[Model Building]

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 

[Download Region Object locations?]

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

[Building Buildings]

Thanks I was missing something but it was not exactly what I was looking at. In CAD tools like Solidworks you can align edges and faces using relationships like vertical, horizonal, parallel, and colinear. It appears that the first approach actually moves the vertices of both faces a little. I will try to add the bevel. 

I am such a dummy, the solidify modifier worked and doubled the geometry so I assume I can texture the inside of the cave now. Need to do a little cleanup.

Thanks Aquila

[Building Buildings]

OBTW, this misalignment was caused when I attempted to create a the 1 meter faces on the bottom and align them to Z S zero and the moved to -19m vertically

[Building Buildings]

Thanks I will give that a try. I thought 0.5 meters might be a little small as well but it should have still worked I think. 

In the process of adding some floor geometry around the edge of the cave I thought I could use the Knife and add faces that were exactly 1 meter up from the bottom. Then scale the bottom edge in the X and Y to 95% and it would give me a curled inside wall. How can I align two faces to make them coplanar?

Thanks

[Building Buildings]

Hello again,

My "final" model has made me think about a couple of things that bother me that I thought you might be able to give me some advise about regarding building a mountain from a terrain file from SL. First, why didn't the Solidify modifier in Blender increase the geometry of the original model? Ideally what I thought was the shell of the mountain would be increased by 0,5 meters or so, whatever thickness I wanted.  What did I miss? 

I did see a wonderful YouTube video - that is pretty cool but I don't need a landscape because I will you my mountain mesh. He does use a solidify modifier and he does does some sculpting (I have not experience with sculpting).  

 

My current model has an outside and inside section and I am thinking about also adding a floor. I saw one large cave in the Marketplace (https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Open-Rock-FULL-PERM-MESH/18840836) that was built from three pieces. Maybe I should do the same?

I will probably we add more stuff to the inside like a pool and maybe stalactites and stalagmites. I think maybe I should learn the basics of sculpting but I am not sure how the poly count will be impacted. I might try some sculpting the floor and add some stalactites and stalagmites. 

OBTW, I did notice that some people in the Marketplace actually create cave tunnel kits with multiple models that can be connected together. These seems sort of cool.

[Building Buildings]

ok, I think I got it. I just built the inside part of the model and textured it. Then in SL I was able to link them. Need to do minor texture cleanup but this looks great. Thanks

[Building Buildings]

Does anyone have any advise on how to build models that use linksets? This is new to me ...

[Building Buildings]

Thanks, I have tried to do this but I was not able to scale easily. So maybe just make an outside and inside model? On the inside model I can modify it and remove some geometry and then invert the normals and texture paint the inside. I can then upload and somehow link the two models with a linkset. I also think that I can revert back to the full model that has a top and bottom together. Then just texture the inside. Maybe if I could scale the model it would look better.

[Building Buildings]

1 minute ago, IvyTechEngineer said:

Solidify didn't work the (0.25M). Looking inside to outside is still transparent. I will need to switch the normals and texture the inside and somehow link the outside and inside together in SL...

 

[Building Buildings]

Solidify didn't work the (0.25M). Looking inside to outside is still transparent. I will need to switch the normals and texture the inside and somehow link the outside and inside together in SL...

[Building Buildings]

I played around with it a little more and just deleted the quad and replaced it with two tris. It had some weird unwrapped shape, maybe because some of the vertices were in odd places. The texture looks weird on the bottom. Should be a solid color. Also, since I didn't solidify it before adding the texture the mountain is transparent on the inside. If I add the solidify modifier will it still be transparent looking from the inside?

[Building Buildings]

I have been thinking about maybe just making the mountain in two parts, an upper half and a lower halves. However, I am leery about mating the halves because I think have very little control of the "origin" for the halves. 

I have filled in the top half of the model but I get an odd quad in the lower right of the UV MAP. First, all vertices for the quad have a Z value of 0 meters. I have deleted and added the quad several time and it still acts the same. When I attempt to paint it doesn't seem to totally paint on the bottom of the part. I can paint it in the UV MAP but I don't understand what is wrong with the quad ... 

[Building Buildings]

Can I use the Solidify modifier in Blender to build the inside walls of the mountain? 

 

[Building Buildings]

ok, sort of makes sense. The inside probably ought to be different than the outside anyway. Is it is because it is a "shell"? However if was extruded, like circular structures is a connecting arch, I wouldn't have this problem?  

Thanks

Ivy

[Building Buildings]

This fixed my physics problem, thank you. I can now go into the cave but the walls are transparent? Maybe it is because the model is just a shell? Do I need to build the another model that flips the normals and texture the inside walls?

[Building Buildings]

55 minutes ago, Aquila Kytori said:

Enable in preferences.

SL viewer :

 

Firestorm :

 

Thanks, learning something new every day, lol

[Building Buildings]

1 hour ago, Aquila Kytori said:

 

 

I visited the Ivy Tech sim, found the mesh island and checked the Physics............ Wulfie is correct, the island is set to use the default Convex Hull type physics.

I think it has been mentioned before in one of your previous threads but I will mention it again,  if you enable the Developer > Render Metadata > Physics Shapes option you can see the collision surfaces of all the objects in the scene. For your Island see the screenshot below :

 

I noticed from a previous screenshot of yours that you don't have the Developer menu active. You will find the option to enable it at the bottom of the Advanced menu :

 

To walk correctly on the surface  and pass through the cave opening of the Island you will need to change the Physics shape Type from the default Convex hull to the Prim option. This option is found in the Build floater when editing the island in-world.   Build floater > Features tab > Physics Shape Type drop-down menu :

If you don't see the Prim option it means you didn't specify a physics model to use when uploading the Island.

 

Just a note, The Firestorm viewer is very popular because of its many "extras", one of which is the ability to quickly see the collision shape of the selected object :

I don't see the Developer selection in my SL Viewer or in FireStorm?

[Building Buildings]

On 3/31/2023 at 4:53 PM, Wulfie Reanimator said:

It's not really possible.

The reason why it's not really possible is because SL terrain uses repeating textures that blend between each other (based on height -- like the grass and rock textures in your image).

While you could create a texture for your mesh that blends between two kinds of textures (by doing that manually), the resolution couldn't be anywhere near as sharp as regular SL terrain, because SL terrain uses repeating textures to cover the large surface.

And while you could create your land mesh with repeating textures in mind, your current geometry wouldn't work for it, and you'd lose the ability to blend textures arbitrarily.

 

9 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

How come? 500 tris for a 64 meter hill doesn't seem terribly complex.

 

I also think the physics mode is just set to convex hull, that's why they hover and can't get into the cave. I made a similar model as a test and it turned out fine.

I know, I am slow, lol. My goal was to build a mesh model of the mountain that is part of the terrain.raw file in my region. I wanted this so I could have access to the area under the island. After a fair amount of effort I got a mesh model that I could start with using L3DT (import_opensim_raw.zs ) and Blender. The original thought was to float the mountain so I cut it flush in Blender to the water line, i.e. 20 meters. After some edits I got down to a model with 3520 tris. OBTW, I got a good deal of help from people like you in the forum, thank you. 

In an effort to create a physics file I reverted back to a simpler model. I even tried to draw it in Blender but it was a challenge for a CAD guy, lol. I was able to create a stl file and 3D print it which is pretty cool.

[Building Buildings]

After many, many hours of work on my mountain it still doesn't work. I believe the physics model looks great with no error. However, when I upload with everything to include the texture the physics don't allow me to go inside and I cannot walk on the surface of the mountain? The mountain is larger than 64 meters in one direction so SL want to scale to 0.982. I do not know where the Beta site is but this is frustrating. Suggestions?

 

IvyTech

[Building Buildings]

Also, I am wondering if I should add some more geometer to improve the texturing of an large object that I upload into SL. The image on the left would be harder to texture with an image? Of course the results are the tri/quad count goes up...

[Building Buildings]

Thanks for the feedback. So are you telling me that texturing in SL would be better for large objects?

[Building Buildings]

Final question, which I probably asked before, lol. I have fixed the physics file I think and now I want to texture the mountain. Ideally, I would like it to look like the terrain texture that SL has vs something else. Any suggestions on the least painful way to do that? 

Thanks

IvyTech

[Building Buildings]

Thanks, I am not sure how that happened. Is there a modifier in Blender to eliminate these problems? 

[Building Buildings]

Just a follow-up on this. I just tried to use a medium LOD physics option for a large model and it didn't quite work. In this thread I pretty much decided that I needed a physics file but I still have issues with my models. I just noticed that the physics model I tried to use is being modified in SL where quads are converters to tris?