Sae Luan

Updating this post because it comes up in searches pretty high for the video. Even though it's outdated, after high demand, I've put the video BACK up. Please update bookmarks and information to the following URL. http://cutepoison.net/tutorials/maya-tutorials/rigging-mesh-in-maya/

I don't do animations out of Maya, so you'll need to wait for someone else to come along to help you with that. You say there are two skeletons, I'm assuming you mean the avatar weight source and the actual skeleton. I'm not sure how those two things apply to making animations, again, someone else will have to come along to answer that. However, for rigging clothing/avatars, the skeleton you bind with is the colored skeleton, and you can utilize the avatar weight source by copying the skin weights from it to the clothing/avatar mesh. There may be more you can do with it, but I'm not aware of any other use. Hope that helps a little.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6003454/Standard%205%20sizes.zip

I am in desperate search for a good prefab designer to do my next store. The work done for me must be exclusive and not something you've sold previously or plan to sell to anyone but me. You will work loosely with my concepts, but will maintain a decent amount of freedom to be creative. Please contact me in world if you are interested via notecard. I will not entertain anyone who doesn't have some kind of portfolio to show me. Working in mesh is a MAJOR plus, so please be sure to mention to me if this is your preferred method. Please outline your fee structure in your notecard. Thank you, Sae Luan

Thanks for helping me understand this more! I had no idea.

Thank you. When I have the time to really put into my UVs I also do the move and sew with the edges of the UV borders. It tends to take me quite a while though on some models. With most mesh, I tend to use planar projections on any areas it makes sense to do so on then use automatic on areas that are harder for me to nab with the planar method, then go back in with moving and sewing. Sometimes this goes quick, and sometimes, not so much. I wish it were quicker for me. These items are very much a result of simply not having enough time to devote to that part of the release before event deadlines. I had NO idea that it adds to a higher download cost to have the extra islands. That's very good information to have on hand, and I'm going to keep that in mind when constrained for time in the future. Perhaps I can work in at least a bit of going through and minimizing with sewing. I learned to UV map through digital tutors. The course I watched that was specifically over UV mapping was very thorough and informative, however, as I watch courses over other things, I see sometimes the instructor will simply apply an automatic mapping on things and not bother with moving and sewing. The most recent I noticed this on was a course called "Creative Development: Baking Light Maps for Game Environments in Maya and mental ray with A. Gabriel Betancourt." It often makes me wonder why some courses don't bother with sewing the UVs into something more understandable and usable. Perhaps it's not as important to the specific project or maybe automatic mapping is just used to cut down the time on these courses that are not specifically teaching UV mapping. Unwrella sounds very nice, and I'm going to go check that out as soon as I can get back to my work computer again. When I first started learning about UV mapping i often thought to myself something like that would be so much easier to work with. That price sounds very reasonable as well. Thanks so much for letting me know about Unwrella.

Hello. Thanks for the response. These are things I know and have done in the past. It is even something I stress on when someone comes to me for help with Maya in general. Both of these items were automatically mapped, then adjust using the layout options once in the UV map to save time on my end due to a lot of RL being busy and SL event deadlines. This is something that did occur to me, however with a decent enough bleed, I didn't feel I should have to go back and redo my UVs by hand when I already am short on time. It's a good point though, and one that should be noted for anyone else having issues.

Thanks for the info. I tend to do my UVs fairly close together, so I'm having to redo the UV layout a tad on part of my newer mesh to allow for a higher bleed during baking. I assumed the issue today wasn't due to my own error as I've used these settings countless times in the past and not had this issue (or a complaint for that matter), but it did make me realize that someone else could be seeing the texture incorrectly from time to time, so I've opted to start making sure the bleed is much higher, possibly pairing that up with a solidify in PS as you suggested.

Hello everyone. First, I understand what generally causes this issue. I always bake my textures 5 pixels outside the UV lines to try to make sure it doesn't happen. Today, though, when I logged on and uploaded a new mesh, I noticed there was black lines through all my texture work on the mesh where the UVs meet up. Thinking I had bumped my settings in Maya back down to where it didn't bake over the UV edges, I went and checked the settings, and sure enough, the textures are baking over the edges by 5 pixels still. Switching back over into SL to continue trying to figure out what was going on, I noticed an older mesh of mine was doing the same thing, and this mesh for sure didn't do it before to me or anyone else (I have countless photos from bloggers as well as my own snapshots and ad for referencing back). I relogged like 3 times, then suddenly I was no longer seeing the lines. I decided to be sure and sent the meshes off to 4 different people, all said they see the lines, and two of the people relogged and were still seeing the lines. After countless relogs, though, I cannot duplicate the lines. It happened for about an hour for me, but is now gone, yet everyone else is still seeing them. So I'm curious.. did anyone else experience this today with any of their meshes? Also, what is the standard pixel area to extend your textures outside of the UV borders? I always thought it was around a 3, so I thought doing mine at a 5 I would be safe from having this issue. If I'm simply not baking or extending the textures far enough past the UV borders, why would it be some people are seeing my items wrong and others are not? o.O Anyway, here is what they see and what I saw at first - and here is what I see now and no one else can see-

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Standard-Sizing-Package/2894727 Listing has a download link in the description to working maya scenes with all standard sizing avatars, plus defaults, along with the skeleton... all the avatar sizes are positioned on the skeleton correctly, so it's super simple to build your mesh items and expect them to fit (male or female) with very little error.

Feel free to contact me if you need any additional help on the rigging process and such.

You will have to manually resize it for each shirt, however if you use the sizing kit I link to on my rigging in Maya tutorial, it's a snap. http://saeluan.com/tutorials/maya/rigging-mesh-in-maya/ Once you get done exporting one standard size shirt, you'd simply detach the skin, turn off the size avatar you previously rigged to, and turn on the size avatar you want to rig for. Make a few minor adjustments to the mesh to fit the new size, then bind skin, import skin weights, and you're ready to export again! For me it only takes about 5 minutes per size.

I have since done a video tutorial outlining the steps...for anyone else who finds this. http://saeluan.com/tutorials/maya/rigging-mesh-in-maya/

Thanks for the feedback. I found out today I have a Windows hosting plan. Since WordPress is a PHP based program it functions best in a Linux environment. That's what I was able to find out through support. The reason I didn't contact support in the first place was due to a couple of bad past experiences with them, but I decided after trying literally everything else that I would contact them one last time before changing hosting providers. Hopefully their suggestion to change my hosting account to a Linux account will work. Personally, I had no idea of anything to do with Linux or Windows as far as hosting goes.. I just bought what seemed to fit what I needed. Luckily the change over to Linux is free.

I'm hoping someone can share some advice with me. I started out back years ago by purchasing a domain name through godaddy for a blogspot blog I had. As time went on, I switched to a wordpress blog and upgraded my godaddy accounts for a ton of stuff and started hosting my blog with godaddy. It worked fine for a while, but for over 2 weeks, I've barely even been able to log into my admin panel for my wordpress. I get this - I get this when just loading the website often now too. I'd say about 75% of the time. IF I am able to log into the admin page, once I click to add a new post or anything else in the admin panel, it will go to this page about 95% of the time. I'm super annoyed right now. I've tried everything godaddy suggests about slow loading wordpress installs, and I've gotten nowhere. I'm starting to think I need to change hosting providers. So, anyone who has any experience with any of this.. any steps I can take to fix this issue? If godaddy is just crap, which I'm being led to believe, who should I be hosting with? Thanks so much.