Herpes Melodie

I'm having the same.

I'm such a genius! :matte-motes-sunglasses-2: Thanks again everyone.

Hm well, if I understood Drongle right (and do correct me if I am mistaken) a linkset made out of 4 objects means that the lowest possible LI is 2, right? (.minimum serverweight = 0.5 x 4 = 2 LI)

Thanks, that clears things up for me.

I had a question regarding land impact with meshes. I figured I could answer this question myself with testing and testing and testing, but I rather have a full explanation to make sure I understand everything properly, without confusion. I tried the wiki page as well, but couldn't find the answer to this specific question either. Land impact of mesh X is decided by different factors (the highest value of download weight, physics weight or server weight) Now lets say mesh X has 0.200 on each factor. If I duplicate mesh X in-world and link both meshes to each other, they'd have 0.400 on each factor, right? 0.400 is below 1.00 thus these two meshes, linked, would result in 1 land impact. If these two would be duplicated again, I'd have 4x a 0.200 mesh, thus the linkset will have 0.800 on each factor, thus it will cost 1 prim. Is this correct (it almost sounds too simple) or is there some mathemetic formula going on behind the screens?

Not exactly solved, but it works for now. I switched to brute force (Global Illumination -> Final Gather -> Use cache) It's a different method of calculation and much more time consuming. It disables caching and performs a new final gathering for every shading point. The results however, are better, superior I might say, from what I have seen so far. Irradiance (the default setting) caches the irradiance at selected points in the scene and uses interpolation in between the points. If you have the time and have a moment available, I would appreciate it if you tested my scene yourself and check out the results. It might be something on my end.

Problem solved.

Hiya everyone, I am running against some issues with the Turtle Plugin in Maya 2012. As you can see on the image, the shadows are kinda messed up. I have tried different settings, adding more rays, a higher anti analizing value, but no luck. Below are the settings I used. Settings that aren't mentioned below are set to default values. Sampling, Min and max sample rate, 1. Global Illumination, Enable Global Illumination, on. Primiry GI, Final Gather. Secondary GI, None. Enable Caustics, on. Final Gather, rays: 5000. Ambient occusion settings, Influence, 1.000 Envirnoment, GI Envirnoment, Sky Light. Sky Color, White.

Cool, thanks both. Thats just what I needed. Thanks again!

I was wondering if there's a possibility to send an IM, by e-mail. I know one can reply to offline IMs that end up in the e-mail box, but what about sending e-mails directly as IMs to people in-world? I checked wiki for answers, but couldn't find any. Thanks in advance. :)

About the LODs and mesh optimalisation for SL in general, I have a question and I am not sure what to do. If I make a small mesh object, lets say, a chair, and I am going to make and upload LODs, how and what should I prioritize? Should I go for a) usability, meaning, everyone is capable in seeing a chair, even on lowest graphical settings b) a low PE at the cost of a not visible LOD4 Certain situations allow to use LOD1 (with the highest quality) for all four LODs while maintaining a below 1.00 PE. However, sometimes you end up with a) LOD1 till LOD 3 with the highest graphical quality and a 3 vertex triangle on LOD4 and with a below 1.00 PE b) LOD 1 till LOD 3 with the highest graphical quality and a *reasonable* custom made mesh for LOD4 and with a PE somewhere between 2 and 5. What would you pick? Personally, but this is just my own opinion, I would prefer a low PE above objects being visible on the lowest LOD. Reason being: even if the object would be visible, it wouldn't even be properly visible, thus I rather don't see it all. With structures and bigger mesh like pillars and fountains etc it's an entirely different situation because you don't want to walk against objects just because you can't see them. Everyone's thoughts would be highly appreciated.

Thanks both. The reason I asked about it, was because I want to sell stuff with light maps included. Full shading bakes don't work for this particular scenerio. The trick you mentoned Chosen (applying a lightmap in an adjustment layer) might do the job as well, haven't thougt about this one. I'll check it out. Again, thank you all.

How does that work exactly? The overlay blending mode usually (over) saturates, when using pure white, on textures. It highly depends on the actual texture itself. Screen adds white values, but doesn't brighten/lighten the actual color itself. Same goes for mulitply and hardlight. Hardlight is basically a combination of screen and multiply. To see what I mean, try using a brightness adjustment layer on an image and play with the settings. If you darken/lighten it, it gets darker/lighter in a different way than how it would be if you'd use white on screen, or black on multiply. When you bake out a texture map with light effect baked in, you see this effect as well, just like how you would brighten an image like I described above with a brightness adjustment layer, and I want to reproduce this effect in Photoshop. I could be wrong though, but it just doesn't look right when I play with the blending modes on lightmaps in Photoshop.

Hi all, I was wondering how I should create light maps, in Maya, that can be used in Photoshop by using the blending modes. Like ambient occlusion maps, I want seperate light maps that can be used in conjunction with texture maps. Thanks in advance

Heya Drongle, I wasn't aware of all this, but I don't understand the fragmentation thingy. It would be much appreciated if you gave a further explanation! Nalates, this is what I do:Lets say you a detailed mesh. With details, think about some extruded rows of faces in and out etc. A roman pillar would be a perfect example. Lets assume you made a highly detailed roman pillar. Your highest LOD (with the most detail) will be your mesh for up close in-world, obviously. Now lets say you want to create the other LODs while using your highest LOD as a base. All those details in your pillar are made with faces, many of them that is. And those faces are made with edges. So if you would make a lower LOD of your pillar, you could delete the edges that are making the details, which reduces the amount of faces. This is where the 'pinning' is important. Depending on how you UVed your pillar, you could pin the borders of the sides of your pillar (I hope this makes sense) and remove the edges inside the borders of the sides of your pillars to get rid of the detail. By doing this you a) keep your UV layout similar because you are not moving UV pieces (shells) around b) reduce the cost for SL. I hope this makes any sense! And if I'm wrong, do correct me.

What I noticed when creating my own LODs (and I'm only speaking about meshes, haven't been actively playing with sculpts) is that they are 1) cheaper 2) look better. Especially if you create low resolution meshes, your lower LODs will have hard edges etc but this is something you barely notice from a distance. SL however, when it makes LODs, will distort and deform your mesh it seems into something badly.

Heya Gaia, thanks for your quick reply, this answered my question and led to another one! I know that you're a Blender guru, and I know that I used to spam you with Blender questions, but at some point in my life I saw the light and ran to the evil Maya side and never looked back. But perhaps you can answer my question anyways. My question: When making a mesh, would it be adviceable to start modelling the high LOD, UV it and from there start to remove some edgeloops to lower the resolution down? Not sure how things are in Blender, but in Maya when you remove an edge, or a complete edgeloop/ring it updates in the UV editor as well. So by doing this you could lower the resolution down of your mesh while keeping the remaining UVs (the ones that create the specefic LOD) in place. Is this an idea?

I probably should have known this, but I don't haha so here it goes. What's the workflow of creating textures for different LOD meshes? If I create (I use Maya) seperate meshes to optimise LODs, I would guess I need to make seperate UV layouts as well for each mesh. This means that every mesh and every LOD is using an own texture, right? So basically you create 3 meshes, all 3 seperately UV'ed and textured or am I missing something?

Thanks Max, this will be helpful! Catwise, the wiki link appears empty to me

Heya everyone, I'm thinking about playing with the whole rigging idea but have no clue of where to start. I'm using Maya and have zero experience when it comes to animation. I'm about to do some tuts about how and what rigging exactly is and how it works, but I was wondering which things I need to watch out when specifically rigging models for SL. (I have been looking on Wiki and the forums for information about this, but couldn't find any.) If somebody could give me a short summary, I'd be happy. And do I need to start with downloading .obj files by looking for them in-world somewhere in the menu, or the 'bot' file from wiki?

Nevermind it, works again. Not sure what the problem was but I restarted Maya, opened the same scene and everything works.

Heya all, As the topic says, I am trying to apply materials to specefic faces. What I do is, 1) go to componement type 2) choose the "select faces" option 3) select some faces of my geometry 4) go to hypershade, hold right mouse button and choose "assign material to selection" Instead of getting my material assigned to the selection (the faces) my whole object receives the material D: What am I doing wrong?

Heya Hanahhh, Send a notecard with your name in it and a tut request to me in-world to make sure I wont forget you and expect a detailed tutorial coming your way in a while. I will drop you an IM when the tut is on the interwebz. Not sure when though, working on preparations for a new business I'm about to start. And it will come with a blog as well where I cover lots of SL-related Photoshop things such as photography and texture cloth, etc. Just drop me a note! As for now, when making cloth there are 2 things you need to focus on: 1) It must look realistic. 2) The design itself, must be good. To get a bit further into details; what exactly is realistic cloth? Well, 1) it must be shaded nicely to prevent the flat look (light and shadows) 2) realistic details such as wrinkles (leave a reply if you need help with this and I will post a step by step here in this topic) but also seams, highlights on, for example, metal pieces such as buttons, etc. The material you are trying to create, must look realistic as well. For example, you dont want to use a carpet for a leather jacket, etc - duh! And other things, depening on the complexity on your work. How to create a nice design? You could get inspired by using real life sources, which can be fun, but a bit boring imo because everytime you do this, your work process will be the same. Another option would be creating an own color palate (google for a color weel, read some articles on wiki about color theory) and you could download pre-made brushes, vectors, etc or make it yourself. When it comes to illustrations I would suggest you go for premade stuff - do credit when needed! - unless you have some awesome drawing skills. And compare. Just compare your work with top notch designers. Lay your work next to them, litterly. Snapshot something in-world, import it into Photoshop and lay your work right next to it. What's the difference? Oh and another thing that is very important, though I havent tested this recently, find out what SL is doing with your textures whenever you upload them. For example, something on overlay, in Photoshop, on 40% transparancy and 50% transparancy doesn't look the same. In SL however, it will, I think. Keep this in mind.

I got mines to work =) Not sure if this would help you as well, but what I did was deleting and clearing everyting on your pc that is related to the SL viewers. In my case I had to uninstal snowglobe, the default SL 2 viewer end the mesh client itself. After that, go to your users/application data folder (its hidden on default in windows) and browse to your SL folder. Clean that map as well. Then I downloaded the mesh client again instead of using the client I had downloaded before, though I doubt it would have made a difference but it was worth a try none the less.And now it worked. ) I just logged back offline because the region I was in was about to restart and I couldnt tp to another region. G'luck and let us know what happens!

This is ridiculous lol, I still cant log in. I was planning to do a fresh windows installation one of these days anyways, might as well do it now then. I will give a shout if I still have log in issues.