Medhue Simoni

insilvermoonlight wrote: Hmm, you know I had thought of that, but went back to check and the listing says it's non-rigged. Is there a way to tell in world? I have notecarded the creator but still haven't heard back. It's just frustrating because I'd like to put this behind me and move on with another project. Like I said, if the hat attaches to your hand, but it sit on your head and moves with your head, then it is rigged. It can't happen that way without being rigged. If it wasn't rigged, then if you attached it to your hand, it would move with your hand, not with your head, reguardless of where it is moved to. Then again tho, maybe I'm reading your post wrong.

Guessing, but it looks to me like you didn't select Joint position when you uploaded it. Here is a snake I'm working on now, and it has a crazy skeleton, but it all works out perfect. Then again tho, I use the Avastar addon with Blender.

insilvermoonlight wrote: Hello, so I've been working with this full perm mesh hat template, my problem is when I linked it to my root prim, (so I can put my name as creator,) it won't attach to my head anymore. I tried the attach to: body part and then edited it into place but it is still moving around on top of her head. Original attach point for the hat was her right hand, I'm also wearing a mesh dress with the same attach point. Also why can I link mesh clothing to a root prim and they still attach to her right hand, but this hat wont? Thanks for your help It seems to me that the hat is rigged, which it really should not be. It's not bad to rig hat, but if the person sells it full perm, then the person buying it has less options as to how it will work. The only way something can attach to your hand, or any other part, and still be on their head, is if it is rigged. The bottom line is, that hat's don't need to be rigged. You gain no advantage rigging a hat to the head. It actually makes fitting the hat to everyone impossible. I would ask for a none rigged version.

Looking again at the dress, I think you could still delete most of the back sides of the ruffles, and then pull the verts in to simulate the backsides so you don't see wholes thru the back sides. I'd also create more distance between the front and back sides of the ruffles. The real issue of weighting things when you use solidify, is that it all becomes a mess to try and change the weights. The only way that I know of to even get to all the verts, is to see thru the whole mesh, but that get comfusing quickly as your brain tries to distinguish what vert is on what part of the mesh.

Pamela Galli wrote: When I hear "Creator-centric" I think of concentric circles drawn on my back. Because when LL tries to do what it conceives of as "helping" merchants, I have learned to duck. I am pretty resigned to the fact that I have had a very good run in SL, but LL is planning to kill it one way or another, probably several ways. Or maybe not kill, but seriously wound. I have a 4 sim store packed with content. It has taken me three years to get 2/3 of that content converted* to mesh, and trust me it has been a huge effort. Other than one PT employee who does MP listings, I have done it all, including Customer Service and managing the business end on top of learning Blender and keeping to a weely new release schedule. Just now the store is looking like i want it to. So I dont care how wonderful SL2 is going to be. After playing catch up to mesh for 3 years -- yes, I realize most mesh "creators" are just importing things off the internet, but I dont -- I cant look forward to starting over again, OR to trying to figure out how I am going to run two stores in two different grids when the one I have now takes all my time. * By converted I mean, making new mesh stuff, not some "conversion" process. I'm proud of you. Seriously! It's not easy what you have done, and shows a real dedication to both 3D and to your customers. I'm hoping, that all these changes makes it easier for us to make profits across many platforms with very little effort. Instead of making different products for every different platform, we'll just need to make 1 product that works on all platforms. Of course, this will take time to evolve.

ChinRey wrote: There are no content creators nor experience creator working for LL. There are nobody at the board or staff meetings or at the office to give them firsthand information about what a 3D world creator actually needs. LL has always tried their best to make SL as creator friendly as possible but without that in-house expertise, they often miss the mark. Well, I think the problem is really that they are letting coders pick and choose which creators to listen to. This gives us crap like Fitted Mesh. ChinRey wrote: One example: As I'm sure you all know, there is another team, independent from but partly financed by LL, who are working on another virtual world right now. They're going to base the graphics on voxels which apparently are quite a lot heavier on the computers than mesh. Their reasoning is that voxels can provide better graphics and by the time they're ready to open their world, the average computer will be twice as fast as today so they can afford to use heavier graphics. Actually, I just heard Phillip talk about voxels, and they are just basically using them to render things that are far away. He said that it's very good for that purpose ChinRey wrote: That's exactly how Ebbe started his SL2 pitch too. "Better graphics", cause that's what all creators want. Or more correctly: that's what all non-creators think all creators want. And of course we do, but not at any cost! I mean, what's the point of making a wonderfully detailed replica of an old motorbike if the environment is so laggy you can't actully ride it? And how are we ever going to find time to use all those wonderful new features anyway? - I mean when you already spend three times as much time fighting the unfriendly interfaces of buggy, bloated and barely compatible software as you do on actually creating? Anyway, as I said, Ebbe started with the "Better graphics" cliché but now he suddenly talks about "experience creators". Now, being a pixel doll can actually be a nice experience (don't knock it if you haven't tried it) but it gets boring fast and I have a feeling what Ebbe had in mind was something a bit more action-filled. And since they clearly want SL2 to be for the masses, they need all that action to work on a perfectly normal average - and even slightly below average - home computer. That means the stipulated doubling in copmuter speed won't even be enough to get today's SL down to an acceptable lag level. There's certainly no room to spend any of it on improved or "improved" graphics. Here's a very simple test: Make a small race track - say about 1000x500 m in overall size. Fill the tribunes with 500 spectators, half of them on "average" home computers, the rest on two year old laptops. Start the race - twelve cars, fifty rounds, full speed, all drivers on "average home computers". The day we can do that with no significant glitches or lag, that's the day increasing graphics quality becomes more important than reducing lag. In SL1, of course, you're struggling with 20 avatars running through some basic dance animations in a club.... So, yes, better graphics would be nice. But there are so many other more important and urgent updates and the only visual feature that should be anywhere near the top of the priority list right now, is working mirrors. The solution to lag is all about preloading the items for the simulation. Half of the issues with lag are a direct result of caching problems, or the fact that things aren't preloaded, and must be seen first before it is loaded. If the caches were preloaded with everything in the sim, even animations from avatars, then that would cut down on lag. Of course, I know almost nothing about these things, so it's all just speculation. That said, prepackaged games run smooth, like racing thru the streets of chicago in Watch Dogs, because all the information is already on your pc. Maybe, there should be a switch for the new world where you can tell the viewer to preload everything, or not. This might be needed if you are running a tablet or something that can't hold everything in the scene. ChinRey wrote: It can't be anywhere near 15%. One important point many people seem to overlook is that nobody has to deal with L$. We can do all our SL buying and selling with RL money if we like. We can even invent our own in-world valuta if we want to. As it is now we don't want to, of course. L$ is reasonably safe, free to use and very, very practical. Things will look very different the moment LL introduce any kind of general transaction fee though. Yes, we could sell our items on our own websites, but those would only be full perm items. If you did not want to sell your items full perm, then you would have to sell thru LL's marketplace or inworld. Platforms like Daz and Unity have this problem much more than SL. I can easily avoid Daz's and Unity's high commission by just selling the items on my own site, which I already do. The customer gets the exact same thing they would get buying from Daz or Unity. ChinRey wrote: It's not that simple unfortunately. I know I'm repeating myself here but from an RL perspective, what you do when you buy a sim is simply rent a web server. Yes, it's a server with some special software and some special possibilities and limitations but it's not significantly different from any web server you can rent from any web host. Back in 2003 200 dollars a month was a perfectly reasonable price for a dedicated web server, in fact it was a little bit below average market price. But prices on the open web host market have dropped significantly since then and now you can easily get a dedicated server for 50 dollars/month. LL still charges 2003 level prices for their hosting services. You may think it's because they're greedy but there is actually another very good reason why they can't just drop the land tier: The L$ exchange rate is closely connected to land tier so if LL changes one of them, they'll have to change the other too. What do you think would happen if suddenly overnight you had to pay 1000 L$ for a U.S. dollar? It will happen sooner or later anyway of course but it's easy to understand why LL tries to delay that crack for as long as possible. This would only happen if LL tried to adjust things so that they still maintained the same $ value income from the land. This would be completely unreasonable. With the new world, they can price land however they want, and it won't affect SL to any large extent. There will be some affect, but no more than when a different world opens from a competitor. As LL does better and better with the new world, and has 2 legitimate income streams from 2 worlds, then they can easily cut prices on land in SL, without destroying they whole business model. ChinRey wrote: I think that's an important part of their current plan yes. Seems to me the package they're planning for right now, contains four items: A software system to simplify game buiding A dedicated (mandatory) hosting service for those games A dedicated (mandatory) viewer for those games A selection of auxiliary services (user registration, money transaction etc.) Now, the auxiliary services certainly have some value but not that much. The special viewer may be an advantage but it may also be a liability. It certainly isn't enough on its ow to persuade game developers to choose LL's package. The dedicated, mandatory web hosting is a clear liability, even if LL drops their hosting fees down to regulalr market price. LL will have to seriously sweeten other parts of the deal for developers to swallow this. In the end it all boils down to how well the game building software holds up against the competition. Hard to say right now but I have a suspicion LL has yet to realize there is a competition at all. Well, a world like SL is a unique thing, and use case. Allow me to put forth a scenario that is easily doable today, and something I've thought about for a long time. Let say that I have this grand idea for a game/movie/world. When it comes to game, or world, or movie, they all use the same assets. Ok, maybe not exactly the same, but they could be the same assets. As an animator, it's all the same to me, and I might actually do all this. So, I could make a Unity game, prepackaged for almost any device used today. No multiplayer or any of that. Just a more single track type of game. While I'm creating cutscenes, I can also create a whole movie for the game. If any of it gets popular at all, then I would want a place for all the fans to gather and play together, which is where something like SL fits in nicely. Again, they all could use the same exact assets, so the cost for creating all of this becomes very small, compared to any AAA game trying to do anything similar.

Well, I'm late again to the party! Here is my take on it all, or maybe just what I hope. Creator-centric means that they will build the world around what the creators need, to maximize what is possible, and the amount of creators involved. Yes, I think the % of sales commission will be higher. I hope it is not over %15 I think it would be kind of dumb to tax inworld sales, as I still see land as a big seller, that will always dwarf the marketplace. You want all those creators to own land too. LL was all wrong about land prices for SL. They just thought wrong about it. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying LL should not have maximize their profit potential, but that maximum level is hard to predict. They far over shot it. Remember when they announce that enterprise grid product, and asked 50k? Those people in Cali don't quite understand how to gauge price. If LL prices these new sims, bigger sims, at something reasonable, like 50-75 bucks, with no set up fee, then the consumers aren't taking that big of a risk, and they'd have many more times the landownership. There will be more volatility, but easily 5 times the volume. They'll have to expand. Plus, land sales is a more constant profit, and what got them this far. I also see something like approved game developer that create experiences, like they are doing now in SL. What I would like to see, is LL create sets for codes for games, so that any knowledgeable creator can just slap some prebuilt code together to basically create whatever they wanted. This is kind of what is happening with Unity. Or LL could promote or pay independent developers to write the code for the games that will be available to anyone. As creators add their own code, they can choose to release the code thru an approval process with LL, or keep the code secret. This kind of coding practice works great with the SL viewer and 3rd party viewers. It also works great for Blender's development. In no time, we'd have the most amazing games possible, and all accessible to every creator or developer. To me, it the best way for code to be developed. Of course, this is what I'm hoping for. Or, LL could write their own game code, and license it to creators.

I don't think I can give you specific advice, but just that it takes time to get the hang of weighting. I'd turn off Textured Solid when weighting. It makes it hard to see the weights. I'd also turn on wire in the object tab in properties, so you can see where your verts are. In some of the real problem areas, I'd pull some of those vertices out a little more from the body too. I made a video recently, that does show some of the things I mentioned, but it is not going to show you how to weight better.

Yep, I'll confirm that it is a nightmare. Whenever possible, you should try and fake the inside of the clothing. It's going to be difficult with that dress, but it will help in some areas. As a creator, that is up to you. Anything using solidify is going to give you a bunch more work to do with weights. Between the legs and in the armpits are the worst areas. Here is how I make fake insides. I tend to use 2 extrudes now, but this video does show what I'm talking about.

Pretty cool! Most of the time, I don't worry much about paying for uploads. I'm pretty bad about it tho. I likely upload something a dozen or more times, when we are talking avatars. Even animations tho, at least a few times. When I do get smart tho, I'll upload the meshes and test them in InWorldz first. They still give the same results for most things, plus it encourages me to sell those items in InWorldz too. Heck, I recently did my rigged cobra snake for SL, and I bet I uploaded him over a dozen times now. The rest of them are definitely going to be uploaded in InWorldz first. Hmm, it just him me, maybe I'll make a snake you can wear too, not just an avatar. I could still make his jaw move, but his eyes won't work. lol

maxciri wrote: The solution you were talking about before, can he fix it? Yes, it worked for Chosen, but this is not the same as what you are doing. Chosen was using the same Genesis body, which he needed to attach a head to and then reimport back into Daz. He doesn't mention that here. I suspect that your problem is bone lengths. Somehow they get changed, at least from what I remember from the image. I wonder if you couldn't just change the bone lengths.

maxciri wrote: http://i.imgur.com/x6xDWHY.jpg Hi there. I register exclusively for this topic. First of all, I apologize to you, so bad I'm writing in English (using a translator). My goal is to use a character from "poser" and import it into DAZ Studio. This character is the Grey Alien. When I import the character into DAZ STUDIO, the rig is disproportionate, as rotated (not all bones, but some). I am a newbie on the 3d, to understand what happens. With my poor English, I can realize that you are giving a solution for it ... and I was wondering if you would be able to explain to me how to fix this error. http://i.imgur.com/gG5cOp1.jpg Thanks a lot. How are you importing the character into Daz? I would think that the proper way to do this would be to import the cr2 file. Daz excepts cr2 files. What you can also do, is import your whole Poser library into Daz, by using the feature in the Content window.

It sounds like a viewer issue. Which viewer are you using?

Monkey Kingmaker wrote: Hey there guys! I'm kinda new to created mesh in sl and so I figured I would ask for some help. Currently I'm using Blender 2.71 to make my models and rigging them with Rigify, a bulit in plug-in for blender. Anyways the point is I believe that I have everything rigged correctly and when I export it to collada (.dae) everything seems to go fine since I have both the rig selected and my model when I export. When I go to upload it to sl I don't get an option to check the "Skins weights" or "Joints" boxes. So in turn all I have is my textured model in a T pose with no rigging. Any ideas would be great! Thanks in advance Monkey. The normal collada exporter in Blender doesn't match with SL's collada format. There may be options to convert these formats online, but I just use Avastar, which is an addon for Blender. The creators of the Avastar addon have included an exporter that matches perfectly with SL. Plus, you get a bunch of tools that will help you rig and animate better and faster. I love Avastar!

I'll try to give you a couple of suggestions to help. I've rigged lots of clothing for myself and even more for designers, so I've seen most problems. First, you probably need to add more chest influence to the mesh in that area and probably reduce influences from the collar bone and arm. 2nd, you should give the 2 meshes some distance from each other to make up for this problem.

Aspire Rang wrote: I have no idea why my own searches did not turn up this page, but a friend helpfully clued me in. Here it is for any future hapless searcher. http://blog.machinimatrix.org/avastar/avastar-animation-priorities/ Although I agree with most of what is on that page, I do wish it would suggest animation priorities for different animation tasks. The main issue is that many people automatically upload with priority 4 just so they don't have issues. There was also a good period of time when walks and run default priorities got messed up and everyone had to upload walks and runs as priority 4. Even I still have walks and runs in AOs made during that time period with priority 4. Somewhere in the forums, I made a list of all the different types of animations and what their priorities should be. I won't go over all the types of animations again, but I will make a suggestion for the specific problem that you are talking about. Stand animations should almost always be priority 1, or 2. If you upload with priority 1, then your animation will combine with the other animations, like breathing, and will respond to your mouse. Priority 2 will not have the same affect, and should not work with breathing, or response to your mouse, unless you don't give the influenced bones some rotation. Walks and runs should almost always be priority 3. Sit animations should generally be a priority 3.

Antumbra wrote: No.... my bones are blue because it is in pose mode, and my mesh is grey because it's not in weight paint mode its in object mode.... and yes i have sucessfully rigged a mesh and uploaded a mesh on sl before just not with other things attached to it, and 1st I tried joining then trying to rig with automatic weights but that didn't work so then i tried to rig everything with automatic weights and then joined but the only thing that moved is the shorts not the details.... and that picture shows that when i try to move a bone the only thing that moves is the shorts, not the other mesh, even tho the other mesh was rigged with automatic weights also. I don't know how that doesn't compare to what I was saying..... My shorts move with the bones but my other meshes don't, but nvm... i think i found out the reason why. Well, obviously, I'm mistaken. This doesn't clear up what you are saying tho. I asked that you explain exactly how you are doing these things, because what you are describing doesn't match what should happen. So, I can only deduce that you are doing some part of the process wrong. We can't help you if you say you are doing something but not actually doing that. We can only know if you describe exactly the process you are using, step by step. If you have found the reason why, I would urge you to explain it here.

That's terrible! I feel for you. That said, everyone gets scammed once in SL. Once you do, you know what to look for, and know to check the merchant out first. 1 point that is important for anyone buying full perm and getting dae files or psd files, is that these are not files that are distributed inside of SL. This means the seller must have a website or some service that delivers these items. They can't deliver it without you supplying an email address to deliver the link to download the product from. Possibly, they could deliver the link to your SL account in an IM to you. Services that deliver these links for people to download from are not free. So, if it's a new merchant, and they don't display a website, you would do well to ask them directly how you are going to receive these files. If they do have a website, you should be able to buy that product directly from the website. This could be a better option because you could cancel the charge on your credit card or Paypal account, if you do not get the product. I don't sell these types of files for SL products, but I do sell 3D content for other platforms. When someone purchases a product from my site, they recieve an email with a download link. They click the link and goto a page setup to specifically deliver the item to them. The link will only work a set number of times, and for a set number of days. I can also renew links for customers who need to download again because of a problem with their computers. If the seller of these external files doesn't use some kind of similar service, then you should think twice about buying from them.

Your image doesn't make any sense when compared to what you are saying, or maybe I'm just making assumptions I should not make. Your bones are blue, which to me indicates you are on the skinning bones, but your whole mesh is grey, which indicates to me that your object is not rigged at all. To help you, we'll need to know much more, and see more images. You might want to explain exactly how you are joining the meshes and rigging them. Have you ever successfully rigged a mesh before, and uploaded it into SL?

When you join meshes together, the last mesh you selected will be the mesh that all the other meshes are joined to. Maybe you didn't select the shorts last. If you are just using automatic weight, then just unparent the mesh and reparent it with autoweights.

Seems like you kind of fixed it. Your issue was the weight gradiant between the 2 thigh bones. The right thigh bone should be almost all red around the leg, and then fade very gradually to blue when it reaches the left thigh bone. The left thigh bone should do the opposite.

Gaia Clary wrote: Then look at the resulting collada file size. You will see the problem immediately. Although admittedly the Blebnder exporter does not do a good job here. However there is a lot more data when morph shapes are involved... I was hoping you would chime in. There is no doubt that it is more data, but the real question is whether it is too much for what you get. That base SL avatar in Avastar has, what seems like, hundreds of morphs. The vast majority of us are not making avatars with hundreds of morphs. Even when we talk about the clothing I mentioned earlier, we are talking 6 morphs or so. That's not alot of extra data when you consider that the mesh will fit anyone. I'll give another example that I'm dying to do. Everyone loves werewolves. If you don't, something is wrong with you, lol. 1 distinct thing that a werewolf does is morph from human to werewolf. The only way to do this in most games is to wear a totally different mesh. In this case with morphs embedded in an FBX, you are saving data, not wasting it. What about physics? I recently purchased Watch Dogs. All of the clothing physics looks to be done using blend shapes. This is far less process intense than having that clothing respond to real physics. You could never ride a motorcycle that fast, with the whole environment moving around you, if the clothing used real physics. If we have morph imports in the New World, we could do the exact same thing. Plus, blend shapes are essential, not optional, at least in my mind. How can we make avatars talk and have expressions if we can't import blend shapes? It would be pretty ridiculous for us all to have to use 20 or so bones to do this. You are still adding data when you add bones too.

RipleyVonD wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: Well, I really think you are wrong about how the morphs get displayed. It's all in the 1 file. There is nothing else to download. You mean for the Second Life default Avatars? The Gatcha example was hypothetical and one approach in implementing them. It seemed to me dynamically downloading morph targets would relive the burden of downloading multiple meshes contained in one big file at first download, since their not all used at once. If a way exists to implement morph targets without duplicating the original mesh then I'm not aware of it, but I've always known that's how they work. I love morph targets, but I don't know of a way for them to not place burden on download cost for an online world like Second Life or any other online world. I remember when some one asked the Cloud Party developers if they would be implementing Blend Shapes at some point and they responded with saying they would never be implemented because you would need to download multiple versions of the same mesh. I would think they would know of a way to safely implement them but they didn't. Like I said, not all 3D programs do morphs like Maya. As far as I know, Maya is the only program where you have to create multiple instances of the mesh to create a blend shape. The Cloud Party people used Maya. That is why they think that way, and also why they had so many issues with the avatar skeleton. An FBX file with morphs does not contain multiple instance of the mesh, as far as I know. The Secondlife Avatar uses morphs, and we are not downloading a new mesh every time we change it. All the expressions, and hand poses are morphs also, and are played like an animation. You don't see thing freeze or hesitate when playing hand morphs. I just think you are making assumption that you can't really make. I just did a quick test with my snake. I exported 1 FBX with all the blend shapes, then I exported another without blend shapes. The 1 with no blend shapes was about 1mb. The 1 with 9 blend shapes was 1.26mb.

Connor Nowles wrote: Yeah i don't excarly know how it should work in the upload window, but maybe you have a good idea there.. :-) Maybe animators can even add the beat point to a certain frame in the animation.. Like: Beat 1 = Arms down Beat 2 = Arms up Beat 3 = One leg up Beat 4 = Arms down and one leg down But maybe some animations will look weird with some music, since music can have different beats.. Like 1-2-3 1-2-3 and some music is like 1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4.. Like if you dance a waltz i think the dance is like 1-2-3 1-2-3.. if you then go to a club with modern music then maybe most beats are 1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4.. So it would look stupid with a animation where we dance a waltz.. But then again, it would also look stupid in rl to dance a waltz to modern music, and if they aim for a more real life feeling then it is soppouse to look all wrong.. :-) Idk, there must be a solution to that also.. maybe just change the dance then, hehe.. :-) Here is how I would look at this problem. As an animator, I could create different types of dances to different kinds of beats, and different timing. I would then give each of those animations a number that corresponds to the beat. A scriptor would create a system that recognizes the beat, and plays animations according to the beat. I think the code could just check the description of the animation for the correct beat number, or it could be in the name of the animation. I had an idea a long time ago to make a dance hud with buttons to switch to different beat times. I never finished it tho. Dance animations are generally much more work than most other animations.

Yep, and probably at 60 fps.