Amilia Zabaleta

Thank you for that feedback, Ivan, I will definitely look into blender and the proces you described after my next project is completed. Then I'm quitting events until I can beat this process into submission and come up with a lower-poly, workable system. IvanBenjammin wrote: Blender's dae export has been developed in part BY SL creators, and its proven to work. I can sympathise with you not wanting to model in Blender, because I sure can't. What I do is export obj's from my 3d app (Silo), import those to Blender, then export out daes. Its a bit of a roundabout way of doing things, but it works.

Thank you, Chic, and everyone else, for the input so far. This is good, I had no idea that this was such an issue. I had found limits elsewhere, and apparently it seemed I was within them, but I totally understand why people are freaking out at those sizes and I am working at reducing big time, learning how to use normal maps, etc. to create more detail with less verts. Chic Aeon wrote: WHY the uploader was able to compile (or whatever) your file before and not now "could" be a difference in the current uploader which is trying to curtail the exorbitantly dense mesh folks try and upload. Much of this is stolen with the folks having NO clue let alone paying attention to the TOS. Having said that, is there some information or a jira or anything referencing the change in the current uploader? If I can date that, I might figure out where all this went sideways and work backwards. Also, if anyone has feedback as to what those errors I listed may mean, it would be greatly appreciated. I've checked other forums, and all I've been able to find is people just guessing at what could be going on, rather then explaining the error messages themselves. I think that would be helpful for everyone trying to get familiar with mesh and its problems/procedures. Thank you.

Hello arton, I have no special characters in my file path. And yes, I know that jewelry items are just little things, but they are much more complicated then a large straight wall on a house would be, for example. I am working on reducing the mesh count where I can though. Seriously pursuing that as a goal in general. What confuses me is that the density ON THE EXACT SAME OBJECT has increased, and thus becomes unloadable with the new system. THAT issue is what I'm trying to figure out. How it all went from a reasonable (mostly) number of tris to an INSANE number when the mesh is looked in wireframe in world. Where did the extra tris magically come from all of a sudden...? oh! and thank you for the page reference, most helpful!

Ok, I'm going to put it all out there, because either I'm really stuck, doing something very wrong, forgot a vital step; or there is something wrong with Maya 2014 suddenly, Second Life Mesh uploads or windows 8. It's a long list of variables, and I feel I'm losing my mind in the process. Please be kind in your responses, my patience with this situation is wearing very very thin. Recently (late June) I acquired a marvelous new laptop, top of the line in graphics and gaming, with Windows 8 installed. Until then, I had a good quality but standard HP machine, with good graphics and processor, and I was merrily cranking out mesh items using Windows 7, Maya 2013, then upgraded to 2014, exporting the meshes first to an fbx file, and then using the fbx convertor (an older version) to create COLLADA (.dae) files. They generally uploaded just fine, occasionally some MAV_BLOCK issues, which I could always fix cause I was forgetting to delete random UV maps from the file. Materials and thus faces were working fine, tris converting just fine, but in general I was in business. This new machine, Windows 8, installed Maya 2014 (had to decommission it on the old machine, because they make you do that), installed the FBX convertor, then was informed that Maya 2014 can save Collada files directly just fine, so tried that. Welp, everything I have made since acquiring the new machine has been..very trying. Yes, I did copy over my old settings for Maya from the old machine. Yes, I have tried exporting the files as OBJ and deleting history, reducing polys etc. etc. the list of fixes go on and on, I've spent most of August and September cruising the forums for answers. The best way I can describe the main issues, when the meshes actually decide to upload, is that what seemed fine in terms of triangle mesh when uploading on the old system (you know, doing that wireframe thing that shows you how dense the mesh is), now uploads like it's on steroids. Even when I reduce it to the point where the mesh almost deforms. Where did all of those extra tris come from, all of a sudden? So, I did a little experiment this morning. I took one of my meshes that uploaded with absolutely no problems in February, and tried uploading it in beta grid. It has not been touched or altered since I originally created it. This is what happened: looks fine so far (please no comments on the original numbers, I always reduce the lowest to 0). At least it didn't give me any major error messages and showed up. But then I tried to do the upload, and this happened: \o/....:\ Back in February, I had absolutely no problem with this. Ok, went back to Maya, found the original file, and tried creating a "straight-to-dae" file from it. When saving it, (this is a question for Maya users) I got this warning: I tried uploading it on beta grid anyway, just to see what would happen: Got that pesky "dae parsing issue" message (I've seen that lots of times lately.) Oh and here is another fun error I've been getting lately as well: BTW, I have uploaded the latest version of the FBX convertor for Maya, and have tried it repeatedly for converting to Collada files, but it hasn't worked so far. There HAVE been some collada meshes that have uploaded ok, but that's after I have severly reduced polys, (which worked just fine before) and again, the surface in SL looks like tris times a million. AND I've also gone back and forth using the Firestorm and official viewers, and that has made no difference. So far my conclusions are: either I'm forgetting to tick some box in Maya that would miraculously fix all this. Or, I'm doing the collada export all wrong. And/or the new fbx convertor is borked. OR, Maya 2014 and SL hate Windows 8, straight up. OR, there is suddenly (since June) a major issue of uploading Maya-created meshes onto the SL platform. So - I've tried to outline all parts of this mess as clearly as possible. ANY suggestions would be extremely helpful, and please ask questions if some part of this was unclear. Not sure if I've included all the issues, but a good discussion of this may be helpful to others as well. THANK YOU IN ADVANCE! One more note, please don't advise me to switch over to Blender. What is making me crazy here is that three months ago, this all worked just fine, so I know it should be able to work again. Also, I can't find any updated wiki sources re working with Maya 2014, so if someone can point me in the right direction, that would be great!

Thank you, Cathy, for your reply and for sticking up for me. I tend not to post too many questions on forums, so consider me a newb to that, but your response to Natales was spot on for my reasoning for creating a new thread. Also, thank you for all your suggestions, they were very helpful. Your fourth suggestion was the best, the problem is with the mesh I had made (probably on incorrect settings, plus I think the mesh was a little poly-heavy) so I've had to figure out work-arounds, and the obj export/import trick helps zero some of those settings out. Any other input would be great. And what did happen to Chosen Few? His comments were a little...not sure what a good word for them would be...but he really seemed to know his stuff. Again, thank you Cathy.

Posted this in another thread, but thought I'd start it anew to see if I can get more input. ...(was very happy to find out about) re. direct export to .dae files in Maya 2014. Having said that, I'm having loads of trouble with the Maya 2014 to SL transition on my new, fabulous and expensive machine. I am trying to figure out if it's a Windows 8 issue, an "old files into new" issue (the "export to OBJ, then reimport" scheme), or a material/LOD issue. Or did I forget to check the right box when I reinstalled 2014 on the new machine? I did copy over my old settings into Maya 2014 - so that part is working right. The biggest problem has been that the steps that worked pre-new machine aren't working anymore. Of course I'm still learning, but what could be so radically different at this point? The two most difficult issues have been getting the following warnings when I export to Collada: "The plug-in will tessellate meshes with smooth mesh preview according to corresponding preview division levels maya error message" and: "While reading or writing a file the following notifications have been raised. Warning: Null not supported by COLLADA. Node tiarabasetrial will lose its geometric information. The node transforms will be saved." And then when trying to upload to SL: "material of model is not a subset of reference model sl" Any insights (constructive, please) would be much appreciated. I want to get back in the groove. I guess the main question is, is there a way to "wipe clean" the model to get it to work? Much thank yous in advance..

Thank you so much for posting this - a big "whew" re. direct export to .dae files in Maya 2014. Having said that, I'm having loads of trouble with the Maya 2014 to SL transition on my new, fabulous and expensive machine. I am trying to figure out if it's a Windows 8 issue, an "old files into new" issue (the "export to OBJ, then reimport" scheme), or a material/LOD issue. Or did I forget to check the right box when I reinstalled 2014 on the new machine? I did copy over my old settings into Maya 2014 - so that part is working right. The biggest problem has been that the steps that worked pre-new machine aren't working anymore. Of course I'm still learning, but what could be so radically different at this point? The two most difficult issues have been getting the following warnings when I export to Collada: "The plug-in will tessellate meshes with smooth mesh preview according to corresponding preview division levels maya error message" and: "While reading or writing a file the following notifications have been raised. Warning: Null not supported by COLLADA. Node tiarabasetrial will lose its geometric information. The node transforms will be saved." And then when trying to upload to SL: "material of model is not a subset of reference model sl" Any insights (constructive, please) would be much appreciated. I want to get back in the groove. I guess the main question is, is there a way to "wipe clean" the model to get it to work? Much thank yous in advance..

Very well put, Meri, and I see no answer to that yet. I'm a little late to the table - I have come to building mesh kicking and screaming, but I finally relented in my pursuit of the perfect shells - and have made the time and monetary investment to accomplish that. Btw, I'm finding this transition to mesh a solitary and "out-of-world" venture so far - which I think is counter to what I think LL was trying to accomplish in the first place (in-world creation, in-world tools, cooperative in-world building?). Would someone from this thread please clarify work-arounds for, say, earrings that still come in with a 0.010 limitation? Invisible prims? Please direct me to a link? Thank you in advance...

Thank you for posting this! Maybe I'll get some jewelry done yet!

Well...I guess I got told. Thank you for the lecture about why I'm wasting my time on sculpts - I was trying to avoid that by explaining my CURRENT position (right now, before I have tons of stuff to produce by the end of April; not in three months, when I will have more time to actually spend creating mesh because I have done all the tutorials I could find). Believe me, if it looks worth my time, I will commit to that. Also, I'm working with a special 3-month trial of Maya, still haven't committed the full monetary amount, so the jury is still out as to whether I will put the money on the cracker barrel. That having been said, I will try your suggestions, but I was also wondering if some of the struggle with sculpts (I know I know, please no lecture, just treat this question as a hypothetical) has to do with UV maps not "sticking" in place. If you could address that, thank you in advance. Also so sorry I got the word NURBS wrong. I know what you were talking about, my mistake. *retreats yelping into her comfortable cave*

Hello!! This forum has come closest to addressing some of the problems I've encountered trying to transfer anything from Maya into SL, either sculpt or mesh. So first, why am I continuing to try and make sculpts with Maya? I'm really struggling with this. One of the main issues is - prim count. I create jewelry, and there is a definite limit of prims in a complex piece - 254 actually. This issue is actually an entirely different discussion - mostly having to do with the fact that a single mesh item can come in as high as 8 land impact, when the same sculpt is still....1. Also, I'm still not at the skill level that I can create the entire piece in mesh, from armature to finished product to textured, let alone rigged (that is my goal though) After all my research (over the last two months) I've concluded that until I get there, I need to stick with trying to create sculpts. I'm learning tons everyday, and my meshes in Maya are gorgeous, I just can't get from here to there. Very frustrating. So, here are pictures illustrating my problem: My gorgeous build in Maya: My sculpt in SL It's truncated. I'm happy with the texture map though. I feel like I'm missing a step, something in the baking? Also, in the side view, you can see my edit outline, I had to map it as a torus since the seam for the nurb was broken when I mapped it as a sphere. I've gone through, updated my sculpt mel script to 1.4 (practiced made the squared nurb sphere, that was very cool actually), finally stopped making sculpts with multiple nurbs and limited myself to the nurb sphere, deleted history, saved the sculpt file as a bitmap, double checked ALL the steps. And the sculpt is still not coming out the way I think it should. Yes, I'm just starting out, yes, I am fully aware that I'm probably spinning my wheels making sculpts in Maya and that I should only concentrate on mesh, but I've been able to hammer out sculpts in other programs with pretty good results and with some skill. I would really like to make this work. Any suggestions, further info, anything this group has would be very much appreciated!