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guY Ralior

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Posts posted by guY Ralior

  1. Not sure where you live ( I live in CA ) and when I first moved here before opening my own business, I had a few offers from Boeing they use Alias which I have had very little experience, I know nothing about CATIA, but I can tell you for sure that you can't loft a 4th or 5th degree curve with Blender. I was also told by Boeing that knowing Alias was good that many auto manufacturers use it as well, so learning it would have good benefit for me.

    Some people want to make out that your an idiot for using a program such as Maya or Max when there is a free program Blender available that will do all the things that Maya or Max will do, and in some ways that may be true but in others it is so far from the truth it isn't even funny.

    In my first post in this thread I suggested Blender?? That is because I would never tell someone they have to go out and spend close to 6K USD for a seat on Maya, just to build stuff in SL. Unless there is some other reason you need the program such as myself ( I build models all day long at my business ) then there is no reason to purchase it. I know no one in the industry that that has access to both and decides to use Blender over Maya or Max for modeling.

    And as Ash says, if you can model it doesn't matter what program you use, you can model. I use Maya and Blender and advocate both and don't put one down over another but to make both equal would be like calling apples and oranges the same fruit. They simply aren't.

    Sorry if somehow I have offended someone I mean not to at all, I am simply pointing out that people on the Blender side just jump down the throat of anybody suggesting to use something else for use in SL.

  2. They same argument can be made on the other side, cause it's free is it supposed to be better? Cause people can freely add to it all they want and build it on their own and call it whatever they want does that make it better? There is a reason that people use Maya and Max and its not cause of pretty brochures. If you have used both extensively you would clearly say that Maya or Max would be far superior to Blender, now granted most people don't have the money to go out and by an Autodesk product just to build stuff in SL as you would Sculpt Studio or a paid version of JASS even if you are a merchant, but that does not at all make Blender better.

    Do you think Boeing or Aerospace Engineering firms are using Maya or 3DS for designing their planes and ships? No they don't they use programs like Alias and Rhino. Maya and Max are looked at in the film community like a pedicel uncle at Christmas, you don't want him around but he is part of the family so you have to invite him :D NURBS need to be revamped in both to call them up to par for anything outside of film or game animation. So in this regard Blender, Maya and Max are all kinda the same, but in no way equal. Until you use other programs, it is very hard to get out of the Blender cult :D

  3. I think if you want the most information and tutorials Blender would be the way to go as many more people use it than others. It is great to know and you can transfer all knowledge to other 3D programs. As far as between those two you mentioned I would use Maya but I am partial as that is what I use along with Blender and a few other programs in my workflow.

  4. It seems like you have figured out your problem but I just wanted to add this in case it helps, that I have had the same error on upload and it has always been related to the fact that there are no UVs on a portion of my model. In other words I have manually deleted them. They can be scattered all over the place as long as they are all there, but if for some reason you delete some of them or all and not re-project a new UV set this will cause the uploader to say you have a missing level of detail. Hope this helps :D

  5. In C4D locate where you can show normals. This will put a small arrow or similar pointed in the direction the normals are at the moment. Most likely somewhere maybe in that same tab you should have set normal angle, smooth and harden normal angle. When you click smooth normals for the first time you should notice that hard edges now go away much the same way they did with the phong tag. SL uses Lambert not phong so I am not sure if the phong shading tag will show in SL, but setting and smoothing your normal angle will show in SL.

    In Maya if you do a show smooth mesh preview by hitting the number 3 on the keyboard you are showing what the model would look like if it was subdivided, so smooth and normal angle are different things, and I would think that would be the same in C4D. In Blender smooth is showing you what your normal angles are and a subsurface modifier is subdividing the object with more geometry, so the two terms are not interchangeable between Blender and Maya and I would think it would be the same for C4D. Hope this helps :D

  6. In my workflow I start with the kinda blocky version to get the general shape that I am looking for then take the model into a sculpting program to increase quads and get the final super high rez model I am looking for (maybe 4 - 6 million quads). If for example I am working on a avatar while I am doing this it will change the basic shape of my model some I want to do this so that when I create my actual high_LOD mesh it follow as close to the contoures of the super high rez mesh from the sculpting program, this makes better AO and normal maps.

    I will then take my model into a re-topologizing program and create my high_LOD mesh with as few quads as possible and still keeping the general shape of my model and having proper edge loops where it need bends. From here I will then create my UV map layout and then finally create my lower LODs by removing edge loops to end up with acceptable lower meshes and then finally a sprite for the lowest_LOD, and do same for UV map for each.

    Using the super high rez mesh and the high_LOD mesh I will generate my maps. This work flow for me is good because I am not working on something that is not a finished piece for long. If for example I don't want to create the lower LODs and just use auto generated I can and I still have a usable model. If I did it the other way starting with the lowest_LOD and going up until I create the highest I don't have anything I can use if I wanted to, until I get to the highest_LOD.

    As far as the smoothing, in your program it will have to do with setting and then smoothing your normal angles. Drongle has mad a great explanation of what is exactly happening when you smooth them. Hope this helps :D

    • Like 1
  7. avatarpics.jpg

     

    Bump mapping is as explained and adds so much more detail in a flat surfaces, eliminating the need for so much geometry to make up your object. This is a pic of my avatar just as base mesh ~2800 quads on far left, and in the middle with AO map and on far right with normal map which is very similar to a bump map just made in a little bit different way. So as you can see with always using the base mesh you can get so much more detail from the normal map than you can with the AO or of course nothing. So either bump, or preferable normal cause its cleaner, or both would give us so much more freedom without having to just click subdivide on the base mesh :D

    • Like 1
  8. No, custom rigs are not supported yet, and the unfortunate thing is they say they are because of the examples that Medhue pointed out. I myself have tried extensively with the Mac and a bootcamp Win7 versioins of the viewer and I am not able to get a scaled rig to upload. I have tried with Blender both and Mac and Win7, and Maya 2011 Mac and no avail on scaled or manipulated skeletons. I have however been able to upload a complete proportional skeleton at larger and smaller size and it comes in at the size of whatever shape I am wearing the same as anyother rig I have uploaded. Hope this helps :D

  9. Yes the default SL skeleton which you can get several different ways one of which is in the link I gave you in the other thread, it's in the first post by Reed Steamroller. There is some other valuable information in that thread as well, but be careful some of the stuff is now not functional in SL cause of changes in the viewer.

  10. I think in the last user group meeting notes it was said that that is something that is in the plans for after initial rollout. I agree that it would be a great feature, one thing that will have to be sorted out is which attachment is the active one for when you adjust the shape targets. 

  11. It appears you have been able to upload so that would constitute being able to upload a rigged mesh :D congratulations :D now as far as your rigging goes that is gonna need some work :D I would assume if you got it uploaded you followed my suggestion to use interactive skin bind. Now you need to go into the interactive skin bind tool and adjust your skin weights. If you just did a regular smooth bind then you need to use your paint skin weights tool or your component editor to be able to adjust the skin weights. Then you wont have anything sticking through. Also a partial body alpha will help to keep unwanted body parts showing through.

    Searching rigging in Maya specific to the type of rigging your trying should yield you some great tutorials on how to do it. Don't worry that they aren't specific to SL as rigging has nothing to do with SL other than the classic linear type bind is what SL requires. I hope this helps and please understand I know you said you were a fast learner but just to give you an idea a fast learner may be able to learn rigging in about a month or two not a day or two. Hope this helps and happy rigging :D

  12. I use Maya 2011 on Mac with Open collada and it works fine EVERY time, for rigged avatars. The FBX_dae exporter as of recently works as well that is something that has just recently started working though. As far as partial bone sets as if you were just exporting a piece of clothing those do not work no matter what I do, unless all 26 bones are in the .dae file no upload is happening. One way I have found to do this is with Maya 2011 is using an interactive bind which includes all bones even if you are just trying to rig a shirt. I am on a Mac so thins may make some things work differently as other programs related to SL and Mac work differently.

  13. Hi Sommer yes I have uploaded rigged mesh avatars :D You must keep in mind that right now it is beta and software are being updated constantly and things are changing sometimes on even less than a days time. When you don't fully understand your pipeline, as they call it, such that when something isn't working it is because it is the software, it is going to be very confusing for you and it's not you it's just that things are changing so much you have to constantly stay up with it to be able to know what is going on :D I really hope this helps

    With all that being said the Mac version of the viewer will not allow me to upload partial bone sets in the traditional smooth bind I use for an avatar but I have done my avatar many times and others and all have worked in Maya. Any problems were know issues.

    EDT: also the FBX_dae exporter now works which it wasn't as well as the open collada tried them both for avatars

  14. I am on a mac and of course using the mac versions of the beta viewers. I have not under any circumstance been able to upload a partial bone list. If the 26 are not there it will not upload. I work in Maya mostly but use blender also, I haven't tried blender recently on upload which I am going to do now to see if things have changed but when first testing mesh with maya to make sure I used blender as well and never for a partial bone list could I get the upload button to not grey out. I have installed most new viewers the day they came out or within two days at worst so I have tried most of them and none have worked for the mac version at least. I will add my findings from trying blender today, I am excited it may work now :D

    So my question is what am I doing wrong if indeed you can upload partial bone lists and always have been able to?

    ETA: One thing I have found in trying "everything" is, I can add the missing bones to the two spots in the .dae file and it will allow me to upoad, but at that point the skin wieghts are all funky :D so it seems the uploader is just looking for the 26 and that is all it doesn't care about anything else.

  15. 5K tris should not equal that much PE there is something else wrong. FIrst don't leave the others set to none that will raise your PE, it is at least best to use the auto generated ones if you are not going to provide your own. I personally don't upload the other LOD levels unless its a finished model, when I am just testing I upload the hi-lod and auto generate just to see how it looks but I am not really taking into account the PE at that point. Once I have achieved the topology I am looking for I then create my lower LODs and add them getting to the best possible PE. No pysics shape for avatar but for attachments a simple sprite or even cube will greatly reduce your PE.

    Remember PE cost is the greater of the three weights rounded up.

    • Like 1

  16. Ishtara Rothschild wrote:

     I don't mind as long as it looks good. If my avatar lags people, they either need a faster PC or more reasonable graphics settings
    :)

    No you would be the only one seeing your avatar as you would be auto muted by the viewer. So then you will have to say to yourself wow people will slow computers are just not as good as me, with my top-o-line windows PC. LOL........not

     

    IMHO if you don't care about the lag caused by what you create, then that is fine, homestead sims provide a place for you to be where you don't bother any people but the ones that wanna think they are the coolest with their 6K arc avatars :D weather the arc number is accurate or not, lag is real thing, and mostly it's caused by people that don't care or don't know what they are doing :D

     

    

  17. When you attach stuff to your avatar it doesn't count against the land/parcel prim amount but it does count against the arc that other residents will be affected by as well as yourself. 

    I think a good rule to keep in mind is think of if you made something out of sculpties and how many prims it would be, you wanna be less than that, after all that is what mesh is supposed to be doing is saving us from the lag monster that sculpties are. The only reason why it would be more PE than its sculptie counterpart would be if you have soooo much detail to warrant it and even in this case only maybe a few PE more than its sculptie counterpart. Hope this helps :D

    Remember as little geometry as needed to hold the shape. Look into topology optimization and layout techniques to help you achieve good edge flow.

  18. Considering that most of the SL population has under 200 prims to work with on their land/parcel I would say that both PE amounts you just described would be way too high.

    If you were making it strictly for yourself and any of your friends that just had to have one cause it was just sooo mesh cool and didn't care how much the PE was, that would be different and totally up to you or your friends to waste as many prims on ineffective mesh optimization. But if you are going to sell something it is imperative that you learn how to optimize your mesh. That much PE for something that is an accessories as you say is way to much, making something look good is not done by clicking subdivide unless you know what you are doing, it is done by properly placing the edge loops so that you can hold the shape you want with as little geometry as possible. Hope this helps :D

  19. It sounds like you are not including all the bones in the upload. I am not sure if this has been fixed as of yet. If you open your collada file and make sure it has all 26 bones in it, if it doesn't afaik you have to have them all included for the upload to work. Sorry I can't be of more Blender help.

  20. I work with both Maya and Mudbox 2011 and 2012 depending on what I am doing. As another tip before using the maya rigging link make sure you read through the first link I gave you completly as it will give you some insight into how to get it uploaded once you are done working on your rig.

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