Christhiana

ChinRey wrote: Last update my original question: After uploading 41 road modules and 11 floors with five more floors to go, there is as far as I can see no recognisable pattern or method for making a thin walkable surface with good physics in SL. Each and every case has to be treated separately and be solved with long, tedious sessions of trial and error. Analyzed physics is no better in that repsect. LI is predictable with that but elevation isn't. And even worse, with analyzed phsyics there's a huge difference between a model uploaded to the beta grid and the same uploaded to the main grid. So to get it right, you have to do all the tests on main grid and waste a lot of Lindens on failed tests. There's a difference in the analyzed physics model for beta and main grid? Damn.... Is the difference a constant or just random? This really sucks. I finally got the elevation right on the beta grid... And of course, once the uploads are done, it's the even worse nightmare of fighting the horrendous interface MP offers the poor sellers. Just sell a fatpack with all the pieces on MP and put a statement in the description that individual parts can be purchased at your inworld store This way you'll only have to go through one listing and you should mentally recover within 24 hours! I will finish my work, partly to prove to myself I can and partly because I know there are people in SL who appreciate quality workmanship and some of them may be lucky enough to stumble across my humble stores among all the garbage on MP. Do it for the peeps! But what I can't for my life understand right now is how could I ever feel any joy in building??? I know the feeling...everytime I think I have it down something else pops up... On the other hand it feels really great when the beast is finally whipped into submission!

There is a big difference between running a themed sim where you can roleplay your favorite movie or tv show and trying to make a profit by selling themed stuff from those movies or tv series. While both are IP infringments I can understand a company might see a roleplay sim as great advertising whereas selling items based on their ideas and designs is likely to be seen as theft.

From the firestorm website: For SL 32bit Havok: Click to DOWNLOAD SHA1: D44920EE6BDA84D58237317B11D926D21176C71A For SL & Opensim 32bit: Click to DOWNLOAD SHA1: 98B610F5C2EF27063CF8D55BC75467A34D190505 For SL & Opensim 64bit: Click to DOWNLOAD SHA1: 368DB68EC9A0351CF537CEC2986C2C4CF84607BC The first download suggest it has a license for havok support, the other two seem to suggest they don't. I know the topic of a 64bit havok license has come up a few times in the two weekly tpv meeting, but I can't recall if it was LL that needed to buy a license for 64bit support or some other reason it wasn't possible yet. I remember Oz mentioning that they wouldn't support 64bit Havok until they make a 64bit viewer themselves (if they ever decide to do so in the first place). It's just what I recall from memory so I could be wrong...

I don't get why people would get upset when someone has the same display name as long you're not trying to impersonate that other person. In RL there are a lot more people sharing your name People partner up in SL and want to take the name of their partner, family, clan or whatever so there are bound to be a lot of people with the same or similiar display names. Ofcourse with exception of extremely decorated names that are copied to the letter.

I totally agree on that! I've never found a reason too complain about LL. I think they've done a hell of a job keeping SL alive and well for so long. And the recent upgrades and fixes have made it a lot more enjoyable then it already was. When I use a platform such as SL I accept it has and always will have perks. I see it as a challenge to master this platform and overcome it's perks and nasties What would (second)life be without a few challenges now and then right?

As far as I know the 64bit firestorm uses a different engine from Havok. So maybe some things can be compared this way...

I've seen that on two opposite parts of a house I was working on. The mirrored part always uploaded with more Li. After triangulating it in blender before uploading the Li's were very close. No clue as to why though....

I managed to make some savings there. The wood surface is repeated 4 times (2x on the top and 2x on the bottom surface) The edges are mirrored once. I could have also lined up some of the objects UV's to match a single texture but I was afraid it would look to repetative that way. I still might give it a try, but honestly I'm kinda happy with the result and I've already spent a lot of time redoing things on this build.

Also the last attachment point you attach the object to will be the new default place when you select attach instead of attach to.

ChinRey wrote: Christhiana wrote: Today I started with the physics models for my walkways and was amazed to find your thread! The timing couldn't have been any better. It saved me a lot of trouble! Thank you for that == Christhiana wrote: The most important thing I've learned here on the forum regarding mesh building, is that when you want things to work correctly, put in the work! Yes, that's much better than the usual "I've just bought me a violin, how do I play Paganini?" approach. :matte-motes-tongue: Christhiana wrote: I also used to focus just on Li, but now I'm all about the right balance between good LODs, physics, efficient use of textures and ofcourse Li. I've been through the same. Making low LI mesh that looks gorgeous at point blank distance is easy (at least from a technical point of view, not necessarily from an artistic), just skimp on the LOD models and physics and cover the thing head to toe with a ton of high resolution textures. Haha, indeed...it all seemed so easy when I started out It's been "back to the drawing board" a lot of times for me, but I'm glad I pulled through and learned to build the right way! Making SL items that are low LI, low lag, look good at any distance and have proper physics, that is difficult and requires some serious thought, work and experience. Nekka once called it "environmently friendly building" and I think that's a very good metaphor. It's all about making the most of the limited resources we have available in SL. I like that term, sums it up quite nicely I might even use it in my marketing strategy! Combine good quality mesh with good quality sculpts and prims and LI should never really be a problem anymore. At Coniston I now have seven layers of builds, the ground and six full sim sky platforms with two more coming up. Oh and also a few smaller sky platforms and sky boxes I've rented out. Much of it isn't finished yet and I have lots of details to add but I still have 5000 prims available so that shouldn't be a problem. For all practical purposes I have nine sims for the price of one and the way people keep complaining about inflated land tier prices, that approach should be worth quite a lot to many SL'ers. I only have a 1680m2 parcel which can hold less prims then most peoples hair, but am already impressed with what you can build on that if you're building smart. I think the smarter builders are starting to build, the more populair homesteads will become.

I've had a similair effect when removing the sides from the physics model. The number of tris and verts went down but Li weight increased. I know that must have been a lot of work! Looking very good already! Here's how far I am with the corners and straightsof my walkways, still a lot more to do though.... I don't even want to start thinking about upload costs.. (2 materials on each model with diff,norm and spec textures).

Today I started with the physics models for my walkways and was amazed to find your thread! The timing couldn't have been any better. It saved me a lot of trouble! Thank you for that I did run into the elevation bug and had already found the thread about that. Adding an extra triangle did the trick for me. It took some trial and error but luckily I can use the same measurements for all the walkway objects since they are all equal in height. The most important thing I've learned here on the forum regarding mesh building, is that when you want things to work correctly, put in the work! Make LOD's, Physics shapes, bake your own normal maps from high poly models, etc... I also used to focus just on Li, but now I'm all about the right balance between good LODs, physics, efficient use of textures and ofcourse Li.

Thank you Drongle! I didn't realise the "secret switch to convex hull" only happens with triangle based physics. Makes sense now... The object already had a Li of 3 because of HQ LODs and the way I unwrapped to make textures repeat where possible. Adding an extra triangle to compensate for hull retraction still keeps it at 3LI, so I'm very happy with the result so far! The tip to make the physics shape out of the hulls I want to end up with was very usefull as well.

I am working on some round corners for a modular walkway set I'm building and I've been having problems with the physics shape. When setting the physics shape to convex hull it closes the inner corner on the outside, which is expected behaviour. When setting the physics type to prim it shows the correct physics model for prim physics in the viewer but it still actually uses convex hull physics. Then I came across this post by ChinRey: https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Building-and-Texturing-Forum/Physics-shape-problem/td-p/2918076 ...where Drongle mentions the secret conversion from prim to convex hull physics by the viewer if one direction of the object is less then 0.5m This explains the problem I was having with my physics model since the Z axis is only 0.15m. Trying to find a solution for this problem I've found that about 9 out of 10 times analyzing the physics model before uploading resulted in a correct physics shape where the inner corner is not closed when setting the physics shape to prim (it still closes when setting it to convex hull, as it should). I can not find any information as to whether this is to be expected behaviour or not. I'm also puzzled as to why this works about nine out of ten times (I tested it about 30 times). Forgive me if this is something commonly known, but I couldn't find it in any forum thread... This is the physics model in Blender: This is the physics shape and LOD0 model in SL: In the image above, the physic type is set to prim and the z axis is still 0.15m. As you can see I can walk into the inner corner.

I think building with prims is good to learn for everyone who wants to build. Even if you plan on making mesh only. I use inworld prim building for mockups a lot too. I just don't export into blender. I take the measurements and start a clean build in blender, it's a lot faster and cleaner that way...

I'm getting real good results with the high to low poly bake. I did however notice that the artifacts at the bottom of the grooves are caused by the edgeloops near the bottom of the edge. Instead of using these edge loops I did an edge split on the edge at the bottom of the groove. This gives better results without artifacts in the normal and AO maps.

What's even the point in building with prims if you are going to export and reupload it as mesh. The modifications you'll have to do in blender to optimize your build is as much or even more work then when you would have modelled your build in blender in the first place.

I used the same texture as in my other thread about baking normal mapos only this time it was on a straight walkway instead of a rounded corner. I mirrored one half of the walkway on the UV map on the x and Y axis and overlapped the UV's to save texture space. I understand why it would work the opposite way if i only mirrored on the x axis (the walkway runs along the Y axis) but not mirroring on the x axis, only on the Y also produced the same result. If that's the bug you're reffering to, I guess it's not fixed...

LlazarusLlong wrote: [Has Linden Lab been tinkering with real world settings; for an hour this morning the sun went out in the UK?] I think that might have something to do with RL enviromental setting not being persistent over waking up sessions... :matte-motes-big-grin:

Just about every time you mispell a search result for something 3D related you're going to land on a website offering Maya or 3DS for free, with half the page written in Russian and the other half in Chinese... The last thing they want to do here is start approving of the use of illegally made content (we already know SL is full of pirated goods... putting a stamp of approval on that - is a bad move). How is LL approving the use of illigally made content by using Maya? That's like saying "whenever I type windows in google I get offered a free version. So LL should not support the windows platform and only make the new VW available for open source OSes like Linux". You know, you can use blender to rig pirated game characters or export stuff from turbosquid for use in SL.. I don't think that supporting a platform that you can download a pirated version of means you're approving the use of stolen content.

I was using a subsurf modifier on my bake as well, otherwise it gave me offset baked triangles. For me a division of 2 did the trick. I learned very early on that if your bake looks off, try a subsirf modifier before anything else And 8 out of 10 times that does the trick for me.

This was the solution I was looking for in the first place. Good to know it can be done in blender. But I will stick to baking from high to low poly as the result is a more correct texture set. . But still... I find it odd that this didn't work with a regular normal map bake. Since it works with a selected to active base to me it seems logical it would also work in a normal bake.

One thing you might experiment with is cutting your gif up in smaller blocks. if you cut it in blocks of 16*16 and build a grid of say 4*4 prims and have each prim play a 16*16 piece of the animation you'd have a 64*64 pixel animation with a framelength of 256. If you use 8*8 pixel pieces you get up to 1024 frames, etc... I don't know if the animations will sync up correctly, you'd have to try this out inworld...

Thank you so much Drongle for this wonderfull and comprehensive guide! I have been thinking of using a high to low poly bake but I have never done this before and was a bit hesitant to try. I'm going to go this route because the end result looks so much cleaner and more realistic. You're guide has a very clear and simple workflow with a lot of great tips to circumvent some problems I would definetly have run into, like extending the edges on the high poly model and the aligning of the UV islands to the woodgrain. I also noticed the pinching of the woodgrain and normal maps and it gives quite a few artifacts (besides from not looking correct in the first place. The gap between the planks got tapered as well, something you wouldn't expect to see in RL. The woodgrain also got stretched a lot on the outer edges when mapping it the way I did. Your solution to this problem works perfect! I like the idea of starting with a plain wood grain texture. The end result will be a unique texture opposed to a bought and applied one. It will give me a lot more control over the outcome as well. A big thank you to everyone who took the time to respond with all these usefull tips and examples! This has been a great learning experience and I'm sure I will be a better builder because of it!

You are completely right. After some sleep and re-reading RipleyvonD's solution I understood what you did with the UV's. Not changing the normal map but adjusting the uv's to the normal map. I never thought of it that way and will remember this trick for when working with prebaked NM's in the future!