Chameleonic Possessions

I’ve spent the weekend working on stuff, making headway and then hitting the wall (and occasionally screaming in frustration). Over the weekend, I worked for a long time on a “shell” shirt based on the Avastar addon, using an imported shape from my Open Sim standalone.

Don’t be too impressed. This is the “triangulated” version, I still have a version kept back that’s got regular quads and a mirror modifier. This is the “retopo” I did over the top of the rigged shell T-shirt, which is just a skintight version of the Avastar character model.

It was a lot of screaming and frustration, as I could not get something called “bsurfaces” to work in Blender. There have been changes in the last couple of updates and the version as shown in this video is no longer the same – there’s no panel to add something called “follows and crosses.”

I also read this – an even older version of Blender, but at least it’s text based. SPO Curriculum – Bsurfaces in Blender

Eventually, I just figured out how to snap a plane to the surface, turn on X-ray, and I started at the collar and worked down.

It LOOKS good, and I managed to produce a couple of different UV maps, the second one edited by hand to sort of follow the Second Life standard clothing template. But it’s crap. It looks better with the “retopo” UV map, but then that one won’t take standard SL clothing textures. It was sort of cute with a “student” shirt on it. I had to do something to delete the rigging, otherwise I couldn’t do the mirror modify, so it’ll have to be re-rigged once I can get it to even upload. I also probably need to do some low LOD models. Grr.

 

I thought I was doing well, but there are problems – loose unconnected mesh. I can’t upload it to Second Life or Opensim, and forget about rigging it. I think it’s best to start over.

I spent hours moving verts (vertices) by hand on Saturday and learned more than I wanted to know about some other methods to make the UV map sit right, but then this weird thing started happening. Some of the vertices were “connected” or welded to each other and they kept moving IN THE UV MAP even after being pinned. No pictures on that.

The screaming. It was very loud.

I mentioned it on G+ and the endlessly patient +Chic Aeon thought it might be the “keep UV and edit mesh selection in sync” button still being ticked, which it was, and so was I. But I’m a n00b and this is my time to make n00b errors.

This Bike Jersey project will have to be reworked – fortunately I kept a separate .blend file with the original quad version and the mirror modifier. The back topography was a mess and so I fooled around with it for a little while.

This is sort of goofy but it’s better than it was. I probably have too many faces over the tops of the sleeves and need to adjust them for better deforming under animation. I removed a couple of poles, used the K-knife tool to cut a new edge to reduce stretching down the middle of the back, but I don’t know, is this useable, or is it still messed up in the back? I may go back and cut an edge into that one wide faceloop up from the scapula, next to the 5-pole. I have many 5-poles but managed to take 2 or three out and straighten some of the area under and over the arm and collar.

The front looks okay, but there are issues with the join at the shoulder, and the edges should be less vertical over the shoulder and angle toward the armpit more. I figured out that “GG” is the G-grab tool for “grab edge and slide” so that was a good trick. I don’t know if I need more curves around the bust and “6-pack” area, probably would deform better if I moved some of the edges on the side to relax into where the body bends.

Meanwhile the AO bake still won’t work. WHAT?? am I doing wrong?Those damn black triangles! It’s probably to do with my settings, which are screwed up. I need a clear list of things to leave checked and unchecked and settings to set and not change.

I can’t even get that to save out. No pictures.

I also had issues with my new base top hat, to replace a an old sculpty I bought in a kit. ALL my top hats will eventually be switched over to the mesh (mess) base.

What the HELL did I do wrong? there are the dreaded black triangles. That’s when I went on a “vert hunt” to track down broken edges, double vertices, and general nastiness.

Meanwhile, I found some issues – a “stutter” edge under the hatband section where my hand had shaken a bit and the whole edge had looped back on itself. I’ve done that before and knew to look for it, and also there are these WEIRD “folded” faces up on the corners of the top, where I had done a “grid fill” in order to get around the problem of having a single pole with 16 or 32 edges.

The folded faces are hard to see except from a side angle.

No matter how I adjust the verts or try flipping normals (AKA “those FLIPPING NORMALS”) the faces remain folded. At one point I found a duplicate face (probably another errant mouse squiggle) and cleaned that out, but can’t find the same thing happening here even in wireframe.

But otherwise the mesh now looks clean, I’m not seeing any more stutters and there don’t appear to be any places where faces from the underside of the brim touch or poke through the upper brim faces.

I found this mesh analysis thing to check, which was somewhat interesting as far as displaying the edges.

And there’s detail on the inside of this one, because it’ll be a relatively high poly display version. It may get used in the St John Parish “always marching” Mardi Gras parade.

For actual use I would probably delete some of the inner faces. I deleted most of them for the mesh fedora, but test-victims said they could see the inside was invisible when they rezzed it out. So when I left the inner faces and uploaded to the Beta Grid, it came back with 9LI, higher than I wanted. That grid fill on the outer and inner top is probably the culprit, but it takes textures well. I could probably go with a different grid fill that’s all quads, though.

I have some updating to do on current products:

1. Pet Beds – want to add simple sleep pose and recast for Dinkies and Tinies, and covers!
2. Hawaiian Quilts – once I learns me some clothifying, they’ll replace old sculpties
3. All the hats that are currently sculpty-based – redo by hand rather than export.
4. Necklaces – really need to get on this. Saw a technique with single vert extrude and bevel.
5. Kit mesh clothing – need to tweak some texture settings.