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Avant Scofield

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Posts posted by Avant Scofield

    UV map not importing correctly - Maya 2013

    in Mesh

    Posted

    I've had this happen to me several times now where the UV map simply breaks on upload. I've tried the default DAE exporter and tried FBX then converting and both produce the broken UVs. This seems to happen after baking textures.

    If I export as an OBJ and then reimport, then export to DAE or FBX, it works. However, now that I am working with a big scene that involves multiple meshes, I can't really use the OBJ fix I've been using in the past. Any ideas?

    Tranparency problems

    in Mesh

    Posted

    This is a known bug with rigged mesh. You can't have alpha layers on top of eachother as they act like invisiprims for many people. The skirt ruffles don't seem to need to be alphas, so make those 24-bit and it should fix.

    Maya 2013 supported mesh skeleton?

    in Mesh

    Posted

    You could try restoring Maya to default settings:

    1. Window>Settings/preferences>Preferences
    2. Edit>Restore Default Settings

    Then you'll probably need to change the world axis to Z in Preferences>Settings

    That fixed all the problems with the Standard Sizes 2012 file for me.

     

    • Like 1

    Male base mesh

    in Mesh

    Posted

    ghestheria Bromide wrote:

    I am trying to upload a male base mesh from blender 2.63 into second life, but I can not figure out how to make my whole avatar into a Scene file

    Select all > Save as Collada DAE ?

    ghestheria Bromide wrote:

    if this creation works, I will make a female version to upload and give all of my rights to Linden Labs

    mm.. wat?

     

     

    Maya Upload Problems / Hair Modeling

    in Mesh

    Posted

    Chosen Few wrote:

    Use two materials, rather than just one, and create two versions of your hair texure, one with alpha, and one without.  Apply the 24-bit version to most of the length of the hair, where you don't need transparency, and put the 32-but version only on the ends, where you do.

    I'm doing this already! :) The lower section with the alpha gets a little SL shadow on it showing the seam, but it's worth the payoff of having more alphas. Also, it can be a bit tricky to rig. I made the cut at the neck and it took quite a long time to get it to look okay when the head turns.

    Mesh Hair Transparency sorting

    in Mesh

    Posted

    JackRipper666 wrote:

    is there away I can tell SL what layers of hair I want on top and ones I want shown underneath? 

    Short answer: Nope. You can try adding the textures in order, from furthest away to closest, but I haven't been able to get this to work.

    Long answer:

    http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Possible-work-around-for-alpha-sorting-problem/td-p/1227445

    http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Alpha-sorting-glitch-within-a-mesh/td-p/1109161/page/2

    http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Alpha-sorting/m-p/418761#M1741

    Maya Upload Problems / Hair Modeling

    in Mesh

    Posted

    The alpha glitch happens in the newest default viewer and newest Firestorm. All my friends I contacted were aware of it. One person said that it only affected water and "png textures" but oh well. I've cut these down and pulled them closer to the hair so people experiencing this glitch won't notice it nearly as much as in my last picture.

    And I do appreciate all your points on poly modeling Chosen, though like I said, it's not completely alien to me, I just prefer it for hair. I do think working with polygons is superior for pretty much everything besides hair and maybe snakes :) Lattices and deforms just don't give me the same results and ease as pulling around NURBS curves. With isoparms I can evenly distribute the density of polys as I see fit without having to pull them manually. Then, after converting, I can work with polys to remove faces and fine tune it.

    The advantage I can see polys having is creating a hair like the one Raster posted, out of planes. I'm aware this is usually how hairs are made in games, but I don't think they work so well for SL because of the alpha issues. Whether SL is better than other engines at sorting or not, it's proved painful in my experience and I'm sure that Raster's hair would be switching between visible layers all over itself in SL.

     

     

    Maya Upload Problems / Hair Modeling

    in Mesh

    Posted

    So, apparently alpha textures become ugly invisiprims when they're used on rigged mesh? Is that why I haven't seen any messy hairs done in mesh yet? Ugh :(

    wtf.jpg

     

    Well it looks like this lovely glitch is here to stay for the foreseable future. So my next task is cutting these prims and pulling them closer to the non transparent hair pieces to hide it as much as possible.

    Maya Upload Problems / Hair Modeling

    in Mesh

    Posted

    That hair looks great!

    I didn't doubt at all that it could be started from polys, but I personally work much faster with NURBS and I know the converter can produce very similar results, minus having to delete some faces after the conversion, which I'm guessing you must of had to do as well anyway?

    Also correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this hair wasn't made for SL. Another reason I forgot to mention that my hair might be a little higher on the polys is because of SL's alpha rendering bugs out when we layer alpha textures. In order to get a nice messy hair look I'm having to layer pieces on top of eachother. I have worked around this in some areas.

    I agree that 20-30k is too high and so is my 15k. My main issue at the moment is hidden faces. It's quite tedious to go in and delete all faces that are overlapping and Maya's "Clean up" tool only works for lamina faces, which are directly crashing. If I could find a script that deleted all overlapping faces I think my current hair would be a lot closer to 8k! I've used the avatar head to delete parts I had extended into the scalp. If anyone has any suggestions for these overlapping faces that would be much appreciated :)

    Maya Upload Problems / Hair Modeling

    in Mesh

    Posted

    Chosen Few wrote:

    I'm glad it was just a borked scene, and not something more serious.

    As for the sizing issue, I'm guessing you probably haven't changed your working units in Maya from the default centimeters.  SL wants to see meters, so if you don't change it, your model will be 100 times too small, in-world. To stop that from happening, you can reset the working units to meters in your Maya preferences (Window -> Settings/Preferences -> Preferences -> Settings category), or you can edit it after the fact in the .dae file.   Or if it doesn't bother you, just resize in-world after upload.

    I've been playing with both that and the units in the exporter. The Standard Sizing Initiative downloads I use for rigging are set in centimeters so it's been a bit of a hassle but I've finally got that all sorted and I'm uploading at the right size now :)

     

    Chosen Few wrote:

    First, I'd highly recommend you work directly with polygons, from start to finish.  Otherwise, you're only making things a lot harder than they need to be, and you're creating a ton of extra work for yourself. 

    I do appreciate your concern here, but I really think NURBS are the way to go for hair. I'm easily able to create smooth curves by only grabbing a few points and every adjustment is immediately smoothed, yet still editable. I have done poly modeling and would definitely use it for lots of other models, but for now I'm sticking to NURBS for hair.

     

    Chosen Few wrote:

    To give you an idea of how easy poly modeling is, you could have solved your curvature problem simply by inserting a couple of edge loops, rather than doing the whole conversion from NURBS all over again.  Alternatively, you could have just moved some of the existing edge loops, in the same manner that you're probably used to moving isoparms when you work with NURBS.  (To select an edge loop in Maya, simply double-click on any edge in the loop.)

    Well, now that I know it will triangulate based on my isoparms, I shouldn't need to re-convert ever again :) Thank you for this info though - good to know for poly modeling.

     

    Chosen Few wrote:

    Also, so you know, it would behoove you to work with quads, rather than tris, for many reasons.  One is that Maya isn't always able to determine edge loops with tris.  Another is that when you need to subdivide, tris can get all kinds of messy.  It's best to keep your geometry as clean, and easily manipulable, as possible while you're working.  Once the model is done, go ahead and triangulate it, but not before.

    This model was done, which is why I was converting it to polys.

     

     

    Chosen Few wrote:

    I also have to point out that your model looks extremely poly-heavy, for what it is.  Because your source surface was NURBS, your polygon distribution is very even, in both directions.  As a result, you've a ton of polys where you don't need them.  For example, you don't need nearly as many sections around the circumference as you've got.  You could safely eliminate at least half to two thirds of them, and circumference would still read as round.

    Additionally, the areas you labeled as "yuck" and "ew" and whatnot look perfectly acceptable for any real-time model.  That's about the level of curvature one would expect to see in those same areas on any professionally created game model.  Consider how small those areas will be on people's screens, and that they'll be surrounded by additional objects (the other locks of hair).  Nobody's ever going to notice that they're a little bit angular.

    The edge loop your "mmm..." arrow is pointing directly at does not need to exist.  The span that that loop transects is more or less straight.  If you were to remove the loop, the model's appearance would not change in any noticeable way.  There are a couple of others that could maybe go as well, but that one is the most glaring.

    All told, you could likely reduce the poly count by up to 75%, and the model would look just as good as it currently does.  That would also allow you plenty of overhead to increase the curvature in the "yuck/ew" area, if you really feel it's a must.

    The reason I'm working with this amount of sections is that I really do want a super smooth surface. I'm a huge gamer and I understand that the yuck/ew areas are standard polys in a lot of games, but not all (see: Far Cry 3). I have tried removing sections around the circumference to save polys, but it truly is noticeable in-world. This picture is also a little deceiving as it may read as a small strand of hair, when it actually scales across half the head profile. Even when at the default zoomed out level in-world, I could notice these points sticking out and I know it's something customers will complain about, especially when they compare with their other hairs.

    Also, the span you're looking at where the "mmm" is pointing is deceiving again. It is actually farther away than you think. This hair piece is kind of fat and that span is just as separated as all the other vertical spans.

    The other issue is texturing. The NURBS to poly converter is great for hair textures in that it keeps a generally even surface area. It would become quite a pain to adjust hair textures, not to mention cause more texture pollution as a trade off for poly pollution. The full hair model is about 15k vertices, and I know for a fact that a lot of the popular mesh hairs in SL right now are 20-30k.

    Once I finish rigging, I'll post some pics at different tessellation levels or I could show you in-world.

     

    Chosen Few wrote:

    While we're on the subject of reducing poly counts, here's a quick public service announcement...

    I agree with your PSA and I'm doing my best to follow suit as I learn. I'm having trouble believing people really brag about high polycounts, especially when there are entire communities dedicated to working with as few polys as possible. Funny and sad if it's true though.

     

    Maya Upload Problems / Hair Modeling

    in Mesh

    Posted

    Aha, I've figured this one out on my own :)

    If anyone else stumbles in here wondering how. I went into the settings for Convert NURBS to Polygons and changed the tesselation options to "per span #" instead of "per surf #". Then just need to make sure there's more isoparms in the areas you want more smoothing.

    Maya Upload Problems / Hair Modeling

    in Mesh

    Posted

    So it looks like it was just that scene as I quickly made a new one and did my same process. I work with NURBS, apply some deforms and pull around the geometry, then convert to polys. The new scene still uploaded super tiny, but when I stretched it out, it wasn't a jumbled mess like the hair model. All parts were in place and not skewed on any axis.

    My next fear is rigging/weightmapping the hair in Maya and still using Blender to export. Hopefully this won't be an issue, but it probably will! :P

    Before I get there, I do have another question. Since I am working with NURBS, the vertices at the tighter bends in my hair start to really show when I convert to polys, unless I crank up the tesselation/smoothing for the whole model, which would be polluting! Is there a way to add more vertices just around the tighter bends?

    Here's a picture:
    hairprobs.jpg

    Maya Upload Problems / Hair Modeling

    in Mesh

    Posted

    At this point it seems easier to just export to Blender. On my most recent Maya > Blender > SL upload there weren't any differences between the Maya and SL models. So hopefully this will continue to work and will be my upload method.

    To answer your questions though: I had the standard options in the exporter, except that I tried a few different units, none of which solved the super tiny upload problem. When I select all the nodes, it only shows one in the attribute editor, which it always has. I don't have anything parented or grouped in my hierarchy.

    I'm going to bed now cause it's late here, but tomorrow I'll try exporting to obj and testing with a new scene to see if I still get problems.

    Maya Upload Problems / Hair Modeling

    in Mesh

    Posted

    So I am able to import into Blender and export to SL from there, but there are some slight differences to my model . I'm left wondering if they are because of this extra importing/exporting or if that's how it would look directly exported from Maya :/

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