Nalates Urriah

Thanks, forcing those vertices using Automatic weighting broke them fee.

I've run into a weight painting problem. Then I ran into a problem uploading an image to the forum. All I get is the error: This file does not appear to have any content. So, I uploaded to my blog... it has content. Anyone know what that is about? Back to WP prob... I started playing with weight painting. I am experimenting with making skirts that will work better when one sits. In the process I found some vertices that will not move as I weight them. As I paint, normally the color changes and the vertex moves. Except for those vertices I have arrows pointing at. They change color but do not move. I've tried changing weight, brush strength, appending to another file, normalizing, auto-normalize... and no joy. Does anyone have a clue what I may have done or what the problem is? http://blog.nalates.net/?attachment_id=7565 Windows Vista 32x Blender 2.63a - CUDA on GTX560 v301.42

There is so much to know I have no idea where to start... I have a tutorial for setting up blender for mesh clothes making: Second Life Mesh Clothes Blender 2.6 Setup 2012 Tutorial I have two short articles on retopology and they link to a good video tutorial: #SL Blender Clothes Retopology & Blender Retopology – Clothing Update. And there is a recent warning of a problem with 2.63: Blender 2.63 Import Problem. If you use the menu on my blog to open the Mesh Related or Clothing Tutorials sections you'll find more. When working with clothing, you don't have to learn to script. If you want to make things no-mod you may need scripts to change color, size, and textures. There are public scripts you can use for that. Animation is not necessary for making clothes or avatars. But, a related part, weight painting, is needed.

You should always look at Second Life Grid Status Reports to see if a grid wide problem has come up. It can take a couple of hours for a problem to appear there. So, keep checking while you try to resolve the problem. Other times a transient problem like todays is fixed before the notice hits the status page.

This is one of those cases where you need to use SL Search. A weak as SL Search is, it will return some results.

If you are running a Mac you will need to change your DNS settings. That is a known problem. There is a section on DNS in: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection.

I suspect it is an attempt to scare off griefers.

In this areticle is onformation about deciding whether the region or your connection is a problem: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection. It explains how to use Viewer Statistics to determine the state of the region. If the region is lagging, everything is going to be slow. There is nothing you can do about that. When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. Get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post. In this case we need some hardware and viewer information. You can try restarting your modem/router to see if that helps. You can get a bit of a performance boost by exluding the SL cache from your real time anti-virus protection. Since the Lab uses lossy compression on most of the assets it is unlikely a virus can survive upload to SL. So, there is no point in checking the asset downloads. Keep your bandwidth setting under 1.5mb/sec. You'll see how to test connection speed in Troubleshooting. Check your cache size setting. 1gb is good. Experiement with it to see what works best for you. In Debug Settings look for ImagePipelineUseHTTP and try setting it to FALSE. This may speed up your downloads or slow them. It depends on the load on SL at any given time. The change switches you back to the legacy UDP protocol. If most of the people in the region are using HTTP you'll have an empty highway using UDP. In Debug make sure CurlUseMultipleThreads is true. If your on Apple try experiementing with RenderAppleUseMultGL. You can look up what theses do in the SL Wiki.

When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. If the viewer will at least show the login screen, get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post. You can test your connection using these steps: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection After a viewer crash and subssequent failures on restating... reboot your computer. Something may have messed up in your computer. You can try reinstalling your viewer. I would install over the top of the existing install. If you decide to uninstall... remember to save your chat logs, if you need them. You can look in the SL log and see if you can get a clue to the problem. C:\Users\[win_login_id]\AppData\Roaming\SecondLife\logs\ Start at the end abd workbackward. Look for warnings and errors.

Hitomi is right, we need more information to have an idea what's wrong. When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. If the viewer will at least show the login screen, you can get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post. Otherwise, on WIndows click Start and type CMD. When the CMD or Command Line comes up in programs run it. That will open a commandline windw. Type dxdiag in the window. This will give you your system specs. We need to now video driver version, OpenGL version, and the stuff Hitomi asked about. You can try some general fixes. Reboot the computer. Login as an adminstrator. Disable your anti-virus. Now try an install. If you run any anti-malware software, disable it too. After the install enable the AV and malware then run SL.

Run through these steps to determine if it is a connection problem: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection. If you have more than one network connection port on the computer, try changing to the other network card. Network cards do go bad. Plus if there is not surge protector on the network connections a spike can cause them to fail or partially fail.

There are some thigns that make a significant difference in how well SL performs on a given set of hardware. Plenty of fast memory. 4 gb of RAM is decent and more is better CPU multiple cores. The more the better. But, be practical. The render process in the viewer is currently a single thread, meaning it can only use one CPu core. However, the texture decompression process, network processes, and number others are multi-threaded. The result is the world rezes faster with 4 or more cores. i3, i5, and i7 CPU have a highly efficent threading process. So, efficient that each core works as well as 2 of the older Core2's cores did. i3 is more for video but it works well with SL. 64 Bit OS. This makes a significant difference. While there is no 64 bit viewer, AFAIK, there are LAA (Large Address Aware) versions of the viewer that can use the additional memory available in 64 bit systems. NVIDIA video cards - You have a choice between ATI-AMD or NVIDIA. NVIDIA provides way better support for OpenGL and SL is an OpenGL based application. The 200 to 600 series nVidia cards work well with SL. The higher the first digit the newer the card. The higher the next two digits the more horse power the card has. GTX is better than GTS and that is better than GT. Windows provides better OpenGL support than Apple. Fast harddrive with a large buffer helps. The new SSDrives are fast but expensive. No matter what you do you will not get the type of performance you will get with other 3D video games. Frame rates of 50 to 90 FPS are possible with SL. Most get far less. You can look through an old thread to see what people were getting: How Fast is Your Viewer? - Second Life. My Core2 Quad w/GTX560 gets 15 to 25 FPS on Vista 32 w/4gb of ram using the 257716 Development Viewer. It is not uncommon for i3 users with a $200 video card to run on Ultra in the 25 FPS range.

As Dora suggests, try Blender. The recent 2.6x releases have BMesh and Cycles. Check out the new features in the videos at CG Cookie. Maya, 3DS, and Blender are about the best tools availalbe. Of those, the Lab puts more effort into supporting Blender, they figure more of their users are using Blender.

I just rewrote a tutorial on setting up the base file for rigged mesh: Second Life Mesh Clothes Blender 2.6 Setup 2012 Tutorial. It is a text tutorial. So, it is about as up todate as possible. Also, tutorials are only out of date in the sense that the user interface of Blender has changed. The concepts used in modeling and rigging mesh have not changed. It is a bear changing from 2.49's UI to 2.5x and 2.6x UI. But, things are way easier to find in the 2.5+ versions. If you rigged the mesh using the tutorial for general rigging rather than Second Life rigging, that is the problem. You need to use the Second Life armature for rigged mesh going into Second Life.

There is a long tutorial about setting up a base file for doing rigged mesh for SL: Second Life Mesh Clothes Blender 2.6 Setup 2012 Tutorial. The basic steps are: Append the armature and avatar mesh from either a Domino Marama or Gaia Calry file to a new Blender file. Links to the files are in the tutorial. Bring your new mesh into the file. Parent it ot the armature. Use Gaia's Copy Bone Weights to get a beginning set of vertex weights. Do your weight painting. Export the mesh. That is over simplifying, but it is the basic steps. The tutorial take 9,000+ words to say the same thing.

The Lindens deal with these things everyday and have years. I think it is some times difficult for them to realize how much information they are assuming when they write a post explanning what they are doing. I am sure I have the same problem. I hope I'm a level or two below their geek level explanations. I won't say that I always get it right, but I try to write a geek to human translation of these events in my blog. I run a bit behind these posts. But, I include information form other developement teams too.

Why are they called Empties for Avatar.blend and bone attchaments in other files? Aren't these the same things?

Several people have been complaining of this problem. First step should be to check your connection: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection. Next... When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. Get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post. Also, if you have your bandwidth over 1,500kbps, turn it down to something less. Check the region stats in Viewer Statistics (Ctrl-Shift-1). Region Phsycs FPS and Time Dilation should be 45 and 1.0. Anything below 30 and 0.8 can contribute to the problem you are seeing. The common reason for the problem is system lag, SL system. Relogging to a deserted region usually clears the problem. Oddly another cause is font size. If you recently changed screen font size that could be the cause. Or if you changed font size in your viewer (this is a TPV thing). Mac's have a DNS problem that can prevent the friends list from loading. See: Google Public DNS. Keep at least one of your existing DNS servers. Use 2 of Google's or OpenDNS's servers and one of your ISP's with your ISP's being last. This can also speed up performance a bit.

Check that your computer meets the System Requirements | Second Life. When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. If the viewer will at least show the login screen, get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post. Initial login problems are usually either form a poor connection or a computer that does not meet the minimum specs. You can test your connection: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection You can clear the viewer's settings and probably get the opening error message again. The file you need to wipe is: C:\User\[win_login_ID]\AppData\Roaming\SecondLife\user_settings\setting.xml OR... You can look in the viewer log file to see what is failing. The log is here: C:\User\[win_login_ID]\AppData\Roaming\SecondLife\logs\SecondLife.log That is a text file. So, you can open it with most any editor. Start at the end of the file and work toward the beginning looking for warnings and errors.

I'm confused. You want a male avatar... CR2 is a file type for Canon's Raw Camera format... What is it you are wanting? A 3D model, a photo... What do you want to do? You are probably getting vague answers because you are being vague. If you want a male 3D model: You can see how to make a OBJ file with the default male shape here: Second Life Mesh Clothes Blender 2.6 Setup 2012 Tutorial. Page 2 shows the various files you can download. Unfortunately most of what is out there is files with female avatars. Page 3 explains some of the confusion about which files and shapes to use for the coming Mesh Deformer. You should be able to use an OBJ file with most 3D modeling and/or animation programs. If you want more information about animation, try Machinimatrix.org. If you are not able to download ZIP files, that is usually a mis-configured MIME type in your computer. It can also be a misconfigured or over zealous anti-virus program.

I'm not sure how much you have followed mesh or whether you know about the Mesh Deformer. (See: #SL Lab’s Viewers Update Week 21) You can get a Mesh Deformer Project viewer and see how it works. There are also sample mesh items in Hippo Hollow (region) made to be used with the Deformer. Mesh clothes in SL are not like RL clothes in that they can't squeeze the avatar into a shape. They follow the avatar's shape. Ceera is partially right. Sliders that affect body 'fat' do not affect mesh clothes, unless one is using the Deformer. But, sliders that affect 'bones' will shape the mesh clothes. In other words, the height of the avatar affects the height of a dress. Jennefer's idea to use a shading layer to fake pressed together cleavage is probably about the best solution. Lots of skin makers sell cleavage layers to work with various avatar settings. Look through some of the better skin shops to see what they are doing.

From what've heard Oskar say in UG's the bots that are AI controlled avatars will prevent region idling. I have a number of quotes from Oskar in SL News Week 20 and Update Week 20.

You should always look at Second Life Grid Status Reports to see if a grid wide problem has come up. It can take a couple of hours for a problem to appear there. So, keep checking while you try to resolve the problem. You can do a quick check to see if it is you are the Lab's web site that is the problem. In a web browser visit http://my.secondlife.com. That will bring up you profile. You will have to login if you haven't used the web page in your browser. Search is the same way. Use http://search.secondlife.com. There is sometimes a credintials loading problem that blocks the viewer from showing web pages. Once you visit with your web browser, that usually clears up. So, the visit with your web browser can fix the problem, provided the sites are up.

This is a known problem. The fix is simple enough. The cause is a bit strange, at least to me. Thanks to the Firestorm-Phoenix wiki: wearing_entire_inventory and the SL JIRA we have a fix. To fix it: right-click your avatar and select My Appearance (SL Viewer). In My Outfits find the Current Outfit. Click the folder and select Remove Outfit or Take Off. This should correct the problem. It may take some time, like really long time, for all the objects to be removed, be patient. Alternate fix: again in My Appearance -> My Outfits find the outfit you are wearing. Select everything in the Outfit’s folder and delete it. In My Appearance there are only LINKS. So, this is not deleting actual items. This can take time, be patient. Now relog. The long fix for when the others fail: Find a deserted area; Hippo Hollow, Pooley, or Furball. You need a place with no people and as empty of stuff as possible. Now make a new Outfit folder. This can be trick, if you have only used Appearance to make outfits. Open Inventory using the suitcase icon in the main viewport. Find the special My Outfits folder and expand it. Right-click My Outfits and create a new folder named !!nude or whatever you like as long as it starts with !!. The double exclamation marks will hopefully force it to sort to the top of the folders list. Add your shape, skin, and if you want pants and a top into the folder. Keep it to a minimum. DO NOT move any prims into the folder. No sculpty clothing. No mesh clothing. Keep it simple. Now right-click the newly made outfit’s folder and click Replace Outfit. It has to be REPLACE. No other choice is going to work. This is going to take some time. Be patient. Once the outfit change completes, relog. Use Last Location when you login to return to whichever deserted region you chose. If you do not have a choice of login locations when logging in, open Preferences (Ctrl-P) and in the General tab enable: Start Location – Show at Login. Once logged in, make sure you are wearing only the things you added to the new outfit. If by some quirk of fate that does not work, repeat these steps in a different deserted region and allow more time after the outfit replace. Avoiding reoccurrences of the problem is next. We know the cause of the problem. It is a bad click… you goofed… BUT it’s not your fault. There is a nasty gotcha. When you click to select an outfit and then go to click ‘wear’ or ‘replace outfit’ something happens. If a friend logs in or out, inventory updates the status in Calling Cards. If you are watching close, there is no reason to watch close, you will see the select focus change from the single outfit you selected to the whole freaking inventory. This is a BUG. Now the instruction to wear all has been sent to the server. It will add inventory items until the avatar is full. If you take stuff off, on the next login it starts putting on all the stuff it didn’t get to last time. The process repeats unless you follow the steps above. We know the problem is server side. So, cache clearing and clean installs are no help. Once you have the problem you have the problem. Changing from viewer to viewer does not correct the problem. It may seem aggravate the problem if you go from viewer to viewer.

I don't know how to fix it. But, I would make an export from Blender and Maya and then compare the to two DAE files to see what is different. I know that Gaia Clary (Machinimatrix.org) modified the Collada exporter in Blender for SL. You could talk to her to see what's up.