Cathy Foil

StoneDwarf I don't know if this will work for you but try not adding a texture file to the Lamberts. I use Maya 8.0 and with DAE_FBX plugin I found in the past that this worked. Of course I have to upload all the textures separately and then rez the mesh and apply each one to the faces. I am even able to change the color and transparency level of the different Lamberts in Maya and they stay true when I upload the mesh to SL. I hope this helps.

Don't give up Victoria. I helped a friend out just last week with exporting out a tiny avatar and I know they use Maya 2012. I will contact them and either ask them to reply to you in this thread or I will get the info of which plugin they are using and how they export it. (UPDATE: Ok I talked to my friend. She said she uses the DAE_FBX plugin that came with Maya 2012 but that she has only made avatar mesh with it that has just one texture. She has not tried to make static meshes with it or a mesh that has more than one texture.) Wish I could give you more information. Best I can do is give you a link to Autodesk Converter and Plugin Archive: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/item?siteID=123112&id=10775920 I know the newest converter makes DAE files with Collada 1.4.1. You may want to try Autodesk FBX Converter 2011.3 which converts FBX files you export out of Maya to DAE files with Collada 1.4.0 which is the original Collada format SL's mesh was designed to be used with so 1.4.0 may be more compatible and less problematic but I wouldn't know for sure. I hope that helps.

Hi CashMoneyMan, You will be happy to know that Satu and I worked out all the problems and in fact I think I can help you as well. Well at least you won't have to keep rebuilding the skeleton each time you want a different size avatar or have joints in different positions and or rotations from the standard avatar skeleton. I am going to copy and paste a reply to another posting on another thread that I wrote giving detailed instructions on how to do this in Maya. You will be happy to know that Maya can indeed change the joint positions and import them into SL. I remember reading someplace that you can't rotate joints but that you could only lengthen or shorten the joints. This turns out not to be entirely true. You can rotate the joints and put them anywhere. I haven't tested all the joints yet so there may be some limitations but none that I can find so far. Anyway it is true that if you rotate a joint it will just export with zero rotations anyway but this turns out to be the key to placing your joints any place you like with Maya. First rotate the joints and lengthen or shorten them till you get the skeleton in the position you need. Then you need to "Freeze Transformations". Basically what you are doing is making all the joints have zero rotations in their new positions by freezing them. First time I tried this on a joint that wasn't the pelvis bone I got this error "Error: Freeze Transform was not applied because my_rig:mTorso.translateX has incoming connection.". If you get that error what you have to do is the following: In the channel editor you will see all your channels Translate X, Y Z, Rotate X,Y,Z etc. If they are all highlighted with like a pink or orange color or grayed out then they have connections to them. Click the top on then hold shift and click the bottom one "Scale Z" to select them all. Now right click on them a menu pops up select "break connections" The highlight color should disappear. Now you can select the Pelvis joint and "Freeze Transformations" and all the joints will have zero rotations. At this point I delete history for the skeleton and mesh. After that you can "Bind Skin" with "Smooth Bind" and export your mesh and skeleton as normal. I hope that helps. P.S. You can't "Freeze Transformations" of the skeleton with the skin attached. What I do is with the meshes skin attached I move my joints to where I want them. Meaning I rotate and or lengthen or shorten them. The mesh will move with the joints. This means you can scale the mesh bigger or smaller or into new positions just by editing the joints. Then what I do is "Delete History" of the mesh. This detaches the skin and the mesh is now in its new position. Now you can do a "Freeze Transformation" on both the joints and the mesh.

Try logging on with a different viewer and wearing the skirt. I ran into some weird stuff over the weekend when I wore some of my mesh. On one viewer I wore an avatar mesh I made that had very distorted joint positions and when I took it off I was still distorted. I didn't have any other mesh on. I then logged off and log on with a different viewer and I was back to normal but when I tried a different mesh some of it acted like it wasn't weighted. So I took it off and put on the first mesh with the distorted joints it worked fine and when I took it off my avatar went back to normal as usual. I then logged on with the original viewer and same exact thing happened as it did the first time. The first viewer I logged on was the standard LL default viewer and the second one was LL Beta Viewer. Both were up to date. I was on Aditi the beta test grid if that matters. Hope that helps.

There shouldn't be any problem with controlling the alpha transparency setting of a mesh face with using a script. You can have up to 8 faces or textures per mesh so 4 shouldn't be a problem at all. You just need to know the face number of the particular sail you want to be visible or invisible. I am assuming that all the sails are one mesh and that you just want to make each one its own face. If you log on with Phoenix Firestorm finding out the number of each face is easy. Just rez the sail mesh and then with the edit tool select "select face" option and click on each sail. It will tell you the number of the face just under the "Link" button. Then just drop your script into your mesh and set the face number for the appropriate sail in the script. I hope that helps.

Hi Karl. You will be happy to know that Maya can indeed change the joint positions and import them into SL. I remember reading someplace that you can't rotate joints but that you could only lengthen or shorten the joints. This turns out not to be entirely true. You can rotate the joints and put them anywhere. I haven't tested all the joints yet so there may be some limitations but none that I can find so far. Anyway it is true that if you rotate a joint it will just export with zero rotations anyway but this turns out to be the key to placing your joints any place you like with Maya. First rotate the joints and lengthen or shorten them till you get the skeleton in the position you need. Then you need to "Freeze Transformations". Basically what you are doing is making all the joints have zero rotations in their new positions by freezing them. First time I tried this on a joint that wasn't the pelvis bone I got this error "Error: Freeze Transform was not applied because my_rig:mTorso.translateX has incoming connection.". If you get that error what you have to do is the following: In the channel editor you will see all your channels Translate X, Y Z, Rotate X,Y,Z etc. If they are all highlighted with like a pink or orange color or grayed out then they have connections to them. Click the top on then hold shift and click the bottom one "Scale Z" to select them all. Now right click on them a menu pops up select "break connections" The highlight color should disappear. Now you can select the Pelvis joint and "Freeze Transformations" and all the joints will have zero rotations. At this point I delete history for the skeleton and mesh. After that you can "Bind Skin" with "Smooth Bind" and export your mesh and skeleton as normal. I hope that helps.

OK got a few links for you to check out. 1. Autodesk plug-in and converter archive: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/item?siteID=123112&id=10775920 2. Maya mesh best practices forum archive: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Mesh-Best-Practices-Maya/td-p/182772 3. Wiki tutorial on how to rig and export a mesh in Maya for SL: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Exporting_a_mesh_from_Maya It very well could be that your exporting with 1.4.1 is the problem. I have both 1.4.1 and 1.4.0 plugins installed. I can export non-skinned mesh using 1.4.1 just fine but if I use it for any mesh that is weighted it won't upload. But you did get your mesh to upload and most of it looked like it weighted correctly except to the top of the head and face. Could you send me that mesh on the Beta Aditi grid? I will wear it and see if it does the same thing on me. I got like 3 or 4 viewer loaded on my computer I can try it with. No copy. No mod and No transfer of course. I hope that helps.

OK I got your rig to work but I had to do a few things first. I am using an older version of Maya so some of the things I had to do may have been because the file was originally written for a newer version. I first just opened your file. First problem is your rig appears to have been built with Y axis set to up. In SL Z axis is up so you need change your "World Coordinate System" to Z. Maya's default is Y. It is under Window + Setting/Preferences + Preferences + Categories "Settings". I then opened up my avatar mesh and imported your rig. I then had to rotate your rig 90 degrees and position it so that Y and X translate were 0 and Z translate was 1.0440129 which is what Y originally was. I then did "Freeze Transformations" and deleted History. I had to rename all the bones because importing your rig added my_rig: in front of the name of each bone. No big deal I just deleted "my_rig:" from all the bones names. I then smooth skinned my avatar mesh to your rig and exported it. Since I am using an older version of Maya I had to open the DAE file in Microsoft Word and manually edit it to say "<up_axis>Z_UP</up_axis>". You may not need to do that but I check just to be sure. I do know SL has a problem with Collada 1.4.1 for weighted or skinned avatar mesh at least that is what I read. I use Collada 1.4.0. This is also something you can check for in Microsoft Word just to be sure but you can't edit the file to say 1.4.0 if it says 1.4.1 that won't work. (UPDATE: I recently helped a friend who uses Maya 2012 and I was able to help her get a weighted avatar mesh successfully exported and imported in SL. So it appears that SL supports Collada 1.4.1 for weighted mesh now. My friend has only exported mesh with a single face so far. I have recently read that Maya 2012 has a problem with exporting mesh with multiple faces. In that thread my reply was to suggest using plain lamberts without any texture files associated with them and upload the textures separately and apply them to the mesh in world. This has worked for me in the past.) I then uploaded my mesh with your rig to Aditi the beta test grid and it worked just fine. It took forever for the Calculate weights & fee to finish calculating it and I did try a few avatar meshes that I had previously uploaded and it took forever for them as well so I don't think it was your rig that caused the delay. I don't know why I always seem to have to struggle with getting the upload window to just calculate the weights and fees. One minute everything uploads just fine. Two minutes later and the same DAE file just won't upload. One tip that seems to work is first try calculating weights and fees with not including skin weights or joint positions checked. Then after it calculates the fees to check those two boxes and calculate the weights and fees again. For some reason this seems to work for when I am having a problem. I hope that helps. PS Something really really weird is going on at beta test grid Aditi!!! After wearing your rig I took it off and yet my avatar default mesh was stretched with a long neck as if I was still wearing the mesh I had just uploaded with your rig. Basically as if I took the mesh off but the rig or skeleton was still on. No matter what I did I couldn't get my avatar back to normal. I then logged on with the Beta Viewer and thank goodness I was back to normal. I then tried on a few of my own meshes I had just uploaded like a week or two ago and they where not working correctly!!! Some parts of the mesh were acting as if they had not been weighted! So I logged off and log back on again with the standard SL viewer and while my avatar meshes I had uploaded week or so back where working fine I had the same problem I had with the mesh I had just uploaded using your rig. My conclusion is that your original mesh you uploaded, the one you took the photo with, may be just fine. Try logging in with a different viewer and wear it.

I haven't had that much experience with rigging avatar mesh for SL. I played around with it a bit but I will give it a go. From my experience you can lengthen or shorten the joints but you can not rotate them. That means your mesh must be in a "T" pose. So if say your mesh's back was very curved you have to straighten the mesh so that it fit the "T" pose. I also know that if you do lengthen or shorten the joints of the skeleton you must "Freeze Transformations" and probably a good idea to "Delete History" before you weight or skin your mesh. In fact probably good idea to "Freeze Transformations" and "Delete History" of your mesh as well before you smooth bind it. I figure you are but just incase be sure to check "include joint positions" in the upload window. Lastly you might want to delete the .slm file generated by SL when you upload a mesh. The file is saved onto your hard drive with the same name as your mesh in the same location. I have read that SL will sometimes keep loading the old SML file even though you modified your mesh and just exported it out with the same name as before. So just to be sure SL is uploading your current version of your mesh I probably delete the SML file just to be safe. Hope that helps. Sorry if I am not making a bunch of sense it is 4AM here and way past my bedtime. [ P.S. Since my original reply I have fount out that you can rotate the skeletons joints besides lengthening and shortening them in Maya. The key is to zero out the joints rotations after you move them by doing a Freeze Transformation. See my post on page three for more detailed instructions on how to do this with Maya.]

While trying to cut down on lag I been going through my builds. As many of you probably also do I use a combination of mesh, sculpties and regular prims depending on which is best suited. So I decided to try and make my regular prims less demanding by going through and making all the faces that are hidden 100% transparent and a blank texture. My thought is if it is 100% transparent then the graphics card won't have to work as hard seeing as it won't be rendering it thus making my regular prims less laggy. To check this I clicked on "More info" on my build window. To my shock the Display Weight actually went up not down. I then rezzed a mesh, that I had several different textures, and made one of the faces 100% transparent. To my shock the display weight went from around 300 to over 2200! I could see if something was not 100% transparent like say 50% having a higher display weight because the graphics card would have to render the semitransparent texture and what is behind it. So can anyone explain this? Is it just a waste of time to make hidden faces of a regular prim invisible?

LOL I was so busy talking about needing LL to provide us with an accurate default weighted mesh and skeleton that I forgot to give some practical advise. I wouldn't move the bones of the skeleton your using but rather just move the mesh pants back a bit and skin/weight them again in the new position. It will take a little trial and error but if you log onto the Aditi the beta test grid it won't cost you anything to upload the mesh as many times as you need till you get it just right.

Did you use Nurbs or Polygons? In any event try deleting History and Freezing Transformations before you export your mesh. Oh an I suggest saving a backup before deleting history just incase.

The reason your pants are not positioning correctly when you wear them in SL is because the avatar mesh you are using in the program you made the pants with is positioned incorrectly. It is not your fault. LL's has not provided us with the exact mesh placement and skeleton. Also the default mesh LL provides is not the exact same mesh LL uses in world. The way you can tell this is to look at the hands. The default mesh LL provides us to download the fingers are straight and spread apart. The true default avatar mesh the fingers are relaxed as you see them in world. I have even seen two skeletons, both of which actually work for uploads, but one has more of a tilt in the pelvis. If there are differences in the hands and even skeletons that have been provided what else is different between the default mesh we been given and the actual default mesh SL uses? My plea to LL is please please please provide us with the actual default mesh and skeleton with the mesh weighted. I am pretty sure they were originally created using Maya so just save them as an "ma" file so anyone with Maya can open them no matter how old of a version they have. I am sure there are plenty of us Maya users who be happy to help export it in other formats so our friends using Blender and other programs can have an accurate default avatar mesh as well. Really making these available should be something in the basic Wiki download page for mesh. If someone out there has been able to some how get their hands on a true default avatar, skeleton and weighted please make it available. Even if it is just a DAE file.

If you were able to rotate your skeleton before was it durring the Beta Testing before mesh went live? Is possible that LL has changed things so that you can not rotate the skeleton like before? OK before you give up on Maya you might want to try a few things. 1. Download a new skeleton here a link: http://abbloch.com/slmaya/skeleton.ma 2. Be sure to set Z to up in Maya. 3. Don't do anything fancy just take a polygon sphere and weight it to the arm or leg and export as you normally do. 4. Open up the DAE file in a word processing program like Microsoft Word. Look to make sure Z is set to up and that it says Collada version = 1.4.0. From what I hear Maya and Collada version 1.4.1 doesn't work with weighted / skinned mesh. At least it doesn't with older Maya versions. 5. If you are exporting out of Maya as an FBX and then bringing it into Autodesk FBX Converter to be converted to DAE that isn't going to work from what I know. I tried that route myself and it didn't work no matter what I did. 6. If you are still having problems with a simple weighted polygon sphere could you upload the file here in a post and I will try and export it. Be sure to save it as a "ma" file not an "mb" file because I am using an older version of Maya and won't be able to open newer Maya versions "mb" file. I can edit "ma" files to open in my older version.

Sounds like you may need to add more vertex to your mesh between the legs. Could you upload a photo of the line of division you are talking about and wire frame image of the mesh?

A couple of things come to mind. You mention that you rotate the skeleton in maya to fit the mesh. From what I know you can not rotate the joints of the default skeleton. YOu can make them longer or shorter but you can not rotate them otherwise the mesh will become distorted. Another thought was perhaps you don't have Maya set to Z as up or that maybe you are not selecting the skeleton and mesh when you export selected out of Maya. I also found it necessary to delete history and Freeze Transformations on both the skeleton and mesh before I Smooth Bind the mesh to the skeleton. I hope that helps.

You're Welcome Aurelia! I am so glad you got it working. I am going to have to file that tidbit away for future reference. I will remember to always try an older version of the viewer if things go wonky all of a sudden.

Aurelia try uploading an example DAE file from LL. I downloaded the truck, and while at first I had the physics set too high, it uploaded fine. I picked the truck because it was the biggest file. You might want to try a smaller one first. If they don't upload then you will know at least it is not Maya but perhaps your viewer or internet connection. If they upload fine then something is wrong with the DAE files you are creating. If that is the case then we need to look at what version of Maya are you using and what plugins or converter program. Here is a link to LL example DAE files: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Sample_Content Hope that helps. P.S. Nurbs do not work. All mesh must be polygon or converted to polygon before exporting.

I have my world coordinate system in Maya set to Z up but since I am using an older version of Maya I have to use two different plugins depending on what I am doing. Neither plugin export options have a selection for making Z up on export. One plugin uses Collada 1.4.1 and it exports Z up just fine so no need to edit the DAE file in a word processor program. The second Collada plugin uses 1.4.0 and no matter what Maya's world coordinate is set to always exports as Y up though in order for the file to be uploadable to SL I have to have my world coordinate set to Z up in Maya before exporting and then edit the DAE file and change it from Y to Z up in a word processing program. It is not a horrible thing to have to do. Just adds about 20 seconds of work though the plugin that uses 1.4.0. It also doesn't like texture files added to the mesh. You can have, I think it is 8 different Lamberts provided they don't have a texture files linked to them. This means I have to upload my textures and apply them manually once I rezzed the mesh in SL. Again an extra step but not a big deal. The plugin that uses 1.4.1 has no problem with Lambers that have a texture file in them but it won't do avatar weighted/skinned mesh. If I could just afford a newer version of Maya. LOL

If you are trying to upload the texture at the same time as the mesh try uploading the texture separately and then manually adding them to your mesh in SL. I use Maya and SL doesn't seem to like the default Lambert for some reason. I had luck with applying a new Lambert to my mesh and it uploaded fine. Another thing I done is edit the DAE file in a word processor. For some reason my version of Maya always makes Y axis up on the DAE file even though I have changed it in my Preferences for Z to be up in Maya. Since you say it is a fairly simple mesh I am assuming that the mesh isn't weighted to the avatar skeleton? What program are you using?

I'm using an older version of Maya. The way I got it to work was to detach the skin from the skeleton first. Then scale down the skeleton and "Freeze Transformations". I then scaled down my mesh and did "Freeze Transformations" to it. After that I weighted the skin again and then exported both the skeleton and mesh like normal. I then opened up the DAE file in a word processing program and set the up axis to "Z" and saved it in the original DAE format not TXT or RTF. If you already weighted your mesh to the original skeleton and don't want to have to go through the process of reweighting it as smaller mesh get a free plugin called "Comet". With it you can save the weights as a file and then apply them back to the mesh after you have detached the skin and scaled the mesh smaller. Note: The plugin is only for Maya 6.0 through 2008. http://www.comet-cartoons.com/maya.html Once you saved the weights from the larger mesh and detach the skin you will have to weight the smaller mesh to the smaller skeleton first before reloading the weights of the larger mesh version. When you go to load the file that contains the weight information you will get a warning saying that the file already exists and are you sure you want to replace it. Say YES. This is just a small glitch in the plugin. You are going to be clicking on the Loading Weights button not the "Save Weights" button which you did when you saved the weights of the larger mesh before Detach Skin process. Now I am assuming anyone reading this can upload a normal size weighted mesh to SL. Uploading a weighted mesh to SL from Maya is not covered in this Reply.

I am sure some of it has to do with the size of the file you are trying to upload and the speed at which your internet connection can upload. I also know that LL checks the file to make sure everything is ok and I am sure this process takes a while and the larger more complex the mesh the longer this process takes. One thing I have noticed is that it can take me several attempts to upload the same exact mesh with no differences in the upload settings. It might be due to my internet connection cutting out for a split second right during upload process which can happen from time to time. I had things not upload on the Beta Viewer but then I log on with the default LL viewer and it uploads fine. Might be the viewer or just the hit and miss luck I been having with mesh upload. I hope that helps.

Thanks for responding CashMoneyMan. I was starting to think no one ever would. I am pretty sure that the default mesh was created and weighted using Maya. So LL should have the files someplace. If LL would just post them I am sure it wouldn't take long for others to convert them to other platforms so everyone could benefit. It really surprises me that this already hasn't happen. I was hoping that, even after 5 or 6 hours of searching, I just happened not to have found them and someone on the forum would just point me to them. Anyway thanks again for replying to my posting. If I ever find them I will post here again to make it easier for others searching to find them. P.S. If by some miracle LL is listening and posts the files please save them as ma files not mb. "ma" files can be edited in a word processor so that they can be opened up by older versions of Maya.

Two things come to mind that you might want to try. One increase the number of vertices in the area around the knees and in between the knees. You can then more finely tune the weights of them. Or two you could duplicate the mesh then delete everything except the front from mid thy down. Then place the duplicate just a little behind the original mesh and combine it with the original mesh. The new second layer weight more heavily to the knee closest. That way as the original gets stretched the second layer will poke through keeping the knee covered. I never tried this approach. I am new to skinning mesh in SL but I had a fair bit of experience in skinning mesh for avatars in IMVU. Hope that helps. P.S. Just for the record I don't like IMVU it stinks compared to SL but they do have some great things I wish LL would implement.

You don't need to rez the mesh on the ground and resize them they will resize automatically once you wear them. Try uploading them again but don't resize them just right mouse click on them and wear them.