[Mesh House creation - Question about pricing?]

Something that I don't think has been mentioned yet is optimising your mesh to reduce geometry. This can reduce the final LI cost of the build  and will be "greener" for SL environment.

In one of your screenshots its showing that you have not deleted faces that will never be seen. Example the top (and bottom) faces of the walls and the top (and bottom) and back faces of the battens.

 

Also you haven't shown any wireframes of the mesh so I'm guessing its looking something like the image below? quite a few vertices that are not really necessary and which could be removed without any adverse visual effect on the finished model :

 

Back, end faces and undersides of the base boards could also be deleted:

 

The unnecessary vertices could be removed by selecting them and merging them to vertices which are necessary or we could use the Limited Dissolve tool in Blender and then convert to tris / convert to quads. Its this second method we will be using in the example below:

1: We start by grabbing the low hanging fruit. In edit mode,  with all selected, M to open Merge menu > By Distance. this will merge any 2 or more vertices that occupy the same position in 3D space:

 

2: With everything still selected > Mesh > Clean Up > Limited Dissolve. This will remove all internal vertices lying on a flat plane (except for the window opening where it leaves two unwanted edges which will be cleaned up in the following step) :

 

3: The two unwanted vertices  on the window wall can be merged to appropriate corner vertices. First select vertex A then vertex B,   then M > At Last. Repeat for vertices C and D.

 

4: Triangulate the mesh. All selected > Face > Triangulate Faces:

 

5: Convert the triangles to quads.  Face > Tris to Quads.

With the default settings there will probably remain some triangles which can be converted to quads by opening the Operator panel (bottom left) and increasing the Max Shape Angle to something like 80° or more:

 

9: The only thing left to do is select and delete all the faces that will never be seen, bottom caps of door frames, and  end caps, underside and back faces of the base boards :

 

The result for this example is an approximate 50% reduction in vertex and triangle count:

 

And yes this should be done before UV unwrapping,

[Mesh House creation - Question about pricing?]

The result is that the texture flows around all the corners, except for the the corners with the UV seams with no visible misalignment :

 

 

If you need certain walls to use a different material to the others (for example the entrance hallway alcove walls) its at this stage that you can select those walls and assign them  another material.

[Mesh House creation - Question about pricing?]

 

Your build is looking good 

I noticed yesterday in one of your screenshots that two walls in the entrance hallway alcove are using the same wallpaper texture but appear to have their UV's scaled differently :

 

Before any UV unwrapping, in Object mode,  check that the 3 scale values, X Y and Z are set to 1.000. If they they are not then you need to Ctrl A >  Apply Scale :

 

 When UV unwrapping outside walls or walls of a room which you intend to texture with seamless textures like bricks or wallpaper, scaling and alignment issues can be avoided if you use only one vertical UV seam per room. This will result in all the walls of a room unwrapping as a single UV island.

In the example below of a hallway similar to yours I gave the lower walls one material and the upper walls a second material. Each have a single vertical UV seam and marked in a corner that would be the least visible because its at the UV seams that the texture will probably not align correctly. (this can often be fixed by applying a test grid and a little more tweaking of the UV's).

 

Start by selecting the walls to be unwrapped. In this case Upper_walls and Lower_walls. Then  U > Unwrap :

 

The two walls unwrapped as expected, 2 separate UV islands :

 

These UV islands need to be rotated so that they are horizontal and then moved down to the lower edge of the UV space and have their left hand corner snapped to the left hand corner of the UV space.

So its:   Select each UV island in turn and Rotate -90° then with Constrain to Bounds enabled drag the UV island down towards the left hand corner. Constrain to Bounds will make this easier by stopping the uvs from moving outside of the UV space.

They will then be scaled up together in such a way that the lower left hand corner of the UV's remain at the lower left hand corner of the UV space, (X=0 Y=0).  To achieve this we need to change the scaling origin (Pivot) to be the 2D cursor and have that 2D cursor at X=0 Y=0 in the UV space. Luckily for us this is the default position of the 2D cursor in the UV Editor.

 

Next we need to select both UV island together and scale them up until the top edge of the Lower_wall uv's is approximately at the upper edge of the UV space. But first uncheck the Constain to Bounds option in the UV menu so that when scaling we can extend the uv's beyond the 0 to 1 space in the X direction :

 

Now we can check to see how a seamless texture looks on the walls in the 3D viewport. (in this case a wallpaper texture but more often a UV Test grid texture would be used here).

In this example the we need to go back to the UV editor , select both uv islands together and scale them up even more. (Note: This additional scaling could also be done in SL instead).

 

Additional scaling :

 

Some more tweaking of the UV's to get the Upper_walls texture to align with the Lower_walls. This again would be better done with a UV test grid applied to the walls instead of this wallpaper .

 

 

 

 

[Mesh House creation - Question about pricing?]

10 minutes ago, Skylar Woodford said:

I tried getting on the beta grid, but it wouldn't let me maybe it's under maintenance?

Nope, I just checked and its open for business. Did you read Rowen's post I Linked you to yesterday ? :

How do I log in to Aditi?

The first time you want to log in to the Beta Grid (Aditi) you may need to contact Support to gain access. If the viewer doesn't recognize your username and password for Aditi, or if you haven't logged in to Aditi in some time, you may also need to request a manual update from Customer Support.

To contact Support for access to the Beta Grid (Aditi):

• Visit the create a ticket section of support.secondlife.com
• Sign in to your Second Life account, if you aren't already logged in.
• On the Submit A Ticket page, select Account Issue as the Issue Type
• For the Account Issue dropdown, select Viewer Login Issues
• Enter the name of the avatar you'd like to use on the Beta Grid and in the Please describe the issue box, explain that you'd like access to Aditi or the Beta Grid.
• Click Submit to send your request to Support.

 

Its way past my bedtime so only very quick answers from me .......

 

12 minutes ago, Skylar Woodford said:

So I tried uploading it in the normal viewer - when I uploaded one mass of model it did not work, it looked like it was made of paper and Hollow

Have yo checked that the Normals are facing the correct way in Blender before uploading.  see this earlier thread  about how to check for face orientation in Blender :

 

 

18 minutes ago, Skylar Woodford said:

I do notice the scale is off, and blender you can measure so I set it on meters since SL is in meters, it's significantly bigger in game but I can resize it to make it the correct size..

I also noticed the texture scaling is off? 

1 meter in Blender equals 1 meter in SL so the scale should be the same in both.  Try applying scle in Blender before exporting. In object mode, with object selected > Ctrl A to open the Apply menu and choose the Scale option.

 

23 minutes ago, Skylar Woodford said:

also noticed the texture scaling is off? 

Is that typical for a house build for the texture scaling to be off, it's an easy fix I can just go in game and edit the textures so they show up correctly.

Texture scaling in SL should  be the same unless you used the Mapping Node to do the scaling in Blender instead of resizing the UV's in the UV editor.

 

27 minutes ago, Skylar Woodford said:

didn't upload a physics model, but the build had physics, I uploaded the foundation and I was able to walk all across it.

 

If you didn't specify a Physics model to use when uploading then it will be using the default Convex Hull Physics shape. Imagine your model, Foundations wrapped in cling film, thats what Convex hull Physics Shape is like .  So my guess is thats what you are walking on. 

 

[Mesh House creation - Question about pricing?]

A little more info on how to login to the Beta grid (also known as Aditi) can be found here :

Just follow Rowans and Codex's instructions.

If you need any more info you could check out the SL Wiki page for the Beta grid : https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Preview_Grid

Good luck with your build. 

 

 

[Can't upload mesh to sl from blender]

25 minutes ago, PearlTingz said:

i cannot join my objects together for some reason in blender either

The "chainlink" is an actual mesh object and not a curve of some sort ?

If you would like me to take a look at your mesh and do a test upload you can send me a link to your .blend file here in DM's.

 

[Can't upload mesh to sl from blender]

20 minutes ago, PearlTingz said:

i tried this to no avail

Hmmm ?

Not sure what else it could be.

Your model is one object in Blender ?

When exporting as Collada from Blender, are you using the  sl+opensim static presets ?

You could maybe find which part of the model is causing the problem by elimination, uploading the heart by itself, and or  then uploading only the chain, single link  etc etc .

[Can't upload mesh to sl from blender]

@Chic Aeon We had this same error a few of weeks ago so I'm fairly sure its that  😉 lol .

 

[Can't upload mesh to sl from blender]

The error message is saying that your LOD3 (High LoD) model has a negative X Y or Z scale value so you probably just need to fix that by Applying the scale in object mode. Ctrl A > Scale.

See my answer in this pervious thread if you need more details

 

 

[Materials and baking]

13 hours ago, vanettda Lassard said:

I have a Blender object that has four materials assigned to it. When I try to bake a texture for one section of the object all four areas are burned together as one.

I thought I understood what you were asking as "how do I bake the 4 different materials to 4 different textures? "  but now the more I read the above the less sure I am  that that is what you are asking.

Any-ways ... to bake out the  different materials of an object to separate textures you need to first tell Blender that is what you want to do.

That is done by 

1:  In the Shader Node Editor or each material Add a new Image Texture node. It is to this image texture that the texture will be baked to.

2:  Rename so you know which is which (also set required texture size),

3:  Have these new image texture nodes selected at the time of baking. (Highlighted in white).

 

In the example below the object has 2 materials,  Blk Wht  and Colour.

In the Shader Editor of the Blk Wht material a new Image Texture node is added,    Shft A > Texture > Image Texture.  This new image texture is renamed as    Blk wht_Bake and is left selected (ready for baking to) .

 

The above was repeated for the Colour material and named Colour_Bake :

 

The result after baking is 2 separate image textures. You will find the different material bakes in the drop-down to the left of the image name in the UV editor.

Don't forget to save the baked images before closing Blender. UV editor > Image > Save as.   and or pack the baked textures into the blender file with UV editor > Image > Pack.

 

A YouTube video explaining similar here at  4:30  to 7:10

 

[Model Building]

3 hours ago, IvyTechEngineer said:

I seem to remember that once you rotate or scale an object in Blender you need to do something to lock the scale in for the object. Does anyone remember the command in Blender?

Object mode > Select Object > Crl A to open the Apply menu > choose the All Transforms option.

 

3 hours ago, IvyTechEngineer said:

Is there some sort of command to merge objects before exporting?

To merge (Join) 2 separate objects so that they become 1 :

Object mode > select both objects > Ctrl J to join them so they become a single object.

After joining use  the Apply > All Transforms option.

 

[Blender error Weight Limit (too many Weights on Verts) when exporting collada avastar mesh top]

Hi

I don't know a lot about weight painting but I do remember @Quarrel Kukulcan  and others mentioning here in the forums that the max. number of weights per vertex for SL is 4.

Limiting the number of weights per vertex is done in Weight Painting mode:  Weights > Limit Total > then check in the Last Operator pop_up that the Limit is set to 4. see screen_shots below :

 

 

 

Also I believe the weights per vertex should be normalized before exporting. Weight paint mode > Weights > Normalize All :

 

 

No guarantee's for the above, so best do try this on a copy

 

[Creating Houses in Blender - Please Advise <3]

5 hours ago, GraceLovell said:

Any other advice is more than welcome!!!

 

I downloaded an  .ifc file created in Revit and imported into Blender using the BlenderBIM addon to see how efficient the imported model was with its use or vertices/triangles.

On the large flat walls it was using the minimum number of triangles and would have required only a little clean-up like deleting a few faces that would never be seen :

https://github.com/IFCjs/test-ifc-files/tree/main/Revit

 

But on the bevelled edges of the large window frames, for some reason there were a lot of extra vertices.  Happily these could be easily cleaned up using Blender's Limited Dissolve tool.

In Edit mode with window frame selected > X key to open the Delete menu > choose the  Limited Dissolve option > and increase the Max Angle value until all the unnecessary vertices have been removed.

602 vertices before,  66 after using Limited Dissolve :

 

So later on you may need to do the same on some parts or your imported models.

Also there were no UV maps !     I'm guessing you don't use them when mapping textures to surfaces in Revit ?

 

 

[Creating Houses in Blender - Please Advise <3]

Hi Grace,

 

A complete house is a bit to much for your first SL project.

 

You will learn a lot with a very simple mesh object, an open sided cube.

The project would be uploading Blender's default cube, minus one of its side faces and have it set up so that when rezzed in world you would be able to walk around inside the cube. Also  have it so that you can apply correctly a seamless tillable texture to the outside side walls and another to the flat roof and the same for the inside walls, floor and ceiling.

If you take on the open cube project  it will be relatively easy for one or other of us to help you when you get stuck with something.

And please add screenshots with any questions

A link to the SL Wiki page for uploading mesh :

 

Second Life has a beta (testing) grid called Aditi which has a few sandboxes where uploads are free. You will still be charged L$'s for each upload but L$'s used on Aditi are just pretend money and will not be deducted from your real SL account. 

Link to wiki page :   https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Preview_Grid    

 

and just a little bit on how land Impact is calculated :  

 

[mesh object is in a large invisble box]

2 hours ago, Devilgrey said:

but there's still this lod3 error when uploading. i tried setting the rotation and xyz location in blender all to 0, and setting the origin to geometry but it didnt help.

And what about the X Y Z scale values?

In the error message, LOD3 is referring to the High LoD model and Negative scale detected usually means that one or more of the X Y Z scale values in Blender > Object mode > Transforms side panel are set to a negative value. All three should be set to 1.000 before exporting    (and before using any modifiers or UV unwrapping in Blender).

In the example below the Cube's X scale has been deliberately set to  -1.000  (negative 1.00) :

 

Result of exporting with this negative X scale value :

 

To remove this error you need to Apply the Scale values before exporting, Object mode > With object selected > Object > Apply > All Transforms. (Shortcut keys Ctrl + A) (Of course you could just select the Scale option but I prefer to use the All Transforms ).

 

Hopefully doing this will help you eliminate the Negative scale error.

 

Note:     LOD3 = the High LoD model.

              LOD2 = the Medium LoD model.

              LOD1 = the Low LoD model.

              LOD0 = the Lowest LoD model.

[Building Buildings]

Perhaps you are simply trying to create a bevel (Ctrl B) around the bottom edge of inner cave walls?

[Building Buildings]

I don't really understand what you are trying to do exactly and seems a bit complicated just to add a floor to the cave, perhaps add more screenshots ?

 

 

3 hours ago, IvyTechEngineer said:

How can I align two faces to make them coplanar?

 

I had to look it up. 

The first method shown in the video above ?

Note: To get the LoopTools options to show up in the right click contextual menu you will have to enable the LoopTools (one word) Add_on that comes shipped with Blender.     Edit > Preferences > Add-ons > LoopTools :

 

[Building Buildings]

2 hours ago, IvyTechEngineer said:

First, why didn't the Solidify modifier in Blender increase the geometry of the original model? Ideally what I thought was the shell of the mountain would be increased by 0,5 meters or so, whatever thickness I wanted.  What did I miss? 

Why it didn't import with the same cave wall thickness that you set in the Solidify modifier ?

If you applied the modifier before exporting then there should be no issue.

If you didn't apply the modifier before exporting then you should use the sl + open sim static presets in the Collada options panel when exporting. This sets an option which applies the modifier just for the Collada export which leaves the modifier unapplied on the original model inside Blender.

I thought 0.5m a little bit too thin for a cave wall so in the example below I set the thickness to 1 meter and used the sl + open sim static presets when exporting .........

 

If it was a cave I was building for the inside of your island I would start by selecting the cave opening and just extrude inwards a few meters to create a tunnel like entrance then create the rest of the cave by extruding and adding geometry, building up the shape of the cave as I go along  ......

[mesh loading issues]

If you didn't instruct the SL mesh uploader to use a specific physics model, either a custom model you made in Blender or one of the options in the Physic panel > Step 1: > Choose one...  drop-down menu then you will not have the Prim option, only Convex Hull or None.  see screenshot below :

[Trying to create a cube for skybox...please help!]

As others have already mentioned you need to create a Physics model(s) and then tell the SL mesh Uploader to use that model(s) for your collision surfaces.

There are 3 rules that you should comply with when creating a Physics model:

1.  Each visual model has to have its own Physics model.
2.  The Bounding Box (BB) X, Y Z dimensions of the physics model should match the BB dimensions of the visual model.
3. Keep it simple.

In your screenshot you show that your sky box is made up from 2 separate objects in Blender, So we need to create 2 Physics models.

Your Sky box is already very simple, meaning it uses very few polygons so we can probably just make copies (duplicates) of each object and use them as our Physics models.

The copies will automatically comply with rule  number 2

 

Starting with the 2 original objects, here named Inside and Outside :

 

To make copies of the 2 existing objects, In Object mode select both objects and use the shortcut keys Shft + D to create duplicate objects.

 

If we give these duplicate objects the same names as the originals but add the suffix _PHYS they will be recognised by the SL mesh uploader and uploaded automatically at the same time as we upload the visual models.  In this example we rename them  Inside_PHYS and  Outside_PHYS :

 

Now we have 4 objects and are ready to export, first the 2 visual models :

 

In the Collada export panel use the sl+open sim static preset option and give this file containing the 2 visual objects the name Sky box :

 

Then repeat for 2 Physics models:

 

In the export panel give this file containing the 2 Physics objects the same name as the previous export but add the suffix _PHYS   (Sky box_PHYS):

 

Now inworld,  Build > Upload > Mesh Model we choose the Sky box.dae file  the uploader will search the folder containing this file for other files which could be used for the lower LoDs and Physics. It will only find the Sky box_PHYS and load this in the Physics slot in Step 1 of the Physics panel of the mesh uploader.

LoD panel :

 

Physics panel :

 

When rezzed the last thing to do is change the Physics Shape Type to Prim. This option is found in the Features tab of the Edit Floater.

 

Now you should be able to walk around inside the sky box

 

Let us know If texturing the sky box is still an issue, mention how you want it textured and why you have the sky box as two separate objects instead of one object.

For example : a separate image texture on each of the 4 inner walls and floor and a single colour for the outside walls ............(= 5 materials in Blender ) .....

[Texturing inworld without custom UV maps]

51 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

1 hour ago, Aquila Kytori said:

Rote the UV islands as needed so that a horizontally aligned texture will be correct on the mesh...

Too lat to use Blenders built in Color Grid !   Too lat to correct my typo !   and now too lat to even do a little UV editing !  

 

[Texturing inworld without custom UV maps]

10 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

You mean I must make an UV map, no matter what?

It will make texturing easier if you do because then it will be you that controls how the image texture you assign to the different parts of the model are mapped to the mesh.

The fewer UV seams your mesh has often means fewer UV islands to deal with and so less problem with aligning textures later on.

For example in the image above if you could unwrap the top part of the mesh, the part above the side walls (these are called coping stones in English) as a single straight UV island wouldn't that make texturing in SL easier ?

 

The following may seem a bit complicated but try taking it slowly step by step and you may find its the way to go.

So starting with our base model:  Note that I have removed any surfaces that wont gererally be seen like the underside faces of the coping stones because doing this means less UV seams to mark and less UV islands to deal with.

The pond is one object in Blender In the following 3 images I have duplicated then separated the parts of the pond to try and better show where the UV seams are placed. Don't you do this

 

Marking seams, The aim here is to get the parts to unwrap in straight lines and with as few uv islands as possible. The coping stones have one edge loop where all 3 edges are marked as seams but the rest only have the two edges marked as seams.This will ensure that it unwraps as a single straight uv island:

 

the UV seams:

 

Adding the built into Blender Color Grid image texture to the model so that after UV unwrapping we can see how this grid texture is mapped to the mesh :

 

Unwrapping the Pond model :

 

Rotate the UV islands as needed so that a horizontally aligned texture will be correct on the mesh.

The 2D cursor will be used as the scaling point later. Constrain to Image Bounds is enabled because it makes it very easy to drag the UV islands all to the same "stating point" before scaling.

Setting up the UV Editor before editing the UV islands. By default the 2D Cursor will be at X = 0.0 and Y = 0.0 in the UV space (bottom left hand corner of the 0 to 1 UV space).

 

Grab each UV island , one at a time and drag down towards to bottom right hand corner. The lower edge of each uv island should be on the lower edge of the UV space.

Don't forget to uncheck the Constrain to Bounds !

 

Open the Color Grid image in the UV Editor:

 

In the UV editor change the pivot point to be the 2D Cursor.

In the 3D viewport change the shading to Material Preview so that we can see the Color grid texture on the model.

Then in the 3D viewport select all of the mesh, go to the UV Editor and scale all the UV's up quite alot.

 The exact amount of scaling is not that important, its just to be able to see more clearly how the texture is mapped to the mesh. You can later scale up or down again or leave as is and use the scale options when applying a texture in SL

 

A little more editing in the UV editor:

 

Zoom in to see how now edges are aligned across the coping stone part of the mesh:

 

Last step is to add and assign the different parts of the model their own Materials :

 

If you need to see more clearly where the UV seams have been placed you can download the .blend file here :  https://litter.catbox.moe/u5hke9.blend

[my cut out image got meshy]

 

Yesterday I was trying to make out what your original cut-out was going to be and now we know, a leaping lary llama. 

 

[my cut out image got meshy]

11 hours ago, Fairealice said:

hello, i need some help with blender please, i inserted vertices and joined them outlining an image, then i uploaded it in sl and added a texture with a transparent bg.

a wonky problem happens shown in pictures....the image wont come up. cause it all blurry not even the default sl prim texture shows. please helpus alotus.

 

As Optimo has already said you need to UV unwrap your cut-out model and map the uv's to your image in the UV space before exporting from Blender.

Note: reference image used was created using Playground AI  https://playgroundai.com/

 

This next step is not really necessary because we are going to use the Project from View method of UV unwrapping (see step 11) but may be useful if later we would like the back of the cut-out to display a different image to the front faces of the cut-out. It is simply easier and quicker to select and apply the UV seams at this step.

 

Next we fill in the the front face of the cut-out object :

 

Give it some thickness :

 

Assign a material to the mesh and link an image texture to the material :

 

 

Next the important part, The UV unwrapping and then mapping the unwrap to the reference image in the UV space. Mapping the UV's to the image will result in the pixels of the image being mapped to the surfaces of the model.

 

Scale up the uv's to match the reference image :

 

 

Now when we bring the cut_out model into SL and apply the same image that we used in the UV editor this image will be correctly mapped to the cut-out.

Note: This reference image does not need and should not have an alpha channel. 

 

[Building Buildings]

3 hours ago, IvyTechEngineer said:

have deleted and added the quad several time and it still acts the same. When I attempt to paint it doesn't seem to totally paint on the bottom of the part. I can paint it in the UV MAP but I don't understand what is wrong with the quad ... 

 

Strange ............... umm,  what happens if you uncheck the Backface Culling option in the paint brush Options menu ?

 

If you don't get it sorted then just copy and paste that part of the mesh into a new blender file and share it so we can take a look at it .