[Good Books for modellers]

When i was searching for a good book on Blender (to take on holiday), Blender for Dummies was the only one that seemed to be recommended (with the caveat that noone really recommended learning Blender from a book, because they go out of date so quickly).

I have to say I found it very useful, possibly more so than the manual, because it was so much easier to just flick through, scribble on and generally use for learning.

[Why beginners don't learn the basics first?]

I just wanted to say how informative I've found the information in this forum, but some of it is really really hidden. There have been times when I've just sat down and read my way through, say, Drongle's entire posting histories hunting for those nuggets of information. And when I eventually find it, usually the pictures are missing.

If I were to ask for inworld help, I don't think any of the inworld groups are really set up to answer questions like "What exactly do you mean when you say specularity is the inverse of reflectivity?", or "Does it really matter if I normalise my normal maps to <127,127,255>, instead of <128,128,255>?" (Drongle said not, but since the pictures were all missing, I couldn't work out how to replicate his results).

 

EDIT: Also, just to let you know, I'm a millennial. That complaint is beneath the dignity of anyone capable of posting on here. Very very few millennials are in SL.

[Blender 2.8 anyone?]

8 hours ago, Kurshie Muromachi said:

Have you tried exporting your key configuration from 2.79 and importing it into 2.8? There's export/import buttons at the bottom.

I did, but it didn't seem to make any difference. Could have been a PEBKAC error, of course. 

[Do you rely on bump maps in your meshes?]

I think I would query use of a spec map at all, unless your dinosaur is made of metal. 

You can get quite far with just the shininess layer embedded in the normal map. 

[Blender 2.8 anyone?]

I've played with it a bit, but couldn't get my preferred keyboard shortcuts to work. It seemed harder to edit the default ones than in 2.79.

I'm very envious of the collections though. 

[Things to look for in the next version of Firestorm]

Thanks! That should save some time and squinting. A UV map preview will be especially useful.

[Why is there so much high-poly mesh in SL?]

Ooops, I got the first and last page of the thread mixed up. Sorry about that, serves me right for trying to read the forum on my phone. 

[Why is there so much high-poly mesh in SL?]

@chinrey It is out there if you search (and I have, extensively), but you do have to piece it together, and I had the distinct advantage of knowing what I was looking for.

The ones that were most helpful were aimed at making game assets. 

I've taught myself mesh making in the course of about three months, and I'm confident I could produce multiple variations on that third tree with ease. It wouldn't be the best tree SL has ever seen, but it would be low poly. 

It would also be an incredibly ugly tree, because a texture like that should be hand-drawn, and I can't draw for toffee - which is why I buy my trees from other people and stick to building non-organic forms. 

[Full-Perm Policy]

I completely agree with ChinRey. The only thing I have on the Marketplace is a full perm sculptie candle that I textured, lit (lighting is I think a underappreciated fifth skill to add to your list, along with potentially soundscaping), and provided the animation for. The particle flame was a full perm script. 

 

There are a billion things I would improve about it if I built it now, and I'd probably additionally do my own build and script, but it sells quite well, and no-one has ever complained that I didn't personally place every vertex and every particle.

[Tutorial - the virtues of normal editing.]

4 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

That's looking pretty flawless in this picture.

I think I'd become so used to seeing the horizontal line of the sticky-out bit (technical vocab) between the bevels that it now looks odd for it not to be there. A bit like the way that the word "mesh" begins to lose all meaning when I read too much of this forum at once.

Of course, it's not going to make much difference either way unless someone walks up and stares intently at it.

[Tutorial - the virtues of normal editing.]

On 9/30/2018 at 2:36 AM, Kyrah Abattoir said:

@Ana Stubbs Can we see the new version? Curious.

I'm not entirely sure i'm happy with the result I got, but at least I understand the technique now

[Gothic Victorian?]

Try searching for "gothic revival" - I found one example, though it is on an Adult sim.

[Tutorial - the virtues of normal editing.]

4 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

If your question is "Why is there an option to recalculate?" that's for some special cases, and it will prevent flipped normals.

Yeah, that was my question. Sorry I wasn't clear - I figured there must be some significant use case, or the option wouldn't be so exposed, but couldn't see what it was.

[Tutorial - the virtues of normal editing.]

1 hour ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Since this is the process of creating custom normals, "recalculate normals" throws that all away.

Right, but why would you ever want to throw your normals away? I'm kind of curious.

[Tutorial - the virtues of normal editing.]

18 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

You have to delete the faces AND the edges composing them so that the "normal source" object only contains the flat surfaces of your object.

Ensure all your faces are in "shade smooth" mode.

Tick autosmooth on both source and target.

Thank you! I've finally got it working. Perhaps I should have had more than a few weeks of meshing under my belt before trying it...

18 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Don't use recalculate normals in the uploader (why would you)

Genuine question. Why WOULD you? I've never used it.

[Tutorial - the virtues of normal editing.]

56 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

You should be using smooth shading with the data transfer. Your "fixed" version seems to be using flat shading, which defeats the point. (Or maybe it just needs an extra level of bevel, not sure.)

Oooops. Smooth shading on both source and target, or just target?

i tried both - now my bevel looks fine, and the rest of it looks like meeroo cack...

 

[Tutorial - the virtues of normal editing.]

This is what it looks like in Blender.

And these are the faces I've deleted from the data transfer source object.

[Tutorial - the virtues of normal editing.]

3 hours ago, arton Rotaru said:

It's hard to post something to compare without knowing how your model looks like. I have edited vertex normals on the most of my meshes, in one way or the other.

That's a fair point. I just wanted some sort of indication of how it should actually look in world, compared to in Blender. I'm still trying to work out if I've mistaken success for failure due to expecting a more dramatic difference.

Here's an example from what I'm currently working on. I can't see any difference between the flat shading and the fixed one.

In the interests of transparency, this particular mesh wasn't triangulated before upload, but I see the same thing on ones that have been.

[Tutorial - the virtues of normal editing.]

Does anyone have any in-world pictures or examples I can compare my attempts with?

[Modern Sim Lag Times]

1 hour ago, Macrocosm Draegonne said:

Ive seen the arguments about complexity score, but its the best we've got, and I will be installing drones to boot people who have too many scripts or too high complexity if im running a whole sim.

The sim's already done the heavy lifting once they teleport in. If you kick them out, it's got it all to do again when they come back.

[SLUniverse is Closing]

I'm glad to see that it will be archived, I still refer back to posts in the scripting forum from time to time.

[Tutorial - the virtues of normal editing.]

24 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

Other than that, I would recommend to triangulate the mesh before editing the vertex normals. Edited vertex normals are pretty fragile, and can break easily with changes in the topology. 

It is already triangulated, and I've double checked all the possibilities suggested upthread.

I'm starting to wonder if it's my expectations that are the problem instead!

[Tutorial - the virtues of normal editing.]

I just can't get this working. I remembered I'm using Avastar 1 to export. The collada exporter included with Blender causes crashes to desktop more often than it doesn't.

Is that going to meddle with my normals?

[Tutorial - the virtues of normal editing.]

I think I must have taken idiot pills, because while I can get this to work very well within Blender, getting the custom normals to survive import into SL is more difficult.

 

Is there anything obvious I'm likely to be overlooking?

[Doubt about the GDPR law and scripts accessing external databases.]

I don't want to get involved again, but I'm complying because I want to, and because as a trustee I'm supposed to act in my charity's best interests.

The likelihood of the ICO fining a small charity like mine is vanishingly small, but that isn't a good reason for ignoring it. I'm a grownup, not a child who only tidies their room on threat of being grounded.