Aquila Kytori

Just to add : For most small mesh objects, for example a table, an earring, a pot plant or a postbox etc a simple box will do for physics. And because the physics mesh is always stretched to fit the bounding box of the visual mesh the same box will do for them all. So for all things like that create a cube in your 3D software, export as Collada.dae file and save it as Cube_Phys.dae to your desktop or where-ever, so that you have it easily available. Then when you are uploading your mesh object you can upload this Cube_Phys.dae file in Step 1 of the Physics tab of the mesh Uploader and in Step 2 you should hit the Analyze button.The Physics weight will now never be more than 0.4 in the LI equation no matter how big or small you resize mesh. The increase in LI you experienced with your Non Analyzed mesh when making it smaller is not a bad thing. As others have already said reducing the size of your mesh is also reducing the size of the triangles used to make up your physics mesh and you are being penalized for that. It follows that using very big triangles will DECREASE the Physics weight in the LI equation. Which means for large mesh objects like buildings you can take advantage of this by creating your Physics/collision mesh using polygons/tris/planes as large as possible and avoiding all small and thin planes/tris in this mesh. This type of Physics model should NOT be Analyzed in Step 2 of the Physics tab in the uploader. (Remember to set to Physics Shape Type Prim once it has been rezzed inworld).

hi LisaMarie McWinnie wrote: While checking the normals I saw this on the high poly model. I'm not sure if this is how it is supposed to look, but there are some normals pointing towards the inside of the model, and their locations more or less matches the areas in different colors in the normal map. How can I fix this? Recalculating or flipping directions is not doing the trick. I don't think that there is anything wrong with the normals to fix, it looks like its the geometry that is a the problem. Your high poly mesh appears to have some of the folds folding back on itself and also intersecting faces. Add to that that that your low poly and high poly are intersecting as well means that sometimes the "rays" from the low poly mesh will be meeting the back faces of the high poly first, which is like the ray detecting faces with flipped normals which can sometimes cause messed up colours being saved. Because of the complexity of the high poly mesh editing the Bias and Dist values in the Blender Normal baking menu will not really help. Have a look at this link: http://joeyspijkers.com/t_normalmapping.html about halfway down the page is a good explanation of what varying those 2 parameters does.

hi The first line from that link says : "Just as we can texture individual faces of a primitive differently, we can texture individual faces of meshes differently if the mesh has been properly set up for materials before import. " Which means if the different material faces haven't been assigned to the mesh in the 3D software before uploading, the mesh will only have one when you come to edit it inworld. ( A mesh object can have up to 8 different material faces. )

Just tried exporting a mesh from Blender to Hexagon as .obj file and the UV map was included when i opened it in Hexagon. Just make sure that you have the Include UV's check box checked in the Blender export window : After you import into Hexagon, change to the 2 Vertical Views mode and when you select the mesh the UV's open in the second window. What to do after that I have no idea

hi That force field is the default Convex Hull Physics/collision shape that the uploader creates from the low LOD mesh. Ideally you need to create a separate Physics/collision mesh which you upload (along with your visual mesh) in the Physics tab of the mesh Uploader. Then when the mesh is rezzed inworld Edit it and in the Features panel you can change the Physics type Convex Hull, to Prim, which means you are telling it to use the physics mesh that you made and not that default one. If you do a search in these forums you will find quite a few threads dealing with mesh physics. For example : http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Problem-with-home-mesh/m-p/1788825#M18558

Using Hi LOD mesh for physics Uploaded ok for me using the Second Life 3.7.24 (297623) Dec 19 2014 06:55:47 (Second Life Release) Standard Viever to Mesh Sandbox 1 on the beta grid. And Drongle you weren't far of with the size And for Castles its probably best to use the Planes type Physics mesh (not analyzed , avoiding small thin triangles and simplifying the physics as much as possible.

Hi Dellon Omizu wrote: ................ I not sure if is possible post files in forum, .................. http://www.pasteall.org/blend/ is a useful page for sharing Blender files. Have you checked for "doubles" ? Analyzing the high LOD mesh may prove costly in Physics weight, but thats what testing is all about isn't it. The best choice of Physics type (and shape) to use for such a mesh would probably depend on its size.

Hi One way to change your Ambient Occlusion texture to one with an Alpha gradient texture is the following 1: There is some colour in your AO textue so first make it a true greyscale image by using the Desaturate filter: Colors > Desaturate > OK 2: Increase the Contrast and Brightness , the lighter the grey the more transparent it will be in the finished texture. Colors > Brightness-Contrast > and adjust the sliders > OK 3: Convert greyscale image to Alpha gradient. Colors > Color to Alpha > OK

hi Suki Hirano wrote: I'm using Blender, how do I mirror an object correctly? If I duplicate an object then simply mirror it with the mirror command (which simply turns one of the scale coordinates into negative value), it will have a parsing error when trying to upload into SL as SL doesn't except negative values in scale coordinates. To set the negative scale values back to positive ones : In Object mode with the object selected Object>Apply>Scale Not sure if that will fix the upload issues or not. Also after Mirroring the Normals can get flipped so you would need to check that before uploading aswell. To do that : In Edit mode open the Properties Panel (N) and search for the Shading sub menu then enable Backface Culling. If all or some of the faces of your mirrored mesh looks see-through then the Normals are facing the wrong way. To correct this, with your mesh selected in Edit mode open the Tools panel (T) and then the Shadings/UVs tab and in the Normals menu either hit the Recalculate or Flip Direction button. http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Shoe-creation-exporting-duplicated-shoe/m-p/2881455#M30250 Suki Hirano wrote: I If I use the mirror modifier it will create a mirror right on top of the original object, making it very difficult to separate because then I'd have to select every single vertice manually then force it to separate that way. If the mesh is very complex I don't see this as a viable solution. When you Add a Mirror Modifier the mirror axis will be where ever the Objects Origin is. So make sure the origin is where you want it to be first. The easiest way to do that is either manually place the 3D cursor where you want the origin to be or use the Snap menu,(Shft + S) Object mode>Snap>and choose either Cursor to Selected or Cursor to Center if you want to mirror about the scenes center point. And then to get the origin to the 3D cursor : (CTRL+SHFT+ALT+C) Object>Transform>Origin to 3D Cursor.

Hi Perhaps this video will help : But I would still urge you to get a mouse.

Hi Welcome to SL Have confidence in yourself and yes you could certainly do it yourself in an afternoon. Once you have downloaded, installed, and opened Gimp, : File > Open and go to where you have the texture files and select one you want to work on. Then open the Colors menu and choose Hues..Saturation........ from the list. Select the Primary color red and then adjust the Hue slider to get the color you want and then hit OK. Next you have to save your new texture with a different name.: File >Export as ......and save it as a .png file with a new name somewhere on your hard drive. Next you should remove the Alpha channel and to do that open that new texture file in Gimp, open the Layer menu and then Transparency and select Remove Alpha Channel. Then export again but instead of choosing Export As choose the Overwrite..... option. Now you are ready to upload that texture to SL. If you take your time all will be well

Elinah Iredell wrote: ....... . I still do not understand though why the mesh object showed up as cube when I opened it in Blender? You didn't say if you had a cube in your Scene, ( 3D window) or not before trying to import, so maybe the object got imported and was so small it was inside the cube ? or: In Blender Objects are added at the 3D cursor location which can be moved to new locations with the Left Mouse Button. So perhaps you weren't viewing where the 3D cursor was positioned ? Best is before adding or importing an object always ensure that the 3D cursor is at the center of the 3D window by using the short cut keys Shft + S to bring up the Snap menu then choose Cursor to Center. All mesh Objects that are in your scene will be found in the Outliner window. If it doesn't appear there then it wasn't imported. If the little eye icon next to the Objects name in the Outliner is greyed out that means its hidden so won't be seen, you would need to unhide it to see it again.

Hi again Blender is your best choice, but the only way you are going to learn Blender is to put aside any thoughts about finding an easier way to creating mesh using other software. You need to commit to Blender for a few months. I have been looking around for Blender 2.7+ video tutorials for beginners and I think this series is very good. ( I have watched tutorials 1, 2 and 5 ) This guy is a professional teacher and it shows. Blender is designed to be used with one hand on the keyboard and the other on the mouse. This means learning the keyboard shortcuts so I would advise you to do as I did when starting out , get a pen and a notepad and write them down as you learn them. The very first entry in my notebook was a drawing of a box with arrows pointing to a Vertex, an Edge, a Triangle and a Polygon. Followed by : Tab = Toggles Object and Edit mode A = Toggles select / deselect All S = Scale R = Rotate G = Grab (translate) T = Toggles Tool shelf on or off N = Toggles Properties panel on or off E = Extrude etc , etc ................ Later I reorganised the list of shortcut keys into two lists, one for Object mode and the other for Edit mode. Why was this important ? Look at the 2 screen shots below, the first is the default Blender workspace Edit window setup , the second is the one I use 98% of the time when actually mesh modeling. You see the screen doesn't have to be confusing, with the use of shortcut keys most of what I want is available to me. To toggle from the first to the second........ in Edit mode with the mouse cursor over the 3D Edit window press Shift + Space bar. So just decide to go with Blender , watch tutorials, try things out and when you get stuck Google will always have an answer somewhere and if you don't know the correct mesh language to ask Google you can always ask here

Medhue Simoni wrote: ........ Other than some minor annoyances with not being able to name layers, .......... http://cgcookie.com/blender/lessons/13-layer-manager-add/

Hi In Blender , 1: Add a cube, 2: Subsurf Modifier > Subdevisions 2, 3: Apply And it turned out is was very similar in Hexagon, 1: Add cube, 2: Properties panel >Smoothing level 2, 3: In the Dynamic Geometry panel hit that little "lightning" button.

You may find this recent tutorial from BlenderGuru interesting. http://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/how-to-make-rust/#.VKmPYHvm7ao I haven't tried it but i'm guessing you would need to start by creating a Mask for your worn area ....................... looks a bit complicated

(yes, agreed still images are better that .gifs so will be returning ot them in future posts )

Hi Basically its a bug. when using triangle based physics shapes, that is Not Analyzing the physics mesh in step 2 of the Physics tab in the mesh Uploader, for walls that are less than 0.5m thick. Rezz your wall and increase the thickness to more than 0.5m and you will see that you are able to walk through the opening see link below. The Bug is that for walls using this type of physics mesh and less than 0.5m thick they are "secretly" (Drongles word for it ) using Convexhull physics and so closed. All you need to do is either Analyze the simple wall in Step 2 and change to Physics Shape Type to Prim when rezzed or more usually when using Triangle method for physics mesh, don't upload a single wall. Upload several walls together as a single mesh object (so making the over all "thickness" of the mesh object more than 0.5m in all axis. One of many threads on this subject : http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Making-physics-HELP/m-p/1751753#M18002

Hi WinnyChoo wrote: Then it would let me upload the shoe, but the inside of the shoe is missing.. ? Even if I clearly see it in blender. I am lost and don't know what else to do.. As you haven't mentioned normals .......... Polygon faces are only one sided, the Normals of the face indicate from which direction that face will be visible. There are different ways to mirror a mesh object in Blender and at least one of those will result in the face normals being flipped. Extruding can also result in flipped normals. A mesh rezzed Inworld with flipped normals can often look as if those faces are missing or the whole mesh can appear to be inside out. Maybe this is what has happened with all or part of your mirrored shoe ? Enable Backface Culling and then you will see if flipped normals is the problem or not. In the .gif image below I show how extruding can easily inverse the normals and how to correct this :

ty Have just one more look. I worked out how to edit the .gif in Gimp and have now added some text and increased the timers on parts that before looked a bit rushed.

Hi I have been waiting for an excuse to try making and uploading a gif file to this forum and now is my chance Not quite a full-blown action video but it is moving pictures : In Edit mode and with your mesh selected : 1: UV Uwrap your mesh. 2: In the UV Editor create a New Image. This will be the the image the AO texture will be baked to. 3: Go to the Properties window and open the World tab. Enable Ambient Occlusion. Next open the Gather menu and enable Falloff. Set Distance to 1, Attenuation to 1 and Samples to 5. 4: Go to the Render tab and open the Bake menu. Change bake mode to Ambient Occlusion. Enable Normalized. Hit the Bake button. To see the AO on the mesh change the Viewport Shading from Solid to Texture. Experiment with changing the Distance and Attentuation values until you find something you like. With the Samples set to 5 the AO will bake out quite quickly but be a bit grainy. For your final bake up the Samples to 20 or more to get a smoother bake (will take longer to bake. To find out why you should enable Normalized in the Bake menu try giving your mesh a Material and setting it green for example. now bake with Normalized unchecked. Edited to replace original .gif to one with a bit of text. Also in the Bake menu I forgot to reduce the size of the Margins (UV Island Margins)

hi The minimum size in any of the x, y or z axis is 0.01meter (1cm). If you try to upload anything smaller than that the mesh will be stretched to that minimum dimension. One way to get around this little problem is to add extra geometry in the axis which is being stretched so that the bounding box size is now more than 1cm in all axis. The extra geometry can be a simple little triangle which you give a separate material in Blender, then when rezzed in SL you select the triangle (Select Face) and set it to 100% transparent. One thing to note, this extra geometry has to be the same mesh Object as the main mesh for this to work http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Mesh-and-sizes/m-p/1744979#M17893 http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/When-exporting-from-blender-to-SL-how-to-reduce-to-make-a-tiny/m-p/2038219#M21886 There is a alternative method which doesn't need a separate material: You make the Bounding box bigger by adding a large triangle from one corner of the bounding box to its diagonally opposite corner, then the third vertex of that triangle you move to the same position as one of the other two vertices, but do not merge it. It will look like a single diagonal edge passing through approx. the center of your mesh but really be a very very thin triangle. When rezzed in world this very thin triangle will not be seen at all.

In the Edit >Texture panel why are the Horizontal and Vertical scales not set to 1.0 ? Optimizing is usually done before UV unwrapping. Deleting faces and merging may well have changed your UV mapping a bit. In Blender we have an option to Disolve vertices instead of deleting, this has less effect on the UV's ...... having said that if the texture is mapped correctly in Maya it should be the same in SL (unless you now have more than one UV map and the wrong one is being uploaded along with the model ?)

Hi again Michael Bigwig wrote: As far as the resolution, this is taking up most all of the UV area...I didn't care about some things like the handle, but perhaps I could because it is a bit lower rez. Other than the handle, I'm pretty content with the rest of the texture resolution. What Cristhiana meant was that with a better layout of your UV's you would be wasting less texture space. Your present layout is wasting approximately 40% of the available area. A better layout would mean you have the choice to increase the size of the UV islands and so have better resolution or a better choice would be you could use a smaller texture size.

OMG ! New to Blender and already wants to model a better avatar ! Hi Rowan , only joking , yes why not have a goal to work towards. Is creating a better avatar easy ? No Is creating a better skin for that avatar easy ? No But just to give you some idea of how much work is involved have a look at the following : Gaia Clary has already created an example of a rigged for SL Make Human avatar in Blender. And not only that but she has UV unwrapped it to fit the original SL Avatar's UV 's. http://blog.machinimatrix.org/avatar-workbench/ Skin examples can be downloaded from https://sites.google.com/site/another/resources and opened in Gimp/Photoshop My advice would be start looking for basic Blender tutorials