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What's the best method for uploading a mesh home?


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Which is the best method of uploading a mesh house? Do I upload all the walls, floors and roofs (physics shapes included) separatly and join them manually in-world or do I upload them all together from one dea file? What's the most used method? I'm trying my best to avoid difficulties further down the road.

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Sally Audebarn wrote:

What's the most used method?

You would have to do a survey to find that out. The best method is the one which suits you best for any given project. In the beginning I uploaded pretty much every mesh on it's own, and put them together in-world. Today I rather upload whole models in one DAE file, with all the custom LODs and physics.

However, when you want mixed physics shape types, analyzed, non analyzed you will have to split the upload already. Also if you want to let the importer generating  the lower LODs for you, you will have more control when uploading single meshes.

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I think that many (most?) folks would say that it depends on the model your are uploading. Oftentimes you will get better total land impact by uploading in sections. Other times this will not be true and one or a few pieces will be a better plan.

 

I am going to retract that statement. While it could be true I haven't tested lately and will likely be impacted on whether one makes LOD models for each slot. AND, I am certainly influenced by how I prefer to work :D.  

I have uploaded a house as one model (minus doors) simply because there was no way to put it together inworld. So that CAN work so far as LODs and physics go. It seemed like the land impact was much larger than it would have been had I uploaded in pieces (much) but since there was really no way to upload the individual pieces, it had to be brought into world that way.

 

Keep in mind that you can only have eight materials per mesh (you can upload more recently but that is fraught with its own issues so thinking EIGHT is likely a good plan). So if you build has more than that you will need to split it up into sections  -- or let the uploader do a randomesce version of splitting for you.

 

Over time you will likely find that there are no concrete answer for mesh. There are many ways to work and what is best for one person may not be comfortable for another.

 

 

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I think Drongle answered that for you a couple of days ago. It had to do with naming your physics meshes by a certain system accepted by the uploader. I have never done it so no help from me. THAT would be if you uploaded as a linkset which you were mentioning before.

IF you join everything together as one mesh you can make a single physics mesh for that object. Doors of course if they will open would need to be separate in order to script.

 

Again, you could take a big hit on the land impact cost doing it this way -- it really depends a LOT on the house in question.

Going to retreive that comment now that I understand the method AND will test to see if it is true or not. If you made your own LOD models it seems like there should be no difference; I can see an issue with uploader generated LOD and the combined Objects in the Model method. It has been a long time since I tested the "whole house" versus the "in pieces" house.

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He did, but I was still left a bit confused. You see, I only see ONE option to select a physic shape "from file," so how can I use that ONE option to upload 8 different shapes? That's what confuses me. Am I uploading a folder? I have tried selecting more than one files at once in the browse menu but I can only select one at a time. I'm puzzled. 

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"so how can I use that ONE option to upload 8 different shapes?"

Moving this to the top, as it's probably all you need...

In other words: You must upload one physics shape Object for each mesh Object in the main File. Different Materials within a single Object do not have separate physics Objects. However, since the mesh of a single Object can have disconnected "pieces", you can have multiple "pieces" for each Object, which may or may not correspond to different Materials in your main Object. Indeed, if you are going to use "Analyze" in the physics tab of the uploader, it is recommended that your physics Objects) each consist of non-overlapping convex "pieces".

tldr version...

Let me try to be more clear....

I think confusion here usually stems from ambiguity in the terminology used to describe the "parts" of mesh models. So I will try to define that better first.

In Blender, there is a hierarchy of entities. Let us call the whole thing you are making (eg your house) a Model. In Blender (etc.), a mesh Model can be built from  one or more mesh Objects. In each of those Objects, polygonal faces will be allocated to one or more Materials,each of which is a collection of polygons that will receive the same texture, colour etc. It is important to note that the polygons in (allocated to) a Material do NOT have to be contiguous. They can be discontinuously dispersed over the surface of the Object. Similarly, the polygons in an Object don't have to be all joined up. So one Object can consist of several unconnected "pieces". Neither do the Objects that comprise a Model have to be connected. This is where the misunderstanding comes from when we use terms like "pieces", as it is not clear exactly which level of the hierarchy we are referring to.

When we want to upload the Model to SL, we have to present it to the uploader in one or more Files. The primary File, the one we open the uploader with, becomes the highest LOD (level of detail)of the upload and appears inworld as a Linkset. It can contain multiple Objects, which become the multiple linked Prims. Each of the Prims can have multiple Materials, which become multiple independently textured Faces inworld.

We don't have to upload our entire Model in on File. Instead, we can upload multiple Files, each with a single Object. The we can assemble the Linkset inworld from the separately uploaded Prims. The same is NOT true for the Materials of a single Object. They cannot be separated into different Files. If we want to do that, then they must be "promoted" to being separate Objects.

In the uploader, there are slots where we can specify additional Files that are used together with the main File to specify non-default aspects of the uploaded Model. Three are for different LOD (level of detail) versions, and the fourth is for the physical and collision behaviour. There are important requirements for these Files (to work properly), whether we uploade our Model's Objects all together in one File, or separately in different Files. For each uploader invocation, each of these subsidiary Files MUST contain the same number of objects as the main File, so that the uploader can associate one Object from each with the corresponding Object from the main File. To ensure the correct associations, we should use the naming convention whereby all of the Objects in each subsidiary File are names with the same name as the corresponding Object in the main File, with the specified suffix (e.g. "_PHYS" for the physics File). So all Objects in any subsidiary file should have the same suffix.

 

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Well for ME this was the important part:

" For each uploader invocation, each of these subsidiary Files MUST contain the same number of objects as the main File, so that the uploader can associate one Object from each with the corresponding Object from the main File. To ensure the correct associations, we should use the naming convention whereby all of the Objects in each subsidiary File are names with the same name as the corresponding Object in the main File, with the specified suffix (e.g. "_PHYS" for the physics File). So all Objects in any subsidiary file should have the same suffix."

 

So the Objects in the main Model (what I would think of as uploading a linkset) need to match naming wise the Objects in the Physics model (which would also be a Model made up of Objects).  I still don't think I would (personally) use this for a house as I prefer to "build" it in world (maybe just a pschologial throughback to prim building and my creating as I go method) BUT I can see it coming in very handy for smaller things that might just have two or three objects in the model.

 

So a big thanks there.  This actually makes complete logical sense AFTER the light dawns :D

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