Masami Kuramoto

Medhue Simoni wrote: Plus, to protect the knowledge, you are creating a bubble for your market, which will most definitely burst when a few other creators figure it out. If your goal is to make knowledge widely available and beneficial to many, blogs and forums are the ideal media. If you want to keep it secret, obscure and accessible to few, private mentorship is preferable because it closely resembles the medieval guild system. Contrary to popular opinion, teachers should not always be paid. Teachers should not be expected to teach without payment either. Of course compensation need not be monetary. That is up to the teacher. However, some sort of compensation is always involved. Second Life is a meritocracy, and some people teach to build a reputation for themselves. The knowledge is free. Knowledge is a product just like any other. It takes time and effort to acquire it, it is scarce, it is in demand. It is sold in the form of books, software and, more recently, training videos. Its absence is a showstopper for any creator. I find it interesting that often the same people who put copyright above everything else consider knowledge a freebie.

Ashasekayi Ra wrote: No one puts a gun to anyone's head and says "you must answer this email ". If someone wants to ignore an IM all together, they are free to do so. I was banned from a forum over a support request that I ignored. Sometimes they do put a gun to your head. Encouraging newbies to pick personal mentors without prior invitation is a bad idea. Let the mentors pick the newbies instead.

Nacy Nightfire wrote: You can easily search for such a partner by privately IMing folks on the forums who contribute by answering or asking intelligent questions on the mesh forum and who seems to be a compatible match. Don't be put off if the person you contact doesn't have the time or the interest or is otherwise engaged mentoring another person. Keep searching to find the right mesh "buddy". It's time well spent. What is this? An invitation to spam? The fact that people are willing to share their knowledge in public spaces like forums and blogs does not mean that they are keen to give private lessons for free. A forum thread or blog post benefits many people for an extended period of time; a private lesson benefits no one except its recipient. It is the most inefficient method of knowledge transfer and the most time-consuming for the person sharing the knowledge. I strongly advise against asking people for help via IM unless the person you ask has already been your friend for a while or you are willing to pay the person a reasonable fee for the lesson. Asking strangers for a favor like this is impolite and rude and smells of entitlement. Especially in a place like Second Life where the recipient of the free training is very likely to monetize it and claim exclusive ownership of the result. Knowledge is intellectual property too. We should start treating it with the same respect as the tangible products that emerge from it.

Pamela Galli wrote: The fact that the problem disacppeared on restart tells me it was another Blender bug. If the problem disappeared after a restart, then the bakes were probably OK but displayed wrong in the 3D view. Could be due to an outdated OpenGL driver. Are you using a Mac? Or a PC with Intel graphics? I've seen computers where Blender was totally unstable. For example, on an old (ca. 2005) PC at my workplace, Blender will crash as soon as I use extruded curves, text objects or meta objects. That's with the official release binaries from blender.org, not some unstable test build. MakeHuman also behaves weird on that machine, showing UV mapping errors when I switch between proxy meshes. I could not reproduce any of these bugs on my PCs at home which use Nvidia graphics. So if your computer uses Nvidia or ATI, make sure the drivers are up to date. If it uses Intel graphics, you're probably out of luck.

Flip the direction of the surface normals, then export again. SL renders only the front side of each face, and the normal determines which side that is. If you need both sides to be visible, you have to copy the faces and then flip the normals on the copy.

The black areas on the door frame on the right look like there is something wrong with your UV mapping. The baked ambient occlusion on that wall clearly belongs to a different part of the model. You have to be careful when using overlapping UV islands, because the bakes will overwrite each other unless you assign separate images to each of the overlapping parts.

Pamela Galli wrote: 1) I sometimes have problems baking -- such as AO, full render -- in Blender. What kind of problems?

Keli Kyrie wrote: So what is the best way to do this? I am picturing making the model then taking a picture. Then create an outline shape and texturing with the picture of my model. Is this a good way to do this? You can do a full render bake from the high LOD object to the low LOD one. Link both objects to an empty scene. Place them at the same position and make sure they are properly aligned. Add some lights to the scene so that the objects are lit from all sides. UV-unwrap the low LOD object and assign images to it. Since you are going to bake the strings to a flat plane, make sure that the image assigned to the plane's UV island has an alpha channel. The material assigned to the plane should have Z transparency enabled, and its alpha value should be zero. When you're done with these preparations, select the low LOD object to make it the active one, switch to the Render tab and expand the Bake panel. Select "Full Render" and enable "Selected to Active". Increase Distance and Bias so that the bake result includes the entire geometry of the high LOD object. Then click Bake. Using this method, you can bake details from one or more high-poly meshes to the textures of a low-poly mesh. A full render bake will capture the colors, diffuse shading (there's a trick to include specular shading as well), ambient occlusion, shadows, and even holes if the target object is transparent. The vector of projection is always the surface normal of the target mesh, so the method works with objects of any shape and form. Finding the ideal values for Distance and Bias can be tricky if the objects are concave, but in your case it should be easy. If Second Life ever gets support for normal maps, you will be able to bake those using the same method. It's a standard procedure for low-poly game asset creation.

The payment info requirement for mesh uploads was introduced by request of residents participating in the mesh beta test. It was one of the most frequently discussed topics in mesh beta office hours. Statements saying that the initiative came from Linden Lab are not correct. As a measure against copyright infringement, the payment info requirement proved to be largely ineffective. For the process of DMCA takedowns, payment info it is entirely irrelevant. If infringing content is taken down, the only way to restore it is to file a counter notice which includes a real world ID. At that point the uploaders have their "skin in the game" anyway, regardless of their payment info status. Take it as a feel-good thing or a gesture of good will by LL to established content creators. When mesh upload was first announced, many of them feared a drowning of the in-world economy under a deluge of freebie meshes. From a policy perspective, payment info for mesh uploads is inconsistent because the bulk of copyright infringement in SL still happens through ripped textures, audio clips and animations. Uploading these does not require payment info.

Over several decades, computer keyboards have evolved towards the modern standard 104-key US layout. This layout is not ideal for every language on the planet, so there are variations. European layouts have 105 keys, some Asian layouts have even more. Some keys have been renamed or shuffled (QWERTY/QWERTZ) etc. There were attempts to make keyboards more ergonomic by splitting them in the middle, tilting them etc. But none of these changes has reduced the keyboard's complexity. Proposing Zbrush as an alternative to Blender is like proposing a numeric keypad as an alternative to a full keyboard. Yes, getting rid of those character and function keys greatly reduces the keyboard's complexity and the steepness of its learning curve. Writing a novel on such a keyboard should be a lot easier, right? The computer keyboard is a perfect example of a user interface that does not benefit from reduced complexity. The key to efficient use of a keyboard is to ignore the keys you don't need. A friend of mine once said: "If Zbrush is all you have, everything starts looking like clay." He was referring to the fact that works created with Zbrush often have a distinctive clay-like look. Even if you ignore rigging and focus on static mesh only, there are modeling challenges for which Zbrush is useless, for example in architecture. http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/8955/snapshot006d.png http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/8642/snapshot007l.png http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/4273/snapshot008z.png Blender's complexity makes these things easy to build. Zbrush's simplicity makes them difficult. Your claim that "complex" and "easy" are mutually exclusive is just plain wrong and easily refuted. Blender's UI is the easiest because even if sculpting is the only technique you're interested in, Blender can do that too. Just ignore all the other stuff, and you'll do fine. Another piece of advice: Coming into this thread and accusing people of talking "BS", deceiving newbies, being "geekoids" etc. just because they don't share your opinion is not exactly boosting your credibility. It's true, there are a lot of people "biased" towards Blender, both here and elsewhere, and this is for perfectly valid reasons. It's because there is hardly another software project with a degree of user participation comparable to Blender's. If you follow the discussions at blenderartists.org or in the mailing lists, you'll see people debating over every aspect of the user interface, and the developers are listening carefully. Nothing is decided behind closed doors and then imposed on the users without their consent. Blender is a successful community-driven software project like few others, and throwing insults at that community will get you nowhere. Constructive criticism is always welcome, but if all you can do is disparage their work, no one will listen to you.

Toysoldier Thor wrote: I installed the latest blender this year. It is not better - it is more complex and worse. The world is run by those who show up. Apparently you were not around when the developers asked for input. But clearly you are biased and a lover of Blender. There will not be any way of changing your mind. I know from my own personal experience and from comments from several fellow 3D builders that Blender is Ogre of 3D UI. Its horridly over complex and non-intuitive. But if it works for geekoids like you - GREAT! Just dont deceive others by telling them its EASIEST. You deceive people by telling them that Zbrush is all they need to create mesh content for Second Life. Blender's UI is the easiest until someone comes up with an easier one without dropping features. Dumbing down is not an option if it keeps us from getting the job done. And get real. I have no intention in investing anything in Blender. Crowdfunding is all about getting others to invest in your idea. But then again, you don't really have an idea how to make Blender's UI easier. All you have is a sense of entitlement: "If I don't grok this, then those who do must be geekoids." I already told you that I have moved on from blender. Yes, you have moved on from rigged mesh to static mesh. What will you do if Zbrush gets more powerful? Move on to prims?

Toysoldier Thor wrote: You are trying to say that because no one has spun off an initiative and decided to spend 1000's of hours to create a new friendly UI for Blender and receive nothing in financial compensation for their efforts.... that this somehow means that everyone likes the current one? REALLY?? Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. Blender 2.57, released in April 2011, had its UI rewritten from scratch, with plenty of community participation (including donations) during the entire process. In other words, the 1000s of hours were indeed spent, and Blender now looks exactly the way its users want it. If you think they're all wrong, go ahead and initiate a crowdfunding project for a better Blender UI. Share your vision and see how many people get into your boat. I think you're in for a big surprise.

Toysoldier Thor wrote: OK I have to respond to this posting and call BS on this statement. For anyone to openly post with a straight face that a 3D program that has a long standing reputation as having one of the most difficult and confusing U.I.s in the 3D tool industry is the "easiest to use" is either not familiar with any other 3D modeling tool or has a huge bias for Blender. Blender is the first 3D modeling tool I unfortunately cut my noob teeth on. It has one of the most steep learning curves in the industry. The UI was developed by a bunch of unix geeks that had no concept of proper intuitive UI designs. If does not conform to most well known and understood UIs. Blender is open source. If its UI design is that bad, why has no one forked it? Why are there dozens of third-party SL viewers but no third-party Blender? I think I know the answer: It's because your point of view is a minority opinion. Blender is developed, maintained and funded by those who use it. The idea that a community of that size would agree on anything but the most efficient UI is preposterous. Zbrush is good at what it does, but what it does is not enough to get the job done. You can sculpt in Blender, but you can't do subdivision modeling, simulate cloth physics, retopo, unwrap, bake, rig, and weight-paint in Zbrush. Blender is the entire production pipeline; Zbrush is a one-trick pony. Blender has tons of support resources online; Zbrush can't even fill a page in the SL mesh wiki.

Elettra Gausman wrote: I've yet tried to duplicate, flip normal, join then rigg... I see only an inverse mesh in the back. Rig first, then duplicate and flip normals. The order is important to make sure that the duplicate has identical vertex weights. Alternatively, you can apply a Solidify modifier with Thickness = 0 and Fill Rim = disabled.

Solidify does copy the bone weights. The problem here is that Blender 2.49 is more than two years old. It does not have a Solidify modifier but only an add-on script that does something similar in an incomplete and destructive way. The whole point of using a modifier is that you don't have to repeat the normal-flipping procedure every time you change the bone weights. By the way, I would seriously consider doing a retopo session on that shirt. It could easily reduce the poly count by 50 percent or more. Please don't make SL even more laggy than it already is.

The topology of that shirt is horrible. Did you use some kind of generator to create it?

No shadows? Blame the hardware. Wrong shadows? Blame the content creator! In my opinion, baked shadows in outdoor scenes are no longer acceptable. They are still OK for indoor scenes if the textures are fullbright. This will eliminate all dynamic shader effects and make sure that the scene looks the same for everyone, regardless of hardware and viewer. There will be no double AO, no double shadows, no double speculars etc. Everything will look exactly the way you baked it. But remember to back up the scene with some local lights in the room, otherwise avatars may look slightly underexposed relative to the background.

Kudos to the moderators for deleting Chosen's latest comment as it was clearly violating the TOS and community standards.

Pamela Galli wrote: Actually what I have done is make shadow planes with holes for the floors, all linked together, but not linked to the house -- so if anyone has a problem with alpha issues, they can just delete them. Not an ideal solution, but I explain what they are in the info notecard that comes with the house and I don't get any calls about the alpha issue. Was hoping there was some way around it. Making shadow planes removable is certainly a good idea, and it also highlights another problem that Linden Lab will have to address when they roll out a new material system: Light maps, even if implemented the elegant way through multitexture pipelines, are a workaround that may conflict with the rendering engine's own dynamic shadows and screen space ambient occlusion. For example, many prim and mesh trees in SL have a shadow plane attached to the base of the trunk. That was a great feature for many years, until Linden Lab added a deferred rendering pipeline to the viewer. Now for many of us those trees cast two shadows: a dynamic one that properly moves with the sun, and a static one on the shadow plane. SSAO and projector lights cause similar issues indoors. The results are horrible and made me stop shipping shadow planes altogether. I'd rather have my content look good on the top end systems than on the bottom end ones. If Linden Lab ever implement a customizable shader pipeline, there should be an option to switch off light maps globally if dynamic shadows are available.

You are right, it's a convenience. It's just like faces in a flat-shaded mesh, where each logical vertex actually represents several physical ones. There is a 1-to-N relationship between XYZ-triangles and UV-triangles, and the highest N that occurs in the mesh is what we call the number of UV maps.

Gavin Hird wrote: In my experience you can have as many UV maps per mesh as you have materials (8) Technically it's only one (shared) UV map though, because each face is mapped (or "unwrapped") to 2D texture space only once. Multiple UV maps allow you to map each face multiple times in different ways. This is useful in rendering engines that support multiple textures per face, because you can, for example, mix small tiled textures with large baked lightmaps, saving a lot of memory while maintaining a high texture resolution across the entire mesh (only the shadows get blurred, which is fine in most cases). But we don't have that feature in SL yet, so for us there's only one UV map per mesh for now, shared by up to eight materials.

Syle Devin wrote: Sorry about that, I thought I had said what I am using. I am working with blender 2.6. I think I understand using multiple materials but what about using multiple uv maps? I have not tested it out yet but I have searched and I don't think it can be done? Atleast I wouldn't think you can have multiple uv maps with different ratios because some faces would overlap? You can't use multiple UV maps, but you can re-use the entire UV map space up to eight times, once per material. You can also extend UV islands beyond the boundaries of the underlying image space because the texture will be repeated infinitely in all four directions. You can visualize the effect in Blender's UV/Image Editor by pressing N (to reveal the properties sidebar) and then clicking the Repeat checkbox in the Display section. Overlapping UV islands within the same material domain are useful if you want to map a tileable texture to multiple parts of a mesh while keeping a uniform size and aspect ratio everywhere. For example, to use the same floor tile for all floors of a three-story building, select all the floor faces on all three levels, assign a common material index to them, switch the 3D view to Top Ortho (by pressing Numpad-7) and then choose "Project From View" in the Unwrap menu. There will be overlapping UV islands, but that's perfectly fine. If you select all the UV islands and resize them, or if you change the texture scale factor in SL later, the floor tiles will resize in a uniform fashion across the entire mesh. Retexturing the mesh in SL will be a piece of cake, much easier and more accurate than retexturing a prim-based building.

Here's what I think, Chosen: I think you distributed CBS/Paramount's content without permission. Electric Sheep's license has expired, and all you have to show is some advertising fluff that a company executive uttered during a keynote. There is no "stated fan art policy" whatsoever. Licenses are time-limited for a reason, and if they don't get renewed and you get caught using the IP anyway, the result is usually a C&D. Just like it was in the case of the Frank Lloyd Wright museum. I also think that this is the reason why you keep changing your story with every post now. First you talked about unofficial content that you made. Then you claimed to have authorization. Now we learn that the authorization didn't exist, not even in verbal form. I find it amusing that you complain about me not doing in-depth research about you. Apparently you consider yourself some kind of grid celebrity. I don't care who you are; all I know is that you attacked me in this forum when I said I don't bother to report lightweight infringers like you. It seems you are disappointed about the lack of attention. Well, you have my attention now. Show me that unofficial Star Trek content you talked about in comment #29, and I'll show you the true nature of CBS/Paramount's fan art policy.

Chosen Few wrote: Quite obviously, the Star Trek stuff is entirely irrelevant. In every single case, I was either hired by CBS (the owner of the Star Trek franchise) to do the work, or else I was in full compliance with their stated fan art policies. I've enjoyed a good relationship with CBS for many years. I've never done anything they haven't authorized, and never would. I call shenanigans on this. CBS Paramount have no stated fan art policy, but they do have a long history of sending out cease-and-desist letters to fans. Just to show our readers that I'm not making this up, here's Wikipedia on the subject: The attitude of the Star Trek copyright and trademark holders toward fan works has varied over time. In early 1996, Viacom (which purchased Paramount in 1994) sent cease and desist letters to webmasters of Star Trek fan sites that contained copyrighted film clips, sounds, insignia, or other copyrighted material. In the lead-up to the release of Star Trek: First Contact, then-president of Paramount Digital Entertainment David Wertheimer stated that Viacom was targeting sites that were "selling ads, collecting fees, selling illegal merchandise or posting copyrighted materials." Under threat of legal action, many Trekkies shut down. Jennifer Granick, a San Francisco criminal lawyer who went on to champion cyber rights, felt that the unofficial sites should be covered by the fair use doctrine in U.S. copyright law. In 1998, UCLA associate professor Howard Besser claimed the entertainment industry as a whole was, and cited Viacom's actions toward Star Trek site webmasters as an example of, "exploiting concerns over digitization and attempting to reshape the law by strengthening protection for copyrights holders and weakening public rights to access and use material." Star Trek fan films have, until recently, operated in an informational vacuum, since Paramount has made few official statements regarding their existence. Fan filmmakers have generally kept a low profile, hoping not to draw attention to themselves. I remember that Electric Sheep secured a license agreement to bring official Star Trek content to SL, but anything beyond that is clearly in violation. By your own admission, you are a thief. You know what? I am beginning to appreciate your zero-tolerance policy and consider adopting it. Let's report all the unofficial Star Trek content on the grid, shall we? And let's begin with yours. I can't find your name in the merchant search on the marketplace, but I see there's a shop in your picks: INDIGO: Sci-Fi Geeks Museum & Store Indigo (96.3594,200.047,70.6892) The home of science fiction trivia events, fan-art, and fun! Stop by any time! Now featuring the full size USS Defiant & Klingon Bird of Prey, both fully explorable! Be sure to vist the Sci Fi Supplies store just to the east! USS Defiant & Klingon Bird of Prey are Star Trek spaceships, right? See what a hypocrite you are, Chosen. Let's test your theory right there. I'm going to show you that I don't advocate theft.

Kwakkelde Kwak wrote: As soon as that painting is developed into an actual car, which unlike the painting will be utilitarian in most cases, the copyrights no longer apply to the utilitarian aspects, They never do. aspects that can't possibly be in the painting. They are not in the 3D model either.