Nacy Nightfire

I made a wee cat joke about that in the sandbox when someone was complaining (justifiably) about all the gigantic meshes left around in the mesh sandbox making it hard to find a space to work.....I told him there wasn't enough sand in the entire sandbox for me to bury that pixel-poop....or something of that nature! Now I'm turning my brain to mush trying to animate the little guy in Blender. wheeeeeee.

"* I wish people would stop saying mesh bodies will all be the same shape." By people, I suspect you mean me, and I am duly chastened. I apologize for spreading any mis-information here. Although these days I mostly wander around as a rigged mesh house cat and less as "people". (and I did reserve the right to be wrong!) How is it possible to have a mesh with two layer textures? Are they seperate material groupings or do they overlap?

If humanoid meshes really catch on it will not be possible, as already stated, to apply them to the mesh replacement as we do to the standard avie. They'll need to be integrated into the texture based on their unique uv mapping. It's possible that some mesh artists will make available the uv texture template that goes along with a mesh, just we all have for the SL avatar, so individuals who buy it can create their own skins. In that scenerio you could sell designs that people could purchase for baking into their texture maps. However, I think mesh will create a greater diversity of avatars into the non-human realm, but not so much the human. Everyone likes to be an individual and living with a shape that can't be tweaked will be too limiting for most people. A gazillion identically shaped and textured barbie dolls is a real nightmare, imho. I remember when everyone walked around looking like one particular star..I forget her name, but can't seem to forget her face..scary. So I think we'll see human meshes, but ones worn by their creator that are unique to them. I reserve the right to be completely wrong about this.

guY, It helps enormously, thanks for the debug tip. And thanks for the explanation of what that file is all about DanielRavenNest!

"OMG, remember image maps on websites that where 8 megs trying to download a page with a dial up modem." Careful here, Chelsea! There may be children reading this forum. No need to frighten them with scary stories about the age of dial up modems. :matte-motes-oh-rly:

He he, I was running all around the main grid mesh sandboxes last night trying to find familiar names. I'm sure I'll catch up with you soon if you are working there from time to time Ashasekayi! Be sure to have some kitty treats handy :matte-motes-smile: Its funny how the projects can take a disorganized person like myself on their own path. I'm thinking I'm now going to get back into making the crude animations I used to have so much fun playing with, but specifically now geared towards 4 legged critters, plus my texturing skill has a long way to go. Fun!. Edited to clarify: By "crude animations" I mean unprofessional beginner stuff, not crude in an offensive way! :matte-motes-nerdy:

I'm going to stick my neck out here since I'm not even sure what a .slm file is, but it started appearing on my computer after loading up meshes. Unless I delete it or rename my mesh, the second time I try to upload it with a scaled avatar armature attached to my mesh, it ignores the deformations and the mesh is all distorted, so if I decide to make a small change in weighting verts, etc. on re-load it gave me problems until I figured out I needed to give it a new name or remove that dang file (one of these days I'll get my nose out of my current project and learn the purpose of that .slm file). I hope if this doesn't help in this instance, it will help someone else looking to solve another problem.

Yaaay fixed it!...Well it's weighting isn't perfect, but its a whole lot better. Now I'm bald. big pile of hair next to my computer. :matte-motes-smile: And tonight I have a date with "Introducing Character Animation With Blender" .

I almost successfully skinned my kitten to the sl avie armature, but no matter what I do the arms are crossed. Depending on how I position the shoulder, they are either extremely crossed or less so. If I remove all weighting the legs straighten out, but they of course don't move. Is this just a problem with the default SL animation? Am I chasing a problem that can only be corrected with an ao? The back legs are fine and walk correctly and the head/eyes track really well, its just the arms are causing me so much frustration:

"one method i use which is incredibly time consuming, is to triangulate everything (there is usually a tool that does this automatically, then start merging your tri's, in most cases i can reduce vert counts by 50 - 75% using this method but as mentioned it is very time consuming " York, the free program Sculptris from Pixologic has a brush that reduces triangles on the fly. http://www.pixologic.com/sculptris/ You can bring your obj in and it will be automatically triangulated although usually I've used Zbrush plug in Decimation Master at about 75 percent to begin the reduction a sculpted quad poly model from Zbrush and then after importing it to Sculptris I used the reduce brush to bring it down in in count in the areas that don't need so much detail. It might be worth trying if you aren't already using a similar workflow. Edited to include snapshot:

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/This-sounds-interesting-anyone-tried-it-Meshes-from-photos/m-p/920673/highlight/true#M1631

Autodesk has unleashed a (so far) free sculpting app for the Ipad called 123D Sculpt. And it's funnnn. But there is no export option which makes it a bit of a demo. HOWEVER you can save snapshots which means if you fall in love with your creation, you can take a number of snapshots at all angles and process them thru one of the free websites that convert images to 3D. I haven't gotten that far (so far I've made ugliness) but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

Blender 2.5X does have an optional script you can turn on in the User Preference area for creating these gem shapes as a basis for other shapes:

Blender has scripts that you can download, both from their website and from various Blender enthusiasts. A large number comes included in the build you download. I believe I've even seen a script that adds gemshapes to the list of primitive meshes, but I'm not totally certain of that. I'll check it out and repost if I find it. Zbrush is fantastic, but it's not free. There's a 30 day trial, but good luck trying to get up to speed with all its features in 30 days! Its merely a tease. Well worth the purchase price, however. And Zbrush Central has a terrific forum and the folks are really helpful. Many are industry professionals and artists; their work is breathtaking. Since you are interested in jewelry, take a look at this: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=135212

Thanks. I watched both video series straight thru yesterday, and there is so much great info in them, clearly I need to take notes and not try keep it all in my head. This whole thing is a tough slog for those of us who are organizationally challenged! :matte-motes-nerdy: (but it's worth it!)

Thanks again Ashasekayi, I'm learning the hard way! :matte-motes-shocked: This bone inclusion thing is so confusing. I'm then assuming from what you wrote that you don't need ALL the bones, but if you're mesh covers a bone..and or the mesh overlaps and is paint weighted to a bone, that bone better be on the list?

Ok I downloaded the newest beta version so I'm probably not getting exactly what I did last night..not sure. I have some thoughts about what I did wrong which I'll comment on below. I tested copying the vertex groups from the avie using the script. I tested parenting and selecting "bone weights", I tested parenting and selecting "envelop weights". Then I uploaded each both with and without the armature selected. Everything worked fine, except the selecting "bone weights" neither the version with or without the armature selected for collada conversion worked. Here's a bit of detail from one of those failed files which I think does show all 26 bones: <controller id="Skirt_lod2_003"> <skin source="#SkirtLOD4_002"> <bind_shape_matrix> 0.09956 0.0 0.0 0.02125 0.0 0.14498 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.17116 1.17866 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 </bind_shape_matrix> <source id="Skirt_lod2_003-joints"> <IDREF_array count="26" id="Skirt_lod2_003-joints-array">mPelvis mTorso mChest mNeck mHead mSkull mEyeRight mEyeLeft mCollarLeft mShoulderLeft mElbowLeft mWristLeft mCollarRight mShoulderRight mElbowRight mWristRight mHipRight mKneeRight mAnkleRight mFootRight mToeRight mHipLeft mKneeLeft mAnkleLeft mFootLeft mToeLeft</IDREF_array> <technique_common> <accessor count="26" source="#Skirt_lod2_003-joints-array" stride="1"> <param type="IDREF" name="JOINT"></param> </accessor> </technique_common> </source> <source id="Skirt_lod2_003-weights"> Now my theory of what I did wrong happened when I initially copied the vert groups from the avatar last night. I was wrongly assuming that since the avatar was in 3 parts, I needed to first copy the bottom where most of the skirt sits, and then select it and copy the vert groups from the top. I was unsuccessful and kept getting an error that both items had vert groups. I thought I cleared them and tried again, but kept getting the message. So I went into pose mode, selected the mTorso bone and painted in my weights, BUT I forgot to make a vertex group for this bone and I'm guessing the weights were there, but the vertex group wasn't automatically created by my painting. This time I went against my intuition and selected the mesh then successively selected the top and bottom then processed the script. All bones were transferred. So that is one more of the very many annoyances that are easy for beginners like myself stumble over, including non-manifold geometry and forgetting to push "make real" in the modifier tab., etc. etc. The more frustrated one becomes, the worse it can get, because there are so many steps, its hard to get organized with testing these things. Well, it can't be helped. And thanks so much for all the help Gaia and everyone else who chipped in. Maybe this mistake will help others..as for me, I'm writing up a new checklist of the "trip up" things to watch out for to keep next to me at all times!

Yes. I looked into the .dae file with a text editor last night and saw 26 bones listed. I'm going to retry and I'll post the text here. I may have deleted the file, but no doubt I can reproduce the error.

If that is just the rough stage I'm scared to see the final product. Stunning work so far :robothappy:

Eryn, I didin't find I had any missing bones using the avatar.blend file I downloaded from the Domino website. I had a complete set of 26 and I saw all of them in cooresponding vertex groups in the outliner associated with the mesh after I copied over the vertex groups via the script from the avatar mesh itself, and when I tried the same using bone heat transfer. The only thing that seemed to work is parenting the mesh to the armature and then selecting the option to use the envelope weighting. You might give that a go and report back here if it also helped in your situation, but I'm being grossly unscientific here, since I don't really even know what would be different about envelope weighting then the other options. I just tried it as a last resort and it seemed to work.

Thanks so much for all the work you did experimenting with this and posting, Gaia. I've downloaded the latest mesh viewer and after I get caught up a bit with everything in RL I set aside yesterday , I'll tackle it again.

Well I finally got a version of it uploaded. The sad part is I'm not fully clear what actually made the difference, but in the end I parented the mesh to the armature and and used the "create from envelopes" option instead of copying the vertex groups from the avatar or from "bone heat". I did it twice and both times it went thru successfully. Thanks everyone for all the help and good luck to everyone who's still trying.

I have all these bones and more! I noticed when parenting with bone heat just now in the .dae file I also have "skull". Right now that particular method of parenting with bone heat isn't even being recognized in the uploader. It just gets worse. I'm probably in need of a serious break. I've been at this for hours.

Thanks for responding Gaia and Ashasekayi, I carefully went over the complete list of bones. They are all there. And I selected the entire armature when uploading. I have a material set, I've made it "real", I've made uvs....I've lost fistfuls of hair. I've rechecked everything. When I played around and set the physic shape to one of the higher lods I finally got a message, which I should have written down. But it referred to a log. I'm not sure where the log is. Any clue?

I made the mesh and rigged it right in Blender 2.49b ...so frustrating!