Medhue Simoni

Ebbe Linden wrote: Thank you for starting this. I read it all. Awesome. Thanks for taking the time Ebbe! I hope this helps you a little.

Sometimes, a quick easy fix can be to recalculate normals.

Well, I can't really see what is wrong in the SL version, but if the issue is faces not showing, then you just need to flip those normals, or recalculate the normals.

Indigo Mertel wrote: >> I'm tired of wasting my L$ on useless uploads. I don't believe that I'm the only one with this problem. You may want to upload to the beta grid to check your models and save L$. I just goto InWorldz and upload test meshes there. It's less hassle and works the exact same way as SL. Of course, uploading a Fitted Mesh model there would be useless. I always hated having to create a new password to see my new items on the beta grid.

Did I miss something? I saw 1 blog post. If there are more, other than some tweets and a blog post, please do post links.

Pamela Galli wrote: I have never socialized much except for chatting with customers, so at first I was making furnishings I liked, but without a very clear idea of what people were doing with the stuff. Early on I invented a way to have "dinner parties" in SL. These dining sets were an instant hit -- but I had never had a dinner party myself. Then I talked with a customer who said every Friday she and her loved one, who lived across the country from her, made themselves lasagna in RL, and had dinner together in SL while their avatars had the same meal together in SL. That was when the light went on for me. That holiday season I made an elaborate sculpted holiday turkey dinner, and was amazed at their popularity -- that's when I realized that for many, their only holiday dinner, with their only loved ones, was the one they shared in SL. And that is not sad -- it is a testament to people's ability to find what is good in any life, and taking advantage of it to enrich their lives. We need more merchants to tell their stories. Yes, it is the people that live out these stories, but merchants play a big part of making those lived out stories better. Holding a highly detailed rose and handing it to your mate is a bit more engaging than a stick with some red blocks, but we all have our preferences. That again is why SL is so great, because you can likely find both on the marketplace. Beyond the stories tho, it is vastly interesting to be engaged in the SL economy. As some1 interested in economics, I get to see how things play out in an economy that is not really based on need, but want. An economy that could easily mirror real world economies of the future. It's fasinating to watch it all play out, and how economic theories are put to test in SL. It also shows that those that succeed are those that understand their customers and are always seeking to make them happy. Those that don't, won't succeed. Of course, I can not mention the SL economy without griping about how LL has handled it. IMHO, the stats are there. The evidence of why things have declined and how to fix things is all over. The key is really the right person coming in and interpretting the evidence correctly.

Dillon Levenque wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: Some how, when I was young, I came up with a nice analogy to the friendships we all have, or had, or lost in our life time. "A really good friendship is like a really good book. Every time you engage it, is a new chapter, and usually, each starts off where the last ended." Who knows, maybe I inherited the analogy from somewhere. I was typing my post apparently at the same time you were answering Treasure's comment on your really moving post earlier. Your last paragraph is astonishingly similar to what I was just saying (although a great deal more succinct). LOL I try not to take ownership of any idea or thought, as they all are a product of our influences. I also tend to think that if any1 thinks deeply enough about a subject or issue, they will likely come to the same or similar conclusion as most others. So, taking ownership of ideas or concepts is not a logical position to take. LOL

Treasure Ballinger wrote: Awwww. Many D/deaf left SL with the advent of voice. Because now, people think that you are an avatar of the opposite sex, if you don't 'prove it' with voice, and many just don't want to bother with you. That's why it's important (for me it was anyway) to find your niche, your group of people who like and want to be around you, for who you are. I personally haven't found the advent of voice to be a problem for me, simply because of the venues, the Virtual Ability disability related sims, and the function venues I choose to be in. When it's a dance, I just dance, I enjoy the movement of my avatar, and I don't need to hear the music; I've found a couple of DJ's who have really worked hard and gone out of their way to provide text lyrics with the songs they're playing, when they're doing a dance or party that include RL D/deaf. Most people are kind. Why force yourself to be with people, or at places, who dont' accept you or want you around, when there's so many who would love to have you? It's sad Heather stopped coming around and I too hope she comes back, and renews her friendship with you. It seems a loss to both of you. You know, I think she said the exact same thing to me, that guys thought she was a man, cause she would not voice. I'm sure she is on the net somewhere having a great time. That night she really opened up to me, we stayed up for hours past our bedtimes, and she basically told me her life. Some how, when I was young, I came up with a nice analogy to the friendships we all have, or had, or lost in our life time. "A really good friendship is like a really good book. Every time you engage it, is a new chapter, and usually, each chapter starts off where the last ended." Who knows, maybe I inherited the analogy from somewhere, but I'm waiting for the next chapter.

Pamela Galli wrote: that really is cool, Medhue! Thanks, I been dying to try it since I started using Blender.

Sassy Romano wrote: An age old method known as rotoscoping. I did the same with a mocap that had so many glitches that it was easier to rotoscope it from the imported capture. Good to know. I'm always bad with names or labels. I was even going to track the camera for this, but it really only moved to the side, so I figured why take the time. Plus, there wasn't really enough items to track the camera.

Gator Peterman wrote: Nice advertorial :matte-motes-big-grin-wink: Whatever dude! I'm a merchant. I like to create. Most of my stories and the people I meet, happen because I'm a merchant. It's likely, that I've met more people in SL than almost anyone else, unless they are also a merchant. To me, life is a big advertorial.

Treasure Ballinger wrote: What a cool thread. I Feel this way, every time I see someone that has shared just how disabled (in RL) they really are, walking, running, flying, with a freedom they'll never know in RL, being bed or chair bound. SL is a lifeline to 'fun' for those who have no fun in RL, due to physical disability/immobility issues, vision loss, and even deaf, (like me); there's a whole community of like-minded folks out there to share commonalities with. I love SL, it's important to me, and I hope it never goes away. I hope new CEO Ebbe learns to love it, too. Gentle Heron, the founder and prez of Virtual Ability, has in her profile, proudly states that 'Gentle can walk without crutches'. A statement of fact and joy, for something she can do in SL and not in RL. Many people in SL do not realize just how big the disabled community is in SL. I can't even explain how much my experiences in SL have impacted me, and from the very start. Oh, now I have to tell this story. When I first joined SL, I knew right away that I wanted to learn animation. Literally, the first week, I had set goals for myself. 1 of those goals was to get enough lindens to rent a store. The easiest way I had found to do this was to LandMark all the Money Trees in SL, and teleport from tree to tree, collecting lindens. While doing this, I would meet other people doing the same thing, and we would trade LM to trees. Soon enough, I got to know some of these people and we would hangout and talk. 1 girl, let's call her Heather, she was very good at finding awesome things all around SL. She was also a very big socialite. She liked to party. We became good friends and she always knew I'd be around working on something. All of a sudden, she didn't come around as much. I got a little worried. Then, she popped up again. I was excited to see her, and told her about all my new projects, but she didn't seem her usual excited self. So, I tried to push her and find out what was wrong. There were long pauses, which was very unlike her. Finally, I told her about how excited I was that SL was getting voice. Heather didn't say a word. Of course, I questioned, "What, don't you want to use voice?". Heather finally spoke again, "No!". I was confused. Why would she not like voice? Then, she broke down and told me. See, Heather is deaf. She had been picked on all her life because of it. In SL, she was just like everyone else. It was the first time she ever felt like she fit in with everyone. She was afraid that voice would change everything. I tried very hard to reassure her that voice was just a feature and that not every1 would use it. That was seven years ago, and I have only seen Heather 1 time since, and that was soon after she told me all of this. I still think about Heather, and I hope to see her again, some day.

I don't think she is talking about how it generally works, tho that could easily be talked about. I think what she is talking about is that the site runs slow, like to a crawl. I'm a merchant, so I see it in my sales. 1 half of a day sales are crazy, the other half, or for 6 hours no sales at all. I'm not some huge store, but I've always had regular sales, not long periods of no sales. Everytime I investigate, it's because the site takes forever to load a single page. Some people might think, big deal, some merchants lose sales, but the failing goes much further than that. Do those merchants own a sim? Not just merchants but almost every1 that owns a sim. Normal people don't just pay 300 for a sim so they can build their dream house. People pay 300 because the sim brings some kind of return that is more than 300. If the major driver of the economy fails, alot less money is getting moved around to the spots that require it's support. The whole economy fails. But, LL allows it to happen.

It really depends on the security efforts people want to put forth. On my own website, I use a service. In that service, I could decline a charge for many reasons, even the credit card's country not matching the user's country. Personally, I don't understand why LL doesn't accept many more options, but then again, I've never actually bought lindens. On my own website tho, using the service, I can accept almost any kind of payment possible, even bitcoins.

Well, since we have a newb in the house, and this newb is running things, I thought about just how complex SL is, and how the heck is this newb going to understand it. I think everyone likes how he doesn't think SL is a game, although it has games. So, he might kind of get it. If I actually get what SL is, I think it is only because of all the experiences I've had inside of it. So maybe that is the best way to show Ebbe what SL really is, for us to give some of our best experiences in SL. Me, oh gosh, I have many, many stories. Some are crazy. Some are exciting. Some are inspiring. Some, I can't even tell anyone, without shedding a bunch of tears. I won't tell those, but I will tell about 1 that, I think, really taught me why I love SL so much. I'm a merchant. I make things. Mostly animation things. It's fun. Better than working in a Detroit factory. If it was not for SL, I would probably not be making a living sitting in my PJs making 3D stuff, but rather sweating my butt off in a factory. Oh, I sell quite a bit now outside of SL, but this is where I started and I still love it more than creating for any other platform. My creations have a life here. They influence people. They spark memories. They bring people together. One day in SL, this woman, let's call her Nancy, contacts me and she just bought 1 of my bicycles. She wants to know if she can pay for another bicycle and I send it to her sister. She told me it was her real life sister. Nancy said that when they were kids they used to ride their bikes everywhere. They would ride their bikes downtown and fill their baskets with goodies. She told me that my bikes reminded her of their bikes. See, Nancy lives in California now, and her sister lives in New York. They rarely ever have the money to fly to see each other. So, they come into SL to hangout with each other and actually do things together. A few weeks later, Nancy messaged me again. She went on and on about how much fun riding the bikes were together, and how it really took them back to those days when they were kids. They could even do tricks like letting go of the handle bars, just like they did when they were kids. Those are just a few reasons I love SL. To the community: I'm sure we all have many stories and experiences. Please do tell!

I'll do 1 soon. It's funny but, you'd think I'd be like the quazi expert in Blender animation, but I've dealt mostly with motion capture in Blender, until recently. I hadn't played much with Avastar's IK cause motion capture doesn't use IK. Recently tho, I've had a bunch of animation projects that needed me to make it all by hand. Plus, I really wanted to try creating a Michael Jackson animation by playing the video in the background and building the animation off of Michael's movements. Check it out! It was so fun, It wasn't even like working. The spinning was crazy tho. Even with 30 fps, I barely had enough frames to get it to work right. So, yeah, I've had a chance to really play with the system now. You will need Avastar. It just makes everything so much easier.

Great! Well, I find it to be a somewhat common problem that is asked to me, maybe not in the forums tho. Many people think they want the best animation, so they use as much fps as possible. I never looked at animation that way. I always thought, if the character is not moving like crazy, why would I use so much fps, and end up dealing with more frames than I needed. When people would complain about the uploader, I had no clue what they were talking about, as I never had a problem. Then, when I got my mocap system, and did some mocaps with little movement, I realize right away what others had experienced. It didn't take me long to figure out why, as I didn't like dealing with hundreds of frames, and reduced it shortly after. If we are talking about a dance animations with quick movements, then you need all the fps you can get. Even 30 fps can be challenging to get the movements of some quick dances.

Gaia Clary wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: Hey Gaia, This is not really about Fitted Mesh, but I did notice that when you bend the mShoulder bones down into a more natural position, any clothing weighted to it stretches to expose the shoulder. In SL tho, I don't see the same affect. I been meaning to mention it to you, but I keep forgetting. If you want to talk about this more or somewhere else, just let me know. Hi, Medhue; Possibly there is a relation to the "Preserve Volume" option in the Armature modifier. I have been informed by some people that "Preserve Volume" is used in SL. I heard the opposite from others. I did not yet check this in more detail though. But maybe you can test for your case if enabling "Preserve Volume" gives more consistent results in Blender. Yep, that was it! When it is checked, It seems to react like it should.

WhiteRabbit0 wrote: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Fitted-Mesh-BUTT-rig/m-p/2492933/highlight/false#M25830 Pandora Wigglesworth : At a bare minimum, the BUTT bone should not get bigger when the avatar shape butt size is reduced. As it is, not getting bigger to match an increasing size and getting bigger when the size decreases, the BUTT bone is completely useless. I'm filing this one as a bug. I don't know if other people can see this JIRA yet but, when it becomes publicly visible, it will be BUG-5131. The JIRA seems to have been accepted and rated as Major so hopefully this can be fixed soon. It's not a tumor, I mean bug. At least, I don't think so. You misinterpretted what I meant. I didn't mean to not use it, I meant to not change it much. It does have some default weights in Avastar. See, from what I have concluded, the Butt bone is mostly for the butt to giggle. It is not for weighting your whole butt for it to be morphed with the sliders. Other bones are handling that. Like I said earlier, I made a full body suit and it works almost perfectly. Of course, it won't fit on the extreme sizes, but it will easily fit 75% or more of all the users. The same goes for the Butt morph slider. I can get it to work up to about 75% of the slider.

Hey Gaia, This is not really about Fitted Mesh, but I did notice that when you bend the mShoulder bones down into a more natural position, any clothing weighted to it stretches to expose the shoulder. In SL tho, I don't see the same affect. I been meaning to mention it to you, but I keep forgetting. If you want to talk about this more or somewhere else, just let me know.

LepreKhaun wrote: Thank you for a great introductory tutorial to unwrapping! This may clear up a lot of confusion the novice experiences when being confronted with the many options available in Blender, giving them a reference framework to decide what is best for their own model. Thanks Leprekhaun! I really try to remember what it was like when I learned, and the questions or confusions I had. I don't know if that comes thru, but that's what I think about when I make tutorials.

Well, recently, I decided to make a full body suit. This time, when I weighted the cbones, I didn't really use the butt bone. I left it as is, with only minor adjustments when I saw it would help in the areas of love handles and keeping the groin from getting crazy. Most of the morphing below the chest, at least that I have found, is controlled by the Pelvis, and Belly bones. I hope this helps a little.

MIstahMoose wrote: Not insulting you or your effort for the community. Just stating that it was a bit convoluted and could be improved to give users a better understanding. Convoluted is what LL did with Fitted Mesh, not this video. You have your opinions and that is all they are. I don't mind the criticism, but just point out what is opinion and what is not. Like I said before, if you paid attention to the video, most of the same points you make, I make in the video. The only reason I did this video was because I was asked to make it. I actually pointed these people to other tutorials that I think are good, but they told me they couldn't follow them. They said they like the way I show and describe things. If I was not asked, I would not have made this video. I would have actually made a rigging and weighting tutorial. That will likely be next, or an animating tutorial for Blender, as I haven't done 1 yet.

Chic Aeon wrote: I just wanted to make one comment -- well maybe two. I didn't watch your video; I know how to unwrap They WAY you unwrap something depends a LOT on how you plan to texture it. We learn over time and I doubt too many folks do it exactly the same way. I have never found any actual good use of the "T" cube unwrap for instance. I see mention over and over again about "wasting space" on your texture. Actually I don't see a whole lot of wasted space on your cap. Maybe each piece could have been a little larger but then it can be more difficult to texture if you are doing something complex. What folks seem to overlook is that you need to keep the SCALE OF YOUR MAP consistent with your model. YOU did that well on the hat. There is no ONE "correct way" that works for every purpose . Even though some folks apparently think there is *wink*. I am sure there will be many folks that appreciate the time you took to do this. I point out just about everything you just said in the video. Scaling is covered, and I show how to correct scaling issue with Blender's Average Island Scale feature. As far as wasted space on the hat, I point out that I could spend more time to use more space, but it's a tutorial and people don't need to see me tweak things. I think some people just want to be nitpicky. You're right, there is no real "correct" way. Thanks for the input.

MIstahMoose wrote: Not sure what the video is aimed at, just general unwrapping use? Because The cube made me cringe a bit, you should explain that the only time you need an unwrap like that for a cube is if you plan to have a different texture on each face, usually stacking a cube ends up being the most useful way to utilize its unwrap. There is another layed out version of the cube which is seamless, unlike the T version..I do not remember where to find a tutorial for that version The cylinder was fine The sphere had extreme pinching and would actually not be very useable http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Realistic_Eyes_In_Blender Scroll down for the sphere unwrap. The hat unwrap could be much improved All of the above, a lot of wasted texure space which results in loss of quality (I understand this is a basic unwrap video, but you should show people how to do it correctly... not just do it. "Thats okay" isn't never better than "Thats correct") ETA the link If you had actually paid attention to the video, I point out most of everything you just said. Why not make your own video? See, I took the time to sit down and make 1. I'm an animator, but I just happen to know how to do just about everything that is 3D. I never said I was an unwrapping pro, or even a modeler. The point of the video is to give users, that asked me personally, a basic understanding of how UV unwrapping works. Oh, and to any1 reading this, you can also select groups of faces and unwrap them independent of the rest of the model. I forgot to add that to the video.