Rahkis Andel

I can confirm it works in 2.66.1. I wasn't aware it was so out of date. That's pretty impressive!

Also, screenshots would be great if you are so inclined. Hard to give an opinion on something you can't see.

May I ask when the last time you used Blender was? I know a point of contention for a lot of people is that Blender used to be a great deal less intuitive in the UI, but that has changed. That said, your point about Blender being complex is not untrue, but let's put that fact into context -- Compare what Zbrush does to what Blender does: Blender is a full 3d suite with physics, a game engine, a render engine (with viewport rendering), 3d sculpting, (currently crappy) texture painting, mesh editing, rigging, UV editing, animating, compositing and motion tracking. Yes, I also have to mention It's free and open source. Zbrush is primarily a (The) 3d sculpting tool. Blender, 3DS Max, Maya and all the rest of the full 3d suites are going to be more complex than Zbrush by nature because they do more things. I would argue that the things they allow an artist to do are more benefitial to Second life than the things Zbrush allows an artist to do. Especially if you can only pick 1. In my opinion, the scary thing is that no 3d suite I've ever used (I had access to maya, lightwave and 3ds max before, through school) is better than Blender at -everything-. For the price they ask, that should not be acceptable to the hobbyist. I apologize for being the one to jump to Blender's defence, but in my eyes, the biggest threat to SL's usability right now are people who don't know what they are doing, but get a "simple", specialized tool like Zbrush and think they can just use everything they sculpt right out of the (mud)box. With the power to make multimillion poly sculpts, comes the great responsibility of understanding topology and the limits of game engines. Enough of my rant. You will go forth and have a good day!

I have been uploading stuff all night to the beta grid and haven't seen any problems. To me, it looks like only one of the legs has it's normals flipped. Rather than flipping the normals, select all the vertices of both legs and press (ctrl+n) to recalculate all of the normals.

You're right. I tried it again and changed my mind.

I did the same experiment and I prefer the bottom result because a wooden spool would be expected to be made out of the same piece of wood. You'd have to deal with the wood grain direction in each island in the first example and it would be tough to get it to line up (tough enough that I wouldn't even try).

There's a few different ways. You could add additional seams so that there are more separate islands that can be moved around to fill up more of the map space. You should also be able to rotate and resize your island -- on a diagonal and sized up it should fill up a lot more space. I couldn't tell you how to do this in Zbrush, though. I'm a Blender user. Edit: Sorry, I'm an idiot. I totally missed the second part of your question. I would personally bridge the two holes so you aren't seeing into the mesh. This has nothing to do with alphas -- Games don't display backfaces (The side of a polygon facing opposite of it's normal). Unless you cap the hole of your spool or bridge the holes together (as it would be in reality), you're always going to see through it when you're looking at the backfaces of your object. In my opinion, If that spool is going to be set on a spinning wheel or sewing machine, you'll never see inside of it anyway, so it doesn't matter. If it will be sitting out, you aren't really saving anything by omitting those inner faces, so you should just include them. Nowadays, saving a few polys at the expense of visual appeal is not really necessary, so that shouldn't be your first priority. That said, I feel like your spool could look just as good with a little more optimization. I am seeing a lot of extra edge loops where they aren't needed.

I don't know if this means anything to anyone else, but if you don't have anything that natively opens .FBX files, you can find the .FBX converter here: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/item?siteID=123112&id=10775855 I've been using this to open the output in blender. My personal opinion of the web app, though, is the same as Chosen. That is to say, i think it's slow but pretty neat. Thanks for pointing it out. Edit: The .OBJ conversion works fine, but Blender seems to refuse the .DAE file produced by the converter for some reason. Just a heads-up.

All full perm means is that you can modify, copy and transfer the object. Anything outside of that must either be stated in the Author's TOS or you must ask the right's owner for permission to use their product in an ambiguous way. I'm sure they won't bite if you ask for clarification This isn't really a question that can be answered by anyone here; Realize that the TOS can be anything the author wants, including but not limited to standing on your head while eating a bowl of frozen yogurt before you are allowed to touch their textures in any way. They can also require that you include somewhere in your modification of their texture a purple smiley face with yellow horns -- You get the idea.

If they have different rotations, it makes sense that the female couldn't figure out how to kick right. I assumed they were the same. Whoops. Thanks for playing along with my karate chalange. I'm having too much fun with this, and I agree with all of the points made. After studying the weights a bit, I can see that the choke point is in the weights rather than the mesh. It could be better, but it's not as bad as I originally thought. Furthermore, as Gaia pointed out, there are some additional life in the mesh by fine tuning the weights (though, I would just assume make my own mesh avatar than use the default) To celebrate new knowledge, I've ditched the pointless shorts I was working on and am designing a test outfit so that I'll actually be rewarded in the end with an avatar who owns more than system clothing. Lastly, @Gaia Clary: I've read that article several times -- Full mesh avatars are my primary interest for coming to Second Life and the idea that there could be any additional bones to animate against is exciting to me.

HAI-YA! Can you replicate this pose and not get those distortions in the buttocks? If so, I'll believe I'm doing something wrong in posing. Challenge me and you'll get a Karate-style challenge! @Gaia Clary: I really want to try to make an advanced rig for the second life armature. Right now it's so simple that it's rather easy to work with regardless, but a proper rig would be icing on the cake. You can see how frequently I jump from thing to thing, though so we'll see if that ever happens. PS: Could someone explain this to me? I'm using the Workbench avatars and armatures and I created that test pose on the male avatar. Mind you, the test poses provided with the blend file work fine on him and the female armature interchangably. They are both using identical armatures (I think), so this makes sense. I expected, then, that when I applied my test pose to the female's armature, I'd get the same result (That is, the pose should more or less just work). Instead, hilarity ensues: How I shot kick? Can someone please tell me why this is so funny (also why it is happening)? Edit: Hopefully, it's obvious in the above that I'm being facetious. The problem at the bottom is serious, though. Edit: Edit: Also, here is a link to the kick if you want to play with it directly: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/39234437/Blend%20Share/avatar-workbench-265.blend

Thanks for the highly detailed and screenshot supported explaination; I wasn't meaning to imply that the current avatar is"broken" per-se -- I'd be blatantly lying as there are obviously many AOs and textures in which the default avatar looks quite good! I was originally poking fun at it without any context, but my real position is that it could be much better (Which I'm sure very few are arguing against). It's a common practice to judge how well your model deforms based on extreme ranges so that you can understand where your mesh may have weaknesses. It doesn't have to look perfect all twisted up, but if it doesn't look right out terrible, chances are it'll look quite good under reasonable deformations. I hope to hand animate and script a few AOs myself in time, so this is a process that I want to really understand well; With that context, you can understand why I'm being thorough and critical. At any rate, I have not ignored anyone's advice here -- I will copy the weights from the avatar's waist and work out the rest loop-by-loop with my newfound knowledge and see how it turns out. Until next time!

Sorry, I guess I was being more silly than clear. Yes, I was talking about the distortion on the right. The complete loss of volume in the thighs was not the result I was expecting whether it was a natural range of motion or not, particularly when my pants looked fine given the same pose. In my opinion, any mesh you make should accomodate the highest amount of possible flexibility in a person due to there being no limit in how the avatars can be animated. Also, the pants were created on the fly with no reference made to the default avatar whatsoever, so I never had the expectation that they fit. That said, I'm actually kind of amazed by how well they -do- fit . It's a bit of a stroke of luck, really. I think once I get these pants uploaded successfully and looking okay my next test will be a real world set of clothes. Thanks aga(ga(gain)in)in.

I thought the deformations in my mesh were bad; Looking at what any kind of movement does to the default avatar's mesh is...well seriously? I must be doing something wrong: That's just using automatic weights from the armature! Perhaps I don't want to emulate LL's weights...

Definitely some of the best cloth I've seen in a game. About Linden Labs, though, haha. Who knows what we'll have in the future, but it seems to me that they already have that problem! How much of our current lag would just dissapear if everything was replaced with game optimized mesh? Obviously, most content creators aren't professional 3d asset designers, so that is not a realistic expectation but the point still stands. Add the new material support to the mix and we could have higher quality than what is currently feasible and still be able to run SL smoothly on the highest settings. It's fun to dream.

They don't have those methods of providing cheap high detail, but we will be getting normal map capabilities with the new material system (Whenever that happens). That'll be a huge step up from what we have.

I downloaded the workshop avatar and I'll be working with it tonight. I'll show my results in the morning. Also, no confusion here -- I understand what both of you are saying. Hopefully this is a benefit to those coming after me. There really isn't a large volume of skinning workflows for Blender out there. I think that first video Codewarrior posted was excellent. I was really confused about what "normalize" was doing, but now I feel like I really get it (so far). Thanks again(again).

Thanks, both of you. Duly noted. I have a lot to do/watch before I report back. Cheers!

Thanks for the response. No, I wasn't in pose mode when I took that screenshot, but I didn't just parent the pants to the skeleton and give up -- I played with it for days before writing the OP; It's definitely not a matter of them needing to update. Indeed, I modeled them in that position assuming that it wouldn't matter. I was wrong! I really should have modeled them to fit the skeleton. I guess, as you said, I was expecting the mesh to just snap to the armature somehow (an admittedly silly assumption). I even tried moving the armature to fit the pose I had for the pants before parenting them together with automatic weights. Upon uploading on a mesh sandbox in Aditi it did very strange things, indeed! I wish I had taken a video of it. Moving on, I actually did attempt what you suggested, but the file I downloaded came with a robot avatar rather than the default one, so copying the weights may not have had the results I was expecting. I've been too lazy to look for a download of the default avatar shape with the armature. I really like this idea, though, so I'll get unlazy and try it. I'll also check out those tutorials when I get home. Thanks for those. To describe more properly my issue: I was having a hard time getting good deformations when three bones were competing with each other for the same vertices. In particular, keeping a good volume in the buttocks and not having the crotch of the pants stretch too unnaturally is really hard when the pelvis bone and both hip bones are competing for those areas. How do I know which to paint? How do I maintain symmetry? I've since sort of half way figured out the answers to those questions, but it was a pretty painful process. I tried to fix one thing and it broke another, leaving it faster to just start over and try again. I tried using the Levels and Clean tools to help eliminate the human error of manual painting, but that didn't work too well either. I wasn't aware that there were any weight properties in the "N" panel (perhaps you could explain your workflow using that); I was primarily using the brush, not really even sure which brush to use. I have determined that rather than using the add and subtract brushes and having a confusing weight setting as well as a strength setting conflict with one another, I've had far better results using just the regular brush and adjusting the weight property alone. All the while, I was working with "preserve volume" off, which was making things look much worse than they really were. Really, it seems to be a matter of inexperience -- I had these same growing pains learning anything else in Blender. I'm sure if I play around with this enough, I'll get better at it. I was just hoping for some advice to speed up the process, and I'm greatful such advice was delivered. Thanks again.

Right under emulate numpad it will say "orbit style". Is Turntable or Trackball selected for you? At the bottom, that option is also there for NDOF Device (For 3D mice). That's probably the option you want to change.

Of all the subjects in 3d asset creation, I consider weight painting to be the one I know the least about. That said, I thought for fun that I'd throw together a pair of rigged mesh short pants just to see if I could. Somehow, that has turned into an ADHD fueled obsession distracting me from more serious projects. I have played with the weight painting for two or three days, and while I'm making some progress, I'm hoping to find some help for blender 2.6X (2.66.1 preferrably). I haven't had much success finding good weight painting tutorials that aren't extremely outdated. Go figure trial and error isn't getting me the fastest results. Just for the record, this is what I'm trying to make into rigged mesh: I'm using the new "triangulate" modifier in this to help me better visualize the final SL look without actually having to edit tris. I didn't make this with any serious effort to look good or have accurate to anatomy, mind you; it's just to test with. I just want it to move with the armature naturally and have okay deformations. Topology is fair game to critique, though. Many thanks. TL;DR: If this whole thread is too long to go through, here is my updated list of advice to anyone who needs help with weight painting in Blender: 1. The order that you skin your mesh to the bones will matter (especially if you don't start with automatic weights). My favorite method is to start at the top of the head and work my way down to the feet, ignoring the shoulders out to the fingers until the very end. 2. You can lock vertex groups by clicking on the little lock icon by them. This is the key to the triad of tools that make this workflow so enjoyable. Only ever have 2 vertex groups unlocked at a time. When you select a bone and start weight painting for it, you are only focusing on the flow of weights between those two groups. You don't touch the vertices that will be shared by a locked bone. Every time you press "normalize all", Blender automatically sets all weights within the unlocked vertex groups to a total of 1, favoring the bone you have selected and subtracting from the inactive bone's group. You then move down the chain, locking and unlocking groups as you go. This means Blender is always doing half of the work for you. As you work on the skin of one bone, blender automatically determines the weights of the previous bone in the chain wherever there are shared vertices. 3. So long as you have only 2 vGroups unlocked at a time, you can -always- have Auto Normalize on. If you don't have it on, you'll have to press "normalize all" every few brush strokes to make sure that each brush stroke is actually putting the vertex into it's true position. Note that if you don't lock your vGroups, auto normalize is not reliable. You'll find that vertices start getting weighted automatically to unrelated bones. As I said, the ability to lock vertex groups is the key to this workflow. 4. Finally, there are a lot of brushes, so it can be a little confusing to decide which ones to use and even more confusing to know how to use them. The ones I found to be the most useful are add and subtract (after a lot of fussing around with the other ones). I found with the standard draw brush, it was hardly different than selecting vertices and setting them to a value. Just a little faster. It still felt like really slow trial and error guesswork. The common monologue was, "Will .50 look right? No? How about .75? Okay, that looks good. Oh wait, under this deformation .75 looks like crap. Let's try .6..." With the add and subtract brushes, it was endlessly more natural feeling. You just gradually add or subtract a degree weight that you can choose to the vertices and see what it does to your deformation progressively. If you use unified settings, it's extremely fast to switch from add to subtract without skipping a beat. I've heard this method described as managing the flow of weights from one vertex group to another, which is very accurate. Using this workflow means that you never again need to worry about the numbers. You will never need to take the time to look at the n panel to look at what your weights are or set vertices one by one; Blender handles all that for you. All you have to do is see how well your deformation is doing and make small adjustments where necessary. Suddenly the automatic weights -really- take you a long way! Here are my brush settings: Weight: 0.025 (This weight can be whatever you like, but I like this value as it is good for achieving subtle skin stretching in areas that don't move much, yet it isn't such a small value that it takes too long to build up.) Radius: constantly varies as needed Strength: Always 1 (never affected by tablet pressure) Auto Normalize: On Multi-Paint: Off All other options are default except that I keep Unified settings all checked so that I don't have to reset my values every time I switch brushes (which I do constantly with this method.)

Wow. I applaud the effort that must have gone into all this. This is an overwhelming amount of information to tackle in one post -- You actually managed to do a "Everything you need to know about manipulating topology in one thread post" which i didn't think was possible. If every mesh content creator read this, the content of second life would be (insert arbitrary percentile here)% higher quality and less processor intensive.

My experience so far being an experienced (but still learning) Blender user trying to get into Second Life is that the two subjects are rather mutually exclusive. I haven't seen any Blender specific forums that have a devoted Second Life community associated with it and most Second Life focused Blender tutorials use old versions of Blender. My approach has been to attack the subjects separately. Go to CGCookie.com, Blenderartists.org and Blenderguru.com to name a few and learn what you can about Blender. Then just play around in Second life and ask questions in this forum to get Second Life figured out.

That's a very non-specific question to ask on this forum. Wouldn't that be something to ask a registrar at your local community college? The vague answer is "yes", though. I know they have 3d software classes in some tech schools, and certainly at some art institutes.

I'm...not entirely sure what you're wanting to do here, but there is a very simple answer to your question: If Photosynth can export .objs or collada files, then you absolutely could import those files into Blender. What would actually appear in Blender? I have no clue -- I'm not sure this is something anyone has done before. If it's an object with mesh data, UVs and image textures, then you could touch up any of those things to your heart's content. Good luck and let us know how it goes. I've never heard of this program.