[Medium LOD vert count greater than high version?]

Got it in under 1 land impact and learnt some useful stuff on the way.  Thanks you guys!

Good news that smoothing groups work. I treated my steam powerd  3ds 2011 to a newer fbx exporter and alls good.

[Medium LOD vert count greater than high version?]

Thanks for your replys.

Hurrar! It was the flat shading. The smoothing groups I set in max don't seem to stay with the import.  I had to re-check the 'gen normals' tick box after adding each LOD file.

Cheers for the heads up on land impact.   Lots of learnig to do..

[Medium LOD vert count greater than high version?]

Hello

I'm trying to import a fairly small mesh. The hi-res version looks good but my next LOD down says I have a load more verts than it should..

To make the medium LOD all I did was delete some edge loops, checked for isolated verticies then exported. 3ds max says there are 163 the importer says 563. I understand the vert count wont be exactly the same because of the uv map but I have no idea why there are way more verts than the original high res mesh..

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks for reading.

 

 

[3DS Rigging An Avatar That's Not A Single Mesh]

I think you can use Edit Geometry -> Attach. although I am out of practice so couldn't swear by it. I would add all other parts to the mesh that goes with the pelvis bone and rename with the model name. Then reset x-form before applying the skin mod.

[making mesh items respond to the foot size avatar shape slider]

Hi Fizz

If you look in the viewer file \SecondLifeViewer\character\avatar_lad.xml

"Hand Size" param is adjusted using the bones mWristLeft/mWristRight.

      <param_skeleton>
        <bone
         name="mWristRight"
         scale="1 1 1"
         offset="0 0 0" />...

"Foot_Size" param is adjusted using volume morph L_FOOT/R_FOOT.

      <param_morph>
        <volume_morph
          name="L_FOOT"
          scale="0.02 0.01 0.0"
          pos="0.01 0 0"/>..

It is possible to add the morph points to rigs as bones and weight them. It was put forward as a way to fit mesh before the Deformer project. It was shown to work but there are inconsistencies with the method as some sliders use a driver/driven param and are not editable this way. 

There  was a deformer thread recently with links to more info

 

[Weight Painting Eyes?]

Hi Eilfie

did you make mHead parent to mEyes?

Then all verts in your left mesh eye should have a weight of 1.00 to mEyeLeft bone. 

In 3dsmax you can exclude the eye verts from all the other bones but I don't know how in blender.

[3D max triangulated Physics shape problem]

Hi, not sure if I got you right.

have you tried with the pivot on your phys model centered?

$.pivot = $.center

[Tiny Rigged Mesh Avatars From 3ds Max?]

coordsys local when scaling is my last thought.

bummer though, I hate it when you suddenly realise its easier to start again and it happens to me often because I'm a stuborn old git )

[Tiny Rigged Mesh Avatars From 3ds Max?]

odd one.  I always reset xform on the mesh before skinning maybe thats the difference?

[Tiny Rigged Mesh Avatars From 3ds Max?]

Hi Chip

I think it goes like this:

1. Turn Off 'always deform' in the skin modifier under 'advanced params'.

2. Select all the bones and turn them Off in 'bone tools' from the 'Animation' menu.

3. Rescale mPelvis and mesh. I do them together already weighted.

4. Select all the bones and turn On in 'bone tools'.

5. * Press Reset Scale in bone tools.

6. Turn On 'always deform' in the skin modifier.

7. Export.

 

 I just did a little test upload and it worked here so hope it does for you.

ps. Thanks for all the maps )

 

[Problems animating a quadruped mesh]

Have you tried BVHacker? You can add a t-pose and make other adjustment for SL.

[problem with multitexture and with weight vertex]

Regarding the multi texture: I think this is a known bug with the 2012.* fbx plugin.  Everything was working for me in 2011 until I installed max 2012 which updated the plugin at the same time.

I fixed this by going to the Autodesk Plug-in and Converter Archives and reinstalling FBX® 2011.3.1 Plug-ins to the max 2011 program folder.  I left the newer fbx in 2012 in case I wanted it later but you should be able to uninstall the plugin and use the older one if you like. not tried it though as I still work mostly in 2011, it has all my other plugins sorted etc.

You can check which plugin is being used in the last panel of the fbx/collada exporter, 'information'

 

[Why do meshes have to render for non-compliant viewers? So awkward....]

I think it will take a long while for people to get it.! 

In the importer window there could have been a field for alternate item UUID for people without mesh suport? I suppose that would mean server code changes though and its too late in the day now.

[An idea....maybe a bad one.]

Must be public domain by now? Where do these companies get off? Copyrights? I dislike cola advertising and not seeing the logo many times daily is almost impossible. Most countries they have it pasted up everywhere, you name it, even the TV and audio versions are sent on radio waves through my body, and tin hat, day and night without my permission. Repetitive imprints in memory against my will, brainspam in the human cloud, Unpaid for Adwords of the mind. Hundred and twenty five years of it man and boy!! The twice sold Cola-Cola Company of dubious old west legal origins, Protecting their copyrights.. Huh!! **spits** Sonny Bono, Mickey Mouse Protection Act **again**  Darn it must be public domain by now!

® Genericized Trademarks Inc, © 2011.
The views of the author are non defamatory, a commentary on art, which occurs frequently in the context of parody and satire. Everyday, each of us encounters at least 1,500 trademarks and up to 30,000 if we visit a supermarket. Second-Cola Rules!!

[How many of us are really actively build and testing mesh?]

Well I've slowed up a bit now but was fully on the case for some months.

 

I reported some bugs that I thought worth bothering the Devs about most seem too trivial when they are still working hard on show stoppers and server stuff. With all our patience I am sure tuning and code clean up will iron out most problems and the whole system will continue to evolve.

Onwards and Upwards. You all Rock!

O' for more time off )

[3ds Max 2012 Workflow]

it works here, maybe its fixed now?

I wearing a textured mesh avy straight from 2012

In the exporter I used 'media and entertainment'.

The ony thing i changed was the axis to z up.

standard material with bitmap

max 2012:  no service packs
version: 2012.1
build: 20110303

[Messiah and rigged mesh]

Rig first and dont rotate might work thats what I had to do in max with the old skeleton. Hope you find it soon without too much frustration. I may be some time,, as I am way behind you trying to work out where evrything is. )

Finding it quite confusing so far, whenever I go to the setup tab all the bones move around but in all other tabs it looks right. wasnt like that yesterday. Anyway if i can work this UI out I might even be able to have a go at blender.  Lol

 

[Messiah and rigged mesh]

Thanks Wiz

The BVH doesnt have any data in the animation frames, the file is just to import the bones. I only applied x 100 to make the skeleton a good working size for the viewport. Like the blender export py fix.

Good news for us you are here. Do you have plans for a 'Messiah_SLAV'? scripting seems to be in C

[Messiah and rigged mesh]

I made this skeleton which imports with Messiah's native BVH importer/parser. It seems that a Messiah BVH needs to have tabs and spaces between number data also some filler frames rather than nothing.

How does this compare to your file? I havn't done a test upload to SL yet as I am new to the app and just working out the skinning process but it looks right on its side facing the same way as the maya one. I took the data from the viewers avatar_skeleton.xml file and multiplied by 100 so the size was usable.

messiahSLbones.bvh

[Messiah and rigged mesh]

Jackai, this looks like the rotation problems that max and maya users were having at the start of the public mesh beta. If you look up the old forum archives maya best practice you should find a link to the maya skeleton fbx, it may help you work out whats going on. To import properly it was on it's side and rotated 90 degrees in the app. 3ds Max was the same but also had a world Zup axis issue. I don't think its much use rotating the bones after they are linked unless the traslations/xforms are reset to zero.

In the DAE you may be able to adjust using the SID translation tags inside the   <library_visual_scenes> section

Keep at it and good luck!

 

 

[Does Google 3D Warehouse - Terms of Service mean what i think it means?]

Looks like we can use warehouse content then,  I expect some will object, but with full atribution to the builder why not. Those terms look  clear enough. 

hehehe  :: Dump.wharehouse() >> SL.Asset.Serv  -  wheres the API.? nice little convert and  mashup script project for someone 

[Ya know Mesh Import shouldn't take more than a week and this is month 6]

Ha Ha Ha!  got to love this ranking system if I complain enough times I might even make 'Contributor'

[Meshmixer, free toy]

Heres a free toy thats lots of silly fun and easy for mesh noobs.

It saves collada files that import to the mesh beta.

http://www.meshmixer.com/index.html