Cathy Foil

I have flux v3.10 on my computer running. When I log out I get the same color distortion you get but it just for a half a second and then my colors go back to normal. I am using Singularity to log into SL with. Not sure if that helps any.

irihapeti wrote: Cathy Foil wrote: only "Premium Members" be allowed to ... give items to another resident would cut this down to a minimum.. i disagree with this part + first in all the history of SL the most amount of copybotting is actual done by "premium" and longtime established accounts. And still is a aside of how this came about the copybot codes (the reverse engineering of the SL protocols) was written by people who worked for a quite venerable RL IT multi-national company. They did it just bc they could and they also believed philosophicallythat it was their right to do this. Their claimed right drawn from their ability to be able do it. Is a whole circle jerk this. Meritocracy gone nuts. Like I have the right to do anything I like. bc I have a ability to do it when a longtime established "premium" account is called on their copybotting of others works then they just go: oh! soz. I never knew was yours. I feel really bad what I done to you by mistake. Please dont hate me ok. Was just honest mistake. Honest!. Am ever so sorry. Please forgive me then they take that one down. And then just rip the next thing and include in their sales items edit add. i just add in here about how people get away with this over and over and over first is that need a thick skin and zero consciene but mostly is bc of how the DMCA works. Each violation is seperate and independent of each other. If multiple violations were to be treated as a single offence then we getting into criminal law. The RL authorities in the USA would have to make a case that a series of violations treated as a single offence constitutes a conspiracy and the authority would have to be able to evidence that in a criminal court + second to have a online space where a person cannot give something to another person without payiing to do this, then is not a world. Is a shop shopping is pretty cool. I like shopping. I spend ages on it some times. Is quite fun but if I cant receive something made by a new person who is learning to build with me in a sandbox then that would sux. What would be more suxier is for me to have to tell them that I cant accept their gift they made unless they pay I love to know where you got your information that most people who use copybots to steal and sell stuff are premium members. Please sight your source. I really like to read it. I believe that most likely the vast majority of copybot items and ripped items from games being sold in the MarketPlace and in world are being sold by free accounts. What is my logic for this? People who use copy bot or rip from games don't want to pay for things and are lazy and those types of people are also not going to want to pay for a Premium Membership because they have already demonstrated that they don't like to pay for things. Add to it that a Premium Membership makes it easier for LL and other authorities to track them down if and when they get caught. Now I am sure there are people who use copybot and sell ripped items who are Premium Members but probably they are in the minority. It is conceivable that such a person would also have free accounts as well that they use to copybot and then pass the stolen items on to their premium account but again not allowing free accounts to give or transfer items to another account would stop this. I would also really love to know what the name of the multi-national company whose IT people wrote the code for copybot. Again if you could provide some links to articles or webpages that be awesome. I agree with you that it be nice to for a newbie to be able to give you something they were working on in a sandbox but to make it harder for Copybots from profiting on stolen items I don't think it is that much of a loss. There is the alternative that the newbie could just give you permission to edit their things if they needed your direct inspection or help with an item. You just couldn't take a copy is all.

Charli Infinity wrote: example full perm mesh of a t shirt L$300, one designer buy that mesh and make t shirt with a tiger picture sells for L$400, anothoer designer make t shirt with a bird picture sells for L$400. person wants both tiger t shirt and bird t shirt if purchase from both designers the total spent will be L$800 if purchase full perm mesh and gets free ripped tiger and bird texture from texture ripper total spent will only be L$300 copybotters and texture rippers are a big problem in SL. It's already happening now which why resell items are very cheap. what you suggest will benefit the full perm mesh makers only since they are the ones getting the most sales from so many reseller reselling the same mesh with textures that can ripped easily texture alone has little value and will be targeted by texture rippers if it is good leaving little profit for the reseller. Yes that scenario could happen but the percentage of people willing to rip textures for such a purpose is very very small. They would have to find both shirts rezzed in world someplace to rip the textures. Way too much trouble for the average buyer who is also willing rip textures to bother with. Copybotters and texture rippers are only a problem if they can turn around and sell what they have stolen. My proposal that in the new virtual world only "Premium Members" be allowed to sell on the marketplace or in world or give items to another resident would cut this down to a minimum. Think about it. If a copybotter or ripper can only use the items for themselves there is no real loss to the content creator since the person who is willing to use copybot or rip mesh most likely would never buy the item in the first place even if there was no such thing as copybot or ripper. People who use copybot are lazy thieves and lazy thieves don't spend money for things. I am not saying if they are caught they shouldn't be punished or banned from SL. I am not saying it is OK to copybot or ripp mesh. I agree with you Charli that resellers who just add a simple texture are not adding much value to a product. So why would you think that the reseller who added so very little to a product make the larger amount of profit from the sale of the item than the full perm seller? Now mind you I have seen some awesome texture creators who can take a plain mesh and with great textures make it incredible. In this case they would be able to charge a lot more money for the item thus making a lot more money than than the original full perm creator and they should because they added a lot of value and creativity to the item.

Dresden Ceriano wrote: Cathy Foil wrote: This is what I mean when I say such a system would encourage creativity Are you insane? Look at IMVU and look at SL, the way it is now. You can't possibly, seriously claim that IMVU is more encouraging of creativity than is SL. In SL, anyone can become a builder and a merchant... that sort of freedom is built in... the same cannot be said of IMVU. I sincerely hope that LL will institute more protection for content creators in their new platform, but not at the expense of freedom and, as such, creativity. The bar should certainly be set higher, but not as high as that which IMVU has set. Or are you honestly suggesting that creators for IMVU are less restricted than those who create content for SL? If so, I simply don't believe it. ...Dres Dresden are you as clueless as you appear to be? If you knew anything about IMVU you know the owners of IMVU overly encourage or require very low poly mesh creation. IMVU exchange rate is horrible and they have no in world building or script language. Every mesh that has a different color for texture has to be uploaded separately in IMVU thus each variation cost a considerable amount of money to bring in world. That is why overall there isn't as much higher quality items as compared SL. It is not IMVU's full perm / Derivation system they have that makes the overall amount of high quality items lower in IMVU less than in SL. I never suggested that creators for IMVU were less restricted than those in SL Dresden. The only restrictions I have proposed is selling be limited to Premium Members only. Free memberships should be able to create anything they want for themselves just not be permitted to sell it or transfer it to other residents. This would not restrict creativity. Now to be clear I am talking about this for the new virtual world Linden Lab is creating not for SL. It is way too late in the game to change the rules for SL. I am no fan of IMVU but there are certain aspects of IMVU that are superior to SL. It is these aspects that I believe are the reason there are twice as many people logging into IMVU everyday than there is in SL.

Charli Infinity wrote: This would never work in SL for sure and not in SL2 if they don't do something about the copybotters and texture rippers. It benefits the full perm creator too much and if they receive royalty for ever sale then it is not really full perm. If full perm is L$300 and the resell is L$400, people will just buy the full perm for L$300 and the texture rippers will just spread the textures for free like nobody's bussiness. From what I understand textures can be ripped off from any item rezzed in world already so why would people buy full perm for L$300 just to rip the textures when they can do it for free now? You haven't given me a solid reason why such a derivation system for full perm wouldn't work in the new virtual world LL is working on. It works extremely well for IMVU which has twice as many daily users logging in than SL. It is your opinion that it benefits the full perm creator too much but I disagree. In my example I gave yes the original content creator gets L$300 of the L$400 but that is only because the person who bought the shoes decided to sell it for only L$400. Had they decided to sell it for L$700 then they would get L$400 and the original content creator would get L$300. The price the full perm buyer could get for the shoe would depend on how good they were at adding value to the shoe by putting in their own creative touches such as textures and shadowing or paring the shoes with other full perm items they bought. The better the finished product is the higher price they can get. This is what I mean when I say such a system would encourage creativity and adding value to item and keeping prices stable not allowing them to fall through the floor like they are doing now and have been for some time now. I agree with you that such a system would not and probably would not be called "Full Perm" in the new virtual world LL is currently working on. New world means new rules which means there is no garentee that there will even be "Full Perm" in it. It is very possible that LL will go with such a derivationsystem instead that works much better than SL's current full perm system.

It will not be named SL2 or Second Life 2.0. Linden Lab's has been very clear on this. They have also made it very clear that this new virtual world, while very similar in many ways to SL, will be a its own product. I am sure LL did this so the new virtual world can have its own TOS and limits that will be different than SL's. I sure hope it will in anycase. I am hoping that LL has learned from its past mistakes and successes with SL. The biggest problems I see in SL is not the technology or code or graphics. In my opinion it is the rules that govern how SL can be used that is the biggest problems. The managerial decisions that have been made in other words. Personally I hope that only premium members will be able to sell inworld or on the MarketPlace. Why? Because this would help stem the tide to what I call the "Economic Race To The Bottom". When there is absolutely no cost to entering, manufacturing and selling in the market content creators who don't need any sort of economic return for their work end up flooding the market driving prices down to ridiculously low levels. They are happy to even receive a few pennies for their work. Couple this with a Full Perm system that doesn't allow the original content creator the absolute ability to set a minimum price their products can be resold at and you have a recipe for disaster. Yes I know they can have it written in their terms what prices their items can be resold at. I am talking built into the permissions settings a new field where they can input a minimum price that object can be sold at making impossible for resellers to sell it for less. Personally I like the way IMVU handles items that can be resold by others. IMVU the resell price can never be lower than the original price. While yes this means full perm prices have to be very low the original content creator always gets the same amount every time their item is sold no matter who sells it. For example if they sell a pair of shoes full perm for L$300 and someone buys it to resell and sells it for L$400. Every time the shoes sell for L$400 the original content creator gets L$300 and the other L$100 goes to the reseller. This encourages resellers to add something extra to the shoes whether it is a better texture or script or pairing it with another item. It encourages creativity and adding value to the item making it more valuable. Just the opposite of how SL works currently. Another reason for allowing only Premium Members to sell would be to help stop the practice of ripping mesh from games and other online sources and or for that matter reselling copybot items. Since premium members have to give a credit card or bank account information people engaged in such practices won't because now their real life identities can be easily tracked down by authorities. It won't stop it completely but it will sure keep it to a minimum. Free accounts should still be available. They should still be able to buy items but just not be able to sell or give items to other accounts.

WOW thanks Gaia! I am definitely bookmark those pages. Medhue yeah Maya has a similar function but it doesn't work perfectly on the mesh avatar turning it back into quads. It gets most of the way there but some places, like on the face, can get a bit tricky determining where the quads are exactly or at least how they were originally because there are a good number of triangles that were in the face before it was triangulated. Thank you both! Cathy

I have searched the net for hours looking for SL default avatar that is not triangulated. I know they are out there because I can find photos of them just no luck finding an OBJ version. If anyone knows where I can get my hands on one that be much appreciated! :)

The problems you are having is a fundamental problem all custom mesh avatars have whether they are Fitted Mesh avatars or mesh avatars rigged to the normal or mBones. THe SL avatar eye openings in the mesh are controlled using blendshapes, more commonly referd to as Morphs, not by the bones changing scales except for head size. Since we can't upload our own Morphs the eyes openings in custom meshes are fixed and not affected by changing the slider settings except for head size. THe easiest solution is to position your head over the head of the default avatar in Avastar and line up your eye openings in the mesh so they match up. You will just have to tell your customers that they will have to use the default avatar eye slider settings. THey should be able to make the head bigger or smaller but that is about it. Now had Linden Lab gone with the Mesh Deformer this wouldn't be an issue. I made a test head and made a video as proof of concept that proved the Mesh Deformer worked. All I did was roughly line up the eye openings of the custom mesh head with the default avatar's and weight the whole head to the mHead bone. See the video below. I don't use Blender I am a Maya user and I use MayaStar which I created. I wanted to make a similar tool like Avastar for Maya users. Even though I made my MayaStar specifically because the need I saw for a tool to help rig Fitted Mesh I wish LL had gone with the Mesh Deformer or let us have both. They work by totally different methods and can and have worked side by side without a problem during the Beta Testing. Everything works with custom mesh avatars using the Mesh Deformer. Eyes blink, all facial expressions and animations, fingers move, avatar physics and all the Avatar Appearance sliders work right out of the box. Just rig the mesh to the normal mBones like you do for regular mesh. Best of all it follows the avatar's real shape so bikinis or tight fitting skimpy mesh cloths work. One size really would fit all. And it could have quickly been adapted to an new default avatar LL came up with. I have worked extensively with a similar system for my MayaStar for my Automatic Mesh Resizing feature. In Mesh Deformer 2.0 LL could have had Qarl add some extra controls such as smoothing or deform form face instead of vertex, envelope setting and UV world space relax that would eliminate the texture distortions. Everything I predicted or warned about during the discussion while Fitted Mesh was in beta have come true. I hate to say I told you so to all those who believed Fitted Mesh was superior but I told them so. LOL So being a big girl I acepted the situation as it is and have done my best to make a bad sitution better and created MayaStar to try and help. If LL is reading this watch my video. With the extra few controls I mentioned and one or two other small easy things to add SL could have not only custom mesh avatars that really work but a clothing system that really is a one size fits all. It is not too late. All the work and testing has been done. The Mesh Deformer is ready for the main grid just sitting on the shelf. I bet we could even get the residents to pay to get Mesh Deforemr 2.0 up and running.

Learning to 3D model in an advanced program like Blender or even Maya is a bit like learning to fly in a jumbo jet. There are so many bells and whistles that even a professional program like Maya the interface like can be confusing let alone Blender which has historically had a very difficult interface. I can not speak for how Blender is now but I tried learning Blender about 7 or 8 years ago. I tried everyday for hours a day for a weeks and gave up and I do not give up easily ask anyone who really knows me. Just to give you some idea of my level of skill and competence with computers and programs at the time I tried learning Blender I had been working as a professional full time graphic designer for a graphic design studio for about 10 years. We did print work mostly and some vynle graphics so 2D not 3D design. I had extensive experience with professional programs like Quark, Pagemaker, Photoshop, Illistrator and Corel Draw though Corel Draw was, at the time, considered an armature program it was starting to be used more and more in the professional world. I have no idea how Corel is perceived in the print industry since I left 10 years ago. When you work with professional grade tools and programs the user interface has been honed to work in a certain logic. Yes each program will have its own particular spin on that logic but they won't be so far off from each other that it will seam totally alien so picking up the basics normally comes very quickly. This makes sense since these are finished professional products so the user interface was designed for professional use with the needs of their customers in mind. Now we come to the Blender I tried learning 7 or 8 years ago. Its user interface was not just confusing it was horrific totally alien to anything I had ever used. Even the simple task of opening a file or importing the method of navigation I had to use was totally different than I had ever used before. I have since been told that this was more the way opening a file in Linux worked than Windows. The user interface was basically like a very very bad beta version of a program that was still under development which from what I understand of the history of Blender is not far off. I am sure I won't get the particular details correct but here is what I understand how Blender came to be. A production company, I think outside the U.S., had developed Blender in house to be used solely by their company and had never intended it to be released so no thought was put into the user interface for consumer use. So while in development the focus would have been primarily on capability not user ease. The company went bankrupt and in the settlement the employees who had worked creating Blender didn't want to see the program they had worked so hard on and come to love die so they asked to be given Blender and released it as open source so that could continue. This explains why Blender's user interface was so bad when I first came upon it. My advice to you Elinah is don't start with Blender or even Maya. I would start with Silo 2. It just does polygon modeling and subdivision. Just please don't subdivide more than once or twice at most for SL's sake. Silo has very intuitive controls and since it doesn't do much else there isn't so many things to confuse you in the interface. It is not free you can get it on Steam for $80 right now but if you wait for it to go on sale, probably in 4 months or so, you can pick it up for about $50 USD. I think I got it for $40 over a year ago around New Years. Here's a link. Silo 2 I hope that helps. Cathy

Hi Lexii, A good place for software is Steam. Some of the program you can rent for a month at a time. Others you can pay a one time fee. I wouldn't bother with Maya LT which is 30 USD a month. It has been stripped down from the full version so much it is pretty worthless from what I been told. Blender is a good choice. YOu can create polygon models and rig in it and some painting from what I understand. Be warned though Blender's user interface is pretty bad making it one of the most difficult programs to learn though the interface has improved a lot over the years. It is probably the most popular program for mesh creators here in SL. ZBrush is an awesome program but it can't do rigging and is around 700 USD. I use 3D Coat I got from Stream quite a bit which is a lot like ZBrush but doesn't have quite as many tools as ZBrush but it is only 100 USD. Silo 2 would be good for a beginner for just polygon modeling. It is also on Steam for 80 UDS. Programs go on sale there twice a year. Once around Christmas and another in late Spring or Summer. I think I picked up Silo for like 50 USD and 3D Coat for 80 USD when they had been on sale. My main program I use is Maya but it is a pretty old version Maya 8.0. Maya is an industry standard for professionals to use. To get a new version is extremely expensive. We are talking thousands of dollars. You could take a Maya class at your local community college and get the student version for free and lean how to use it at the same time. If I was just starting out and didn't or couldn't take a community college class in Maya I would get Silo 2 and 3D Coat from steam and use Blender to rig in. If I had the money I would go for ZBrush instead of 3D Coat though 3D Coat is catching up to ZBrush pretty fast. Hope that helps. Cathy

Hi Antumbra. I don't blame you for not wanting any more of the kind of help you have gotten from the previous posts. I would have felt the same way. I know you probably are not going to read this but I will try and help you anyway just in case. I suspect your problem has less to do with any sort of smoothness feature the program you are using has and more to do with it not having good edge flow. I couldn't know for sure unless I saw a photo of your mesh in wireframe mode. Let me try to explain what good edge flow is. Imagine a bowl of still water and drop a small pebble into it and imagine freezing time so just a half second after the pebble hits the water and sinks you see a ring of water form creating a tiny circular wave. Now if you were to create that frozen moment in time with the circular wave that is 3 or 4 inches a cross in mesh you would use a plane. A plane with good edge flow the edges of the plain would not form a grid like a checkerboard with horizontal and vertical edges but more like a bullseye target with the edges made from concentric circles and a ray of edges from the center like the spokes in a bicycle wheel. YOu can see that where the wave would be the circle of edges would be raised above the rest. Now think of a fold in cloth like a wave. You want the edges to flow along the length of the fold horizontally and then vertically up and over the top of the fold. With good edge flow you really don't need that many vertices to create a smooth realistic looking object. Here's a link to a tutorial on YouTube and notice how with just a few vertex he is able to get a recognizable face. Here's a link to an wonderful article on Digital Tutors. While the article only touches a little bit about smoothing look at all the images and notice the really great edge flow. Digital Tutors Article Last but least here is a few videos I made about converting Marvelous Designer mesh which has horrible edge flow to quads which have good edge flow. and part 2. I hope that helps. Cathy

(Edited: LOL I should never reply to a post right after I wake up. A good source for modeling programs is STEAM. If funds are low and you are just starting out I suggest Silo 2 to make your mesh and then use RoadKill to create your UVs. 3D Coat is awesome and it is also available at steam. Silo 2 and 3D Coat are not a subscription base though there are modeling programs there that are. 3D Coat will do everything you are looking except for rigging. Silo2 is just for making and editing mesh. Blender is FREE but be warned it is the most difficult to learn out of all the modeling programs I have mentioned but it will do everything you are looking for. If you go the Blender route I would highly recommend getting Avastar plugin which is made for the SL avatar.) Before you pay for a subscription you may want to try a FREE program called RoadKill. There is a stand alone version I believe as well as a plugin for 3DS Max though might only be for windows. Here is where you can get it: http://www.pullin-shapes.co.uk/page8.htm Hope that helps. Cathy

Lindal Kidd wrote: I'm sorry you're having financial troubles, but the way to fix that is to spend less time playing around in virtual worlds and more time looking for a job! Once you've got that problem licked, your other worries will be solved automatically. Lindal that was quite rude. You have no idea what is causing MarieLily333's financial troubles. Her spouse may have become sick and she may be too busy taking care of them to be able to get a job or perhaps she already have a job and is also taking care of a sick loved one as well. There are millions things that can cause financial troubles and not make it possible to simply get a job to get out of them. Being able to log onto SL for a few hours here and there may be the only recreational activity available to her. The rest of your comments Lindal were well done.

Awesome first video Gaia! I am really looking forward to the rest of the series. Is there going to be a video on the Collision Bones? That would be a very very interesting video. I am in the process of updating my MayaStar and I can tell you figuring out how the Collision Bones respond to the sliders in SL was a big challenge. Some of the changes are not contained in the avatar_lad.xml file like you think they would. On those I had to just go by observations in SL and educated guesses. Then there are the unexpected behaviors of some of the Collision Bones like the Upper and Lower Collision leg bones. When you change your knee angle instead of just letting them be children to the "m" or Normal Bones LL decided they should rotate so the axis of the leg Collision Bones stay basically straight up and down. While this is great for long dresses it is a major problem with pants and shoes if you have any other setting than 50 for the knee angle. I dare say that more people are interested in shoes than long dresses. Honestly LL should not have used the original Collision Bones at all. A good number of them are at strange rotations and or scales not to mention some are offset a good distance from their "m" or Normal Bone counterpart which makes skinning harder since the initial binding process weights those vertices closest to the bone the most. All of the standard "m" bones or what I call Normal Bones have zero rotations and scales all set to 1 in the standard T-Pose. This is pretty much an industry standard but some of original Collision Bones and some of the new ones like I said rotations and different scales. This just adds to the complexity of rigging Fitted Mesh unnecessary. In my opinion LL, if LL were going to use just the bone scaling method, it would have been better to have created a new category of bones called Fitted Mesh Bones and not use any of the original Collision Bones. To be perfectly honest my opinion is that the Mesh Deformer would have been a much better overall system than Fitted Mesh. Way less work for content creators and it did respond to the morphs and physics since it deformered worn mesh by by using the avatars body to change the shape. Even the facial and hand morphs worked. Imagine the custom avatars that could have been made using it. Oh well we can always hope LL will change their minds. No reason both Fitted Mesh and the Mesh Deformer can't work side by side since they use completely different methods to deform mesh. They did basically work side by side during the beta testing.

There are a few things about Fitted Mesh that make it incredibility difficult to get the weights just right. Unlike regular mesh which you only have to worry about how the mesh moves and bends as the joints bend with Fitted Mesh you also have to worry about how the mesh changes shape as the different joints change scales. The tighter and or skimpier the clothes the more difficult this becomes. Lastly the avatar itself mainly doesn't change its shape by changing the scales of the joints it is rigged to. It mainly uses morphs or what in Maya is called Blendshapes. Morphs/Blendshapes don't take the different parts of the mesh and simply scale them up or down like Fitted Mesh. Morphs are made by taking the default shape and making a duplicate and reshaping the duplicate into a new shape. Then this new shape is made a target mesh for the original mesh to create the Morph/Blenshape. If the Morph/Blenshape is set to 0 then the default mesh doesn't change. If the Morph/Blenshape is set to 0.5 then the vertices of the default move half way between the two shapes. If it is set to 1 then the vertices move all the way so the default mesh now has the same shape as the duplicated mesh. The duplicated mesh can be reshaped into an shape even something that looks nothing like the original mesh. Because the avatar mainly changes shape in a different way than Fitted Mesh it is darn near impossible to Fitted Mesh to change shape and follow the real avatars shape accurately. I am coming out with an update for my MayaStar real soon which should make getting acceptable weighting a lot easier. Personally I wish LL had gone with the Mesh Deformer or at least let us have both Fitted Mesh and the Mesh Deformer. The Mesh Deformer worked much better for tight and or skimpy mesh clothes than Fitted Mesh ever will. With the Mesh Deformer custom mesh avatars made by residents would have full facial expressions and fingers that moved. All without having to do any special. Just rig to the normal skeleton bones. Don't believe me? Here's proof: The whole mesh head is weighted to just the mHead bone/joint. I didn't have any animation overides that had facial expressions but you can clearly see the eyelids blink and of course the whole face changes shape as I change the Appearance Sliders or change from wearing a female body shape to a male one. LL really missed out though it is no too late if they like to change their mind.

It looks like some or all of your faces are pointing the wrong way. It is hard to tell from the photo. I am not sure what I am looking at. In Maya turn on "Backface Culling". This will make the backs of the faces invisible which is what they are in SL and you will be able to see which ones need to have their normals reversed. To turn on Backface Culling in Maya in the window where your mesh is look for a menu named "Shading" near the top left corner. Click on it and near the bottom you will see "Backface Culling" and click on it. If only certain parts of your mesh faces are pointing the wrong way go into "Face" mode and select those faces. If the entire mesh faces are the wrong way just select the whole mesh. In either case, in Polygon mode, then just go to the "Normals" menu at the top of the screen and click "Reverse". That should fix it. Hope that helps. Cathy

Hi Reiramon, What version of Maya are you using? I think Maya 2010 and newer comes with a DAE collada export. Open Maya and click the menu at the top named Window > Settings/Preferences > Plug-in Manager. Once the Plug-in Manager window is open scroll down and look for "fbxMaya.mll". Put check marks in "loaded" and "auto load". I usually click "Refresh" just to be safe and then "Close". Now you can export mesh out as a DAE file. Just select your mesh and click File > Export Selection. In the export window type the name you want your mesh to have and in the "Files of type:" select DAE_FBX(*.dae) If your Maya is a newer version that is all you need. You don't have to export as an FBX file and convert to a DAE file using the free Autodesk FBX Converter. Let me know if that works for you. Hope that helps. Cathy

I am surprised the moderators haven't moved this thread. Normally when people post that they will hire someone the moderators move the thread to the Wanted forum. You are actually more likely to find a teacher to hire there. http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Wanted/bd-p/Wanted Benefits to Blender is it is very powerful. It is free. There are a ton of tutorials on YouTube you can watch to learn the basics. Draw back to Blender is its user interface makes it very hard to learn though it certainly has improved over the years. If you have a little bit of money you could get Maya LT on http://store.steampowered.com/ for $30 USD a month. The Maya LT version doesn't have all the features the full program does but I believe you can create and rig mesh in it so it does everything you need it to do for SL. Maya is a heck of a lot easier to learn than Blender. If you take a class at a community college you can get the student version which has all the features. If you don't want to pay a subscription I go for Silo 2 to start with. You can get it at the steampowered as well. Wait till it goes on sale though. My guess it will go on sale sometime after Thanks Giving. I got it like 6 or 7 months ago on sale for $40. If you have about $800 USD I go for ZBrush in a heartbeat though I can't afford it so I got 3D Coat from steampowered for $99. It does about 60 or 70% of what ZBrush can do. If you are going to get into clothes I definitely look into Marvelous Designer. You can buy it outright for $550 USD or rent it per month for $60. It is definitely the quickest easiest way to make mesh clothes though you will have to rig it in another program like Blender or Maya. It is still a very good idea to learn the basics of polygon modeling before you jump into making clothes. Silo 2 is probably the easiest to learn the basics of polygon modeling though you can't rig in it. You definitely need to start small and simple like suggested by Chic. Start with making simple polygon models of tables and chairs. Then move on to more complicated items. Hope that helps. Cathy

If you use the fbxmaya.mll and export your mesh as a DAE_FBX (*.dae) file you don't have to worry about smoothing groups. All you have to do is set what ever edges you want to be soft to soft and what ever edges you want to be sharp to hard on your model. Just click on your model and then press F10 to go into edge mode or hold down your right mouse button over your model and select "Edge" when the menu appears to go into edge mode. Once in edge mode select the edges you want soft or hard and go up to "Normals" menu at the top of your screen. Of course you have to have "Polygons" selected in the Status Line drop down window which is under the File menu in the top left corner of your screen to seen to see the Normals menu. So click on "Normals" menu and then go down to and click on either "Soften Edge" or "Harden Edge". I am sure you already know how to do this. I just want to make sure we are both on the same page. You don't have to worry about UV edge seams being set to hard or anything. To export your mesh out of Maya then just select your mesh and "Export Selection" with the DAE_FBX (*.dae) file type. In the SL mesh upload window be sure to select "Include Textures" option. The faces of the mesh that have the texture applied to them should automatically have been set to white. Now I am using an older version of Maya 8.0. So my DAE_FBX(*.dae) doesn't export textures properly. If I want to export a model with textures already applied I either have to use the open source DAE plugin beta version or export out as an FBX and use the FBX converter like you done. This isn't a bid deal for me. I normally just export out my mesh as a DAE_FBX(*.dae) file with no textures associated with my lamberts and upload them separately to SL and then rez and apply the textures manually. Say I have textures applied to my lamberts in my model in Maya and now I want to export my model as a DAE file. I just create a new lambert for each one of the textured lamberts I have on my model. To replace the lambers I just select the faces of a particular lambert/material and create a new lambert. I normally change the new lambert color to white. Then I export my model out as a DAE file and upload it to SL and upload my textures to sl separately. I know it seems like a bit more work than exporting as a FBX and converting it to a DAE file but if you don't have the correct settings on your FBX exporter then your model will be messed up. Besides I often upload several versions of the same model before I am completely happy so why pay to upload the same textures over and over again. Now your version of Maya is much newer and I am fairly certain that your fbxmaya.mll plugin won't have any sort of texture problem uploading it to SL. So you won't have to jump through the same hoops as I have to. I hope that helps. Cathy

I use Maya. It looks like the normal edges of your mail box are set to soft instead of hard. That looks like where the artifacts area coming from. The rounded back part of your mesh edges should be set to soft but the corner edges and legs should all be set to hard edges. The dark color, as already mentioned, is probably do to your faces in SL being set to a different color than white. In SL right mouse click on your mesh, after you rez it, and click "Edit". Then in the edit window click "Faces". Next click on texture tab and click on your mesh. If the color isn't white click on it and change it to white. My guess is it is probably the same color of gray as your lambert. Lastly you don't need to be using the FBX converter to convert your file to a DAE file. You can export directly out of Maya as a DAE file. Click on "Window>Settings/Preferences>Plugin Manager. In the Plugin Manager window scroll down till you see "fbxmaya.mll" check "Load" and check "Auto Load" then close the window. To export your mesh click on your mesh in the "File" menu select "Export Selection". Next change the file type to "DAE_FBX.dae". Type in the name you want it to be and click "Export". Your DAE file is ready for upload. You should be able to click Upload Texture option in the mesh upload window and the texture will automatically be applied to it in SL though you will have to pay to upload the texture. Since you already uploded the texture you can skip this to save L$10. Remember you can always log onto the Beta Test grid and upload mesh and textures for free. Hope that helps. Cathy

Autodesk has a good free converter. Google Autodesk FBX Converter. My guess is that your problems isn't the converter program you are using. Meshes that aren't specifically created with Second Life's mesh limitations will probably more often than not upload to SL. Some of the limitations for SL mesh is that there can only be 8 materials/textures applied to each mesh. A mesh can only be so many vertices and there are a few more limitations. Here's a few links to where you can read up on the limitations: Wiki Mesh Limits , Wiki Mesh Limits Tests Another issue you may not have considered is LODs. If you purchased the mesh or found mesh that has the correct royalty free license it probably didn't come with LODs that are setup for SL. Each LOD has to have the name number of textures applied to it as the highest LOD (Level of Detail) or it won't upload. SL is very picky with physics shape. If the vertices are too close together or on top of each other it simply won't upload. My advice is if a mesh won't upload after converting the original OBJ to a DAE is to bring it into a 3D modeling program like Blender or Maya and look to see if it is within the limits of SL mesh. You may have to make some minor modifications to major modifications. Often major modifications will be so much work you are better off just creating something from scratch yourself. If you are not willing to learn or don't have enough time to learn how to make your own mesh you could always advertise in the Wanted Fourm for an experienced mesh designer. You will have to pay them or course unless you have a skill that you can trade on. Good script writers are in high demand. Hope that helps. Cathy

Yea I noticed group chat has been awesome these past few days. Only problem now I see is the need in every viewer to be able to mute individual groups not just group members. I know I can go into Busy Mode but I don't necessarily want be cut off completely.

Thanks for the link Amethyst. I watched the whole video. It was very informative. The video didn't really address viruses though it appears that all data retrieved from users hard drives or CPUs, what Philip calls "Contributed Devices" will be processed through centralized servers. That at least two sets of data from two separate "Contributed Devices" will be compared to see if they match before it is sent to the end user. I can see how this would cut down on viruses and also hackers trying to break into the system. The problem arises though this screening process would have to wait till both sets of data are downloaded onto the central server so there may be a delay if one of the "Contributed Devices" has a slower upload speed. Then there is the time it takes the server to compare the two sets of data and what happens if they don't match? They could instead of using 2 sets of data they could use 3 or 4 and only send the data that is a perfect match from any two sets of data. Though now you have compounded the upload speed problem and now the server is comparing even more sets of data. Philip sees "Contributed Devices" being paid in virtual currency for computational time sort of like how campers in SL were paid for just sitting in a sim while they slept in real life. I have a feeling that the amount of money people will make being a "Contributed Devices" provider will probably be less than the cost of the electricity it takes to run their computer. Now I can see third party professional servers offering services to the virtual worlds and grids that use High Fidelity to enhance their worlds. Say a third party server company that specializes in skies or clouds or water simulation or wind or rain or shadows or physics. These would be a great asset as "Contributed Devices". There is definitely some big hurdles for High Fidelity to overcome. I hope Philip succeeds. It sounds like it be awesome if he does.

I don't know a whole lot about High Fidelity but my understanding is that they want to basically do away with a central server and use the users own computers as sort of a giant spread out server to store the data that makes up the grid. My biggest concern with this approach would be three things. 1. What about computer viruses? With tens of thousands perhaps millions of individual PCs all storing bits and pieces of the grid there are bound to be a good percentage who's computers have viruses on them. Other users PCs would download those viruses as they access the data off hundreds or thousands of other users hard drives. 2. Most peoples upload speeds are nowhere near their download speeds. Wouldn't this be a huge problem causing lag? 3. With data spread out all over the world and a single sims data being split onto many many individual computers how will that affect download times when one texture may be from a computer next door and another texture or asset from a computer half way around the world? Data would have to be duplicated multiple times so when one computer is shut off there would be a good chance that several others will be online. Will High Fidelity be storing data on my hard drive and accessing it when I am not logged into the grid? If so how much will that affect my computers performance and Internet speed?