Kwakkelde Kwak

Shotgun Galtier wrote: Thats all good and all, but for one; I am not paying for primstar-2, and for two; i just checked the object creation on second life, it is still the same old thing as it was yesterday, I don't want a cluster of prims in just one object You can use Blender for making mesh. If you can make a sculpty, you can make mesh aswell. A mesh can be a cluster of prims or one single object, that just depends on how you build it. I'm not a Blender user, but if you ask in the mesh forums, people will happily point you to some tutorials. Here's one for making sculpties though, not using Primstar: Sculpty in Blender 2.5

If you want to replace the feet, try rigged mesh, I've seen some great feet inworld.

Faubio Alter wrote: (EDIT) I'm not going to argue with you about it. I'm done. That's fine, just don't misinform and confuse people by pulling a term completely out of context. Saying a UUID holds your personal data is like saying a book holds your personal data. If I know all your personal information and put it in a book it doesn't mean ALL books contain your personal information. You said so yourself: "Second Life uses GUIDs for identification of all assets in its world." That means exactly what it says, not what you made of it. It means what Chosen said earlier, a tool if you will for finding things on servers.

You can't predict the land impact by the filesize. There are too many things that can be exported into the dae file which aren't used by the uploader but ingored completely. Splitting up your mesh into various smaller sections, will result in these changes: 1 A lower download weight 2 A shorter range for LoD switches 3 A higher server weight The smaller an object is, the faster it will change to a lower LoD model. Because this means less stress on the graphics cards of everyone with the object in view, LL rewards you for it by a lower landimpact. Splitting up your mesh has a small disadvantage though, especially noticable in very simple meshes. The minimum serverweight per object is 0.5. If you have a very small mesh with a download weight and physics weight lower than that, the server weight will determine the landimpact. An example... I made a very simple chair with some chains, which all needed a dedicated object. The display and physics weight would have resulted in a landimpact of 3 or 4, but since I was forced to use a good number of very basic objects, the server weight made the landimpact 14. All I mean to say is you can play around with these things and see if you can get an optimum for your specific object.

The SLAV is nice to work with, it's the only rigged avatar setup I've found with actual bones rather than the annoying dummies that works. For now I used the free version, with the default avatar. Since it works I bet I'll get my copy of the full one aswell to play around with some exported shapes. I'll see if I can find some time to write a tutorial for 3ds max, based on the SLAV. From the import of the rig into max to the import from max into SL. The wiki is really not very ..well...friendly... It will be about the basics (of importing/exporting and settings I think. Modelling and weight painting and such are all very well covered in various 3ds specific tutorials.

Hmm guess you're right. I, for some reason, always mix up download weight and display weight, which are closely related but indeed not the same.

The only thing I can think of from the top of my head is a mirrored skeleton (or model?) in max. I guess you can check this by texturing your mesh in a non symmetrical way then look when you are wearing it.

Syle Devin wrote: I found out, the hard way after I crashed a couple of times, that I couldn't upload the same .dae mesh file. Drongle... wasn't there something with the slm file that caused this?

There hasn't been a lot of interest in this topic, such a shame, I'm sure 3ds max users exist:) Anyway, I got my rig working by finding two things. One, the skeleton didn't work for me, which is strange since others seem to have no issues with it. This caused the odd scale it seems. If any 3ds max user got the SLAV default female working (by scaling ?) please let the world know how. I used another skeleton and my scale issues were gone. The other issue I had was in the object attaching in the wrong place. According to the wiki, all 26 bones should be added by hand. This is indeed the case.I overlooked that the bones that were already in the file should be kept in that exact position. So rather than copy-pasting the entire bonelist over the bones specified in the dae, I added the missing bones after it. If there's any interest I could post all my findings and "workflow" in a basic tutorial for 3ds max rigging. I for one had a very frustrating day yesterday, hopefully I can spare others that same experience... EDIT... I figured out how to get the SLAV rig to work aswell finally. In the SLAV import, I set the scale to 1, rather than 40. I scaled up the model to 4000% in max and left it that way, no XForm resets or anything. Then in the upload window I set the scale to 40 to compensate. Now I got a full rig including avatar in 3ds max and the desired result in SL.... The offer for a tutorial stands...

Syle Devin wrote: There was no option to set it to prim. You did look in the object tab in edit mode right? You can't set it in the ulpoad window itself, you have to do it when it's inworld. If You looked there, I can't think of anything besides what Drongle just said in the post above.

LindaB Helendale wrote: LI (Land Impact) is server side cost, and transparent textures won't increase it, Display Cost is viewer side cost where it shows up. LI is determined by the combination of all the weights, or rather the highest weight. server cost is server side cost, so is physics weight. display weight is indeed viewer side. In other words, you can have something with little impact on the servers and still get a high LI.

Did you set the physics to "prim" instead of "convex hull" after uploading?

So I finally took a first peek at rigging today. I downloaded the SLAV plugin and got myself a working rig in 3ds max. The rig was built in inches, so I converted both display and system units to meters. Then I scaled the rig back to normal proportions. Then I reset XForms so everything had 0 rotation and 100% scale. Since it's a first try, I made a simple cylinder and placed it over the elbow joint. Converted the cylinder to Editable Poly and removed the caps. Moved the pivot to 0,0,0. Applied a Skin modifier. Added all 26 bones. Weighted the cylinder from top to bottom for the shoulder and elbow, all vertices with a total weight of 1,0 ..... Now in 3ds max the rig works fine, move the arm and the cylinder follows, rotate the elbow and it bends. So I exported the rig, both skeleton and cylinder as dae. I turned off animation, set the scale to auto and the Z-axis up. Added "26" and all the bones to the dae file by hand. In the SL uploader I checked the "Include skin weight" This is the result: Now if I upload the cylinder is FAR too big and it's not on my arm but next to me. If I also check "Include joint positions" I get a giant avatar on top of that. Part of the cylinder is also inside out, not all of it though. So my question really is: what did I do wrong and what did I overlook? It looks like the scale and orientation of the skeleton aren't correct. But in 3ds max everything looks just fine. All rotations are at 0 and all scales are at 100%. Did anyone else have these issues with the SLAV plugin?

Medhue Simoni wrote: Kwakkelde Kwak wrote: The objects would require some serious new UV mapping ofcourse. OMG! And think about the total savings on textures with the mesh version, versus the sculpty version. Yes "having" to UV map your object can be a pain, but "being able to" is a blessing. Just a matter of perspective:)

Hmm going by the pictures it just looks as if the pants are not alligned properly. The shape matches perfectly as far as I can see, the pants shape in SL and Maya and the body shape in SL and Maya that is. I would still say the hip bone is not in the right place in Maya compared to the body mesh. If you move the hip joint forward in Maya, the pants in SL should go backwards in that area. Instead of testing and testing and trying and trying without knowing for sure it will do a lot of (or even any) good, it would be really helpful if someone using Blender (or anyone with a 100% accurate rig in any program) can upload the three orthogonal views of the body mesh and skeleton. Yours does look a bit unnatural in the leg area, especially the ankles and pelvis area seen from the side. I haven't rigged anything as I said, so I'm not sure the above picture perfectly matches the inworld SL rig. This is the 3ds max rig from the SLAV plugin. If you compare it to your rig, the hip and ankle joints are far more to the front of the body mesh.

Toysoldier Thor wrote: What is interesting is that all the LI values I gave you were from Aditi.... But when I did the same upload into the main grid the LI was lower ... only .5 LI and $3L cheaper for the upload. Not sure why but Im not complaining. There is some randomness to the calculations for uploading a model. This is always the case. I think it has got to do with how the uploader reduces the vertices for the lower LoDs, I'm not sure about that last bit though.

This is exactly why I suggested to alter the skeleton rather than the mesh. In order to get the skeleton right, you only need to test once, although it can be hard to get right. If you alter the mesh on the other hand, you have to test every single time you make a new mesh. I don't know how difficult it is to move the bones in a rig though, maybe someone can explain how to do this for the different programs used. Maya, Blender and 3ds max are the most common ones I think.

That is not insulting in any way...see how easy it is to not be insulting? As for the mesh deployment.... I agree LL could have done more to promote mesh. I've seen games and vampires on the logon screen, nothing about mesh though, besides a notice under the loading bar I think. That should have been dealt with better I think. On the other hand, sculpties were never promotoed and it took a good time before people knew what their possibilities are. Things simply take time, yes, because people are stubborn. That's on the same path as cautious, just a different place. It's not SL user stubbornness, it's human nature. People in general don't like change, people want to stay in their comfort zone. All over the forums I read comments from people saying they don't give a hoot about mesh, even when they are told the advantages. Luckily most people already use mesh enabled viewers and the number is rising. For now? I'd say take the time to improve your SL mesh skills, I'm still learning or picking up things regularly and I've been building 3D models for about 15 years (not full time, not even close).

Geek and experienced is not the same. A geek is someone who is out of the ordinary and focussed one one particular thing, to such an extent where he/she loses touch with the "normal" people. I certainly don't place myself in that corner, nor do I want to place others in any corner, that's insulting, plain and simple. I find it rather surprising you don't understand geeks at a certain point in time, then a week later you consider yourself to be one. "POLYPAINT is actually painting colors on each vertice / point" "That I could hold of UV mapping the model until just prior to polypaint clones its results to the texture map." "get the cool aspects of a Material baked into what has been painted." I don't think terms as "UV island" (or whatever I wrote that was greek) is less clear than this. Maybe if you don't understand something, you can ask for clearification rather than dismissing it as garbage.

Clarissa Lowell wrote: Noob to making mesh. I haven't even made a sculpt unless you count PLOPP which is about as it sounds. Questions! 1. What is the easiest program to use for making SL mesh 2. Are there any online classes for making mesh (that can be used in SL) 3. What is the price of mesh programs 4. What kind of computer does it require 5. Are there any in world classes for mesh or mesh related issues Anything else, add that but please keep it simple for us dunderheads. Thank you. 1. That is impossible to answer. Blender is a good option, since it's free and most SL builders use it. That means you can get a lot of forum help here. It is a handful if you're not familiar with 3D modelling. I'm not familiar with most of the software, but there are other free programs out there, I'm sure others can tell you which are easy to master. 2. I'm sure there are:) .. sorry I can't point you to them... 3. Ranging from free to well over US$5000 4. Any computer which is built after 2002 or something should be able to handle mesh. 5. Same as 2... You can always try these forums though for specific questions...

Toysoldier Thor wrote: This lack of awareness still rests on LL's shoulders. They assume because they are geeks and understand it and because they are working with a bunch of 3D modeling mesh geeks in the mesh forums that understand it... that somehow magically everyone in SL will hear about Mesh and understand it. THEY WONT. I really think you're insulting a good lot of people who are always willing to help. Or do you consider yourself a geek now you can build mesh? In that case, forget this post. You of all people, saying certain posts can be frustrating, are frustrating others who merely try to help. I think your latest two posts were more technical and complicated than the one I posted and was tossed aside by you for being "greek" or "geek". Give it some time and people WILL understand what it is. Consumers don't need to know the technology or workflow or whatever behind mesh, they only need to see it. People don't understand the details about textures, animations, normal prims and sculpts and that has never been an issue. People are stubborn creatures. As time goes on more people will be using viewers that can cope with mesh. And if that doesn't draw everyone over the line, the fact the world will look like boxes and blobs will convert the majority. Latest and final change will be mesh viewers being mandatory, or V3 based viewers anyway. I don't think there are any viewer coders so stubborn to take a functioning mesh viewer and pull the mesh code out of it. Then again..people ARE stubborn....

You can also use a mesh for this. That won't have the long loading time or the distorted appearance from a distance. It will also be a lot friendlier in terms of lag. I made one that has 3 planes instead of your 2. It is only one prim by itself. Two linked together is also one prim. If the mesh itself has several of these plants, rather than being a linkset, It should be possible to have a lot more of them for one prim. I haven't tested this (yet) with different amounts of plants or very large sizes.

I haven't been very busy building lately and really only had the issue with one type of object, a set of roads. No matter how many times I tried and in how many ways, without hitting analyze the object would act like a hull, even though the physics shape (shown through the dev menu) was correct. After reading your previous post and going by the fact I didn't have the issue earlier, I think it's just my type of object, not what I suspected earlier..I DID say "seems to" If I run into the issue with other items it might be something to look into. For now I think that would be a waste of time and efford.

If the physics model is successfully uploaded with your mesh, you should have the option to set the physics from "convex hull" to "prim" in the features tab. I have no idea why LL decided so or overlooked the fact the shape always defaults to convex hull. Anyway, if you don't have the option, the physics model wasn't uploaded. The model should look the same as in Blender in your upload window. Maybe you didn't save the entire model as dae? Did you also hit "analyze" in the uploader? That seems to be mandatory the last couple of viewers for a correct upload. If this doesn't help, can you tell us how the physics model looks in the uploader? EDIT...forget about the mandatory analyze and read Drongles post below instead...

Very true, but other sculpties can be replaced by mesh aswell, because mesh is friendly on the system, when done right at least, and it's easier to make in most cases. Mesh is also a lot more controllable with textures and LoDs.... It probably takes longer to build, again when done right, but that's efford easily justified if you ask me. I really don't see a bright future for the sculpt, which was a half solution to get something kind of resembling normal 3D content...which is mesh. Very large items like the sim surrounding mountains for example can't be replaced with mesh. I honestly can't think of anything besides that from the top of my head.