Butler Offcourse

Well if they don't answer, we will find out when I come to that step! hopefully in a week if i will have enough time to work after work! Tonight I will restart the shoes with the new skeleton position and as you said, which i was thinking as well, in the worst case, I can just rotate the shoes at the end.

Hello Aquila! THANK YOU! You are a genius also a very nice person for taking ALL THAT TIME to help and explain! I really appreciate! So I did everything you said step by step. The only difference or where I had an issue was the third image. When I was selecting the mHipLeft and rotate it, nothing was happenning. I tried all the axises, everthing with no luck. Then out of curiosity, instead of selecting the bone, I selected the green circle that was just on top of the name mHipLeft, not knowing what it is and when I rotated it, it gave exactly the same effect as yours! Before: And after: Also my rotation axis was Y axis, but it should be because of different dev kits that we may be using I suppose? Then I deleted the armature, readded the armature, and also set the original pose as well like all of your steps and it works like a charm! When I finish the shoes, would this rotation cause me issues? I know that you said that you are not a professional on rigging but still, your knowledge is way better than mine! Well my knowledge is 0 and I don't wanna rig lol, just because I promised I have to do it and it gives me an excuse to learn it as well! - I am scared though, I feel like it should be very hard - Having said that, I will continue posting in this thread like the ballerina thread, to get your feedback, because even if you just tell me "you can improve this or that" it helps me a lot! And I did not know about the mirror X that you showed me here! I learned something important! I appreciate that a lot! Now I have to restart the shoe! But you are used to see me restart from 0 often It is the part of my work flow I suppose haha Cheers!

Hello Aquila! What a pleasure to read from you again! You are always helpful to me and you always open new horizons to me! I knew nothing about those armatures and positions! I learned something new today as I usual learn from you! But I have a slight problem: - I did select the armature from the outliner as you have adviced me to do so. - Then I went to the running green man, and I clicked on the rest position But as you can see on the screenshot, nothing has changed for me. Am I doing something wrong or am I not doing something completely? Thank you so muchagain for your patience! much appreciated! :)

Hello AmeliaJ08, I appreciate your time for replying! You are right most probably and I am getting lost in unnecessary details It is just that when I do something, I want it to be perfect, I don't like to do stuff, and then say "well, it came out like this". But then again, with hover weights and all, it shouldn't be so noticeable. So the way it is coming out, on the photos that I have sent, were not really bad. Do you think that the back part is a bit too small? should I make it a bit bigger? Because when I push it a bit more backwards, I am scared that it will show the insole from the top view. I could not find good referance photos about it, so I just eyeballed but I am not sure if the shoe looks too small for the feet lol. Thank you again and I will use this thread to share my progress with you! That is what I had done three years ago when I had done the ballerina flats Cheers!

Hello everyone! After a break, I am back! In the meantime when I was lost, I didn't stop blender, I did bunch of furnitures, tried to learn optimizing my models..etc but then rl came in, I could not continue. In the meantime, I did some 3d models as a hobby, like I made an interior, a keyboard, a computer, some other stuff and they turned out pretty nice. Last week, a friend of mine, asked me to make a pair of shoes for her. She sent me the photos of the rl shoes and she wants those ones. They are some high heeled sandals. I said, well, let's take the challenge! And I decided to do it. So I opened the dev kit, but I am confused. The toes are not alligned from the position that the avi is standing. Like the pinky toes are higher than the big toe. How should I do the shoes? I should just do parallell to the toes and it will be fixed in sl once the avi is using the AO..etc? I added a slight curve to make it look less shocking and more straight, but I have no idea if it is the correct technique? Because by doing it the way I am thinking of doing, the sole doesn't sit flat on the floor as you can see on the screenshots. Thank you in advance. If you wish I can share the other blender works that I did here, but since they were not SL related, I didnt want to dirty the thread/forum with non-SL related stuff. I appreciate the time you put to answer, thank you! EDIT: I added new images of how I am doing right now, is it correct? Please do not consider the polygon count statistics, for now it is not optimized at all. They are just planes with solidify and subsurface pumped 2 levels just for my eyes. But it will be highly optimized - to my ability of course - before uploading to sl.

Hello! Thank you so much for your answer! I am in since almost 16 years, and all my computers that I used thruout that time had 16 gb ram, not less and not more. I upgraded my ram to 32 gb just two weeks ago. So that is why I was surprised when I saw 14 gb of ram useage because I was like "what was my computer using when I had only 16 gb of ram?" , well, most probably swap. I've been using linux just for 6 months, before I was using always Windows and MacOS so, the situation must have been the same, with swap disk - even thought I never set it up. If it has it as default, then it must've used it. Thank you so much for the technical explanation, I didn't know about the connection between Vram useage and Ram useage. That is very interesting to know! I found out caping frame rate, and I capped it at 60 (compared to 140-160 frames uncapped). Would it help for the ram useage? or may be for the cpu useage? I wanted to do it because SL on my computer uses only 1 core from all the 16 cores available and that one core works 80-90% pushing the heat of the cpu up. Not very much, it remains around 62-70 degrees which is totally normal for my AMD Ryzen 7 5800H, but if i can bring it down, I prefer, so that there is less fan noise.

Hello everyone, Today I was wondering about my ram useage and I realized that Firestorm was using 14 gb of ram. Normally it uses around 6-8 gb. Is it normal? Is it a memory leak? I am using Linux and all those values are from Linux - both the 6 gb useage and 14 gb. I am in a busy beach, this can be the reason? My computer has AMD CPU Ryzen 7,16 gb Nvidia RTX 3080 GPU and 32 gb of ram running on arch linux and hyprland if it matters. And I am using the latest firestorm client 6.6.14. Also if it matters I am right now in a beach with 55 people. This could be the reason? I don't go to crowded places normaly. And I am using just one second below the Ultra, but I realized that changing it to low did not really make a difference. EDIT: I teleported out of the place to my skybox and now the ram useage went down to 3.8 GB. So was it the big number of people that caused the high ram useage? I don't care about most of those people there, is there a way for me to decrease the ram useage the next time I have to be in such place? Like derender everyone and render on demand people that I want? is there a setting like that or I have to go and derender manually? Or it was something else that was causing that much ram useage in parallel to the number of people? Because sometimes when I am working on blender, I may need that ram but I love multitasking too, so I was curious if there is a workaround for those moments. Thank you!

Hello @Aquila Kytori , thank you very much, it is always a pleasure to read your replies and advices which helps me to improve a lot! Lol, loved your interpretation about the scene! To be honest, nevermind the camera, it was just a view to show as much as possible or the general idea, since it is a work in progress. It is intended for sl, so I am trying to optimize it while working. The table and the chairs are already inside the game, i added animations to them..etc so the size of them is ok, even tho it is more suitable to the avis less than 2.25 meters, but for me above, is not the normal. lol. Actually I was not going to do a room at all, I only wanted to do that chair and the table. Then I wanted to build a scene around it, just for me to enjoy looking at it. The one thing led to an other and then I found myself like this lol. Till I added the refrigerator and the oven, I was 6100 tris, which was pretty good in my opinion, included all those clothes. Obviously I am not a pro and i dont pretend to be, so I am sure that it could be better, but still, not a bad result i thought. But then the oven killed me lol. The refrigerator + handle + the letters with thickness is 720 tris. Screenshot below: The oven + the handle + 4 round stoves + stove holders + the round turn buttons on the hand came to 2172 tris even tho i did not use much bevels, and when i used, i used chamefer instead. Screenshot below: Since you have asked for some wireframe view, I am adding also more wireframe views. The table I wont show because I am embarrassed LOL. I mean, this is the decimate version that I had used for medium LOD. But I will do it manually as well. So till then, I wont show you the "Medium low poly" version of the table, after all those things that you teached me! But to give you a number, two chair + the table + table cloth, we are around 3466 tris. The curtains are 238 tris each. No solidify applied because anyways noone will look from behind. For the position of curtains, I neverthought about pushing them all the way to the corners as i did not really like how my windows looked and i did not want to add even more geometry to make them prettiers, that is why i was hideing them behind the curtains but i can give it a shot! For the drawers you are right. For now, them, I had positioned them that way, by eyeballing but when i was going to start, i was going measure it to avoid some bad surprises later LOL, but yeah, looking at your explanative screenshot, i can definitely see that i have to lower it lol. It is secondlife's camer's fault! I hate houses with low roofs as it gets always in my way, so for sl i always want to create things with very high roofs, but then, it makes everything seem too small inside or makes me confused while eyeballing lol. For the oven and cabinets, i actually rezzed in sl a kitchen cabinet that i had, then made a cube at it's size and imported to blender. Same for the table , so their height should be ok. Right now, the whole scene, as is, is 9k tris, with all the furnitures included. But I still have some unseen faces..etc which I will be deleting later. Modelling clothes by hand?? hmmm.. for now it is above my limits! I already think that this "project" that I am doing now, seems to be too ambitious for me! LOL , but I am trying to model secondlife in mind. Actually I am surprised that till now I never ever used subdivision modifier, which was my fav modifier always! LOL Today I discovered a new add-on! It is a paying add-on, it is new, but I wanted to say because if anyone is interested, it has 20% discount till monday. It is my first paid add-on that i bought. What it does is that it let's you create procedural textures or add procedural imperfections or normals..etc to your materials. It is not Substance Painter, but let's you achieve some pretty stuff in Blender even for a noob like me. I still have to understand it better, but so far, I am satisfied with the effects. I enjoy playing with nodes and trying to learn them, but these effects is a bit more advanced for me, when they start to mix 8-10 math nodes with greater than, maximum, substract then seperate x,y,z then other math nodes, i get lost! LOL I keep watching videos about them but still, for now they don't do too much sense, still need to learn and in the meantime this plug-in seems nice.The only reason I shared this with you guys is because there is the 20% off right now lol. Here's their link: https://blendermarket.com/products/fluent-materializer And here are my experiment results with it (well, for the owen and fridge I just followed their start-up course) but the chairs are my personal experiments: And one more from today

I decided that in this thread I will share my "mesh journey" and ask questions if i have or share what I am doing. I hope it isn't against the rules. So the last render I showed about the room, it all started as something to put the table in and visualize but then I decided to put it in sl. So now I am continueing, I changed the room slightly, made it tiny bit bigger with the indent i created for kitchen cabinets (still to be modelled) and I changed the curtains, made simpler ones and added heating radiators. So even tho I added geometry to it,, the new simpler curtains helped me to bring down the whole seen to 6113 triangles. Here's the actual result: I also love the smooth shading or in certain cases autosmooth as well. For example for the heating radiators, I made "pretty simple" cubic shapes: And once applied Smooth shading, it became somewhat the result i wanted without any smooth surface or bevelling. Afterall it is not the focal point of my scene so i thought that i could get away with it to save on some geometry: Same for the pipe above, I always thought that it was necessary to use high definition cylinders for it to look good, but in this case, i used a cylinder with 8 sections and just used shade smooth on it, looks wonderful for me! I don't like the carpet tho, I will have to redo it, may be make one with strange hair modifiers..etc and bake normals of that high poly to the low poly but it is still a technique that I am not good at, trying to learn. But yeah, this is my continuation to mesh! EDIT: Decided to change slightly the layout, changed the place of the painting, made a retro looking refrigerator there and started to build the kitchen appliances, for now i just did the oven and now i have to build the buttons and the stove. While doing this, trying constantly my best to find the right compromise between bevels, forms and the tris number. I am enjoying how it coming out so far.

Hello everyone! The ones who follow this forum may recognize my name from two topics I created where I asked endless questions, desperately trying to learn and also the valuable advices and times used by others to help me and teach me blender and blender for sl. Then my posts cut suddenly because i had some rl issues, moving..etc and I almost stopped using blender for 2 months. But in that period, I was sometimes using it to model the house of a friend in RL and to make renderings for him, but it was basic stuff. Here's a quick render: https://gyazo.com/e618cbf13efca2227fcdf318aeca9c28 Then when I settled my problems, restarted using blender, noticing that i forgot many stuff. The threads that I had opened came to my help tho, the advices..etc which I reread let me jumprestart and this time i continued and also this time i took notes while "studying" blender for in future if i forget some stuff again. When I restarted, first of all, I built a small room in a skybox, someplace as my workshop for myself. Well, there I immediatly realized the challenges of texture sizes, physics..etc. I did my best, it is not perfect but still it worked, here's a screenshot: https://gyazo.com/c7e0a44a626c82fb0750fafb940b64fb The exterior is all black because at first i put it inside an huge black cube, so only the light inside would be visible, but then i realized that i was getting lost in the skybox trying to find the building lol so i removed the huge black cube that was making a surrounding. The shoes.. I had a special request from a very special girlfriend of mine, a type of shoe that i hate but she was not able to find it in sl, so it was a different challenge and i did it. Since I am not selling it and I did not like the shoe too much and did not want to work on it much, I will be honest, I did not really optimize it much. It is way too much vertices. 18k triangles. I used a lot of smooth. Here's the result where I also tried several different shiny black leather (no material enabled) : https://gyazo.com/528f459d430fd0df35abc2a62c186049 https://gyazo.com/2b5b64da6e3d77836e75a14e13b9c73a Once doing that, I continued to play in blender freely again and I did some cute small tables, one to put the shoes that i work on, and an other I decided to make a coffee table. The big one you can see it here. I should repeat that it is not optimized, it was just experiments for my own, and in this big one everything is baked on the object, light, shadow..etc even on the floor: https://gyazo.com/8e0066e98b1bc0623524f328162dcaad I actually loved how it looks but when I do things like the two examples that I shared above, I always remember the words that I read here in the forum, optimizing it for sl, using materials..etc. So, even tho it feels easier to do like this, I always feel kind of guilty. So first of all, I tried using the materials, I still need to experiment more on materials, this could be considered my only experiment, but here is the result: https://gyazo.com/5bfb2b1ae05cc565b18171c0b9915c80 To be honest it does not look very bad, even tho I find the non-material version more photo-realistic, even tho, it is not photorealistic in different lighting settings, especially for people who uses materials, so in the future, if i am able to, if i put them on sale..etc, I would put both a material version and a non material "fake photo realistic" version. Once I was satisfied with this experiment, I remembered the word optimization. Well here's an example. The one on the right is high poly with 10080 triangle sand the one on the left is lower poly optimized version with 2000 triangles. May be I could still do better but it is a pretty curvy object, so this was the best I could come up with. Then I kept modelling simple stuff, not destined for sl, just to practice modelling and then I started to dive a bit inside the nodes system, procedural textures...etc. I should be honest, I still get confused with the math nodes attached to the texture coordinates..etc, but still, I am following tutorials, first simple ones and they make sense to me which i modify as i wish and create my own stuff. And some other, which are too complicated, i just follow to create a pbr texture and try to learn one or more thing from doing that. So after modelling a full bedroom in blender also to try to learn cloth simulation (not for sl, pretty high poly) : https://gyazo.com/8cd62c7c65c5f6c27be62b76d1d2f4d5 https://gyazo.com/51656bd90f2172ab20442222d04a12ae So here, I had tried to learn the cloth simulation for the blanket, pillows..etc, it was fun and i enjoyed it. Then I bought a blender course for hard surface modelling for 1 euros. And from that course, I learned the importance of Auto Smoothing normals, how to use bevel weight which I find very interesting and also trying to clean topology of booleans..etc. I also realized that I love using the Q shortcut quick menu to put certain much used commands. I spent several days to play with booleans, trying to clean the topology..etc and hard surface modelling. Then I decided to stop it and dive back into node tutorials for pbr textures. To try the nodes I decided to do a table and a table cloth, so here is the result in blender: https://gyazo.com/dc1709f38c260c20b1653d8cf634f124 At first I have modelled it without SL in mind as I wanted to just play with nodes. But then again, I always found it cute those pizzeria style tables and chairs, and I wanted to import. Obviously with scales and proportions I was quite off lol. So I imported a cube to blender which i created in SL, fixed the scale and proportions, unwrapped it, uploaded to sl and applied textures! It was linked and 2 prims, but even tho I had tried to optimize it, it was still a bit too much with around 20k triangles. The issue was the chairs tho, not the cloth as the cloth was around 7k vertices. Well the cloth was dense too but for it's form, compared to the chairs, they seemed more acceptable. Anyways, I should admit that I found it very cute and in my opinion it was too cute to leave it like that. So what to do? A very nice friend of mine, took 3-4 hours of her morning to teach me how to put animations in them! And there I added animations. Obviously at first I didnt have any so I went to buy in this beautiful shop. 900l for vip group and 480l per animation, I bought only 1 female and 1 male animation. Guess what, I was stupid, I took the animation for male, crossed legs, and the leg was passing thru the table, totally uncompatible with my model and I was a bit dissappointed, with my mistake. My friend was very kind and she gifted me 8 animations from an other shop, which was also way more affordable at 700l in total, I now had 4 anims for female and male to add, which i did and finally I was able to sit at my table! It felt like a big achievement for me. The very same day, i decided to try the next step as well, texture changer! So I bought this texture changer, which everyone advised me to buy, put it in my table, but then i was confused on how to use it, followed the tutorial and managed it. Then I had an issue with the shading (alpha binding was set on, on certain table clothes) and the builder of the texture changer was extremely kind to spend her time and attention to help me, which was resolved. Well, I had added the simple texture change into my object, changing the table cloth. Then I baked bunch of different woods, different table clothes and in the menu i created submenus..etc and finally the object was fully customizable and sittable in sl! That day, my brain was hurting from all the studying and trying to learn how to apply the scripts, but the result was quite satisfying! Here it is: https://gyazo.com/051f32c4dc18e1bf3a4f76ee645eadae https://gyazo.com/1141f9208e01fb0fb935aedd577550de https://gyazo.com/4216637a64e591445bec94b2140358d8 Here you can see the texture changer in action, obviously it is completely normal for builders ..etc but for me it was something special when i achieved it! : https://gyazo.com/9add3777a5046f9ac7273945e55d1bda Then again, optimization for SL/Game, for this model i did my LODs "manually" , sometimes using decimate, sometimes removing the edge loops..etc and I did a medium and low LOD. The high poly version (on the right) is 21.4k triangles and the medium poly version (on the left) is 3.5k triangles. A big change! I did rez the medium poly version out of curiosity and the visual change was surprisingly little! Ok I have some shading issues I noted, but I am pretty convinced that I can fix that! Here you can see them side by side below: https://gyazo.com/08369c5e02608ba708e218ce7259261c And a gyazo GIF of the medium poly model: https://gyazo.com/1ea8c3ca403276e6a50a805c8577a394 And I was a bit bored the other day and decided to build a small room around it, something like 50s style, it is still a work in progress, but here's the scene. In the scene, I put the medium poly version of the table and the whole scene with everything you see here is 7.1k triangles: https://gyazo.com/12294820a283bebe56ab1e563621fbfe With a slightly different floor tileing: https://gyazo.com/0ae3ff4631dd87363c8136e6f68eb1b5 Here, I did everything with procedural textures which I followed from tutorials, or some other which I did on my own (such as the wall), except the images on the wall. I also used the Ambient Occlusion node which I feel like helped to define the shadows/forms better, even tho it slowed down a lot the rendering time. It is still a work in progress as i want to add a simple kitchen cabinet and a retro style fridge on it, something like smeg. Lastly, I also started to attend Blenders Benders classes from the week 13 and there also I am learning bunch of stuff and I find that very useful too! Here's my homework screenshots about the Nurbs Surfaces, but i had not optimized it for sl, I was also experimenting with cloth simulation on this one, I created the floor texture on my own, with nodes and after finishing it, I realized that it looks EXACTLY the same as my rl room floor lol : https://gyazo.com/24278e6b4681543a9119bafb66fc0e84 https://gyazo.com/afa694ae15713577f51a0ed5209394e2 https://gyazo.com/e05a47dea32e37f159db120c310b0a80 So, I created this thread to share my progress with the people who did teach me when I was trying to learn, well I am still trying to learn and also to show them that I just did not give up and dissappear and that I appreciate all the help that they have given me to understand this world better.

Hello @Aquila Kytori thank you very much for the time you take always to answer my questions, much appreciated! You know what? I always prefer how the shoe looks in your screenshots even if it is my model LOL! I will try it that way as well! thank you so much and I will look at your model! Today I have been playing with the text tools, cleaning them..etc, baking them..etc. Then I decided to do the both parts as you see, i want there to be written Sunday Funday, so I could not use a simple mirror. So here's what I did: - First mirrored it thru the modifiers and then applied it. - Then I realised that the branding text (added with photoshop) that I had written inside of it god messed up with orientation, being flipped as mirror was a flip horizontally. So I felt like I hit a wall as well. And also the text on the toe part of the shoe should have been different. I could reunwrap the mirrored shoe but then I was scared that I would definitely not be able to size the parts same as the other one, so any branding text, details/stitches..etc that I could want to add on photoshop later on the baked texture would vary in sizes and positions between the right and the left side. - So started to think a little bit and decided to do like this. Seems like it is working. On the mirrored shoe, I went to the UV map with all my parts, selected all the UV islands, and then I scaled everything in X with -1 value. So basically I flipped it horizontally. - Then went and deleted the 3d text on the nose part and copy & pasted the text that I wanted on it that I had created earlier. Joined them, pinned the shoe uv islands leaving free only the text UVs to be unwrapped. So unwrapped it, filled the empty spaces with it. - Then baked it this way, went on photoshop, took the baked texture of the other shoe where I had added the brand name (imaginery brand) and flipped it horizontally to use the position of the text as a guide (decreased the opacity of the guide layer). So on the new bake texture I repositioned my flipped texture to a very similar position as the other pair (almost pixel perfect) and saved it. - Then to test, went to the blender, I applied a new material to the whole shoe. A basic one. Then went on to the node editor, I disconnected the standart shader, created a UV map node where i selected my uv map, created an image texture node where I put the baked and editted texture and then connected it to the final surface output and the result seems to be working pretty well! Is this the correct way of doing it? Soon I will share the photos! BYW I love how you reduced the edge number and how nice your vertexes are alligned! Now I am taking the final bakings to upload to SL to see how it looks Then I will proceed by starting to be ruthless with my edge loops! EDIT: Here how it looks in SL, with baked textures. Always the high poly model, but the textures are starting to look nice. I am starting to enjoy how it is coming along. Now I have to start reducing the the segments (anyways the subdivision is not applied, just applied with .dae export) and increase the segments on the pipe as you have advised to try to improve. Here's some screenshots from SL and the way I have baked the texture.

😂

Thank you very much for your replies @Aquila Kytori 😊 Yes I know, sometimes I get carried over LOL! Oh I had not thought about remaking the faces, good idea! I will try that, thank you!! 😊 Auto smooth? I never ever used it, didn't even know such thing existed! is it something that only effects the shading or does it effect also umm when you move vertices and if it sucks the position it moves it to a better position to keep a curve? I doubt that as in case you wanna make a weird shape, it wouldn't do, so i think that it affects only the shading! Lovely! I will try! I had not tried the normal weighted modifier neither, need to try it too! thank you! Will these be exported to SL as well? Well, if they are modifiers, they should, should I apply it or just keep it there? Yes! I understood the importance of not wasting the space and I am having more fun the more I understand the things! but the problem is that, the more I understand stuff, the more questions I happen to have! LOL Now my biggest problem is the sole, it is too messed, not nicely curved, trying proportional editing, moving them..etc but I did not manage to do something lovely yet. 😕 EDIT 2: So I couldn't resist anymore, so I somehow modelled the sole and the insole, I used autosmooth as well, here are some screenshots. The very High Poly Model - 27k tris: And here is the lower poly model - albeit still high poly with 6.5k tris (I still need to optimize the model, and also the text, but my only concern is the pipe as the pipe looks junky even with this tris count 😕 And this is for now how I did the UV Map. Now I will be researching to see how to add a decal in Blender to a surface where I was thinking of adding to the insole. Once I have some progress, I will let you know!

@Aquila Kytori , thank you very much for your explanation! Fantastic! crystal clear now, thank you so much! Then I would love to add one more question for the evening (or whenever you have time to answer ) , so here's the shoe this way, I like it, elegant, classy..etc. Well, do not shoot me for the extra subdivision modifier (NOT APPLIED! LOL, just pleasing my eyes ) , if I want to let's say write a text on the black strap, such as a brand, a word ..etc etc and raise it and colour it gold to have it as if some metal text was attached to it. - I could have a lot of subdivisions to the strap, then extrude and shape it like the text I want, would be very time consuming, yes, but also would increase by A LOT the tris count. - I could use shift + a and text and add a text but then if i boolean it to the surface , it would again create too many subdivisions and it could even look messy, so would kill the purpose! - I could use shift + a and text and position it on top of my surface, join it with ctrl + J and keep it that way. Which one is the best? I guess the third option is the best, but I wanted to get your idea. Here's an example that I did to illustrate: As I was suspecting, just the text, added 10k more tris! I could use a simpler font, and may be modify the vertexes to reduces it, but I really wanted a font like this! An other option could be may be baking this as a normal and then use it on my final model? I fear that the resolution may not be good enough but I may be definitely wrong. If I did not want it to be raised, I could bake it only as a diffuse texture. Arghh, optimizing is harder than I thought! 😊 EDIT: While a bit of looking around, searching on youtube..etc, what I did was, after converting to mesh, instead of extruding, I added a solidify and beneath it I made a remesh modifier keeping the values as low as possible to avoid cranking up a lot the numbers of tris. Applied them both and then I took only the top surfaces and deleted as much as loop cuts/segments that I judged "unnecessary" then applied the shrink wrap modifier to the shoe to take the shape, then I extruded it outwards, hid the rest keeping only the letters, deleted the lower faces that should be touching the base of the shoe and doing like this, I was able to bring down the tris count for the letters to 2.291 tris while still keeping the thickness, this is as much/good as I was able to do with my still limited knowledge, here is two screenshots. EDIT 2: I uploaded the models to SL, as I love seeing what I create become real in a way And wanted to see the difference between the higher poly version. So the one on the left is 20k tris, and the one on the right is 5k tris ( well, half of it is the writing ), and to be honest I did not see such an huge difference. The biggest difference I saw on the pipeing. Well the piping sucks on both of them because I stretched it's UV island in X to a very thin line, so as a result, the resolution of it sucks LOL. On the other hand, I am pretty happy on how it turned out the gold on the nose in SL. I have been also surprised to see that both of them has 1 land impact, I was expecting much more for the higher poly version. But please note that when I upload it to SL, I am putting 0 as a value for the lowest LoD with the advice of a friend to have a less upload fee for my trial models, so it may have an impact on the land impact, I don't know, I am still experimenting and trying to see and understand the relation between prims, tris..etc. Even tho the prim number is not important for clothes (according to what I hear or read, I am still checking it by curiosity. I am still struggling to have my leather texture to look as sharp as it looks on blender, or as sharp as it looks on certain shoes that I see in SL. I even tried using sharpen filters in Affinity Photo, did not really help. And I should also find a good compromise for the blacks as the black shoe in SL looks lighter (Ambient Occlusion was turned off.). The models you see are using the same bake texture of the higher poly version, it is just the combined texture, I did not use material textures. Now I am baking the texture with 1024 sample instead of 256 that I have been using and I am baking it at 2048 * 2048 pixels. I had read somewhere that SL is making a better job resizing it other than image manipulatoins apps, so I am curious if it will help. Let's see. EDIT 3: Hello again! 😊 So here's some progress. I have somewhat made the shoe more black as I wanted. I went to the world settings, I had put an HDRi because I wanted to have some outdoor reflections on the metal nose part. It is adding a lot of lighting which I do not want, but I still did not find the correct way to disable it's lighting properties and use only it's reflections, so at first I decreased it's exposure and strength to 0.5 from 1. You can see the result on the lower poly model on the right. The black was nice but the nose was too dark, so then I went to the shader node editor and I saw that the specularity was set to 0.5, I brought it to 0.1 and now it looks more black with the nose being lighter than the right one, you can see it on the example on the left. Having said that I would like the nose part to be lighter, so I am still searching a way, I will continue playing with the material nodes. I also increased the texture space of the pipe unwrap and it looks much better. I also turned the main body diagonally once how @Aquila Kytori showed me on her alternative example of UV Unwrap to be able to cover more space for the body, and it seems like now the texture is looking better! Here I am adding some examples, what do you think? The gold color is different from the one above because I decided to tint it to rose gold. EDIT 4: Decided to make the nose a bit longer, even though it leaves a bit of space from the big toe, but proportion wise looks nicer on foot! I guess I will continue with this proportion, now time to do the sole and the insole!

Wow this something I did not know and to be honest I never thought about it! Thank you very much @Aquila Kytori 🙂 I was always putting the edge loop and then delete the unwanted parts! Talking about edge loops, while I am selecting the edge of the newly created edge loop, while I am alt + clicking the edge connected to the pipe, it is selecting the whole edge, whereas while I am doing it on the other side, it I have to make multiple selections as it is not selecting. There are no ngons around them whatsoever, I never understood it, and this happens when I am modelling this way. When I modelled it your way, it does not happen and it always selects all around. What is the logical reason for this? Here you can see what I mean: Also now that you have the foot as well with the shoe, do you see why I have to have that weird raise in Z on the corner next to the starting of the pinky toe and then go back down towards the other toes? I think that with that foot shape, if i want toe cleavage, this is the only way, or am I doing something wrong? Thank you very much again for your reply! So now I have the green light to go forward? And also to answer your previous question that I saw now, the edge of the edge loop joining to the pipe is marked with a crease, I did not mark sharp I guess, I still did not get used to use both of them I suppose. Even before the edge loop there I had the crease, but I guess that I had not marked sharp. Other than extreme poly counts for now since it is not reduced, do you see any other bad things on the model? The sole is a bit messed up from the side view, I was not able to do it very well even thought this is the much improved version compared to when I was playing with it yesterday night. I tried to make it smoothed by hiding the vertices above keeping only the thickness surface of the sole and played with proportional move with big brushes to give it a smoother curve. Wow I am glad to see that in a way I am improving and all with the help of you all! Thank you so much 🙂 When I first posted here, I was thinking that I was going to upload my first model to SL in a couple of days 😂

Good morning @Aquila Kytori 🙂 We wrote I guess at the same time as I had edited my previous post 🤪 I have somehow fixed the shading with an edge loop , I shared it on my edit that I had posted like 1-2 minutes before your post. Here's my blend file: https://pasteall.org/blend/32c0a677542f4d43aa1aadc093588af5 Obviously I am always open to the advices and thank you! Note that I still did not reduce the tris numbers as I was curious on how to model a strap! So this means that, If I have my model with the previous topology that you taught me and I liked a lot, as it produces as a cleaner result, I can not add a strap to it afterwards like I was trying yesterday? I mean, is there an ideal way to do it other than the face snap and vertex extrude way that I did? I am asking this to learn if there's a technique that I did not know? I tried to use some common sense, and did it that way, but my common sense is only limited to my actual knowledge of blender, which is nothing compared to more experienced users like you! 🙂 The model is not perfect, yet, but well, I am trying to work on it and improve! Also I can use the one with the nice curved edge topology to make simple ballerina flats and use this one for the "strapped/buckled" flats. And.. god...it is soo tempting to apply one more smooth! 😂 When I look at the shoes, I think that all of the popular brands are cranking the smooths? I was thinking, would it be a nice option to include both a second subdivision modifier applied for who prefer more laggy but realistic shoes in the box and an other optimized one and leave the people choice? Well, I still did not even texture, rig...etc, I am still too far from producing anything yet but I asked it for curiousity!

Hello again! So I restarted modelling it on the previous way, but this time with some Y 0 scaling to have a place to make the band. Well, the model's topology is better than the model that I had done last week but I also keep having the old shading problem on the corner.. *bangs his head to the wall* , I have no idea how to make the shoe with the band/volume integrated to it while still keeping the model/topology of the round edge flow that I had done with the examples of @Aquila Kytori Here are some screenshots, for today, I give up and go to sleep, goodnight! EDIT 1 : So this morning, I woke up, and I've made my coffee, opened blender and I was hopelessly turning around my model just to figure out what I could do to improve it. And I knew that adding one more subdivision was making it look very nice and it was fixing the shading issue. So, I decided to apply it to see what it does to improve the topology and I saw that the only that was changing was that the faces were smaller. This gave me an idea, so I undid the extra subdivision, I created a very small edge loop (actually several ones as in this topology, my age loop isn't turning all around but it goes towards the nose. Those edge loops I positioned close to the pipe, then I deleted the excess edges that I didn't want (going towards the nose part and then with knife tool I connected those edge loops, creating ngons but it seemed to have fixed my shading issue that I had on that weird angle since the beginning, then I snapped and merged vertexes, with knife added new ones and this way I removed all the ngons making the topology a bit nicer, what do you think? The selected edge is the created edge loop. EDGE LOOP: TRIED TO FIX NGONS: BEFORE THE EDGE LOOP: AFTER THE EDGE LOOP:

Hello @Aquila Kytori , wow an other fantastic posts with a very detailed info on the processes! Thank you so much! 🙂🙏 My process on the first model that we have been talking about till yesterday was I realize box modelling. Box modelling and Vertex modelling were two terms that I had heard but I did not know what really was vertex modelling, I had seen this technic in a car modelling tutorial without knowing it’s name! 😂 Both techniques, in my opinion, I like them according to different cases. I love box modelling because I find it easier to block in shapes quickly and get the proportions right and I find that I am doing it faster. On the other hand, I found that I was able to do a cleaner model with the vertex technique, because it is more similar to the modelling type that I am used, for my RL work, nurbs modelling. But then this is the dangerous part for me. Since in nurbs modelling, we have perfectly smooth curves to model first the edges with CV points of bezier curves (would be the vertexes of Blender) I tend to add many vertex points while creating the edges. 😂 So I tried to find a compromise and force my eye and brain to avoid adding too many vertexes. My workflow on this last model was similar to yours with a slight difference. What I did was: - I first made the main edge ring like you. - Then again, with vertexes, I did the second edge ring (the one beneath it) , instead of extruding it, and I did it all the way around and between them, I created faces with F button selecting 4 edges. - Then I extruded in Z towards down and edged edge loops to get the form of the bottom. - Then all the rest I did the same as you have explained. - I just did not really delete the edge loops yet, but I will delete the ones that you have adviced. I have already deleted some time to time to see, but did not really show you yet as i was not satisfied 😂 Actually I had deleted the ones that you had advised, so I am happy because it means that I am getting to learn it - I also realised that one of the reasons why I have the front part sinked in ( remember my previous problem? ) is the pipe. Because on the front part, it sits lower so when I snap the edge of the shoe, it goes lower (steps 17-19 in your diagram), but then I am trying to fix it by playing with the edge loop and came to the result that you saw on my previous screenshots. Oh, I had been using the G+G on my previous shoe modelling, but I never understood what it does. Is it moving the vertexes on normals? ( edit: now understood, it is sliding, it is lovely! thank you! as using the shortcuts rather than left menu is always faster) Is it sliding the vertexes on their axes? I do use a lot edge slide, vertex slide, ...etc and I like them a lot. I have also modified the shoe on the pictures I posted yesterday with Proportional editing because after “finishing” it with the subdivisions and making it a full model, I realized that I did not like the height of the shoe and proportions, so I hided all the lower vertexes keeping only the one third vertexes above and with proportional move, I gave a slight curve towards backwards with a very big brush, then with vertex slide, edge slide, deleting edge loops and adding new ones, I tried to fix/correct it as the proportional editing brought certain of my edge loops very close and this was the result on my post yesterday. 😊 I will check the tutorial that you have sent, thank you! And yes! The more I dive in, the deeper I realized that it is! EDIT 1: So here I was continueing this technique with the wonder on how to have a flat nose cut. So what I did was, even the left model could be cleaner, wanted to take a "bigger challenge" and took all the vertexes towards where the cut will be, and then S I pressed (scale) , Y (axis), 0 (value) and hit entered alligning them all in one line. Then I extruded that edge creating two sections giving the overall volume and then I deleted 4 internal faces to create the opening and then alligned them to create a more curvy shape. I added two loop cuts to make it even rounder even tho they ended towards the triangle and created ngons. Well I could use a knife and make the triangle smaller but sinde i did not yet applied smooth, left it like that to see how Blender will manage it. Then I set the creases, and noticed that creating a crease where I want the cut to be, created a strraight section there after the subdivision, or else, it gets blended it. So here's the result. It is not intended to be a final model, it was just an experiment and seems like working. What do you think? 😊 EDIT 2: And also I was wondering, if i want to add a buckle, or a leather strap..etc, how could it be done? I had no idea, so I experimented on it as well, using the left model this time. And I never realised how important creases were before subdividing other than having "just sharp edges". Here is a basic result, I aligned the two last sections flatly in Y. Then I recalculated normals, went to object mode, applied all transforms and extruded faces along normals. Then marked the edges of the "strap" with crease on value 1, and applied the subdisivision, looks like a nice result, what do you think? And I realised that when it is not single material and it has like separations like this, UV unwrap is much faster and easier. 😊 And this was a bit too many poly fun lol. 9300 tris.. 😂 EDIT 3: So here's the million dollar question. If I want to make such cut on my clean model with the round edge flow, how can I do it? Here's an example that I did b using vertex extrude techniquue and face snap. Obviously I have the surfaces of the shoe beneath it as a double but the edge flow is completel different that I can not delet them perfectly. How would you do it? In this situation boolean is my best friend? Obviously if I model it the other way, it is easier, and may be more ideal, but I prefer the topology of this solution as it looks cleaner, so I was curious, if there was a way to do this with this topology? Or should I have to do it seperately like I did here and keep it like this and hide as much as unvisible face I can, not in a very elegant way (as the edges do not follow each other because of different edge flow between the general shoe and the strap/gold part)

Sorry for posting it in several different posts but unfortunately the image file size limit is preventing me to add new screenshots. So I was playing around with my model thinking on how to improve the model..etc, I was looking at the sole, here it is: Have I messed it up big time? What I did was, I made a face with the F button inside of each 4 vertexes. The problem is that when I was doing the exterior, I was putting the vertexes where I was more satisfied with the volume and after applying the subdivision..etc, I realize that my vertexes are not aligned perfectly on the left and the right side, so the faces between them does not have flat edges. Even though the sole won't be very visible, just to understand it better, is it a problem? would you leave it like this? or how could you fix it? The weird shadow that you see in the lower 1/3 of the sole is the heel, so it is not a normal or shading problem. EDIT 2: Then I started to wonder, how would I model the shoe if I wanted the nose part separate, cut flat in Y to separate material may be. Since in my model, the topology is all round and round, I could not just separate it with a loop cut or a segment. I did not want to use boolean or else I could shape a plane with the same curvy surface of the shoe, perpendicular to shoe, add solidify and use boolean to mark the model and separate it in the UV islands. So I decided to retry modelling, to practice, and I modelled the toe end from a plane in a very low poly mode and then added a subdivision value 1 to see the result. On top you can see it without subdivision and beneath with the subdivision applied. I also tried to model from a plane the round method to achieve a similar result to my actual model that today I did by extruding vertexes. Actually I found it fun to model fastly low poly and see the magic done by subdivision, pretty neat! Here's the example: This time when I did the fast low poly nose, I did not care about using a triangle and as a result, it turned into a quad with the subdivision so it fixed it for me

Hello, here's the result with this edge flow. The topology is MUCH better than my old model, but still, I have to decrease loopcuts..etc, as I am around 3.5 tris and I don't even have a correct insole as I just did F command after selecting the whole edge 😂 Here's the current progress:

Hello @Eirynne Sieyes , thank you very much for your nice message and compliment much appreciated! 😊 How this thread turned out, I was thinking the same as you, that this could be useful for many other people who are getting into mesh modelling as my masters, have answered many questions that I could not find a lot of info online! Full of valuable advices from them and I am very grateful for that so I think that this thread would help many others like me. 😊 I am happy that you are enjoying it, and I would like to advice you to check this thread as well: They have been giving many advices here too, I am sure that You will like it too!

@Kyrah Abattoir and @Aquila Kytori , thank you very much again for the replies. @Kyrah Abattoir then you were definitely right because this is the model that was supposed to be uploaded to SL as the full version, so then this is the low poly that you have meant. I am saying supposed to because I will follow the advice of Aquila Kytori and I will remodel it! @Aquila Kytori , you are definitely right, I will remodel it then! I have been facing the typical syptom of an "artist" , feeling that your work is very precious instead of redoing it, trying to fix it always and ending up with a mediocre stuff. And in the beginning it is always better to redo from scratch as it forces you to draw or model in this case, more, and learn faster. I would also like to add that I appreciate the time you put into modelling the shoe three times to teach me, thank you! 🙏😊 May I please ask what shoe you have been trying it on? I have no idea if it is the Ebody foot which is a bit more oddly shaped, or if it is me. But most probably it is me. I will try to model it better this time and I will follow your workflow instead of my previous one to see if i will manage better. 😊 You said that in such model there is always a lot to tweak, and when I look at your model and mine, I can definitely agree on that. What would be the steps you would follow to improve it? I mean, instead of taking your time to share screenshots as I don't want to give you much disturbance, could you type briefly the steps to follow such as "I would apply smooth, position the cv's evenly by hand or by using this command , that..etc. I am not trying to save the model as I will be remodelling it, but I would love to learn how an expert modeller is improving the model once satisfied with it. Most probably, you never end up with such model that you will need to improve this way, but I was still curious if there were techniques that I could practice and learn. 😊 Modelling the two edge flows.. it is interesting and I agree, I have to do it! I will try even tho I am a bit lost about that, I mean the edge floow, loop rerouting is still a bit blurry for me, I still did not master it well enough but I will be trying that and I will share the results here! 😊 I really appreciate the time that both of you are putting to my threads to help me, really, thank you so much! 🙏🙏 I promise that you will both be proud of me once I am "graduated"! 😛😊 EDIT 1: To experiment, I decided to use an other technique that I had seen, by creating vertexes, extruding them and then making faces between them, I thought that this way I could control the edge flow. Well, I could do it with a thin plane too, but I wanted to experiment with this technique too. EDIT 2: So I have been doing with the technic above. At first I extruded vertices and with them I did the top opening carefully. Then just beneath them, I did an equal number of vertices to create a face, as if I have been drawing the edge loop. Once done, then I extruded, scaled, moved..etc how I felt looked better. I repeated this till I had the final outer body. I decided that I will use this as the inner sole, so when I use the solidify, I will be using it towards exterior. I guess that this edge flow is similar to your example. It looks much cleaner! Though when I want to fit them better on the toes, I realise that the crease is unavoidable as it is the shape of the foot. But, even if I do it, the shading is MUCH better than before. Here's how it looks now without crease. WITHOUT THE SUBDIVISION: AND THIS IS HOW IT WOULD LOOK WITH THE SUBDIVISION ( Value : 1 ) : AND HERE IS THE TOE PART:

Hello! So today I took my old model before the subdivision applied, added some more loop cuts and then applied the subdivision. I did not delete any loop cuts for now, and tried to fix thee shading issue by moving with proportional move, by smoothing..etc and tried to achieve this, is it better in your opinion? I have also added screenshots with the old pipe so you can see the difference and I have also added a view where you see the height with the toes. There you can see why I am trying to go down towards the opening part. I can see some imperfection on the toe end towards the lower part where the sole will start, not a very perfectly round shape, but after all it is a shoe, soft leather..etc so some imperfections on the form makes it look a bit more realistic may be? (Am I trying too hard to find an excuse to avoid fixing it? 😜)

Hello @Kyrah Abattoir and @Aquila Kytori , thank you very much again for your detailed answers, I love reading Your answers and they are very helpful to me, thank you! If I ever become a shoe creator in sl, you both will be receiving all the shoes I do! 😊 🙃 @Kyrah Abattoir , When you mean low poly modelling, do you mean it before that I applied the subdivision? Or do you consider to be low poly even after that I applied the modifier and came to 2.2k tris? Because I was trying to do those reductions (well, in theory as the model I posted was like a sandbox for learning and not the final) where may be on the nose i needed some loops to give the "perfect" shape that I want but it is totally unnecessary to go all the way backwards, so by doing this, I thought that I could remove many more faces on my subdivided model (subdivided with value 1). Is that still unnecessary in this case? Then looking at the proposition of @Aquila Kytori , I realise that I made the reduction in a very complicated way when I could do it in a simpler way, well this is the proof that I did not follow any tutorials for that and I messed it big time! 😅😅 That cloth looks fantastic and yes, the triangles doesn't seem to create any problems! Awesome job! @Aquila Kytori , Perfect, so I can continue on my old model to try to fix it! Well, as I was explaining on the paragraph above, I was using this "excuse" to try to learn topology techniques, rerouting, reductions..etc. As I was explaining above again, I was thinking of creating those reductions close to the front part to on the sides to avoid many edge loops going all around and to try to decrease loop cuts and this way, to decrease the numbers of tris even further, would you say that it is not necessary? 🤔 When I look at your 4 to 1 reduction, I can see that I have overly complicated it! LOL, as I said, I was not following the tutorial and I was trying to imagine and find. I was thinking that it would be lovely if there was a game for smartphones or tablets where it would give you such situations and you try to reduce loops or reroute them, and when you aree stuck, it gives hints, it would be a fun way to learn when you aren't in front of your computer! So now that I have deleted too many, edge loops, to read them, what would be the best way? Here's what I mean: - If I add a new edge loop to this final model, it will add a new loop but the vertexes will follow the flat shape. So I have to move all the vertexes one by one as a simple scale would not really work. May be apply some relax with Looptools add on after I move them all to keep them smooth. - I could go back to my earlier model before the subdivision was applied, reapply it, remodel the sole and heel and insole again and then reduce less loops. or is there an other way that I don't know for those situations? Which one is the ideal workflow? Also I would like to say that I have that shading issue close to the piping on the front even before removing the edge loops. But it is something I am unable to fix, so I think that it is because of that volume requirement, I mean, the pipe part going downwards and then going a bit upwards towards forward. PS: This month I have some serious RL issues (nothing related to health) , so that is why my progress is slow, so if i reply late, it is the reason but i will go till the end, till it is good and nice!

Hello @Aquila Kytori and @Kyrah Abattoir , Since yesterday I have some RL issues, that is why I could not post any progress as I could not really concentrate on the shoes. Having said that, I tried to play a bit with the idea of rerouting, disolving edges, adding new edge lopps and using the knife to add new cuts. Is this better? Or is it how I should do? I tried checking some youtube videos but it is mostly about reducing edge loops or rerouting to a full circle on a plane surface, but this one is a bit more complicated so I tried to do it on my own. I was thinking that using some triangles like the like in the post of Kyrah, could help to clean the topology more and reduce the number of edge loops. I have been also practicing on some techniques to be able to reduce the number of loop cuts where it is not needed but while keeping it on the other spots where it is needed. Still need to get the hang of it, but I did this one on my own, trying to remember a tutorial i had seen on the subject last week, and then did it on my own way. It does not look very bad, right? So now, I have not really been improving the shoe, but instead have been trying to improve my skills to optimize it as good as i can. Then I wanted to try the 2 to 1 reduction as well but no matter how much I tried, I couldn't figure out how. So I shamelessly cheated 😅 and looked at the guides on google, and I found out why I couldn't figure out, because I was trying to do with quads whereas it was achieved by triangles. So to try, I replicated it on the shoe and the triangle part is being shaded pretty bad, so, what am I doing wrong? Or that type of reduction always creates problems? Is there an alternative?