Indigo Mertel

Can I really overlap and let the islands stick out?!? I have seen tutorials stacking up islands but my understanding was that the islands had to be of the same size. And I didn't know that I could let the islands stick out. This would make things a lot easier.

Thank you, Cale. I am quite new to Blender so I need to ponder a bit on what you suggest as I don't fully grasp all the details. I'll come back if I'll need more help... BTW, you touch another topic where I am confused. Gaia Clary suggests that working with quads is easier for UV Mapping. Does it mean that I should triangulate faces after I UV map? Doesn't that break the UV mapping?

I have received some good advice from all of you 3d wizards in a previous thread (What's the best topology?) for the conversion of a prim-based villa to mesh while at the same time trying to learn Blender. The modeling part is coming along pretty well and I am getting more confident with the program. I am now trying UV Mapping. The exterior walls, ceilings and floors were not a problem. I do have a problem with the interior walls. The image below shows a section of the ground floor, each color represents a different material in Blender. I have to map a different textures for each material. The textures have different color but the same pattern. Here is an example: The texture has moldings, so it must match the height of the wall and must repeat for its length. I am not sure what the best approach to do this is. One solution I tought of is to create one new image 1024 x 512 in size in the UV Editor for each wall section, with some optimization for the shorter segments. Then, for each UV Map I would scale the island so that i takes all the UV Map space. Is this correct? Do you have any suggestion? BTW, can anyone tell me what the dotted orange box around the origin point at the lower left corner of the building is and how I can get rid of it? Thank you in advance for any advice you can offer.

You have misunderstood what I said big time, Peggy. I have not encouraged Vixtris to drop her Premium account. I have suggested that there is another option for getting what she wants rather than going through all the hooplas of trying to fit a photo lab on a Linden Home. My first recommendation would be to buy her own parcel somewhere but I offered my suggestion by taking into account that additional costs would be an issue. However, I did say that she could keep her Premium account, based on what her needs are. By no means I said or implied there is no value by being Premium. As for costs, I should have phrased that better. In some cases renting can be cheaper than paying Premium. Your argument would be always correct if everyone rented land or houses for profit. That is not always the case, some people offer land for rent just to recover part of the tier they pay. As for the "conveniently forget" remark, that is definitely misplaced. I have not offered anything for my own benefit in what I suggested. For full disclosure, I happen to run a community with friends where we rent houses (we don't rent land) but I didn't offer any. I also happen to pay US$ 11,700/year in tier to LL to sustain our community, of which only 14% is covered by house renting and other revenues. There is no convenience in what I do.

Vixtris, there is another option for what you want: get rid of the Linden Home and rent land somewhere where you can have a house the way you want it, and/or a skybox. You don't even need to be a Premium member to rent land, and the cost of renting is lower than paying Premium.. Or, you can keep the Premium account if you need it. Linden Homes are very limited, as you found out. Their primary reason is to be a retention mean for new users and as incentive to go Premium. They are good enough until the user is ready to "upgrade" to something better and less restrictive. There are lots of nice places where you can rent land and have a house just the way you want. You can buy a house or even build one yourself. There are also places where you can rent a ready-made house. Not only you'll have a better place that you can use the way you want, you'll also have more prims to use. There are lots of places offering land or houses for rent. Just make sure to check their covenant before you rent.

I generally don't like to rant about the Lindens screwing everything and I try to keep an objective point of view, but it's hard to defend LL on this. People keep complaining of poor communications and all the Lab does is making communications even harder. It's a kick in the arse of users. I am trying to understand the motivations. Streamlining the process? Curbing rants? These may be valid reasons but, as Natales Urriah rightly points out in her blog, making JIRA cases private is overkill. And, somehow I have the creeping feeling that this is done to avoid that people lobby against some of the Lab's decisions, as is the case of the JIRA to bring last names back. Lindens really have all my sympathy for the level of abuse they receive and I really can understand how frustrating it must be to manage a system like JIRA when people abuse it. But this does not justify depriving everyone of an important tool without consulting the users and ask for their opinions. It's really a decision that it is forced on everyone with little regard to the users' needs and that only risk of blowing on Lindens' collective faces. As much as I believe that users really should make an effort in keeping communication with Lindens correct and respectful of their work, and as much as I believe that LL should improve communication and transparency with users, when either side pass a certain limit things are no longer acceptable. This is a case where a decision taken by the Lab really affect users in ways that are not acceptable. A decision like this totally disregard users' needs and it's liable of a strong protest. If Lindens deal with problems by forcing decisions that negatively affect the users, then a call to boycott their new system would have all my sympathy.

@ViperElle, everyone should feel welcome to SL, unless proved to be a jerk. Unfortunately there are many who behave as jerks and exploit SL without any regard to other users. It seems clear to me that you make a genuine attempt at understanding how things work and that is to be appreciated. There are many things to learn in SL and it's easy to do something wrong without being aware of it. In your case coming to the forum and asking was the right thing to do. @iCade, your intentions were good, you answered and said what you thought because you care. Nothing serious happened here, this is just a minor incident and I don't think you should be chastized either. You just need to work a bit on your form and assume for the best. Unless people prove to be jerks, of course. Call it sugar-coating or cultural upbringing, but I have no doubt that you are a nice person and you'll take into account other people's views on better ways to deal with matters. As far as I am concerned, I just wish to close this with a virtual handshake. Now, for funny anecdotes on wrong things to do: a couple of years ago, back at the time when we had mega-prims, I was checking the size of some of the mega-prims I had in my inventory by rezzing them one by one. There was one with a strange name that included the word CAREFUL! I rezzed it, and... the thing was humongous, spanning several regions! Every avatar in range must have thought what the heck was going on. I deleted the prim as fast as I could, sweating cold as I imagined the Lindens on a chase already...

Hmm... @Drake, where did I say squatting should be condoned? I ARed my share of squatters. Maybe you should re-read what I wrote. I expressed my opinion about the way this specific case was handled, not about squatting in general. Since everyone here enjoys making comparisons to RL, do you think that in RL a squatter would go to the city hall to ask to have power attached? No more improbable comparisons with RL, please. They only derail the conversation. The matter is simple: one person who is new to Second Life asks in good faith something that is not legitimate. A simple, polite explanation sets the matter, period. If the same person is caught squatting again, then you have all the reasons to AR him/her.

It doesn't change much, iCade. The difference between blunt and rude is really thin and neither are necessary when someone new just ask a question in good faith. You make improbable comparisons with RL, what you don't realize is that she was not aware she was squatting. Either way, a polite answer will take you that extra mile and you can reserve the bluntness to serial offenders, where it is deserved. For the record, I am not American. I am Italian. And I think that treating people properly is an universal value..

Maybe I should stay out of this but for the 12 years of past experience as a community manager I don't find this acceptable. @ViperElle, lacking information from your profile I'll assume you are a woman for simplicity. @iCade, I think you'd make a better service to ViperElle if you explained to her how things work wthout chastising her. The post she made was her first one here and she joined the forum the very same day. It is obvious that she is not aware of the squatting rule, else she would not post here asking about her house. And, frankly, I didn't know there was an explicit rule myself even if I joined SL more than 5 years ago. To my excuse, I never use sandboxes. And, just to be precise, unless things have changed and I didn't notice, not all sandboxes are paid for. Several of them are on Linden land. There is still the issue of using prims but new users are not necessarily aware of how things work or if there is any money involved. @iCade, it is clear that your intentions are good but when dealing with matters such as this as a rule of thumb it is better to assume for the best. A user with good intentions will be informed and thank you, anyone else can be handled accordingly.

Ok, let's see if I got things straight. Based on the suggestions I have received in this thread I can outline a list of best practices to follow. I have marked points where I still have some doubts with a question mark, so please feel free to clarify with further comments: 1. Vertices have a higher cost than faces. While it is important to model with the least number of faces, it is even more to follow practices to reduce the number of vertices. 2. Disconnected faces with overlapping edges are to be avoided. 3. Based on things I have read on the web it was my understanding that it is more practical to model with quads and even ngons/bmeshes and then triangulate before exporting the model as a Collada file. However, in the examples provided here I see that people triangulate from the beginning. Is this the best approach? 4. In some cases it is more efficient to design the topology so that faces are disconnected, as in Drongle's example of a window frame. With that example in mind my understanding is that it is better to sink the vertices of the bar in the window frame, rather than to exactly position the vertices on the frame (?). 5. I have been working on my model under the assumption that smooth shading should be enabled. This is not necessary on flat surfaces and should be enabled only where needed (?). 6. In order to reduce the number of vertices the edge split modifier can be applied on the model. This can be applied selectively through the modifier's settings and by marking edges as sharp. 7. Always make sure face normals are right by enabling the display of normals or by enabling the Texture Solid and Backface Culling properties. Thanks a lot to all those who helped. Next round of questions will be on the best approach to texture a large building, as that is another topic where I am quite confused.

Ah, thanks a lot Drongle. Your post anticipated one of the other matters I am confused about. I do remember reading past posts of you where you advise about sharp edges and how they increase LI inworld. I am confused about using the edge split modifier though. My understanding is that the modifier can only be applied in object mode, thus it is applied to the whole object at once. Is this the proper way to do it? I guess what confuses me is that I had the idea that I had to add a round fillet to all edges. The shading is indeed smooth. I thought this was the proper shading to use for models to be imported to SL. It looks as I was wrong. As for the face normals, I am aware of the normal display and I always leave it on. This is another tip I picked from old posts by you. I've noticed it seems to be a frequent case. I didn't know about textured solid and backface culling. Very interesting the bit about the weight of vertices vs faces. I didn't know that.

Thanks a lot, Kwakkelde. This is very helpful. So, in general it is better to avoid overlapping edges. Good to know. I wonder why it is so difficult to find good information on a proper topology. I have searched for tutorials and best practices on the web and couldn't find anything. If anyone knows of a good tutorial / best practices on topology, please let me know. Could the odd shading be caused by vertices not being perfectly aligned? What I am working on is a prim-based model I exported from SL with Mesh Studio. Some of the vertices in the collada export are not perfectly aligned. Obviously this is not a big issue in the prim-based model as the difference is insignificant, but I wonder if in Blender this may cause the odd shading. Any Blender expert has an answer to this?

Hi! I'm learning to use Blender 2.63 and am currently working on the conversion of a prim-based villa to a mesh one. My experience with 3D modeling and Blender is basic, so please bear with me. I have some doubts on what is the best topology to use for the building I am working on, as you can see in the following screen capture. The image shows the façade of the two-floor building with some window openings, duplicated as to show two different topologies: Which one of the two topologies is the better one? The one on the left has less faces, so I thought it would be the most preferable. But, there are some duplication of edges as some of them overlap. Also, is it better to have all the vertices attached as is in the example on the right, or it doesn't matter? Another thing I want to ask is about the darkest areas in the smooth shading. Is it something I should be concerned about?

Thank you Deja and Drikke. I was afraid this was the case.

Hi! I want to transfer a house that I have built to a friend but I am now allowed to set the transfer property. The house is a copy of an existing house which had additional no transfer scripted gadgets. I have removed all the scripts and gadgets from the building, even inspected each prim and replaced those I didn't create. No matter what, the house remains no transfer. What can I do to resolve this problem?

Toysoldier Thor wrote: That explains why this user group seems to be heavily weighted to being a FASHION / MESH user group.... The Server User Group seems to be a good option. Hope it works. However, just let me reiterate that the Content Creation Improvement Informal User Group is not about fashion, it's about content in general.

There is an explanation for that: the first topic discussed by the group (or one of the first topics) was the mesh deformer, as that was a major topic among content creators in the past months. I believe the group discussed the mesh deformer for a number of meetings. Subsequently, they discussed another fashion-reated topic: cloth simulation. With her post Natales meant to catch the attention of fashion creators to encourage them to partecipâte to the meetings. However, if you check the group's wiki page you'll see that the focus is described in more generic terms.

Check this blog post for more details on the Content Creation Improvement User Group. You should be able to find some answers there. You may want to check Natales' blog for more posts, as she posted a few times about this group in the last two months.

I know of the group mainly for posts made by Natales Urriah on her blog. What I know is that you can submit a JIRA for discussion. I suggest you contact Geenz Spad for more information on how to proceed.

I had some reshares within minutes, so the feebback is good. Not sure if you saw my suggestion to submit your JIRA to the Content Creation Improvement Informal User Group, as I edited my previous post to add that bit while you were replying to me. That group is monitored by Linden Lab and has the purpose of discussing new features or improving existing ones.

This is a good idea. I have shared a link to the JIRA page on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Plurk and the SL social stream. You may want to submit the idea to the Content Creation Improvement Informal User Group: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Content_Creation_Improvement_Informal_User_Group

DAZ bought Haxagon from Eovia back in 2006 and later released v2. I don't remember in which version tools to create Second Life sculpts were included. Back then DAZ obviously added the sculpt tools to entice Second Life users and made Hexagon a low cost 3D modelling program. It looked promising but probably DAZ didn't get the expected results because it stopped developing the program with version 2.5 in 2008. Last time I checked DAZ's Hexagon forum used to be full of posts from users complaining that DAZ abandoned the development of the program. Now that SL has mesh import there is a chance that DAZ may revive the development.

I agree with what others have said in this thread. I'd also like to add that Bay City is not the only example of a nice community with a cohesive style. There are a number of communities on Mainland which have the same goals as Bay City. Rather than having Lindens build more city sims I'd like to see them supporting communities. Set some basic rules, such as communities must have a charter supporting a cohesive style and preserving their area. Offer some advantages (double prims woiuld be one), give incentives to people to join a community and let people take care of things. On a small scale and without any incentives, the model we use in our community works. We are a small group of land owners who joined forces to create a protected area which is attractive and without the typical chaos of Mainland. In its 4 years of existence, the East River Community grew from having land in 3 sims to a total land mass of 6+ sims and a presence in 7. This would be a good way to improve Mainland and counteract abandonment and loss of value. LL used to have a Community Partnership Program and then killed it. It never really worked in the beginning but if LL got serious about it, it could be an attempt worth to try. It certainly would do no harm.

The first San Francisco server listed with SpeedTest.net is definitely crappy. This is what I get from Milan, Italy with it: The second listed server gives this result: