Indigo Mertel

Well, good news finally. I have managed to resolve all the baking anomalies. This is the final result: For the record, for the UV unwrap I have used Lightmap Pack. I have resolved all the anomalies by modifying the topology in the critical points, mostly by merging tris into quads and connecting some intersections with faces rather than stacking them. Next step will be to bake the handle and possibly a single texture for both the frame and handle. Thank you Masami and Dilbert for all your help.

Indeed, that is what I am finding. The damn thing refuses to cooperate and at this point I am thoroughly frustrated... :matte-motes-mad:

I see what you mean. As a matter of fact a grid shows that there is quite some distorsion and misalignments in the UV. I guess I need to try with manually unwrapping the model as you previously suggested.

>> There is no reason to keep the bake margin at its default 2 pixels unless you bake in more than one pass. I always max it out at 64 pixels; it has no adverse effects on the result. << Really? I thought that spilling from one UV island to another was to be avoided at all cost. Do you do this when you bake all maps (AO, color, normal)? >> By the way, the triangle in the second picture can be eliminated by removing the edge at the bottom. You will get two quads on each side and save at least two vertices. << LOL! You are good at challenging my scarce knowledge on 3d modeling... Do you mean like this? My understanding was that overlapping edges was another of those things to avoid. EDIT: In the meantime I have reworked the topology for the side to improve the model and get rid of those triangles...

Masami, your suggestion helped a lot but I still see some artifacts on the AO map: There is also a problem with the normal map: I am confused...

Ah, thanks a lot Masami! I'll try what you suggest and will dutifully report back...

Thanks for the suggestion, Fizz. Yes, I have a separate image for the AO in the texture stack and I use multiply for it. I don't think the AO is too strong as the AO map looks fine and doesn't have those black blotches. But I'll give it a try and see what happens.

Yes, that's how you do it if you are in a hurry to get rid of the land or think you won't be able to sell it. But before you purchase the new land I suggest you chek the land tier at your dashboard just to be sure that the system has recorded the land you sold. I have seen occasional delays in the sysem in taking notice that a parcel was sold or abandoned. Also, are you taking advantage of the group bonus? If you don't you may want to take a look at this: How to buy land for your group without bumping tier - MetaLibrary

Eh, I was afraid someone would say that... :smileyindifferent: Thank you for the suggestion, Dilbert. I'll try with a manual UV unwrap...

I need some help troubleshooting some baking anomalies I have with my model. The following picture shows a window I have made with Blender 2.64 r51232 with a full render bake applied to it: To create the full render bake I first baked color, normal and AO maps. Here you can see some anomalies in the color map bake, the parts I have circled are not baked properly: You can also see the problem in the following two images showing the full render bake. The glass pane is hidden as it is not part of the material used for the frame: I have tried rebaking the maps several times without any improvement. I thought perhaps the baking process had problems baking thin faces but the following image shows that some of them get partially baked: I have created the UV map by using the SMart UV Project with angle limit set to 10.00 so to have as few islands as possible and an island margin of 1.00. Does anyone have any suggestion?

I don't know if this is related to a recent change in the latest release in the Le Tigre channel but you may want to read this post for details: http://blog.nalates.net/2012/10/23/alert-le-tigre-httprequest-change/

Thank you Maeve, Gaia, Dilbert. Each of you gave me a valuable tip. Dilbert, applying the subsurf modifier resolved the problem and also made me realize that it created an awful amount of faces. That handle needs some work.

I have modeled a window with a handle, where the handle is a separate object. The handle has a curvy shape, thus I have applied a subsurf modifier in order to get the result I want. The handle is a rather small object so I wonder if it's better to join the two objects together and have a single UV map. However, if I join the objects the subsurf modifier is applied to the window as well and the result is not what I want. Can anyone suggest what is the best way to proceed? Should I just keep the two objects separate?

There is a inworld group just dealing with the problem you describe, called the Open Seas Project. The intention is to inform and educate SL users on the need to keep waterways navigable. We have a notecard where we explain why it is important and also suggest some possible solutions. One of the solutions we suggest to "privacy concerned" owners is to split a parcel so to make it a navigable channel for boats and leave the rest of the land inaccessible. Sometimes it works and we had some good results. I can provide to you our info kit or I could send it to the land owner if you wish.

Nice work. It looks great, Sylvia.

Thank you Pix and Dora. I am happy people appreciate what I do.

Blender 2.64 is now available for download: blender.org - Get Blender http://bit.ly/pDXeF4

"This always causes multiple entries for vertices, that your program sees as one, along sharp edges and along UV seams (a good reason to have them coincide)." Interesting. I have been wondering about this. So, it is better to have UV seams and sharp edges coincide, where possible.

The Machinimatrix videos are quite good to learn how to use Blender for SL. For an overview on Blender there are some free ebooks and video course for beginners. Here are some MetaLibrary links where you can find more details: Blender Fundamentals, a free introductory video course Free eBook for beginners: An introduction to BLENDER 3D Free Blender 3D Tutorials eBooks in English and Dutch Free Blender Basics Classroom Tutorial eBook

Well... I have purchased a few books from Packt, thus I've had an account for a while. I think I receive about a monthly email. I don't mind receiving it so that I can see if they have published anything interesting. It's acceptable, but you can always uncheck email delivery in your account or close it altogether...

No, you only have to register an account to their web site. Once you are in browse their catalog, choose a book and download it.

Packt Publishing is one of the leading technical publishers and is celebrating the publishing of its 1000th book with a great promotion: you can access the online library PacktLib for one week and choose one eBook to download for free! To make use of this offer, you simply need to go to www.packtpub.com and log into your account, or register for an account, between the 28th and 30th September. Among several technical books, Packt Publishing lists 6 books on Blender 2.5 / 2.6 and 4 books on 2.49. This is the full text of the offer: Packt Publishing has come a long way since it published its first book in 2004, and is now one of the leading technical publishers, renowned among developers for its focused and practical books on a wide range of tools and technologies. Packt has just published its 1000th book. You are invited to join us in celebrating this milestone with a gift. Access our library, PacktLib, for free for a week, and choose any of our eBooks to download and keep. To make use of this offer, you simply need to go to www.packtpub.com and log into your account, or register for an account, between the 28th and 30th September. At Packt, we really appreciate your support in helping us get this far, and hope that you will continue to enjoy our range of books.

Blender user Alfonso Annarumma released an add-on that I believe will be of some interest to SL users who work with bones. Mind you, I haven't tried the add-on myself so I can't vouch for its usefulness. It would be nice if you could give me some feedback on useful this is. What the script does: set name of layerselect bone on layerlock bone on layermove bone to layerautomatic creation of bone group of the bone in the layer with random color assignmentselect the protected layer for the link exportation. Please, find further information on MetaLibrary

Thank you for making this video, Gaia. It helped clarifying a couple of things I was confused about.

Great! Thanks a lot. I had no idea I could do that. And, yes, I did see a tutorial showing the texture repeating in every direction. >> What you most certainly cannot do when you UV map your item this way, is baking (light/occlusion)) textures. Do you mean I can't when I need to bake light and occlusion maps? In theory this is not a problem in this case as I can generate those maps with an external tool (I use ShaderMap, really cute tool).