Kwakkelde Kwak

I use 3ds max, so unfortunately I can't tell you which buttons to click in Blender for weightpainting either. I'm surprised you didn't get an answer yet on that, since there are plenty of helpful Blender users around here. Just give it a while. In the meantime you could google for some tutorials. This might be a start: Blender Docs It's written for Blender 2.4 though, so some things might be different.

You'll need to do some minor vertex painting/weight painting. No idea what buttons to click for that in MD unfortunately.

anselm Hexicola wrote: I know that people bake them into their textures, but I am a bit vague about their purpose. Can someone explain in simple terms what they do? Without getting too technical, which a normal map really is, it's a map that tells the object it's applied to, in which direction it should reflect light on any given place on the object. That way you can suggest some depth on a flat surface without using extra geometry. It's similair to a bump map if you ever heard of that, although not the same. Currently you can only bake in the effects (so they really only look correct from one angle), pretty soon we'll be able to make real use of them in SL. Also, that checkbox on the mesh Upload window ("Generate Normals"); I didn't find the official LL guide to Mesh Uploads very informative. I am never sure whether I need to check it or not. That's something else. If your model has sharp edges between two faces, you can use this checkbox to let SL determine whether to make it smooth or not by telling the uploader an angle between faces. If the angle between the faces is sharper than what you type, the edge will stay sharp, if not it will be smooth. Usually that's done by 3d modelling software before uploading to SL though.

Bentley Squeegee wrote: Firstly, Ground shadows, What is the best method for creating and baking these without a stupidly wide bleed effect whereby you can see the edges of the ground shadow as they are clipped, even after have a huge plane underneath in 3ds max? It depends on what you use as a lightsource above most things I think (and its position). Skylights for example give nice spread shadows, pointlights give a sharper shadow. If you use a shadow map which is a bit blurry or spread by nature, the thing I do is simply editing the outer edges in a graphical program like photoshop or gimp. For the few shadowplanes I've built this was my technique of choice. (skylight/shadow map/edit the baked texture) Alternatively you could use a directional light with raytraced shadows which are a lot sharper. but this might not give the disired look. never did that for SL really. It should get rid of any bleed though. Yet another thing you could do is baking the occlusion rather than shadows. Never did that for a single plane, but I guess the shadows will stay a lot closer to the object.

A shame, thanks for the reply though.

Some things you can most likely fix with the sliders in avatar shape in second life. Some of the deformations are because you didn't do any weight painting or bone adjustments in 3ds max, look for tutorials on that. Finetuning your rig is a lot more complicated than simply adding a skin modifier. btw, it would be nice if you used your own models for second life. I'm pretty sure you don't have permission to use marvel or pixar models.

I don't know what's causing it exactly. But I did have the same issue today on my home sim. Attempting etc... then missing a lot of functions when you finally get in. I think it's a connection issue somewhere between the SL servers so it should be temporary. I fixed it by logging into another sim then teleporting back to my home sim. All is fine now.

Drongle McMahon wrote: As far as I can see, there is no real advantage to uploading the textures with the mesh, and there is this clear disadvantage. I agree, the only other advantage I can think of is you can see how your textures are applied to your mesh before you upload and pay for them. The clear disadvantage is minor too though in my opinion, at least for me. I do all my preperation work including test uploads on the beta grid. Paying for the textures each time wouldn't cost anything then.

Either that or reset XForm after mirroring. The problem is the mirrored geometry has some odd values: negative volume and an incorrect center off mass, even in 3ds max itself. (Utilities -> Reset XForm). Alternatively you could attach the mirrored mesh to the nonmirrored mesh. (so the attach button with the original selected).

Happens to the best of us, glad it worked out

Thanks for sharing the file. I think you made some mistake when making the multi/sub material. Did you by any chance instance one material to several slots instead of copying them? All you need to do to fix it as far as I can see, is making a new multi/sub, open the one you have in the material editor and set the number of materials to 1, then back to 7. You should have 7 unique materials there then.

Glad that worked, you're welcome:)

I'm happy that works. Even more good news probably. I had somewhat of a quarrel with someone IN the wiki about this issue. 2012 and all its exporters have the issue, but the 2013.2 version used in 3ds max 2013 doesn't need the 3ds max - fbx - dae - secondlife. It can directly export the dae. As I have 2013, I can't test, but she thought the 2013.2 collada exporter would work with 3ds max 2012 aswell. Keep your eyes on the wiki, I'm sure it will be posted there once it's been through some testing. Wiki I never got the textures included in the upload to work myself. It has got something to do with absolute and relative paths as far as I know. Uploading them seperately isn't such a pain really.

I don't use it, but I have in the past, never seen or heard of that particular issue. Something must be off if an fbx converter can only export fbx.

BlackHeaven1983 wrote: I'm using 3dsmax 2012 with openCollada to export. That's your problem. OpenCollada loses all UV data. As you noticed, the Autodesk FBX exporter in 3ds max 2012 gives issues aswell, but still that's the one to use. Instead of exporting to DAE, export to FBX and use the Autodesk 2011 FBX converter to turn that FBX file into DAE. Autodesk FBX Converter You need the 2011.3.1 version. If you have a subscription, you could upgrade 3ds max to 2013, that works without the converter.

Yes it will pretty much do what the other two do, both mesh and sculpty, for about 5000 bucks less...it's free. As far as I can remember the most commonly used sculpty plugin for Blender does cost 20 bucks. I'm sure someone can either confirm that or the exact opposite.

Ok, I figured as much, just checking:) If money isn't an issue, you could try a trial version of 3ds max, it comes with tons and tons of tutorials. Starting out very basic and pushing you to more complicated things as they progress. I don't think you'll find it extremely userfriendly, but that's probably the case for any 3d program with a serious toolkit. Don't be discouraged by that, it just takes time. You might want to spend a good week on it to get familiar with the controls and options, so choose the trial period wisely. For 3ds max to make sculpties you'll need a plugin. Alternatively, you could pick up the Maya trial, I did some work with that a long time ago and it's slightly more intuitive I think ( I'm just used to something else) No idea if they have professional tutorials, but it's owned by the same company, so it's very possible. I think you need a plugin to make sculpties in Maya aswell. If you only want to build for SL, Blender might be the best choice. Not only will it save you a couple of thousand bucks, most SL builders use Blender, so there are more people to help you with any specifics. There are some simpler programs out there, can't tell you much about those. They're likely to be more userfriendly, but will lack a bunch of editing tools. Any of these programs will build you sculpts, but you'd be better off making mesh items instead. Not only a lot easier, also a lot better for SL (and your primcount/landimpact).

As good as anyone on that sim. I wouldn't worry with a computer like that.

Are you talking about making Second life sculpties or do you mean sculpting software like Zbrush and Mudbox?

gothtier wrote: Also, is there a way to wear more than one alpha layer at once? Yes there is. Instead of clicking "wear", try "add" (This also works for other clothing and for attachments). Some third party viewers lack this option I think.

At 1200 or so bucks I think that x51 is a steal. Definitely not easy to build your own for that price. Not at all impossible, but for a change this looks like well priced Alienware. @ OP The framerates will really depend on the sim you are in. Well designed, not too crowded sims and high settings should give you 100+ fps with that computer. But as soon as you enter a busy RP sim, don't be surprised to see 10-20 fps, even on lower settings. At least that's what I get with a very similair system (3770K@3.4 (so exactly the same as the 3770) and a GTX 670, 16GB)

Slightly crowded area: ultra: 25-40 fps or so high: 40-50 mid: 50 low: >60 (vsynch on) CPU use 18% GPU use 40% ____________________________________ Second Life 3.3.4 (0) Jun 23 2012 19:35:46 (RestrainedLove viewer v2.08.03.03 (3.3.3.23744)) CPU: Intel® Core i7-3770K CPU @ 3.50GHz (3491.53 MHz) Memory: 16276 MB OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601) Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 670/PCIe/SSE2 _____________________________________ Even though the simowners warn people on landing about their script use, a lot of people have very laggy avatars, graphics wise. The avatar draw weight should be under 40k according to LL, I've seen plenty of people with a weight in the hundreds of thousands, up to well over half a million. Graphical load on my computer doesn't seem to be that high though, I can see that in the temperatures. GPU didn't get any warmer than 50C, where it gets close to 70C when it has to work in SL. I think your 20 fps is pretty normal then.

Aizen Wind wrote: So its perhaps mainly my video card because I am on a laptop? It's possible, but I don't think it's very likely. If the video card was the bottleneck I'd expect to see higher fps with lower settings.

Having more or less the same specs you have, same GPU, slightly faster i7 and slightly more RAM (16GB). I suspect your connection. On an empty platform I can get over 200 fps with a good connection on ultra settings. A busy sim and they drop to 20. I absolutely can't imagine people getting 100 fps on a busy sim. So it could also be the places you visit. It could also be the things you are wearing. 300 prim sculpted boots will cripple any system I bet. btw, did you try the same system with windows 7? And does your motherboard support PCIE3? If not, the 670 can't be used to its full potential. EDIT, I just noticed you're on a laptop. You can't compare the 670M to a 670 (the one I have). It's still a very good card ofcourse, but benchmarked at just 40% of the desktop version. The desktop equivalent of your card (if you can compare apples and pears) is the GTX 460 SE. videocardbenchmark.net If you do get to run your card faster, make sure you monitor your temps, especially on a laptop.

Just send me a private note here on the forum with the file location. I can't look at it today, but I'm curious:)