Rahkis Andel

This thread is awesome and you are awesome for making it. I hope I have some free time to chime in soon.

I was hoping someone would go into more detail. I was in a bit of a hurry.

The beta grid is Aditi. You will have to take the mesh upload test specifically for the beta grid and set your client to let you log into other grids. Aditi has several mesh sandboxes you can use and you get an arbitrary amount of Linden to spend that is disconnected from your account -- Like 40k or so. It's very buggy and unstable, but it's perfect for avoiding a ton of waste. Try a google search and see how far that gets you. Edit: By mesh upload test, I mean the pointless Intellectual Property pop quiz they make you take to cover their butts in case of lawsuits.

Nice sword. It looks like the normals of the pommel are flipped. Try selecting all the vertices and hit ctrl n to recalculate the normals.

I both dread and eagerly await these reports. I hope all your effort will result in this issue being fixed or worked around.

A cool little feature I never use. If you want to fine tune your uvs you can use sculpt like tools to move the points. It has a grab, smooth and something else mode, to be exact.

I was going to suggest this exactly. Try hitting "Q" in the UV/Image editor to toggle it on and off.

I agree with you completely, no worries. I just prefer a complete answer over an easy one. I saw this as a highly misunderstood subject and it would be easy to take the easy answer without looking deeper and being no clearer for it.

How does LL time relate to Valve time?

- never scale the mesh in 'object' mode. I'd amend that to "Understand what it means to use transformation tools in object mode versus edit mode." Not only is scaling (or translating or rotating) in object mode okay, it's got some really great uses. Let's say I am making a house and I just finished the walls, but now my doorways are just bare portals. I want to make doorframes for all the open doorways, and I know that all of the doorways are exactly the same dimensions...so why bother modeling 3 separate doorframes? Let's just model 1! Okay, so I have one doorframe, and it is in it's own object, so I can just keep duplicating it at will to fill the other doorways...but I want to do one better. I want to give each new doorframe object an exact duplicate of the original's mesh data... I use (Shift + D) to duplicate the selected object and looking at my toolshelf in the context sensitive tool parameters, I make sure "linked" is checked. Now I have a new Doorframe object with mesh data that is linked to the original. I do it again to make the third doorframe...Now I just need to move them into position. Might as well do it in edit mode since object mode transformations are a no-no, right? Woah, that's not right...When I select one, all of them are selected...what if I go back to object mode? There we go; now I can select the individual objects and move them without moving the others -- That's weird -- When I'm in edit mode all my changes apply to all linked mesh data but not while in object mode? Oh well, so while in object mode I move/rotate all the doors as necessary to get them into position and...oops. I realize that I wanted the doorways taller. Of course I'm a 9ft tall runway model, how could I have forgotten? Oh crap...That means I have to adjust all of the doors individually, now! That's like, at least 5 or six more button presses! I'm way too lazy for that. Wait...In edit mode, everything I select in one is selected in all, right? So If I select all the top vertices of one doorframe and drag them up... Okay, this is officially awesome. To recap, moving vertices in edit mode affects an object's mesh data. performing transformations on an entire object simply affects it's transform properties -- equivalent to using a modifier. As soon as you use (ctrl + a) and apply any transformation, the change is applied to the mesh data. You can inversely zero out any transform values an object has in the object panel. Doing this will ensure the object goes right back to looking like it's mesh data tells it that it should. And yes, exporting this house to Second Life would result in the doors being oriented just as you'd expect, so no worries there, either. When I was starting out in Blender, the whole object vs/ it's mesh data concept really threw me and it throws everyone I know starting out, so I hope this is explaination is explanitory enough. Farewell!

At least one is -- myself. Thanks for the clarification.

I've nothing of worth to add here, just that I'm as excited as you are and for mesh deformer and materials for obvious reasons. Can't wait for some status update on the whole thing, but I'm not holding my breath.

Duplicate and separate. Alt+s to size along normals slightly to give the pants slight thickness. You can get more quality by sculpting high res details and retopologising, but I get the impression that you need to work up to that stage. Note that it doesn't matter if the vertices line up or not, as it is expected that you would use an alpha map to hide the occluded parts of the default avatar to prevent visible clipping

That link didn't work for me.

This is a life lesson hidden in a second life lesson. Don't get so caught up in the trees that you become lost in the forest.

I know that your customers shouldn't be responsible for helping you test your own product, but have you tried asking someone to use singularity then Firestorm an see if there was any difference in behavior?

Stop completely. Your shirt is a jagged mess of triangles, and without ALL it's Subdivisions it is always going to look and act exactly like a jagged mess of triangles no matter what you do. You haven't found an answer to your problem, because what you are experencing is exactly the expected behavior of Zbrush: You make an incredibly dense mesh and sculpt equally incredible detail into it. The end product is something beautiful that you can render out and admire, but is patently useless for anything else. Just because Zbrush requires no foreknowledge to use doesn't mean you can use it to spit out game-ready models at will. Topology is the key. Learn it anyway you can. Don't try this again until you understand what you did wrong.

I don't know that this is the right forum for requests. If you contact me, I can take a look at what you want weighted. Depending on your skill as a modeler and the complexity of your mesh, it could be a cakewalk or it could be a lesson in insanity.

What viewer are you using?

"...Rule number one is never, ever, ever let Windows Update touch your drivers..." Uh oh...Brb.

It sounds like it could be an LOD issue except that I don't know why someone else wearing a mesh outfit would make your outfit flicker... Is it safe to assume you've already made sure your graphics drivers are up-to-date? Also, what viewer are you using?

Would a screenshot be possible?

Most of my up to date rigging sources for blender are paid, but there is a wealth of free info that is still relevant on cgcookie.com/blender. Of course presentation is partially subjective. I'm currently working on a mesh avatar and when I get to the point of rigging it for second life I'd be glad to share some instruction with screenshots. Outside of that, I'll look up some links when I get home if no one has already helped you. In the mean time, go look for an infant to punch.

Whaaaaaaat? I never knew you could do that. Thanks.

That's really nice. I had a toy train just like it when I was young.