Cathy Foil

Mesh Studio is a good program. It definitely has its usages. It basically converts prim builds into mesh and can do a very nice job. Theoretically you could create prim hair inside SL and then using Mesh Studio export it out of SL as a mesh and then bring that mesh into a program say like Blender or Maya and rig it. I don't know why anyone would want to do it that way but it be possible. Singularity viewer has basically the same abilities to convert prims to mesh built in. You just right mouse click on the prim and click "More" and then "More" again and then "Export". You can export your prims as a DAE or OBJ file if you want it converted to mesh. If you export an OBJ you don't get any of the textures. If you export as a DAE you do get the textures and any faces that are set to 100% alpha are automatically deleted from the mesh. Mesh Studio does the same thing with 100% alpha faces. Hope that helps. Cathy

I am sure you could probably get the mesh toilet down to 1 prim cost or 1 LI. Since toilets are generally indoor items and not seen from far away just in the lowest LOD make the toilet out of a few cubes. One cube for the bowl. One cube for the tank and one cube for the seat. I loved sculpties and knew all the tricks and techniques. Best part sculpties kept people from ripping mesh out of games and such. If you knew what you were doing sculpties could be very effecient by using smaller scultpie maps. Everyone always complained about sculpties using 1024 vertices for every sculptie. This is actually not true. If you use an 8 pixel by 8 pixel sculptie map you only use 16 vertices. The rest are not rendered and are discarded by the viewer. Maximum sculptie map size you ever need is 64 by 64 pixels which is only 12KB. Compare that to mesh which can be up to 8MB and up to 65,536 vertices. It is way easier to cause lag with mesh than with sculpties. Don't get me wrong I will take mesh over sculpties any day as far as ease to create with. What sculpties are best at now are for really really big things that are bigger than 64 meters. Other than that mesh is the way to go as far as I can see. Hope that helps. Cathy

Two things to remember that are crucial. Never import the Linden Lab skeleton into your scene. If you import it into your scene Maya renames of all the bones and you will then have to go in the Outliner and fix all the names. You want to import your mesh into the scene where you already have LL's skeleton file open. Two when you do "Smooth Bind" make sure "Remove unused influences" is NOT checked. If this is checked the DAE file will not upload to SL. I would start with something really simple like placing a cube over the head of the skeleton rig it to the entire skeleton and then weight it to just one bone the mHead bone. Then export your DAE file and upload it to SL. If it uploads correctly then you know all your settings are correct and the skeleton is correct. All it takes is for one bone to be not spelled correctly or a bone missing from the "Skin Cluster". All the bones have to be in the "Skin CLuster" even if nothing is weighted to them. Here's a great video tutorial made by Sae Luna on how to rig mesh clothes with Maya: http://saeluan.com/tutorials/maya/rigging-mesh-in-maya/ Hope that helps. Cathy

Nalates is right. Upon uploading your DAE file to SL if you have not already triangulated your quad mesh it will automatically be triangulated. She is also correct in that when you retopo a MD or any random triangular mesh created in other programs such as Zbrush or 3D Coat into quads the entire new retopo mesh dosen't have to be entirely made of quads. It is just best to keep the triangles to a minimum. When you triangulate a quad mesh an edge is inserted between two opposite corners of the quad making two triangles. These two new triangles tend to be more coplanar than random triangles created in MD and other programs. Copanar means two faces lying on the same plane. Most of the time I find that I don't need to triangulate my mesh before I upload it to SL. But there are times when you want and need to triangulate your mesh first. Say you made a mesh shirt and an you want both sides to be perfect mirrors of each other so they move and bend in the exact same way. What you would want to end up with is the quads on each half being into triangles in different directions. Say on the left half of the shirt you want the quads split from bottom right vertex to top left and the right half of the shirt quads split from bottom left to top right. Here is an excellent page on why model with quads: http://blog.digitaltutors.com/modeling-quads-triangles-use/

Sometimes Maya makes junk Nodes created during the modeling process. These junk nodes can mess up the DAE file. I have had it happen and end up with no UVs in SL. I tried deleting the history of the mesh and copying and pasting the mesh into a new scene and nothing worked. What ended up fixing it was exporting my mesh out of Maya as an OBJ file then importing it back in. This gets rid of all the junk nodes and other not needed links and data. I then export the DAE file without applying any textures or anything to the imported OBJ mesh. Luckily I don't have to do that very often but when a mesh won't upload or loses its UVs exporting it out as an OBJ and importing it back in almost always fixes the problem for me. Hope that helps. Cathy

There are many benefits to using quads over triangles. MD or Marvelous Designer triangles are in a very random pattern. The quad conversion in MD 4 is not all that much of an improvement because it doesn't have that good of edge flow. I tested MD 4 extensively during the beta tests. I was most interested in how well the new quad conversion or triangulation feature worked. I was pretty disappointed. I was hoping I wouldn't have to continue to retopo MD mesh in Maya. OK think of the random triangular pattern like clothes being made out of aluminum foil. When the mesh bends at the joints it doesn't bend that well. When quad mesh bends, provided it has good edge flow, it bends much more naturally because the edge flow creates creases there they would naturally be in real clothes. Plus if you look closely at MD mesh in SL that is straight from MD and still triangles the light reflects off the surface with sort of a mottled pattern. That is because the Normals are all sort of random because of the random pattern verses the nice grid like pattern of quads that have a good edge flow. As for rigging quads, with good edge flow, are easier to adjust the weights. Each vertex on say a horizontal edge loop will be weighted more or less the same or at least in an easier to figure out weight pattern than the random pattern of MD random triangles. Think of it this way. Which surface would it be easier to paint a nice even perfectly symmetrical checkerboard pattern on. A grid made up of random triangles or a nice evenly spaced quad grid pattern? The quad pattern of course. Lastly quads, with good edge flow, are just so much more efficient than the random triangle pattern from MD or even their new quadrangulation conversion. When I retopo MD triangles into quads with Maya my quad version is usually about half or just over half the number of vertices as the original MD mesh of random triangles. To sum it up quads are: 1. The mesh bends at the joints better. 2. Light reflect off quads better because of nice even normal distribution. 3. Easier to rig and adjust the weights because of the even grid like pattern they make. 4. More efficient because you can use few vertices and still have the mesh look as good as the MD triangles. 5. Almost forgot because you end up using fewer vertices you have fewer vertices you have to rig and adjust the weights of. I have a couple of YouTube videos I made on how to retopo MD mesh into quads using Maya. So I am very familiar with MD and the benefits of quads. I hope the helps. Cathy

Good for you wanting to master rigging. I have a few thoughts on your issue with the shoes. If you weight the shoes 100% to the mKnee joints when someone makes their avatar taller the shoes will rise up as the mKnee joints move up so your shoes will end up above the avatar's feet. The other problem may be that the joint position of your mKnees may not be correct in Maya. My mKneeLeft TranslateX = -0.000887, TranslateY = -0.045568 and TranslateZ = -0.49105299. This is relative to the mHipLefts position. If I create a Locator and snap it to the mKneeLeft position it reads TranslateX = 0.03287 , TranslateY = 0.08119699 and TranslateZ = 0.5349639. This is the mKneeLeft's relative position to the exact center of the grid which is TranslateX = 0.0 , TranslateY = 0.0 and TranslateZ = 0.0 Your mPelivs should be at TranslateX = 0.0 , TranslateY = 0.0 and TranslateZ = 1.06701486. Since this is the root joint it relative position is to the center of the grid. A quick way of checking if it is a joint position is in the Mesh Upload window where you select the option to include skin weights also select Include Joint Positions. If the shoe looks normal after upload and no stretching then it is a joint position problem. Lastly it could be the viewer you are using to log into SL with. If for some reason the avatar_skeleton.xml the viewer is using is inaccurate or corrupted it would distort any worn rigged mesh. Try logging on with a different viewer. If you are using a thrid party viewer log on with LL's default viewer. If you using LL's viewer log on with Singularty or Firestorm viewer. Can you take a screen shot of the shoes in Maya and SL? Could be an illusion and the shoes arn't really being stretched just a distortion from the camera in SL. I seen it happen myself and others have posted in the forums here where they thought their mesh was being distorted in SL when it really wasn't just an optical illusion from SL's camera when zooming in. Hope that helps. Cathy

Hi Driftwood, Go into Maya and make sure your mKnee joints ScaleX, ScaleY & ScaleZ are all set to 1. If they are set to smaller like say .8 then when a mesh is brought into SL and worn the mesh would stretch. I do have a question. If your shoe isn't meant to bend why rig it at all? Why not just let people attach the shoe. If the shoe is Mod then your customers could resize it to fit their avatar. Rigged mesh can't resize unless it is rigged to one or more of the Collision Bones. Hope that helps. Cathy

There may be nothing wrong with your rigging or computer. There is a known bug that pops up from time to time that was created when Fitted Mesh was released. Switch "Advanced Lighting Mode" on in your viewers graphics preferences. If the problem is fixed then it is the viewer bug. Make sure your viewer is the latest version available. If your viewer is up to date try logging in with a different one. This particular bug mainly affects ATI graphics cards and can affect not only Fitted Mesh but regular mesh as well. Hope that helps. Cathy

I just got a message back from the Marvelous Designer Team that they will no longer be offering the Basic version of Marvelous Designer only the Advanced is available. This rather upsets me since I put a lot of time in testing Marvelous Designer 4 both in the closed beta testing and the open beta testing and gave them plenty of feedback. I had planned on buying a perpetual license for the Basic version for $400 USD. Now I either have to pay $60 a month or $360 a year or cough up $550 USD for a perpetual license. :( I had been paying $40 each month for Marvelous Designer 3 Basic version. I am not a happy camper nor does this leave me with good feelings towards the owners of Marvelous Designer.

Awesome info Drongle! I downloaded Notepad++ from CNet but when I open the DAE file I don't get the nice highlighted colors or the ability to open and close sections by clicking on + signs. Is there a preference setting I need to use? UPDATE: Never mind Drongle I found it. Under "Language" menu at the top changed it to XML.

OK got it to work inside Maya! Drongle pointing out it is the order in which the materials appear in the DAE file was the key. Thanks Drongle! OK there may be a better way but here is how I was able to do it in Maya without having to edit the DAE file. 1. Extract all the faces of the different materials so each material is a separate object. In your case you have two materials. One for the shirt and one for the tie. So extract the tie faces from the shirt making them separate objects not just one object with two materials with boarder edges. The extract function under the Mesh menu has an option to either "Separate Extracted Faces" or not. If this is not checked then the selected faces of the tie will not become a separate object. 2. Once separated into two objects delete history of each object. Then, in object mode, select the object you want to be FACE 0 in SL first. Then while holding down the SHIFT key click on the object you want to be FACE 1 in SL. 3. Under the "Mesh" menu click "Combine". Then click the "Edit Mesh" menu and click "Merge". NOTE: This will make the edges where the two object combine hard edges so you may need to soften these edges for your particular needs. 4. Delete history of the newly combined object in this case your shirt and tie. 5. Export your mesh as a DAE file as usual. NOTE: This is for mesh that isn't already rigged. If your shirt and tie are already rigged and you don't want to rig them all over again duplicate the mesh first and separate, combine and merge as in steps 1 through 5. Then do a quick Smooth Bind to the skeleton and then Copy Weights from your original to the duplicate but don't use the "Use smooth skin weight copy" option in the "Copy Skin Weights Options" window. The "Copy Skin Weights" function is under the "Skins" menu > Edit Smooth Skin> Copy Skins Weights. What you are doing when separating your mesh into separate objects and then combining them back into one object is really reordering the vertiex order. Maya creates the DAE file by exporting the vertex in order. Lower vertex numbers first then higher. Vertex named vtx(0) exports first. So if the material you want to be FACE 0 is made up of 10 vetices then they need to be named vtx(0) through vtx(9) so they are exported to the DAE file first. Here is a link to a nice little MEL script that I use that automatically separates a mesh into separate objects by materials. http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/script/poly-split-per-assigned-shader It is only for Maya 7 through 8 but it seems to be a simple script so it may work for newer versions of Maya as well. New versions of Maya may even have this feature already built in. Hope that helps. Cathy

I am sorry Limer. I am completely stumped. I tried editing the DAE file in ever way I could think of with no luck. :matte-motes-crying: After two and a half hours I give up. I know in Blender it can be done so I don't know why it can't be done in Maya. I will be following this thread to see if anyone comes up with a solution. I take it you are using some sort of script in your mesh and can't edit the script to the appropriate faces? I hate not being able to figure something out that should be fairly easy.

Try naming the Lambert that is applied to the tie 0 or "A" and the Lambert applied to the shirt name it 1 or "B". I think that should work. If not they you may have to edit the DAE file in a word processor program just don't use Microsoft Word because it has a tendency to save it in a word format instead of a DAE format them you save your changes. I hope that helps. Cathy

It would be nice to see the head in wire frame but it looks like it is probably too many vertices and is over the limit. If your mesh has too many vertices it won't upload. Here's the limits for mesh: Lower Limit Upper Limit Number of vertices n/a 65536 vertices per LOD for each n/a n/a COLLADA file size n/a Maximum mesh asset size after compression is 8 MB, roughly equivalent to a 256 MB Raw COLLADA file. n/a n/a Bone influence weights per vertex n/a 4 n/a n/a Number of materials per mesh n/a 8 n/a n/a Number of materials per face n/a 1 n/a n/a Physics weight for a vehicle n/a 32.0 Here's a link to the wiki page: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Limits I hope that helps. Cathy

Hi Amilia, Glad I was some help. If your mesh has too many vertices it won't upload. Here's the limits for mesh: Lower Limit Upper Limit Number of vertices n/a 65536 vertices per LOD for each n/a n/a COLLADA file size n/a Maximum mesh asset size after compression is 8 MB, roughly equivalent to a 256 MB Raw COLLADA file. n/a n/a Bone influence weights per vertex n/a 4 n/a n/a Number of materials per mesh n/a 8 n/a n/a Number of materials per face n/a 1 n/a n/a Physics weight for a vehicle n/a 32.0 Here's a link to the wiki page: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Limits As for Chosen, the reason he left was because the change in the TOS a year or so ago. He couldn't log into SL or agree to the TOS because he had done some contract work for some US federal agency creating some things for them here in SL. I think it ws the FBI but not sure. Anyway for him to agree to the TOS would break signed contracts with the US Federal government and he would have been in a lot of hot water. See the changes in the TOS last year, if you agreed to them, gives LL full rights to anything you create in SL or upload to SL. Chosen could not give LL those rights without being in violation of the contracts he had signed so he couldn't log in. Not even with an alt account just to be sure. See right now if LL went ahead and used those items that Chosen created for the Federal government LL would be in big trouble not Chosen. The sad thing is the minor changes that were made recently to the TOS still gives LL permission to do whatever they want. It was more or less just lip service by LL. I guess Chosen just finally gave up waiting for LL to come to their senses. Either that or when he couldn't even log into the Forums without having to agree to the TOS he simply can't post to the forums anymore either. It is really sad.

Nalates Urriah wrote: It has been a couple of days... People tend not to answer questions twice... plus asking again in a new thread tends to draw a lot of repetitous answers, the same ones or similar to those in the initial thread. It also annoys a number of people contributing to the forum in an effort to help people. If you feel you really must open a new thread, it is a good idea to link back to the first one. Some will take the time to read it and add anything new. I think you are being unfair and too hard on Amilia. The original thread Amilia is referring was originally posted by Aurelia Chauveau way back in March. Not a single person responded to Amilia's reply so her own questions and issues were never answered. Original thread: Maya 2014 Since Amilia's reply to Aurelia's thread was on 08-21-2014 and the original thread started 03-16-2014 it is no wonder only about 15 or 16 people saw it since by now Aurelia's thread is well off the first page of the Mesh Forum. It makes complete sense why Amilia posted her reply as a new thread. Her questions have a much better chance of being answered. 49 people so far have read her thread. My guess why she hasn't gotten many replies is not due to people not wanting to help her or post an answer twice but because it is Summer and the forums always slow down this time or year. If you really feel like you must give advise I suggest you do a little bit of research before criticizing someone. Now Amilia I am going to do my best to try and help you. I don't have Maya 2014 and can't really tell by the errors that you are getting what the problems so I can only give you general advice with Maya. I wish Chosen Few was still in SL. He is a Maya god in my opinion. 1. Do a search on you new computer in your Documents folder for a file named userSetup.mel. If you don't find it search your whole C drive for it. When you install Maya onto a new computer the userSetup.mel isn't created automatically. It is often created when you install a third party plugin so if you had any third party plugins installed on your old machine they won't work on the new machine unless you copy over the old machines userSetup.mel as well as all the other files associated with the plugin. 2. You do not want to use the open source Collada plugin. You want to use the fbxmaya.mll plugin that should be in your Plugin Manager. 3. Do a test with something very simple like a cube that only has the default Lambert applied to it. Export it as a DAE file and upload it to SL or the SL Beta Test grid. If that works try applying different Lamberts to different faces. If that uploads fine associate a texture file to the new Lamberts and try uploading that. 4. If all of step 3 works on the new machine then it is a problem with your particular mesh. Export your mesh out as an OBJ and start a new scene and import the OBJ into it and export it out as an DAE and try and upload it. I hope that helps. Cathy

Awesome article! Just skimmed it and watched a bunch of the animated examples it has. I am going to read it all. I always wanted to understand how a Render Pipeline works. This article being written from a non programmer by a mesh designer is perfect fit for me. Thanks Arton!

The dark areas, which I assume are the underlining mesh poking through, are not needed. Delete the faces of the dark mesh. Gaia is right. If an underlining mesh is being covered by other mesh on top of it then there is no need for the underlining mesh to be there so you can just delete those faces of the underlining mesh. You only need the surface of the mesh that is going to be seen. Faces of a mesh that are being covered by other faces on top should be deleted. By deleting faces of a mesh that are not to be seen will help cut down on lag. It will also make it easier to rig and get to move right and be less expensive to pay to upload. Very beautiful dress by the way. Wonderful work!

Just out of curiosity what viewer are you using?

The biggest problem with Fitted Mesh is that the avatar itself does not change shape by changing the scales of the bones. It chances shape primarily by using morphs so getting clothing mesh to change size in the same way by changing the scales of the Collision Bones is extremely difficult. Just to be clear the Collision Bones change scale when you change your appearance setting in SL. You can't change the scales of the Collision Bones in Blender or Maya or any other program you can rig in. The vertices of the shirt around the nipple area. Are they weighted 100% to the Left or Right Pec collision bone? If they are then it is definitely the problem between how avatars change shape with morphs and Fitted Mesh changing shape by changing the Collision Bones. I so wish LL would let us have the Mesh Deformer as well as Fitted Mesh. Rigging is so much easier with the Mesh Deformer.

The avatar in Blender is the default female avatar shape Ruth. The avatar in the photo wearing your shirt in SL is not the same shape as Ruth. Her breasts are bigger that's why the poke through. Your shirt is fairly loose fitting so it is a pretty good candidate to be rigged as Fitted Mesh. With Fitted Mesh you rig to the Collision Bones of the skeleton not the Normal Bones of the skeleton. Collision Bones change their scales as the avatar shape changes. Vertices weighted to them will scale either bigger or smaller. If you weight the right side of the shirt that is covering the right breast to the RIGHT_PEC Collision Bone then that area of the mesh will get bigger or smaller when the avatar's breast change shape. It will also bounce if the person is using avatar physics. I suggest buying AvataStar for Blender if you are going to try and make Fitted Mesh or even regular rigged mesh. Hope that helps. Cathy

I don't use Blender but have had plenty of experience with Marvelous Designer and rigging with Maya. There is a fairly simple way to get rid of the poke through of underlining mesh clothes. Make all three pieces of your mesh into one mesh and delete those faces that are underneath since those are not supposed to be visible anyway. It looks like you are using the mesh straight out of Marvelous Designer without retopolizing it into quads. Quads are easier to rig and weight. They also look better in SL because you don't get that mottled shading pattern. I know you use Blender but here are a few videos I made on how to make Marvelous Designer mesh into quads using Maya. The videos will help you see how quads can look with good edgeflow which makes the mesh move much better than the mesh straight out of Marvelous Designer. First video the audio is kind low so you may have to turn up your volume. Hope that helps. Cathy

I applaud you in your efforts and think what you are doing is worth while. I am curious to know if the only place you have advertised the survey is here in the General Discussion Forum? If it is then you are not getting a true demographic of the average SL user base. What you would end up with is a good demographic of those who read and participate in the General Discussion Forum and who are willing to take time out of their day to click on a link and take the survey. I am looking forward to seeing how close your results correspond to what LL has been reporting for years.

I am not sure what you are trying to do is even possible. Every time a mesh is converted from one format to another vital information the modeling program needs is often lost. I have actually tried doing what you are attempting on a few occasions. I couldn't find my original Maya file I made but could find the DAE file I had created. I did eventually get the DAE file to import back into Maya and it looked fine and the rigging and weighting appeared OK but when I exported it back out as a DAE file I got errors making it impossible to upload to SL. Wish I could be more help. I will be watching this thread to see if anyone else has solved it. It would come in handy from time to time. Cathy