[problem with texturing in blender]

Looking at the image to the right of the seam it looks like you have a problem with scale.  The texture in that area to the right looks stretched so I'm guessing that uv island was too small relative to the others.

After you set up your  UV's try applying your wood texture to the model in Blender by uploading it into UV space and assigning it to your UV set (highlight the uvs and then add the texture)  and set the viewing in the 3d edit window to "textured view" so you can see the texture in blender on your model.  You can move the islands around and stretch or shrink them as needed to get the kind of texture alignment and matching that  you want.

Another handy tool, which I think people don't use as much as they should, is an alignment grid.  You can select a default UV grid that Blender provides as an option when you add a texture to the UV space or upload one of your own that you prefer.  Again, set your 3d edot view to "Texture" and see how it looks on your model.  All the squares, stripes or whatever pattern you as a template use for judging, should be of equal size and in the direction you want the texture to follow.

If you plan to bake ao or filter the texture through the material system to fully bake in shadows and specularity, don't forget to re-assign those UVs to a new blank texture.

[I need opinions, and hopefully suggestions for this mesh please!]

Mirroring geometry is often just the beginning for creating organic items that aren't supposted to be perfect.   After you apply the mirror modifier (in object mode) you take it a step further and move individual verts around, with or without proportional editing turned on, to create a more organic appearance that isn't all "matchy-matchy" from one side to the other.  You can also select groups of vertices and apply "smooth vertex' and relax them.  Or go into sculpting mode and soften/relax the pleates a bit with the smoothing brush.  (Take care to keep an original backed up while you play around).

You may also wish to use multiresolution modifier (which is similar to subsurf) and create a temporary high resolution version of your mesh into which you can use the sculpt function in blender to  sculpt finer detail and create a normal map full of details that you can apply as bump in SL materials to the lower poly base model.

[Mesh]

The program you should use is a free program called Blender.   It can be downloaded at the website Blender.org.

The best way to learn is to search the web, Youtube and Vimeo for beginner's tutorials on using Blender. Start with the search words "Blender 3d" and "Beginner"  and in Youtube try searching "Mesh" along with "Second Life".  This question has been asked and answered many times and there's a huge resource of links to websites right here easily accessed via the search function.

There are a number of excellent  SL specific websites  produced and hosted by contributors to this forums for specific advice on SL mesh related issues.  And a search on this forum will be of great help to you.  

If English is not your first language you will no doubt find Blender tutorials in a language you speak on youtube.  I find that language isn't as much as a barrier to learning this as I very often watch Blender tutorials in portuguese, french, german, etc. although I speak none of these languages.  A picture is worth 1000 words.  A video is worth 10,0000.

[Why is texture black?]

It might be beneficial to ask developers for that capability.  I don't delve enough into that deeper part of Blender to know if it's worth their time.  I remember you helped me with a problem created by the way blender stored mesh data and material assignments of linked objects and how it also affected the LOD meshes derived via copies of the high vertex versions.   I haven't been that actively building in SL for some months now to know if this was resolved in later versions of Blender, but I recall having to go into the .dae file and manually cut and paste things back in the same order.  I'm guessing it was due a the way Blender logged it's data that was inaccessible to the user, perhaps similiar to this case.

[Why is texture black?]

I think you actually meant to write that you will name the mesh UVs the same thing.  I just mention this for clarity in case it's confusing to newcomers to Blender.  You can't actually give more then one mesh item the same exact name, but more then one mesh can have a UV map with the same name.

 

[Blender made 500 copies of .obj]

Nooo!  Don't give up!  It was an off-night and a really bad audience .  I see now that the "lol" was at the top.  Usually I catch the punchline at the bottom:matte-motes-tongue:

[Why is texture black?]

Thanks very much for explaining that in greater detail.  It is a version thing.  I tested it out in 2.66a which I fortunately hadn't yet deleted from my hard drive.  It appears that, as you described, with version 2.66a the last object added is the UV adopted no matter what order the objects are selected.  And the "active" (last selected) object doesn't actually seem to matter - its all about the position on the list, the top object (last added) is the UV for the combined group.

The behavior of 2.69 is completely different.  And I'm guessing there's some rational behind this, but I can't think what it might be.  It's a big inconvenience for me, however, except I generally just use the default UV name, but I might have a problem for items I bring in from modo, zbrush or PS because each UV has ALL the mesh mapped and the  joined mesh parts are represented as stacked verts on the lower left corner.  At the moment I can't think how to combine the UVs into one map so that each combined mesh part is layed out exactly as it was as a seperate object, except by changing all the uv maps to the same name before joining.

[Blender made 500 copies of .obj]

Ok I think I know what happened.  You were up late and working on a deadline and when you selected export as .obj you accidently checked off "animation".  I just tested this.  It filled my desktop with  250 objs. 

[Why is texture black?]

I don't understand: "I guess it combines maps with the same index in the lists of the joined meshes."

Drongle, could you please explain what you mean by index and list?  And which version of Blender are you using.  I'm using 2.69 in case that makes a difference. Perhaps this is a new "feature"?

I confirmed my suspicions about what was causing the extra uvs by actually going through the exercise of combining three different objects with distinctly different uv names and ended up, as I expected, with the single mesh and 3 assigned uvs with all original names retained.

 

 

[Why is texture black?]

The reason you ended up with 3 uv's is because each object had a unique name assigned to their UV when you combined them.  *

I'm guessing as a practice you don't name your uvs and just keep the default "UVMap" name Blender assigns.  When you combine 3 objects made in Blender, each with a default UV name of "UVMap",  Blender just creates a single UV with that name and combines everything together.

Edited to add for clarity:

*If you made and imported those objects with UV names other then "UVMap"  into Blender from another program like Zbrush or Photoshop extended that originating program no doubt assigned those cryptic UV names.

 

[Blender made 500 copies of .obj]

Aquila you have me scratching my head as well.  Whaa?

Actually I had this happen once when exporting an obj from  Blender..2.6 something.  It only happened once.  It completely freaked me out and I never figured out why it happened, but happily it's never happened a second time.  Must have something to do with that monkey...

 

 

[Q for Mac Blender users]

Are you on a PC or a Mac, BoricuaB?

 

[What are your steps to creating a house in blender?]

I "second" Drongle, here.  You can't shortcut the process.  You need to practice on simple items, then learn and test  upload combinations of items until you are comfortable enough with your skill set to finally build up to something as complex as an entire house.

A house is built out of many, many mesh challenges.  When you arrive at the point where you are prepared to tackle an entire house you will not need assistance (not very much, in any event).  And I suspect most people with this skill set are  proprietary about their workflow since it's a very time intensive endeavor both in building and in gaining the knowledge to build. Plus a lot of folks devote their entire SL business to making houses.  They will happily answer specific questions, but few have the time to give anyone a detailed explanation of the entire process.

I'll add that building a house in blender is not exactly the same as building something that can be uploaded and used in SL.  For example you can easily make a very nice house in blender that has much too high a vertex count for anything useful in SL.  And there are things like double sided polygons which are visible in Blender but not in SL.  SL has its own set of requirements/restrictions and you need to get familiar with by experimenting and reading what's been documented on the forums and wiki.

 

 

[Blender: No objects or images found to bake to]

This error message can also appear if you've accidently checked on "bake to vertex color" in the bake render area (you'll want that UNchecked):

 

 

[Blender - Proportional Editing > Project 2d]

Thanks for responding Nalates.  I do understand what proportional editing is, however your information will be useful to newcomers to Blender.  I use proportional editing all the time as it's quite similar to using the sculpt mode except you can see the cage and gauge how your actions are effecting the topology of your model.

My specific question pertains to the new tool added which is "Project 2D".

Do you have any specific knowledge that pertains to this added feature?

[Blender - Proportional Editing > Project 2d]

A new addition to the proportional editing tools in Blender has appeared in both the 3d edit and UV edit windows.  I kinda sorta understand what it's doing...well maybe not.  But what I'm really curious about is why.  What does it do?  When might one use it? It must be worth adding to the mix, but I can only find 2 videos on youtube and they are in Spanish, which unfortunately I don't speak.  And I can't figure out the Blender wiki illustration.

Can anyone enlighten me here?

[That magic keystroke thing]

I feel the same way.  If I can imagine it, I'm pretty sure the authors of Blender have made it possible.  Always a challenge to find the info to describe it  however which why this forum is so delightful.

I tested my results a few tiimes re: the E key.  I'm on version 3.69 so it might account for the difference in our results, but it's equally possible I'm just doing something wrong and only getting the expected results in "sync" mode.

I happen to be one of those odd people who if only allowed one task in the modeling process would choose UVing.  I  love the challenge and I gobble up any tip I can to make the job quicker.  Who needs Suduko when you can sit down to create optimized UV for a complex model.  And add  a time constraint and you've got yourself a game of skill.

 

Edited to add:

I understand now where I "went wrong"  with the "E" key.  I'm accustomed to selecting the entire model while in non-sync mode in UV space and displaying the entire flattened geometry in the UV window.  In this mode one can have UV islands visible, but not selected.   I have discovered, thanks to your explanation, the E key despite being  a UV tool  operates on what is  specifically selected on the 3d space and essentially ignores a more limited selection in UV space.  So  if everything is selected in 3d space and, for example, only one island is selected in UV space, all of the models  faces will be effected by the key, not just that island.  Being in sync mode just makes this relationship automatic, but it's not necessary to be in sync mode, as you described.  My apologies to anyone new to UVing. This sounds much more complicated then it is in reality.

[That magic keystroke thing]

Aquila is correct in that you most likely   hit the "E" key while the cursor was in the UV workspace while the UV island was selected.  But this will only work if the button for "Keep UV and edit mode mesh selection in sync" is active:

 

 

 

[That magic keystroke thing]

Ok Aquila, I'm so sorry to be a magic-buster here, but there's unfortunately (fortunately?) a much quicker way.

First select a single face in on the bell in the 3d edit screen.  Press U and select "reset".  Then without de-selecting the active face hover over the bell in face mode (3d edit screen) and press L to select all the rest of the faces.  Press U >Follow active quads. Done.

 

By resetting the UV of that active face you instantly create a square UV face in the UV space for the other faces to follow.

[Can we texture Blender model in second life?]

Using Blender doesn't equate to being a noob 3d Artist.  Many of us do intermediate and advanced work in Blender and never move on to a commercial 3D package.  (And Blender is splendidly set up for creating animations that are useful in SL - said with a tip of the hat to Gaia Clary and others who have created a fantastic plug-in for this purpose).

As mentioned, you can always apply textures in SL to your meshes which have UVs set up for them, and it's important to note that as you can only apply a single diffuse (color) texture to a face/material group, textures that you may purchase or have in inventory will look very flat, although you might find this perfectly acceptable.  

Most 3d artists here use the material/shader capabilities of their 3d program to take a basic texture, set up lighting in the scene and set desired parameters as to how shiny, translucent, etc. so they can "bake" all these features right on top of the base texture (or they take various "passes" of these effects seperately, like Ambient Occlusion, and they import them into Gimp or Photoshop to  blend them all together  into a final single texture with realistic detail.

With this baked or composited texture uploaded and applied in SL, you get a much richer 3 dimensional result.  Again you must have uvs specific to your mesh to accomplish this.