DanielRavenNest Noe

Make sure your viewer and the region you are uploading in match up. We are in the middle of testing a new asset format for models, and the viewer and server need to match up for it to work. See the first post for where to get the right viewer for the 4 test regions for the new format. If your viewer is older than version 2.7.3 (ie using old format), the name of the object as it appears in inventory will not be what you type in the upload box necessarily. That has been fixed I think for the latest versions. Watch the lower right corner of your screen while the upload is in progress. There are some small numbers which will flip from 0 to 1 and back to 0, giving progress of the upload. If those are not changing, the upload is not happening.

Practical business reasons: - Disney (Marvel Comics) and Blizzard (World of Warcraft) have more lawyers than Dosch Design (textures) and typical SL animation creators. A stolen character model is more obvious and recognizable than a texture among hundreds of other textures in a typical Second Life scene. - There have been an average of 100,000 uploads per day for the past ~5 years that SL has been large. Most of those are textures or photos. That is 180 million uploads. Policing the past would be utterly impractical. If you impose the rules on new uploads, that creates an artificial distinction between past uploads and new ones. - Many uploads are things like snapshots that are captured to disk, cropped, and then uploaded as a texture, so you would be preventing many users from doing that if you required PIOF. - Upload fees on 100K uploads a day are a major "sink" for Linden Dollars - they vanish from the economy when you upload. Sinks are required to balance sources like stipends to keep the L$ value stable.

Oh, you mean the wiki page I wrote most of? (Check the history tab). Yeah, I knew about that :matte-motes-dead: That's why it references back to 7.0.10247, the last version that works with SL. It would still be better if the *current* version works with SL

I filed this JIRA issue because SketchUp 8 does not generate single models when you use more than one "surface" (texturable submesh) and upload to SL: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/CTS-602 Today it was marked "Expected Behavior" and "Not Applicable". This baffles me. Imported models ending up as separated pieces is expected behavior? Does Linden Lab not want the current version of the easiest to learn free 3D program to be used residents? Since using outside tools are required to make the mesh project succeed, perhaps you need to look beyond your own internal software development cubicle into the wider world, where software that does not play nice with other software is of no use. I cannot tell whether the breakage is on Google's side or Linden Lab's side, but it ought to be fixed, or you are condemning people to learn Blender, a fate wose than death. :smileywink: (or use an outdated version of SketchUp - v7.0.10247 works, just not the current v8.0) A comment saying something like "Google broke their model export and it no longer generates a valid .dae" would be understandable, as would a request for copies of the .dae files, which I will be happy to supply. But I truly don't understand the resolution on this issue.

Not that much will fit in 64K characters, but since its XML, you can spread it across several notecards and paste it together in your PC text editor.

Location: Mesh Sandbox 28 - Upload of a simple cylinder worked. - 7300 triangle grand piano worked - 47,000 triangle full avatar with skin weights silently failed to rez first time. Went to Sandbox 21 and uploaded again, this time it worked. When I returned to Sandbox 28 my piano was no longer visible (even with highlight transparent), although I still bumped into it. It's unselectable in edit mode, but appears to count in about land. Location Sandbox 28 (221, 121, 23). Tried third time to upload avatar, in Sandbox 27. Was able to upload, rez, and wear. Previous copy left at Sandbox 28 still visible, but piano is invisible. Relogging fixed visibity/select for edit problem with piano.

Gearsawe Stonecutter wrote: you really don;t know what the cost will be till you actually hit the Upload button jsut to find out days of work will be to much cost wise. Nothing prevents you from doing intermediate uploads on the beta grid and checking. When developing my mesh avatar model, I needed to do that dozens of times to work out the bugs in the rigging. Also, as soon as the cost formula are final, people will make graphs and tables so you have a rough idea of how many triangles in the model translate to prim count ahead of time.

Winter Ventura wrote: That excepted, however, your realization that "there are other ways to transfer a mesh" is pretty cool. This would really only be useful in situations where you were eithre making a full-perms mesh freebie, or making a builders kit... Several other possible uses for this: (1) You can sell mesh assets *now* in notecard form, rather than wait till it goes live on the main grid. They can only be built with on the beta grid, for now, but some people may want to start buying parts and texturing them in advance, to have finished products ready. (2) Take the dae to an outside 3D program and modify it, then re-import. Useful for people who don't want to create from scratch, but can adjust a pre-made model to their liking. (3) An in-world mesh editor which edits the notecard, and then you re-import as a final object.

I did a test of transfering the contents of a DAE file via notecard, which works just fine. In detail: - Created a simple box with 3ds Max and saved it as a DAE file. - Copied the contents of that file using Notepad into an SL notecard, and sent the notecard to an alternate account of mine - My alt logged in, and then copied the notecard contents back to my PC desktop as a .txt file, which I then renamed to .dae extension - My alt then uploaded the new dae model, and rezzed it just fine, UV map preserved. This test shows it is possible to sell / transfer models via notecard, so that the person getting the copy can upload a model with themselves as creator. There are various reasons to do that.

As I mentioned above, since the .dae file is the interface between outside software and SL, please document the interface. In other words, what version of Collada is the SL importer expecting, and what XML tags/data fields in what order does is it able to understand? What many people do not understand is Collada .dae is not an exact file specification like .jpg. It is an XML scheme describing how to exchange model data between various programs, but the contents of the file can vary according to what exporter/importer software is used and also what settings are chosen at export/import time. So it is quite possible for one program to generate a valid .dae file, but another program not be able to read it.

Nyx Linden wrote: The bulk of our documentation time is going to be spent focusing on the import process after a collada file has been generated from your software package of choice. There's pletny to be documented in the import pipeline, upload process (wizard and advanced), primitive cost calculations, etc. I don't expect a full walkthrough for every piece of software out there (those of us who use them can help with that part), but on your side you should document which version of the Collada format the importer expects, and what tags/order of data within the file the importer will handle. One or more example files might do that efficiently. For example "box.dae" example for a simple object, and "rigged.dae" example for one with skin weights, and UVmaps.dae for one with UV mappings. The above kinds of info will let us compare what we get from any given software and see if it's generating the right information in the .dae export.

Yeah, Rapidshare has fallen a lot in popularity, probably cause they are now so annoying: RS popularity Fortunately there are many other file hosting places: File Hosting Sites

Per Nyx Linden at the User Group meeting today: "Nyx Linden Rusaika - please start a topic in the forums for what documentation you want to see and I'll make sure Jeremy sees it " What I want to see: * For each 3D modeling / Digital Content Creation program/version which works for making Second Life models for upload, provide a step by step set of instructions for making and importing a basic object. See https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Exporting_a_mesh_from_SketchUp for an example of what is intended * For each 3D modeling / DCC program/version that is known NOT to work, provide identification in a list of non-working software so people know not to try and use it.

If you look at the JIRAs for that build, they had SH-1738 UI text stops rendering when Lighting and Shadows is enabled, which I also reported as CTS-604: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/CTS-604 (In Preferences > Graphics Tab, turning Lighting and Shadows on and Depth of Field off while logged in renders User Interface unreadable. This seems to be a related problem, so you might want to add your notes to my JIRA issue. Please note your PC hardware/software/drivers in the report since they are different than mine.

The current SL import supports weighting *from programs that export a proper dae file*. I know that because I have imported weighted models successfully from 3ds Max using their Autodesk Collada exporter.

I would not worry too much just yet. They are in the middle of updating the servers *and* viewer software for the new prim accounting and asset format, so until that is all finished, I would not base any plans on what you are seeing right now.

The Linden staff who process DMCA requests will need to be trained in IP law sufficient to do their jobs. Otherwise they expose the Lab itself to legal risk. On the topic of what can be copyrighted, the courts have held that some minimal creative spark is required. An idea can not be copyrighted (that's what patents are for), only the specific embodiment in a tangible medium. Thus "a door with a knob" cannot be copyrighted, since that is just an idea. Neither could a box prim slab door shape with an ellipsoidal knob at hip height, as there is no creativity relative to real life doors. Add glass panels of a unique artistic shape, embodied in a model file, and it would likely pass the creativity test. Now if a second person uses the same artistic shape for the panels, and a door of different dimensions, that would likely be infringing. They are copying the creative portion of the design. How much of a more complex work can be copied without infringing is not entirely settled. Taking a whole paragraph verbatim from a book likely would be, as would a story plot where the only change was the character names. The latter is a mechanical change with no creativity. For 3D models I don't know of any legal cases where how much was copied was at issue. Merely converting an existing model to another file format is mechanical, without creativity. Making some changes to the model that are new creates a "derivative work", which can gain it's own copyright on the new parts, but permission would be required to use the previously existing parts. (All the above refers to US law, and I am not a lawyer :matte-motes-nerdy: )

Drongle McMahon wrote: You might like to make a jira out of this. I expect the developers would prefer the uploader to work with files from the current version. If you provide examples of the same simple object exported from both versions it should be easy to find the cause. Of course if it turns out to be a bug in the exporter, then it's Google that need to be told. Created: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/CTS-602 I agree, new creators would like it to work with the current version, since Google does not distribute the older version any more and it will get harder to find v7.0 eventually. I can't tell if it is the SL uploader missing the "Consolidate" button that used to be available, or a change on Google's part. The .dae files it generates are different. I didn't supply examples, but any simple object, like a box, with at least two textures will exhibit the problem. As an aside, the entire instructions I wrote on making a basic object in SketchUp and importing to SL is less than a page long. That belies any comments from people that "Mesh is too hard to learn", at least for simple objects.

OK, I found out what the problem is. The Collada exporter in SketchUp 8 is incompatible with the Viewer 2.7.1 model importer. Sketchup 7.0 works fine however. I updated the wiki page with instructions where to get a working older version (Google does not offer it any more). I would appreciate if someone, especially someone new to mesh making, checked out the wiki page and lets me know if anything is hard to follow or confusing (ot simply wrong).

I started working on the SketchUp wiki page: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Exporting_a_mesh_from_SketchUp because it was basically an empty page. But I am not an expert in that program, and doing a naive simple model it arrives in pieces. If anyone can add whatever I missed for making a joined single object to the wiki page, or post what to do here, I will add it. The goal is to walk a new user through the steps to make a basic object in SketchUp and import it to SL.

Luc, she does not have a good answer, because she is only here to troll and complain. The fact is 3ds Max 2012, which was released a whole month ago, still has "Standard Primitives" ie prims, like box, cylinder, and sphere. Why? Because they are useful starting points to model things. You can convert them to editable polygon meshes and work on things in more detail afterwards. The Collaborative Design Activity (Collada) is an XML schema to exchage 3D model data. Saying it is young or old is as silly as saying jpeg image format is young or old. It's age doesn't matter, it's how many different programs use it so they can exchange files. A triangle is the simplest shape with an area you can texture. Graphics cards have multiple pipelines that do nothing but apply lighting and textures to triangles, very very fast. Those are matters of geometry and hardware. Therefore graphics software (Second Life, 3ds Max, and most everything else) is written to use triangles as the basic element to make 3D objects from. A polygon mesh is merely a collection of triangles which share edges. There are ways to describe the shape of an object with a few numbers (parametric) or some formulas (procedural), but when it comes time to put an image on the screen, the graphics card still only knows how to work with triangles. So those parametric or procedural models get converted to meshes somewhere along the way. So Vivienne saying "meshes" are old is just as foolish as saying the alphabet is old. So what? As long we humans all read the same alphabet, and graphics hardware all read triangle meshes, they will be continue to be used.

- What are meshes? Type Ctrl-Shift-R in any SL viewer. Every 3D program, including SL, uses triangles to define the shape of objects you see. In wireframe mode, which Ctrl-Shift-R toggles, you are not applying the textures as it normally does, and you only see the "skeleton" of the shapes. A mesh is simply a set of triangles that are connected by sharing edges. For example, the avatar body is a mesh, as is the terrain geometry, and the sky. Prims are pre-defined meshes whose shape you can edit directly in the viewer (rez a prim in wireframe, and edit it's shape, and you will see that). - Why do we need mesh? It allows us to upload custom shapes, instead of being limited to the default prim set. Prims always have all their geometry, even if you cannot see it. A mesh version of an object can leave out the parts you don't see. Compared to a sculpt, which has a fixed number of corners defined by the sculpt map size, you can use just as many as you actually need. So a mesh object can be more efficient than either a prim or sculpt. Prims and sculpts have a fixed number of surfaces (sides) that you can texture indepenent of each other. A mesh can have a custom number of surfaces with a custom layout. So overall you have more design freedom. 3D modeling is a marketable skill in the real world, besides making stuff for SL. - Learning to make them If you build in SL, you are familiar with the colored movement arrows and scaling a prim, and linking prims to make a linkset. Well, most 3D programs start with the very same kinds of primitive shapes that SL uses (box, cylinder, sphere), but in addition to moving the entire shape, you can choose individual sides, edges, or corners and move them around. You can also add or remove parts of the shape, and connect prims to make more complex objects. The apparent complexity of some 3D programs comes from having lots and lots of ways to modify shapes, but you don't have to use them all. I use about 10% of the functions in 3ds Max. Once you have the shape the way you want it, the next step is how your textures will be applied to it's surface. That process is called "UV mapping", and simply defines which part of the texture goes where. Then it's matter of saving the file and uploading to SL. So for any 3D program, you need to learn 3 basic things: how to modify the shape, how to do the UV map, and how to save and upload to SL. The details will vary from program to program, but fortunately most of them have tutorials online. - Inworld tools We have asked for an in-world editor for mesh shapes, but that is not part of this first mesh release. In fact, it is SL that is specialized with it's prim building system. Most every other world, game, or computer graphics project uses triangulated meshes and the tools to make them. - Some basic concept links: http://people.csail.mit.edu/fredo/ArtAndScienceOfDepiction/1_Introduction/reviewGraphics.pdf http://softimage.wiki.softimage.com/xsidocs/poly_basic_PolygonMeshes.htm#Rca45191

I fully expect to see mesh kits appear shortly after it goes live on the grid, with various shapes pre-made, similar to what we see with megaprims. With megaprims we needed one for each set of XYZ dimensions because you could not edit that. With mesh you need one for each geometry, but you can edit the XYZ dimensions. So that upload cost only has to be paid once, by one resident, then released as a kit. That will not satisfy *every* need, but it can take care of a lot of them.

The prim count on the edit window have been very variable, at least for me. A terrain object (a hill) uploaded as 58 prims one time, and 12 prims the next time. The upload window generally has not matched the edit window. My conclusion is that part of the software just isn't stable yet.

I edited the post to indicate where I tested. I didn't expect that viewer to work, but it was just to put a marker on version number so people know that version and earlier will not work with new asset format. I will test new versions as they come out until one of the project staff tell us what a working version should be.