Having trouble uploading mesh with UVW map intact...

[Samyiel Fallen]

I modled a small knife for a friend, unwrapped, and hand painted the textures onto it in 3DS Max 2012, and Photoshop CS5. The mesh was exported as the .DAE file, and the texture applied to the UVW map is saved as a Targa. When i upload the model into SL, the uv's are not preserved and the texture appears warped and distorted. Is there any way to keep the uvw map from doing that in SL? Would it be better to import the whole file into a different program like Maya or Blender and export it as the DAE from there?

[Owen Lusch]

Did you use the 'unwrap UV' modifier? If so, make sure you collapse that before exporting:

Right click --> Collapse to, then it's applied to the exported DAE file 

[Samyiel Fallen]

I tried that just now, but it didnt change anything, the texture still shows up warped on the example.

[Karl Reisman]

you have to  Freeze X-form first, and then collapse th4e stack, that should help. You need to make sure there is only one UV layer, because Sl only picks the top layer.

[Maeve Balfour]

If you can see a recognisable texture, I would assume the UV map you created is functional.

Have you tried rotating the texture inworld, via the build menu (texture section)? I know for my own work, depending on my method of UV mapping (in Hexagon), the texture is sometimes rotated by 90-degrees in SL compared to what I had on my screen in Hexagon.

A long shot, but worth trying. :matte-motes-smile:

[Samyiel Fallen]

Okay, its been a while since ive used the uvw editor in depth, and max help isnt helping... go figure. How do i freeze x-form?

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

In the utilities menu I think it is...the hammer on the far right anyway. there's a button called XForm, select your object and click apply. I don't think it will do you any good with the stack already collapsed. My personal experience is even the collapsing isn't needed to preserve the UV maps.

[Samyiel Fallen]

The only thing i found there was Reset X-Form, assuming that was it, i applied it and exported once again, but no change, even tried collapsing the stack, still no change. The texture is correct, but its still warping it... a good example of how it looks is if you try and apply a planar mapping to a sphere prim in SL.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Samyiel Fallen wrote:

The only thing i found there was Reset X-Form,

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Yes that's the one. It doesn't do anything to your UV mapping as far as I know, all it does is resetting the translations, rotations and scale to their defaults.

I think you have a problem with your exporter. Are you using the Autodesk fbx exporter? You can download it from Autodesk. Some exporters don't preserve the UV map at all, giving the results you describe.

There's a small catch for the 2012 version, which has a dae format SL doesn't understand. I think the fix for this is to export as fbx then convert to dae using the standalone 2011 fbx converter, also downloadable from Autodesk.

 

[Samyiel Fallen]

Im using the exporter for max that the guide here on the SL site told me to use, but ill try that trick too, maybe ill get lucky lol. Thank you. Ill let you know if that worked...

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

Yes that page you're referring to (I suppose Exporting a mesh from 3ds Max) isn't written in one go it seems. Under "export to collada" it says says to use the opencollada converter. I am pretty sure I got the same results you are having, months ago using that exporter.

The same page also says:

Software Setup

Currently the Second Life uploader works best with the 2011.3 FBX Plugin, which is used to save directly to Collada format. If you are using an older version of 3ds Max, get that version of the plugin from the Autodesk FBX page. If you are using the 2012 version, it saves to a newer version of Collada than the uploader understands. In that case save to FBX file format, and use the Autodesk stand-alone FBX 2011.3 Converter to convert to Collada.dae. OpenCOLLADA, another plugin, can't export meshes for SL. The exported file loses the UV coordinates and can't be rigged, so use Autodesk Collada instead.