IvyTechEngineer

Very nice. I do not have this skill set.

It worked, thanks for everyone's help. I still have a few issues with like adding textures on the inside wall of an object. I am working on my dog house design now. Not sure the best way to do that. Also, maybe I could add some loop cuts around the edges and paint them black to make the outline look better?

Thanks Quarrel, It has never been real clear to me about how materials work. I remember from an earlier post from Chic that 8 materials was the max. Also, I remember Aquila telling me that the reason my model textures go messed up was because "The most common cause of this is that the object has more than one UV map. This can result in the wrong UV map being uploaded with the model." and the solution is "Don't create a texture at all". I will try this out. Thanks IvyTech

Chic, thank you I will check out your videos. I typically only do one object at a time and never use the procedural nodes. I have played a little with Unreal Engine's blueprints but I think this may an over kill for what I am trying to do, i.e. draw objects using another tool and import the models as STL files. Aquila, also thank you for your kind words. I am not a Blender expert per se. I use it as part of the work flow to convert and simplify STL files into DAE file formats. My only issue has been when I attempt to add textures to my objects I cannot texture on individual face. I can texture the entire object with one texture but no individual faces. Perhaps if I create an object with multiple materials it will allow me to change the textures on the individual faces? ivyTech

Thanks Aquila, You did a lot of work on this. There are many things I need to learn regarding Blender. I have posted questions on several of the Blender YouTube channels, I think Grant Abbitt responded but I have not looked at his posting. Most of the channels use the procedural nodes approach. It will take me some time to understand your response. In the past I have never had any luck with applying multiple textures to an object I have built and uploaded. I typically can only add one texture or color. If I build it in SL then I have no problem with multiple textures. Also, when the object is downloaded the textures are not downloaded as well, I think. Again thank you for your massive effort. Regards IvyTechENGINEER

After spending the morning and having problems at every turn I was finally got something that seems to work before my network connection went down. I attempted to create 5 materials for the building floor. Most of the videos I watch don't show you how to merge all the images into a single image for upload for a single mesh model to Second Life. Maybe I need to create a new image that has all the textures I want and adjust the uv map (this is what I did using Paint). Also, most of the YouTube use procedural nodes for the materials. So you do you build something with multiple materials for SL?

Hello Nice job Aquila, and you made me laugh. No spiral stair cases, lol. I had planed to use a teleporter or elevator. Still need to add a door to the bottom level. I think the bottom floor will contain a directory for different posters groups. I want to use a touch to teleport to go to the first level of a group. Most of the posters use the browser and link to a image that I have stored on our website. This makes it very easy to organize no cost to upload images. These posters are typically 6 meters wide and 3 meters high. I have a few other that have a 4:3 size and a few that are images that I uploaded but most of them use the browser. I believe I have about ~200 posters. Each floor can display maybe 12 posters (3 per wall) so I need about 17 floors and I picked a 30 meter square with 6 meter walls. The posters would be displayed around the outside wall. I have always just used the SL Viewer and only used Firestorm for downloading models. I need to figure out how to apply multiple materials in Blender. Most of the time I just ignore the materials (sorry) except for the mountain I was working on that you (an others) helped me with. Regarding "Testing testing testing" I put in a ticket to access the Beta Grid and will try to use it for this project ... Thanks

I am thinking about building a very tall in SL to house 200 posters. Is there an easy way to build a large building in SL? Here is something I would like to use for each floor. 100 Vertices 200 Tris LI 2.279 Any idea how much land impact would it be if I built 71 floors?

Hello When people teleport to my island they end up in the middle of a fountain and then struggle to get out of it. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/IvyTech Engineering Island/128/129/21 How do I move the landing place for people? IvyTech

I am thinking about building a very tall building in SL to house 200 student posters. That would be 17 floors and maybe 100 meters tall. Is there an easy way to build a large building in SL? I think I need to keep track of the XYZ position and XYZ size. Suggestions? I know there is a 64 meter limit as well. Is there a way around this? I want the base to be 30 meters squared with about 4 to 6 meters height per floor ... Thanks IvyTech

I have another question for you guys about build a kiosk for my island. Sometimes people visit my island and I want to share more than a notecard. I also want to share advertisement for the engineering programs we have at the college. I created 5 web browser object and set the urls to the 5 programs we offer but was wondering if anyone has built a kiosk in SL that links to RW objects that the visitor could take with them outside of SL?

I do have some very high level mesh models that were created in Solidworks but I think in this case the model created in Solidworks has a lower level mesh.

Hello I have a parcel that was build by Linden Labs that is based on the Horizons Community Center. I cannot seem to build in the H-Bar and anything I have placed in has been removed and placed back in my inventory. Thanks IvyTech Engineer

Hello again, I wanted to try to build a building instead of buying it from the Marketplace. My previous efforts has resulted in pretty dense mesh models. Several years ago I built the small house that was describe in Chic Aeon's YouTube video - It was probably one of the first things I build. I built it in SL and in Solidworks. I just downloaded both DAE files and the sloppy prim sm house.dae model has 984 tris. While the the Solidworks small house was only had 188 tris. Not sure if I am doing something wrong but I thought the SL built model would have fewer tris. Also, when I downloaded the models using Firestorm is there a way to also get the physics model? Thanks Ivy

Cool, I will try to duplicate it. it. Looks like some pretty low poly models.

Thanks, so can I use multiple images for the materials? Like one image for the floor and one for the walls?

Typically I do a Smart UV Project unwrap on the object and add an image as a texture and then in Texture Paint mode use the Image Editor and then I can paint on either the object or the uv map. The images can then be saved (maybe it could also be tweaked in Photoshop or other painting program). I know the picture is not 2048 by 2048 so I am not sure if it will work if it was uploaded to SL. Also, at one time some one said you could have up to 8 materials for an object. How does that work? Thanks Ivy Tech Engineer

I like yours much better. I will give it a try. Yours looks like they have a smaller geometry. Any suggestions on textures for them?

Thanks for the info, I will need to study your response more closely to understand it.

Thanks for your advice. I think that some of my issue was not all the lower vertices we at the same Z value. Origins also seems to cause me problems because in CAD program drawing are more precise and the location of the origin is more important. I did discover a couple of new trick that I never picked up on that should improve my drawings. In the past when I subdivided an edge I could move the new vertices without moving in all three directions. However a double GG seems to allow for the sliding of the vertices along the edge which is quite helpful. I have also figured out that the bevel of the edge was the way to provide a change to the contour of the bottom of the cave inside edge. This was very helpful. I started this morning to draw some stalactites and stalagmites using cones and cut the sections in half. I am not sure I totally like what I have but I could merge the inside and outside of the bottom and top together to build the whole mountain. Still working on the stalactites and stalagmites for the top and the top cave entrance. Turns out the approach I used for the bottom doesn't quite work because when I extrude faces from the normal planes it doesn't look very good.

I am restarting the mountain model again and was reviewing my notes on what has already been done. I made two versions of the mountain: a floating mountain and a hollow mountain. The floating mountain has a floor with an inside of 424 tris and outside 473 tris. The hollow mountain has no floor (for now) with an inside of 483 tris and outside 525 tris. Next I would like to do a few things like add low poly rocks around the cave openings. I have been watching a few YouTube videos and I focus on the size of the mesh and whether ngons get created when creating a mesh. Option 1 - add rocks around the opening. Video 1 - Low Poly Rocks - Quick & Easy - Detailed Version This is a great video and I worked with this but bevel has a tendency to add ngons that need to be converted to tris and quads I think. Is this correct? There is a Rock generator Video 2 - Making realistic rocks in Blender 2.9+ using Blender rock generator addon This looks pretty cool but the size of the mesh is very large so this would probably not work in Second Life. Has anyone worked with this addon? Option 2 - build geometry around the opening directly. This seems to work but sometimes I get some weird geometry. This was done using the Blender knife and which will add vertices and edges around the cave entrance. The select all the faces around the opening and extrude. After the extrude you will need to add faces to the inside of the cave wall around the edge. Also, if you extrude each face individually you will need to go back and merge vertices because the extrudes will be individually normal to the face being extruded. Is there a way to extrude without needed to add the inside face? Final questions, 1.) Is there a way to find the where the origin is for an objects that you want to link in Second Life? I have just "used" the same origin for all the linked objects based on the original mesh model. 2.) Sometimes seem to not look right because of the lighting. Is there a way to a way to turn that off? I think I can change it by the view to eliminate shadows by switching to a different view. 3.) Is there a way to add an object on a face? Object get added at the origin. Thanks Ivy Tech Engineer

I think I would like to work on the interior of the mountain cave I built now. Add some stalagmites, stalactites and cave textures and maybe a small pool. Any suggestions on how to get started? I still need to do some cleanup on the interior of the cave and add some structures. Thanks

Thanks! You help is always appreciate Aquila.

Hello again, I often review past post to see if I can figure out stuff for building things for Second Life. I really appreciate all the help I have gotten from everyone since I started. I have an STL file that is massive in size when imported into Blender to create the DAE file for SL. It requires a 0.004 scaling to get to a 1 meter size. I seem to remember that once you rotate or scale an object in Blender you need to do something to lock the scale in for the object. Does anyone remember the command in Blender? Also, I was trying to merge two objects: the skull and jaw of a T-Rex model I found online and wanted to merge them into a single object in Blender. The origins and orientations for the are way off. When I tried to export to a DAE file it only export the skull. Not sure what happened or what I did wrong. Is there some sort of command to merge objects before exporting? Thanks IvyTechEngineer

Is there a way to download the locations of multiple objects that are in my region? I would like the location and name of all the objects. Thanks