Fizz Savira

One last update - the mesh upload project viewer (found at http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Alternate_Viewers) works. It contains prep's fix. Who knows when it will make it into the main release viewer, but in the meantime we have this workaround. Of course since these are nightly builds, your ability to run the viewer may depend a ton on when you download it! I tried one from September 1st, and it worked, and my mesh stopped getting all spikey on me

I just tried the Second Life 3.0.4 (239812) viewer and it also doesn't have the fix from Prep Linden, as far as I can tell. I can't seem to make any sort of mesh that is humanoid in blender, using the bone weight copy feature, that yields a working mesh in second life. In my case, the leg spikes are present, and if you look carefully you will see a spike on *one* of the shoulders (not both). I have looked a the verticies in the various vertex groups, and those look fine and consistent with the standard SL avatar. *sigh*

Tried it under 2.59, and it seems to work, though quite slow, and no progress bar of any kind that I could see. However, thanks Once the collada rotation fix is in, I can actually use 2.59 for mesh work

Great news, I hope it makes it out into a real release soon Still on 2.49 thanks to rigged export issues, and bone weight copying missing in action. By the way, I discovered something recently about doing bone weight copies using the "avatar.blend" that includes all the morph's. If you remove most of the vertex groups from the source avatar before doing the copy, your copies will go a great deal faster as the copier no longer has to find matches in your target mesh. And since none of those morph vertex groups have any use at all in the brave new mesh world, getting rid of them can't hurt, right? The long list of vertex groups includes all the facial emotes, and so on, so removing those does wonders for copy speed! Unless of course morph'ing of meshes is coming soon?

What are the permissions for using the MakeHuman mesh? In other words, can we import into SL as-is, do we have to modify it? Can we sell it? etc. Great work as always, thanks for sharing

When you export your mesh to collada, only select the mesh (not the mesh and the armature). Make sure "Triangles" is selected, not "Polygons". Make sure "Only Export Selection" is selected, not "Only Current Scene". Make sure "Apply modifiers" is selected. The rest of the buttons should remain unselected, though in my case "Use Releative Paths' is selected, but I have no idea if that matters or not (I doubt it does). That has worked in the past for me... I'm also using the version of the exporter from the "Jass" distribution from Gaia Clary; it has an additional button called "Check weights" which helps ensure that there is a weight attached to every vertex...

I just tried what you are talking about, and didn't see any issues with using the simplebot.dae from the web site. Given that, I'm wondering if you tried to upload it once without checking the "Skin Weights" checkbox on the "Modifier" tab selected? If you did upload it once that way, maybe the problem is that by default the viewer will save a file that ends in ".SLM" next to your DAE file. Maybe the 2nd time you try to upload it's using the SLM file instead of your DAE file and gets confused... There is a way to disable SLM files being left around, by changing your debug settings -- MeshImportUseSLM should be set to False, I believe, to get around viewer bugs.

To solve the mFootLeft and mFootRIght issues, all you need to do is create empty vertex groups with those names. Alternatively, if you want to be paranoid, you can also select some of the feet in question and add them to those groups... Empty groups do work though

I used to make prim shoes back in the day (very small time store), and when sculpties came out I went "Oh no, I'm doomed". So instead of giving up, I got busy and taught myself some really bad 3D design via "wings3d" (freeeeeee) and later I forced myself to learn "blender", and haven't looked back. My shoes look great and my other products make money I happen to love to learn, so mesh arriving is great, because as others have said, sculpties can be quite frustrating at times... I'm not excited about the mesh transition, but whatever, that too shall pass. Your eye for design is key I think, you just need to spend some effort to update your tool knowledge so you can apply it again Good luck!

Definitely not a mainstream viewer. 2 crashes in 2 minutes of using it. For some reason when I run it, it turns off my iTunes music. I attempted to run it on a Mac, for what it's worth *sigh*. I was never able to get it to start long enough to try doing an upload, oh well.

I see the same problem as well, but with the currently released viewer -- Second Life 3.0.0 (238864) Aug 18 2011 13:35:24 (Second Life Release), and with the last official beta viewer -- Second Life 3.0.1 (238613) Aug 16 2011 12:13:23 (Second Life Beta Viewer) Is this expected behavior? The meshes are made using Gaia's tutorial titled "Rigg your avatar" (http://blog.machinimatrix.org/3d-creation/blender-meshes-trail/rigg-your-avatar/) Unlike in her tutorial, I didn't have any vertex cross-over issues, but the mesh shows leg spikes when uploaded to second life, and the leg spikes vary based on other unrelated changes to the mesh... I am using the updated version of the Collada exported for blender 2.49 that Gaia released that checks to make sure there are no missing vertex weights, so that's not it.

I would love to see that sort of data as well. I'd love to shift over to mesh from sculpties, but I want to do it when there will be enough customers to make it worthwhile.

I tested this using two viewer versions - the last release Mesh development version, and the current version of the beta viewer (3.0.1....) In both cases, I couldn't not attach anything in my inventory. Everything that was attached showed being attached to an invalid location. They would "detach" fine it seems, and a relog would show them as no longer being attached. Oddly enough, mesh assets would attach and detach fine, at least when attached by double-click from the inventory panel. I tried the trivial case - create a default cube, take it back into inventory, wear it. It doesn't attach. I tried this on Mesh Sandbox 24 and Mesh Sandbox 1. Also, Mesh Sandbox 1 is full, and yet claims to have 24 hour return. Since I'm still waiting for the https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SH-2044? to make it into a usable viewer, I was hoping to work on the beta grid until then...

Hmm, lots of mis-information in this thread... Maybe I can help clear it up? But only if people read the thread ;-) Macbooks have fans, just like other laptops. The fans draw air from the top, those neat looking grilles on each side of the keyboard, and exhaust it out the back, which for many versions is hidden by the hinge for the display. I personally use a 3rd party application called "smc fan control" -- http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23049/smcfancontrol The reason I use that is because I've found that on older Apple laptops (before unibody) that Apple wasn't ramping up the fan speeds to my satisfaction. My newest laptop (2011 unibody MacBook pro) I don't bother with smc fan control, because the fans ramp up and down nicely. I also own a 27" iMac desktop, and it gets quite hot as well, so I also use smc fan control there. I just ramp the fans up until I get a temperature I'm comfortable with, and then turn it down later on when I'm done. If you think your fans are dusty, you may consider taking your laptop in to the Apple store, if that's an option for you. I suspect a genius will be able to help remove the dust. For the iMac, I found that running a vacuum cleaner hose along the bottom of the unit (where the air intake grille is located) can help remove a fair amount of dust buildup. The desktop units have a filter which prevents the dust from coating your fans and ruining them over time, but the filter itself will impede airflow when it gets too dusty. Finally, none of this is unique to Apple - current generation computers run hot, Apple has just chosen to ramp their fans up slower than other manufcaturers, which for most usage scenarios is a win, as the machines run cool and quiet.