Anna Nova

Thank you Aquila. I did as you suggested and it now works as I expected. What's even more important, I actually understand why! So much of my blendering is blundering about following 'push this button' instructions without understanding why. So I really appreciate you taking the time to explain it, and make the superb illustration.

Happily Optimo's comments are WAY over my head at the moment. I am still at the 'find a way to get blender to help me make Normal maps' stage. I can get a nice flat blue texture out of it, but it doesn't seem to be able to see my High Poly.... What I did was to take a side of my building with the slats on it, they are 0.05 thick. I call this my High-poly, although it isn't very high in blender terms, no subsurf or stuff like that. I made a Low-poly copy in the same location, stripping out the slats. This I set up with new texture, and added a texture node assigned to it in the node editor. Then I select the high-poly, and then the low-poly, set Selected to Active, and Normal map, and tell it to bake. Sure 'nuf it bakes, no errors, but also no slats. The Ray Distance is 1.0, so 0.05 should be well within range, but it doesn't see it. I am missing something obvious, I know. I note that Chic gave up. Maybe this is a broad hint, 'cos she is way cleverer than me.

Also, I never made a sculpt before, so that's about 7 learning curves running in parallel... I can get the 4 walls of the house down to 20LI as a linkset of 4 with analyzed physics, which is acceptable - and that is with the battens as mesh, but one sided (we will make the inside rooms as separate mesh). To go any lower has to mean using texturing and simplified structure. The use of normal map is just one idea, but since I never did it, I'm going to use it as the learner. The Normal Map Website might be one way to go using a de-colored version of the texture. Shadermap 2 is a windows program, so not available to me, it looks fantastic though. However I did find this: http://awesomebump.besaba.com which has a Linux version, I have installed it and it runs ok with fast results on my GPU (GTX1080Ti). I'll report back.

When I started with blender, a couple of years ago, it seemed natural to use the latest thing. And Chic's videos used it too, so I never used Blender Render. I'm really grateful for all the hints.

Just for completeness I found this too. https://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/blender/cycles-bake-normal-maps.php I usually use Cycles.

I am about to try my hand at my first bit of normal mapped texture making. I'm making a model of this building. I have started with the walls being meshed with the vertical strips, and this yields quite a high LI with good LODs. So my plan is to make the wall texture with a strong normal map to simulate the strips. In RL they are about 40mm proud of the wall surface. The doors could use that too. My usual texture-making tool is GIMP, since on Linux I can't run photoshop. I can also use Blender. Can some kind soul point me at tutorials etc.. on how to get started?

I'd like to say that I am quite competent to make my own clothes, but the body makers want to restrict their kits to people with a store. I will never sell anything, I don't need the money, I don't have a capitalists instincts, I don't want your complaints. But I would like to make my own clothes. But it's a free second life, you do whatever you like.

SL relies on you wearing a bare minimum, I think skin,shape,and eyes, in order to rezz your avatar when you log in. So it can't delete the last outfit, or you would become an orange cloud. Most of us, nowadays, alpha-out the SL-essentials and put a mesh on, but they still have to be there. You can make a minimalist outfit though, with just those items in it.

I know of this clothes store that gives away a L$200 gift card every week. Over the year I have got most of the stores', now free, no-mod clothes. They are quite good if you like boring textures, and some of them fit. Since they are so obviously not valued by the seller, I have considered copying them to texture myself....... but life's too short.

The process of UV mapping, it's called unwrapping but mapping is a better name, creates a 2D picture of all the faces of the mesh. The relative sizes of the faces in the UV map determine how the texture will be sized in-world (or in-render) - and this can be used to distort the texture too (by stretching the UV map face). The orientation of the faces in the UV map determine the orientation of the texture. It gives tremendous control over the way a texture is applied to the mesh. I usually spend roughly twice, and sometimes five times, as much time on the UV-map as on creating the mesh itself. But if all you want is to apply a uniform texture, like plaster, to something simple, then the Smart Mapping works quite well. Chic's videos are very good.

I'm glad someone actually helps with the Geek-View of SL! And yes, PLEASE start a new, well named, thread!

I had a friend once who bought wine like that. Bought it, put it away, and refused to drink it until he had forgotten how much he'd paid. Great guy to visit!

Trouble is that lots of people joining SL from Europe and elsewhere expect Consumer Protection. And there ain't any. SL has no police, no courts, no ombudsman, no arbitration, and no one to complain to. Hence the advice 'Caveat Emptor', and Demo,demo,demo.

But what about the unrecyclable plastic waste? You virtual planet polluter!

I did it for an alt yesterday by logging into https://secondlife.aditi.lindenlab.com/, and going to Mesh upload status. I was expecting the quiz.

are you wearing 3rd party cosmetics, specifically eye make-up? It looks like the layering is screwed. Not an expert, but I'd check that first.

I d There isn't a test anymore you just have to agree some IP terms.

I'll do it for 49L.

My opinion, and I stress that's what it is, is to invest $20-$50 in buying a few thousand lindens. Then you can enjoy shopping for a mesh body (but not a head yet) and a good wardrobe. Trying to do it without an investment will lead to frustration.

Don't feel bad about it. We all went through it. Making low-poly look good in SL is an art-form. It just isn't the same art-form as making high poly scenes in Blender for animations. You are probably WAY ahead of most of us in knowing how to use blender....

Programming languages from before the dawn of time..... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOL_60 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran I don't think you can get high on them.

Considering how it started, this thread has been the best entertainment in the Forums all week. Thankee kindly, Chin, Beq and Optimo. P.S. I vote for Algol60, or Fortran56. (No, it doesn't show my age, I read a history of compilers article.)

It's easier for me to say what turns me off. I have a huge turn off from males who look like they spend their time in a gym. Oddly shaped females, like the current huge bum fad in SL also turn me off. In SL I can't stand 7 foot (or worse) giants. But these are just first reactions, I can be wooed..... (Money also works)

Glad we cleared that up then. I should add that quite often both sides are 'right'. In so far as I have an opinion, I decided to go with the group not trying to make money from it. But it's just an opinion. My only intent was to make sure jokiethesmuf knew that there were two to choose from.

No, those are the forks of the Opencollar scripts. There has been a division of the Opencollar community, slightly acrimonious I would say too. The 'Official', as in they own the IPR and 'trademark', are here https://github.com/OpenCollarTeam/OpenCollar The ones you quote Ruthven, as I understand it, and I may be wrong, break the TOS of the OpenCollar group by including non-opensource No-mod scripts. No-mod is evil.