as i tell you but its a long story to explain. do not move the Mbones, if you move the mbones by moving the entire group fine but do not move the mbones by it self. The mbones are responsible for most of your avatars/mesh deformation, if you move them then as soon as you ware the items or avatar it will instantly deform because SL thinks the mbone is in the same place in relation to the rest of the skeleton, but its not you moved it so it will deform instantly in a bad way. Can you move joints , yes "but not mbones unless read ubove "but.. make sure your tool is set to local space not world space only in local you can move the joints without braking the rig. Can you scale joints, yes. same story local space only. does the skin mirror function in maya work for SL ? yes it does but set weight normalization to post when your painting your skin so it does not normalize the weights overlapping other maps or near by joints. Does the smooth skin weights work, yes but dont use it. it will make you skin painting more difficult. Finally do not use replace option in the skin paint tool attributes, it acts funny, its not an SL thing but a maya thing, use add and scale options to replace weights. how does that work use add with a white color to change the weight to white , use scale with a black color to turn it black or anything in between. but mostly you will use scale to remove influences from your skin but do not replace. I hope this helped a little

Hey all All fun and games discussing resource cost on mesh object compare to sculpts but it all comes down to the same as it always have bin. How smart is the creator in terms of understanding what is going on and how does it work. Already experiences 3D designers who have a little experience in game modeling wont have a lot of problems keeping the cost low but a beginner will make a lot of mistakes at first. nothing that cant be overcome but it takes time. Until the mesh goes life and people start using it we cant really say what will happen but only speculate on it. 1 very important option i still see un explored. BUMP MAPPING, conventional 3D modeling that has the need to keep a very low poly count use bump maps to create additional details "displacement maps are out of the question" now we know SL can handle bump maps but... well we dont have custom bump maps but the few crappy ones from sl that are pretty useless. Non the less this would be a great solution for hi detailed meshes dont you think ?

I wander, default SL rig ?? in maya ??? now how exactly did you do that ? I have rigged so many objects in maya by now hoping i could get just something working but what ever i try if i set up the skeleton in maya SL does not pick it up. So please explain for the full maya SL community how do you rig your object in maya and have them working in SL i have 1000 people waiting for the answer and i have bin breaking my head a million times over that problem by now. So if you have a rig that works for maya please share it in a maya file not a dea not an obj we need the maya scene file and not the crap from blender either. If you are working with an rig converted from blender well there is your problem. blender and maya dont mix well so... Maya will not be able to proper bind skin to the rig and not in the first place be able to proper skin weight pain it. I was soooooo hoping that now we get proper 3D in SL we would get rid of all this free blender crap and get proper support for more professional programs to for people like us who can afford maya. Does Linden labs have a deal with blender or something !! that we dont get support for max, maya, art of illusion, poser zbrush, mudbox and what not ?? all i hear is blender blender blender the heck with blender. Please guys if you manage to make a rig in maya with maya tools no import crap from blender or what so ever then please please i beg you share it. Greets Gamthalion

I have found a few other bugs so far that have to do with the not being able to see uploaded meshes. After experimenting for a wile using differed ways to export my meshes from autodesk maya I discovered that the server ignored measurements at that moment. My meshes are not scaled correctly and there for sometimes to small to render, wile the do in fact ress the size is so small its not rendered and there for does not sexist according to the client. What I have tried is scaling the object up in maya before exporting but that made no difference. As you might now maya's default measurements are in CM not in meters like sl so my next best guess was to change the scale in maya from CM to meters before exporting. No luck there either. How ever older meshes I made before the update that I have re uploaded did work just fine and had no trouble uploading them. Them meshes are scaled in cm in maya but still take on correct size when uploaded. Finally just to make sure I started to take apart the XML code of the mesh to see if it was me having a change or error in exporting. Unfortunately there was no errors in the code **Only uploaded images may be used in postings**://secondlife.i.lithium.com/i/smilies/16x16_smiley-sad.gif" border="0" alt=":smileysad:" title="Smiley Sad" /> My guess now is that something changes the scale of the model when uploading the mesh. I am going to install the latest viewer again and see what more I can find out about this mysterious bug. Information from other people having the same problem is most welcome at this current topic ill keep bumping it till I find the solution. Note: make sure to check your face normal first before you post here. Reversed faces on your model make your model appear invisible wile the physical property will still work.

This viewer build is working for me. Second Life 2.6.0 (218701) Jan 11 2011 08:43:57 (Project Viewer - Mesh) Any more resent build failed so far. but i am glad i found a build that still works for me. You are at 205,869.0, 179,670.0, 23.1 in Mesh Sandbox 11 located at sim7029.aditi.lindenlab.com (216.82.40.146:13004) Mesh Import 11.03.21.224722 Release Notes CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1075T Processor (3000.12 MHz) Memory: 4096 MB OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit (Build 7600) Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 285/PCI/SSE2 Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.17.0012.6658 OpenGL Version: 3.3.0 libcurl Version: libcurl/7.21.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8j zlib/1.2.3 c-ares/1.7.1 J2C Decoder Version: KDU v6.4.1 Audio Driver Version: FMOD version 3.750000 Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded) Voice Server Version: Vivox 3.2.0002.9361 Built with MSVC version 1400 Packets Lost: 0/5,918 (0.0%)

I am currently experiencing the same problem and have not been able to solve it. How ever, meshes I made and uploaded a few weeks ago do work but when I upload new meshes the do not appear in world. I am experimenting with older builds to see if I can get it working again. Second Life 2.6.3 (225624) Apr 1 2011 14:12:01 (Project Viewer - Mesh) Release Notes You are at 205,867.0, 179,665.0, 23.1 in Mesh Sandbox 11 located at sim7029.aditi.lindenlab.com (216.82.40.146:13004) Mesh Import 11.03.21.224722 Release Notes CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1075T Processor (3000.08 MHz) Memory: 4096 MB OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit (Build 7600) Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 285/PCI/SSE2 Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.17.0012.6658 OpenGL Version: 3.3.0 libcurl Version: libcurl/7.21.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8j zlib/1.2.3 c-ares/1.7.1 J2C Decoder Version: KDU v6.4.1 Audio Driver Version: FMOD version 3.750000 Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded) Voice Server Version: Vivox 3.2.0002.9361 Built with MSVC version 1400 Packets Lost: 0/373 (0.0%)

Indeed great to know things are still rolling down in linden land. I also like to point out the importance of content protection. I don't think i have to elaborate on this for most of you are content creators your self and even so likely have had to deal with content theft yourself. Copybots have never the main problem. content in SL today can and will remain to be stolen. How ever mesh does make a change in all this but also reveals several other problems that may cause a lot more damage then all the years of copy botting and GL intercepting combined. I would be sad to see SL fall because of this. mesh opens up enough possibility for me to seriously over thing AGAIN to draw real life company's back in to SL and combine the real with the virtual, but at what cost ? I do know that linden would embrace the business opportunity's at hand if such opportunity would in fact evolve. Lets leave it at that for now. Not to drift to far from the original topic I notices while i have been using the beta viewer on the main grid i noticed an update today that removed the option to log on to public beta but i have not been able to find the reason behind this. Does this mean open beta is closed ? Is that a sign of a near future release"letting the excited boy inside talk" I stopped creating content for the main grid and will eventually result in lost of finances as it does for other people posting the same concerns and i would like a conclusive answer to the question, is it still worth to create new content on the main grid as it is now. The best way for LL to answer this would be to give us more transparency on there timeline. For all i care an insight of the (to do list) miles stones, would for me be sufficient to calculate a time window of which i will be able to determine if it's still worth it to me to create new content for retailers. Please Lindens do be a little bit more transparent on you dev progress.