Cathy Foil

I have another YouTube link showing how to get a copyright to something you have created. Now know anything on YouTube may not be that accurate if accurate at all so any info on costs you have would be much appreciated. According to the video anything you create automatically you own the copyright to. But if you want to take someone to court here in the U.S. you have to file your copyright with the federal government and that costs $45 US dollars. Something I am sure very very few content creators here in SL have done. Yes I know you can't copyright an idea. They explain this in the video.

I have a problem with, "I bought a 3D model (or got it from a friend or downloaded it free from a website), and I made a lot of changes and improvements to it. It looks really different now. Can I sell it or distribute it for free? No. That’s called a “derivative work.” That means you took something that was protected by copyright and derived a new work from it (adapted it to make something new). But the copyrights still apply to the original work, even if your changes make the model unrecognizable.", especially the unrecognizable part I have a problem with. At some point it ceases to be the same design and becomes something new. With this logic a clay manufacture could copyright the clay cubes they sell and anything a sculptor creates from that cube they bought the copyright would be actually owned by the clay manufacture. It would also mean that anything created in SL from regular prims LL would own the copyrights. This leads to the second one I have a problem with, " I got a model for free, and there was nothing that said it’s copyrighted. I changed it and improved it, so you can hardly tell it’s the same model. Can I sell my version of it? No. No. No.". According to this logic even if LL did not copyright their regular prims you can not create things with regular prims and sell them or really own the copyrights to your creation. At some point things get ridiculous. Copyrights originally lasted 14 years. 14 years was considered long enough for the creator to be able to make a fair amount of money from their work. Why only 14 years? Because at some point things become apart of the culture and then belongs to everyone. Now copyright last the lifetime of the creator plus 70 years. Longer if the creator files certain forms. Corporations copyrights last 100 years and keeps getting extended every few years. It may even be more than 100 years now. For thousands of years cultures grew because people would build upon each others works. The great master painters throughout the ages often copied each others work and ideas adding their own inspiration and creativity inspiring the next generation to improve upon the last. Copyright as it is now stifle creativity and damages our culture. I can see 14 years maybe even 30 but a lifetime plus 70 years! That's just stupid. Here is a link to a great YouTube video about copyrights. It is about 10 minutes long but it is very very enjoyable and very informative. P.S. Pamela I really really have a lot of respect for you and admire your creativity and talent but I have to point out the irony that the text you copied and pasted from Turbosquid was copyrighted and you may have just violated that copyright. OMG and I copied and pasted part of the same text from you!!! When will the madness end!!! LOL :smileylol:

I actually found the bug they are fixing to be very useful. I have used volume detect of a phantom prim linked to solid prims quite a few times in my builds mainly for automated doors and elevators. I am not a fan of collision detect on an invisible mat on the ground in front of the door because each step an avatar takes while on the mat triggers an event. Volume detect just detects the avatar entering the phantom prims space and again when it leaves. No need for laggy radars or triggering the same script a bunch of times. Personally I think LL is making Land Impact overly complicated. If it were me I have a set number of triangles to equal 1 prim. Any mesh over say 20 meters in size you lose the lowest level of detail. Meaning the object will simply not be visible once the distance at which the LOD would change to the lowest level is reached by camera position or avatar. This would alleviate LL concerns about large mesh causing too much lag but still allow people to create large amazing mesh such as buildings, ships, space stations and other large mesh environments. Without having ridiculously high Land Impacts. The impact of scripts in mesh on LI I am glad to see LL doing something about. Though really LL needs to do something more about the scripts that avatars are wearing seeing as avatars and what they wear appear to cause the vast majority of lag in SL.

Unfortunately I don't know Blender so I can't help you that much. But there seems to be more Blender users making mesh than any other program so I am sure someone here can help you or point you in the right direction.

Did you weight the mesh to the standard avatar skeleton in the program you used to create your dress? If you did. Did you select the weights box when you uploaded it to SL? Hope that helps. Cathy

All it takes is not doing one little thing or missing a setting to make the whole thing not work. So you may have thought you followed the video exactly but chances are you missed something. Common mistake is to import the skeleton rig into your already open mesh file. When you import a rig it automatically changes all the names of the bones which will mess it up. Here is a link to a page with all the bone names. So check all the names of the bones / joints in your rig. http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Troubleshooting The page also has explanations of many errors you may get and what they mean. One misspelled bone / joint name or missing bone will make the whole thing not work. Always open your skeleton file and import your mesh not the other way around. Always a good idea to save a few copies of your skeleton rig file as backup before you ever import a mesh into it. I always use Export Selection instead of Export All. When I use Export Selection I open my Outliner and click on mPelvis and then hold down my Ctrl key and click on my mesh. After both are selected I then click Export Selection and export them. I am using Maya 8.0 so yours may be different. One limitation I have with Maya 8.0 is any rigged mesh I export I have to be very careful about any textures / Lamberts I apply to my mesh. My plugin does not like it if I have a texture file linked to any Lambert. So before I export a rigged mesh I replace all my textures with blank Lamberts. I just name them like Lambert1, Lambert2 and so on up to eight of them. Then I have to upload the textures separately from the mesh and rez the mesh in SL and apply the textures manually. THe UVs hold true so applying the textures manually is not that big of a deal just a small extra step. I don't know if your version has this limitation but it is worth looking at. I hope that helps. Cathy

From your photos I am assuming your white texture is on a black background. Meaning anything outside the UVs are colored black. That it is this black that is bleeding though the edges of your UV pattern as you move your camera away. I am sure you already know this. I am just mentioning it so others who look at your photos will be able to understand what is going on. If you can't get the baking options to correct the problem in what ever program you are using. Before importing your texture into SL you can open it up in Photoshop and manually extend the edges of your UV seams by using the clone tool. Or if you have a plugin like Flaming Pair you can use a filter like Solidify. By the looks of it you only need to extend the pixels by like 3 or 4 pixels. I hope that helps. Cathy

You're welcome Sae!!! I am so happy you got it to work and awesome job you did on breaking the steps down and posting them!

Absolutely fabulous video Sae!!! I have already bookmarked it so I can pass it along to anyone needing Maya rigging help. Here is a couple of quick tips that will make things go even faster though I love how you did it step by step so people will really know what needs to be done. Instead of having to click the plus sign next to each bone in the Outliner window just hold down the shift key when you click on the plus sign next to the bone named mPelvis. This will open up all the joint under it instantly instead of having to click on each one. If you click the minus sign next to mPelvis while holding the shift key it will hide all the joints again. Next tip is on how to select the entire skeleton without having to select each bone one at a time you don't even have to do the tip I just told you about. With the Outliner open click on the word mPelvis to select it. Your entire skeleton will turn green. Next move your mouse cursor off the Outliner window and into the view view panel where your mesh and skeleton are but don't put the cursor on your mesh or skeleton. Then hold down your Ctrl key and hold down your right mouse button. A menu will appear. While still holding down your right mouse button move your cursor over the words "Select Hierarchy". This will select all the bones / Joints in your skeleton and it should turn white. I hope that helps. Cathy

Hi Sae, A little while back a number of us replied to Maya rigging problems someone was having. Here is a link to that topic. http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Please-help-me-ASAP-Rigging-and-Joint-question/td-p/1388975/highlight/true One thing you will want to check is the names of the bones of the skeleton you are using. If you import the skeleton instead of opening up the file Maya changes the names of the bones which will mess up the DAE file and not upload to SL properly. Here is a link to the correct bone names of all the bones in the skeleton. http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Joint-names/td-p/810861 All the bones should be named like mPelvis and mTorso. If even a single bone is misspelled or not have the right upper and lower case letters or is missing the whole thing won't work. I hope that helps. Cathy

Generally speaking I say that learning how to make good mesh with a low-poly count from the get go would be the way to go but it may depend on what program you are using. I have never used ZBrush but from what I seen it looks like starting out with a high poly count and then cutting it down might be easier but for all other programs creating with a low-poly count to start with would probably be best. What program are you using? Perhaps people who use that particular program would be able to give you better advice. I hope that helps.

My mesh hardly ever loads on the first try. What I do if I get an error is, with the upload window still open, click the "Clear settings & reset form" button and then the "Calculate weights & fees" button. It usually uploads then. I hope that helps.

It would help if you posted a few photos of what you are talking about and a wire frame photo. A common problem with skirts is that when walking part of the legs poke through as the skirt is stretched. If this is happening you need to add vertices between where your legs are. The vertices closest to your legs would be weighted 100% to each leg and as you go towards the middle of the skirt the vertices would be weighted 75% for the closest leg and 25% for the opposite leg. As you get to the vertices that are exactly in between the legs they would be weighted 50% for the left leg and 50% for the right leg. I know skirts seem like such a simple shape and not need as many vertices but they really do so it moves with the avatar correctly. I hope that helps.

I opened up your DAE file in Autodesk FBX Converter 2012.2 and took a look. Very nice ship rigging! I can't wait to see the whole ship finished. I am sure it will be wonderful! My advice would be to that anything that doesn't absolutely need to have a sharp edge be set to a smooth edge. I noticed that the lower vertical ropes were all basically vertical cylinders that were made up of 16 vertices at each end and that the vertical ropes up higher were just 6 vertices at each end. I would make all the lower ropes be 6 vertices just like the higher ones and delete the faces on each end of all the ropes and make sure that the ends edges where set to smooth not sharp. All those ends will be hidden in the ships structure anyway. If memory serves me correct during the upload process the DAE file is converted to another file format and that any vertices edges that are set for sharp edge are doubled. I hope that helps.

I am using an older version of Maya 8.0 so some things might be different in your version but the basics like rigging usually don't change that much from version to version. Judging by the length of your hair mesh it looks like the top of the hair on the top of the head should be weighted to the joint named mSkull as you go down on the hairs vertices they should be weighted to the mHead, mNeck, mCollarLeft, mCollarRight. Those should be the basic bones your hair is weighted to. To tell what joint or bone your hair is skinned / weighted to put your mouse cursor over your hair mesh and hold down the right mouse button and select Vertex mode. Now can select individual or whole sections of vertices. To see which bone they are weighted to click the word "Window" at the top of your screen and select General Editors > Component Editor and then the Smooth Skins tab. Then you will see a list of vertex and the joints / bones they are each weighted to and how much to each joint / bone. Judging by the photo it looks like either the bottom vertices are weighted to the mElbowRight, mElbowLeft or mHipRight and mHipLeft. I hope that helps.

Judging by the photos it looks like the vertices are weighted to the wrong bone. Check to make sure they are all weighted to the proper bones. I would also open your DAE file in a word processing program and check to make sure it says Z is up. I use Maya 8.0 and some of the plugins even if I have Z axis set to up it still exports as Y up and I have to edit it in Microsoft Word. Real easy I just change the Y to a Z and save it in its original format not TXT or DOC. I hope that helps.

With sleeves especially long sleeves I wouldn't duplicate the whole sleeve inside. Just the first few inches and then close off the hole probably coloring it black. If someone is doing say a robe with very lose sleeves then of course have the inside sleeve go up farther but probably only to the elbow or so before closing off the hole. The idea is use a few vertices as you absolutely need to in order to keep lag to a minimum. From what I gather it is avatars themselves and what they are wearing that causes the vast majority of lag in SL. When I first found out that LL had started letting people attach multiple objects to the same attachment spot my first thought was this is going to cause lag to go through the roof. I am not sure they are even still allowing this are they?

WOW only 3 days working with blender and meshes! You are off to an awesome start Riku!!! I agree with Chosen. If a part of a mesh will not be seen once worn it shouldn't be there. But if say your straps are hanging lose from the body that part you would indeed want to add vertices on the inside. You could also just close off the waist and pant cuffs with a few vertices so that if someone had a skinnier avatar you couldn't see through the holes. I haven't made any mesh clothing or sold any mesh yet but Chosen brings up a good issue I hadn't thought of. How to display mesh clothes and still have it look good without doubling the vertices with faces that won't be seen when the mesh is worn. HMM. One thought is to have the inside faces and the outside faces be two separate meshes and when someone buys the mesh give them both but don't weight the mesh that has the inside faces and name it something like for display purposes only do not wear. A note card explaining the reason for this would be a good idea and since the customer got exactly what they saw there would be no reason for a customer to accuse the designer of false advertisement. I love to hear other ideas.

Just a slight technical correction. A "Blimp" has no solid inner structure to keep its shape. It keeps it shape by gas pressure like a helium balloon. Blimps are smooth and don't have facets. What you may be interpreting as facets are seams of the material that covers the helium filled part of the ship so it is smooth. The name "Blimp" comes from the sound the ship makes when you thump the side gas filled part with your finger which sounds like blimp. LOL The Hindenburg was a "Dirigible" and has an inner framework construction which material is stretched over giving it the facets that Chosen talked about. Chosen is right about everything else. I just happen to be a big airship fan. LOL

Looks like you have the wrong axis set to up in Maya. In Maya Y is the default for up and down. In SL Z is up and down. Try setting Z for up and down in Maya. Of course you will have to rotate the skeleton after you set Z for up and down. You will also probably have to Freeze Transformations for both your mesh and your skeleton and delete history for both and re-skin your mesh to your skeleton. You can save your skin weights before you delete history of your mesh and then load them again once you have your mesh and skeleton rotated. How to change Z up axis in Maya: (Window, Settings/Preferences, Preferences, Settings, World Coordinate System, Z and save) You might get lucky and just have to open your DAE file in a word processor and change the Y up axis to Z manually and then just save the file. Just make sure you don't save it as a TXT file that it is saved as a DAE file. You might also have the skeleton facing the wrong way. That may be why I can see his butt in the distorted figure. I hope that helps.

I've also wondered why there was no Sculptie Forum. I still mainly work with sculpties. I was already to switch to mesh only but the PE is still way too high especially on large mesh. I also enjoy the challenge of pushing sculptie technology as far as I can.

There definitely seems to be some issues going on with Mesh tonight. After reading your post I logged on with the Beta Viewer after it forced me to update it. I rezzed up two of my meshes and both rezzed but where invisible. I could edit it and see the outline of the mesh with all the vertices highlighted but no matter what I did the mesh just stayed invisible. I am sure it is just a temporary glitch and that LL will fix it as fast as they can.

You're welcome Jack! Oh and thanks for the link to the joints tool!!! It sounds awesome! I can't wait to explore the site for more gems.

I use Maya 8.0 so your version may behave differently. What it sounds like to me are you need to do two things. One you may need to "Delete History" and "Freeze Transformations" of your mesh before doing a smooth skin bind. Secondly sounds like you need to "Freeze Transformations" of your skeleton. You can move the joints and rotate them to any position or length you like. What freezing does is zero out the rotations of all the joints. So my advice would be, since you already skinned your gorilla avatar mesh to the skeleton, is save the skin weights. Then "Delete History" of the gorilla mesh which will automatically detach the skin and then do "Freeze Transformations". Next select your skeleton and "Freeze Transformation" and not a bad idea to also delete its history. After that do smooth bind the mesh to the skeleton and reload the skin weights you have already saved. Now export your mesh and skeleton as normal. When uploading to SL be sure to make sure you have upload joint positions and skin weights selected. I hope that helps.

The Beta Test Grid is definitely the place you want to log onto to test out mesh. The grid's name is Aditi. The grid for regular SL is named Agni. When you start a viewer and the log in page pops up if you don't see an option near the log in button press Ctrl + Shift + G. Select Aditi and log in with your normal user name and password for SL. Now your account information on Aditi may not be up to date so your Linden dollars may be off and you may be missing stuff from your inventory. Aditi grid is like a small sampling of the Agni or regular SL grid meaning there are copies of whole sims there that are just like they are in SL. There are some regular sandboxes as well as a good number of Mesh Sandboxes though you can upload and rez mesh in either. The mesh sandboxes tend to have a much longer autoreturn time than the regular sandboxes. You upload mesh just like you do on Agni / SL. You will pay for it out of your Linden Dollars but it doesn't actually affect your real balance so you really are paying nothing. You may have to take the mesh test again but no sweat if it asks you to take it just click the link and take the test again. What ever you make and put in your inventory on Aditi the beta test grid will not be in your regular SL inventory when you log into SL but it will be there next time you log onto the beta test grid. I hope that helps.