Eleanora Newell

I had had a similar problem with LODs the day before, but in my case it turned out to be that I had not yet unwrapped the model. When that wasn't the case in this, I looked for the first obvious things to rule them all out and it happened to be dupliate verts that did it. So nice when we can find solutions.

Astrid, I'm having trouble following you, but I do think that you need to make sure you understand what you are looking at and what you call things. The Fitted Mesh Survival Kit, which you propose is wrong, is not Avastar, and it's only real association is that we supplied it. It is merely provided to give users, who do not have Avastar, a way to use the mesh and rig, provided by Linden Labs, for Fitted within Blender. As Gaia stated on the Fitted Mesh Survival Kit page: "All previous versions of blender can not create Collada Files that work with fitted Mesh, because Blender does not support a customizable restpose matrix (or bind pose matrix) as it is available in Maya. We have added a workaround which allows to export the data so that the SL Importer is happy again." Statements you made, such as "Below you can see the proof that avastar free avatar and second life free avatar are the same thing, with same “bugginess”: I have applied the same scale values to BELLY and PELVIS bone and you can see that butt gets oddly distorced." would thus be incorrect. It isn't "proof" when we've already stated that it's based on LL's work. What you are calling "avastar free avatar" is a misnomer. I am guessing you are calling it that because we mention that the file is provided for those without Avastar; that doesn't make it "avastar free" or free of avastar. The more accurate reference would be, "The fitted mesh survival kit". You are making quite a few assumptions. We always welcome comments and questions. We only ask that you be clear and, rather than assume, ask us and we'd be happy to explain. Thank you, Eleanora

Pamela Galli wrote: I do it with floors Ele -- I bake a floor AO then in Gimp turn the white to alpha. Then I make two floors -- one with whatever wood or tile texture I want, and another one on top of it with the shaded prim. Eleanora Newell wrote: Porky Gorky wrote: One trick I have used a few times now is to repeat the texture in SL, then layer another plane right on top with a baked alpha shadow. You retain resolution from the repeats in SL and also get the shadowing, however it obviously pushes the LI up slightly. I've read this a few times now and I'm not entirely sure what you are doing. Could you show some examples of the textures and how you use them in Second Life to do what you are explaining? Thanks. Hi, Pamela, so this is primarily for prims where you're doing the ao over the seamless texture? Is this to allow you do add a seamless texture that can be changed since the AO would be fixed? Would you work with meshes the same way? If you did it with mesh, you would in essence duplicate the mesh, yes? So not always an optimal thing to do.

Porky Gorky wrote: One trick I have used a few times now is to repeat the texture in SL, then layer another plane right on top with a baked alpha shadow. You retain resolution from the repeats in SL and also get the shadowing, however it obviously pushes the LI up slightly. I've read this a few times now and I'm not entirely sure what you are doing. Could you show some examples of the textures and how you use them in Second Life to do what you are explaining? Thanks.

Yardie, with regards to working with the sliders, have you seen Gaia's new video on fitted mesh workflow with Avastar 1.1? The latest avastar test version (as of 03/20/14) is 1-1-1024.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Avastar. If you're going to pay for a plugin, you should consider Avastar. Not only will it let you use your shape from SL (via an xml export), but you might even look at using it for creating shapes and, more, create animations within Blender with it. http://blog.machinimatrix.org/avastar/

Codewarrior Congrejo wrote: ok that sentence was prolly misunderstandable or not reaching far out enough. To clarify : those at least -looking-like prims 'beneath the mesh' (with grid textures and rulers) are the ones you are making the phyics shape from? I am trying to grasp the concept of how meshstudio defines / builds the mesh (and mesh you use as physics shape) - as far as i've seen when checking for you they create them still from prims (just as in their former sculptstudio). Meaning the prim is being used as refference where the vertices will be etc. Mesh Studio generates mesh from the prim surfaces. When you import the dae file to Blender, it can be worked on as any mesh. To keep faces from generating mesh, we use a value of 100 in the Edit Window's Transparency setting. Thus we can create a single plane by making all faces, but one, transparent. We can also create a single triangle by tapering the face. To create physics meshes, we often use a box prim or a single face to describe the collision surface and this generally works as it would in any 3D program where we have created LOD meshes and a physics mesh and upload them through the SL Uploader. bare with me lol, i can explain you how to make models (and physic shapes) in almost every 3D software, and explain you how to implement it into various engines or platforms. Just normally ignore those 'inworld tools' for making anything of that matter. But yet still trying / willing to help. And i'd still like to know what you see when you inspect this uploaded physics shape in the meshuploader window. Is there any noticeable offset or misplacement ? Or is it just as tight as it appears to be in the inworld view? If you would like to see a general workflow for Mesh Studio that includes a simple physics mesh as well, you can view my Mesh Studio Walkthrough in my Mesh Studio blog: http://meshstudiovirtual.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-beginners-workflow-guide-for-mesh.html ~ele

Hi, everyone, I do a blog explaining how Mesh Studio works. It is the sister product of Sculpt Studio, which I have taught inworld. Mesh Studio lets you create mesh from prim linksets and sculpts from Sculpt Studio. It can be used to make and upload mesh without ever leaving SL (except to get and upload the generated .dae files) or the .dae files can be imported to any 3D program which supports Collada .dae files. In coming articles, I will be introducing how to work within Blender with mesh created in Mesh Studio. I've done an article for walking-through a beginner workflow in Mesh Studio. We start with opening the product, to building a prim linkset, texturing, creating the LODs and physics, going through the Upload window and uploading and texturing the mesh in SL. http://meshstudiovirtual.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-beginners-workflow-guide-for-mesh.html I have also got a button to the right of the blog called Labels which shows the articles through topic groups. Hope this helps those looking for alternatives to using a 3D program or who may want to take prim linksets to their 3D program or are just curious about the tool. Happy Meshing! ~ele