Medhue Simoni

Qie Niangao wrote: Although I think the majority of SL users will try SL2 within a few months of its introduction, I suspect it will be several years before it's a fit place to spend much time. That's not particularly because it lacks user generated content (everybody's precious inventories, etc.) but because there's just an incredible amount of platform functionality needed to approximate the features of current SL. They'll start with a subset, of course, and maybe it will be enough to keep enough people interested long enough to be viable. Bingo! I swear, I think some people put cotton balls in their ears. Over, and Over, and over again, LL has said that the New World will not be SL2. It will not have all the functionality. Even 5 years from today, it will not have all SL's functionality. For the life of me, I can't understand why, or even how, people think the New World will be SL2. It's not even possible. Beta will start next year. Nothing will work right. 6 month later, we might have avatars working properly and some basic standards for them. 1 year after, we might have some functionality that resembles SL. It will likely take 2 years, just to get the whole world functioning in any kind of viable way. I find it hilarious that people think the doors will open and anything will work, or it will be functional in the least. That is truly ridiculous. People who think this must have the impression that Lindens are magicians.

Well, I won't be as hard on you. The TOS are problematic. Really tho, they are more problematic for LL than they are for creators. LL shoots themselves in the foot by creating a TOS that is so broad. Then, they override their TOS with the words they publically say. Essentially, IMHO, they have made their TOS a joke. That said, it's just a TOS. People put far too much emphasis on a TOS, especially when it is as muddie as LL's. A TOS is just an agreement between the people offering a product or service to the people buying it or using it. It's not law, and can only be determined to be a binding contract in court. A good percentage of TOS out there, would never be enforcable in court. Some are almost laughable. LL's boarders on that. LL's lack of specificity is seen as a negative to creators, but I see it the other way around. If they don't specify, then they are just talking gobbly goop. If LL ever did anything unethical with our stuff, they'd have a class action lawsuit, with thousands of us on there, and you can bet it would be all over the news. The TOS would be irrelevant.

Gavin Hird wrote: There is absolutely nothing wrong wanting to move virtual worlds into a realm of what is possible with current and near future technology, but if you start with a clean slate approach (which is essentially what they have said they do), you'll more or less have to recruite a completely new class of developers too. – The same developers who are fiercely competing in the mobile space where there probably is significantly more money to be had for the same effort. Some of the current developers may find the incentive to "retool" so to speak, but the learning curve could be staggering. ... one example. They say that skins will not transfer. So skin makers will have to start developing skins from ground up unless they will use a character with an already known uv-map so that developer resources are commercially available. First of all this will lead to very few developers having the time and incentive to do this, and the new platform will simply be dull and unattractive for a long time. Particularly the female market is highly dependent on good skins with everything that follows. How much effort is it to create a good skin for a completely new uv-map? 4-6 months real effort time. Maybe more to get all the shadow, muscle, facial, nails, eye, brows, makeup, teeth, hairline... maps done. You are easily talking a year to make it real good for you need to test, and test and test again to make it look good with the lighting model and the shaders used for the new platform. Only then you can start create variety. I have to also disagree. The real issues are never, ever going to be with any work that creators do. If you are an experienced creator, it is ALL easy, especially when we get to upload exactly what we want, with our own skeletons and all. This is also especially true if the creator already creates for other platforms, like Daz, or Unity. Heck, I already have about 6 full avatars that I'll have ready for Unity by the time LL opens beta on the new world. If what LL says is correct, I'll be able to upload those same avatars that I created for Unity, or even Daz, directly into this new world with little to no extra work. We have been on the same side on issue before, but I think you are definitely painting a picture that has no place in reality, especially when you have been in SL for so long. LL put out mesh, with the ability to make new avatars, and then we got Avastar for Blender. Before that, we got a numerous sculpty making tools from the community. Before that we got many different animation tools specifically for SL. This could go on and on. I suspect that someone, maybe Gaia and her people, will create a UV map converter. Bam! 1 click. Even if we had to do the UV map conversions ourselves, it would take, literally, a day in Blender, with most of that time spent figuring out the best way to do it. Now, I'm not a skin maker, but have have made skins. I was also a charcoal artist that drew people on the spot, in less than a half hour, and people paid me. In a half hour, they got an extremely detailed charcoal drawing. This is what it means to be an artist. It doesn't take you a year to make 1 fricken skin. That would be ridiculous. With computers, all you really need to do, is do 1 and every other skin is just a variation of that. It works the same with animation too. Today, no matter what the animation, I will already have something similar, and can mod them quickly to create any animation possible. How could we sell things so cheap if it took us a year just to texture our avatars. Some, really good skin designers and modellers, can even just model their whole avatar in super high detail, and basically have Blender generation a good portion of the work to make a skin, with minimal manual touch ups from there. That said, yeah, if you want to make a whole avatar, with clothing, weapons, animations, huds and all, with variations, then it does take months, and sometimes half a year. This is also why it is good that the new world will be using a standard format that many are already creating for. Beyond that tho, most things can be done extremely quickly today.

This was talked about at the 3rd Party meeting on Friday. Brook explained pretty much everything.

Marketplace reviews can be extremely frustrating. I blame this all on LL first, and then many of the newbie or not so serious merchants that complained about how the Xstreet ratings and reviews. Ultimately, it's LL's fault for not thinking the system through, and talking to experienced merchants. The Xstreet system was many times better than LL's system. Anyone could leave a rating without connecting their name to it. This might seem bad, but the real affect of this was that many more people left ratings. Because so many people would give the product a rating, they would always drown out any bad ratings a product would get. Xstreet also reminded consumers to rate products, and it was a very visible thing. LL's system is essentially hidden, and the only people that will go out of the way to find it, are those consumer that are upset. I also think, that if a customer writes a review, and the merchant corrects any problem stated in that review, the merchant should be able to have the review pulled, if the reviewer doesn't correct it. This is a recent problem that I have run into. Someone left a bad review on a product that I had just released. He didn't like the walking and running animations. After thinking about the review, I decided that they did have a point, although it was a very unfair review. You can't say the modeling and avatar is awesome, and you only have a problem with the walks, and give the product 1 star. That doesn't make any sense. Anyways, I redid the walk and run, and sent out updates to everyone. No correction was ever made to the review, and probably never will. I really would not even care, if we still had the old Xstreet system, as I know the product would get many great rating that would cancel out the 1 bad review, but LL has done nothing with their system since they changed it, so I have no hope at all.

Gaia Clary wrote: You also mention: Now it's possible to rig by your software of choice and then use blender just to obtain the dae file compatible with SL as maya already did before.I'll startr my tests later ( I've just got the news of the blender plugin). Why wasn't this possible before ? I must admit that i am very focused on the Blender universe and i did not keep track on how other software would work or not work for SL. So is Blender a tool that makes it easier to get rigged mesh to SL than other tools do ? Is that the reason why the new FBX Importer is so exciting ? Is the good news that you now can import from more tools to Blender and from blender create the final export files for SL ? The old FBX importer wouldn't import bones, at least for me, and all the figures I tried. The new importer does an OK job, but some bones are tiny and some are huge. I haven't played around with it too much. Oh, and it won't import a binary FBX. I'm sure there is more work to be done.

Looks like 1 of the handles doesn't have smooth shading applied. That's my guess.

Pamela Galli wrote: Second Life evidently has decided to go in the direction of Sony's HOME virtual world, with beautiful graphics, professionally made content, and lots of inworld games. No more clunky inworld build tools like with Minecraft. Except HOME is closing and Minecraft was just sold for $2,500,000,000. I'll just say this. But....... HOME didn't have us.

Well, you are probably not going to like my answer, and I admittly do not use Maya, so I don't know what is possible. Cathy Foil makes a plugin for Maya that is like Avatar in Blender, and she calls it Mayastar. That might just import xml shapes from SL. The only other option, is Avastar for Blender, with gives you the default SL avatar, with all of the same morphs that we have in SL, and the ability to import xml shapes from SL. It also allows you to easily make Fitted mesh outfits, plus a bunch more. It's a sweet deal, if you ask me. Plus, if you are animating, it has an animation retarget tool to import bvh files and retarget them to the Avastar rig to work on. Any option I could name for Poser, would be a very long process, and in the end you might need Blender's help to do it.

I really know nothing about making a compatible rig, so keep this in mind. The first thing I notice when I select a bone, is that none of them are set to zero rotation, despite the rig being in a Tpose. Every single SL rig, or any rig for that matter, that I have ever used, has all the bones set to zero in the default pose. I don't think I've ever had to really do this, as most of the rigs I make myself go into platforms that it doesn't matter, plus it's a custom rig. I'm sure there is an easy way to set all the rotations to zero, in that Tpose. In Pose mode, probably just select all the bones, and then click Pose in the options next to the Mode. Then , Apply pose to rest pose. That's the options that I have, but I also use Avastar, and it might be an Avastar option. In Edit Mode, there is also an option to correct Bone Roll, under the Amature option next to the Mode option. I hope this helps. I only took a quick look and saw the issue, but it looks like you did a good job with it.

Well, your issue is obvious now. Dazstudeo automatically adds a first frame to your animation if you check Secondlife compatibility. If you are using the SL cr2 file in daz to animate with, then you don't need to check Secondlife compatibility, and it should not add the first frame.

Well, I'm not a coder, but just an animator. What you are describing is consistent with what I have seen. Yes, you need to keyframe the IK bones. I use Avastar, and it would work the same way. If you don't keyframe the IK it doesn't transfer over. It would be cool if the keyframing did transfer to FK bones, cause then you could use IK, and FK whenever you wanted, but I'm sure there would still be issues.

What you need to do is make the 1st and 2nd frame the same for all the bones below the torso. The SL system compares the first and 2nd frame of your animation to determine what parts of the avatar to animate. If the legs in the first and 2nd frame are the same, the legs won't animate, and will be controlled by the default AO system, or an AO system you are using.

Melysange wrote: Hello Medhue and thank you very much for your video, it helps a lot and i feel less confused about uv maps now though i have a problem, i am not using the same version of blender as you and when i go into the UV editing mode, i don't have the same menu as you do and i can't find the proper features (sorry about that i still begin with blender by the way ^^) Here is a screenshot of what i have after going into the UV EDITING mode: Thanks again for the appreciated help As Gaia has pointed out, you need to be in Edit Mode, in the right hand screen. In this image, you are in Object Mode. The version I'm using, compared to the version you are using, is not any different for UV unwrapping.

Here is a video that i created that shows the basics of how to UV unwrap a model, and at the end it shows how to bake shadows into the texture.

MilaaMiami wrote: many thanks to all for your helps ..it's nice of you what about second image ? it is also made by a 3d software ? i think it is made without rendering .. what do you think ? Looks to me like the 2nd image is just using a Drop Shadow feature in Photoshop.

Weight painting is not that big a deal. I have a video on Weight Painting in Blender. I use Avastar also, but it's not much different if you don't use avastar. You'll just have different weights to start with. The actual weight painting parts works the same without Avastar. Just search for Medhue Weight Painting on Youtube.

If you are talking about the mirror affect, that is likely done in Blender as a render. Here is a quick render that I just did with a hard hat. The mirrored floor is just a plane, with a material on it that has a high specular reflection, and I have checked the mirrored option with a strength of .5. Of course my lighting isn't set up all that well, but that is the basics on how to get that mirrored reflection.

What is the toddleedoo avastar model? I've used avatar for over a year now and I have no idea what you are talking about.

Aoi Foxtrot wrote: EDIT: Other people are seeing the problem as well This tells me it's not a graphics card issue, but it definitely sounds like one. The last time I saw what you are seeing, I threw out my graphic card for a new 1 and everything was fine. It might be worth telling us what card it is, because I found out that my last card was part of a series of cards that all had graphics issues for many games across many platforms. It was an Nvidia GT 465, if I remember correctly. Like I said tho, the fact that others can see the same problem says it's not your card. I'd double check that others can see it. Have them take a picture and give that to you. Also, if it is a graphics card issue, then it doesn't make sense that this anomally would only happen on your avatar. You should see issues with other things as well.

Drongle McMahon wrote: ETA: by the way, your files have cameras and lights in, which are uneccessary (although I think the ulpoader will just ignore them). If you deselect everything (A) and then just select the meshes (B, then drag around them; or just rightclick on each) then the camera and lights will be left out. I usually move my camera and lamps to another layer. You probably know this but for others that don't. Select your object/camera/lamp and then type "m" and then choose the layer from the boxes that appear. You may also have to select a Selection Only type of checkbox, in the export window, to ensure you are not getting anything else in your dae.

Whatever tutorial you watched was extremely old. Blender is up to 2.72 right now. It would be best to redo the process in a more current version. So many parts of Blender have changed alot since 2.49.

Sorry, Wang, but I kind of have nothing for you. I could say this or that bone is twisted, but this would all be just speculation. Even if you sent me the rig, I wouldn't know what to look for. I've made many rigs in my life, but I never even thought about making my own for SL, because there is Avastar. That's what I use to rig everything I make. It gives you pretty much a replica of the SL avatar, with all of it's morphs, inside of Blender. You can even export your shape in SL, and then import that shape onto your Avastar rig. To me, the addon is priceless. Plus, you can be sure that the rig is right, and will work. Avastar also comes with it's own collada exports that matches SL collada format exactly, cause it was made for it. The worst part about making avatars and clothing for SL, is dealing with the skeleton. Avastar takes care of that part for you.

I don't think you need to use mToe or mFoot at all. If you just rig the shoes to mAnkle, then it should work. As far as I know, and lets remember that I'm an animator, the toe and foot bones aren't actually used. You can use them, but this will not match the default avatar.

What program are you using? This looks very strange to me, as the stretching is going off away from the avatar. The only thing I can think of is that the vertice has no weight on it.