Dree Eames

"Say I purchase a 3d horse model. I turn it into a product and resell it. I do not sell the mesh full perm. Is that OK? By my reading of the license, I am not redistributing the mesh for reuse, it is for direct sale as an item.... no different than selling a game or movie that contains that 3d character. If that is not a legitimate use of the mesh, then why doesn't the license simply state "YOU CAN"T UPLOAD THIS TO SL". Done." I think it's more accurate to say: "I alter the product and re-DISTRIBUTE it". since it is already a product that you purchase from Turbo Squid. Regardless whether you restrict your customers from further distribution of the item, you have put yourself in the distribution chain and set yourself up as a distributor if you buy a product from Turbo Squid and sell it as a mesh in SL. I believe the intent for products sold on Turbo Squid is tbe sold to the end user. The end user then can use these items in photography shots, and/or in the context of making movies and animations, as fixed props or characters in games and for such purposes as props for architectual renderings, etc., etc.. You are probably are allowed to upload it to SL and play with it yourself, but not allowed to pass it along to any other person to use (for free or for sale). If they admire it, you can point them to Turbo Squid where they can purchase the mesh. Otherwise, if you purchase a mesh item from Turbo Squid and then sell the mesh on SL marketplace it's like reselling it back on Turbo Squid. Clearly that's not what is intended. I would gather, should the creator of the mesh on Turbo Squid be amenable to your redistribuiting the items in SL or any other similar platform, you'd need to purchase a distribution license which most likely would be a whole lot more expensive then the end user license. Also you'd probably be required to give the mesh creator a percentage of your sales and keep him or her informed of your intended marketing plans, providing details regarding how you plan to alter, and sell the his/her product. Just because the item isn't being sold currently in SL by it's creator, this doesn't limit the creator from reserving exclusive rights to do so in the future. It would be foolish not to reserve that right. I'm guessing the license doesn't clearly state you cannot sell the item as a distributed mesh in SL, because it's somewhat obvious that's not the intention of the seller. It would make more sense for you to check for licenses that clearly state "May be redistributed in Second Life". If the license such a statement then you are good to go. Or your other option would be to contact the seller of the item and ask for a distributors license and pay an appropriate fee for this arrangement.

Well actually those knockers (and pairs of large knockers seem to be quite popular in SL and not generally considered the least bit pretentious) is actually an image composed of both a front and 3/4 view of a single doorknocker I modeled yesterday in Zbrush. Thanks for the welcome back, but quite honestly I'm an unrepentant lurker on the Mesh Forum and I've never disappeared completely. I might miss something important worth learning about Blender if I didn't keep up with the forum postings. (And I have only a single knocker of respectable dimensions pasted on to my Linden home. But otherwise I'm perfectly ok with being considered pretentious in a virtual world.:matte-motes-tongue:)

Ah! Then let me introduce you to it's synonym "nurnie" or "nurnies" pl. Now anyone reading this will be noticing these terms everywhere, esp. on scifi modeling tutorials and 3d forums. Personally I prefer the term greeble, but apparently these terms are interchangeable.

This is a very nice UV tutorial link you posted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiQOHSzyooc I have a few additional suggestions for anyone following the method that may enhance the UV experience: 1) Follow active quads. A small thing, but if you have limited time (or if you despise the process of UVing), you can eliminate the step of straightening out that initial active quad in the UV edit space and make the process quicker. Simply select the face and in the edit window press U and RESET. The uvs of this single active quad will automatically align to the boundry of the UV window and have straight edges. You can then, in the UV edit area press S and shrink that active quad's UV square down to something manageable in size. With the Active quad still selected return to the Edit window and hover over the other faces for this island and press L to quickly select them in one go (assuming you are in Face select mode and the island area is delineated with marked seams.) Finally in the edit window select U >Follow active quads. No need to move vertices around in UV space or align edges by hand. 2) Those semi-circle greebles could be simply unwrapped with standard Unwrap. Unless I'm missing something there is no advantage to aligning the view and performing a projection uv for these simple items. Sometimes it's easy to get carried away with more complicated UV techniques when a simple unwrap gives excellent results. ***3) If you have duplicated geometry and you forget to uv unwrap the original before you mirrored, duplicated or arrayed, just unwrap one of the items and then select each in turn (including the UVd one) and use the shortcut P to make each it's own object. In Object mode select them, selecting the UV'd version last so it's the Active selection. Then use CTL L > Transfer UV Maps and copy the active object UVs to the duplicates. With these items still selected in Object mode select the main mesh and press CTL J to join them back up. No need to delete any geometry and/or re-perform the duplication and positioning. 4) If you UV'd sections of your model but omitted the step of establishing UV seams, I recommend you add these boundry seams to your islands in one go using the UV menu. Select from the menu in the UV window UVS>Seams from islands. Once the seams are in place, in face selection mode in the Edit window you can quickly select islands using the shortcut key L while you hover the cursor over the faces. Instead of moving the islands off the UV space to flip them and break symmetry, the author could have quickly selected the islands he wanted to mirror with L key in the edit window, then with the cursor back in UV space he could simple mirror them in place CTL M>X (or y) to flip selected UV islands to break symmetry. No need to move anything off the grid and return it to it's original position. I hope these additions are helpful. Again the tutorial was excellent, but there's always a technique or two to add to any workflow as an alternative or enhancement. RE: Number 3 above - for more details on tranferring UVs for mirrored objects: https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Blender-problem-when-using-the-Transfer-UV-Maps-tool/m-p/2960704#M32336

Hmmm. You should have a chat with the sculptor of that fountain.

I'll second what ChinRey said about Builder's Brewery. Their classes are excellent and they have beginner and intermediate blender classes, no doubt, all geared to SL specific use of Blender. And the instructors are great teachers, which is a skill in itself. Here's a link to the class schedule: http://www.buildersbrewery.com/calendar/index.php

/me waves back! Here it is : The main purpose for the Texture Atlas add-on is to aid in baking an ambient occlusion texture/lightmap using groups of objects in a scene baked down to one texture. AO doesn’t require a high resolution texture, so makes sense to gang many objects together and baking ao to a single texture - useful in many game environments. For Second Life there are other uses we can find for the plug-in since it allows us to create uv sets with the same name across a group of objects and also it offers the option to delete any prior uvs sets associated with these objects so you are left with a single UV set per object. This is very handy for SL as when uploading as you can only have one UV set per object - you must delete any extra uv sets. And with all the uv set names consistent you can join and seperate objects at will without destroying the existing UVs. Also, there are many situations where you might want to set up a single bake texture that includes multiple objects. The Texture Atlas add-on creates a single texture, automatically links all the UV sets for a set of grouped objects to that texture for baking purposes, and it quickly and easily and creates UV sets so there will be no overlap when baking. The Texture Atlas add-on sub-palette exists in the Render palette. To use it, first select the objects you want to “combine bake” together into a single texture then press the plus sign: By pressing the plus sign you create a group from your selected objects and the menu opens up to provide a bunch of options. You can accept the default name for the group or add your own group name. This name will appear both on the texture that the add-on creates and links to the objects and for all the UV sets created with the add-on. You can see that you have an option to set the bake texture Resolution. Left is the X resolution and Right is the Y resolution. Your bake texture doesn’t have to be square, but it should be based on the usual power of two in both directions. Remove Other UVs: For objects that already have a uv set, this button optionally deletes any original uv set(s) and leave only the new one created here within the Texture Atlas palette. Once the prior uv sets are deleted every object in the group will have a single UV set with the same group name. This facilitiates combining objects together (ctl J) into a single object if need be. As we know from prior forum threads, if you try to combine objects that have different uv set names it screws up your uvs. Although you can rename your uv set’s manually, it’s tedious stuff. This is more convenient and fixes all the objects in the group in one go. Remove Selected: This removes a selected object from the group you created. Add Selected: This adds a selected object to the group you created. Select Group: Similar to the select option in the Vertex Groups and Materials palettes menus this is simply a select button. It highlight/selects all objects in the group in the 3d edit window. Auto Unwrap: Here is offered two of the same options from the default UV unwrap menu: Smart UV Project and Lightmap Pack. Select the type of unwrap you want by highlighting Smart_Unwrap, Lightmap or No_Unwrap. Then press Auto Unwrap. Two things happen. A bake texture (texture grid style) is created and given the same name as the group name. Secondly UV sets are created for each object and given the same name (the group name) and, except for the No_Unwrap option, the objects' uvs are arranged in UV space as if all the objects were combined into a single object and unwrapped - that is their uvs are arranged so there is no overlap when they are all baked together to this texture. Again, all the linking of each objects UV set to this texture happens automatically. Very convenient. You would select No_Unwrap if you’ve previously unwrapped the object(s) and only want to create a bake texture and associate the objects' UVs to the texture for baking. With the No Unwrap option, the uv’s that already exist are duplicated and the second set is given the group name. Select the objects and press RemoveOtherUVs to delete the originals. If after using the No_Unwrap option the UVs overlap and create problems with baking you can simply join the objects together temporarily in the edit window (ctrl J) and rearrange the UV islands, then select each part that should be it’s own object and press P to seperate it. The number slider to the right appears to set the amount of empty space between the created UV islands. 0.03 seems about right. Manual Unwrap: This option is interesting. When you select StartManual Unwrap a single “Proxy” object is created made up of all the objects in the group. This proxy object appears in the 3d view and in the item list it appears as TextureAtlas_mergedObject. The the original seperate objects are hidden. Using this joined up proxy you can edit all the UVs together and when done you select Finish Manual Unwrap and the proxy object disappears leaving you with the original objects in the group visible. These seperate objects will have inherited the uvs you manually created and each will have a uv set with the same name. And again, they will all be linked to the same texture for baking. I hope I clarified things here and not have made it as clear as mud. It’s really a very simple menu when you understand what each setting does - and it’s a very nice convenience! Edited to correct many typo errors...although I'm sure I've missed quite of few.

I'll try to put together something to explain how it works and post it here in a day or two. The add-on is a lot like Blender in general. Very scary "off-putting" terminology", but a piece of cake once you get used to it! I hope you find it usefu!

The Texture Atlas http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/UV/TextureAtlas * add-on is very handy and looks much more intimidating then it really is. With this add-on: 1) You can quickly and conveniently associate multiple objects to a single texture for baking. Within the add-on you can set the resolution you desire for the texture as well as the option to automatically uv the selected objects, or you can manually set up your uvs on a merged duplicate, or you can just keep the UV positions already created. For manual work within the plug-in and select “Start Manual Unwrap” to create a merged proxie , and then "Finish Manual Unwrap" unmerges it back to seperate objects with the new UVs (if changed) and all objects associated linked to a single texture for baking. - And - 2) You can use the add-on to combine many objects into a single object and end up with a single UV set where all the uv positions remain in place. The plug in automatically removes the original UV sets. Basically you create the merged duplicate I mentioned above and you don’t unmerge it: Select the objects you wish to combine. In the Texture Atlas Subpalette press the plus sign to create a group from the selected objects . You can give it a new name or accept the one given. Select: "NO UNWRAP" and Select: "START MANUAL UNWRAP" A merged duplicate of your selected objects will appear in the 3d scene and in the item list. The original objects you merged will be in the items list set to hidden visibility. The original objects can be deleted or saved to another layer. Again, this merged object duplicate you create will have a single UV set- all the uvs islands remain in their original positions and the original uv set names/versions will have been deleted. I had to watch numerous youtube video tutorials to get the hang of this plug-in and get a good understanding of it's features. I find it very useful. (Warning: Please note that in one tutorial I watched via Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO9gOeDcgzg - the instructor demonstrates a highly convoluted and unnecessary "work-around" for using this add-on when baking in cycles. This unnecessary workflow could discourage beginners to Blender from bothering with the add-on. His method is far more complicated then is necessary and quite frankly one can simply associate multiple objects to a single texture manually much faster then his “fix”. His method of copying and deleting materials is simply NOT necessary to bake in cycles. I'm not sure if he ran into a bug in an earlier version of Blender or simply had a midunderstanding of how to use this add-on. I tested the add-on using multiple materials on multiple objects and using the Texture Atlas add on and I had no trouble using cycles to bake in a straight forward manner as with the default Blender Render bake.) *Edited to correct error in wiki blender link at the top of the post.

An even easier way to combine objects and end up with a single uv is to use the Texture Atlas add-on, which, if you've activated it in User Preference>Add-Ons, will appear as a sub-palette in the render palette. As follows: Select the objects you wish to combine. In the Texture Atlas Subpalette press the plus sign to create a group from the selected objects . You can give it a new name or accept the one given. Select: "NO UNWRAP" and Select: "START MANUAL UNWRAP" A merged duplicate of your selected objects will appear in the 3d scene and in the item list. The original objects you merged will be in the items list set to hidden visibility. They can be deleted or saved to another layer. This merged object duplicate you create will have a single UV- all the uvs islands remain in their original positions and the original uv set names/versions will have been deleted. Edited to add: I'm adding this in response to the video re: combining objects posted by Gaia.

The interesting thing here is it's not about either you or me. It's about the beginners that come to the forums trying to learn a skill filled with complicated confusing terminology and methods. And it's learning these skills that keeps many potential new members to SL engaged and involved in Second LIfe. I have yet to take a class where the instructor hasn't pointed out that Ambient Occlusion is a trick to fake out what appears to be shadows followed by a further explanation of what the difference between AO and true shadows is. You chose to omit this from your publically posted forum contribution, which is fine. However from my perspective these posts are viewed by folks interested in mesh creation whether they are making SL specific clothes or not. And I chose to chime in and clarify a point here. Also completely fine. There's no need for you to get defensive or argumentative. You are not technically wrong for omitting this explanation, nor was I wrong for chiming in with clarification of the term. Please re-read my post and then re-read it again. you will see that I posted to add an explanation specifically for beginners reading this post and I was not calling you out to provide as much assistance as possible to help others. I know from personal experience that beginners lurk for months on these creation forums struggling to absorb as much as they can until they stop feeling utterly confused and defeated and start feeling bold enough to contribute. Posting is getting thin here on the Mesh forum and we can use new contributors. Why not encourage others to participate and help them along by recalling that what we post is intended for the wider audience who may appreciate a more through explanation when someone takes the time to offer one. You aren't obligated of course to provide this, but don't step on the toes of someone who WILL take the time to contribute this added information. And I will continue to chime in where I personally think it is helpful to provide clarity for novices to 3d mesh creation. Please also know that Second Life mesh clothing designers are not the be-all-and-end-all to mesh creation and what they use for terminology is not a guideline for mesh creation in a general sense. This is not the clothing design forum - and perhaps this aspect of the topic even belongs on the texture forum - however the techniques and terminology of mesh creation are the same regardless of what you choose to use it for, be it clothes, tractors, houses or terrain. Someone who will never make a piece of clothing in SL will be reading your posts to get information in a general sense and may easily adopt the term and use it incorrectly, then become confused when they watch tutorials, etc..

With all due respect Drongle, we can offer folks completely misleading answers such as referring to ambient occlusion as "shadow", or on the other hand we can bedazzle and overwhelm beginners who come here needing our assistance by spewing an over-abundance of eye-crossing technical jargon. I think it's fair to compromise and give a definition that is somewhat simplified and "digestible". Clearly from your history as a technical adviser and expert on this forum - something is well appreciated by myself and other forum followers - it's been a long time since you were a beginner at this. For me it wasn't that long ago and I know what it means to get accurate definitions that are understandable and concisely stated.

I do not wish to be argumentative here, Drake, however there are a lot of folks here just starting out and trying to learn the basics of 3d modeling. There's no distinction between AO used for clothing and AO used for buildings, rubble and bunny rabbits, it can be used for any of these things to fake out an impression of non-directional shading. However, you wrote: "AO are shodows." You did not write " I use ao as a way to fake shadow effects" or "people commonly use ao when making clothing in SL to create shadow effects." It can really confuse people who are come to the mesh forum trying to learn at a beginner level when the most basic terminology is not used correctly.

Just to clarify for anyone new to 3d Graphics, AO (ambient occlusion) is NOT shadow. Shadows are dependant on the lighting in the scene and are directional. An ambient occlusion map can be baked without any lights in the scene. AO represents the areas on your mesh where the geometry is occluded (deep seams, cracks and/or spots and surfaces that are in close proximity to other meshes visible in the scene when baking). These are the areas where dirt, grime and tarnish would accumulate on real life objects. RL surfaces tend to be darker in these occluded areas as opposed to the parts that are subject to exposure to light which may fade and oxidize the exposed surfaces and the occluded spots tend to be hard to clean. Incorporating an ao map into your texture adds realism and definition to your objects in a non-directional fashion (unlike shadows which follow the light source).

Check out this very nice zbrush tutorial site that was so generously provided by a kind member of the Zbrush community: http://www.selwy.com/2009/zbrush-clothes-tutorial/ You can also pick up a copy of the brushes used in the tutorial on this site. Even so it takes an enormous amount of practice to get this right. (I know having tried and failed so many times despite watching many tutorials on the subject...perserverence is more important then any tool or method).

There are loads of vendors in SL that are successful in creating a look more rooted in realism. I'm not a professional but a hobbiest and here's an example of the type of realistic items I make (as a creator not a merchant) for SL in terms of realistic texturing and lighting. Note also that it is a choice to make items that fall in the category of fantasy, and not something good or bad - just a choice. Edited to add: Small list of designers who produce items of high quality that are more "realistic" then the example posted: Dutchie, La Galleria, Apple Fall, Trompe L'oeil...in no particular order intended, nor is it any exclusive list....just a few vendors of extremely high quality "realistic mesh/texturing work in SL.

Standard mesh work on a hobbiest level. Not realistic...more fantasy based.

Cycles doesn't offer the same option as Blender Render to clip the image to a single untiled version. What you are describing is similar to adding a decal, so I'd recommend you google "Cycles Tutorial Decal" as well as "Cycles non-repeating image" to find the tutorials you need. I've seen two different versions to accomplish this. 1 version that uses 2 different UV sets which you obviously just bake down to one set and eliminate the extra for export. The other version uses a somewhat elaborate node set up, but once done you can make a group out of the set up and save for reuse in other projects. Edited to add: http://www.andreucabre.com/2012/02/multiple-uvs-and-decals-in-cycles.html

Lighting in Cycles is very different then with the default blender render system. Check out this video: http://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/introduction-to-cycles/#.U7GwyBYSt94

Go into SL and press CMD Shift R (I'm on a Mac so for PC it's probably CTL Shift R) and look around at the world in wireframe. This will give you a sense of mesh complexity. I might also note here that when someone posts here to on a topic the information is for the benefit of everyone, not just the op. Everyone gets an opportunity to learn and problem solve. If a forum participant mentions something useful like a reminder about copyright infringement, there's no need to feel singled out. In the same vein, I'm delighted for you that you own this 3d scanning equiptment, but this information is not germane to the topic and in fact, in demonstrating your professional status, it's less likely people will feel compelled to assist you. Most of us are just working stiffs, hobbiests who model each treasure from scratch the "old fashioned way" - and spending hours at the job.

I should probably wait until someone with experience with 3d printing chimes in, but I'm guessing the scanning process creates some very dense geometry. You'd have to use a program like Blender (or one of many other 3d software brands) to greatly decimate/reduce the geometry of scanned result in order reach an acceptable polygon count that could reasonably upload into Second life. You also will need to create the UVs for applying the final texture and figure out how to transfer the scanned texture to match these UV coordinates (if in fact the scanner not only scans the geometry, but also the surface texture). SL mesh wise needs to be very low-geometry. The real art to the job is in the texturing and in adding material tricks like bump and spec maps to add visual complexity. You'd probably be better off learning to model and use these scanned items as either a background reference image or as a base to retopologize. Once you've done this you can use the complex model as a base to project the detail lost via simplification onto a normal map which captures all the bump detail and you can use that in your bag of tricks to further the illusion of dense detail. And needless to say, as you mentioned you work for a 3d printing company, but did not mention you are a sculptor/artist creating these items, you need to be in compliance with any copyright issues and have permission from your customers in order to retain copies of their 3d art that you take into other venues, such as SL.

I'm jumping in to this thread a little late, but I want to point out a few things for clarity. Mirror Modifier: If you uncheck "merge" in the options of the merge modifier your duplicated geometry won't connect even if the copy sits on top of the original. And if by some chance you have the two objects overlapping, once you apply the modifier you can then select P (in edit mode) and choose the option "seperate by parts". This will quickly make each part it's own object and you can select one or the other either in the 3d edit screen or from the items list and move it away from the overlapping copy. The slight drawback to this methoid is if you have many unconnected parts in a mesh. Each would become it's own object and you may have to rejoin (ctl j) all those parts that got turned into their own object back into the mesh group they belong to. But even with the modifier active you can still offset the object's center to avoid overlapping the geomoetry. It's best to take care to place the object's center in a spot away from the geometry or exactly aligned to an edgeloop you want to connect the mirrored copy to when you use the mirror modifier. Again place your cursor off set from the geometry where you want to place the objects center point, select the object, press shift ctrl alt c and sent the object's center to the cursor. There was actually no problem with your first method of mirroring geometry. However when you do this, either by duplicating an object and scaling the duplicate -1 (negative 1) or using the shortcut CTL M X, your copy is inside out. So when you uploaded your error was most likely due to flipped normals. Easy to fix with the shortcut CTL N in edit mode.. If you mirrored your Mesh in Object mode, it will appear to have accurately flipped normals, but it will still upload with an error message. That is because the loc/rot/scale (ctl a) hasn't been reset. When you reset the mirrored object you will see the faces go darker grey....the face normals are facing in the wrong direction and you need to return to edit mode, select the faces and flip them.

Thanks Nalates. I've done something similar with regular Blender Render materials - collecting my favorites and placing them in a library blend file. It's a great time saver. The fact that one can view the render in real time IS perhaps the greatest advantage. That really eliminates alot of the tedium when refining materials. I suspect as you stated there is some improved quality, but it may not be noticable in SL. I do find the method of lighting in cycles where one uses objects set to emmisive (sp?)rather then lamps is much nicer then trying to position a gazillion lamps around objects. So maybe the advantage is more a workflow thing.

I've spent a few hours coming up to speed with the Cycles renderer and it's baking feature. Although using nodes is fun, I don't see a huge improvement in the results I can achieve with baking in Cycles vs Blender Render. Regular rendering is with Cycles is fantastic, but is there any real advantage when it comes to baking? I'd appreciate it if folks with experience using cycles baking would comment on their experience using Cycles Baking vs. Blender Render and what the advantages are. Thanks!

They are approachable, Medhue. Why not shoot them an email and ask them if you qualify?