Anna Nova

Thank you so much! I have been waiting for this series of tutorials - forever! Stuff I have leaned to do by rote are now starting to make sense. I'm going to register all my alts to give you more upvotes! (not really, it would be a cheat)

Which viewer are you using? I just tried it in Firestorm 5.0.1.52150 and I can zoom almost infinitely.

How did you unwrap it? It looks to me like you have the default unwrap, which means that every face is mapped on top of every other one. Try a Smart Unwrap.

Chic Aeon, I seem to be able to walk on mine. And at about the right height too (which is more than can be said for many places, since hover made people lazy). Interesting info on the Jira in Firestorm 5.0.1 - which IS what I'm using - thanks KatyProxima. Thanks for the tips, lag doesn't appear to have changed, ChinRey.

I offer this just in case it helps someone. Not looking for help, but feel free to enlighten me.... I needed a large landform for our parcel at Ogilvie. We are building a very complicated mesh house, with a basement, and I hate landscaping in SL, whatever you do something always screws up nearby. The answer for me is to push the whole parcel to minimum, and make the land in mesh. Only this time I got terrible yet subtle distortion that took me a while to work out. It was uploading different from how it looked in blender. The problem is prim-size limits. I had made a mistake in blender of making something bigger in X than the maximum 64 meters, so the uploader squished it, and stretched the Y from 61 to 64, and the X from 70 to 64. I guess this behaviour might benefit someone, I would prefer it to say 'No!', rather than the silent squish. So the answer was to split the landform into two, and upload them separately. Uploading them as a linkset doesn't do it, you get the same squish. Each upload has to be 64x64x64 maximum. There is a benefit in doing this. The LI for the linkset went from 7 to 4 (Download 3.5, Physics 3.0, Server 1.0), and this is using High as the physics, and no analyze. The two parts can be linked in-world. The disadvantage is that the upload fee base of $11L has to be paid twice, but the total was only $24L It was worth the hassle to discover all this. But, Thank you for Beta! Anna.

Google Translate said that he said: There are lots of ways of making low Land Impact (Li) objects. My wife makes them in prims in SL, like you do, and then uses a converter to make a Mesh version of them. I make them in blender directly, and then upload the mesh that blender saves as a .dae file into Second Life. Typically a 70 prim small object will load as less than 1 Land Impact if you know what you are doing, and 70 prim house-size object might be 4 or 5 Li. There are loads of tutorials about using Blender, Maya, and other 3D programs to do this. I don't know if there are any in Spanish though. You'll get better results on this forum by using a translator to post in English. Hay muchas maneras de hacer objetos de impacto terrestre bajo (Li). Mi esposa los hace en prims en SL, como tú, y luego usa un convertidor para hacer una versión Mesh de ellos. Los hago en la licuadora directamente y luego subo la malla que la licuadora guarda como archivo .dae en Second Life. Normalmente, un objeto pequeño de 70 brocas se cargará como menos de 1 Impacto de Tierra si sabe lo que está haciendo, y 70 objeto de tamaño de la casa puede ser 4 o 5 Li. Hay un montón de tutoriales sobre el uso de Blender, Maya y otros programas 3D para hacer esto. No sé si hay en español. Obtendrá mejores resultados en este foro utilizando un traductor para publicar en inglés.

I quite like 'hitbox' for Set of Collision Planes. Anything to help the tired fingers.

I'm seriously concerned that people think hardware that can be damaged by software is acceptable. Granted I don't use a laptop, and I don't use Apple or Microsoft anything on principle, but doesn't the OS close down when the temperature rises to a dangerous level? It shouldn't matter if it's the graphics subsystem (on MB or off it), the Fixed disk, or the CPU, they all have thermal sensors and the OS should be monitoring them. My 8core AMD-based desktop with AMD R9 graphics with Linux does shut down when I run Ultra on two high rez monitors for long periods, am I reading that with Microsoft Windows 10, I could expect the MB to melt before it turned off? Sheeesh!

Learn the keystroke Shift-S. Then select 'Cursor to' somewhere else.... I have to do it a gazzilion times every minute, 'cos I can't train my fingers to move from blender to SL and back again. (Note to self: learn how to set up custom keystrokes, and set one for 'Cursor to Centre')

Thanks for trying to help. I've come to the same conclusion - the flexibility of keeping the upload separate is valuable.

I know how to make something in Blender. I know how to make a UV Map, and manipulate it to get something I can export and paint. I know how to import the texture I made into SL and apply it to faces I put on the mesh in Blender. I even know how to upload the texture into Blender, and bake it onto the mesh in Cycles using nodes and the lighting and camera to get the results I want. But what I can't find is how to export a collada (.dae) from Blender with the baked texture on (in?) it, so that the texture is still there when I import it to SL. The Blender exporter says it can include textures (I tick the box), and the SL Importer (Firestorm for me) has a tick box for 'include textures'. But nothing appears..... I have spent several happy hours searching these pages, and using duck-duck-go to search the internet, but so far my search terms are not yielding anything useful. Could some kind soul point me at that workflow please? I'm using Blender 2.78a and Cycles, and I'm making architectural items, not clothes.

Thanks Chic. I didn't know about the edge-split modifier, and it does seem to do a reasonable job. I'm meticulous about checking the scale and rotation!

Doh! I knew that (once). Now I'm not sure how I ever got it to smooth! Thanks a heap. Anna.

I'm making a door in blender 2.78. It has a curved frame, I made it as a half-half, and then used mirror modifier in x and y to make the final shape. I have carefully (and over and over) checked that all the verts on the facing side are in the same plane. Yet when I look at it in blender in Object the face exhibits shading. If I export it to Aditi, I see this as a shading on the face. It's most noticeable in the two stiles, and worse in sl. I can hide it with a dark texture, but I want it light. What am I doing wrong?

As one who has recently started from scratch to learn modelling using blender, I want to encourage you to take the good advice here. But you need to be prepared for a steep learning curve. Blender can do everything (I think there is even a way for it to make tea while you are working, but I didn't find that yet :matte-motes-big-grin:) but this comprehensiveness comes at the price of complexity. What I did was to follow some tutorials. Up to now, I have played them on my tablet, while I try to copy them on the desktop, this works well, but I have now invested in a second monitor so I can work on one, and watch on the other. The other hint I give is to learn to ask Google: 'Blender Join 2 faces' type questions, you will need to do it frequently. But in the end it's worth it! Another approach, for people who just can't get their mind round Blender (or Maja etc...) is to build everything in prims in SL, or better still Aditi (the SL Beta Grid), and then use a prim to mesh converter. My partner does this to great effect for buildings. This is the one she uses. Before she found the converter, we used to export her linksets as collada (dae files) import them into Blender, decimate each prim a bit, join the the prims, and export a new, hopefully simpler and lower Land-Impact mesh. Trial and error seemed to get us a way forward. But Blender from scratch is by far and away the best way to go.

Thanks Drongle, I am almost able to understand all that.... (at least I think I do!) What a ride this stuff is! I'll try some more things myself now. I can't see any reason why this can't be 0.5 thick, as long as most of the thickness is transparent, and Over it rather than under it.

Thanks. But my question was also about the Developer tool. It shows that the mesh HAS got a hole in it. So is this a bug in Firestorm or SL?

OK I have a very simple, but large 30M diameter, octohedron with a 25M octohedral hole in the middle, made in Blender. Each of the 8 segments is identical, and consists of 4 quads (8 tris after conversion): two are the inside and the outside edges 0.1m wide, two are the identical faces with the 22.5 deg ends. This is to be the awning round an octablonal structure. I export it from Blender 2.78, using the preset for SL + Static. The .dae file contains what I would expect. In Beta, I import this using the same file for both visual model (High) and Physics. The file is so simple, anything I could make would be just as complex. Looking at the preview of the physics I see that the yellow physics model fits, it is co-incident on all faces and edges, and does NOT cover the hole in the centre. On import without analyse, rez and set to prim, this mesh does NOT, repeat NOT, show a collision surface over the hole using the Render Metadata->Physics Shapes tool in Developer, yet you can walk your avatar over the hole in mid (simulated) air!!!!! As a prim, this comes in at 1.0 download, 1.0 physics, 0.5 server, and 349 display. But is useless. If I do the same thing and Analyse, the physics model is similarly co-incident and now the usual pinky-glow. On import and rez, switch to prim, the mesh behaves as expected and you fall through the hole. The picture seen in Render Metadata->Physics Shapes is IDENTICAL to the one not analysed. But as a prim it is 0.9 download, 2.9 physics, 0.5 server, and 339 Display. Is there a bug in the Render Metadata->Physics Shapes tool? Or better still, is there a tool that actually shows the physics in world?

also, related to that... how do I 'really' get onto the beta grid. it seems to be always inaccessible when i try. ??? Just a thought. You HAVE raised a ticket to get your account set up on Beta, haven't you? There is still, as far as I know, a bug, and new users of Beta don't get access unless they ask for it. The error message looks like it is inaccessible.

Number one priority, get an Aditi Beta-grid account so that you don't waste money learning.....

Doh! Found my mistake. Sorry for the noise.

Has anyone managed to upload a mesh to beta WITH a physics file since it came back? Mine are all being silently uploaded without the physics, and can't be set prim.

I am having the same problems. Could you say what kind of support ticket to file? All the ones I have raised have been acnowledged and then ignored. There doesn't seem to be a suitable category in the drop down lists.

Did you assign a material and UNWRAP the landform? No. Didn't know I had to. Now I do. All I need now is to work out how to do it. Thanks. Anna.

I'm trying to make some mesh landforms for my parcel. (48x48 squares, about 4-7 land impact) I have discovered how to make them in Blender, and have successfully imported them into SL, using the same file as physics - which seems to be essential. The landform is then set to prim so that the physics works. My problem is with texturing them. I can do it when they are set to 'Planar', but not when they are textured as 'Default'. I have some made by a Marketplace seller that texture fine as 'Default'. Can someone point to what I'm missing, or give me a hint. Kisses, Anna.