Braydon Randt

ohh just champion, I read it as this.... "We make money off your transations, when you arnt making those linden transactions through us, we loose money and even though we understand that most of you use external agencies due to our delays, we find it easier to block those services than to improve ours" . Of cvourse thats just opinion, however people use services that work for them, certainly having to plan weeks in advance to take out your money means its held by LL longer, ergo more interest for LL. Many of you would remember when the way out was through the marketplace, they closed that avenue down, now they have closed the likes of virvox down too. I am not going to leave SL , but I will find it harder to do business in a place where I have to wait 2 weeks to extract money but if I want to purchase lindens it can be done IMEDIATELY!!!!!

Hiya everyone, Ive been out of the country etc for a while with work and now back full time making stuff again, I sort of caught that there has been some moves on the materials system within SL , can anyone shed any light on that for me, as from what ive read it seams server side is ready ... viewer side not. Opinions welcomed Ta Bray

well tried to look at it again today ... was in for 30 minutes , and that was after the 48th attmept of being told " server not responding" then i tried earlier .. and apparently i have no facebook account connected with CP" now im back to server not responding .. so at this rate .. SL is most definately more attractive. but i know LL doesnt pay the slightest bit of attention to this request Lindens, we have seen that it is possible to introduce a materials system, even if it is on a circa 2003 Sl esque clone called cloud party , Please can we have materials .......... so that the mesh we create looks like how we intended , rather than flat?

it seams nvidia cards may be having a few issues too ...... as twice now ive had PSOD with a gtx card and 301 drivers

Well ive just had a looky at that new fangled Cloud Party doohicky, and yes im impressed, a full material system so normal mapes etc .. better physics engine yadda yadda ... the UI is total crud IMHO though, I am an old hand with SL so im staying put , but with this new competition made apprently by old lindens .... will this push to improve the MESH system in Second LIfe , I know from whatI understand LL wants to make sure that old content doesnt get broken .. but their we have the problem .... we have content from 2003 yes NINE YEARS later .... that we still have to accomidate for. ok ok ... lets say thats fine for such things as Avatar 2, but how can a competitor make something like SL , that runs in a browser , has normal maps , animations , scripting superior physics engine ... yet we .... can not have these things. I was once told something .... that is every country that is defeated in a war surpasses the country that defeated it ... because they start from nothing , rather than clinging onto old tech .. LINDENS!!!! GIVE ME THE TOOLS!!! , if our customers leave to go to pretty land ... then we have no money to reinvest into SL , and i want SL to succedd , i dont want a replacement ... i want to say " f**k old content .... we are 9 years later , lets more forward" if we have better mesh avatars for example , we can retain the " old" avatars , we can select what we want , rather than it fed to us .

ok... Theres been a lot of various conversations running around the SL Universe over the last few days over things like copywrite etc. So I thought i would get dirty and put my feet into the pond and add to the various posts on here. Most of this information is based on what is stated at BitLaw ( limited permission was sought and given by Daniel A Tysver however nothing verbatum has been stated and would suggest reading his website given for the full explanation) and Wikipedia (Use of which has been granted under the open use stature of Wikipedia) Ok , Firstly.... the basics "Copyright are exclusive rights granted to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work. Copyright does not protect ideas, only their expression or fixation. In most jurisdictions copyright arises upon fixation and does not need to be registered. Copyright owners have the exclusive statutory right to exercise control over copying and other exploitation of the works for a specific period of time, after which the work is said to enter the public domain. Uses which are covered under limitations and exceptions to copyright, such as fair use, do not require permission from the copyright owner. All other uses require permission and copyright owners can license or permanently transfer or assign their exclusive rights to others." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law Some works however are not covered by general copywrite law these are called " unfixed " These are works that have not been fixed in a tangable form of expression, these are items such as speeches etc that havnt been recorded in any form, this has in the US at least been addressed under the 1994 act of congress when it passed The Uruguay Round Agreements Act ( such as bootlegs) Titles, Names, slogans and shortphrases are also not under copywrite law, however trademarks are, Ideas and proceedures are also not covered under copywrite, however the written proof of such an idea would or could be covered under copywrite as in such a case that idea goes under fixation ( because its recorded). One of the most usefull and I suppose applicable situations that apply to the second life metaverse, is the term " Usefull articales" so for example.... if you made a pair of training shoes or sneekers , thats actually ok , but the second you throw a swoosh on it , or call it a trade mark or a name that can be misconstrude as the original such as " noke " or " neke" then you are really falling into the trademark law, so essentially .. in Second Life... you can make items that are of a utilitarian nature as long as they do not mis represent the original trademark or business. So if you make furniture or clothes .... you are 100% legal ( as long as you dont use trademarks or methods of identification recognised as such i.e the Adidas tristripe) General Information is from http://www.bitlaw.com/index.html and i was offer to anybody that if you require a full explanation from a legal source to visit this site, Allthough nothing verbatum was quoted I would like to say Thankyou to Daniel for his consideration of my request. One of the areas to which I can only give an opinion rather rather than source information is things that are inspired, For example ... there has been comments on things like game rips on other parts of the forum, This in my experience is a difficult area, I think the best examples of which are things for example ... Skyrim, obviously is licesend to Bethesda however, as the general US copywrite applies to something like "70 years after the death of the creator" it is slightly ropey because both furniture and clothing is not copy protected, and as skyrim is based on a medieval structure that would leave the creation of items from Behtesda also infringing any copyrite because those items such as a table .. or a chair .. or an item of clothing are under "usefull articals" now if you claim that the item is from skyrim, you are walking a fine line, if you interperate something in your own ... possibly not ... ripping models directly out of a game .. is DEFINATELY a no no, as even though Bethesda so give you some licence as they have various Mod Packs and edit packs to do variations on the textures etc and as such these packs are openly available they do not alow .... and thats most definate DO NOT allow monitization of those mod packs. A well know example of monitizing folk law could easily be given .. with Disney essentially talking old stories of folk law such as grimms fairy tails etc and making films based on them. an example is "arabian nights" was written , and used as " alladin" yet again these stories are " fixed" yet they have passed into common use as they most definately are over the "70 years" statute of limitations. So ... please bare in mind when you make an item for the virtual world, dont use trade marks , dont quote from fixed works without permission this includes other websites, try to be as courteous as possible and most of all .... respect other creators, if they have gone through due process , pay them the respect of doing the same.:matte-motes-big-grin: Bray p.s Dont fall foul .... find out before hand , seek the correct information and remember , we are creators .... we form this world with our own hands, if it ends up a dirty place where there is no room for movementt, then it is nolonger the metaverse .. and just a money grabbing state of immediate value, distrust, slander, liable and poo slinging. then who can we blame but ourselves.

Hi There Triblurr I bleieve the ones you want can be found on Ashas you tube page , allthough she does specify blender , the extracting of the AV Obj meshes are the same, and can be imported into maya without too much hasstle most likely. Good luck Bray

And thank you Mas, as I said , im going to give it a try and see if it helps me spped up my work flow any, as I do sometimes suffer with making things extra hard for myself i.e use a screw when a nail will do kind of mentality. I am sure many people tend to sing the praises of what they have learnt over what is a change of practice, I am sure many of us here are constantly bombarded with how blender " isnt professional" normally by 3dsmax pros, or zbrush users, yet it is always down to the artist to creat the work , rather than the tool they use to do it .. which kinda just makes my posts stupid .... as as long as you get the right result ... ( bangs head on desk) I just wanna be a good artist .. like it says The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell. - by Confucius.

and in reply to your point there Ash , this was my original point , as I always try to get the topology relitivly right from the start, I dont want to get too used to having to clean up as part of my work process as im still " young" in my experience, those extra tools in the bmesh system are indeed invaluable , as ive stated in an earlier post .... I wanted to understand the bennefits of roughing out with ngons only to have to clean up .. over trying to get it close to right in the first place. is that too much for a fella to ask ?

any more people want to flame me for having an opinion based on my experience, and at no point did i claim to be an expert , but if we REALLLY want to start sending links , i can supply many about the " evils of ngons". Jonathan Williamson of blender cookie I believe that is in that video. I said ealier in fact less than 2 posts ago , that i was biased based on my experience, yet I will take a different approach and try it rather than just being a luddite and putting it down BEFORE i really give it a chance ... but please feel free to deminish my opinion because i happen to have listend time and time and TIME again , to "experts" saying NOOOOOOOO TRIANGLES OR NGONS!!! based on things like http://blog.turbosquid.com/2010/11/12/3d-modeling-standards-ngons/ I could flood this reply with pages of "anti ngon" propoganda ,but that snot my point , i have explained WHY i went with what I did, and the generally feeling of what i had been taught ( and also reading things like polycount, CGportfolio, CGSociety etc). But if this is gonna turn into a Mac V's PC type argument im jus going to pull out the conversation, As reading "experts" say " when using ngons it is " best practice" to remove them before finalising your model, makes my opinion say to why use them in the first place , i made no reservation that they wernt a fast method of working , and I have no doubt that the likes of Ash are fantastic modellers with far better ability than I. But i would rather be given an explaination as to why im incorrect rather than just being slammed for it.

you are right in multiple way s ... especially that ive kind of inherited the " all quads" intent while modelling, and try rely hard to avoid ngons and triangles while creating my topology, im happy to give it a bash before i get too set in my ways.. i know the new tools are a godsend .. as i always find the knife a pain and not being able to remove multiple rows at a time to manually decimate my mesh is something i cant see why it wouldnt have, so like i said , more than prepared to be wrong and learn from it. I will install 2.63 and go with the flow or with the ngon ... then address flow after * lol*

talk about creating a fire to show how hot it is .... *lol* , I create clothes .... if i had something like that in an outfit .. it would animate no better than a suit of armour. so ultimately ... pentagon, 1 quad and 1 tri. dependending on where i want the edge flow to be. yanno .... just like what collada and then the sl importer would do for you , without your controll , I have seen a few posts in the forum about the fact that if you use Bmesh , its best practice to triangulate your mesh before you export so you can edit your edge flows etc ... so I am confused how using an ngon , only to triangulate and correct would give bennefit over getting how you want it in the first place. I do understand your point , and agree that it is fast to fill those pesky holes, but i still like to know how something is going to animate in SL , and I cant see how an ngon is an answer, Possibly im a luddite , and am afraid of new fangled technology , I think its possibly that i learnt to model within the last year or so , and look more towards things like edge flow and topology with the end sight of being how will it work , rather than looking at a static item that just needs to be filled as easily as possible ( thinks he may have just opened up a can of worms because of his work practice) I am prepared to be wrong , as learning is full of opinions on experience and training , and always open to change,

I personally like to have controll over what goes where with edge flow Gaia , I make clothes , rather than objects , so with lots of qaudralation and trangulation of importers and exporters , i like to model things where i can do it from start , if i have 5 vertices , i want to fix the topology , not just thow an ngon at it and hope for the best. ( edit : and i know you can change it .... ive watched the vids, I just prefer to model myself ) Personal objectives only , its like the Qauds v's Tris argument , everyone has there prefences, me i still dont like using triangles so looking at the SL AV mesh .. is like looking at the worst thing ever.

I am of a mixed opinion , I havnt moved to 2.63 yet , because it seams extreamly mango centric at the moment, so desipite the MASSIVE requests for cycles to bake to a texture for the gaming industry , most of the progressive movements have been to make BMesh ( which is bad modelling practice really) and the rest is for all the animation and cinemagraphic processes for mango. The reason I am mixed , is blender is FREE ... and that in my book is a lot of what you take into consideration when you remember that 3ds max is VERY expensive unless you are a blatent software theif and doesnt have half the upgrade cycle that blender does, so .... if theres bugs , you can gaurantee they are in hand and will be processed soon enough.

definately , go into weight paint . and check the strenth of the painting on that leg in comparison to the skeleton , as its not quite right, however.... the SL av has crap crotch vertex groups anyway Bray

I say this very tongue in cheek ( as im a blender user) do what 98% of the devleoper world does ..... like on CG portfolio, or polycount .. or even Sl ... and STEAL IT!!!!! *lol* zbrush is nearly $1000 maya is £4000 and in real terms , if you dont use blender and gimp .... you are ultimately going to be doing something .. you are either a professional in which case why are you selling your meshes in Sl for 50c rather than $100 on turbo squid, or you are using a rather " iffy" version of a professional package that in real terms , cant give you any better reslts than blender. I would suggest though , on a serious note , that you do check out autodesk , as i believe they offer extream discounts for the unemployed.

I agree with most of the comments here based on the "standard sizing" there is no standard size for anybody , just like RL , everyone wants their clothing to fit them perfectly , and to be honest I dont blaim them having that want , yet as one of the very very few Mesh clothing designers for the Gor/Medieval market I have not embraced this " 6 sizes in a pack" system , as you still can not gaurantee fitting , or even close to fitting , never mind physics issues without the deformer project. And an alpha layer can not fix most of the issues you may have, of course you can develope complete outfits ( which is what i do) because you also can not gaurantee a mix and match mentality either. this ISNT real life, we arnt talking cotton or wool, you are wearing a suit of wood , metal or plastic ( or rubber if you are that way inclined). A perfect example of this was the other night , A customer came to me , and said " this item doesnt fit my AV , " i suggested the alpha mask , and they replied that that wouldnt work because they had a mesh body. Now I thought to myself this was a problem , but at 5.30 am I was uploading the 18th version of the pants for this customer, and they still didnt fit ... why not ? because the body maker had made the AV so " buff" that the legs were not actually within the scope of the rigging , so even though i stretched the inner thighs to half way inside the opposite leg they still did not fit , and never would because the custoemrs mesh body developer had given ZERO thought to anything, and All i could do after 3 hours at extream costs was laugh with the customer and tell them " the avengers is at the cinema , i recommend changing the pant texture to purple , painting your AV green ... and lean how to say " gunna SMASH!!!!!!" a lot . We both found it somewhat funny and he did cover the upload costs , but the point of this is .... mesh will NEVER fit everyone , even with deformers. it will always be a problem for somebody as it isnt a perfect solution, in game s.. mesh is deformed because you have no body , your body IS the clothing , you overcome issues with animations with shape keys , and are not subject to stupid AO's that make you wave your arms like a muppet or stand in a position that unclothed your AV skin textures are stretched beyond recognition. WE as developers can push as much as we like for LL to secome to our wants , but ultimately .... we are going to have customers who are loyal , and like how we do things , but we may also have the opposite. I know I for one , will not be doing a " standardised" system decided by other designers, as certainly if you read the reviews .. they made 5 sizes that fit NOBODY . we really just have be more understanding as developers and customer to the limits of mesh , and then let the deformer project catch the slack. Ive tired the approach of trying to accomidate peoples needs, but even when i offered the service of saying " give me your shape .. and cover upload costs and i will do my best" and you know what ..... they complained ... yes complained that i didnt make the size that was perfect for them .... for free. So .. you cant win , so i just make an " outfit suit" in an average size, with an alpha mask and when deformation because front line ... i will make for that instead. Bray @ snatched

ok , this is doing my head in, I have made a few mesh items .. all of which went ok. So i decided to make my latest with a starting point of lowered arms rather than the T position .. i closely followed this work path and not only watch my mesh end up with all manner of wierd and wonderfull distorions but also the hood is rotated 90 degrees once uploaded and it is clearly fighting with the weighting as its always screwed so after being on it till 4 am last night ... and still on it today , I am fed up and annoyed as I keep repeating the workflow but still getting both distortion and rotation heeeelpppppp Bray Update... ok couldnt sort out the rotations issue, so exported the hood as an OBJ , then reimported it which wiped out the strange rotations, now all i have to do is get the A Pose situation to work. Update - hours later Well , ive done and redone it several times, and the end result is triangular pulls at the armpits that ive pulled back out manually, the upload into sl is so poor in comparison to the original model that im seriously considering scrapping the whole thing and never making anything with a hood again the distortions are just pityfull, as theres no possibility of shape keys you cant make the faults settle on animation ( in sl) so you end up with bad pulls and horrible weighting this is the front view Back view And like i said , this is after remodellintg the hood in Blender the original before all the horrible work was this

I dont know if this has been posted yet as I couldnt see it, but in the documentaltion for Blender 2.62 and the upcomming 2.63 it shows the collada information with the greatest of thanks to the above http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.62/Collada Bray

I was curious, Does Sl support Blender Shape Keys. I am of course refering to the blender shape key information for morphong meshes during animation. Such as when the arm moves on a jacket you can adjust how the jacket sits on the shoulder to avoid nasty morphs with weight painting. I have used Shape Keys before to add laughter lines to the mouth on non Sl models. Such as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q4o8F1A6XQ Many Many thanks Bray

is that like saying ... they should use .blend as a format

Gaia I have found that you can sort of reuse your UV map on lower LOD items by pinning the areas that define its size and location, like around the edges in the uv editor, and then asking it to unwrap again and most of the time it will move the internal vertices of the UV map to compensate for the holes generated by removing ring loops. Bray

I was all set up to say something positive on this ..... and to be honest , im finding it hard to, as I work in quads like normal folk ... yet SL doubles face values as it gets converted to triangles because yanno ... thats SL avatar animates so well with triangles dont it. plus ... I modelled something and uploaded it less than a weekago and it came to L11 and i took it and removed vertices ... and today its asking for L$18 so .. I will put this nicely.. LL sort this out please, you want SL to attract people, yet you bring in meshes that cant (or wont allow it to) use normals so a 4k texture that you have compressed to crap for normals cant be used so reasonble attractive meshes are hammered. I have become over obcessed with making every model i make look like a low poly WoW character. So Pamela, I can only offer that .... errrr I cant offer anything as at 608 Faces even as triangles is 1016 not even a 10L$ sculpty that has 1024.

I bet the collada exporter is still bolloxed though

Quick updating on the sculpting for the baked texture for the jacket.