This post is also available in: German
|
|
abstract:In this tutorial I have recorded a preview about the creation of meshes using blender. This tutorial des not reflect the current state of the development. So there may be differences to the actual release when meshes are published in beta. |
intended audience:
- Creators of content for Second Life and similar environments
prerequisites (*):
related resources:
translator.py Warning: Do not use with Jass-Pro and Jass-magic (these products already have an improved Collada Exporter)
Thank you for your work on this video. I am looking forward to tackling it now that I have watched. People make more noise about the hard parts of SL meshing, but this looks relatively painless to me!
Of course, I suspect most of the griping has to do with meshmaking, and not the actual uploading and implementing to SL….
I’ll find out now, anyway…
Thanks for your extensive information on meshes. I did not find any information on a problem I currently experience. Creating meshes in blender with an open area in the middle like torus or other cylindrical meshes is going fine. But when they are imported in SL , it seems that the bounding box is preventing my avatar to stand in it. It will stay on top of a torus or open cylinder even while there are no faces to stand on. What am I doing wrong ? Thanks for your time
Ah, I have an example screenshot here : http://www.pasteall.org/pic/26382
Another screenshot, showing that the physical shape type is prim and the render physics shapes shown http://www.pasteall.org/pic/26384
Hello, is it be possible to make flexi mesh? I heard something about turn it on in public server but is it true?
Thank you for once again blazing the path we all want to follow!
Do you know what the plans are for using emotes or lip-sync with mesh-based heads? I’m concerned the answer will be: not supported.
Locksmith in Las vegas
I got a few problems
using avatar.blend in Blender 2.49 i cannot export to Collada (.dae) says my python needs full isntall
im on Windows 7 64 bits, if any one of u got around this python issue please tell me version of python blender and Collada plugin.
i am inded ableto export to .daeon Blender beta 2.56 release, altho UI its totally changed and i cant make it it smother, because it givesme errors. So i tought by making it smoth and real in 2.49 save it as .blend, id be able to open it on 2.56 and export it to .dae, but it does not work, 2.56 just goes black and crashes
Any hints let me know
i can alway format my computer, but 32 bit versions only handle up to 3 gb of ram so id be wasting the rest of ram on my computer
Yeah is there a female version anywhere? Impressive stuff.
Hi. Can you tell me if something has changed in the viewer? I have made the arm exactly as you have in the video, several times.The armature just doesn’t work for me. Could it be that I am attaching it incorrectly or missing a button somewhere in the upload window? It works fine on the av in blender so I’m really confused:/.
the importer has changed a lot. Please download the newest viewer from http://blogs.secondlife.com/message/499615#499615 and checkmark “skin weights”. that should work.
Hi:) again- the silence is deafening
I see the error of my ways one being i should have started with the jass stuff. But, that would not have gotten me out of the woods. It seems there is more than just having all the correct versions of ducks in a row. If you use an older version of blender you must remove it all first or the python scripts don’t seem to update properly. (maybe this is a vista thing). Anyway after gutting my system of blender and reinstalling with the proper version of python and blender I was able to finally get the weighted stuff to work properly, because it seems to require a specific vesion of the python conversion script for callada files.
These are such beautiful tutorials its a shame to waste them. But, I’m not sure how many frustrated newer users might be able to hack themselves out of the forest of installation miasmic faux pas created by previous versions.
Hi:)
Great Tutorials:
They are very helpful but I’m having problems with weighted meshes. I follow the example and I have downloaded all the suggested files. But there must be a setting somewhere which is not correct. First- my colada plugin looks different from yours and the only way to get it to work is to use the dissable physics button. and there seems to be a button at the bottom of the example which is not there in my version.
Regardless of that the meshes i get from the rig and even importing the rigging model itself do not seem to carry the weighted meshes through with them.
Any ideas?
Greetings Gaia. I have made a mesh dress and have reviewed this video several times and very carefully. My dress uploads as a normal static mesh just fine. The UVs are good and so is the mesh, and it is low poly, loading in world at a prim equivalency of 5 prims.
When I try to upload it as a weighted mesh, it goes all spikey. Part of the bottom of the skirt appears as it should, but the rest is a mess. The mesh moves with the avatar, but the result bears little resemblance to a dress.
I have watched this video so many times, and paused it to double check your Blender settings. I am using Blender 2.49.
I tried making the arm as you did in the video and that worked just fine. I have made a vest and had the same problem.
Any idea about what I am doing wrong?
Hello, Vivienne
I too have seen such problems when working with a whole avatar mesh. The rigged mesh looks like a hedge hog. I reported the problem to LL but all they told me was that i had something wrong in the mesh weight data. We later found that the problem is somewhere in the way how i had defined the weights. But as long as you just use avatar.blend like i have shown in the tutorial, (and do not modify the weights by hand), it should work. But i suspect you HAVE used avatar.blend and still got this issue ? Then LL seems to be the correct address to ask ;-(
We will take care about this issue again as soon as we get to the rigging tutorial. A release date is not known at this time, but it should be before end of this year (maybe early december?)
regards,
Matrice
I used the avatar.blend model from your website and did not weight paint it. I am starting to suspect one of two things.
I extended the mesh and turned it back to make “facings” for the neck, sleeves and bottom so that there would be a partial visible inside for the tunic, made from a plane, and made sure that the vertices did not collide and that the normals were all facing the right way. Perhaps the double layer is the problem.
I made the base mesh in Blender because it gives me such nice control over the mesh, making nice quads and spacing vertices according to where I need detail and where I do not. I exported it as an .obj and took it into ZBrush to sculpt the shape and add detail. I exported the lowest subdivision level back to Blender as an .obj where I then marked seams and made the UV map for it, making sure it was all nicely laid out and there were no problems. I then took that UV map and applied it to my ZBrush model, and quickly baked in light and shadow and material using Zapplink and saved that as a quick texture. Perhaps it is all this moving back and forth by exporting and importing .objs that is causing the problem.
I am starting to suspect that the first possibility is most likely and I will experiment with that a bit.
[img]/wp-content/upload/Tunic Weighted Mesh Upload Attempt.jpg[/img]
[img]/wp-content/upload/Tunic Static Mesh on Beta Grid.jpg[/img]
There is another possibility. If you take a look at the import window picture, you will notice a blue mesh rectangle in the upper right of the preview window. What the heck is that?? The spikes appear to be pointing toward that.
Doh! I found the problem. On the avatar.blend model, I removed the skirt mesh, but forgot to remove the hair mesh! Sheepish grin…
Thanks anyway! Hopefully if someone else makes the same mistake they will see this post and know what the problem is!
Is there a reasonable way to export or duplicate one’s avatar precisely as a Blender model?
I am not aware of any such solution. However you can export an XML-file with Phoenix. If you are able to create a transformer to Collada or even a native blender importer, you are done. But i am sure, that this is not an easy task. So the answer right now is “no”. But maybe somebody else knows it better …
Do you happen to know if the version was changed after the 13th or during the day of the 13th. When i say version I mean… viewer version.. updated or something.
When I download the file, or when I open blender I get orange lines not pink, and my dialog options for armatures is different. It is preventing me from being able to upload a properly rigged mesh.
Any help would be appreciated if this is just some sort of setting issue, though I have it on factory defaults.
email: fe.energy@hotmail.com
skype: Perefim
cheers,
failed
As far as we have seen, the viewer version has not changed. But the overall behaviour of meshes varies slightly over time as i think LL is working on changes on the server side. I heard that it is not enough to be logged into the test grid. You also must have teleported to a mesh SIM before you actually can upload meshes.
[img]/wp-content/upload/screen01.jpg[/img]
[img]/wp-content/upload/screen02.jpg[/img]
Hello Gaia, I have an little problem that I dont know how to resolve.
I tried SL2.1.1 Viewer and Snowglobe, and in my uploads options doesn’t appear the “Upload Model” option.
I sent two images to ilustrate what I talking about.
How to fix it?
Thanks
Qwasi
Public mesh beta starts at 13-october-2010. You will need to download a special viewer in order to be able to test meshes. The details will be available on the Linden Lab Website. Note that meshes have not yet arived in the main stream SL and probably will need another few months (if not even more) to get published in the main grid.
Hi, this really is a fab tutorial, I am beginner and still managed to follow it, well as far as I could, which says more about my level of expertise than your teaching, but could you maybe turn down the incidental music next time? I had trouble hearing the commentary over it in places. Not at all a comment on the tutorial itself, as I said it’s really good, just the music
A quick comment on the scaling “fault” and the replacement translator.py Technically, this isn’t a fault but a unit difference. The default translator specifies that the mesh coordinates are in centimeters. The replacement specifies that the output units are in meters. Second Life uses meters as it’s units and appears to handle the unit specifications in the Collada file correctly. If one is making jewelry in Blender and exporting it, consciously using centimeter units might actually be more convenient. As long as one realizes that the default units are centimeters and sizes accordingly, there isn’t a problem. What the replacement translator.py does is let you think in meters within Blender, no more, no less.
If one is also working with the Blue Mars platform, the change to translator.py is not necessarily what one wants. Unfortunately, the Blue Mars importer seems to assume that units are in centimeters, ignoring the specification. Thus, the unit change will create a scaling difference between importing to SL and importing to BM. That difference may be more inconvenient than the need to use centimeters properly in sizing for SL. So, it’s a user choice of units more than a fault.
Does the 100x fault for collada export also exist in Blender 2.5x?
Always a good tutorial in that website.
Does someone tried to use Makehuman to import avatar form in SL ?
we did so. You only have to take care about the weights of the rigged mesh. There is a way to copy the data from the original avatar mesh to the mesh made by make human. tutorial will come.
For whatever reason i’m getting a blank page while i make an attempt to post a comment,do you recognize reasons why its occuring?i’m using oprea web-browser
Done!! Thanks Gaia
Hey Gaia, just to let you know This tutorial is getting mention on my “Stark Reality” Net radio show! Cheers!
Hi Gaia. Very thank for your awesome tutorial. i’m excited so much for this news.
But sorry for my ask, i don’t understand how i must do with the translator.py download file. Can explain better if i must install it inside the directory that i see in your tutorial? or what?
Thanks for your responce.
find the existing translator.py at the location as sketched in the tutorial. The tutorial shows in a very straight way where to find the file. Remove the original and replace it with the version we have published on this web page. In fact only 2 lines have been changed in translator.py, but they make the difference… Still confused ? Jass-2.4 is on its way …
there is an unrigged male avatar obj file available from the SL downloads page,this could be used as a base.
Thank you for once again blazing the path we all want to follow!
Do you know what the plans are for using emotes or lip-sync with mesh-based heads? I’m concerned the answer will be: not supported.
Do you know?
facial animations are not supported right now (for the public beta).
But it is planned to add custom bones in a later stage
but there is no known release schedule for that.
Custom bones imply that you willbe able to animate hands and face.
But as far as we understand there will be no “standard”
for that. And that implies that you will have to make
matching skeletons and animations.
We do not know if (and how) voice will be transported to the
animation system (to support face animations in voice chat).
nevermind, I found it!
In object mode under edit buttons, there is a “shapes” tab beside the “modifiers” tab. In this tab you can bring up options to swap the avatar mesh to male, as well as adjust the shape in different ways.
Using those sliders you can make most kinds of avatar mannequin that one would need for building a mesh around.
So, when do we get the tutorial about rigging the SL skeleton to our own meshes for custom avatar bodies?
is there a way to make the avatar.blend give you a male shape to work with, or is there a male version of the avatar somewhere?
Fantastic! I very much appreciate that you had this ready to go for when the NDA on the mesh import beta was lifted. Your website is excellent! Thank you!
[...] Video on blog.machinimatrix.org October 16th, 2010 | mosm | Category: Simulation [...]
[...] Machinimatrix: Preliminary Tutorial on Meshes http://blog.machinimatrix.org/2010/09/15/meshes-i-a-preliminary-tutorial-about-meshes/ [...]