Ashasekayi Ra

In Blender 2.49, there is a button labeled "Make Real" in the armature modifier. They don't have that in Blender 2.5. Sadly, you can't export a useable SL rigged mesh from Blender 2.5 yet since the dae exporter hasn't been fully developed.

You can't rig an object to be used in SL with 2.5 yet. The collada feature isn't finished. You'll have to use Blender 2.49 to export out the rigged dae. If you want to build in 2.5 and just export with 2.49, try the method described by Luc Starrider in Message 6: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Blender-2-5-exporting/m-p/413765/highlight/true#M1708

That looks great ^^ Machinimatrix has a basic tutorial on adding the skeleton to the mesh for SL.

Heres a tutorial on uvmapping in Blender: And, blender cookie has several tutorials on texture painting.

"Does the Mesh View upload reduce the density of meshes?!?" What do you mean exactly? Are you asking if it reduces the polycount for you? No, it doesn't do that. Now, you can let it make auto-generated LODs for you. But, I wouldn't recommend it. The LODs look pretty horrid. It would be better to just make your own in your 3D modeler. "Did the people at SL actually provide a joint rig, or are "we" expected to make the community standard?!?" No, LL didn't provide any official files. The information has always been there in XML format apparently. The avatar.blend file existed before the mesh program. Wiz Daxter's system lets you change the appearance XML file, that you can export from SL yourself, into a rigged avatar in Blender, Max and Maya. And actually, it just occured to me that another problem with the Poser/Daz route is that you'd need the actual weighting of the joints to match up to the SL avatar if you are making clothing for it. This isn't an issue if you are making your own avatar replacement though instead of clothing.

A mesh object can have far less polygons than a sculpt. A sculpt has a set amount while a mesh object can have more or less than that amount.

Uhmm.... the system still renders sculpts with triangles. The same with tortured prims. The issue of sculpt inefficiency has been discussed ad nauseum by the developers. Sculpts were a work around because they couldn't implement mesh at that time. Now, don't get me wrong, I think there will still be a place for sculpts after mesh is released. Anyone that has followed mesh development knows that mesh will be crippled in several ways. So, I doubt it will totally take over any time soon. As for the creator comment, it makes me wonder if you have uploaded a mesh to aditi yet. As has been discussed a 1000 times, somebody just uploading a mesh from Google sketchup won't cut it in the market. For one thing, he will need to give it proper LODs so that it isn't penalized heavily by the uploader in prim count. Beyond that, the auto LODs in the viewer look horrid ... yet another reason a customer will chuck it. Then, there is the question of making a proper physics shape for the item. This doesn't even get into the issues of dealing with rigged mesh. This will also take extra work that doesn't come out of the box for models dowloaded from other sites. So no, it won't be a simple process to make a marketable product.

Hmm, I'm not sure why you had such issues with the Blender install. I always use the zip installers, which are bundled with the needed Python. You just unzip to any place you want it and done. However, the latest stable release 2.5 actually has an incomplete collada implementation. You'd need a copy of 2.49 to make an SL compatible rigged mesh in Blender. If you do change your mind about Blender, I'm sure I could find you a proper copy. It's interesting that you mention trying it 10 years ago. When I first tried it not long before that time, I hated it with a passion. But now, I love it. Truly, the key to Blender is finding good tutorial sites like Blender Cookie and Blender 3D Design Course, which is a free video course taught by a professor. That being said, I'll give the cr2 file a go. I can test it in Poser Pro 2010, Daz Advanced and the latest non-pro version of Carrara. Off the top of my head, I think the FBX exporter for Daz might be the most obvious route. It was designed to convert Poser models for use in programs that have weight mapping. The only problem then is converting the fbx file to a dae file SL understands.

LL can't unring the mesh bell now. Not only have they spent alot of time and money researching and developing it, there are many people expecting its release. But more importantly, mesh is more effiecient than sculpts on several levels. A sculpt always has a set amount of triangles even if the shape doesn't need it. With mesh, you can use just the amount of triangles needed. Plus, you have precision control over the LODs. You can texture a mesh properly without distortion as well as set different material zones as well. And as someone in this thread already stated, SL can't remain behind the times technologically if they want to continue being a viable player in virtual worlds.

Poser is also a possibility. However, Poser 8 doesn't export skeletal information in its dae files. Poser Pro 2010 does though.

Yea, the only resource files that I know of for this area are for Blender, Max and Maya. I don't know of any for Daz products at the moment. Since I use Blender a great deal, I never tried this process with the Daz family myself. If I get some spare time tomorrow, I'll experiment with it a little. The problem is I don't know if the Daz products export a dae file compatible with the dae files SL wants. Yes, names matter. The weight groups need to match the avatar's. However, if you have a shirt, you don't need to include bones not interacting with it, such as toes, shins, etc. Just note that if you want to upload joint positions, you do have to include a specific set of joints/weight groups. List of all joints/weight groups: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Joint-names/td-p/810861 Must have joints for joint offset position changes: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/CTS-472 (read the 22/Feb/11 comment by Prep Linden) As for avatars, you will be able to do some of that with the current system in the since that you can model an avatar and wear it as a rigged attachment along with an alpha texture that hides the SL avatar beneath. You could have an elongated neck using joint offsets. However, you'd have to wait until they add custom bones to add realistic bones for a tail extension.

Well, this won't help you at the moment. But, the rumor is that the next generation of Daz figures will use traditional weight maps/skeletons instead of the old Poser joint system. This may make it easier to export out something useable to SL since I'm sure Dazstudio 4/Carrara or beyond will support the new tech. I'm hoping that Daz will extend their Figure Setup tools to support making figures with weight maps once the figures are out.

It would help if you stated what specific program you want to use to make your rigged avatar in. The process is different for different programs. Also, the process has been discussed for a long time for more than just Blender. You can find discussions on Max in the Mesh Best Practices-3ds Max thread and Maya on the Mesh Best Practices-Maya thread. As for Zbrush, you can't make a rigged avatar for SL in Zbrush. Although, you can export out a static collada file now using a plugin that can be found on Zbrush Central. You could make your avatar or clothing in Zbrush then rig/skin it in another program, such as Max, Blender, etc. Also, Wiz Daxter sales a product on the marketplace that assists with the process for Blender, Max and Maya. Some programs just aren't able to save out the skeleton information that the SL importer needs. The program needs to be able to save the bone data out in the collada 1.4 format. And even then, it needs to be compatible. Some programs export out collada but don't support all the parameters like skeletons, animation, vertex colors, etc. The known programs that work are Max, Blender and Maya. However, there might be others like Cinema 4D and Softimage. I know that Dazstudio and Poser Pro 2010 export collada with skeletal information. However, I haven't personally tried to import them into SL. Maybe someone who has can let's us know if they work as well.

^^ The Lindens actually requested that this jira be made once it was brought up during the last meeting by Yellow Alloy. This will be a helpful addition. However, it won't fix the problem of being able to scale rigged mesh objects inworld once it is worn.

I just started a jira for scale and rotation support of imported mesh objects. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/CTS-550

This outfit looked great inworld Vivienne.

Thanks for pointing out the Live UV unwrap feature. I didn't notice that one before.

Well, they have stated that they want to give users the ability to make custom skeletons for worn mesh and rezzed objects in the future. But, it was clear this wouldn't be available when mesh hits the main grid.

It might depend on the date of the video. Back in the earlier mesh testing days, UUID flipping was possible. It has been turned off now though.

That is strange. You could upload models with skin weights (not altered joints) that didn't have all 21 before. But yea, you don't need to weight the LODs at all.

For those interested in Blender, they have a Blender 2.57 Release Candidate available for download. Link: http://www.blendernation.com/2011/03/31/blender-2-57-release-candidates-available/#utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Blendernation+%28BlenderNation%29

If you mean you welded the two pieces together or combined them with Ctrl+J, they will come in as one piece as long as you didn't use more than 8 material ids on it.

As far as I remember, he just said that the deadline for the falcon avatar contest would be around May. I didn't see him say Mesh would hit the main grid in May.

"Did they do away with the mesh inventory assets in the latest dev build?" Yes, I believe they mentioned removing it at the last Mesh User Group. The transcript for that meeting is posted here in the forums.

Update: In the mesh meeting today, Prep Linden stated that there will be an option added to just use the object's defined pivot point. This will make life much easier. ^^