Spinell

As I read your tittle I went "No sh*t " Yes, mesh is NOT easy to learn. It took me about 2 months to learn basic modeling and modifiers and I'm STILL picking up new tricks every day. I don't come from any animation or modeling background, I'm actually a student of Finance. I've always loved video games and that's what got me interested in knowing more about how they're made. Basically, I just learned mesh for fun because I wanted to and I already made stuff for SL that I'm selling in my shop, so I'm living proff that anyone can learn this. It's NOT easy, but doable. And it takes time. And a lot of trial and error. Youtube is your firend if you're looking for tutorials! I won't garantee you'll find everything you need there, as sometimes I had to ask for specific tutorials here on the forums for an object I simply didn't know how to model. First thing is choosing a program to work with. Blender is free and a lot of people use it. I think the other two most used programs are Maya and 3DS Max, but they're both not free. Also, there are other programs people combine for speific details, for example, ZBrush. It's all a matter of choice and knowing what's best for each program. If you're using blender, I suggest you start the basics with Machinimatrix videos. Check out their website and explore around. Once you get some modeling principles down, my suggestion is checking out how the modifiers work, because they can save you a lot of time and effort. Other than that, it's really a matter of working on a project and trying to get over the bums that come along the way. I wish you good luck!

I see, I know there's way to animate fingers in blender but I remember that, when I use my AO in SL, my fingers sort of seem aminated as I change poses... Maybe it's just an ilusion? Would that perhaps work if I was wearing a mesh glove? Also, I'm using the avatar workbench, and work mainly with the T-Pose. What did you mean by "pick a single handpose"?

Since we're on the subject of hands, I wonder if I could also ask a question? I was thinking the other day if it's possible to make mesh gloves, AND wether or not this is a good idea versus just having a regular texture painted on top of the avatar. I'd love to make some detailed gloves, but not sure if it's doable or even a good idea.

Hey guys, I'm going to try and go over my mesh during the weekend. Just wanted to say I've read your posts and advices and I think you're awsome as always.

Managed to aaaalmost weight perfectly my mesh coat. Just need to iron out a few little details that are bugging me. Some bits of the collar still merge with the coat when my avatar moves: What I did was assign to the vertices of both the entire collar and upper part of the coat the weight from the mNeck bone (I'm using the Workbench). But as you can see, there are still a few little bugs to iron out. I'm terrible at weighting so should I remove weight from some of the bits of the collar? Or should I assign some different weights fro another bone? Or something else entirely? As you can see, the coat itself moves fine with avatar; I weighted it using the bone-weight-copy script and it works perfectly. simply wanted the collar to move EXACTLY like the coat does... Any thoughts on this? I don't mind sharing my file if case anyone wants to take a closer look. ;)

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Ok, I can sort of see some of the faces that are overlapping, although I can only make it out after I have it selected. Could you show me a trick on how to check when you have overlapping faces? Also, after deleting those faces, do I have to re-rig the mesh?

Hum... Gaia, could you perhaps chop down what you said into smaller bits? I couldn't quite understand what you ment. Could you also explain how deleting invisible parts help with rigging? Also, not sure what you ment by invisible parts. You mean hidden with an alpha mask?

I AM trying to get better at weighting! I swear, I am. So here's a coat I have modeled, all done and ready and textured. Now, I initially though I'd rig the main part of the coat and then rig the collar seperatly (ignore the bow for now). However, when I went to test this, the collar merged with the coat when the avatar moved. So I said to myself "Ok, maybe if I join the collar with the coat and rig them together, they'll move evenly." So, I joined them together, deleted the armature modifier, re-parented the mesh (using automatic weights) and did the bone weight copy again.. Sadly, even after the two meshes were joined I still get the same problem. Any solutions you can offer me?

Not sure if this is related but... for some reason I can't bake an ambient oclusion of the jacket in normalized. Usually, when I do an AO bake without the normalized checked, I get a triangle bake. Then when I click normalized, I get a more shadow feel, bluered and spread out through the uv map. But even if I click normalized, I still get the triangles.

I...want... that... mesh!!! Wait, what? Oh! Right, texturing! What program are you using?

Didn't work for me undortunately, but I did manage to properly do what I wanted with it in photoshop and it looks good, so everything's fine. ^.^

I actually went to check: these strains or weights are actually generalted during the simulation itself, as the fabric is falling.

Oh, I just like to use solidify in most of my builds, but I guess it didn't work very well with this fabric. Anyways, here are some pics about the strain map. Take a look: it does look similar to the weight maps in blender, right? Not sure if they're the same. I exported this skirt as an OBJ and checked if it had any weights in weight paint mode, but alass, it didn't. Your toughts, Gaia?

Forgot to add! Apperently MD had something called a Strain Map, which is basically the weights! Now, if only I could figure out some way to import those weight into blender along with the mesh.... Life would be wonderful. ^.^

Ok, time for the follow-up! Downloaded the trial, saw some tricks, some tutorials, etc, and got to making a nice, big, ruffle ball gown skirt (veeery victorian ) Easy to make in MD and thank goodness I have an awsome PC, because that cloth simulation was going slow. Imported it into blender and started cleaning away. One note beforehand: this wasn't the first piece I had imported from MD and cleaned in blender, this is just what I'm using here as an example. Overall, MD meshes were very easy to clean up and, guess what?! I never had the non-manifold error appear, so I can just use decimate to chop down most of the vertices and then use smooth to try and get rid of those nasty triangle pointy bits sicking out. So that's what I used. Normally I do my decimates about 3 times, each at 0.5 each time, but this time I decided to just chop it off at 0.1 in one fell swoop. Went to faces>turn tris to quads and got rid of even more unecessary geometry. From there, I have the smooth and solidify modifiers for a bit of an edge. Here is the pic in blender, after the 0.1 decimate, with the smooth modifier on and solidify off. Then I went to upload it on the test grid just to see what was the price and LI. I was plesantly surprised that the first skirt (with no solidify) was only 21L$ to upload, with a LI of about 21. Solidify skirt was another thing: price got up to 56L$ and LI to 61. Here's the comparison: But still! I was expecting much worse. This was actually rather easy to clean up and upload. The skirt with no solidify looks better, so I'll stick with that one (plus it's cheaper). Tell me what do you guys think. You've been in this longer than I have.

This never happened to me before: I'm making a sleevess jacket, it fits around the avatar nicely (in otehr words, it's the same size) and I did a first unwrap, with no seams. I usually like to do this just to see how blender desides to unwrap the mesh. Then I went to mark some seams. The only seams I marked where around the hem the of jacket (top and bottom) but when I went to unwrap I get this error: object scale is not 1.0 will operate on a non-scale version of the mesh. Again, this never happened to me before and I didn't even touch the scale of the mesh. (at least I don't think so...) What do I do?

Hello everyone, I'm hunting for info this time. I've heard about marvelous designer before when I was hunting for tutorials on youtube, but never actually took the time to see the program. Until today, when I found a website with some free models, that had some amazing cloth work. Since I do clothing with lots of fabric bends, ruffles, lace and whatnot, after seeing what the program could do, I got interested. Blender's cloth simulation is not exaclty very good. The program is not free, but there is a 30 day trial version, which is preatty good. My main concern is being able to export it either directly onto SL, or better yet, export it to blender. I'm sure there's someone here who used this before: is there any way to get over the file extentions? I heard MD's extension is .pac

That was a fantastic tutorial, thank you so much Aquila. I was able to make my fleur de lis with no problems. Also, like otehr have already said, I DID learn a few modeling tricks as well! Thanks so much for sharing. ^.^

Well, I think it's going much better now. It seems I'm able to properly align the sleeves with the skeleton when I pose. But I did unfortunately mess up a little in the chest area and I can't find where the Weights>Assign automatic from bones is. Also, I'm not too worries about the shoulders because I'm hiding the original body of the avatar with an alpha mask. I only need to worry about a good fit around the neck.

Hum, well, since no one answered, perhaps I should post an update and change the questions. I found out something new about weighting these few days: if I go into pose mode and select one bone, then go to my mesh and select weight paint, I get to paint different weights for my bones. Rather neat, yes, but that still leaves me with the problem that I seriously cannot weight properly. So, since I'm the one asking for serious helo here, let me try and divide this into eatable chunks. Here's my dress in blender: Now, I did a bit of experementing. I tried adding full, red weights to the bones along the arm, and it kinda worked: the sleeve now moves with the avatar in-game. Problem is, there are a lot distortions along the dress, even in place4s I didn't touch. Like how the bottom of the dress doesn't fall to the avatar's feet, like it should. There's also a spike poking out of the dress' bum for some strange reason. Any directions and advice, please? I need to know how to properly weight this sort of dress, since I plan on making more of the same type. Also, I DID watch the videos about weighting with avastar. They didn't help: either the info there is not about what I need or I simply can't understand how to take that info and transform it into something I can apply to THIS situation.

Lols, calm down, please. Yes, the fleur the lis I want is that in the picture, not a lily flower. Still, if you and your friends say it might help and get some ideas, I'll take a look at the videos.

I've been trying to find some directions as to how to properly model a fleur de lis in blender, with no sucess finding tutorials. Could anyone give me a hand?

More weirdness with rigging! Hurray! Managed to make my first full-body mesh dress. Problem is, I'm rigging it wrong somehow. The dress is long, with sleeves, and ehre's how I rigged it: parented the dress to the skeleton (with empty gorups), then selected the dress and the avatar and used the bone weight copy script. This is how I always rigg, and I only go to weight paint when I need to fix soe slight off details with the avatars motion. So I save my dress and upload it to the testing grid, and something quite strange happens. The torso part of the dress seems to be well rigged, it moves with the avatar and has the breathing mothing in place. But the rest of the dress isn't rigged. The sheelves and the bottom remain in their stiff T-Pose. How can I fix this?

Hi everyone. Is there any way to make carvings in Blender 2.63? I've kinda seen this before, but I'm not sure how to do it. I want to make carvings of a lion's head, but if you asked me to model a lion's head from, say, a cube or a uv sphere.. I wouldn't know where to start. -_- I'd like to carve out a lion's head onto a mesh that would be something lke stone, and I'd also like to know if you could do the inverse of carving. Instead of the head being carved into the stone, it instead sticks out of the stone. Can you do that in blender?