Kwakkelde Kwak

I'd say use the skeleton generated by the SLAV plugin. Make sure to set your 3ds Max units to meters and generate the skeleton with scale 1, not the default 40. You do not need OpenCollada, use the Autodesk FBX plugin you downloaded. OpenCollada won't save your UV data and will therefor mess up your textures.

If your mesh rezzes fine when not rigged but not at all when rigged, I wouldn't look for the solution in the material area. I think either you did the weighting wrong or more likely you have the thing rigged to a skeleton that's not scaled properly. Maybe you could post a bit of how you made it, what skeleton you used and how you rigged it.

It's really difficult to say anything sensible, since there are countless possible situations and countless settings. The main question is: what are you trying to achieve? There is no "perfect setting" for all scenes or all objects, all scenes require different ones. So if you can post the next: - what are you trying to bake? (for example shadows under an indoor coffee table in a marble room or shadows cast by an outdoor wall at noon on a wet surface or shadows cast at night by a spotlight on a stucco wall, etc) - what renderer do you use? (Mental ray, default scanline, etc) - what kind of materials do you use? (standard, arch&design, etc) - what kind of lights do you use? (standard or photometric) Going by what you posted so far I can only agree with what Madeliefste said, jpg isn't the best way to save in almost all cases and you could try to increase your soft shadows precision multiplier. (Render Setup -> Renderer, it's on top in Global tuning parameters) I can't agree on using a 1024 for shadows. Shadows are usually quite soft so it would be a waste of resources to use the highest available resolution for them. For quick outdoor renders I usually just use a daylight system. That gives pretty good results by default. Btw, what exactly do you mean by "blurry"? With a precision multiplier too low, a resolution too low and the jpg compression messing with your shadows, I'd expect the result to be pixelated, not blurred. Could you post a picture?

What might be causing your issue is your polycount in combination with a bad connection. You could try resetting your router. Also, I agree with Dilbert completely. Whether or not it's causing this particular issue, your polycount is nothing short of insane for a dress. You can make things that look just as nice or maybe even nicer with far less geometry. LL likes your avatar draw weight under 40 000. I'm sure this dress alone is good for a couple of 100 000. A nice looking dress can be, I don't know, 1500? You can check inworld by selecting your worn item (it's rigged so edit something else then click the worn dress) then in the edit menu click "more". The magic number is the display weight. I also don't understand your export to zbrush to quadrify the mesh. If you model in Maya, the easiest way is using quads. Then there's nothing to convert.

I don't know why you want a baked texture. That added a whole new problem. The old problem is fixed, you probably didn't even notice. By the way, you can export to .dae instead of .fbx with the Autodesk fbx plugin. Then you don't have to convert. Your new problem is multiple UV channels. You bake on a different channel than your object uses.

Aquila Kytori wrote: ok my results: polygon order Physics weight when set to Prim (LI) 0 1 2 3 4 5 1.8 1 2 3 5 4 0 12372 2 3 4 5 0 1 5188 3 4 5 0 1 2 16512 4 5 0 1 2 3 16197 5 0 1 2 3 4 9757 So the weight differs when a different poly is the first. I don't see any numbers on for example 123540 vs 102354 vs 140235. One would expect those to give the same weight. OR the 0 poly in the same place all the time, not as the first in the list though. So for example 102345 vs 203451 vs 304512.

You'd be the first to have any problems with the 2011.3 exporter as far as I know, but if you post your video we might be able to see what is going wrong.

Jumbomahmo wrote: But Texture did not work in Second Life So my question again... Is your problem the fact you have to upload the texture seperately or is it that your uploaded texture doesn't look the same on your object in SL as it does in 3ds Max? Then my answer again: I know no fix for the first issue, but using the 2011.3 exporter I linked earlier instead of the OpenCollada exporter you used in the video will fix the second issue.

The texture itself or how it's placed on the object?

You are having two issues, one can be easily fixed, the other I know no solution for. You are missing the UV data. This is what causes the texture to show up the wrong way. Instead of OpenCollada, use the Autodesk FBX plugin to export from 3ds Max. The fact you can't upload the texture with the ubject is because the path can't be found by SL. Easiest is to upload your texture seperately, like you did.

Syle Devin wrote: So if someone set their regular view distance to 80 meters, everything in that 80 would be perfect but you wouldn't even see anything outside of the 80. If LL did that, you'd have a terrible SL. Imagine all 1 meter big objects at their highest LoD from 80 meters. The amount of triangles to render would be immense. It's up to the builder to make sensible LoD models, so everything looks good from any distance at any setting. For some odd settings it's simply not possible, but I always try to get good looks at all the default ones.

Drongle McMahon wrote: The only problem with multiple parts for an exterior is that, from angled views, the parts swtich LOD at different camera locations, so that you can see mixed-LOD views. This can be unpleasant unless due care is taken with the medium LODs to mitigate the effects. There is no switching at all, that's the point. The switching happens out of range of any default settings. You don't want to match the switching, you want to eliminate it altogether, either for real or just how it appears.

Kitsune Shan wrote: I did a custom small avatar with this method and worked fine. Dont try to make with MaxSLAV skeleton, isnt even correctly made at 100% (have wrong rotations on the neck, but still works for clothes and such). First of all, thanks for jumping in. I didn't have any issues with making a small avatar using the SLAV skeleton. Not with the neck, not with anything else. Can you point out what the problem is? Also, you IMed me the bone fix a while ago and now it's on the forum. Could you add it to the wiki when you have some time? I really think it should be there for everyone to see, instead of hidden on some forum page.

Chic Aeon wrote: So a house WILL fall apart a bit from way across the sim. It doesn't have to and it shouldn't. The trick is in making good use of linksets. Maeve has tested a lot with this. I myself have done some. My first "rule" is to break your build into exterior, interior and windows. The exterior should be very LoD resistant to keep the shape over a distance. A big build will never fall to pieces with just the highest LoD modelled. The rest can be set to 0. (This is with all the default LL settings from low to ultra , a very long draw distance in combination with a low object detail won't work). The interior can fall apart from a distance any bigger than the biggest indoors distance it will be seen from. This means you can break it into pieces. The entire interior as one mesh results in a LoD switch distance far bigger than needed. The windows are more or less flat, so you can use imposters at LoD med, low and lowest without it being obvious or even visible at all. The second thing to do is cutting up/combining pieces. Currently I'm working on a building about 50x30x15 meters. The plan has an I-beam shape. I tried some different setups for the exterior: - Making the entire exterior out of one piece - Splitting it in three with the vertical part of the "I" as one piece and left and right each as one piece - Splitting it in three with the vertical part as one and top and bottom both as one - Finally I tried it as 5 seperate pieces The first option results in very resistant LoD behaviour, more than you need. It probably won't fall apart at more than 1024 meters. This is too much for the default settings and results in an unneccecary high LI. The second option kept the shape of the outer pieces at any default LL setting, but the center broke. Rather than combining the pieces again, I added a medium LoD model. In the third option all three pieces broke from a big distance. Given the bigger complexity of the outer models, adding a model for medium would have resulted in a high LI. I didn't try this. The same is the case for the last option, but of course the models broke from a shorter distance. All in all, if I had fiddled with the medium LoD models to let them keep their shape, the different setups would have looked the same, but the LI would have a factor 3 between them at least. With option 2, I managed to keep the LI for the entire exterior at 15. Uploaded as one single object it would have been 20. I am now fiddling with the windows, looks like clusters of 3x3 for the wings and 2x2 for the ends will result in the lowest LI. Also notice the geometry for the entire exterior is about the same as half a sculpt for the tris and about three fourths sculpts for the verts. Just to point out how horrible sculpts are.

Maeve Balfour wrote: However - the added materials and requirement for hidden triangles will possibly increase your Land Impact calculations slightly. Not by much (if at all), but keep this in mind. There are a few more things to take in mind when you use different textures for every LoD. First is your landimpact, which shouldn't be the first thing to optimise, but often is. If you use a seperate material for every LoD, you will have to add an extra triangle for every unused material in the other LoDs. So if your lowest LoD is a bottomless box which has 20 vertices (if the edges are sharp) and 10 triangles, you'll have to add three triangles with 3 vertices each. This means an extra 9 vertices and 3 faces, quite a lot more. Depending on the size of the object and the numbers of it in a linkset, this can result in a substantially higher landimpact. Second is texture use. Although it might not be obvious at first thought, adding a low resolution texture to your lower LoDs will not lower your memory use, it will raise it slightly. Because of mipmapping, SL won't download the full texture if the object is far away, but a sampled/scaled down version. Adding an extra texture will...well add an extra texture to be processed. It doesn't really replace the others. Third is the ability to modify colour on an object. If you have for example a car which has a shiny material for bumpers, a flat material for paint and a translucent one for the windows on the highest LoD and a small texture for the lower LoDs, changing the colour of the paint won't affect the color on the lower LoD material. Changing the colour on the lower LoD material will change it completely. So your chrome bumpers and glass will change colour with the paint. In such a case it's probably better to share materials between LoD models.

Rigging isn't exactly my field of expertise, so I'm not sure if there's an easy way to rotate your current skeleton. Working on a rotated skeleton, no matter how it appears in your viewport, will likely give you issues. I think the easiest way to get a good skeleton is using SLAV, you don't have to get the paid version, the free one has all you need. This unfortunately means your adjustments will be lost.

Oh I forgot to mention that... sorry. I think only the skeleton's hip needs to be rotated the right way, the rest is depending on that bone or it wouldn't be a skeleton. If you use SLAV, the skeleton should be good to go, out of the box.

Since we're picking at your posts, milli is a thousandth, not millionth

Bentley Squeegee wrote: Is there a particular way that my model should be rotated? Your model should face in the positive X direction in 3ds Max. Make sure all rotations are set to zero before you start rigging. In the utilities tab XForm, or the XForm modifier from the list.

You can use ctrl-f to find the piece of text you need to adjust. Look for Joints-array" count. If you don't add the missing bones to the dae file, SL won't recognise your mesh as a rigged item.

Aika Toxx wrote: when i check smooth i couldn't upload to sl cause it was too much big big big... No idea how all the things are called in Maya, but I'd like to believe your "smooth modifier" has the option of entering a number for "iterations" (maybe "steps", "amount", "smoothness" I don't know). With a single iteration, every quad will be split into four quads. If that results in an object SL can't handle, unfortunately, it's back to the drawing board with your hair. Looking at your model, chances are you set the iterations simply too high, that should be an easy fix. Don't forget to delete history after using the smooth modifier or it might not be recognised by the dae exporter.

Karl Reisman wrote: If you can make Morphs work on a rigged mesh, you have qachieve dht eholy grail of Av makers. Morphs in Blender/3ds Max/Maya etc or the inworld morphs? In a 3D program you can make your own morphs. Changing the geometry on a rigged mesh to my best knowledge breaks your rig, but the weights are set per vertex. Morphs change the shape of an object, but not its topology (number of vertices/layout of them) This means you can save your weights, then morph then load your weights again. If the morphs aren't stretching some vertices beyond "the next bone" this should work on any rig. If you mean in SL, that's exactly what the deformer does. And it's (one of the reasons) why it's taking so long to make it work. With the deformer the mesh is not weighted to the bones, but to the avatar skin. This way it follows all the morphs as well as all the bone adjustments.

Nalates Urriah wrote: There are people taking advange of dual video cards in SL. While the render pipeline is still a single thread and OpenGL is awkward to push into multiple threads, several graphics processes have been placed in separate threads. A second video card can provide image decompression and reduce the work load on the card running the render process. So, there is some gain. BUT, don't expect to double FPS. Ah I didn't know that. Still a single high end card will have no trouble with everything SL throws at it. In an empty sim I don't see mine at 100% usage, about 75% is as high as it gets. In a full sim it doesn't even come close. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that makes me believe, even if the second card can be put to use, it would be overkill and would not give you a single fps extra.

I think what Peggy means is it is at this point not possible to run SL on a phone or tablet the way LL wants the user to experience SL. There is no denying that as far as I can see. You can't compare a tablet (let alone a phone) to a desktop computer, you can't compare the current mobile viewers to the desktop viewers. Lumiya is a nice addition to the viewers available, but as long as it can't process any mesh objects, I can't take it more serious than a text based viewer. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I read it won't even allow a rezz from inventory.) Others disagree, that's why people use it. I don't think that market is big enough at this point to justify a big investment in time and resources by LL to offer something like that. Again, others disagree, that's why Lumiya was written. Possibilities and demand in the mobile (second) world will grow, but so will the requirements for the latest LL viewer. Time will tell when tablets have caught up. Even though you can run your mobile device off a fixed system (modem in either home or for example restaurant), I don't think the market will be all that big until you can run SL on a mobile signal at reasonable speed and cost. I don't think the market will be all that big until a mobile device can run SL at 10-20 fps in a crowded sim instead of a quiet one. Until then I don't expect LL to offer anything. They already offer the base code so third parties can fill in some niches in the market. I actually don't think LL will offer any "mobile viewer" at all. Look at Microsoft, with Win8 they have an OS that can be used on any device, mobile or stationary, lightweight or a powerhouse. If LL takes this approach all we can do is wait until the difference between a computer and tablet is so small, this difference can be overcome by flicking a switch from "ultra" to "medium".

Motoko Morigi wrote: getting 8 GB will help me? Look in your task manager while playing SL. (right click the taskbar or hit ctrl-alt-del). On the bottom you'll see "Physical memory" and a percentage. If this percentage is near or at (can it even be over?) 100%, getting extra RAM will give you a real boost. If it's not, getting more RAM will do you no good.