AcidJuice

For information, i have opened new threads on both technology/server forum and technology/viewer forum... I hope that will help to be sure of the general sequence of all this and help to focus on the reasons of the problem ^^

Several tests again this morning : - many imports all ok on agni - test on aditi : bad imports - agni again : good imports !! A question, may edge loops have an influence on the mesh loading ? (because i know some are bad on my model... but yes it works for you all...) [Edit : Just for "fun", i launched two viewers and two imports : - viewer on agni : it works - viewer on aditi : it's bad Preview windows were opened simultanously... ]

For information, I did a memory failure check using mdsched.exe and all is ok

Yes... all these seem to proove the problem is from my computer.... and i am really sorry to annoy you all with this so particular problem. I did a test again this morning : all the different dae meshes we did during this thread work well today... no crazy vertices, no dark parts... So... this is something on my computer. This is probably not a software problem (because this is not regular)... We talked about the bandwidth or internet connection : is the bandwidth concerned at the mesh upload preview step ? We talked about a corrupted memory in my computer : but why problems seem to focus on this only upload function ? I have no noticable problem at all with all other sl functions or any other software i daily use... Anyway... i have no idea about how to check the computer memory... but i'll try to find that and i'll tell you. [Edit : a little more point in response to Rahkis : my blend startup file contains only a lamp and a camera]

I did again several import tests... and now all is doing well !! highpoly cat, lowpoly cat, lowpoly cat from Rahkis and last reimport/export in a new .blend file.... lol... how can that be ? so versatile behaviour !!

I have this kind of things... but i dont know how to read it !? And that seems to be relative to my last successful import session ? I dont know how it works... [Removed... as i dont know which local information is contained here...]

So... i have tried as you said the following test : - Create a new blend file - Import the dae file you made in it - And export the cat : - Export 1 : using avastar exporter - Export 2 : using blender exporter And the result is... all work (both two exports) after several attempts on both firestorm and sl viewer... Surely, i need to be prudent, because yesterday all seemed to be ok with the "sorting vertices method" which failed today... Anyway.. what could be deduced from that ??

Gaia talked about an example of bad behaviour due to her computer memory failure, in one previous post... ... ok, but why this only this function is impacted if i have a ram problem ? (and i found no notification about that on my system) So Rahkis, if you never had this kind of issue, certainly my environment is the origine of the problem... but as i said, i reinstall recently both sl and firestorm viewers... and my computer is globally ok... or if it fails, it fails only in that particular import... ... i am ok to test to reimport the cat on another blend file, but as i told before i have regularly this problem on many meshes : and the solution was to try and retry imports so that at the end i obtain a good result (but i am sorry to say that i am fade up of doing that ^^)..

Here are some more tests done with "Second Life 3.5.0 (273444) Apr 3 2013 12:48:32 (Second Life Release)"... so the official viewer this time. I used the collada file generated by Rahkis (so not generated by my version of blender). Here are the results of the first two import attempts : Dark parts on the neck : Bad points on the tail or feet : ... and different amount of triangles between these two imports... Well.. i dont understand... if i am the only (?) one to have this problem, maybe this is due to my environment... But why with several viewers ? And why with Rahkis collada file ? Is there any shared system files (exe, dll, i dont know) between the several viewers ? Is that one bad componant somewhere on my computer ? Really nobody else had this kind of problems ?? [EDIT : this cat is not rigged, has no material, and is around 7k triangles]

Here are my export settings for the lowpoly cat (which is not rigged) : I generally use the defaut values (except to say "selection only" using the blender exporter)

I have sent you the files, Gaia. Concerning the viewers, I have tested with the LL viewer (recently reinstalled for the purpose of these tests) and this is the same. For firestorm, i recently installed the 4.4 and have the same results as the previous version. For me, these problems are not recent : i allways had this kind of problems... i opened this thread recently because i am a bit discouraged because of that and really hope to find a solution ! Concerning my configuration : - Asus G75V (gamer laptop) - i7 3610QM - 12GB of memory - hundred of free gigabits on disks... - NVidia Geforce GTX 660M 2GB - Windows 7 Family Edition 64 Hope that may help ? I dont know...

Rahkis, here is the result of 4 imports with your collada file : What we can notice : - The triangles and vertices count is not stable - The two first imports seemed to be ok - The two last imports are bad (the dark parts again near the arrow)

My blender version is 2.66.0 r54697 For the last exports (screen captures), I used the avastar collada exporter (but i had the same problems with the native exporter, for non rigged meshes). For now I just want to understand what happens with the low model and try to find a 'secure way' to import meshes... so just a static mesh (my problems occur both with static and rigged meshes)... I am ok to try an upload from your export (but not sure to have the possibility to do it very soon).

Hello again all... I am sorry to say that... in fact... the problem still occurs... I retried today the upload of the same mesh... you remember the mesh that seemed to be good after vertices sorting... but today it is bad at import again More than that... i reworked on a low(er) poly version of the cat. This time i have 7 068 triangles and 3 568 vertices. Here is the cat in blender (colors are just due to a matcap display which does not affects the materials). There is no materials, no modifiers here... and no doubles... So... here is a series of import in sl (firestorm / aditi) : This time, no more bad vertices (it seems), but these dark parts (unpredictable again)... Here is an example result of this kind of dark parts inworld (not the shadow under the belly, but the 'stars' in front of the arrow) : Again... thanks for any suggestion or idea...

Thanks a lot Drongle and Rahkis for your explanations and advices. I'll try to rework on this mesh to lower it as possible ! cheers Lemon

I agree Rahkis ! Drongle said : " The internal mesh data format uses 16 bit values to define geometric positions. If you have triangles that are very small, the rounding of the coordinates to 16 bits may sometimes make two vertices the same, producing a redundant triangle with non area which will be culled from the triangle list. This could explain the small loss of triangles count that you describe. " Can that be solved using blender "remove double" function with a floor value for the "merge distance" ? Drongle also said : " I have described elsewhere a bug that limits the number of triangles for one material to 21844. The uploader secretly starts a new material when the count reaches this limit. I have only studies in detail the effects of this on texturing/colouring, but it is quite possible that it affects rigging as well. Which triangles go into which material depends on the order they are seen by the importer, I would expect that to depend only on the order in the collada file so that the effects should not vary unless the file is changed. However, there may well be some other things affectin that order. It might depend on the internal state of the collada library in the viewer. Anyway, I suggest you try reducing the triangle count below 21844 (a good thing anyway) and see if that solves the problem. " Many things here... - Why this limit ? A bug yes but where ? - What is handled by the viewer side and what by the sl servers ? Remembering that an hypothesis was link to the bandwidth... - Why does the problem exist, why "instability" from the same collada file ? And i precise again that the problem exists on non rigged meshes too... and with both sl and firestorm viewers... - How this automatic material change affects the sl material count limit ? (if it does) - ... For the other point that is "i need to reduce my mesh"... well ok... i am not so good at all that but try to improve myself But... when you see that this 16k vertices mesh "only costs" 5.7 equivalent prims... well... Oh... for Gaia... a suggestion : including some kind of automatic vertices sorting in the "avastar collada" exporter ? If any other ideas or things to experiment, just say and i'll try (if possible) to make some tests. Cheers, Lemon

Well... i did over 30 import tests without reducing the vertice amount (and keeping the duplicated vertices that Gaia found). As said previously the difference with these new tests is that i have sorted the vertices by material in blender.. this approach deduced from Drongle indications... ... and it seems to work well all the time !! Or... for once, i am very very lucky importing meshes ! As said, i have sorted meshes, not the faces or triangles.. i dont know how blender reacts internally in this sort... But but but ^^ My other test model (the stick man) is only 13 600 triangles and 6 800 vertices... so under the given 21 844 ?? Anyway... i have sorted the stick man vertices too and tried the import about 20 times... and all is ok too !!! So... to me, that could be the solution ... even if i dont understand completly all, to tell the truth... Many thanks to all

Thanks Gaia, just few precisions : The 94 duplicated vertices are recent (work in progress as i told you and this duplicated only concern the eyes newly added). And so i had this mesh import problem previously. For the 'sl material split' i now understand the different amount of vertices comparing to blender. ok... but not necessarily that this amount vary when the import is bad ? For the rest, surely i can reduce the face count in some way... but the point to me is to know precisely the limits : for instance if someone could say "eh ! in the documentation it is written that no mesh over xxxx vertices is allowed" or if the importer gives an error message concerning that... that could be really cool ! no ? All this because in my first posts here, i gave another exemple of a 6 828 vertices mesh with the same problems... so where and why are the limits ? Well... nevertheless, thanks again all for your responses and your attention Lemon

Hello Drongle, Concerning the vertices proximity, i thing i am not concerned here, because the mesh is really regular and clear... so i dont think this is the point here (for the less, for this model). Concerning the limit of 21 844 vertices per material. Knowing that, i have sorted the vertices per material [edit i have now 6 materials in the mesh] in blender and before exporting the model to collada. After that, i made few import tests... and that seems to work !!! But as all this does not occurs all the time, i am prudent and i will try some more tests to be sure... ... i'll tell you all in this thread... Thanks Drongle

i can add few more informations : The amount of vertices shown in the preview window is not allways the same (but the amount of tris seems to be stable). There is also another bad thing. Do you notice the dark part on the cat chest ? Also there are some bad imports that are not visible in the preview window : look at this screen capture below.. it has holes in the belly !! And yes, the mesh is verified about normals (and again this is exactly the same collada file...)

Hello again Well, some more informations : Concerning the low or high poly aspect : this 16k vertices models costs a bit more than 5 prims (lower lod set to zero). I dont know if it is a good indicator about what is good or not in matter of polycount ? I have succeeded to load a good cat again (rigged this time **) !! And the amout of vertices and faces are still 18 468 and 33 088. So no difference with the bad import... but still a difference with blender informations... @Kwakkelde : You asked if there were sharp edges : no. All is defined as smooth in blender Also you asked if there is multiple materials : now yes, but in the first imports no (no materials at all in the first imports) @Gaia : I am ok to give you the model but not to share it too all. I've tried to contact you inworld so that we could find a good way to give it to you, if you want. I have not tried yet to triangulate the model. But by the past (on other models), i have noticed (or at least i made the supposition) that tri or quad models may influence the result. But i am not sure at all (because bad points are not allways the same from an import to another). In this way, another question maybe the influence (or not) of mesh loops ? I dont know if sl takes care of it (for any optimisation or i dont know) or simply converts all in tris and no more... For additionnal information, i know use the last 4.4 version of firestorm. I'll tell you if this seems to change anything. But previously i had the problem on both sl and firestorm viewers (and by the way both in aditi and agni). Have a good day ** i have to say that i succeeded to do the rig because of the very good tutorial found on avastar blog here : http://blog.machinimatrix.org/2013/03/15/avastar-1-rc1-775/

Perhaps a begining of explanation ? The cat mesh is now in blender : - Vertices : 16 757 - Tris : 33 184 Here in this import : - Vertices : 18 468 - Tris : 33 088 Here is the screen capture : So... there is probably some kind of algorithm behind, and including for "load from file" setup... maybe all this is documented somewhere, but i was not able to find this documentation. And, ok, this does not explain totally the "unpredictable" aspect of all this... (when i am lucky enough to have a correct upload i will note tris and vertices amounts to check if there is some kind of relation with them)

So... My sl bandwidth is 500kbps And my internet connection : - ping : 31ms - download : 16.24 Mbps - upload : 0.87 Mbps If i follow Codewarrior advice, i may set the bandwidth up to 800kps... Then, maybe this is not a good explaination for the problem ? What do you think ?

Thanks all for your replies ! @Codewarrior : i cannot connect to sl right now, but i'll check the bandwidth and tell you what it is and if changes affect something as soon as possible. @Gaia : my memory (12GB) is checked and good (i meant, not my memory in fact but my computer's one ^^) I agree with your comment "how the bandwidth may affect the preview"... To me, this kind of files can only be entirely read or not (as they are xml format)... so (at the base) nothing can be lost in the way... (??) I suspect this is some kind of optimization done server side... but how to verify that ? @Kwakkelde The cat is about 16k vertices (i did it by retopo another model found on the net which model is more than 100k vertices). To have a comparison : avatars are about 4k vertices (approximatly) and human models such as DAZ are currently about 20k (and yes, this is not "lowpoly" models...) I think i will not reduce the cat but cut it in several parts (poor poor cat ^^) so that each part will have a small amount of vertices. It will take me some time to do it properly but i'll send you back the results when done. Thanks again all for your replies... i'll tell you soon the results of my differents tests

Yes Gaia, I confirm about the strange hair shape : all is ok with it, and the hair was not exported in the collada file anyway.