Nacy Nightfire

Try applying CTL A - "Apply rotation and scale" to your mesh item. (If you've scaled your mesh it in OBJ mode modifiers will not work as expected in many cases.)

The main advantage of Blender is the upgrades are free :matte-motes-smile: Seriously though, anyone asking this question is not a professional and most of what Maya has to offer is wasted on them for the first year or so. I recommend beginners get acclimated to the 3D world with Blender and then save/spend their money on the newest upgrade of Maya or another professional option when they really know what they are doing and you are ready to use it fully. The beginner should pay themselves 5 dollars for every free tutorial they watch on Youtube...If they get hooked they will "earn" enough to buy a professional modelling tool by the time they know enough to use it. If they decide 3d modeling isn't the path for them, then they can buy a Ferrari. I started out buying Poser 6 on Ebay for 50 bucks. Then I bought Lightwave 7 on Ebay for very little money. However I was such a beginner that I got frustrated quickly and someone suggested Modo. Modo makes modeling easier for EXPERTS, not beginners, although it's a wonderful program. I've been seduced into upgrading these programs to keep pace, in most cases the upgrades were wasted because I had not yet achieved a skill level to take advantage of the most basic features of these programs.. Had I just stuck with Blender and saved that cash I could have spent it on Maya at this point (or 3D Max or C4D, etc.) Zbrush and Mudbox are different types of 3d programs that can do "some" of what 3d modelers do, but they are primarily sculpting and texturing tools and not animation packages. They are mostly useful going hand in hand with a good modeling program like Maya or Blender. And they are alot of fun. A good free modeling SCULPTING *program from the Pixologic Website is called Sculptris. *Edit to correct

I prefer to model in Blender. I own Modo, Zbrush, Mudbox and Lightwave, but I always go back to Blender. And it's extremely efficient to use a program that many people use here for SL You can share tips and ideas and get help or help other users here on the forum. Since Blender is free, the "playing field" is level for SL creation so anyone dedicated enough to learn how to 3d model (no easy task initially) can download and learn how to use it and decide if they want to continue before wasting spending money on another program.

It's not enough just to press ctl alt shift M. This only HIGHLIGHTS any non-manifold geometry by selecting it. You have to follow this up by actively deleting the non-manifold geometry that is highlighted. Note that its perfectly normal to have the borders of empty areas highlighted as non-manifold geometry..don't delete that. You are looking for things inside your geometry such as inside "bridging" faces and faces you might have created by accidently hitting E for extrude and not then translating so these faces remain as narrow as edges and hidden...things like that. Find them and delete them.

How many materials do you have assigned to the faces of that mesh? If you exceed the maximum you may get invisible parts to your upload, I believe. Either 6 or 8 is the maximum...I forget which, but check the mesh wiki and it's listed there. If flipping is a problem in Blender then go into edge mode and press ctl shift alt M to check for inside faces (non-manifold) and delete them. I noticed when these exist Blender has a problem resolving normal recalcuations.

Terrific job on that tutorial Asha, as always! Yet another solution is to use snapping in object mode. These mushrooms were aligned to the sphere using snapping. each mushroom is a duplicate of the original one and for randomness they are scaled and then repositioned with snapping. Re: snapping - for this example - be sure to select the button that looks like a circle with a stick (it's a normal) sticking out. In edit mode, manipulate the mesh you will be moving to snap so that it's median point is where you want to snap (the bottom of the object that will connect with the target mesh). Return to object mode.* Set up snapping to align to faces/snap target = center. And if it isn't orienting itself correctly set your transform orientation to "local" *Edit for clarity

You have a point Masami, but I'd move the lighting and not the mesh. Also you can temporarily set up an additional "rough and ready" UV set which has everything on it and direct your test bake to this temporary bake set up as that single image then delete that uv set when you are satisfied with your lighting, etc.. I repeat for anyone new to this techique: Make sure you delete this test UV before uploading or your textures will be misaligned in SL. My point was that for every overlapped UV you must seperate it by a material group and assign it to a seperate texture so you don't bake the overlapping geometry on top of itself AND have SL set up the texture faces properly. *edited to replace the word "lamp" with mesh (I was modeling a lamp when I wrote that and meant to write mesh- whoops!)

If one were to totally depend on the mesh uploader for lod creation rather then making them by hand, one would STILL get a better result then with sculpties in my humble opinion.

If you forget to save and have applied the split modifier, just select all and chose "remove doubles" and that should set you straight again.

However each overlapped "group" of uvs will then need to be seperated by material group or this will be meaningless for the purposes of SL.

True Masami, but if you aren't in Texture draw mode to notice this and you bake, these faces will appear black on the bake.

You can make that shortcut permanent by either pressing CTL U to add it to your default set up (be sure to clear the scene or everything will appear in your default set up next time you load blender)...or save via the "Export key configuration"...you can load different key combinations sets at any time. For merging a series of verts I make good use of Shift-R which repeats the last action.

"Sculpties have their use. But, I have no use for them." I second that .

Good point about the remove doubles radial adjustment feature. I use this all the time, and quite frankly I consider it a "better decimator" in certain circumstances. Thanks for showing us how you'd use it in this example.

I believe Alisha is correct here. See post: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/I-invert-normals-to-bake-correctly/td-p/1568345. It's not a normal problem it's an unassigned faces problem.

When I think Normal Maps in SL I have an image of all the SL mesh creators looking like Homer Simpson dreaming of donuts. :matte-motes-smile: "doooonuts!."

I've been pinning my uv setup after removing edge loops and then reprojecting the uvs in place. This works maybe 80 percent of the time. Drongle's "dissolve" solution is magnificent and Aquila's post has really helped me greatly with a fussy uv stitching system. I found the stiching function hard to grasp but I discovered I could shift-select green dots that would attach parts I didn't want to to stich to "release" them from the calculation. I havent found a way to the "limit selection" function via rolling the middle mouse button. I'm going to find that stiching menu and see if it helps..I'm guessing it will! Excellent thread. Thank you all.

Beautiful bow Spinell! As you now know from the contributions from the various forum members to your thread, there are MANY ways to model any one thing. All valid choices and all can be improved upon, as you experiencedby addiing a couple of your favorite features subsurf and the cloth modifier to the mix. We all have our favorite features . You did a great job and I'm glad the second set of instructions were understandable.

Start with a box (A) Delete two opposing sides (B) Scale to the length of two loops © Add edgeloops (ctl r) to the long sides (D) Subdivide smooth (short cut w for “specials” menu – select subdivide smooth) (E) Select middle edgeloops, turn on proportional editing (shortcut o) and adjust area of influence and the type of proportional edit you like and scale the middle edgeloops together (F) Then with proportional editing still on scale in the opposite direction to pinch the middle into the center Don’t forget to toggle proportional editing off by pressing o again. (G) Add a plane, scale it, add edge loops, making the center part a bit denser. Pinch in the sides near the center . The center will become the “knot”.Duplicate the loops in place and then rotate the copy 45 degrees (H) Position the “tails” behind the loops and with proportional editing (optional) bring the loop part up and covering the join. (I) Add the modifier SOLIDIFY to create the back faces. (J) You can then practice with the sculpting tools in Blender to move things around and smooth areas to make it all more “bow” like. Although this is optional. You can, of course, just move individual edges, faces and vertices around. Your UV set up is important for good results, but unfortunately I don’t have any additional time to spare to go into that important topic deeply. Experiment and check out the many tutorials on the web that discuss uv-ing, including the Blender documentation. Good luck!

Exciting news! Thanks so much Gaia.

If I wasn't so bad at SPEAKING english, myself (it's my native language!) I'd do a public video . But I'll try to write up a more detailed tutorial with pics here. I'll get to it this weekend and I'm pleased you like my little bow example.

Thank you both for your excellent tutorials!

Yes unassigned faces wouldn't bake and the faces would appear black. That seems to be what Pamela was experiencing.

In Blender the modifier is called "solidify", perhaps Maya has something with a similar name.

A guess here, but when I have texture problems on upload it's usually because I have two sets of UVs, often because I've been using the projection painting feature. The uploader decides which uv to use, which may not be the right one. So be sure to check that you've deleted any extra uvs and only export one uv set with your mesh.