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OptimoMaximo

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Everything posted by OptimoMaximo

  1. OptimoMaximo
    Never underestimate the creativity of a determined griefer!! I actually was thinking of scammers, that happen to me a lot. Buy the demo, 5 minutes later they buy the full product and 1 minute later they IM threatening a bad review if i don't refund them. I can stand the refund just to get that person out of the way, but then i don't want to become their ATM
  2. OptimoMaximo
    That's where the MP web designer should be smarter than that: the ban should be applied on recipient name. Match that against the ban list and show a "can't proceed with this transaction" message. I didn't read all the posts here, but among all those i could read, the manager option to grant access to someone else to do the dirty work for us is my fave. I would add my idea too, but as i said i didn't go through all the previous posts and this may have been said already: create a co-workers list, with preset percentage, allowed to load their content on the main store's MP from their own inventory. This would really decrease the fuss of handing stuff over to the MP's account.
  3. OptimoMaximo
    The only way to "convert" them to something usable in SL is to have a set up of polygon planes onto which , ideally, you should bake the particle generated fur as texture.
  4. OptimoMaximo
    The problem here is that each single rigged attachment contributes to the overall avatar bounding box. So, as shown in a post above, if a content creator manages to upload a rigged mesh with a gigantic bounding box, that affects the whole avatar's BB size too, PLUS the LoD being calculated on the diameter instead of the radius. Basically, you already start with a doubled LoD threshold distance because calculations happen using the BB diameter (like increasing the LoD factor by 2 on each rigged mesh), plus an eventual rigged attachment that makes the overall BB artificially bigger than it should be. This is why i was saying
  5. OptimoMaximo
    As Rolig correctly says, low poly is good as long as it-s not a poor model. If you manage to make your content look decent on all LoDs levels, it's fine. That's what you should aim for. The problem at hand is that, for rigged content, the distances at which each LoD level gets displayed are too mismatching between their rezzed (static) state and when worn. It is ok to have the avatar bounding box as reference size to get all mesh pieces to switch LoD at the same time, but this won't happen as it appears that the calculations give out a different result than what is supposed to be output. Therefore the ARC calculations aren't real as the mesh is calculated as bigger than it actually is, which makes the overall avatar bounding box artificially bigger, increasing by a LOT all the threshold distances at which each LoD should kick in, for ALL of the rigged attachments, also a tiny pinky finger's ring would keep its high LoD always displaying at useless distances, given its actual size on the avatar. I'd rather make the calculations on the avatar's hitbox, making sure it resizes along with the skeleton's joints position (in case of custom joint position for a 3 meters tall/long charater/creature). This way it may become a relatively consistent bounding box replacement, consistent with the actual avatar size. Not to mention that collisions would improve on such "shaped" avatars.
  6. OptimoMaximo
    Sure you can use those avatars to work on, they're out there for this reason be aware that these dummies are for the default avatar, in time you will also need to get the mesh bodies devkits if you'll want to rig for, say Altamura or Maitreya body.
  7. OptimoMaximo
    There are many options out there, but i think you want to begin with the default avatar. Depending on the 3D software you use, you may want to buy one of the available SL related plug ins Blender has Avastar Maya has MayaStar 3DSMax has Marionette However, these plug ins aren't mandatory to get started, they just simplify and speed up your workflow. You can get the basic male and female avatars from here http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Rigging_Fitted_Mesh Just download the skeleton file that is most suitable to your 3D software of choice Good luck
  8. OptimoMaximo
    The point is about converting particles into mesh geometry. Particles can be emitted from geometry though. By definition, particles are points in space with a series of math generated construction to simulate a visible-but-non-existent geometry that follows some physics rules. Most fluid simulations run starting from a enormous amount of particles, but anyway depending on the type of simulation you want to run, they can vary in amount, behavior and dynamics.
  9. OptimoMaximo
    Most likely you're attempting to upload a too high poly mesh, which is exactly what a conversion particle-to-mesh does. Triple A games don't use this method as it generates an overkill amount of polygons that SL is not built to manage and display. Games like TheWitcher3 show that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fs6rle_IbE in this video they use planes to put hair textures.
  10. OptimoMaximo
    i guess you mean the baked iridescence effect on the color too. If this is the case, that is done in Maya using the Hypershade. Among the Utility nodes, there is one called Sampler Info. The following pictures show the node set up Connect the facing ratio from the Sampler Info node to the U coordinate of a Ramp Texture node, as shown here Make sure that the ramp node is set to U ramp, choose the interpolation you like, then choose some colors for the ramp. Each color will appear on faces that are angled away from the camera consistently to their position on the ramp Final effect on a randomly squashed sphere. This effect can be baked for any attribute you will connect the ramp node to. In this case it's connected to the color node to better show it on screen instead of having to render it. Notice that the right-most color on the ramp is the one that shows on the surface when it's perpendicular to the camera, the left-most is the color applied to the most facing-away areas Hope this helps
  11. OptimoMaximo
    I made MyAniMATE exactly with this in mind: any custom skeleton shape is fine. It generates animation skeleton in either BVH or anim format, starting from your rigging skeleton, bringing also the character mesh with it. The plug in itself doesn't autorig your custom shape though, as many features can't be procedurally applied in a reliable fashion (like IK handles and pole vectors, there's no way to determine the correct location in regard to custom elbows and knees location/assumed rotation angle). But it comes with a few custom functions to create animation controllers quickly and easily, and to create parent constraints on them in bulk instead of doing it one-by-one, digging in the outliner. Overview video, at initial relase (i was still developing the .anim exporter) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nYvU6IT8kc a more in depth one, with my horrible voice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrnjoCzC5GY but at least there are explanations here It also comes with the secondary plug in i made, Builders' Mate, in case you want to build an up to scale scene in Maya but the rebuilding stage in SL is too much of a bother for you video here with a very simple model https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQXi4gCNXSM A new update is currently pending, as i have to deal with RL work right now. However it's fully functional as it is. Feel free to contact me inworld, should you have any more questions.
  12. OptimoMaximo
    Alright, i went over this again and yes, you're right, i didn't have the option box checked. I went on and tried the same file from yesterday, and i have a crunching on the abdomen/chest area. Arms work fine though. This is most likely due to the additional spine bones in the Bento skeleton, not being weighted to the default avatar mesh, but still present in the hierarchy definition. So basically it doesn't know where those spine joints go on the mesh, defaulting their location to their parent in the hierarchy definition and thus moving the hierarchy downwards like you're showing. In my opinion, you can go ahead with this skeleton. Suggestions: Remove manually those joints you know you're not going to use beforehand (like the spine joints or the fingers); when shaping is done, select the mPelvis joint, then go to Select menu ->hierarchy and freeze transformations then go to skeleton menu -> joint orient ->option box to view the options, tick on "orient to world" checkbox, up on top (it greys out everything else) and apply this now should be a compliant skeleton and shouldn't give trouble.
  13. OptimoMaximo
    No Kylie, it "fixes" or blocks the marked frame only. The initial developer in the Avastar team, Magus Freston, told me that this was a counter measure for when the simplification intervenes deteriorating contact location's frames. This feature doesn't "fix" the animation, it's more like "lock down this frame and run the simplification in such a way that this frame is written to anim exactly with this value and exactly at this frame number" type of feature.
  14. OptimoMaximo
    The curve description of any transform in the .anim format is written frame by frame exactly like a bvh, but there's no uploader screw up in the middle. However, Avastar's anim exporter does some simplification (call it clean up) for you. The result of this simplification is a pretty linear transition from point to point. This was set in place on purpose at the beginning of Avastar development in order to also support high frame rates (more frames = more data = higher chance of hitting and surpassing the file size limits). However, you can set a marker in your action editor, naming it "fix" (with no quotes) in order to tell the scripts to NOT intervene on the marked frame. Which still keeps the clean up running for the remaining keyframes, just re-adapting it to not change the marked frames. You can add as many of those as you like, but it's not gonna solve the issue completely.
  15. OptimoMaximo
    Alright, make sure, in the export window, that you're using the FBX version 2011 (the version that was used during mesh development). It's the plug in version you're exporting with: the fbx converter last release was 2013 and it's why, i think, the converter says the file is corrupted
  16. OptimoMaximo
    This is a good grief. I just downloaded the avatars again, but everything looks ok to me. I would think something happened to your download. Try getting the files anew. Also, it may be worth noting that the Collada exporter found among Maya's available format, is not the best way to go. I achieve 100% accuracy exporting to FBX first, then using FBX Converter i get a Collada file that truly complies to the general Collada format (with no risk of Maya interventions and twists). It is also WAY faster than Maya even in case of high polygon counts.
  17. OptimoMaximo
    That part is actually wrong in the wiki. The standard there is set as Y axis up, +Z axis forward, not X . Plus, it doesn't mention that the scale of the avatar needs to be 39.37 in order to comply to the scale the uploader is expecting. At this point advertisement time I made a plug in for Maya exactly for this purpose. It supports creation of an animation skeleton for both BVH (using the scripts you have already for animation export) and the native SL internal .anim format. It comes packed with other functions to speed up the rigging process, take a look at my signature beneath my posts (you may need to enable signatures viewing in your profile settings)
  18. OptimoMaximo
    Yes i didn't mention that as i was assuming the first issue to overcome was the scale. Yes you do need to check that option on upload. About what concerns animation, as you say it's coming in using the wrong axis, you should expand a bit more on the tool you used. If you're trying to export a bvh for SL from the rigging stage skeleton, its orientations are all wrong for the bvh standard. As odd as it sounds, rigging, bvh animation and stored animations use different standards, too long here to recap.
  19. OptimoMaximo
    Everything looks like it's squished in... i'm wondering if you're using the Collision volume bones too? If so, what you're incurring is a scale bind pose problem. SL avatars use collision volume bones that, at their default state, are scaled very tiny and rotated a few degrees. When you freeze transformations, you lose those data for a neat zero rotation and scale at 1. Collision volume bones are in the scale of 0.09 so imagine the shrinking effect it has from a scale of 1, just to render the idea. Generally, quadruped characters don't have an actual use for collision volume bones at all, their shape is too far from the human stance and editing the shape may turn out to be not practical. I'd suggest to try removing those bones (easily identifiable by their names, all in upper case, ie PELVIS, HEAD, NECK etc.) first and bind again.
  20. OptimoMaximo
    right, if there were, the issue would keep coming up. So you must have hit a limit per upload, not sure which one it is though
  21. OptimoMaximo
    The opposite, it doesn't need to be there, and it may be sitting there as a left over. To avoid this, start assigning a material to the whole object, to then keep assigning the other materials to the single faces This might be a problem of having overlapping sets of faces (lamina faces) or, even worse, same duplicate faces with different materials, a bug that results in layered textures by duplicating the geometry in place with different materials. Definitely worth a check by running a Separate, to know whether you have overlapping and separate sets of faces, and in case a Mesh Clean up, set to check for Lamina Faces (faces that share all of their vertices)
  22. OptimoMaximo
    What you do on the UVs end up in the regular history, so you should be good on that. My best two guesses about your problem: 1)try to import the body parts in different files (upper body, lower body, etc) to see if this still occurs. If it does, see #2 2) you did the 8 materials be "recycled" over and over on all of the meshes, so the 8 materials limits per Collada file is respected. I would suspect that you started applying the additional materials starting from the default Lambert1, but you didn't assign a first material to the mesh to override Lambert1 completely. Even if you cover all of your faces with different materials, Lambert1 may still be lurking, hidden, never used, and possibly breaking your import's material list. Double check the attribute editor for the attached materials. If Lambert1 is sitting there, restart the assignment from scratch! Lambert1 can't be deleted at any time. Assign the first existing material to the object first, then all the other materials to the single groups of faces. Hope this helps
  23. OptimoMaximo
    I missed this part and i wanted to specify something. Internally, the equivalence between generic unit and meter is done inworld, implicitly or explicitly. As per my experience with the .anim file serialization, i could observe a behavior that points to just "units" as being important: i had two options for anim files, either keep the scene as in the rigging set up and animate that size, exporting the linear values as they appeared in the transforms (in centimeters) or, as i did for animation on props, scale everything up to meter scale and convert the measurements from centimeters to meters. As long as some scale compensation is done within the hierarchies, nothing should be really different.
  24. OptimoMaximo
    Too bad! The rest of the community does Being a good modeler doesn't necessarily mean being good also at content creation, which includes modeling and texturing as first stages, then it also needs the knowledge to make something work on a specific platform for how the platform requires such content to be. The "free LoD factor" behavior you and your sock puppet alt C(rap)S(h*te)Virtual are so much defending, is going to drive people off SL because the rendering requirements go through the roof for stuff that would need way less computing power. Be less ignorant = problem solved
  25. OptimoMaximo
    It all depends by how you began the scene in the first place. In 3DSMax, meter based, you will have a giant avatar when you set the scene to centimeters. However, if you group it and assign to it a scale value of 100, you would do a scale compensation that brings everything back to being relative distances. Oddly enough, even if i set my Maya scene to meter, an fbx or collada would sign the scene as centimeters anyway
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