Nacy Nightfire

"Us ladies would also rarely go outside without covering our head, wearing gloves, a hankerchief and a small revolver in our garterbelt." And every gentleman should have a large pistol in his pocket and be happy to make my aquaintance. Life is so unfair!

According to my husband its the "unfair" sex since I need to be right about everything.

In my dreams Don Johnson isn't wearing any underpants either.

"Because, I know people in SL who have let their RL age be known, and they are older than me. (Unless they are lying..and why would they lie to make themselves older? ) " If they are 14 year old boys, they will lie to make themselves older, rest assured. Edited to add: There's something I find objectionable to your stating : "why would they lie to make themselves older?" This is at the heart of the matter with the overvaluing of youth at all cost. What's wrong with being old? What's the alternative? Being dead? Aging is not a disease or a failure. It's a natural process that we are lucky enough to go thru if we are forunate to live that long. The problem we face is current attitudes about aging. Its as iif older/old people come from a different planet and by aging have done something very wrong and are exiled to this one.

The point is he has such a hot bod he doesn't NEED a belt. He has a butt to keep his pants up.

Ok, I messed around a bit today with some clean up plug-ins for Sketch Up and they did absolutely no good. I've also have some luck in Sketchup with small things like windows, but I guess the "boolean" style geometry is just too messy on larger things like buildings to be worth the work of cleaning up. This just wasn't all that obvious to me at first - what takes a short time to build in Sketchup talks a loooong time to fix in Blender. I agree that it's not worth it, although, again, fun for small things and for sketching out designs.

@ Jo You dropped a stitch. And empty that ashtray. You are going to nod off and set the house a-flame.

Thank you, Dillon, for showing respect to your elders by not editing the wording of my posts or contradicting my claim to be the eldest. :matte-motes-wink: I'm very candid about my age in real life. In SL I preferred initially to be "ageless" so I'd not be shut out of the opportunity to experience friendships with folks of all ages. After 4 years in SL, I have now experienced these other generations, I'm satisfied I'm not missing anything, and I am content.

Thanks for the edit Madelaine, however I DO mean chidlish. And yes, my husband would truely get joy out of seeing me wear those go go boots. That is if its the only bit of clothing I put on and I danced around a bit like Nancy Sinatra (I can hear you youngsters groan from where I sit. Guess what!?! You never really lose "it"...or the desire for "it". This is why your near vision eyesight starts to go at 40. It's an act of kindness by some supreme being.) As to staying awake...that's my biggest problem. If only I could get some sleep at a reasonable hour...say before 3 a.m. this new fangled invention called the Ipad is kiling me.

"You keep lying when you oughta be truthin" That just slays me. I wasn't so much a trend-setter as a trend-enabler. (I couldn't stand Nancy Sinatra's music, but I was quite fond of the young Michael Jackson and the entire Motown crowd.)

RE: "I always presumed I was the oldest in this bunch, but you might have me beat ." Add a walker to that emoticon, and that will, in fact be me. Everyone in SL thinks they are the oldest. I met someone the other day who was 14 in the sandbox. He assumed I was a contemporary of his. It is in fact ME thats the oldest and that's why I act so childish in SL. I've gone up the curve of life and now I'm coming down. Just like a roller coaster - wheeeee!. It goes faster as it closes in on the end. I am old enough to have worn hot pants and look hot in them. I want to once again put on my white go-go boots (where any of us thought we were GOing I haven't a clue) and my Mary Quant lip gloss, if only for a minute in the privacy of my own home. Edited twice, because at my age I'm allowed a few "do-overs"

User's of Sketchup have come up with various "clean up" scripts primarily for CAD use,. One or more of these might, in fact, be the solution. I'll give this a shot and report back. (I apologize if I'm deraililng the op's thread here a bit.)

Thanks for sharing this on the mesh forum. Your mesh attachment is adorable! From time to time I go back to trying to re-rig my cat avie. I even upgraded to Poser 12 hoping for a miracle. The best I think one can achieve is what you and I both discovered, which is a walk, run, dance enabled avatar, but nothing too detailed, like a proper sit animation or many animal behaviors. I hope someone will prove us wrong here.

I can't completely disagree with you arton, but I've discovered that Sketchup, despite its many limitations for importing mesh objects into SL, is a lot of fun use. The simple tools and the bright interface is a pleasure and a great way to sketch up floor plans and play around with design ideas. I wouldn't count it out as a useful tool for SL builders, its just not really one that stands by itself. It's more suitable as a substitute for paper and pen when coming up with plans then for actual modeling. So far everything I've made in SU took 3x as much time in Blender getting it fixed up and prepared to upload into SL. I do suspect that with understanding the program a bit more there may be some hidden tricks to avoid that problematic geometry. I'm going to bed as well, happy that I finally understand what those dang red lines mean in the uploader. Yaaaay!

Its helpful to keep the upload screen open with the physics shape showing the red lines while you go back and forth from SL to your 3d package finding those thin thin triangles. I just made my first house I could actually walk into tonight starting with Sketchup. I thought previously that it was sufficient to just go into Blender to remove doubles and fix normals, but I realize now Sketchup makes ALOT of these thin triangles. I can't think of a way in Blender to uncover them since they are as thin as edges and sit in the same space as other edges. Referring back to the uploader screen where the red indicators point them out seems like the solution. Any other tips to uncover them would be appreciated. I'll also repeat what someone already posted (sorry I forget who pointed this out on the forum) that in the upload screen you can manipulate the image just like any other item in SL..zoom, rotate, etc. So you can really get in there and find those spots that are giving you grief.

No. You are still young. If you ask that question you don't know what old is. When you are actually old you will know it and have no need to ask random, vaguely polite strangers this question. When you start to post questions here and half way thru you forget what you are posting you are getting up in years. When you no longer care that you are old then rest assured (or in peace) you are really old. Now explain to me what a television is?

Actually that was a bit of a brain hiccup on my part. For that matter a friend could just send the file as an attachment. But to pass a .dae file to a SL friend in SL, copying the data via text to a notecard (or two cards...I think it needs to be split up) can be useful.

Brayton, I'm delighted for you that you have the unique skills to hand texture your sculptie maps, most do not. Mesh solves that hurdle for the majority. Rather then think in terms of the cost of mesh upload being a rip-off, did you ever consider that with sculpties we were getting a significant discount? That LL absorbed much of the true cost of this kludgy approach to bringing handmade models into SL? Mesh may in fact be their opportunity to price things correctly, and yet they aren't taking the option to continue to offer sculpties away, or raising the price to upload and use them. I applaud them for this. Very generous on their part. If you've been in SL since almost it's inception, you know things are always a "work in progress here". Mesh is by no means finished, nor is anything else in SL. To complain about it's deficiencies at this point is just a downer and not productive. Just make your suggestions and report your issues and expect it will realistically take a while before all things are implemented and working smoothly. And you, like the rest of us, won't always get "our way". As to "what i expect is for LL to impliment tools that complimentry to SL, rather than trying to shoehorn industry standard tools into a non standard enviroment." You are entitled to your expectations. Mine are polar opposite. I expect LL to align itself more usefully and efficiently to industry standards and turn this into a more standard environment that all people can join and use easily without wasting hours (MONTHS!) of their time learning some wierd proprietary method of building before getting up to speed to enjoy themselves creatively.

at: http://www.packtpub.com/books/blender for the month of October they are selling the ebook version of their blender books for 10 US dollars or the equivalent in pounds, etc. which is a great deal compared to the hard copy price. These books are also sold on Amazon (not with the ebook discount) so you might check them out there if you want to read the reviews and more details about the contents.

A very roundabout method would be to ask a friend at the university to copy the .dae info to a text file and send you that in an email which you can turn back into a .dae file and import back into your 3d editing program.

By all means, make a cost/benefit decision over which building method to chose. If mesh is too expensive for you both in terms of your time and the upload costs then create with sculpties. If you can't afford the upload cost of sculpty textures or the time to make them, then use prims and free textures. No ones putting a virtual gun to anyone's head demanding they switch to mesh. It's just an expanded tool in the creators tool box. Mesh give people more options and some flexibility to, as mentioned, for achieving optimized topology, eliminating unnecessary vertices and create useful UVs that are easy to take into a graphics program and texture. That can make a big difference in certain types of building and it can be a negligible difference in other types. Obviously the increase upload/prim cost it's not worth it to a lot of people and they shouldn't feel obligated to go in that direction. As for myself, I don't remember being told this was implemented to save us money on upload. I completely accept that the added complexity and control has a cost associated with it. In the 4 years I've been in SL the upload prices have stayed constant, which has been a very fair deal. I don't resent the additional price of mesh upload as long as it is consistent and understandable.

Who's to determine how many man hours should go into a single item. If you,with your expert skills, you can knock off an item in 20 minutes and I spend a week agonizing over every detail...how should that be priced. Who gets to decide? A large attraction SL has for people, especially when getting started or outfitting an alt, is the free stuff. Treasure hunts and freebie chairs are also one of the most popular items as is joining groups to get free stuff. SL wouldn't be sl without these things. Creating is also one of the most popular things that everyone gets to do. Personally I'm not interested in holding back from creating things and giving my stuff away for free just because some folks decide this ever-evolving and therefore unstable environment is the only option they have to pitch their economic tent. Its up to them to roll with the punches, not for me to hold back on enjoying SL the way that is best for me. I understand many people use SL to supplement their incomes, however there are no guarantees in life. People often make a good income from what turns out to be a passing fad. Folks always need to be considering other options if they are dependent this money. There is no (nor should there be) artificial means to hold back other SL players from giving away things for free it they choose to do so. If everyone has a fruit tree in their yard, then obviously that limits the market for the grocery store and the grocer has to expand his/her offerings or change the business plan. No one should be restricted from being generous with others or be forced to cut down their trees. As in RL, competition is not just between you and your rival creator, its also between you and what people can make for themselves or obtain for free. If you sell things that are so easy to manufacture that others just do the same and give these things away, then that's a poor business model. Find something else to sell or improve your product so well that people won't be able to make it and distribute it for free, don't expect to restrict the rights of other people make and gift stuff for the benefit of the entire community.

Thanks Ashasekayi, that's extreamly helpful!

You are correct about the edge crease function "weighting" subsurfed model edges, which means I was using it incorrectly on a model that was not subsurfed =(. http://download.blender.org/documentation/htmlI/ch07s02.html The fog is lifting.

Thanks a gazillion Drongle. That gets me well on my way. I'll do more research now that I have a better understanding of the differences and I'll expecially get a handle on "edge crease" and report back. I'm sure this is useful info for alot of folks. Circular/rounded modeling shapes need more verts to hold up their shape which is costly, but the sharpen effect for edges adds to the cost also. It makes my head spin.