Keeping faces intact on rigged model?

[Rucy Byron]

cont from: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Not-all-faces-are-usable-Zbrush-Model/td-p/1936437

 

OK, so I get my model into sl (cardigan with undershirt) rigged and wearable (although needs weigh painting adjustments) but I have lost the 5 faces that were applied, so can't add textures as I had intended. Any ideas how to keep the faces after rigging?

 

Thx in advance.

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

hey Rucy,

did you export it as OBJ or as DAE from Zbrush?
(i made a little 'remark' about it in my Zbrush tutorial : http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Z-Brush-Tutorial-Multiple-UVs-and-textures-on-one-mesh/m-p/1940687#M20016)

One of the work arounds is to export it as OBJ, import into Blender and then you have all former Polygroups as separate objects. Now assign to each object a 'new material', ('and' a new texture for the UV map - should several parts of the mesh have different image maps). Do this 'before combining them into one mesh. (and don't forget after 'joinging them' with CTRL+J, to also choose Mesh > Vertex > Remouve Doublicates. This will remove all vertices that are doubled in the spots where the formerly separated parts are now laying on top of each other)

Also ensure in this case to run a mesh > normals > recalculate outside again, an d possibly also choose 'smooth' for the normals of the newly combined object again.

Another way is (if it is imported as one object) and doesnt have different materials on it, select the exact same polygons/faces as you had them grouped in zBrush and make sure to assign each of these selections to a different material.(and possibly again also to different images for the UVs, in case you want more then one texture to be used)


(The way SL reads the 'faces' coming from the blender's export is by different 'materials' / and their assigned vertices/faces. Each material = 1 face. Which is similar to the polygroups from Zbrush but not the exact same)

[Rucy Byron]

HI again

Yes I exported from zbrush as obj, but the different polygroups don't seem to be different objects. It was exported as one object, cardigan, undershirt and three buttons the 5 polygroups. I see that I need to get deeper into Blender, I understand what your saying but have no idea how to do it! I guess I need to trawl through a load of tuts to understand the workflow for your suggestion.

I have to say, without your guidance and willingness to share your knowledge I would be a lot further behind on this project that I am.

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

hehe you are welcome =) thats what i'm doing it for.
OK all in one object (yepp depends on how they have been made, and exported if they come in one object or several ones)

If you bare with me i'll make you a lil tutorial on how to create different materials / faces.

One thing in need to know for that in advance - did the UVs stay intact? or have they been changed / lost after the import. (so i know if i need to include this in the help) oh and i need the version of blender you are using to m ake sure it's the same menues etc.

[Rucy Byron]

I made the five subtools separately, then with all on screen I merged visible with 'UV' highlighted in merge menu, then exported as obj.

Here is an image of the rigged cardigan with undershirt and buttons, when I choose 'select face' in the edit menu in SL and click on a face I get a message in the edit window saying Faces: ALL-SIDES, when I tried to drop the cardigan texture is seemed to go on OK, but at the same time seemed to cover the undershirt and buttons with a black/dark texture? So I am not sure if the UV's are there or not, seems like they are not even though it sits on the cardigan layer OK?

I am using Blender 2.49b, mainly because the video tuts I have been using were using that version.

I keep saying I appreciate your help and I really do, I am sure countless others will come across these threads and be saved a lot of time and frustration. Much kudos to you.

 

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

yeah, i guess its propably due to them being all on the same UV area / one face now and possibly pulling their color information from some pixels on the same map.

You can try to solve it (and along the way check what happened to your UVs and the Faces) by following this lil tutorial (as promised):

If you can't work it out i can offer you to send me the blender file and i'll check whats wrong with it, correct it and send it back / or tell you whats wrong (in case the fileformats aren't interchangeable within our both versions)- i'll send you a PM here in the forum with my email, in case you want to make use of it. Don't hesitate, for me it's a small thing to do =)

I am using 2.66 (and a selfmade theme) so things might look a bit different. But i'm sure you can find most of it. Or stick to my suggestion at the end of this answer to take the chance and switch now already to a later version of Blender. (see at end)








- Edit: Working with the default Blender materials (not cycles) in this example:

Basically you are done after these above steps, and gave your object now all 'faces' to read out when being exported to Collada (DAE) and imported into SL.

But in case you want to check on your UV's and /or give also the jacket, Shirt and buttons their own textures, you have to do these steps: 

You can do all of this witout being afraid to screw your skinweights. It won't in fluence or break them.

PS: you might want to switch to a later Version of blender (i.e. 2.65 a or even latest 2.66 a) because thanks to Gaia and others / users indirectly helping (i am sure Gaia can explain  better who was responsible for it : ) ) it has now Operator-Presets for Second Life in the also now an already 'included' Collada Exporter. 

But i'd suggest 2.65a. Because i just tried yesterday and the bone-weight-copy original scripts apperently won't enable in 2.66, and they haven't been updated by their creator in a while, it was a surprise even to Gaia (who offers a modified version of them ) that they have been still working until 2.65.

Having the latest Collada Exporter and the presets can prevent from lots issues, which the older not natively provided plugins had.

PS-PS: the usability and the UI have changed rapidly since 2.49 you might find it easier to learn on a newer blender version =)

[Rahkis Andel]

One more thing to mention is that the materials/texture menus look and to a degree work differently depending on whether you are in cycles or blender internal (selectable at the top of your screen).

Most beginners will be using BI since it's the default choice, but it's still worth noting.

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

yeah. Blender internal renders are set by default. And for creating plain the faces anyways not relevant, but a good sidenote  =)

I've been bothering myself yesterday with installing 2.66a (bone copyweight-scripts = fail, not able to enable, as mentioned above)
Luckily don't need them myself, and for starters in blender i don't think they need 2.66 when they begin. All the fancy stuff as matcaps etc and the new cycles hair rendering and the physics are advanced stuff. So mostly until they reach the need for them i am sure the creator himself or maybe gaia found s solution for it. Also it has copy attributes inbuilt already and some weight transfer plugin as well. And they gonna be good with 2.65a.

Hencing matcaps.. yippieh!.. and now i want them to implement the ability to insert own textures for matcaps (they are working on it), and i want to bake matcaps, and.. and.. *insert wishlist here*

But have to say it's nice to see blender growing up and trying to cope with the big 'brothers / sisters'. And for polygonal modeling etc i still love to jump to blender. It just 'flows' better. And i'm coming from Maya and Max, and Maya being claimed to have the nicest flow in polymodeling. Dunno blender did the trick better for me. I Make them there and then take them over to Maya or Max.

Anyways 'nuff with the 3D lovesongs !

[Rahkis Andel]

It's only relevant in that you asked them to create a material and texture. In cycles, I would probably add the texture directly as a node or as the color value rather than go into the separate texture menu. That and it looks different, which might be confusing.

Maybe not, but hey, no unsaying it now.

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

hehe yeah, as said was a good input for others with newer versions reading it. =)

But for complicity's sake to not confuse other readers / Rucy more:

I asked him specifically in advance which blender version he has, he said 2.49
(That's why I also extra mentioned that my UI will look different then his, and that he will have to find the corresponding menus in his version)

For 2.49 cycles was not available thus mentioning cycles in this simple tut would have been confusing additional info.
It was a question only towards how to create separate texture faces for SL, and therefore nothing else than the regular existing materials in blender pre to the 2.50 special builds from graphicall.org with cycles integrated was needed.

@ Rucy, until you go with my suggestion to switch to Blender 2.65 (or any special compilations of pre 2.61 which include cycles) you don't need to worry about these.

Should you have changed  to a newer version - to avoid confusion - all you need for the above task is the Blender default materials. Which are the default ones being set with a fresh blender installation. Unless you want to play with the Cycles renderer and materials, but that is not necessarily needed for creating just the texture faces.

Edit: added a note to the image-tut thread  to ensure this info is included.

Cheers!

[Hikaru Yamamoto]

---

Codewarrior Congrejo wrote:

Also ensure in this case to run a mesh > normals > recalculate outside again, an d possibly also choose 'smooth' for the normals of the n

ewly combined object again.

---

Hi, I was able to get your method to work but recalculating doesn't seem to fix the big seam I am getting.