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Gaia Clary

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  1. ortiga Waco wrote: arton sculpted prims allow a total of 1024 verticies, you would divide this number by 4 to get the number of poly's on a sculpt which is 256. 256x32 (the number of sculpts allowed on a vehicle not 30, that changed a few months ago with havok7) and you get 7680. AKA your suv there has twice as many poly's as a sculpt car would not vise versa. Sorry, but your calculation is wrong and i would like to give you a correction and allow me to add a bit more of background information: A standard Sculptie has always 1024 Faces (not vertices!) Due to the way how the underlaying mesh is constructed for sculpties (yes sculpties ARE meshes!) it can have at most 1089 vertices for planes (33*33 vertices) and at least 1024 vertices for torus (32*32 vertices). You can get smaller sculpties when you use viewer-2 for import. the smallest possible size for sculpties is 8*8 = 64 faces. But due to long (very long) standing bug in the used jpeg graphics libraries such small sculpties suffer from distortions and can not be uploaded lossless (even if the lossless checkmark is checked). Because sculpties use this very special mesh topology and because they use a fixed UV map they are very hard to texturize. Hence making sculpties IS a nightmare for 3D modellers. Face it. You just got used to them. 3D modellers outside of SL shake heads and run away screaming loud when i tell them what sculpties are about ;-) Meshes remove all constraints which are put on sculpties: You can have any number of verts/tris/quads/faces whatever you like most for your wording (ok, there is an upper limit of course). You can have your very own and special UV map which is mandatory to have if you want to make efficient(!) models. Thus constructing any model with meshes will in most cases be more efficient and in the absolute worst case be as efficient as a sculptie. The car example from earlier shows it exactly and its numbers are fully correct. Another very nice example has been shown to me a few months ago. It was a coffee mug made out of about 120 faces with meshes. And it looked better than its sculptie equivalent made out of 2 sculpties with 2048 faces in total. so in this case mesh was 20 times more efficient. Just a few numbers.
  2. Freshley Solo wrote: why doesn't dae files want to import into blender 2.57? because the Collada-part of Blender is not yet finished. They even can not fully EXPORT yet. rigged meshes are still not possible (status last week at least, not 100% sure about 2.57 but i guess we have to wait for 2.58)
  3. I just found how to change the "CTRL SHIFT z" setting back to "CTRL y": You can do that (change all other keyboard shortcuts) in User preferences -> input
  4. The GUI is very different and IMHO much more pleasing. For new blender users it is certainly much easier to use and easier to learn. For old users it is a bit like switching from viewer-1 to viewer-2. All so often i end asking myself where someting particular has moved. And hmmm, feature complete may be right, but at least weighted mesh export with Collada is still not finished (as far as i can tell, i did not test with the release) and that is a huge backdraw (in the moment). The keyboard shortcuts have not changed sooo much. There are some changes however. For me the biggest problem was the change of very prominent shortcuts like the "add new" shortcut changed from SPACE to "SHIFT a" "CTRL y" changed to "CTRL SHIFT z" . But after a transition period of a few days i am getting used to 2.57 and now i feel very comfortable with it. BTW you can customize the GUI to look very much like the old GUI. And indeed when you open old blend files then the arrangements of windows and buttons gets somewhat similar to what you where used from 2.4* (well, not the same but similar...) You can also tell blender to NOT use the old gui (checkmark in the open file selector) when you open an old blend file. And if you are working a lot with mixed build (meshes+sculpts+regular prims) then you might be pleased to know that primstar-2 will support regular prim builds (with an edit environment very similar to what you know from the SL-editor but inside blender) as well as sculpties. We do not yet know if it will be possible to add meshes to the upload function because we rely on an official API for that which does not (yet?) exist. So i would recommend to add blender-2.57 to your set of tools. ANd while i was creating this screen shot i learned that you can drag/drop blend files from the file explorer right in to the blender screen ;-)
  5. weighted meshes still seeem to not work. collada is not feature complete.
  6. hi all. http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-257/ this means primstar-2 will be available around the weekend. cheers, Gaia
  7. One more hint: When you have installed blender-2.49b on your system, you should NOT open the blend file that you created with blender-2.5. Instead of that do this: - open a new blend file. File -> Link and Append -> navigate to the 2.5 blend file and select the mesh you want to export. So you can work in blender-2.5 but export from blender 2.49 the "link" ensures that your 2.49 blend file is always automatically up to date with your changes form blender-2.5 ...
  8. Weighted meshes are broken in the blender-2.5 Collada-exporter. The developers are heavily working on getting it completed. But there will be no working Collada-exporter before blender-2.58. The only workaround i know is to use blender-2.49b which works perfectly. Maybe it is worthwhile to mention this article too : http://blog.machinimatrix.org/spikes-after-mesh-upload-to-sl/
  9. The first Primstar-2 official release will support mixed builds containing regular prims and sculpted prims. Of course you also can add meshes to the mix, but while the upload of regular prims and sculpted prims from blender to Second Life will be fully supported, the upload of meshes must still be done manually (via collada exports). I have asked Runitai a few months ago about this issue. But there is no official statement from LL yet and as long as we do not have an official API for mesh upload we can/will not support uploading them. But since meshes can be uploaded with intact scaling, you can of course upload the meshes through the official viewer and merge them back into the build by hand later. What other features would be of interest regarding meshes ? I have started collecting ideas. It would alsdo be nice to hear what kind of support you would like to see.
  10. I do not think there is a "best program" to work with, but there may be a program that fits best to your way of working. And maybe there is a program which comes with better documentation and make your life easier. (Maya has been constantly reported to have the best user documentation on the planet (Chosen Few will probably give a more detailed answer on that ;-) ) Concerning blender: Maybe you can give some hints about what features you need for your work ? And what troubles you have with blender ? Maybe at the end it turns out that your original decision already was the right one...
  11. Hi, all. Primstar-2′s sculptie features are almost complete! We are planning an early adopters program that’s installable on the official blender-2.57 Release. Of course this only has a small subset of the full features of Primstar-2 but is certainly enough to consider migrating to Blender 2.5. Currently we have the following features implemented: Sculptie Creation: Basic shapes creation (plane,cylinder,sphere,torus,hemi)U and V rotation on wrapped shapes (shifts the seams)Support for oblongs (sculptmap ratios n:m)Import from File (includes all basic shape creations settings)Two UV Layouts (for sculpt map and texture)Baker: Single sculpt map baking (produces optimised and finalised map)alpha channel preview (improved version)The details about the early adopters program can be found on the Machinimatrix Blog. Have Fun, Gaia
  12. When you bake a multi part object, then you can do this only in Object mode. When you bake in object mode then the UV-editor does not necessary show you any results at all. So this may already be your issue ? You can check if the sculptmaps have been baked as follows: for each part-object do the following : go to object mode right click on the part-object so it is the only selected part (shows a pink outline) go to edit mode look at the UV image editor. If you can see rainbow images for all your parts, then everything is OK for you. If you see a uniform dark grey image instead, then your sculptie has lost its association ot its sculptmap images. That happens sometimes especially when you have moved the blend file to another place. In that case the images can no longer be found by blender and it shows up with a dark grey image instead. your workaround: go to edit mode select all vertices (very imporant !!!) in the image editor: create -> new (select the correct width and height, 64*64 pixels for a standard sculptie) Now the image should have turned to black and the baker should work now again. If you see a uniform black image, then something very different is going on. In that case the baker tool was not able to bake the sculptmap. You should find an answer to why the baker failed in the Console window. Unfortunately the console window is very hidden on the MAC. Check in google how to open the console application if you do not know how to do it. And take care, sometimes the output to the console window might show up only after you have closed blender. Don't ask me why that is so ;-.( The most popular error here is that you have either deleted or destroyed the sculptie's UV-map. In that case your workaround is: go to object mode select the broken partial object Object -> Scripts -> Sculptify Objects (see warning at bottom!) Now you got a new UV-map. this map might NOT be the same as you had in first place depending on the history of your sculptmap. I.e. the tool examines the object at its current state and derives the best fitting UV-map for that one. If you have added/removed edge loops, then the UV-map will most probably differ from the original. And if your sculptmaps have been imported, then sculptify Objects may fail because the seams are not defined. And now we come into the very details. I hope that helps. If not, go and ask in the chat groups. Your best choices are: blender blender users blender jass/primstar (*) WARNING: It is very important to know which version of primstar you are using!!! For Primstar-1.0 and Primstar-1.1 and Jass-Pub: If you have the official primstar-1.0 or primstar-1.1,then you must delete the UVtexture named "sculptie" before you use sculptify Object. Then you must go to the UV-editor and rotate the entire map by 90 degrees, which is no fun when you are dealing with an oblong. For Jass-Pro and Jass-Magic: You must KEEP the UVTex if it is available! Then Sculptify-Objects does the necessary rotations as it needs.
  13. Jasmin Helstein wrote: I have done that allready, for nice edges you should do that anyway and the straight sculpts do look perfect. The rotating is what couses the bumps i think. You should consider to bake sharp edges into your textures instead of using collapsed edge-loops. Here is a more indepth article about why the edges do not look sharp by default, and why collapsing edge-loops make sharp edges: http://blog.machinimatrix.org/3d-creation/vertex-lighting-in-sl/ Instead of collapsing the edge-loops i propose to bevel them. mathematical streight edges are one of the reasons why Second Life sometimes looks like made of Lego-bricks ;-)
  14. This problem is directly related to the fact that the vertices of sculpted prims only have 256 possible locations along their bounding-box axes. This is so because the color channels are only 8 bit wide and thus can only contain numbers from 0 up to 255. Lets make an example. Here you see 3 cylinders made with a 3D editor: You now clearly see (click on image for details) how bad the endcaps can get when you do not take the sculptie grid into account. Please also note that the problem gets more and more apparent when the object bounding box gets longer and longer in one dimension (see the leftmost object). This is so because the 256 possible locations are uniformly distributed along the bouding box dimension. And thus the longer the dimension is the wider is the gap between 2 allowed locations along the grid. And the more apparent the problem shows up at the ends. Your best option to avoid this problem: Follow the sculptie grid when you do your modelling.
  15. Borst Borst wrote: Hello. I have a question: I know that Mesh is in the works, but if I wanted to use sculpties as well how would I do this for Mac? I have read countless instructions and I cannot for the life of me get anything to work. You have basically 3 options to go : Download the old primstar-1.0.0 from the Domino Website ( http://www.dominodesigns.info ) and follow the installation instructions. The MAC-version of primstar is very crashy, but you can get to a reasonable working system when you follow http://www.dominodesigns.info/node/95 Alternatively download the new primstar-1.1.0 . This release contains a port of a fix for MAC from the JASS-product line. The download link to primstar-1.1 can only be obtained from the JASS-shop in Second Life. Detailed informations can be found at http://blog.machinimatrix.org/jass/jass-2-3-6-pub. When you entered the Shop you will find the Primstar-1.1.0 distributor at your left side. the SLURL to the shop is http://slurl.com/secondlife/Jass/145/193/25 Alternatively you can always decide to download one of the JASS-products (pub, pro, magic) All jass-products are based on primstar-1.1.0 and purchasing or donating in the Jass-shop will directly help to develop primstar-2 for blender 2.5 Also note that the free jass-pub already contains a ready to go prepackage of blender-2.49b for MAC. Please note that Domino and me have joined forces to get primstar-2 ready to go. So you can treat us both as one ;-) Concerning merging of meshes: You can do that, but it is very tricky. When you do not know exactly how to keep the mesh "sculptie compatible" you better should not try it in first place. There are a few tutorials around which show basically how you can create complex objects out of one sculptie, but that is basically something very different from what you ask for. When you refer to meshes instead, then 2 objects joined into one mesh indeed will be recognized as one object... i hope that helps cheers, Gaia
  16. hmm. I am realy far from being an expert here. I have been playing a bit with animation in blender and i used the tentacolor blend file for that purpose because for blender 2.4 there is no bvh exporter built into blender (as far as i understand) So i was eager to learn more about that and opened the tutorial. But after reading through it i have a few questions: The tutorial does not describe how "retargetting" actually is done. At least i do not see where the bones from the original BVH-import get mapped to the bones needed for SL. Does a standard BVH file use the exact same bone set and relation as SL ? What if additional bones are involved ? Can they just be ignored in the SL character ? After preparing blender to work with the imported BVH, how can we export the BVH again for SL ?
  17. it looks like you have removed some edges from your object. This is a guess only. (Actually your mesh might have been constructed differently. I can't tell for sure if all the red edges are necessary): Look at your UV-map and check that it is intact and shows the entire regular mesh as it was generated when you created your sculptie.
  18. I too use the space navigator. However i am mostly using it for making small video snippets for my tutorials. There is only one caveat i can see: Almost ever when i am doing a longer smooth camera move, i get small "jumps" or "stutters". I can get this to a minimum when i disable all sorts of interruption like IM or local chat events. But there is almost ever a small hop once every few seconds (nothing constant, sometimes i can go for 10 seconds until it happens). I just wonder if i am alone with this or if i can optimize the configuration to get rid of this problem. The problem is most apparent with the SL-viewer-2 and it is least apparent with Kirsten's viewer (S21) And it has nothing to do with the graphics settings... Just to say it is very subtle, and maybe you won't even see it in every day usage. If someone happens to know more about it, i would gladly learn ;-) cheers, Gaia
  19. I can not reproduce your problem with primstar-1.1.0 nor with any of the Jass-products. I Kow that primstar-1.0.0 had issues with precision. Therefore i took special care about that in Jass. And meanwhile with primstar-1.1.0 the most apparent precision issues have been fixed too. Maybe it is worthwhile to update at least to primstar-1.1.0 ? Or maybe you make something very different when you create the sculptie in blender. Hence it would stil be interesting to take a look into the blend file. But i am almost sure, that the problem vanishes once you updated. I thought that i also have seen a note about python 2.6.5 having a more precise math module. So maybe just updating python would already fix your problem (that is just a weird guess though)
  20. hi. Thanks for the pointer. So you found a historic document from the exciting time when oblongs where just introduced and primstar was still called "The Domino Marama Scripts" ;-) However i think that in your particular build the problem should not appear like it does. Have you introduced any rotation in edit mode ? Or have you bended the object in some way ? I am just curious if it is a precision issue with the primstar baker or some other glitch. How can i reproduce it with primstar ? And which exact version of primstar have you used ?
  21. hmmm... i made a screen grab from the sculptmap and examined that. of course it had very bad quality, but it does not show any obvious errors. A screenshot from how your object looks alike in the SL-viewer might help. Maybe you can publish the sculptmap and maybe also the blend file. then we can tell you in 10 seconds what's up with your sculptie... two guesses: You forgot to check "lossless compession" while uploading ? You face an inside/out problem. ?
  22. Hi, Here is a first “production” video tutorial which shows that we now have a working prototype of Primstar-2 for blender-2.5. This is only the beginning. Many of the new functions are yet missing. So you can keep excited about what we will show you next time :smileywink: For more news you always can check out the news on http://blog.machinimatrix.org Have fun, Gaia & Domino
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