Chosen Few

Interesting. Yeah, I'd have to agree that perhaps the JPEG save had already filtered out some of the colors that the JPEG2000 utility does not handle well.

I think you're right that were were talking about two different things, iCade. You're of course absolutely right that when a sculpt map is applied to a prim, the name of the creator of that prim will be what shows up in the build menu, regardless of who created the map. That's part of the expected behavior of SL, and the requisite transfer of rights for it is part of what we've all agreed to in SL's TOS. So, that's totally a non-issue. That does not speak, however, to the practice of downloading a sculpt map, and then re-uploading the image, in order to change the apparent creator name of the map itself. That's a no-no, unless the creator says it's OK. Upon re-reading your post, I realize you were talking about the former, not the latter. Somehow, I thought you were talking aobut the latter when I first replied. My mistake. To answer your question about whether or not I regularly buy sculpties, the answer is no, I do not. I never buy anything in SL, actually. If I need something, I'll just make it myself.

One more thing I forgot to mention in my last post: If you're saving your images as JPEG, that can be a major contributor to problems like this. So, if you've been using JPEG, stop. JPEG is lossy, and so is SL's implementation of JPEG2000*. So, when you start with a JPEG, and then SL converts it to JPEG2000 for upload, you end up with the 'copy of a copy' effect, and the results are sometimes pretty ugly. For best results, ALWAYS save your images in a lossless format. TGA is the industry standard, but BMP and PNG will also do the job. Don't worry about the file size for the locally saved image, by the way. When you upload an image to SL, the viewer software makes a copy, and converts it to JPEG2000. It is that copy that gets uploaded. The source file never leaves your own hard drive. The JPEG2000 file that does get uploaded will be the same size, no matter what the source format. *Note: SL's lossless upload feature only works on very small images, like sculpt maps. For medium and large sized images, it's always lossy, even if lossless upload is enabled.

Ah, that makes sense, Kristine. I should have thought of that, actually, especially considering the question was aimed at rigged meshes, specifically. Yeah, if you've got a low end GPU, skinning may indeed work better when relegated the CPU instead.

My guess is the banding is an artifact of JPEG2000 compression. If you take a look at the individual color channels in the image you posted, you can see the blue channel is the culprit. For whatever reason, that channel did not compress very well. Open up your info panel, and in each channel move the mouse over the gradient in both sections of the image, and take a look at how the color values change. In the Photoshop part, you'll see that in all three channels, the values change smoothly, in one-stop increments, as you slowly move the mouse from the base color area, inward toward the specular highlight (and of course it jumps up abruptly when you actually hit the highlight). In the SL version, however, it's a different story. The red and green channels behave similarly, although a bit less smoothly, which is to be expected after compression. The blue channel is out of whack. The values rise up and down, as you cross each band. The area you described as "dark" has less blue in it than the base color has. The reds and greens are actually brighter in that area than in the base color, just as they should be. The lack of blue, though, is enough to cause a drop in the combined brightness of the three channels. One thing you may find interesting is that the very same bands exist in the blue channel, in the Photoshop image, too. Their values are arranged in the right order, though, keeping the gradient effect behaving as expected. Each concentric ring increases in color value, as you approach the middle. When the compression algorithm was a applied, it must have recalculated each color separately, and the way the math happened to work out, some of the blue bands got decreased instead of increased. Unfortunately, there's not a lot you can do about it, since SL's JPEG2000 compression settings are not under our control as users. I would suggest experimenting with different color schemes. When you find colors that make the problem apparent, avoid those colors. I doubt there's anything else you can do.

Happens to the best of us. It's not something you have to deal with on all platforms, so it's easy to overlook. Since SL only supports one skeleton, it requires that the full list of influences be present, even if the values of some of them happen to be zero.

From your description, you seem to be misinterpreting what you're looking at. If the texture is repeating as you steretch the object, it's because it the texture is NOT stretching with the object. The object gets bigger, but the texture remains the same size, so it has to repeat more than once to continue to cover the surface. If the texture were indeed stretching with the object, then it would grow as the object grows, and the number of repeats would never change. In any case, take a more careful look at the editor window, and you'll see the answer, staring you in the face. Near the upper right hand corner of the window, there's a checkbox for Stretch Textures. When it's checked, the texture will stretch with the object. When it's unchecked, the texture will stay the same size when you stretch the object, causing the texture to repeat as the object grows.

Glad you got it fixed. Out of curiosity, what was the actual problem?

Assuming you did everything else right, there are a couple of common pitfalls that can cause the issue you described: One is your exporter is putting out the wrong COLLADA version for SL. This is a common issue with the stock FBX/DAE exporter for Maya 2012. For an easy fix, export to FBX instead, and then use Autodesk's stand alone FBX Converter program to convert the file to COLLADA 1.4. The other is you might not have set up your rigging quite right. Are you absolutely certain the skeleton has all the correct bone names and heirarchies? And did you remember to uncheck "Remove unused influences" in the smooth bind options? If turns out the problem is not one of those, we can explore other possibilities. But start with those, and report back.

Don't waste your money on a machine with integrated graphics. Always, always, ALWAYS get a real graphics card. If you need to sacrifice somehting in your computer to stay in budget, cut down on something else. Do NOT skimp on the graphics card. If you go with 8GB of RAM instead of 12, and you hold off on the SSD, you'd probably have enough to get a fairly decent midrange nVidia card, which would be about 10,000 times better than the best IGP imaginable. Think about it this way: 12GB of RAM, plus IGP, equals you can run a few more programs at once, but they all look crappy. 8GB of RAM, plus decent video card, equals you can still do a ton of stuff all at once, and they all look great. SSD, plus IGP, equals programs open faster, but they look crappy the whole time they're running. HDD, plus decent video card, equals programs open at normal speed, and they look great the whole time they're running. Any way you slice it, you get more bang for your buck with the video card than with that other stuff. There's just no case to be made the IGP. If you really want the extra RAM and the SSD, add them later, when you've got the money for them. Your video card is the single most important item in your compute. Don't skimp on that, just to add some bells and whistles that won't do nearly as much for you. By the way, just so you know, "spec says it supports OpenGL" means nothing. I'm not aware of any current GPU that doesn't support OpenGL. It's a standard. Saying my video card supports OpenGL is like saying my car supports asphalt. Just because Ferraris drive on the same roadways doesn't mean my Dodge rust bucket will ever perform like a Ferrari.

Jared Spearsong wrote: it comes in extremely tiny, but can be stretched to a bigger size.... As others have already stated, the issue is unit discrepency. Your Maya units are set to something other than meters. By default, Maya uses centimeters, so if you've never changed that, then your objects are 100 times smaller than SL wants them to be. There are three ways to fix it: 1. Change your working units to maters, in Maya. Click Window -> Settings/Preferences -> Preferences. The Preferences dialog will open. In the left hand column, click Preferences. Under where it says "Working Units" select "meter" from the dropdown menu, and then click Save at the bottom. -OR- 2. Set your COLLADA exporter to change the units to meters, upon export. Instructions for this will vary, depending on what exporter you're using. -OR- 3. After you export, manually edit the .dae file, to change the units to meters. To do ths, open the file in a text editor, such as WordPad. You'll find the line that defines units near the beginning, generally within the first 25 lines or so. If your Maya units were set to centimeters when Maya wrote the file, then the line will look like this: <unit name ="centimeter" meter="0.01"/> Change the 0.01 to 1.00, and your objects will become the correct size. Optionally, you can also change the word "centimeter" to "meter", if you want. It won't make any difference for SL, but it will help keep things consistent, in case you ever end up using the same file for other applications that do care about such things. Jared Spearsong wrote: it's almost invisible on the outside when you cam around it It sounds like you've got your normals reversed. In 3D modeling lingo, "normals" are the directions in which light reflects off of surfaces. Each polygon has, among other things, what's called a "face normal". Whichever direction the face normal is pointing is considred to be the front of the polygon. By default, Maya displays double-sided polygons, so every surface is visible from both the front and the back. Realtime environments like SL only display single-sided polygons, meaning surfaces are only visible from the front. Whenever you're modeling for realtime (games, virtual worlds, etc.), you MUST keep track of which way your normals are facing, so you don't end up in the situation you're in right now. One way to do this is to enable backface culling in Maya, so that things will look the same way they'll look in the game. With backface culling turned on, only front faces will be visible; backfaces will be invislble. Maya offers several different ways to enable backface culling: You can enable it globally, by clicking in the main menu bar: Display -> Polygons -> Backface Culling You can enable it just in a specific viewport, by clicking at the top of the port: Shading -> Backface Culling You can enable for just a specific object by first selecting the object, and then clicking in the Attribute Editor: object's shape node tab -> Render Stats -> uncheck Double Sided There are other methods, as well, but those are the ones you'll likely use most often. Another option, as an alternative to enabling backface culling, is disabling two sided lighting. This will turn backfaces black, instead of invisible. You can do this in any viewport, by clicking at the top of the port: Lighting -> uncheck Two Sided Lighting. You can also enable normals display, so you can look at the normals themselves, to see which way they're pointing. They will appear as lines protruding from the front side of each polygon. Just as before, Maya offers lots of different ways to enable normals display: You can enable it globally, by clicking in the main menu bar: Display -> Polygons -> Face Normals You can enable it for a specific object, by first selecting the object, and then clicking in the Attribute Editor: object's shape node tab -> Mesh Component Display -> check Display Normal Once again, there are other methods, but those are the ones you'll likely use most often. To reverse a polygon's normals, first select the polygon, and then click in the main menu bar: Polygons menu set -> Normals -> Reverse. If you want to reverse the normals on the entire model, do it with the whole model selected. If you want to do it to just part of the model, go into component mode, and select just the individual faces you want to flip. Notice that like most menu commands in Maya, the Normals -> Reverse command has an options box next to it. I'd suggest you open it up, and take a look at the options. As always, for a complete explanation of what each option does, click Help, at the top of the options box. Jared Spearsong wrote: when trying it on, it's completely crazy and there's a long box that goes down my whole body Sounds like it's not rigged properly. There are any number of ways your friend might have screwed that up, so without knowing more about what exactly he did, it's hard to suggest a solution. My guess is he inadvertently weighted some of the vertices to the avatar's feet, so the corresponding parts of the jacket are getting pulled downward. I would invite your friend to post here himself, so we can have a more direct conversation about correcting his techniques.

Dragon Ronin wrote: You would not go out and buy a Gucci purse and take the Gucci name off to replace with your own. I appreciate what you're trying to say, but I might suggest you pick a more suitable example. The purse doesn't really hold up. If someone wanted to pay all the money to buy a Gucci purse, replace the label, and then try to resell it as their own brand, there's no legal or eithical reason why they couldn't or shouldn't do that. Of course, there may be a compelling financial reason not to do it, since they'd most likely reduce the perceived value of the purse, rather than increase it, and they'd end up selling it at a loos. But there's no law against being stupid like that. Here's why the purse doesn't make a very good analog for the digital art being discussed: First, if you own a RL item, whether it be a purse or anything else, you can resell it any time you want, regardless of whether or not it still has the original label on it. Reselling the item does not involve making new copies of it, so there's no possible way to infringe on the creator's rights. Second, even if you somehow were to magically replicate the purse upon selling it, the fact is a purse is a utilitarian item, and as such, it is not protected by copyright law. So even then, you wouldn't be infringing on the original creator's rights. This is why the knock-off industry exists. Anyone can produce a purse that looks just like a Gucci purse, and sell as many units as they like. They just can't include protected intellectual property, such as the Gucci logo, which is trademarked, or any artistic items that could exist separately from the whole, which would be copyrighted. There's an active argument to change all that, by the way, by broadening the laws regarding design patents, and trade dress. If you've been following the ongoing Apple vs. Samsung saga, it's all about these kinds of questions. Certain legalities may indeed be altered, for better or worse. But in the here and now, things are still how they've been for a very long time. Anyway, I get that your point was to respect original creators, and I do appreciate that. It just would make better sense to use an example that is more analogous to the situation at hand.

iCade wrote: Unless the creator of the sculpts expressively writes that their name must appear as the creator of the end product (something I have not seen thus far) everyone is free to use the products with them appearing as the creator. Legally speaking, it's the other way around. Unless the creator of ANY work, be it a sculpt map or anything else, expressly ALLOWS you to make copies and claim them as your own, then you're NOT free to do so. This is true, no matter what the assignment of permissions in SL. That's the reason creators tend to include a wrriten TOS with their full perms works, to make it clear what rights they are granting to their customers. They're under no obligation to state what rights they are not granting. Legally, if they don't come out and say you can, then you can't. That said, you're of course absolutely right that many sculpt map creators do intend for their customers to put their own names on the items they make from the maps. It's just important to understand that if that's what they intend, they should say so. If a creator doesn't actually say it, then this or her customers legally have to assume they do not have the right.

Xtaci Evermore wrote: The avis have points all over their bodies that jut out across the screen, and when they move they flail all over the screen. Odd description I know but its the best I can do. Definitely sounds like a vertex location issue. ATI/AMD cards, and Intel IGP's tend to have this issue with VBO's. nVidia cards, not so much. Whenever the time comes that you're ready to replace that machine, get one with a good solid nVidia card in it (one with at least a 5 in the second digit of the model number, preferably a 7 or 8). In the mean time, I hope disabling VBO's solves the problem for you. If not, I don't know what else to suggest, besides get a more suitable computer, which I'm guessing is not what you want to hear right now.

Xtaci Evermore wrote: I have a MacBook pro and the graphics it has is the intel hd 3000. That's your problem right there. Intel graphics are the absllute worst of the worst, of the worst. Apple really should be ashamed of themselves for allowing such a subpar piece of hardware into a machine that has the "Pro" monicker on it. If you were on Windows machine, I'd suggest you update your graphics driver, but since it's unlikely Apple will let you do that do that, that probably doesn't help. And of course, if you were on a desktop instead of a laptop, I'd tell you get yourself a real graphics card, and disable that ridiculous Intel IGP. But obviously you don't have that option in most laptops, and certainly not in any laptop made by Apple. What I can tell you that might be helpful is this. Disable vertex buffer objects, in your SL graphics preferences. The "extensions" you described (assuming I'm accurately understanding your use of the word) are typical when a graphics card doesn't understand how to manage VBO's. When the GPU doesn't know how to interpret the VBO data properly, it thinks certain vertices are in the wrong locations, and then you end up with long thin spikes acrosss the screen, as it draws triangles between the incorrectly placed vertices. If that's actually what's going on, then disabling VBO's should solve the problem. If it's something else, you may be out of luck. Sorry to have to tell you, but the computer you're using just isn't designed for this sort of thing. Next time you buy a computer, get one with a proper graphics card in it. That's the single most important part of the computer, especially if you're going to be running graphically taxing applications like SL. Any time you buy a machine with an Intel IGP in it, you're just throwing your money away. That goes double for laptops, since you can't upgrade the card. IGP's should be avoided like the plague. They're horrible things that cause nothing but problems. If they disappeared off the face of the Earth tomorrow, not a single person would mourn their loss. There's really nothing else that can be said about them.

As others have stated, you can certainly get that particuar chair down to 1 LI. It's all in how well you manage the lower LOD's. That said, let's talk about your other questions, because the subject in general is an important one. Success in modeling for real-time environments is always about striking the best balance between quality and resource usage. With that in mind, let's pretend for a moment that there was not actually a way to lower that chair's LI, and that it really had to be 4. If that were the case, then the question you'd have to ask yourself would be do the rounded corners make it look 4 times better, in order to justify 4 times the overhead? If it were me, I'd say no, they don't, especially when you consider that people are likely to have a lot more than just one instnace of any given chair in any given scene. While it does look a little better rounded, it doesn't look 4 times better. That's the way I generally approach the balancing act. Really, it's just like balancing any other budget. If you're getting a good return on your investment, then it's worth doing, and if you're not, then it's not. Here's the logical thought process I use, when deciding whether or not to make something look better, at the expense of higher resource usage. If I can make it look a lot better, while only costing a little more, then it's generally worth doing. Conversely, if it's only going to look a little better, while costing a lot more, then it's generally NOT worth doing. If the factors are equal, meaning it's either going to look a lot better while costing a lot more, or look a little better while costing a little more, then it MIGHT be worth it, depending on what else is going on in the game. If it helps, here's the same set of factors and conclusions, diagrammed: Of course, the reverse is also true, when deciding whether to reduce resource costs, at the expense of quality. If I can make it cost a lot a less, by only looking a little worse, then it's worth it. Conversely, if it's only going to cost a little less, but will look a whole lot worse, then it's not worth it. And again, if the factors are equal, then it's a maybe. Here's the same kind of diagram, for this situation: As passionate artists, we have a deeply personal investment in how good our artwork looks. And as wary technicians, we have an equally strong concern for how efficient our assets are. As human beings, it's easy to become overly emotional about either one, to indulge the one, while drowning out the other. Whether we're aware of it or not, we tend to tie our sense of identity to these things. To ensure our decisions are pure, it's important to rely on a set of guiding principles/ The solid logic in the two diagrams never fails. By placing each decision into one of the squares, to see how it measures up, we ensure the best, most balanced result, every time. If it's in a white square, it's a good decision. If it's in a black square, it's a bad decision. If it's in a gray square, then you know you have to look at other factors*, and use the same sort of process on those, as well. Make all your decisions in accordance with the process, and you'll never go wrong. *Here are a couple of quick examples of incorporating other factors, when faced with gray-square decisions. A few years ago, I was involved with creating a virtual world for users in an a developing nation. The average computer in that country is about ten to fifteen years behind what we're all used to here in the first world. Therefore, we had to do everything we possibly could to ensure good performance. It was a constant challenge to figure out how to use as few resources as possible, at every turn. The client was an advertising company, from the country in question. They had no idea how the technology actually worked; they just wanted a virtual world for their country. They supplied us with lots of 2D concept art, which their graphic artists had come up with. Needless to say, most of their designs were not actually possible in 3D, given the technical restraints. So, we had to find ways to do things that looked passably similar, while still being usable on a circa 1995 computer, operating at dial-up-like connection speeds. It proved to be one of the most difficult of all projects in my career. Needless to say, on this project, the "costs a lot less" category was king. Anything from that first diagram was totally out, as there was no room for "costs more", ever. The second diagram was the only thinking that could apply. We would take the concept art, build 3D models of what we saw in it, and then creatively study the results, to figure out how we could change it to make it viable. Any time something fell into either of the "costs a lot less" squares, that was the way we had to go, even if it also had "looks a lot worse" attached to it. We strove for the white square as much as possible, of course, but in most cases, the upper right gray square was the one. On rare occasions, we could afford the lower left, but not usually. Anything we could do to lower resource costs, we simply had to do, and that was that. As long as things looked plausible, even if not good, they were good enough. All things considered, the project turned out pretty well. It actually looks pretty decent, for what it is, and it's still in use today. For an opposite example, I was once involved with creating a virtual dating service. The idea was after you connect with someone on a dating site, but before you meet them in person, you first go on a virtual date. Since the environments would be small, and since there would only ever be two characters at a time, we were able to pull out all the stops, in terms of visual quality. Almost everything was able to fall into the lower left square in the first diagram. Things could cost a lot more in order to look a lot better, and that was just fine. The character models were equivalent to DAZ Victoria/Michael quality, to give you an idea. That's typically unheard of in games, but when you only need two of them, it's doable. Unfortunately, the project was derailed before it got off the ground, so we never got to finish it. A less than scrupulous programmer ended up spooking the investor into cancelling the whole thing. It's a shame. It would have been pretty cool. In SL, gray-square decisions aren't so simple. It's a chaotic environment, in which little is truly under your direct control. The most important question, really, is how does the item's appearance impact the user experience. In cases where other things are going on that more profoundly affect the user experience than the looks of that one item, then it's best to keep the cost as low as possible, even if that means sacrificing quite a bit of visual quality in the item. That's especially true if it's something people are likely to rez multiple copies of, like a chair. If I'm having a bunch of people over to my spiffy new castle in the sky, to enjoy an evening of socializing, or a trivia game, or what have you, does it really detract from that, if my chairs have square corners instead of round ones? I'm sure you'd agree, the answer is very likely no, it doesn't make any difference at all. On the other hand, if it's something whose looks are what directly make or break the user experience, like an exquisite sculpture in the middle of an otherwise empty room, then it might be worth it to jack up the cost, in order to really put the spit & polish on it. In that scenario, clearly, the visual quality of the item IS the experience. No matter what the scenario, though, at the end or the day, it's always about doing more with less, as you already know. In most cases, that just comes down to application of a little knowledge plus a lot of common sense.

IrinaOlenka wrote: Nails are the beauty sopt of the body. You resurrected a year-dead thread just to say that?

Guilliaume wrote: A 5 pixel line from a farther perspective is bigger than a 5 pixel line at a closer perspective even though both lines were drawn at 5 pixels. Just to make sure you understand what's going on, it's 5 on-screen pixels, just like when you paint in any other Photoshop document. The fact that a 3D model happens to be receiving the paint, instead of an ordinary Photoshop layer, doesn't change that. The size of the brush as measured in on-screen pixels has nothing to do with how many texels (texture pixels) the paint ends up occupying on the model. The arrangement of the texels is governed by the model's UV map. What might be 5 texels wide in one spot could be 10 or 20 or 50 or 500 textels wide in some other spot, even if both spots appear to be the same size on the model. The whole point of painting in 3D is not to have to worry about that. This is why it's so important that brush size not be linked to the model's display size. If it were actually measured in texels, the brush would have to change size and shape as you move it across the model, to maintain a direct relationship with the UV layout of each and every spot. Imagine how useless that would be. Again, the purpose of painting in 3D is not to have to care so much about how friendly or unfriendly the UV mapping is. Otherwise, you'd constantly have to distort, counter-distort, and resize things as you go, just like when you paint in 2D on the UV texture canvas. As I said before, once you get used to painting in 3D, you'll start to appreciate why the brush behaves the way it does. It works the same way in all 3D paint programs.

Guilliaume wrote: I figure that my tools are just drawing at the pixel size for my current camera view, but how do I fix that? Your assumption is correct. You're way over-thinking the solution, though. Remember, Photoshop is still Photoshop, whether you're painting in 3D or not. If you were working in 2D, the brush would appear to get larger when you zoom in on the document, right? Well, it still does that when you're painting in 3D. Photoshop's navigator doesn't know or care what a 3D model is. So, zoom in using the nagivation pane, or the ctrl+ and ctrl- hotkeys, just like you would with any other Photoshop image, and it will behave exactly as you'd expect. When you zoom with the 3D camera tool, all you do is make the model appear larger or smaller within the document. The object is displayed bigger or smaller, but the document itself remains at the same magnification, which is why the brush remains the same size on-screen. Make sense? This is how it works in most 3D paint programs, by the way. The brush size is part of the UI, and is not married to the model size. As you continue to do more 3D painting, you'll find that this is a very, very, very important thing. If it didn't do that, you'd have lots of problems that you haven't yet anticipated. Photoshop gives you the best of both worlds, since it provides both a 2D and a 3D interface at the same time. It's got its share of weaknesses compared to true 3D painters like Zbrush and Mudbox, but this is one area where it shines.

emSynth wrote: First I will ask that you not pick apart every word I write like some usenet junkie starting a flame war. That will get us nowhere. No one picked apart your words, and certainly no one's lookng to start a flame war. This is not that kind of forum, emSynth. If you're referring to the fact that some of your sentences have been quoted for direct response, please consider that a positive, not a negative. It's the way we keep the discussion pointed, and well organized. It happens every day, in almost every thread. I've never seen anyone here have a problem with it, except for you right now, assuming that is indeed what you meant. If that was not what you meant, I'd appreciate it if you'd explain what you did mean. I'd also like to point out that name calling is neither appropriate nor productive. Your demeanor had been so apparently thoughtful and well presented until the "usenet junkie" stuff came out. It's a shame you've now changed gears, because truly that's the stuff that will get us nowhere. No one else in this discussion has said anything even remotely disrespectful. You're the only one. emSynth wrote: Also please refrain from threats, that is inappropriate. I do not fear hackers or lawyers so your mention of their imagined response on your part is not only ineffective, it actually appears to be a cry for help. What threats? Who threatened you? When? I see no evidence of threat anywhere in the thread. Please explain. No one said anything about hackers, so I'm not sure where you're going with that. The only reference to lawyers was my suggestion that you consult one before proceeding with this business (just as you should when beginning ANY new business) since you yourself mentioned your own knowledge of the laws by which your business must abide is limited. That was good advice, and you really aught to take it. emSynth wrote: I have previously stated the advantages of and situations within which one might benefit from converting sculpts to mesh And I see no need to repeat them here. You've listed some obvious advantages of mesh over sculpties in general, but I still have yet to see you suggest any ways in which an actual person would benefit from your service. As I already said a couple of times now, the only two use cases I can think of simply don't work. One is illegal, and the other is impractical. (1. If someone doesn't own the sculpt map, then the use of your tool would be illegal. 2. If someone doesn't know how to use 3D modeling software, the results of your tool would be fairly useless to them.) So, what's the third case that I'm not thinking of that warrants the tool's existence? You must have one in mind or you wouldn't be doing this, right? You promised to explain, in response to my earlier post. Please do. emSynth wrote: In fact, I will not address any additional misconceptions except to ask you to Go back and read the thread again. That's not how to have a discussion, and it's certainly no way to treat your potential customers. The fact that you posted here suggests you believe we here are your target market. I invite you to treat us as such. As someone who's been in business for nearly 20 years, I can promise you that when one reacts to one's potential customers by saying what amounts to, "I already told you once, so I'm not gonna tell you again," one won't be in business very long. If I started doing that, I'd be out of business in a matter of days or weeks. I used to teach accredited courses in communications, and psychology of sales. Here's a pertinent factoid from both of those disciplines, which I hope you'll see the advantage in knowing. The average customer needs the same information presented at least five times in five different ways before his or brain becomes prepared to formulate a yes or no decision. When the information is only presented once, at least 80% of people will just walk away confused, without ever getting to make any decision at all, which is the worst possible outcome. No business can afford to lose 80% of its customers, right off the bat. So, if you want to be successful, you absolutely MUST expect and welcome the fact that people so often misinterpret your meaning on the first go. It's perfectly natural, it's entirely positive, and it's THE first step in the buying process (and yes, buying IS a process). The fact that someone chooses to respond to you at all indicates that he or she is interested in what you have to say. It's an active invitation for you to restate your case, to propel the process forward to the next step. Imagine if a surgeon were to say, "I already cut this person once, so I'm not gonna do the rest of the operation," or if a mechanic were to say, "I already turned that screw once, so I'm not gonna tighten it." How successful would they be? Effective communication, just like surgery or mechanical assembly, is a mutii-step process, involving repetition. When someone doesn't get it the first time, GREAT! Now you get to clarify, which is even better. You already stated your (correct) understanding that threats are often cries for help. I can promise you, responses to misinterpretation are ALWAYS cries for help. Your potential customers are asking you to help them understand. Not to recognize that is to do yourself and your customers a tremendous disservice. Not to respond to it is to be abusive of all involved. If you truly believe your service will help people, then you should welcome any and every opportunity to shout the benefits from the highest roof tops, so everyone can understand. When someone doesn't get it, you should get more enthusiastic, not less. It's a brand new opportunity, each and every time it happens. Please take this opportunity to clear up what it is we all seem to be missing here. How might we benefit from your service? For those of us who use 3D modeling software, what will your service do for us that the programs we already have will not do? And what do you expect those who don't know how to use 3D modeling software will be able to do with the models your service generates? emSynth wrote: And most importantly I made an effort to incorporate all of your concerns to the best of my ability. I sincerely hope you misspoke there, and it's not actually the case that simply participating in one day's worth of forum discussion, in which only four other people besides yourself have yet engaged, does not constitute the very best of your ability. Surely you're made of more than just that if you intend to launch a successful business. emSynth wrote: There is nothing else that I can do short of canceling the project, which is not appropriate. If indeed the only two use cases for it are illegal and impractical, then it would be appropriate to cancel it. I'm still hoping you will explain whatever other case(s) there may be that I haven't thought of, which would make such cancellation inappropriate. emSynth wrote: Please realize that you cannot stop the march of progress no matter how strong your fear of the unknown may be. If i were to listen to you and give up, then someone else would provide this technology and guess what? They might not be quite so accommodating! So I respectfully suggest that you learn to deal with the emergence of sculpt2mesh - it is not going away! No one except for you said anything about stopping. What we're all asking for is clarification from you. On a few points, you've done a good job of that, but on some of the most important ones, you now seem to be recoiling. That's not a good sign. It suggests that perhaps you came here looking for validation, expecting that we'd all be excited about your project as you are, but when you instead found that we were analytical and cautious, you became uncomfortable. I'd encourage you to set that discomfort aside, and recognize this opportunity for what it is. Come on back to the discussion, and show on all points the great thoughtfulness and willingness to engage in meaningful discussion that you showed in your first few posts.

Other than the fact that you started with a NURBS sufrace, which was a useless step, since you could have just started with a polygonal model, and saved that step, you've correctly outlined the process for creating, rigging, exporting, and uploading a model to SL. However, your post did not explain any specific details of your particular work. So, it's hard to guess at what specifically you did wrong. If I just say, "Sit in driver's seat, start car, put hands on wheel, step on gas, step on break, turn car off," that wouldn't actually tell you how to drive from point A to point B. Get the point? Without more details from you, the best I can offer for now are some common pitfalls. In no particular order: 1. Wrong COLLADA Version What COLLADA exporter are you using? SL uses COLLADA 1.4. If your COLLADA exporter weites to a newer verion of the format, it might not be fully compatible with SL. There are two remdies for this. One is to use a different exporter. The other is to export to FBX, and then use Auftodesk's stand-alone FBX Converter to convert the model to COLLADA. 2. Bad Rigging Without seeing what you did in Maya, it's hard to guess where might have gone wrong in the rigging department. Did you use a smooth bind? Did you make sure unused influences were not removed? Does the skeleton have the right names on the right bones? Are you certain you weighted the various parts of the model to the intended bones? Does it animate correctly in Maya? 3. Borked Maya Scene How clean is your scene? Depending on what exporter you're using, and how you have it set, it might not be able to understand things like groups, parentings, null nodes, etc. I'd suggest you dig through your hypergraph, and get rid of any heirarchies and connections that don't actually need to be there. 4. Botched Upload It's possible something just went haywire during the upload process. Have you tried re-uploading? That's all I can think of for now. If you'd care to provide some more details about what you did, we can dive in further.

emSynth, from the way the conversation has unfolded so far, I'm glad to see that you're so open to useful feedback and willing to engage in intelligent discussion. Madeliefste has done an excellent job of bringing up some of the legal/ethical issues regarding potential use/misuse of your tool. Everything (s)he has said so far is true, and I'm pleased to see that you're taking it seriously. I'd like to add some comments and questions of my own, in direct response to your various statements and questions, regarding not only the IP concerns, but also the overall usefulness of the tool. Some of this will echo the the good information that Madeeliefste has already provided, and some will be new. emSynth wrote: if after some time the creator cannot be located - usually due to leaving SL for some reason - then the customer can consider the IP to be public domain. As Madeliefste well stated, that's not how it works, emSynth. A person does not surrender his or her IP rights, simply because some other person doesn't know how to get in touch with him or her. The property belongs to its rightful owner, regardless of whether or not he or she is easily reachable. The question of whether or not the owner has left SL is 100% irrelevant. IP ownership is a RL thing, not an SL thing. SL is simply one service among countless thousands of services an owner might choose to use as a publication tool. Just because an owner stops using a particular service doesn't mean he or she gives up his or her rights. emSynth wrote: The burden of responsibility on the customer is to seek out the creator, and the burden of responsibility of the creator is to be available via typical search and contact means. Only the first part of that statement is accurate. The second part is fiction. Yes, the customer has a responsibility to obtain the owner's permission before making any unauthorized copies of the property. But no, the owner does not bear any responsibility whatsoever to making him/herself available to receive such requests. If the owner cannot be reached for any reason, then by definition, the customer has not obtained permission, and that's the end of it. It's worth noting that the subject of so called "orphan works" is currently being reviewed within the US Copyright Office, with the intent of advising Congress on any potential changes to the law. No changes have been made yet, and it's likely that none will be made any time soon. It's extremely difficult to determine how and whether to make works of unknown authorship available to the public, as a matter of policy, while still respecting the individual rights of owners. If you're interested in the subject, feel free to read more about it at http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/ emSynth wrote: The fact that the tool is new and unforeseen by many creators does not alter this accepted practice. First, the "practice" you describe is not accepted, as we've discussed. Second, practices, procedures, and even laws, are reconsidered and reworked, all the time, as new and unforeseen tools become available. emSynth wrote: Do we outlaw wrenches because of the possibility of misuse, or do we educate all wrench users about the proper use of the wrench? Your analogy is too broad. We don't outlaw wrenches, but we do outlaw plenty of other items that are potentially dangerous, even though we might be able to come up with legitimate uses for them. I could use hand grenades to make the hole in my yard for that swimming pool I've always wanted, for example, but that doesn't make it legal for me to purchase, own, or use hand grenades in any way. I can give you an easy example of software tools that are illegal, even though they clearly have legitimate uses: DVD decrypters. Under the DMCA, it is illegal to produce or distribute technology that circumvents digital copy protections. If you want to know just how complicated that subject can be, consider the case of 321 Studios vs. MGM. The judge ruled that although it is legal to make yourself a backup copy of a DVD you own, the software you need in order to make the copy is illegal. Yowsa! I'd imagine the awkwardness of the situation was not lost on the judge. However, the ruling she made was really the only one she could. Short of striking down the DMCA (which was what 321 Studios was arguing for), her hands were tied, and there wasn't enough there to actually strike it down. So, odd is it may seem, the law stands. You may want to think about whether or not your tool might fall into the same category as DVD Decrypter. When you pull a sculpt map out of SL, convert the model it describes to another format, and then re-upload the model to SL under a different creator name, are you circumventing digital copy protections, under the legal definition? I'd say the answer is a definite maybe. It's certainly a question worthy of legal debate. If someone were to bring the matter to court, you might find yourself in hot water, just as 321 Studios did. emSynth wrote: Regarding the accepted practice in the event a creator cannot be contacted, what is it then? The only legal thing to do in such a case is simply not to use that person's property. As I said above, if an owner cannot be contacted, then you haven't obtained his or her permission. Without permission, you cannot proceed. emSynth wrote: And upon mentioning that, I have just realized that the creator and the IP owner may be separate people. So, sigh, it gets complicated. Yes, it's very complicated. The few scenarios proposed so far in this thread don't even scratch the surface. This is why it's crucially important not to jump into any industry without a full and accurate understanding of the legalities involved. I'm pretty well versed in IP law, since I've been in the content business for a long time now, and since I fairly regularly read a lot on the subject. But I wouldn't look at putting out a tool like the one you propose without having a good IP lawyer on retainer. emSynth wrote: We can put a terms of use with required checkbox indicating agreement on the web page if the community feels this would be prudent. The terms of use would need to state very clearly that the tool is not to be used without the rightful owner's permission. That MIGHT get you off the hook if an owner were to sue you. It's unlikely it would prevent any deliberate misuse of the tool, though, as I'm sure you know. If you ever were taken to court, and the judge were to rule that the purpose of your tool was to infringe, you'd be in serious trouble. emSynth wrote: i would like to mention that I have made every reasonable effort to understand these issues and to operate in accordance with accepted practice, and I rely on thoughtful people like yourself to help me resolve any issues that arise. I would say you've made A reasonable effort here, which is a good start. However, you've got a long way to go before it would be accurate to state that you've made EVERY reasonable effort. I'm glad that you're listening to us in the community, but you should also be consulting an attorney. By your own admission, you're not (yet) very well versed in IP law. Missteps could end up costing you dearly. I'd strongly caution you against going forward with this until you've got a legal expert on your side, especially considering you seem to be planning on making a business of it. That covers the legalities raised so far. Now let's talk about some technical issues. I don't mean to rain on your parade, but I'm having trouble understanding why I, as a content creator, would ever have need of a tool like this. Can you please explain what advantage would there be for me in using your tool instead of my own 3D modeling software? I can only think of two use cases, myself: One would be if I don't actually have the sculpt map on my local machine. In that case, it would have to be someone else's map, not mine, and I'd have to lack the creator's permission to download it. If I don't have permission to download, it's nearly impossible to imagine I'd have permission to upload it to your tool. Add all that up, and your tool becomes a service for circumventing copy protections, which as we've already discussed, is illegal. I'm assuming that's not your intent here. The other would be if I don't know how to use 3D modeling software, and I've created the map in a sculpty-only tool, like SculptyPaint or something. In that case, what do I do with the mesh object after your tool spits it out? If my intent is to give it better texturing, but I don't know how to use a modeling program, I'm not going to be able to give it a custom UV map, or assign multiple materials to it, or do any of the countless other things that allow an arbitrary mesh to be textured better than a sculpty. If it's a clothing item, and I don't know how to use 3D modeling software, I'm not going to be able to rig it, so it's going to remain rigid, just like if it had stayed a sculpty. If my intent is to lower display cost by using your tool's decimation, but if I'm not technically savvy enough to understand even a basic 3D modeling program, I'm probably also not knowledgeable enough (or conscientious enough) to be concerned with display cost. Etc., etc., etc. What am I missing here? What can your tool do for me as a creator, that my own local 3D modelling software cannot already do? Who exactly is your target market for your service? emSynth wrote: The work flow therefore involves importing the obj file in a 3D editor such as Blender,,, If I'm going to have to do that anyway, why wouldn't I simply import the sculpt map itself into Blender, and save myself the added step of using your tool? emSynth wrote: Regarding LI, or Land Impact, the Lindens have chosen to set things up such that a direct conversion without editing, decimation, or optimization of a 64 x 64 sculpt map results in an LI of around 32! Just a minor technicality here. It's not always going to be 32. It could be as low as 1, or as much as several hundred, depending on the overall size, the physics shape, etc. emSynth wrote: For this reason we have added decimation to the work flow. You can take the 128x128 Apple sculpt map texture from the library and run it through sculpt2mesh with decimation of 8x8 or so to get a somewhat blocky but usable Apple mesh With low LI. Again, why wouldn't I just retopologize the object in my own local modeling software? What benefit is there in using your tool for this? emSynth wrote: As to the advantages of converting a sculpt to a mesh object, there are many. LI is not one of them! If you need low LI which is often the case, then keep it as a sculpt. Mesh conversion advantages include making flexible cloth items from previously rigid sculpts, better texturing, the ability to alter sculpts for which the original tool used to create the sculpt is no longer available or the source materials are lost. Creating mesh objects from sculpt only tools, faster rezzing, physics shapes, up to eight sided textures, and other advantages that escape me at the moment. To take advantage of almost any of these benefits, I need to know how to use 3D modeling software. With that being the case, why wouldn't I just create the mesh model directly, and export it straight to COLLADA? Again, the only two use cases for which I can picture a need for your tool would be the two I mentioned above. Either I don't own the sculpt map, in which case use of the tool would be illegal, or I don't know how to use 3D modeling software, in which case I can't do enough to be able to benefit from converting the sculpty to a mesh model. So again I have to ask, what am I missing here?

iCade wrote: I'm hoping people aren't actually silly enough to go there Sadly, the world is full of people who are just that silly. They'll either fall for this, or whatever next scam they happen to encounter. I'm more concerned about how long it will take LL to come up with an effective way to block these guys. so the forums don't become too annoying to use. The last time this happened, the arms race took many weeks, before the spam finally stopped reappearing. Hopefully, we won't have to go through that again.

The lines across the screen suggest a graphics driver problem. How up to date is your driver, and was it properly installed? Let me take a minute to explain what I mean by "properly" installed, in case anybody doesn't know. Rule number one is never, ever, ever let Windows Update touch your drivers. While it's great for keeping Microsoft components up to date, it has never been capable of handling drivers correctly, and likely never will be. The proper way to update your drivers, the only way that is sure to work, is the following: 1. If you do not already have it, get DriverCleaner. It costs $9.99, but it's easily worth at least thirty or forty times that much, in terms of the amount of headaches it prevents, and solves. It is an absolute must-have. 2. Go to the manufcaturer's website (nvidia.com or ati.com) and download the installer for latest driver for your card. Do not run it yet. Just download it. 3. Restart your computer in Safe Mode. To do this, repeatedly tap F8 as the computer is starting (before the Windows logo appears), until Advanced Boot Options screen appears. When it does, select Safe Mode from the list. 4. Run DriverCleaner, and follow the prompts to remove all traces of your previous driver. 5. Restart normally. 6. Run the installer you downloaded in step 2, and follow the prompts to install your new driver. Each and every time you update your graphics driver, follow steps 2-6, religiously. It may seem complicated, all written out like this, but in actual practice, it only takes a couple of minutes.

Mayalily wrote: I stretched that flower prim before and it never looked like that, and I also have several of those sconces in my sl home and they never stretched all out of whack or looked misshapen. Something is wrong. All I can say is this. The screenshot very, very, very clearly shows what type of item is in question. As I said, it's an extremely common construction method. It's used not only in SL, but also in video games, all the time. I can't speak inteligently as to why you didn't notice it before. There are all kinds of factors that can impact how apparent it is. Other items in the scene, the camera distance, the camera angle, your graphics configuration, your graphics driver version, etc., etc., etc., can all play a role. You mentioned you only recently upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7. Perhaps the ancient drivers in the old OS simply weren't as good at displaying things how they actually are. Or, perhaps as you're gaining experience, your own powers of observation are increasing to the point where you now can see through illusions that used to fool your eye. We can only speculate. Regardless, it is what it is. If you want a different type of effect, use a different type of item. The asterisk illusion only goes so far. So you understand, the asterisk is generally worthwhile, since it tends to express the item adequately, even if less than perfectly, with minimal resource consumption. In any real-time simulation, success is always about striking the best balance between visual fidelity and performance. Mayalily wrote: As far as computer knowledge, XP was so easy compared to Windows 7 which I hate. Everyone says that at first. The reason XP seems "easy" is because it's what you're used to. In its day, it was a great OS (or at least, it BECAME a great OS, once it had been around long enough for so many of its bugs to have been fixed). Once you've gotten used to 7, you'll find that it comes with tremendous improvements, across the board, many of which will make your computing life significantly easier. Just give it time, and you'll see. Mayalily wrote: I also don't use many nor need many geek computer shortcuts as most of my computer useage has been Ebay almost since Ebay started. My knowledge is adequate for what I need and do on the computer. Your knowledge is adequate, yet you're having problems because of things you don't know. You don't need keyboard shortcuts, yet you couldn't perform such an everyday task as a screenshot. The fact that you know how to use eBay is more than good enough for you, yet now here you are, doing things other than eBay. You're having trouble doing quite a few things, yet you still seem to be saying the fact that you know how to use eBay is good enough for you. I hope you're starting to realize how illogical that line of thinking is. I'd strongly recommend you do yourself the favor of opening your mind to learning a bit more about the basic fundamentals of everyday computer usage. Basic keyboard shortcuts aren't just for uber elite computer geeks. They're for everyone. That's the whole point. They're there to make life faster and easier for every single computer user on the planet. If you've been ignoring them, you've only been handicapping yourself. From the way you're phrasing it, you seem to want to think there's some kind of Great Wall sized list of them that only the no-life guy from the South Park World of Warcraft episode could ever possibly know. That's simply not the case. Windows has had the same very small handful of shortcuts for its most common functions, for over 20 years. They're as useful for eBay users as they are for everyone else. Here are the ones you'll find useful every day. They go right across the bottom of the keyboard: ctrl-z is Undo ctrl-x is Cut ctrl-c is Copy ctrl-v is Paste If you say to yourself, "undo, cut, copy, paste," ten times, you'll have those memorized, right away. You don't need to memorize the actual letters, since they fall right in line, right across the bottom of the keyboard. Just remember, "undo, cut, copy, paste," and you're all set. Those four commands are the most commonly used functions on any computer. Whether you're typing E-mails, or chatting on IM, or placing eBay ads, or even just surfing the web, you're going to need to undo things, or copy and paste things, at least a few times a day. The shortcuts save you a few seconds each time. Over the course of a week or so, that can add up to several extra hours. In a year, it grants you many days worth of extra time. Over a month, it could be an extra day or two worth of time. In a year, it could be weeks. It's well worth taking ten seconds to memorize "undo, cut, copy, paste" in order to save even a few minutes, let alone hours, days, or weeks. For screenshots, there are two options: ctrl-printscreen copies the entire desktop to clipbaord alt-printscreen copies just the active window to clipboard Once you've got the image copied, you can paste it anywhere, just like anything else. Open up any image editor (even MS Paint will work) and then paste it in. Press ctrl-v to do it quickly, or if you insist on doing it the slower way, click Edit -> Paste. Either way, you've got your screenshot. Alternatively, you can use the snipping tool in Windows 7, as Kwak suggested. Remember I said Windows 7 has all kinds of things in it that will make your life easier? Well, as someone who has never wanted to memorize shortcuts, this one's got your name all over it. Mayalily wrote: As far as trying to post that image here, I'm getting a pop up window that says that type of file is not supported by Windows...? Does it actually say it's not supported by Windows, or simply that it's an invalid file type? My guess is you're trying to upload a file type that the forum software does not support. It only allows you to upload web-friendly formats: JPEG, GIF, and PNG. If you used the SL snapshot feature to save the image, it's probably a BMP or TGA. Those aren't allowed, because they're uncompressed, huge files, which would take up too much storage space on the server, and which would take way too long to appear in people's browsers. Before you can upload any image to the forums (or to eBay), you'll need to convert ot to a web-suitable (compressed) format. To do that, simply open the image any full featured image editor (Photoshop, GIMP, Paintshop Pro, Paint.Net, etc.) and then save it as one of the appropriate formats. Alternatively, you can use IrfanView, which is a free image converter program, to very quickly and easily convert images to different formats. As someone who regularly places eBay ads, I'm guessing you must have some sort of image editor at your disposal, and that it's capable of saving web-friendly images. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to include pictures in your ads. Mayalily wrote: I may just go to a sandbox and see if someone knows what might be wrong, as in the Summer I stretched lots of plants and they never looked like what I sent u in the pic. I also stretched plants and put them in vases and they never looked like what it showed in the photo I sent. I'll just keep trying. I'm glad you'll keep trying, but I wouldn't expect anyone in a sandbox would tell you anything different than what we've all already told you here. If the object is an asterisk, it's an asterisk. As I said, I'm not sure why you didn't notice it before, but it is what it is.