Rahkis Andel

If I had to make a hypothesis, it would be that it's failing at the import step. All the signs point to that. I can't test that hypothesis until I'm at home, though. In the mean time, you could try re-installing the latest version of whatever viewer you're using. As Gaia suggested, also try using the default LL viewer and see if you get better results.

Well, I see nothing wrong with the model. What version of blender are you running? I am going to export the cat and skeleton to a collada file and you can attempt to upload that to second life and see what happens. I'd do it myself, but I can't access SL until I get home tonight. Edit: I noticed that the low poly cat isn't parented to a skeleton yet. Do you want to rig the low poly first and send that to me or do you want me to just export a static mesh?

I don't really know what to suggest offhand that hasn't already been suggested. If you're willing to share the .blend I would be glad to see if I can see anything wrong with my own eyes. Hopefully it's just something silly and nothing hardware related.

A few loud voices can drown out the majority; maybe I've paid too much attention to the few loud voices. As a 3d artist I'm probably suceptible to subconciously inflating the degree of opposition there is to a subject I feel strongly about. I sure hope so! Cheers.

I agree with everything you said except that I believe that most of the mesh hate is based around misinformation (Or misplaced expectations) rather than any intrinsic failure of the current implementation of mesh. Mesh is already a capable replacement for a great many prim and sculpt based assets. What failure does mesh really have currently that isn't already status quo in standard prims or sculpts? Can you create a prim or sculpt clothing asset that conforms perfectly to the avatar? No -- why is mesh expected to perform this way without the deformer? Currently, the only significant down-side to mesh compared to prims (That I know of) are that you can't make flexi mesh. For what it's worth, I don't really find that to be much of a loss. Many are just plain misled and sadly it's not only the non-technical types that fall for it. Mesh is blindly blamed with conviction for everything from graphical glitches to skyrocketing LI; In reality, mesh excels in both looking consistently better and having lower LI. Prims? Sculpties? Let's face it, these are hacks. Polygon modeling is how it's been done for time immemorial. People will learn; I doubt it will be the deformer that changes their minds, however. At least not immediately.

Yes and yes. SL understands how to shade the mesh based on normal direction, just like any other render engine. And as Gaia already tested, the normal direction is respected by the collada exporter and therefore will be understood by the importer as it appears in the .dae file.

Glad you figured it out! That was a bit of a head-scratcher.

@Codewarrior: I will try to avoid jumping on the "we should have had this years ago" train and just keep my fingers crossed! @Gaia: Thanks for the info! Felix's video makes things look very promising, but it's disappointing that it only looks to be a video and nothing I can actually play with myself. I'm just glad to see some progress being made. It would be nice to see a more final implementation, but for my uses at least, I only really care that I can export the results, which is possible! That itself is great news for us.

AcidJuice wrote: For the other point that is "i need to reduce my mesh"... well ok... i am not so good at all that but try to improve myself But... when you see that this 16k vertices mesh "only costs" 5.7 equivalent prims... well... You will probably find the response to the last point you made is overwhelmingly against looking at the LI as the singular point of reference to design towards. (LI is a pretty good measuring-stick, but it isn't perfect) Considering what Second Life is -- a real time, persistent online simulation -- and the limitations such a thing carry with it for both the server and the client hardware, you should never even be allowed to approach that "ceiling", whether the ceiling is a bug or intentional. The fact that an excessively dense mesh winds up with a small LI is irrelevant for practicality's sake. It is up to content creators to care that their content doesn't contribute negatively to the experience of everyone else. In the ideal, controlled game environment, no character model (All clothes and hair included) needs be more dense than 10k triangles. That, of course takes advantage of the many tricks you can employ to cheat -- not adding any detail in the model that will not be visible to the player. In this "game", where the end user is rarely comfortable with the idea that there is no body under their clothing, obviously those tricks aren't possible. Plus, our content must be easily reusable, so we just plain lack the ability to cheat. Does this mean we shouldn't care if our models are overly-complex? No, that means we need to care more! That said, even now without normal maps, a naked, bald character composed of between 10k and 15k triangles will still look great by all reasonable standards! People just need to realize that they don't need their mesh to look perfectly smooth all around -- that all they really need to focus on is a mostly smooth silhouette. The shading groups and textures take care of the internal faces! The problem? Making 10k to 15k triangles look and move properly requires a knowledge of topology when some people just want an easy button. Anyway, you didn't ask for a rant and by all accounts you know this already, so I'll take my leave from the soap-box.

This seems to raise more questions than answers.

It looks like there is a lot of development going on in this subject and since it is so important to game asset creation I thought I'd record some of the more interesting developments here. I feel like this thread holds an implementation that could already be of great use to a lot of us. I haven't used the addon yet, but I will be testing it soon to see what results I can get. I'd like to at least be able to upload the default avatar as a single peice without merging the vertices at the object boundaries and still get a smooth shading transition. I know this is already possible for users of Avastar, but I the more options we have, the better. It seems that for those of us who are creating trees, this could already be a nice addon -- that said, I haven't tested it yet, so I don't know what is possible or if Blender will recalc the normals upon export to collada or not. Feel free to add any related news here as well.

If you want, I can look at your .blend and see what happens when I upload it.

@codewarrior: I got it the first and second and third times.

Take 2 more screenshots. This time, instead of turning the camera to see the back of the pants turn the pants. If the back is -still- dark, then you have a problem. Otherwise, not to be contrary, but it's a lighting issue. And I use the word "issue" lightly (I kill myself). Your screenshots exhibit what I would expect untextured pants to look like. Without color and textures, you have nothing but the how the viewer shades your model to determine what it looks like. I could be wrong, though, so assuming there is a problem, we'll also need to know what your viewer is and what version you are using.

I'd say you'd be dissapointed switching to Maya if it was only for an easier experience. It's not easy to learn any new software, especially not an advanced software suite with a dirth of different applications all supported. Back to not answering your question -- Honestly, if my mouse didn't work, that'd be the last straw for me. I'm not sure how you're getting anywhere without that. Are you sure you have "Emulate 3 Button Mouse" on?

I agree. I changed my post above.

Sometimes weird things happen. It's odd that it happens more than expected with you.

First of all, any time you use any generative modeling techniques, the one constant is that they will always need to be converted to plain mesh when being exported for use in a game engine. So yes, you can use bezier curves and no, I can't think of any particularly good reasons to avoid them altogether. It's probably not saving you much work, though, so I wouldn't necessarily reccomend using them either. One thing to keep in mind is what Codewarrior pointed out below about the Z-transparency stacking order. You want most of your hair to be all in one part -- like a single hair "shell". What you could potentially use bezier curves for is the for the strand like bits that won't fit in the "shell" to give it extra dimension. You shouldn't just cram dozens of shapes together to represent all of your hair -- that's one of the best things mesh can help us avoid. Another thing to watch out for is that Blender really doesn't have very good curve editing tools. One potential up-shot to curves is that you could use them to help shape out your hair and then retopologize it as a single shell. Again, the poor curve editing in Blender is a bit of a deal-breaker for me in this regard. And like I'm sure you've been told before, there is no clear guide on lowering polycount. If you have an all quad mesh, all you have to do is evenly remove full connected loops of vertical and horizontal edge loops until you can't remove any more without making your mesh look unacceptably faceted. Let me know if you want me to elaborate on anything.

My personal (Blender) workflow: I create a low poly base mesh of my concept that is as bare-bones as possible while still having all of the proper edge flows to get density where it's needed. I don't care how closely it fits to my concept -- I use as few polys as I can get away with. Then I do multiresolution sculpting to make it match my concept. Once I have a polished high-res sculpt, i kick it back to the second subdivision level (or whatever level most efficiently adheres to the main shapes) and apply the multires modifier. Then I manually remove edge loops until the mesh is as sparse as possible while still retaining it's shape. This time I really care that the low poly model stays as accurate as physically possible to the high poly. This will serve as my final game-ready model. This is a great method for generating good high poly to low poly normal maps, which I presume you will some day want to do when the new material system comes out. Heck, you might want to do it now just for the benefit of those who are using the test viewer. If you wanted to go hard-core low-poly, you could triangulate your mesh and start collapsing edges in areas that don't need the complexity, but realize that will make your mesh unreasonably difficult to modify later. I recommend keeping an all quad version at all times. Also realize that you are not going to see significant gains from sparing a few polygons here and there (in my opinion).

It sounds like you have one or more vertices with the wrong influence. Select a vertex in the troubled area. Press the "N" key (This opens a 3d veiwport property panel) and look for the vertex weights tab to check the assigned weights for that vertex. If you see a bone that shouldn't be influencing the vertex, you can remove the influence there by setting the weight to 0 for that bone.

I can't answer your question, but I am curious -- I never watched that tutorial, so I'm not sure what he was suggesting you do with a digital shoe last. Why would that be useful?

Assuming you mirrored the weight painting, I don't see why it would have any affect. It's the UV maps you need to worry about. As for what you can do, I don't know why it is distorted like that. You might need to warp the texture a bit in Photoshop to make it play nice. Perhaps you could give more images of the issue and of the texture/UVs.

Google "how to make a mesh t-shirt for SL" (exactly as you worded it). This was like the 5th result, I think. In the time it took you to write that question here, you could have typed it into Google instead and had a wealth of options. I'm not trying to be snide or anything -- just wanting to save you time.

It looks like you're going about it the right way (The way I'd try to do it, anyway) but like I said before, I have no experience in large physics shapes in Second Life at all. Until someone else steps in, if you have the time, test with what you have now and see what happens. I could probably be more helpful if you attempted something and took screenshots of any specific issues that came up.

Thanks for the clarification Gaia. It was going on midnight for me and I didn't have time to make such a pretty and well organized post, but I'm glad he got the idea. This is definitely one of those subjects that I don't envy newcomers for. I don't think I could have figured this out on my own a few months ago. As for the physics shape, that's where things get hairy in large builds like houses. I will stand aside and let someone else try to help you on that one. I'm sure I'll learn something myself.