Janet Voxel

I don’t think that was the intention of the op. It certainly could go that way because a lot of people that post here have been around for a while and really don’t care for mesh. I think what she’s saying is valid and I’ve heard many people say that, especially in the last couple years.

Oof...there’s a lot. Some of my favorites are Studio Exposure, Itgirls, session and Bold and Beauty. demo demo demo

That might have to do with how you’re importing the mesh or....you might’ve not let the simulation do it’s thing so it didn’t completely join. It’s hard to say without images. Alt+M will join two vertices, that usually does the trick. If parts of your mesh are going crazy in the simulation...you’re definitely going to have an issue in Blender. If you post a screenshot of what you’re working with, I can kind of duplicate it and help you a little better. I’m not going to promise a quick turnaround, because most of the time I post here I’m at work. But I’ll try to help where I can.

I think the new version of making t-shirts with smiley faces is “texturing” mesh. I’m not knocking people who texture mesh in any way. I’m just pointing out that there has been a migration of sorts. The template business is quietly booming. I’ve seen some pretty talented texture artists, take a template and make a base mesh look different, just with a good use of alphas. There are a lot of creators that just texture and resell textured templates. I think that portion of creators have over taken the number of creators that make original objects. That may also be why it seems like there isn’t as much creativity. There’s only so much you can do with a template and people eventually realize it’s the same mesh.

Couple of things before I begin. I’m really starting to feel that all of these events and people buying mesh from turbo squid, then reselling is what is stifling creativity, not mesh itself. There are so many events creators are starting to miss deadlines, not rig properly or not bother to create something...just outright buy it from somewhere and resell it. The demand is much greater than the supply. 1) I don’t think mesh needs a greater skill set than prims. There are more tools available in a 3D modeling program, but....it’s still geometry. The difference is there isn’t much of a bridge between 3d modeling programs and SL. What I mean by that, when you’re in a 3d modeling program you’re not in SL. It’s harder to share what you’re doing while you’re in the process. Thus you’re on your own a lot more. There’s a degree of gate keeping going on too. The sandbox era, where you could go to a sandbox and meet someone and just learn from them is over. You can ask in a group chat, but often a person who is trying to learn can’t articulate what they are trying to do. Misunderstandings happen, discouragement often follows. 2) I don’t think there’s less objects, there are less people doing it. See 1: A lot of people look at mesh like it’s wizardry. It’s not. 3) I call the prim days the sandbox days. Those were good because everything was right here. Now it’s not. I don’t think mesh got rolled out properly and it faced immediate backlash. Years later, someone is still talking about how prims are better. Mesh just doesn’t have that sense of wonder prims did. There was something that seemed more organic about prims floating in front of you taking shape. Mesh seems more clinical and it scares people away, when it shouldn’t.

Isn’t Ruth 2.0 available on MP? That’s about as close to the system avatar as you’re going to get.

I’d rather LL focus on things that benefit everyone and improve SL. The last name thing is cute, nice to have but I think BoM, EEP, ArcTan, etc should take precedent because they’re more QoL items, last names is a vanity thing.

I’m pretty sure some people were going into group chats and putting it out there that this was happening and also “here sign this petition we wrote up real quick *insert link*” I got so tired of it here, I just closed the box when I saw it in world. I’m sure they got a lot of people to sign it that way.

I’m not sure about the petition, but LL had a thread about the changes. It was a thread that they left open an uncomfortably extended amount of time. Some creators did voice their concerns and a couple of Lindens did participate in it. I’m not going to say they aren’t paying attention here, but I agree this probably isn’t the most effective way to go about it. Especially, since the arguments put forth are the same arguments that were put forth in the “official” thread a couple of weeks ago.

Fine, Maitreya wasn’t out then. Some avatars still have a thigh gap. The point was it was someone with a super skinny avatar saying an xxs standard size was too big. It was wacked out from the start, then it went into proportions , after there was a tirade about mesh lol. I agree, it shouldn’t have been revived.

No, they probably were made in China. The point was that was a response to butt implants being a “Black and Latin thing”, let’s not go down that rabbit hole. Which was my point. The original post had someone complaining about xxs mesh sizes being too big and mesh bodies having big butts. I’m pretty sure Maitreya was available back then which doesn’t have a big butt even if you crank up the sliders to 100. In short it was a looney post. Then someone (lol) took pictures of people’s avatars to make fun of them (which I thought was against the forum rules) One of which must’ve seen it because she responded. It was avatar shaming and the person that posted the picture got called out. Lo’ and behold....five years later...doing the same thing. Then someone implied Black and Latin women tend to have bigger butts....when....no they don’t. Someone had to point that out. I was pointing that out. Is it a thing in RL and SL? Sure....let’s just not make it a Black and Latina thing, because it’s not.

We’re going in circles. The OP asked how to decimate a MD model...in Blender. Several people gave her a solution. I offered an alternative and a reason why that could be better that simply decimating it. That is all.

Because....that’s what the OP asked for? She’s not using Maya though. She asked how to decimate the model. I said before the reason you don’t want to use decimate in Blender is because it’s going to trash the model. Wasn’t that why she wanted to decimate the model in the first place? Because it was too high poly? Instead of lowering the particle count ( which will raise the poly count), she can raise it. Raising it will lower the poly count, which is what the OP asked for. If it’s too low, that’s fine because after she adjusts the model, she can do a subsurf modifier and get the detail back and have a better model than she started out to boot.

I think we’re having a minor misunderstanding. I already said I shouldn’t have said “retopo”. By taking the model in MD and increasing it from 20 (which is the default) to 30, 35 or 40. You’re going to end up with a simplified model when you export. Basically, by doing this you already decimated it, but it’s less messy.

It probably won’t stop me from going, but it’s definitely not going to keep me there either.

Also, pretty sure Kim K is completely of indo-European descent.

I think she’s trying to reduce the polycount. The thing is when you decimate the mesh it’s going to deform a little bit. When it’s a MD mesh and you decimate in Blender, not only does it deform but you’re going to get some strange edges. It’s going to look pretty bad, then you’ll have to retopo anyway. If you increase the particle distance in MD, you will reduce the polycount when you import into Blender. The added bonus is going to be nicer quads, but you’re going to have to pull on some vertices in Blender. Once you spent a few minutes doing that though, you can drop a subsurf( a single one should do) modifier on the object, not only would it be better quadded, but it would be much closer to what you originally had in MD. So let’s not say retopo, let me rephrase that as pulling on some vertices and sorting out your edge flow. Increasing the particle distance will definitely lower the polycount and do a better job of decimating the mesh than simply decimating the mesh in blender though.

Perfect. All you need to do is increase the particle distance of the fabric from the default setting. You’ll reduce the number of verts that way before you export to something more manageable. Decimate does some really unpredictable things with MD mesh that you probably wouldn’t be happy with. Even if you convert the mesh to quads (which you should) it’ll never perfectly quadrangulate the mesh. So it’s better to play around with the particle distance in MD before you export. It’ll lose some shape because there’s less geometry, but that’s ok. It’s fixable. Of course you’ll have to still retopo in Blender.

What version of MD are you using? If it’s a later version, you can decimate it before you export it to blender.

Not really, if you go by the TMP Legacy thread(s) over in the appearance forum....just depends on what the thing is.

Yeah, I wasn’t hanging out there either; that’s why I ended up with three. I only grabbed ones from the creators I thought would be decent. And if the timer wasn’t up by the time I got to another one I might’ve wanted? Oh well.... not going back.