Nacy Nightfire

Firstly Ortiga don't knock lag. Lag serves a very important function in Second Life. It gives total strangers something to talk about, much like the weather in real life. And as we all know, there are some folks who live to complain - lag is a gift to these people. Second Life is a somewhat expensive hobby and its a hobby that is based on a virtual visual 3D experience. Just like photography, skiing, whatever...you upgrade as technology progresses or you accept the limitations of what you can afford. If you can't accept these limitations you always have the option to get a different hobby or a 2nd job. Or you can give up your cable TV subscription, eat at home, give up your daily caffe latte and get a "stupid phone" - what ever it takes to divert funds into a better computer. If you can't accomplish that you have bigger problems and should not be focusing your time and attention on SL. I've met very few people in SL who are not able to keep pace. Most people (like myself) may start out with a computer that doesn't handle graphics very well, but as they decide SL floats their boat, they make upgrading their system a priority or they leave and find something else to do. Are we all spoiled children? I think not. And if you are posting to the Mesh forum because you are a "content creator" for profit, then you have no excuses not to invest in the best equiptment for the job. It's not in LL's best interest to "dumb down" their product so everyone who has a cr#ppy computer or a computer not built for high-end graphics can join in. They would lose just as many customers, maybe more, with that strategy.

Oops! My post is blank. I hope I didn't say anything offensive! Actually what I posted was a compliment to you on another terrific design and execution. You are an inspiration to as all, Vivienne!

RE: "dude... if u even know what a UV Map is you would know you cant just do that... google it my friend **Only uploaded images may be used in postings**://secondlife.i.lithium.com/i/smilies/16x16_smiley-happy.gif" border="0" alt=":smileyhappy:" title="Smiley Happy" />" I'm not sure a beginner would be able to google something he or she doesn't know or understand either the concept of or the terminology. The forum is just the place to ask this question. Beginners shouldn't be intimidated from asking beginner questions. I'm glad Daniel gave such a thoughtful response.

(I'm not as illiterate as my spelling might lead you to believe.."beggining" etc...wahh! I'm home with a cold and my editing skills are subpar..ooo and now I notice the spell check feature right to the upper right of the screen..heh)

In User Preferences > Add-ons there's a nice selection of scripts you can turn on/off. I really like "dynamic spacebar" which recreates the spacebar features from 2.49. And as previously mentioned you can make and re-assign shortcuts to everything. There's also the capability of doing the zApplink (zbrush) thing although it seems a bit buggy at this point. Set your editor (Photoshop or gimp for example) in the User Preferences Panel > File > Image Editor. Set your mode to Texture Paint and check out the Projection Paint sub-palette on the left. You'll see the buttons "Quick Edit" and "Apply". Click on "Quick Edit " and Blender takes a snapshot of your view and sends it to your image editor. You paint, etc. then save the file and return to Blender and select "Apply" . Your edited work is projected back onto the object. Fun. Again, it appears a bit buggy at this point, but it's probably an operator error thingy, I need to work with it more to be sure. Collada works..sorta. No menu comes up to specify exporting only the selection, so you can't just select one object in yor scene. Even if you seperate your objects by layers, everything ends up in the Collada file. The Collada files I tested uploaded to SL beta without a problem. You can either just import the object into a new Blender file before turning ti into a Collada export, thus adding yet another step to your work flow (ugh)..or just delete the extra object(s) in SL, but that would be an expensive way to go. I'm slowly weaning myself off of 2.49b and making it onto 2.5. All the newer tutorials are probably going to be done in the newest version, so for beggining to intermediate users its probably a good idea to get used to it.

Also I think it DOES come in UV mapped i(if you uv in Blender). Without uv's , but just applying material groups prior to uploading, you get texture groups, but when you apply an actual texture to each texture group there is just a single color blur of all the texture colors, but not the actual texture. When I UV the mesh AND set material groups and then in SL apply textures, the textures are applied as expected. Hope that makes sense...if needed I can post pics.

Hmmm, I hadn't tried testing uv islands coming thru as texture groups, but now I see that both the 32 and 64 bit versions don't seperate uv islands into texture groups. However setting material groups does create texture groups. So the work-around would be to assign a material group to each UV island you want to texture seperately in SL. And the nice thing about assigning material groups is you don't have to be to particular about how you set up your uv's as islands I'm guessing.

I downloaded the 32 bit version on an xp machine and it works great...made a simple mesh and textured it, the exported as collada and uploaded to the mesh grid without a hitch. Its a little frustrating to relearn some aspects of Blender as I've been sticking to 2.49, but not too much of an incovenience. I haven't tried the 64 bit version yet, but will attempt that later today on my win7 machine.

mini update: Didn't have the energy to download python 6.6 last night, but did so this morning. That took care of that lasts shading line in the bar. Beginners take note! Keep ontop of the upgrades and upgrade.Thanks everyone who posted. (and don't forget to donate to those who generously provide tutorial websites!)

eeep. I didn't have the most current version! I'm all set Gaia..thanks so much. I was recently reading stuff on the Domino Design site and the most current version there is listed as 1.0.0 (unless I read that wrong) so it would never have occurred to me to look deeper into your website for a newer version, although I go there frequently to rewatch videos or check for new ones. I now only have a single crease in that size and I can live with that. I'm so glad you mentioned the new version. Thanks so much for your help .

Ok, Gaia. I had no luck with Modo or zbrush/zsculpty etc. so I went back into Blender and very carefully created two planes, one 4x256 and one 256x4. I loaded them at the origin and in edit mode manipulated each into a bar using rotation and scaled them 5 unit in length. Here is a picture of the result and I can't believe I spent most of the day on this waaaah. I don't even NEED this..mesh is coming. Its just a riddle I can't put down. SL has a sneaky way of robbing me of my precious RL time.

I just tried a few things...rotating, not rotating, scaling, etc. at both the obj and edit levels - same results. And I uploaded on the mesh beta grid. What a mess! Ribbing up and down the whole thing. However on the main grid and the regular beta grid I get the same result..ribbed shading effect (doesn't seem like a deplacement) on just single off-center portion of the "bar". I think I'll try making this in modo and exporting as an obj and attempting to use either the zsculpty or sculpty maker scripts and see what I get. I'll report back. I'm using primstar 1.0.0

Gaia, here's the link to the only post I found with an image that is somewhat similar to the problem I encountered: http://forums-archive.secondlife.com/8/9a/278017/6.html The poster didn't appear to have used primstar. He did use the same dimensions that I did. Might be an unrelated cause, but this is the only dimension that I've played around with that had this strange ribbing effect.

Just caught your post Gaia. I'll gladly search thru my history to find the link. I believe it was from the archived forums. I'll do that later tonight or tomorrow and post the link here.

This isn't exactly an exciting theme, but I'm learning alot about the effects of various options such as the cost of using subsurf, etc. These teapots range from 4 prims to 9 prims in cost with some modeling refinements on the two on the bottom in green. I started out with more ambitious plans, but I've toned down my projects and its a better learning experience for me. In focusing on this simple object, I've also learned quite a bit more about modeling and UV layout alternatives in Blender . Much fun.

Good point. That hadn't occurred to me.

Something went terribly wrong with my last posting...I think it was the really terrible joke I made. I won't risk repeating it. Thanks for your suggestion, Dana. I did check the other stitching options and they didn't fix the problem. I think it was a problem with using a bad ratio (4 x 256). (Typically only after I search and search the forums for a solution, and then break down and post, do I find a good link to a previous post on the topic. Dang.)

I always forget the simple things like checking for stray verts (In Blender: Mesh>Scripts>Clean Meshes and select verts free and edges free), checking for doubles (In Blender 2.49: shortcut W 6 or Mesh>Vertices>Remove Doubles) as well as making sure the normals are all facing out (Blender: ctl N in edit mode). I had a problem with crashing today which turned out to be both a problem with flipped normals and duplicate verts. Also in the past I had a problem with non-manifold edges/verts. Todays model I was having trouble with DOES have nonmanifold edges, but that didn't pose a problem this time. (You can select non manifold edges in Blender shortcut: ctl alt shift M). You may be aware of these things, however folks who are fairly new to modeling, such as myself, might find this useful, so I thought I'd post it.

/me hits you with my new nightstick

I've finally had some success with fractional sculpting in Blender (yay!), however I've come across an odd surface problem which I can't resolve. I've searched the past forums without success (kind of hard to even to find words to search for this), so please forgive me if this topic has come up in the past. Even before seperating the pieces, I get a weird ribbing effect that shows up on the sculpt on just a portion of the bar. It doesn't follow the entire length and it's not symmetrical. I've tried using both a plane that I've bent into a tube and a cylinder (256 x 4) in the same dimensions, both were created via primstar and baked using the primstar script. And I've tried remaking it over and over again. I don't see any defects in Blender. I've tried various things such as isolating the area and applying smooth, resetting and flipping normals back and forth, etc. I can't tell if its a SL rendering thing, a blender thing, a primstar glitch or human error. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I can envision some of the high end SL fashion designers collaborating with a seasoned modeler to make a better avatar mesh they can design to..sort as an "exclusive". Perhaps forming a collaborative or something like that. Or the modeler might license their avatar UV. . There are alot of defects in the default mesh that make texturing pretty irritating. Plus the novelty of having an alternate, but still human, avatar with nicer hands and feet might be something the spending public would be really happy about. These sort of changes offer alot of interesting new business possibilities and its really interesting to watch how creative people can be when new things are introduced to SL. I remain giddy with excitement .

http://blog.machinimatrix.org/2010/09/15/meshes-i-a-preliminary-tutorial-about-meshes/

I, too, am insanely happy, even though my skills are basic at best and it will take me a long time to catch up. Rigging is a complete mystery to me at this moment so please excuse this question if reeks of naivity (sp?) but I use the SL model in Poser for animations, is it possible to extract the rigging from there?

There's no collada exporter for Zbrush (or mudbox). I just tested the collada plug in for Modo and exported a collada mesh from Modo to Blender 2.49.2 and Blender 2.53 beta and back again. Works. Also there's a Collada exporter for Wings 3D, but I'm having a bit of a problem with it, perhaps I have an out of date version. The prospect of mesh imports makes me giddy. Signed - Positive Nancy

Hmmm this page keeps refreshing itself so I either posted the same sentance 7 times or not at all. We end in agreement..I also would hate to see SL go. I think the mesh import will make little difference to an already flooded market, and instead may re-engage people who are tired of the current limited creation system. Many people I've talked to are waiting eagerly for the option and are not participating much in SL at this point. This may bring them back. And new unique things will be created and sold. After all, even if people import meshes they don't make themselves, they are still in business..selling and paying rent. Really the vast majority of people I meet have no intention of ever building anything and have no skills at all for finding free content and uploading it. THEY are your customers. That remains unchanged. And also don't underestimate the amount of effort, time. organization and business savvy it takes to run a business that lasts in SL. It may come easily to you, but most people don't have it in them to do it successfully. Now time to get some sleep. Take care.