Nacy Nightfire

You wrote: I need to know: 1) What program I need to use first. (To make the mesh model or etc) To begin with, the first program is SL. Second on my list would be Blender since you mentioned you have some experience with that program.. 2) What program I need to use second. (To put stuff onto the model or etc) Blender. You can fairly easily skin a model to the basic avatar rig that is readily available to be downloaded. 3) What program to texture the finished mesh item. Blender. Although if you have another graphics program you are comfortable with use that, also. 4) Any freeware available for mesh, and how reliable it is. Blender. What's somewhat tricky is the various versions of Collada export and how well SL shakes hands with them. There's alot of updates about this on the mesh forum. You can do a search to research this and follow for future updates as well as attend the Monday update meetings. Some folks are using MeshLab for it's features, I'm not familiar with it however. Loads of folks are using Gimp for texturing. All free. 5) If I can use Blender since I've learned it so far... Yes. A large percentage of us use Blender. 6) ....and any other tidbits like the ups and downs of mesh. This entire subforum is jam packed with general an specific tidbits, I recommend you pick a topic and do a search. Then at the point when you have a project specific question, ask away!

re: "What have the inside at all? Isn't there going to be a foot in it?" Drongle I suspect you don't have 30 pair of female shoes in your closest. The inside is important even if you don't see it while actually wearing the shoe. But that's where the labelof the designer shoe goes and there's real pleasure in the inside of the shoe being well textured for the occasional rezzing in ones faux bedroom as an object of art. However oone can't easily see inside the boot, so I have no argument with your question in that case. :matte-motes-wink: This has been a very helpful thread for me, personaly, and both mesh objects shown are beautifully done. Thank you for sharing. Edit: sorry for the double edit...I'm having the usual pre-thanksgiving panic attack about making a big dinner here in the US, and I'm in a rush.

There might be. In modo there's a movable work plane. In that program you would align the workplane to the triangle and then align the mesh to the workplane. Maybe you need the "snapping" function. make the triangle a seperate object and then use face snapping, or one of the other snapping options in object mode for aligning your mesh.

Just go into edit and align your mesh points to whatever axis you prefer, then go into object mode and zero out your rotation on all three axis' either by using the short cut CTL A, or thru the transform palette in the rotation sub-panel.

Fenix, I'm having a little bit of a problem really understanding what you want to do. But I think if you just go to OBJECT mode, select your mesh and rotate it to the axis position you want, and just hit CTL A choosing select copy rotation (copy all - location, rotation and scale just to be safe) that might be what you need. I hope that helps.

Very clever. But for copyright purposes you might want to move the letters around a bit to something like: Avigra Quoting picture here: " "

Ok, ok. I know that pun was uncalled for. I just came across this excellent tutorial for beginners to Blender (and those who of us whe need a refresher) on smoothing and getting rid of dark streaky weirdness on your mesh. This has been covered many times on the mesh forum, but here all the info is nicely contained in one well written article and handy to bookmark: http://feeblemind.org/blog/index.php?post/2007/08/13/88-how-to-solve-blenders-smoothing-problems

Yaaay! I tend to"flail" very unscientifically when I'm frustrated, I'm not certain what exactly worked here. Because Blender 2.6 is my default Blender version, I may have been opening and saving and reimporting back and forth and corrupting the file as I went. I was finally clear headed enough to really pay attention and import the boots obj version into 2.49b. I also took a tip from another thread where Gaia recommended clearing rotation in obj mode. I think that might have made a difference because of the way I imported them as objs. I'm not exactly sure since I'm usually pretty good about applying CTL A rotaton/scale before I export everything. And originally I made the boots in blender so it woudn't have been rotated. But possibly I accidently scaled the model in obj mode. A third problem which was frustrating me was may not being accustomed to the new uploader. I kept thinking the DISPLAY option to see joints was the indicator to include them. I forgot there was a third tab I needed to visit to assign the skin weights. I'm extremely happy now! And now to actually get to work on finishing the boots. Yaaay! Thanks a gazillion Asha!!!

Teqi, there's an old saying about "not burning bridges behind you". You will probably once again need the help of one of the UNPAID experts on this forum, and as you've shown a great deal of ingratitude for the assistance you've recieved on this thread, they have time consuming projects of their own to complete and will not be inclined to help you. Rather then complain about a lengthy post, be grateful that the person took so much thoughtful time to post it. I read the post you were b*tching about and I kudo'd it. It has a great deal of useful information. Chosen Few has an ADVISOR tag here on the forums for a good reason and that is generously providing very good assistance to other people and sacrificing personal time to do so. So if a request is made to show a picture of your problem to help others more quickly and easily help YOU. Just do it. If that's too technical a challenge for you, then you are way over your head with mesh creation. As, for any responses to others who do not quite understand your post, but attempt to answer it. A great big THANK YOU READING MY POST AND TRYING TO HELP ME is in order. edited for word omission

Thanks Asha! . I'll post a pic as soon as I can. I've exhausted myself in Blender today getting over my head with materials and the node system, so I have to put the mesh rigging until tomorrow. (It's embarrassing to have rigged that cat and both a tiny and gigantic sized avie, only to be back here pleading for help like I've never rigged a mesh before)

Asha to the rescue once again! Yaaay!! And thank you so much for your kind reply. I will check and try out all those things and hopefully I will soon post a pic of my avatar's head pointing up her feet firmly planted in the ground with her eyeballs inside her head (and wearing my mesh wellies, too, off course!)

Other then to say I have a great idea involving an event about people, all of which we can discuss at some more appropriate time, I completely agree. Too often I see posters avoiding the topic or not taking the time to actually read and discuss the topic at hand. They use other folks' posts as a platform to challenge the op's right to even HAVE an opinion/observation or they have some other hostile agenda that in no way resembles a contribution to an actual discussion.

Thanks for your help Bray. I had quite a lot of success in the past with uploading resized meshes as well as standard mesh clothing attachments. Something's changed and I can't figure it out. Now I've remade a test mesh I get all the right upload options, following the method I always used and the proper upload options are now available, the image is wearing the item properly, the blue bones outline is now set straight, but when I upload the mesh and attempt to wear it, it doesn't attach as a rigged mesh. If you are just getting a grip on it, take a lesson from me, don't take a month off!!

Yes I copied bone weights and I purposely included the bones. If I omit the bones the option for checking off skin weights and joints are greyed out. Am I forgetting something or was there a major change in how to upload attachements that I missed?

I've have no problems rigging in the past, but I took about a month break to work on static meshes and then this week i made a boot base and tried to rig it. It's been a nightmare. Blender 2.49b was a complete failure. I could never get the uploader to recognize the bones. I've tried a million different things. Today I loaded the avatar workbench into Blender 2.59 and I was FINALLY able to select the skin weights and joints when I uploaded my rigged mesh, but I get the results below. I tried different versions of Blender 2.59 and I've tried a gazillion other things. Anyone have an idea what's going on? BTW I'm using ,Second Life 3.2.1 (243698) Oct 21 2011 15:51:50 (Project Viewer - Mesh) and Second Life 3.2.2 (244666) Nov 8 2011 17:07:43 (Second Life Beta Viewer)

Check in the object data tab in the properties panel under UVTexture that you have only one UV set up for your mesh before exporting. Delete any extras that might have been included. Also, sometimes when you extrude your normals go sideways and flipping them will not correct the problem. If you turn on your normal viewing mode and you see this is happening, go into OBJECT mode, select the mesh and press CTL A and apply rotation and scale.

Back in my early days, I was being griefed by a couple in the sandbox since I was an obvious noob. I returned from afk and found they had had put a trash barrel around me and set my avatar on fire. Next they then started to attack me with a giant ant. So I "sat" on the ant and went for a ride. Then they tried to shock me by rezzing a big...em...feminine vibrating device next to me. Fortunately I'd just been check out the Planned Parenthood sim in my travels in SL (not sure if it still exists here) and picked up a very useful prophylactic device (that has no doubt saved me from many, many a virtually communicable disease in SL) and I rezzed the gigantic cartoonish pink condom next to their device. Although I only speak English and they only speak Polish, they became friends and we had no trouble communicating from that point on.

/me chases Carole around the joint carrying an ashtray and a coaster [Edited to add: I'm making a humorous remark about tidyness, here. Nothing more. I'd like to add that no jokes have been harmed in the making of this my tiny thread contribution here, but that would be incorrect.]

Game? Angry Avatars? Should be interesting.

That's another wonderful explanation. Thanks so much, again! I hope your internet is now behaving.

You explained that perfectly, thanks so much Drongle! (and thanks to you also Maeve for pointing this out )

Maeve, you wrote "A sidenote: For your shadow plane (if you aren't doing it already), consider applying a material dedicated to it entirely. For instances where textures use alphas, materials are very handy for separating alpha-textures from the rest of the mesh, and can prevent transparency glitches taking hold." Could you elaborate on this a wee bit? It sounds very useful, but I don't think I exactly understand what you mean about the advantage of seperating alphas from the rest of the mesh and how that prevents transparency gitches? Thanks in advance if you catch this request.

It is Marigold. I agree, these both of these pictures are quite stunning in their own way!

There is a point where increasing your polycount does not translate into a clearer, crisper image. We are not just dealing with vertex painting, we are also working with transfering your vertex painting to the pixel resolution of your image texture. All these factors need to be taken into account and it serves no purpose to tax your machine by subdividing such a simple model beyond what is necessary and practical for both upload to SL and for the purposes of creating your image. Based on the image you posted it appears you, in fact, did paint on a model with high enough resolution, but you chose the wrong uv approach to transfer that vertex painting (polypainting) to a useable image.

Here is an example of the UV's I made in Zbrush using UV master on a shape similar to your head that I threw together for this example. Note that I used masking on the mesh to create a seperate polygroup for the front and the back of the head and then I used the "Polygroups" button in UV Master to make the polygrouped areas control the UV islands. Very simple process.