[Blender Q - Measuring parts for LOD_0 build]

Below is a picture of an oil lamp Im working on, along with a very early start at a lowest LoD build (currently 28 tris, LI on its own is slightly over 1). The lamp has a fatter central section with a handle and spout attached, so it's important to carry over the proportions of each section into the lowest LoD.

My question is this: Is there a way in Blender to accurately measure parts of a semi-complex build?

TIA.



[Setting up a UV to mirror a texture onto a second face]

I am now a convert to mirror building. :matte-motes-smile: Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you, had problems getting into beta grid when I was ready to test and then RL got in the way. Its schedule and mine weren't cooperating for awhile. Anyway, things seem to be proceeding apace though I haven't finished all of my LoD levels yet. Provisional LI is good too. Thanks for your help, arton. As always, it's much appreciated.

[Ebbe Linden - DIY VR]

You know how Sansar isnt going to be SL2? Now I'm wondering if Sansar and its experiences might not be a stepping stone in developing a more immersive, full world SL. Is anyone talking about that possibility?

Maybe I should look into trademarking the name 3rDLife. :matte-motes-wink-tongue:

[Setting up a UV to mirror a texture onto a second face]

My current project is a painted boxbed/daybed. The construction and geometry are simple, with the entire design interest coming from the painting. This is why I would like the textures to be as sharp and clear as possible while still being resource-friendly.

The daybed has full left/right symmetry so I thought I could divide it in half without adding many vertices or triangles and use the same texture for each half. (512x512 used twice rather than 1024x512.)

I've used Project from View for the UV so far. Had to tweak parts of the layout slightly to accommodate perspective, but that was straight forward when done as a single layout. (The 1024x512 set up.) Trying it as two halves doesn't because the only way I've come up with is to Project from View from the back/reverse side and then the perspective distorts size and placement greatly. The two halves need to match exactly so I'd rather not rely on having to reshape it manually.

My other thought it to rebuild as a half and use the mirror function, which is still a bit of a frightening mystery to me. :matte-motes-smile:

So I thought I would ask for advice here before I go wading back in and wracking my brain over things which might turn out to be dead ends. Can the UV be flipped simply? (I can't figure out what to call it to search for it.) If I UV the first half before I use the mirror function, will I still need to UV the second half separately? Will the added vertices matter enough on the lowest LoD that I should just scrap the idea? (This is my first piece of proper furniture.) In theory, I know about using hidden triangles and spare materials to get around some of that; will such an approach counteract my idea of reducing texture data?

Right now, with only the mattress edges beveled, it's reading Verts: 83, Faces: 64, Tris: 150. Haven't explored lowest LoD options too much, but it's a bed/couch so I don't have to chase the < 1 LI dream too hard. :matte-motes-wink:

[Post and thread closed]

It seems like traveling is less popular than it used to be, but there are still people who do it as a regular activity. A good friend of mine often walks the Linden roads to see what's new and interesting. If you were to stop someone like him, you could probably have a bit of conversation about places to visit and possibly a new friend.

I mention this because you're wanting to meet people who share a hobby that is unorganised and spread out. If you come across any other travellers, say something. Think of a basic strategy for how to do that ahead of time and write it out somewhere very easy to find again. (All about minimising sources of anxiety.:matte-motes-smile:) This could be something like "Hi, I'm traveling through SL looking for interesting places to visit. Are there any you especially like?"

And that's a conversation started.

It might help to have some other responses written out too, like a simple "Thank you, it was nice to meet you" for people who say no. But only if it helps minimise anxiety for you.

Second, would you consider taking up a bit of building as a second hobby? It doesn't have to be serious and it can be a great way to meet other people. Building-related groups tend to be friendly, with people who are happy to help those who are new to creating. Plus, people like to get gifts and if you build, you have a supply of things to give away. :matte-motes-smile: The more I create, the more interesting my SL is.

My time in world is haphazard, but your hours are when I'm most likely to be in these days. (If you can, maybe try out different hours - most Americans (and thus many SL residents) will be asleep in the early SL hours and things like RP sims will be quieter. You might have better luck later.) For the remainder of the month I'm going to be busy building for a hunt but feel free to say hello. At that hour, there shouldn't be anyone besides me and maybe a friend on sim.

[Simple mesh pillow - 13 prims?]

I don't know what I did wrong, but it was something other than the build concept. It's all sorted now, has great numbers and good lod across the board. Didn't have to compromise for the lowest on minimum graphics either. It looks alright and won't give people a reason to turn their graphics setting up unnecessarily. Thanks again.

[Troubles?]

A friend and I were both having sporadic but somewhat similar issues with rezzing yesterday. I uploaded a pile of textures, came back a wee while later and one refused to rez, showed as 0x0 in inventory and grey in world. It appeared after a quick sim hop. Same thing with a mesh item she gave me. Didn't rez fully until a sim hop. Things she wanted to rez wouldn't till she relogged.

Have you tried going to another sim and returning? That worked well for me and turned what seemed a major problem into a wee hiccough.

My inventory has decided it doesn't want to cough up a few things, but I haven't done a cache clear or any of the other usual tricks. It could be my end, it could be SL. On the plus side, I finally have my full inventory on beta grid. But now I can't get into beta grid at all. Just get a cannot find simulator message every time. And I wants to build! Sigh.

[Simple mesh pillow - 13 prims?]

k, just checking the other two i dont know about, or at least not by name (unless align is apply scale and rotation. that one i do know, the hard way.)

but it worked!!! by combing drongle's alt merge last routine to get the corner diagonals with arton's reminder to make the lowest from scratch (previous attempts failed till i knew the merge trick), i have a pillow that holds up well from a distance.
i really should stop being stubborn sometimes and ask you guys for advice sooner.

It looks pretty clunky at a minimized graphics setting though. Maybe if I make that inner square bit on the lowest LoD larger? Have to think about how to optimise. (The first use for the pillows will be a display associated with a hunt and some hunters lower graphics quality cause of all the sim hopping.) How much do you guys build for minimised graphics? There are so many factors to consider.

[Simple mesh pillow - 13 prims?]

is A W >>> Remove Doubles the same as clicking on the box in the Tools window? I tried the latter method there and got a none to be removed notice.

Now that I know how to merge vertices, I was able to fabricate that lowest LoD setup from scratch and it has 20 tris, so I think we may have sorted this or at least gotten good enough for a pillow. Except that pillows have this way of wanting to add themselves to more complicated projects.

So do I head back into the time vortex that is beta grid so soon before bed or not....?

[Simple mesh pillow - 13 prims?]

Remove doubles and make the lowest from scratch. Will try both of those. TY.

[Simple mesh pillow - 13 prims?]

Oh wow. That is really cool. My object looks fine, just like yours, but the UV is messed up. It's less messed up when I don't check UVs than when I do.

Went to the beta grid and download is an unhappy 1.7.

Triangle and Vertice counts are 1246, 744; 448, 296; 168, 128; 42, 48, so I have managed to end up with a hunk of unneeded vertices. (One more example of how important the lowest LoD is for LI here, as was talked about earlier.)

I started with a plane, loop cut 15 vertically and horizontally, then extruded. I stopped my cloth collision animation a click after you did, I think; my pillow is a bit more indented at the sides and poofed up in the middle. But that doesn't change numbers, at least in blender. And since my numbers are higher than yours from the start, it seems my less efficient technique happened early and carried through all of the LoDs. I just can't figure out where.

Letting the mesh uploader generate a lowest LoD gets me a good LI, but the corners disappear when camming out. It's a small thing, I just want to learn best practice.

Thank you for your help. You and a couple others have had a hand in pretty much every mesh piece I've made, both directly and through your replies to others in the archives. It is very much appreciated.

[Simple mesh pillow - 13 prims?]

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Drongle McMahon wrote:

Roligf's cishions make the point, but here is the picture I promised anyway; LOD & physics meshes; inworld with test texture and nice material (0.5m square); upload triangle counts.



 

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Hello Drongle and other kind people,

I learned a method of making a pillow by using cloth collision to poof up a loop cut plane. I can get results which look like the first three LODs, although somehow with more triangles (approx 1300 for the high, 448 for the med, etc). But I cannot figure out how to achieve the set up used for the lowest. Removing that last set of loops very near the edge leads to strange distortions which are unusable in SL (some of the corners flatten out) and every way I've tried to duplicate the pictured lowest LoD from scratch leads to "Invalid region to join boundary faces" errors. What's going on with the distortions is a question I'm curious about, but right now the help I'd appreciate most is suggestions on how to achieve what Drongle has done here. I've completely run out of ideas on things to try.

This is all in the name of learning to make the best most efficient geometry for SL, so many thanks to all of the people whose archived posts have helped so much.

[2 owners for a same Shop?]

Revenue sharing means one person ends up with control of it all, which has a lot of potential to go wrong even with the best of intentions and friendship. Something as common as too much RL going on could lead to all sorts of complications if the person owning the marketplace shop has to leave SL for awhile.

My guess is that revenue sharing is probably better used for a few items rather than an entire shop or with very trusted friends who are building collaboratively. If you're creating independently and want to share traffic, try putting links to each other's shops in the text sections of your own. It's not ideal but it is safe.

[Store Affliliates - Yes or No?]

Friend had no end of troubles with hers. Sim restarts and who knows what else could send them offline. She almost put a chunk of money into an affiliate for a store we were both fans of, but went with the free lower commission one to try it out. Creator left SL a few months later. :-( I was gutted and she was shocked that she'd come so close to losing all of that money. There were problems with other creators abandoning their affiliates too, but the vendors continued to take money and send the creators their cut. No delivery of course and if they didn't respond to IMs, she'd still have to refund the full price. She couldn't join hunts or use MM boards to bring people in. Vendors went offline alot. Too many other places selling the same items. (And that would include yourself if you find you need to set up more than one location to have a chance at recouping the fee.) Vendors offline.... Just wasn't worth the small amount of money she got. She had more fun working as a greeter/store model. Have you tried that? 

[Nano Meshes? How Do I Make Nano Meshes?]

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Trix Easterwood wrote:

OMG, oh my God, OMG

That was sooooooooo it! Switching to Edit mode before adding the cube made all the difference

Great catch, Aquila!

Thank you so much for sticking with it for me. :matte-motes-big-grin:

a Kudo to you, wish I could give more than one!

 

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I did for you, since I didn't have to make my own thread and giving Aquila and Drongle kudos is one of my new purposes in SL. ;-)

[Do i need to make a UV and/texture before selling]

You're talking about full perm untextured mesh, yes? Then sure, there's a market. I always look for what's included though and usually give things a miss it's just a mesh without AO layer. The better the AO is and the better the layout of the UV islands, the more likely I'll buy something else from the creator. Especially the UV layout since buyers have no way of changing that without a dae file. I get grumpy if I have to spend ages and ages lining up pieces because someone used Smart UV Project and went with whatever that gave. A modeler's short cuts can mean heaps more work for texturers, especially if we want to offer it in more than one colour scheme.

There's no reason why you have to be the person who does that kind of testing on your mesh though. If you can find someone to work with who's better at texturing and can give you feedback from that POV, you'll probably end up with better and more saleable mesh.

[Curved EDGES in Blender]

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Drongle McMahon wrote:

Sorry, no step-by-step pictures this time. I need sleep.

 

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Grins.  Then I won't have to name my first child after you after all? ;-)  I'm impressed by how much time the regulars here, but especially you and aquila with your multiple screen shots, have put into helping me and loads of others. Thank you most sincerely.

I think I have something fairly reasonable now. Just need to clear my head enough to switch into GIMP mode for the texturing. I got really peeved the other day when I couldn't mouse scroll to resize. :-)

[Curved EDGES in Blender]

Thanks to both of you for your suggestions. I've used your second method, Drongle, because it was a great way of extending my skill set. Thanks for the clear instructions too. :-)

So now I've gotten stuck on the UV map again. Most of it I've been able to Project from View into a nicely ordered UV, Ctrl A'd into scale and everything. I'm stuck on the inner edges of the extruded cross though. I thought to try it in four sections, one for each quadrant, but there's no way to get a head on view of course.

Any suggestions?

[Curved EDGES in Blender]

Hello helpful people,

I'm trying to sort of emboss a standing stone by extruding part of it. The thing is, I need curved edges. The picture below has Circles added from the Curves section of the Object menu to illustrate. Is there a way to add these curves as Edges to my main object? Join doesn't work because they're not meshes themselves. If not, any suggestions on how to other approaches? This is the only mesh detail so I can afford to make them very smooth - smoother than I can manage via a knife cut. I went looking for other tools but haven't come up with anything yet.

The curved edges needed are 8 quarter circle pieces, so two complete circles' worth. 

The only way I've thought of where beveling might work is to extrude the rectangular bits, bevel from some of the y axis edges created and then de-extrude what's not needed. I'd prefer to only have to extrude (plus or minus) once though, so there's no worry about getting things back to the correct level, which is why I'm hoping there's a way to add in the curved edges before extruding.

Thanks in advance.

[Is there a way to keep UV islands in proportion to the mesh?]

Thanks to everyone who helped. It worked. :-) Even got it done the day before a hunt. Which was then cancelled. :-( Which means I can't invite you to saunter along to my shop at your convenience to pick up a copy as a thank you gift. Not that it would be difficult to arrange it by other means if you like.

Here are a couple of pictures so you can see what you contributed to. Thanks again.

[Is there a way to keep UV islands in proportion to the mesh?]

Girds my mouse and prepares to head back into battle with the Blender beast.

[life imitates SL]

Last week I saw an oversized advert in the window of a high street UK lingerie chain. The model had equally oversized breasts and my first thought was that nowhere was safe from mesh boobs anymore.... :smileytongue:

[Is there a way to keep UV islands in proportion to the mesh?]

Will Ctrl A keep things in place if I tweak them and need to unwrap again?

I got far enough along to want to improve the shape after seeing it with the texture on the beta grid. The uploader doesn't like something I did on the new version so I have some more questions.

1) Do I have to unwrap before every export if I'm just testing the shape?

2) Will Ctrl A (or another hidden trick) help keep things in place so I don't need to redo the UV?

3) Any advice on workflow for testing in SL, making adjustments in Blender and testing again?

4) Any advice on getting less texture distortion on beveled sides? Is this something I just have to accept if I use the orthographic Object Project method of unwrapping? Ideally, the finished result would be a smooth continuous surface over the corners and around the curves.

[Is there a way to keep UV islands in proportion to the mesh?]

With everything I've read and watched, how did I not find instructions on unwrapping sides individually?

Bangs head on the stonework.

[Is there a way to keep UV islands in proportion to the mesh?]

Thanks for replying. If I'm remembering correctly, Smart UV was the option which chopped it up (and disproportioned them) into even more equal sized squares. I tried playing with its settings, but couldn't find anything which, shall we say, dumbed it down. :-)