Nacy Nightfire

I'm stumped! I haven't skinned a piece of clothing in a while, but I never really had much trouble before. Now I've got a simple skirt that I've made 4 lods fors and a simple 8 vert box as a physics shape. All lights are green when I upload the various files, but as soon as I click on Skin Weights the option to upload disappears. No warning or error message is given. I've spent hours trying different things including uploading with both the armature attached to each mesh when exporting as a collada file and not attached. Its odd that the uploader recognizes that the mesh is a rigged mesh by including the Skin Weight option, but when I click it I can't upload. Anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Ok..I was challenged by the tediousness of deleting each vertex group one by one. I just knew there had to be an easier way ! Anyone interested can go here: blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?158240-Batch-Delete-Vertex-Groups-script Copy this script to your basic text editor and change the extension to .py...I named it: Delete_Vertex_Groups.py Then drop that file into your blender scripts folder and when you are in edit mode it will be with your scripts. Click it and you'll get a handy pop up menu of all your vertex groups so you can batch delete the ones you want to remove. Works like a charm in blender 2.49b...I haven't checked it out in 2.58 yet. Edited to add: The script doesn't work in Blender 2.58, but now that I look at the way the layout works it's much simpler in 2.5 to run thru the vertex groups and just press the minus sign to delete the ones you want. Somewhat similar to deleting shapes in 2.49. Unfortunately CTLZ doesn't undo here so its easy to delete too quickly and have to start again.

Excellent! Thanks so much for clarifying. Too bad the Win Daxter version isn't that easy! lol. And now I'm going back to rewatch your vids. They're so great.

Ashasekayi! Your videos are like M&M's...I couldn't stop watching them. They are excellent and I learned a mooseload of new stuffs. I can't thank you enough!!! I have one comment/question. I have found by random flailing around with Blender :matte-motes-nerdy: that if you just delete all the shapes except for the "basis" shape for each body part, it deactivates the corresponding vertex groups and it is then not necessary to remove them. If you go to the shapes subpalette and click on the left facing arrow, then click the x "delete" button repeatedly, you can quickly just remove all the shapes. And of course if you get carried away, as I always do, and delete the last one (the basis), I just hit ctl z to bring it back. I'm not an advanced Blender user by any means, so I might be off base with this. Please let me know if I am.

" doesn't make much sense to see a 20m mesh build using 2/3 the faces of like sculpts and have the mesh produce an 85 PE tree when the sculpt tree uses 5 prims at any scale. Even the least efficient 1 sculpt per tree limb, branch, trunk approach produces a tree with less than 25 prims and at any scale. " Sculpts are a very useful legacy building option. I'd say to be able just to make a sculpted tree is a gift and its amazing that we can have a mesh tree using only 5 prims. One of the reasons 3d game artists use matt painted backrounds is a trade off issue. A tree, unless its a main feature, like a tree house, is a backround item, best made from images projected on a plane using alphas or included in a backdrop painting. A tree is highly complex and completely made up of complex curves. If you are able to view it from every possible angle, it has to be a tremendous load on the system. Every curve in you mesh multiplies the complexity of that area of mesh at least 3x (I'm bad at math, maybe it's more - but you need to add about 3 edgeloops to begin to make it smooth) Sharp corners simple take less polys.

Thanks everyone for the answer to the smoothing question/options

Vivienne, what a beauootiful job! Thanks for posting this and it's so encouraging that the PE can be brought so low for a visually complex group of item in the hands of a great texture artist. I have so much more to learn :matte-motes-smile:

How does the "set smooth" button compare to the smoothing function of the SL mesh import screen? Does it matter which one uses?

" http://www.youtube.com/user/cannedmushrooms#g/c/2B​A5BDF79FF50122 You may find this article on game art helpful as well: http://wiki.polycount.com/PolygonCount" Good stuff Ashasekayi! That wiki.polycount article was expecially helpful, thank you.

There's an "unofficial" GoZ type thing called GoB I've seen talked about on the Zbrush Central forum. For some reason I can't paste the address here, but do a search there for GoB. I haven't had the time to check it out more fully, but I plan to since I spend about equal amounts of my time in Blender and Zbrush. Let's hope that Zbrush 4.2 will have corrected the retopology tools and many other things. It's due out in September and it will be another, and perhaps last, free upgrade until ZB5. In generally I've found work arounds to the retopology problems and I actually enjoy retopologizing in Zbrush, but I really like doing UVs in Blender. That being said, there are alot of tweaks you can make in UV Master with transpose tools and deformations that I think alot of folks don't realize. At the very least one can set up polygroups, run UV master to make islands and get started for refining the UV's in another app. And I have Mudbox. Right out of the box I was able to texture something in Mudbox that I struggled with in Zbrush, but I keep going back to Zbrush. The sculpting in Mudbox and Sculptris just looks too "gummy" to me. I know in the end it doesn't matter since the shading ultimately depends on SL, but it's not as satisfying as sculpting in Zbrush.

Thanks Chodai - Just downloaded it and it looks great!

Thanks Vivienne! I made the low poly model in Blender 2.49 and the rest was all Zbrush. I'm jumping from project to project like an excited kid! So much to learn I'm having a hard time actually finishing anything.

Cat. Looks startled. I need to fix that! First pass on texturing. Fun.

For those trying to get a handle on Blender one resource not to overlook is free Blender tutorial apps available on ITunes. I've found that grabbing a moment here and there to watch these kind of tutorials on my Itouch had really improved my Blender skills. Here's a link to one just announced on the ZBrush Central forum by its author Jason Welsh who is known for generously providing free training on You Tube and Zbrush Central, for many popular programs including Blender: http://itunes.apple.com/itunes-u/3d-modeling-1-blender-2.5/id454180391 A search on Itunes for Blender 3D will lead you to other great Blender training resources as well.

I bought the SpaceNavigator 3d for use with SL..I had to stop using it due to motionsickness which I don't get using the keyboard navigation keys. However, I think it would be very handy using it when modeling. Unfortunately it doesn't work with my most used 3d software: Blender, Modo and Zbrush. The only thing it works with that I have access to is Lightwave and 3d Coat which I hardly use and Photoshop where it isn't needed. Sad.

First of all, I'm not suggesting doing anything without the permission of the brand name company. It's been frequently the case that companies involve their customers, or potential customers, in projects and promotions to create "buzz" , excitement and name recognition, etc. And yes SL is small change. It will always be too small for these companies to be bothered with involving their design departments in making items for SL. It will never be worth it. These are billion dollar corporations. But these companies often have small promotions at college campus, etc. -grass roots stuff - for the purpose of promotion. As to the idea that we don't have SL "to ourselves as a playground", that has always been the case. We have always been bombarded with advertisment, really awful stuff of made-up virtual brands in SL and the forum is frequently blasted postings of advertisments for land rental and sales and $L exchange...this is no less materialistic or commercially crass then the real world.

ooo Excellent..exactly what I meant. But for skiddish companies their license could be restricted to the winner of the contest and even restricted further for a limited time. Thanks so much for the link.

Again, I'm talking a contest where one person's design is approved by the product's company and not open to general use. Probably too complicated as a legal issue, but it would be interesting and I see it as an all around opportunity. (I've always been amused by the C-Class Mercedes that are all around SL. As long as we're going virtual here, why not an S-Class? )

Everyone is focused, and for good reason, on not infringing on copyright material. And this forces people to be creative. But let's face it, part of the appeal of any virtual experience for a lot of folks, at least initially, is being able to have a faux hot bod and drive off in that Lexus or Mercedes while drinking some expensive name brand virtual beverage, etc, etc. that they are as yet too young and/or not rich enough to own in RL. Drinking from a can of kola-coca just doesn't quite match the experience. At the same time these companies vigorously protect their copyrights, they do also love novel forms of advertisement that get their products seen in an environment where people are using them in their day to day activities. Just like product placement in movies. Of course they want to maintain control of how these images are delivered. So it would be interesting if some "events director" or what-not from LL approached companies like Coca-Cola, for example, and engaged them in participating in contests open to all creative SL residents to come up with a 3d design of their product. The goal being the winner be given a limited license for exclusive distribution of their design in SL of that approved item. Everyone wins here (I think). The company gets more international brand recognition and gets to approve the design..free advertising. LL gets something interesting happening and can potentially charge the company an advertising fee, creators have some competitive fun, peeps get their virtual name brand luxury goods that make their virtual world extra fun. Any thoughts on this, or should I go back to modeling my generic off-label kittens?

Thanks for the tip Chodai, I just downloaded it and it does look very complex and powerful. I'm going to have fun checking it out. And free is great. From what I see it you have to individually load files to view and manipulate them, but maybe I'm wrong about that. The 3d browser I mentioned I use lets you see large thumbnail snapshots of all 3d geometery in your selected directory. You can then click on them individually to go into a manipulation/viewing mode which I find handy, but this lite version isn't an editor like the Mesh Lab program. Maybe they compliiment each other in their features. As an absolutely free program Mesh Lab is excellent.

My favorite viewer right now is 3d Photo Browser Light from Mootools.com which I bought a year ago for viewing .obj files. In the recent update it now supports .dae (as well as alot of other formats). What's great about it is you can rotate your view and see the mesh from any angle..which is really handy if you get confused by your own naming conventions. Its $29.00 with a month free trial which I think is pretty reasonable. EDIT TO ADD: I just noticed its actually $21.00 if you order thru the free download version Photoshop Bridge does view .obj but not with rotating views and it doesn't show .dae files. Anyone else using a viewer for these formats that they really love?

"When you bake, you always bake a texture, not the sculpty or the mesh it self. " Just so newcomers to these ideas aren't confused here. Information about the sculpty form is baked into a RGB image which is basically map of the vertex positions in 3d space. The form itself is a particular type of mesh, but the pertinant information is "baked" into that rainbow texture we all know as a sculpty map to be interpreted by SL on upload.

Sculpt maps are images, so they are "baked"...and baked is different then rendered. Render is when you process an image (or a series of images for animation) of the mesh scene and its lighting and other effects as final picture from the viewpoint you set the scene up to take a "snapshot" of. When you bake a image/texture its meant to be applied to the UVs of a mesh which may then be rendered for an video, for an advertisement, or brought into a game like SL for example. What you are actually baking into the image can vary, but it can include lighting effects, ambient occlusion (sorta like a bit of grunge shadow in the cracks and crevices..anything that is adjacent to another part...looks like shading but isn't directional based on lighting), alphas, procedural textures you create in your 3d program (clouds, noise, etc.) all combined/baked into a single image. This is a great saving in 3D games since a very highly detailed texture effect can be applied on a low polygon model. This is an advanced beginners take on the subject. There are lots of folks here who can make corrections to my simplified explanation but it's a start.

Thanks so much guyY, Ripped and Rage! I've just picked this all up again after shelving rigging for a while and completely forgot to check the weight painting. That said, I then cleared the weight paint for the eyes, moved the eyebones down and even locked them. Still going wonky..but I'm so tired at this point I'll try fresh in the morning. So many things to remember, and I'm so fixated on fixing non-manifold thingies, I've forgotten OTHER things that get me in trouble. I repainted the weighting on the upper thigh and in Blender it fixed the sitting problem, ,but after uploading nothing changed. Again, could be I need to get to retopologizing or just did something wrong. I'll know tomorrow. Again, thanks to you all for your generous help and advice. Edited to add: I'm going to try to relocate the hip sockets per your suggestion Ripped. I'm guessing its going to require a lot of fussy balancing between both bone position AND weighting and it's best left to the morning !

Not at all a bit harsh, although I'm actually pretty up to date on what's generally good topology flow for animation in theory if not so much in practice. This is the most basic level of building the character in the state you see here. Overall and to my surprise, the character animates at least as well as the default avatar with my ao, except for the bendy hip part. So yes, I probably should have waited to ask that question until after I retopologized the model, which is part of my game plan, it just that takes so dang long and is so tedious, I wanted to have as much info as possible before hand. The eye movement jerk is what's particularly got me stumped.