Chosen Few

Pamela Galli wrote: I never would have figured that out! That's why we have forums.

I had similar feelings at first, Drongle, which was part of the reason I had put off making this decision as long as I did. A film project which requires Premiere CS6 gave me the push I needed to get off my butt about it, and finally decide which way to go. Your math got me curious, so I took a look at my Adobe order history, and apparently I bought the CS4 Master Collection on December 1, 2008. So, it's been about four and a half years. I didn't realize it had been that long, but still, when you consider that I did upgrade every step of the way from CS1 to CS2 to CS3 to CS4, as well as purchased individual programs before the Creative Suites existed, plus Macromedia suites before Adobe bought them, it more than averages out to $1000-2000 every 2-3 years. Even the fact that I skipped over CS5, didn't save me anything in the long run, since Adobe gades their upgrade prices, charging more to upgrade from older versions than from newer ones. There's a slight flaw in your 3-year math, by the way. With Creative Cloud, you get Photoshop Extended, which costs $999 to buy. So, at $20 per month it would take a little over four years to equal the purchas price, not just three. And for the suite, it's even a little longer. The Master Collection costs $2599 to buy, which is four years and four months worth of (regular) subscription fees. I don't know if four instead of three makes any difference to you or not; just wanted to be accurate. As for the notion of "having nothing" at the end, I do see your point, but I can't quite agree with it. If we were talking about renting a house, or some other tangible item that lasts for decades or centuries, I'd most certainly agree. But with software, you always have to upgrade sooner or later. Like it or not, it's got a shelf life, either way. The difference is that with a purchase you're stuck with the version you bought, whereas with a subscription, you're up to date the whole way through. Speaking of that, one of the big selling points for me on the subscription, which we haven't yet talked about, is that you're no longer bound to the CS release schedule for new features. Adobe makes them available to subscribers immediately, as soon as they're finished. For example, several new features for Photoshop (and for a dozen other programs) popped up less than 12 hours after I joined. So far, I'd say I'm getting my money's worth, on the service end.

Sounds like a UV problem to me. If I'm right, the white is likely a highlight from the gold texture, and the black was probably in the same area on the previous texture. I'd suggest you check the UV's in the source model, and make sure they didn't get borked. Then re-export the .dae, and make sure UV's are included.

Mesh is the solution. In any 3D modeling program, simply create a cone, and then add an extra polygon to it, above the apex, equidstant from the base, so that the apex becomes the center point. Make the extra polygon very small, and no one will see it. Or, if you want to be doubly sure, you can apply a unique material to it, and then turn that material invisible in SL.

I just wanted to give a heads up to all my fellow texture artists. For anyone who wants to own Photoshop, but the $1000 price tag had been keeping you from it, I'm pleased to report that that cost barrier has been demolished. You can now get it via subscription for only $20 a month! If you happen to prefer GIMP, either because you just like it better, or because you'd rather not spend any money at all, that's fine, of course. But if high cost was your only reason for not gettting Photoshop, your world just got a whole lot brighter. Here's my story. My CS4 Master Collection has been getting a little long in the tooth of late, so I finally decided to explore my upgrade options today. I was expecting to have to spend $1000-2000 to buy the upgrade, like I've been doing every couple of years with Adobe, for as long as I can remember. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I was able to get the full collection (and more) as a subscription for only $30 a month! For new customers, it's apparently $50 for the full suite, which is stil extremely reasonable, or as I said above, it's $20 for a single application. The $30 deal is a promotion for existing Creative Suite customers. Surely, this was too good to be true, so I called Adobe to basically ask, "What's the catch?" I said to the nice lady on the phone, "Is there any benefit at all for my if I give you $1500 right now instead of $30 right now?" She replied, "No, none at all." Well, twist my arm! So, I forked over my 30 clams, I'm now downloading the entire CS6 suite, and I couldn't be happier. Adobe has introduced a real game changer with this subscription pricing model. I encourage everybody here to jump on it. Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with Adobe, I don't own stock, and I don't benefit in any way whatsoever if you decide to listen to my advice on this or not. I posted this strictly as a courtesy, and because I'm excited and wanted to share.

If the creator of the model only gave it one material, then it can only have one texture on it. If the creator gave it multiple materials, then it can have multiple textures. You can change the textures, but you cannot change that area each texture will occupy. SL supports up to eight such materials per model. Material assignments are created in the source modeling program. Each area of the model that has unique material assigned to it can be given a unique texture in SL. You cannot select individual faces in SL like you can in 3D modeling program. SL's editor utility does not have the capability to address models down to the component level. It merely considers each surface shader material group to be a "face". Make sense?

Before we get to your questions, perhaps we should talk a little about forum etiquette. You tacked your post onto the end of thread that had been dead for a year, and which had nothing to do with the questions you asked. Both of those are no-no's, which are likely to annoy people, rather than make them want to help you. I realize it was your first post, so you probably didn't realize. So you know, when you have a new question that doesn't directly have to do with the topic of an existing thread, you should start a new thread. And when a thread has been dead for a very long time, it's best to leave it dead. WimRasmussen Constantine wrote: How do you create a texture or assign textures to a mesh object that doesn't belong to you? If any object doesn't belong to you, be it mesh or anything else, then you can't edit it. WimRasmussen Constantine wrote: or that you don't have the UV maps for? If you don't have the UV maps, I'd suggest you apply a text pattern to the mesh, like this one, which will enable you to get a good sense of which parts of the model occupy which parts of the texture canvas. Obviously, it's less convenient than having the actual UV maps, but it'll do in a pinch.

Rolig Loon wrote: You could combine your two UV maps into a single one, but then you'd have to apply pairs of textures at the same time instead of giving your customer the freedom to mix and match. They WOULD have freedom to mix and match, since each "fabric" has its own material. Only half of each "pair" would be shown on each individual "fabric", so as I said above, 5 textures yields 25 combinations.

Sienia Trevellion wrote: 1.) Do regular texture change scripts work in mesh? Yes. Sienia Trevellion wrote: 2.) I have defined the two different areas on the shirt with materials in blender and assigned the fabrics for each. Would I save my textures for each material area as a separate uv texture, or would I save them together on the same uv texure. You can do it either way. It all depends on how you want to set it up. If the UV layout is such that both parts of the shirt can easily fit on one canvas, then you can put both sections on a single texture, and just apply the same texture to both materials. If you'd rather give each section its own full canvas, then you'd need separate textures. Sienia Trevellion wrote: Saving them alone would mean I'd create 10 different textures (5 for each area). Saving them together would mean I'd create 25 different textures. You wouldn't necessarily need 25. The two sections each have their own material, right? If they're both on the same UV map, then all you need is 5 textures, since each section is only using a part of each texture. If we label the textures A through E, then here are your 25 combinations: Fabric 1 Fabric 2 Texture A Texture A Texture A Texture B Texture A Texture C Texture A Texture D Texture A Texture E Texture B Texture A Texture B Texture B Texture B Texture C Texture B Texture D Texture B Texture E Texture C Texture A Texture C Texture B Texture C Texture C Texture C Texture D Texture C Texture E Texture D Texture A Texture D Texture B Texture D Texture C Texture D Texture D Texture D Texture E Texture E Texture A Texture E Texture B Texture E Texture C Texture E Texture D Texture E Texture E If you use two separate UV maps, then you'd need 10 textures. There's no universally applicable right or wrong in which way to go. As always, it all depends on what's going to yield the best looking results with the least amount of overhead.

Rahkis Andel wrote: I think the most relevant point here is that it is frustrating to see blatant copyright infringement and not be able to so much as report it. I'm not sure why people feel they can't report it. There just seems to be tremendous misunderstanding about to whom such reports should be delivered. It's NOT Linden Lab. The proper thing to do, not just in SL, but in all cases of suspected infringement, is to report it directly to the IP owner. I do that all the time, and I don't find it frustrating in the least. As an example, not two days ago, I discovered that a local comic book shop in my area was selling their own in-house produced Superman comics. So, I called DC, and told them what I saw. I assume DC will take action to stop it, but it's really none of my business whether they do or they don't. It's for them to decide what happens with their property, not me. In reporting it to them, I did my civic duty, and that's where my role ends. By the same token, if I were to come across the "Batman from Arkham Asylum" models that the OP mentioned, I'd alert Warner Bros., as they're the ones responsible for that particular property. And again, that's where my role would end. Would it be satsifying to know that action was indeed taken, and that the ripoff artists were shut down? Sure. But if DC, or WB, or whoever, decides not to pursue it, should that bother me? Not at all. It's none of my business what they choose to do or not do in defense of their own property. My concern is strictly to ensure that they be made aware of it, so that they can decide for themselves.

Gadget Portal wrote: The big hole in almost everythjng you just said: It's not detecting what a 3D model looks like. I'm not sure how isolating one point from all the others constitutes a "hole in almost everything." A hole in one thing, maybe, if you happen to disagree with that particular point, but certainly not a hole in everything. Notice I devoted all of just two sentences to that point. The rest of my post was about other points, which were completely unrelated to that one, and which I stated were far more important than that one. Did you read those? Gadget Portal wrote: A lot of these people don't even rename it. They literally upload a model of Batman from the Arkham Asylum game, and name it "Batman from Arkham Asylum". I'm glad that this is important to you. It's certainly very important to me, as well. Unfortunately, when it comes to combating it, there's just no preemptive policy that can truly work. The only one that is practical is the one that is prescribed by the law, which is for the IP owner, not the service provider, to call the shots. Service providers are required to remain neutral, lest they risk losing their safe harbor protections, under the law. Silly as that may seem when infringement is so painfully obvious, it still remains the way it has to work. As for the subject of names, they don't necessarily carry as much weight as you might want them to. The problem needs to be looked at from all possible angles. What if I'm working for Warner Bros., and I'm uploading that Batman model as part of a promotion the company wants to do in SL? If LL were to just arbitrarily bar me from using the model's proper name, I'd have a problem, my client would have a problem, and LL might well be in some legal trouble because of it. If you think that sounds far fetched, it's not. When CBS tasked me with making Star Trek content for them in SL, LL had no way of knowing I had permission. If they'd had a system in place like the one you propose, I'd never have been able to do that project. Ditto for when SyFy wanted me to explore the feasibility of a Battlestar Galactica game in SL. I made a bunch of content for that, which wouldn't have been doable under your proposed rules. There was also "Smokin' Aces", and "I am Legend", and "Beowulf", and "CSI:NY", and "The L Word", and "Laguna Beach", and tons of other TV shows, movies, and games, around which SL content was created either directly by me, or by people I was working closely with at the time. None of them would have been possible had LL just gone around arbitrarily blocking anything that looked like it MIGHT be infringing. They didn't know we had permission. If LL were ever to adopt the kind of 'shoot first, ask questions later' policy that you propose, little if any legitimate business in SL could ever get done from that point forward. Curbing piracy is important, but it's not as important as ensuring that those of us who are not pirates can do our jobs as effectively as possible. Another angle to consider is fundamental fairness, regarding the uniformity of application of such a policy. In order for any policy, especially an automated one, to be fair, it has to be universally enforced. It's easy to know that Batman is a trademarked character, but what about lesser known properties that aren't so easy to spot? For example, I'm doing some artwork right now for a soon to be released new comic book, the main character of which is named Subject K. Subject K is a trademarked character, just like Batman is a trademarked character. Legally, they both enjoy all the same protections. If LL were to disallow the upload of Batman models, they should likewise disallow upload of Subject K models. But since nobody's yet heard of Subject K (and very few ever will, if this particular comic doesn't sell well), how is LL supposed to know about him? In order to make the policy universally enforceable, LL would have to magically know about every single copyrighted and trademarked item in existence, at all times. If they were just to police for big companies like Warner Bros. and not equally police for smaller companies and individuals, can you imagine the endless accusations they'd have to face, about only caring about the rich, and not protecting the little guy? If you think the SL conspiracy theorists are bad now, hand them that little gem, and see what they cook up! (No, I'm not saying the conspiracy theorists should have any say in policy, or that LL should adjust its policies to try to shut them up, so don't worry.) Also, what about cases of fair use? That's a whole other can of worms. There are circumstances under which it's legal to use protected IP without the owner's permission (parody, education, research, etc.). It's not inconceivable that some of those circumstances could exist within SL. How would your proposed block-by-name system handle that? I could go on all day listing more and more use cases in which it could be perfectly legal to upload a model that happened to have been used in a video game. There's absolutely no way any automated system, or even any human-based system, could possibly screen for them all with any degree of effectiveness. So, once again, the only policy that makes any sense at all is for the service provider not to take any action until and unless an IP owner asks them to. That's why the law is written the way it is. It's just the only practical way to proceed. Gadget Portal wrote: Other games/platforms already auto-detect names at the time of creation (no matter what the content), to protect themselves. I just think it's odd that LL hasn't been made to yet. If you're talking about the fact that you can't name your World of Warcraft character Darth Vader or something, that's a pretty different thing. Those kinds of games are not open ended platforms like SL, they don't depend on user-created content, and they don't have third party companies doing business in them. Disallowing a character name is whole different animal from disallowing an entire asset, or even the name of an asset. If you're talking about something else, please explain. I'm not aware of any other UGC-dependent platform which has the restrictions of which you speak. The bottom line is that IP theft is a social problem, not a technical problem. Trying to impose a technical solution on a social problem simply cannot work. History has show that, time and time again. In the early days of desktop computing, we had copy-protected floppy disks. They caused no end of problems for legitimate users, right up to the day they were discontinued, and in all likelihood, they never stopped a single pirate. Fast forward a couple of decades, and the launch of writable CD's gets delayed for years, in an attempt to curb music and software piracy. Again, legitimate users are penalized, while pirates just keep right on trucking. Move up another couple of decades, and we get DRM-protected music on iTunes, and encrypted DVD's. Nobody who wants to steal music or movies is stopped, but those who atually do buy it are inconvenienced at every turn. Now you want to add some kind of Skynet system to SL that would somehow magically analyze what people are uploading, and block anything it doesn't think is Kosher. I see no reason to expect that that from of DRM would be any more successful than any of the others. Legitimate users would be alienated, while thieves would still steal. DRM doesn't work, period. It never has, and never will. Look, I'm right there with you in agreeing that stealing IP is wrong, and that we all have an obligation to do what we can to help put a stop to it (which, by the way, includes having these kinds of very important conversations, like the one we're having right now). However, I simply can't agree that any service provider, be it LL or any other, should try to impose iron-fisted draconian DRM policies to try to see it done.

Vegro Solari wrote: Totally hand-drawn ones are really rare. I'm not sure what you mean by that, Vegro. I create most of my textures by hand. So does just about every professional texture artist I know. In every video game you've ever played, most of the textures will have been created by a human artist. Maybe your definition of "totally hand-drawn" is different from mine?

Gadget Portal wrote: How is it they can get away with obviously stolen content being uploaded and listed, and not do anything about it? Game characters ripped and uploaded, for example. "Get away with" isn't really the right choice of words, and it's hardly fair to say they do "not do anything about it". LL complies with the exact same set of laws as every other online service provider, in this regard. Here's how it works, for all OSP's, including LL, YouTube, and everybody else. If and when the provider is alerted to the presence of allegedly infringing content, via a properly submitted DMCA takedown notice, they take the content down. And likewise, if and when they are alerted to content that a user feels should be restored, via a properly filed DMCA counter-notice, they put the content back up. This is what the law requires, and it's exactly what LL, YouTube, and all the others do. In both types of cases, the provider is required to act without prejudice. When they take content down, they're not saying the accuser was right, and when they put it back up, they're not saying the accused was right. In each and every instance, they're simply complying with the terms of each notice, as is required of them by law, nothing more, nothing less. There are two important reasons why LL doesn't (and shouldn't) try to police these things in advance. One is technical, the other legal. I'll cover the technical first. There's simply no way for the system to be able to automatically determine whether or not a 3D model happens to look like any particular thing. That would require some really scary AI that isn't even close to having been invented yet. Now the legal, which is far more important. The simple truth on the ground is that LL has no way of knowing in advance what is authorized and what is not. If they were just to go around arbitrarily deleting stuff that looks like it MIGHT be infringing, they'd inevitably end up interfering with legitimate business. Over the years, I've done work in SL for CBS/Paramount, NBC/Universal, SyFy, Sundance Channel, and countless other companies, all of whom hired me to produce content that was highly recognizable as their properties. LL had no way of knowing that I had permission in any of these cases. Imagine if they had just gone around arbitrarily deleting stuff, on the assumption that I was infringing, when in fact, I was not. That would have been extremely bad for everybody. I probably would have sued them for it, and I'd imagine my clients would have, as well, since we all would have lost a ton of time and money. The bottom line is it's not LL's job to decide who might or might not be infringing. That's what we have courts for. LL's role, just like that of all service providers, is to remain neutral at all times, and comply with all legal notices they receive. That's it. Gadget Portal wrote: YouTube tries to detect movies at the time of upload, because they got in trouble for allowing stolen uploads. Why isn't it the same with LL? As far as I know, YouTube won't preemptively take anything down. They merely provide certain tools to help copyright holders to identify potentially infringing content. From there, it's up to each copyright holder to determine whether or not to act. In other words, when something gets taken down from YouTube due to copyright concerns, it's not because YouTube itself has decided the content has to go. It's because the copyright holder has asked them to take it down. The accused is free to file a counter-notice to have the content restored, just like with any other provider. The only difference between YouTube and LL in this regard is that LL doesn't and can't have the same kinds of tools YouTube has to help with detection. A 3D model isn't like a song or a video clip, that can be easily compared with an existing library of sounds and videos for analysis. Models are far more nebulous than that. There's no good way to automate the process. The actual legal processes for take-down and restoration are the same for both services (and all online services).

Cool, thanks, Deja. I'll check that out when I get a chance. I guess good ideas get thought of more than once!

If you can't get the .mb files to work, import the FBX files, and work with those. The geometry and rigging should come in perfectly. You'll just have to add your own layers, which only takes a few seconds. As for wha'ts wrong with the .mb's, your guess is as good as mine. There's got to be something more wrong with them than just extraneous render nodes. Errors triggered by the absence of V-Ray or Turtle should only result in the malfunction of nodes that are specific to those plugins. Geometry, rigging, etc., should still be present. The fact that those render nodes are there at all suggests that whoever created the scene files either doesn't know his/her way around Maya very well, or at least doesn't have much experience working in a collaborative environment with it, or perhaps was just simply careless. Standard procedure when you're going to be sharing a scene is to make sure the scene doesn't have anything in it that doesn't absolutely need to be there, and especially to make sure there are no dependencies in it toward plugins that the next user might not have. Saving it with V-Ray and Turtle nodes present was pretty sloppy. I'm afraid I can't be much help in diagnosing what's wrong with the scenes that would prevent them from functioning in 2013, since I'm still using 2009. I get an "invalid file structure" error when I try to open either scene. I can't tell if that means the scenes truly are borked, or if it just means they can't work with 2009. Sometimes scenes from newer versions work; sometimes they don't. The FBX's do work for me, though. I can't imagine they wouldn't work for you, too. Give it a whirl, and let us know how you make out.

Looks like you're not using a mesh capable viewer. What viewer are you using?

Pamela Galli wrote: Firestorm doesn't have that button. Sure it does. When you click on "More Info" in the editor window, the Advanced window, pictured on the right, will pop up. See where it says "Weights of selected". The first three items (download weight, physics weight, and server weight) are what factor into land impact. The total LI will always be the highest of the three numbers. That's what I meant when I said I'd need to know the full set of numbers.

Gooden Uggla wrote: I didn't bother reading that mess. The fact that you wasted so much time responding just confirms the diagnosis. Good luck in your future therapy. What wonderfully circular logic. Dish out an insult, wait for a reponse, and then claim the response confirms the insult. Which playground did you learn that one on? I also can't help but be amused by how you didn't read the post, yet somehow you know it's a mess. It's all of a three-minute read. That's really too much for you? Really? Alrighty, then. Sorry to hear your attention capacity is so lacking. Once again I'll ask, do you have anything useful to contribute on the topic, or do you really think coming here just to try to insult me is a good use of your time?

The hull shape is all about physics, which has nothing to do with graphics. So, no, it wouldn't serve any purpose to do it to your attachments. All it would do is change the label, nothing more.

When you separated the various items, dod you also take the time to create LOD models and physics models for each? If not, then that's your answer right there. If you let the uploader auto-generate that stuff, it's going to do it differently for the different combinations of models. Sometimes, it will even do it differently for two uploads of the very same model. The only way to fully control it is to create your LOD's and physics models yourself. If you did that, and you're still getting wildly unpredictable results, I'd need to know the full set of numbers before I could speak intelligently about what's going on.

Gooden Uggla wrote: That might be the longest and most condescending lecture on the forums that I've ever seen. It took you thousands of words of nonsensical opinion before getting to the point. The forum is not a good place to display serious personality issues. BTW, Good luck with that... There was nothing condescending in any of it, Gooden. There is, however, plenty of condescention in telling someone they have personality issues. You'd do well to consider that. Tell me, where exactly was this nonsensical opinion you speak of? You say there were thousands of words worth of it before I formulated a point. You'd do well not to exaggerate, especailly when the post is right there for all to read. There were actually not just one, but many important points throughout the post, and I got to several of them right in the first few sentences. Let's examine at the facts of what was written, shall we? FACT: There were only 1523 words in the entire post, and I used the first 107 of them to make my first point, which was about some of the important differences between traditional SL linksets and mesh models. Almost nothing in those 107 words was a matter of opionion. It was mostly about numbers. FACT: The next 44 words were used to explain that land impact does not apply to worn/attached objects in SL. This is also not a matter of opinion. FACT: The following 64 words explained that small objects like jewelry always have small prim equivalencies. Again, not opinion. FACT: The 78 words after that were about the fact that mesh models are capable of producing more shapes at lower costs than sculpties. Once again, not opinion, fact. FACT: The above accounting of words constitutes the first 20% of the post. Virtually all of it was a listing of facts and figures, and every bit of it was 100% on topic. FACT: The paragraph beginning with the words "In summary", was the first time I expressed any opininion at all about what all the above facts and figures could mean. That paragraph was all of 98 words, and it came at the end, not the beginning, of its section of the post. Further, it could hardly be described as "nonsensical". Need I go on with the word counting, or can we agree that the opinion you went out of your way to express was exaggeration at best? I'm trying hard to see what could be construed as condescending, in your eyes. Was it perhaps that I attempted to steer the author toward learning in a different way than she had already been trying? Well, let's examine the facts of that, as well. FACT: On the subject of how to, and how not to, learn Maya, I've given the exact same advice literally hundreds of times over the years on this forum and elsewhere (including earlier in this very same thread, in fact), and to my knowledge, no one has ever had a problem with it except for you. FACT: When people try to learn it out of order, they ALWAYS experience frustration. In all the years I've been working in this industry, I've never ever encountered so much as a single exception to this rule. FACT: When people learn it in the intended order, as spelled out in the tutorials I mentioned, almost everyone who makes the attempt experiences complete success in learning the program,. FACT: Each and every person I know of who, after initially having struggled with Maya, has followed my advice about going back to the beginning to learn it the right way has seen his or her frustrations melt away, and has ended up learning the program with relative ease. Oh, and here's another fact for you. I don't mind sharing that the person who asked the question PM'ed me privately, to make sure I'd seen the post, and to ask me personally to respond to it. If she didn't want my kind of reply, I very much doubt she would have gone to so much trouble to ask for it. My writings are all over this forum. It's certainly not hard to guess what kind of answer I'm going to give to a question like this. And here's one more. The average adult reads at about 250 to 300 words per minute. Therefore, reading 1500 words takes just five to six minutes. I personally do not conisder a five miniute read to be a long read, but if you do, then I cordially invite you not to read my posts. If your attention span really is that short, then few if any of my posts are are going to be to your liking. Most of them are that length or longer. They're all full of good information, and whether you like it or not, good information takes more than a few seconds to explain. As for the subject of what the forums are and are not good for displaying, I can't say I agree with you that they're any kind of accurate indicator of anybody's real personality. You get only a very tiny sliver of a slice of who someone is via this kind of medium, nothing more. That said, I think that when someone chimes in to a discussion, only to badmouth other participants, rather than contribute any infomration on the actual topic, that constitutes a far larger and more direct display of personality issues than anything the on-topic participants could possibly have written. With that in mind, do you have anuhting useful to contribute on the topic, or do you really think insulting me is a productive use of your time?

Amilia Zabaleta wrote: 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. Hey, you asked. I wasn't trying to lecture you, just for lecturing's sake. Everything I said about the do's and don'ts of learning Maya is absolutely true, and 100% vital to take to heart, if you want to be successful with it. I've been doing this for a long time, I've helped an awful lot of people learn the program, and I've never encountered anyone who was able to do it by going out of order. It just doesn't work that way. It's up to you, though, how you want to proceed, obviously. In light of this new information, explainig that you've got a project deadline in just a few short weeks, I would suggest that this is not the best time to try to learn new software. I'd strongly recommend you go back to whatever software you're already familiar with, and use that to finish the work. When you're done, then come back to Maya. I tend to learn new programs faster than anyone else I've ever met, and even I make it a rule never to use unfamiliar tools when I'm under deadline (unless project requirements demand it, which they sometimes do). Again, it's up to you whether you want to take any, all, or none of my advice. Buit as long as we're both here, I'd feel remiss if I didn't at least offer it. Amilia Zabaleta wrote: 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. Could you please explain what you mean by "UV maps not sticking in place"? I'd like to help, but I could think of about 10,000 things that that might mean, and at least 9,999 of them aren't it. What I can say in the mean time is this. NURBS surfaces don't really have arbitrarily changeable UV's like polygonal surfaces do. In a NURBS surface, the isoparms themselves constitute an implicit UV set.. Since every NURBS surface is inherently a perfectly rectangular grid of isoparms, the UV layout is always a perfecty rectangular grid of quads. Changing that implicit UV layout is not a trivial affair. It's highly unlikely you might have done it by accident. You have to take special steps to create an explicit UV set that can be manipulated in the UV Texture Editor, and that can only be done last, after all your modeling is finished. After you've created the explicit UV set, if you move so much as a single CV, or otherwise alter the model in any way at all, the UV's will instantly snap back to their original locations, effectively erasing your explicit UV's. For sculpties, you should always use the default implicit UV's. Sculpties require a perfectly uniform UV layout, exactly like the one that NURBS surfaces inherently have. This is one of the many reasons why NURBS make such good source models for sculpties. Sculpties behave like NURBS in several key ways, and this is one of them. As for the UV mapping of in-world sculpties, those cannot be changed at all, ever. By definition, every sculpty has the exact same UV layout, just that same perfectly uniform grid of quads. If a model had any other layout, it would no longer be a sculpty. Add those two things up, and I'm sure you can see why it's difficult for me to know what you might mean by "UV maps not sticking in place". Of all the types of the 3D objects in the world, you're working with the two whose UV mapping cannot be changed. Amilia Zabaleta wrote: Also so sorry I got the word NURBS wrong. I know what you were talking about, my mistake. *retreats yelping into her comfortable cave* No worries, and do try not to be too uncomfortable as you venture into all this new territory. One thing I always hope to do when responding to forum posts is help not just the author of the question, but also everyone else reading. Most people who read the forums never post, after all. I know from long experience that when terminology is misused, it can confuse a lot of readers. So, I try to spell things out as unambiguously as I can, whenever I encounter little snafus like that.

Before you go ahead and nuke the object, I'd suggest you test to make sure it's not just a simple cahce discrepency. The behavior you described can easily happen if your local cache is out of sync with the info on the server. Clear your cache, relog, and the object should begin to work properly. If it doesn't, then I'd say maybe the object itself is boked, as Lusti suggested. Prims do get corrupted from time to time. But cahce discrepency is far more common.

Amilia Zabaleta wrote: 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. You seem to be focusing on all the wrong things. You're not comparing apples to apples. Let me explain. First, I'm not sure why you feel it matters that you can't link more than 254 objects together in a linkset. A single mesh object can have 32 times as many vertices in at as any single sculpty, and you could link 254 of those together, if you really wanted to. That's potentially more shape detail than an entire sim full of prims, all in one little linkset. (But don't do that, or you'll become the world's most prolific lag monster, which is not a title you want!) Second, prim equivalency only matters for land impact, which does not apply to items that are worn by avatars. This jewelry of yours is intended to be worn, right? For worn/attached items, you shoud be focusing on the display cost, not the land impact. Third, even if land impact were to somehow matter, the chances of something as small as a piece of jewelry ever having any significant land impact is extremely nill. Even with the maximum possible number of vertces, a mesh object at the average size of a piece of jewelry will weigh in at under 200 LI, whch is far less than your 254 prims. Fourth, and most importantly, you can make literally any shape in the universe out of an arbitrary mesh, whereas with a sculpty, you can only make a relative handful of shapes. To make any decent looking piece of jewelry from sculpties, you'd need to use a whole bunch of them. Chances are almost 100% that that collection of sculpties will have a higher display cost, and a higher land impact, than an equivalently shaped (properly made) mesh model. In summary, mesh is a whole different ball game from from prims and sculpties, and you do yourself a disservice by trying to make such comparisons. Mesh is how 3D modeling is supposed to work (and how it has ALWAYS worked everywhere beside SL). By continuing to hold on to the backwards thinking from SL's convoluted early days, you're only holding yourself back. I strongly sugget you let go of all that, so you can open your mind toward learning how 3D modeling works for real. Trust me, your models will look better, and they'll cost less, too. Amilia Zabaleta wrote: 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) If that's your goal, great. But consider that every minute you sepnd futzing around with sculpties only puts your goal one minute further away. Sculpties won't help you learn mesh modeling, but learning mesh modeling WILL absolutely help you make sculpties (and better things that sculpties, of course). The reason you're struggling is because you tried to put the cart before the horse. I warn people about this all the time. No one, absolutely no one, no matter how smart or talented they might be, can learn this stuff out of order. It just doesn't work that way. When you try to learn a 3D modeling program for the first time, by saying to yourself, "I'm want to know how to make ______," that is ALWAYS a recipe for disaster. It never ever works, no matter what the blank happens to be. Here's what I'd suggest you do. Forget all about SL stuff for the next 7 days, and instead, go through all the tutorials in the Getting Started section of your Maya help file. Don't skip anything, and don't go out of order. When you're done, you'll have a solid mastery of the basics of Maya, which includes the basics of mesh modeling, and rigging. From there, all it will take is some practice, and you'll be able to make whatever you want. Go in the right order, and it's easy. Continue to go out of order, and you'll only keep tearing your hair out. Amilia Zabaleta wrote: I've concluded that until I get there, I need to stick with trying to create sculpts. Bad conclusion. See above. Amilia Zabaleta wrote: I'm learning tons everyday, and my meshes in Maya are gorgeous, I just can't get from here to there. Very frustrating. You've lost me now. If you've made such gorgeous mesh models, why wouldn't you just upload them as is, rather than try to recreate them as sculpties? I feel like I must be misunderstanding what you're trying to say. Amilia Zabaleta wrote: 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. Before we go any further, let's talk terminology for a moment. There's no such thing as "a nurb". NURBS is an acronym (stands for non-uniform rational B-spline). The S at the end doesn't make it plural. It's the subject of the whole thing. Without the S, it becomes nonsensical, as all you have is a bunch of adjectives with nothing to describe. The logic of it could be described like this. I've got a spline. What kind of spline, you ask? Why, it's a B-spline. What kind of B-spline? It's the rational kind, a rational B-spline. What kind of rational B-spline? It's the non-uniform kind. It's a non-uniform rational B-spline. If I were to remove the S, I'd have just non-uniform rational B, which wouldn't make any sense. The proper thing to say rather than "a nurb" is "a NURBS surface" or "a NURBS curve" or "a NURBS model", etc. As for why one end of the sculpty ended up flattened, there could be a number of causes for that. Did you remember to delete history and freeze transformations, prior to sculpt map export? Did you ensure that the model is not larger than 10 units on all three axies? Is the sculpt map rotated to the correct orientation? Examining the scupt map could help you narrow things down. If that flattening is cintained within the map, you'll see it, as a stripe of realtively solid coloroing, along the top or the bottom of the canvas. If that's present, then someting's probably wrong with the source model (lke maybe it's too large along the length axis). If that's not present, then it's probably a rotation problem. Since you said you're having seam problems, I suspect the latter is the case. Amilia Zabaleta wrote: 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! Here's one additional piece of advice, if you're determined to stick with sculpties. For best results, your NURBS sphere should have 16 sections and 16 spans, and the smoothness setting in your Maya vieweport should be at level 2. (Simply press 2 on the keyboard, and the active viewport will switch to level 2.) This will give you the most accurate preview of what your sculpty will look like in SL. Remember, NURBS modeling is different from poly modeling. The sculpty is meant to be a very close approximation of the NURBS surface, not necessarily an exact replica of it. The polygon-based sculpty creation tools you might have used in other programs were developed by enterprising SL residents, who wanted to try to force sculpties to be a little more precise than they were intended to to be. (Qarl affectionately reffered to these people as "pixel pushers".) But even with those, it's still not always exact, as you're severly limited by the 8-bit precesion inherent to the RGB sculpt map image. If you want exacting precision, that's what mesh is for. Sculpties were only ever intended to be a stopgap, to allow SL to do a little more with its then exisitng architecture, while proper mesh support was still in the works. Now that SL finally can use the same kind of 3D models as every other platform, yes, you are indeed just spinning your wheels by continuing to focus on sculpties. You paid $3750 for Maya. It would be a shame to use it just for something so narrowly applicable as sculpties. Learn standard mesh modeling techniques, and you can make content for any and every platform under the sun, SL included. But just learn sculpties, and you're stuck in just a very small segment of only SL. And I'll repeat once again that learning universally applicable techniques will help you make sculpties along with everything else, but learning to make sculpties won't help you do anything at all besides just sculpties. Logically, it's pretty clear which direction to expend your time and effort, and it's NOT the sculpty direction. As I said before, the very best thing you can do for yourself right now is forget all about whatever it is you think you want to learn how to do in Maya, and just learn Maya itself. Those introductory tutorials are part of what you spent all that money for, so use them. Every single Maya user on this planet started out with those. There's no better way. Once you've been through all of those, you'll have a solid workng knowledge of Maya's baics, and of universal 3D modeling basics, and you won't even be thinking anymore about the kinds of questions you have right now. Those will be long solved, and then you'll have a whole different level of questions that right now you simply aren't yet euipped to even ask, let alone have answered. I say it over and over again. There's only one way to learn Maya. Do it the right way, and it's easy. Try to do it through brute force, or by cherry-picking just the things you think you want to know, and you'll experience nothing but frustration. So, patience, Grasshopper. Put the cart back behind the horse where it belongs, and you'll do just fine.

Zak Kozlov wrote: He's working on Maya, I'm working on Blender, He need me to make something to a scene and we simply can't transfer everything, or at least things that would allow me to take it from there What exactly are you havng trouble transferring? Basic things such as geometry, skeletons, simple materials, bindings, lights, cameras, etc., should be able to move from program to program without much trouble. Things that are proprietary, like Maya hair, or paint effects, or anything else along those lines, will only work in Maya, of course, so if that's what your'e after, forget it. Zak Kozlov wrote: The opposit is super simple, save as FBX and it's in Maya in a few clicks, but Blender can only export FBX. There are FBX import scripts out there for Blender that you can try, or you can use Autodesk's free stand-alone FBX conveter to convert FBX to COLLADA. Zak Kozlov wrote: I'm not sure why, we tried many formats / options / software and we just can't get the darn thing in Blender from Maya I can even save things in .DAE and reimport them in a fresh Blender scene and all infos are in I can think of four possible causes. It could be any or all of these: Your friend's version of Maya is writing a different COLLADA version than your version of Blender can read. Your friend doesn't have his COLLADA export settings configured correctly. You don't have your COLLADA import settings configured correctly. You're trying to transfer things that are not supported by the COLLADA format. My guess is it's the first one, but as I said, it could be any or all of them. For what it's worth, my own Blender installation is having serious COLLADA problems right now. If I try to import any .dae that has bones in it, Blender insta-crashes to desktop. I haven't had time to try to hunt down the cause. (And frankly, I haven't had much reason to care, since I hardly ever touch Blender. The only reason I have it at all is to so I can help answer questions about it, when and were I can. Maya's my everyday workhorse.) Zak Kozlov wrote: (side note: Maybe it's dumb from me to think that, but Maya appear to be more limited to me, I mean a DAE is a DAE, The format is not proprietary for either those programs so, why can I save pretty much a whole scene infos in a .DAE in Blender, but Maya can't seem to be able to save anything much in the same format? ) Think about the logic of what you just said. Maya can read and write COLLADA files without a problem, but Blender evidently cannot read some COLLADA files. Maya can read and write FBX files just fine, but Blender cannot read FBX at all (at least not without third party help). Yet somehow Maya is the one that is more limited. I'm not sure how that makes sense. In any case, it's not quite as simple as "a DAE is a DAE". There are many different versions of the format, and different programs have different implementations of each. When COLLADA was first invented, it showed some promise as a good in-between file format. But for whatever reason, it never got the traction that FBX did, and standards for it were never really enforced. It's become quite fractured by now. Zak Kozlov wrote: What i'd need is at least the custom skeleton made in Maya so I could just rig the thing from scratch If you're talking about rigging for SL, you should know you cannot use a custom skeleton. You can only use the pre-existing avatar skeleton. It's available in just about every format you could think of, inlcuding .mb, .ma, .blend, .dae, and .fbx, just to name a few. If you're talking about making stuff for a different platform than SL, that's a little beyond the scope of the SL forums (at least for now). If it really comes down to it, you could always just recreate the skeleton from scratch. All you need is front and side pictures of it, and a listing of the bone names, and you can recreate just about any skeleton in a matter of minutes. Skeletons are really simple things. Zak Kozlov wrote: We are pretty much out of options now and don't know what to do It may be true that you (temporarily) don't know what to do, but you're certainly not out of options. Zak Kozlov wrote: Maybe someone here with more experiene working with both of those programs would know how we can at least get the skeleton? If you want the SL skeleton, you can get it in about a thousand different places. For example, you can find some in .blend format right on he SL wiki: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Uploading_and_wearing_a_rigged_mesh#Creating_a_rigged_avatar I had been hosting one in .ma and .dae format for a long time, but I forgot to pay my web hosting bill, and my website got nuked. Oops. I haven't had time to rebuild it yet. If you Google "Second Life skeleton", you'll find tons of places to get it. Or, as I said, you can just make your own. It's only 26 bones. If it takes you five minutes, you'd be doing it slowly. The bone names are also on the wiki: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Troubleshooting#Rigging