[Alpha Masking vs. Alpha Blending in basic lighting?]

Thank you, Whirly! That is precisely the issue I am experiencing. Jira can be a bit of a labyrinth for the uninitiated.

[Alpha Masking vs. Alpha Blending in basic lighting?]

EDIT: whoops, to clarify, all of this is when under LL water

After searching Jira and coming up empty, I'm trying to understand if this is a bug or not.

Alpha blending works with Advanced lighting on and off, but textures I have that use alpha MASKING do not display transparency with advanced lighting turned off. Any parts of the texture that are supposed to be transparent turn white.

When reading the SL wiki page about the different alpha modes I didn't see this listed as a caveat of alpha masking. Is there a solution to this issue I'm unaware of, or am I basically going to have to use alpha blending if I want to ensure that an item with transparency looks correct in both lighting modes?

[Zbrush into Secondlife]

You're welcome!

For learning more about topology, and preparing ZBrush models for Second Life, take a look at this (fantastic) thread by Codewarrior Congrejo, especially this post, which talks about ZBrush specifically.

[Topology - the often neglected entity]

Code, this thread is a treasure! I am full of grattitude for the massive ammount of time it took to prepare and share this teaching with everybody else. Thank you for taking the time to provide examples and ample illustrations. I'm still reading through this and learning so much! Anyone looking to create with mesh would do well to read this thread.

Sorry to give the thread a bump, but I felt compelled to post and say thank you. :matte-motes-bashful-cute-2:

[Zbrush into Secondlife]

As I understand it, going from Zbrush directly into Second Life isn't possible without properly preparing your mesh for second life. The detailed models you'll produce with Zbrush will have millions and millions of polygons. You might make the most beautiful, life-like apple, but it would bring SL to a halt!

When bringing a model into second life, topology and mesh density (how many verticies) are really important considerations. If it's a subject that's still new to you, I reccomend reading up on it!

What I reccomend is to use Zbrush to create the fine details on your model, "bake" them into a texture map, and then upload a low-poly version of the mesh into SL that uses the texture you created through Zbrush. There are many steps in that process, and keeping it "simple" is difficult, because it is challenging.

Here is a tutorial I wrote about getting things from ZBrush to Second Life, but it's two years old now, and there might be better ways to do some of the things I mention in the tutorial.

Good luck! It is difficult, but worth the effort. I'm still learning about it.

 

[Standard Sizes]

I have been wondering about this too! I am making my first venture into the world of rigged mesh and trying to figure out what to do about the size.

I'm rigging in blender so I can't use fancy resizing scripts, but having access to them sizes is really helpful. Thank you!

[Does LL care about game rips?]

They probably care, but the rips likely go up quicker than they have the resources to take them down.

Also, where does one draw the line with material like that? I've seen many avatar accessories that borrow heavily from certain video games and anime, yet are not outright rips. Do those get taken down too?

Its probably a complicated issue, and definitely would be lots of bad press. But as a creator that spends a lot of time and effort creating original stuff, it makes me mad to see these people proffiting off other people's hard work. Consumers know they are too, but they don't care about the ethics — they just want a Mass Effect avatar, so they buy it anyway.

[Problem with a mesh pants!]

Can you explain more clearly what "comes sticked" means? Maybe take a screenshot?

The space between the legs are probably not weighted correctly… but it's hard to explain simply and quickly. Rigging is tricky!

[Clothing made in ZBrush…]

These are some great suggestions! I'll give them a try. Thanks so much.

[Blender Plugins]

Thanks for the explanation.

I actually build primarily in mesh anyway, I find it a lot more versatile. I skipped the sculpt generation, so it's good to know I didn't miss much.

[Blender Plugins]

I haven't spent more than $30L on any mesh model I've uploaded so far (mostly attachments/clothing items). The average I've spent is about $23L, and the models are fairly detailed.

what about rendering cost? i'd suspect that mesh is a lot heavier on others viewers than sculpties?

[Blender Plugins]

So am I to understand that sculpties are made obsolete by mesh? Do they have any value still?

[Clothing made in ZBrush…]

I'd be grateful for any ideas you all have on this, maybe I'm missing something?

I created a shirt in Zbrush (from the ruth avatar,) but I extracted the shirt to a separate ztool and did detailed scuplting there.

My idea was to do my sculpting, then project the shirt back onto the base mesh using ZappLink, then touch up the exported UVs from the avatar mesh.

when projecting, i masked parts of the body that would get in the way (feet, legs, head, etc.)

My results were less than great! The transfers have lots of overlap and unwanted ghosting, basically making it unusable.ff

Any more experienced users have any suggestions to offer? :matte-motes-frown: