We all love mesh. Mesh is great and as a serious Second Life content creator, you will sooner or later include mesh objects into your builds or even want to make 100% mesh items to sell to your customers.
Of course, not all of us are great 3d modelers, let alone own or know the fancy programs that would be needed for it.
So what do we do?
Yes, we BUY our mesh. From people who are good at making it and kind enough to sell them to designers, creators and all the others who are not so good at making it.
So here is a big THANK YOU to all the full perm mesh creators who are willing so share their great work with us and allow us to use it for our creations. We're super happy we have you guys!
But now, as we have all the great mesh pieces, made awesome textures for them and assembled them to a beautiful build, we're bumping into the big problem: No matter how we link them, they won't show OUR name as the creator.
But that is what most fullperm mesh creators demand from us. As they don't want to deal with the complaints of our customers, they of course want us to stand up for our creations.
And honestly, we do want the credits for our designs, too, don't we?
So do we now have to mess up our fancy 100% mesh build by adding 1 regular prim? Do we have to list it on marketplace with the tag "partially mesh" - only because of this 1 single prim?! Oh nooooo... 😩
BUT... here's the GOOD news:
You can make our own mesh root prim without even touching a 3d modeling program. All you need is your viewer and a hard drive!
You can make our own mesh root prim without even touching a 3d modeling program. All you need is your viewer and a hard drive!
Ummm... well, there is one downside: Not ALL viewers do support this feature though. The official Linden Lab viewer does not - but almost every other 3rd party viewer does, so if yours doesn't work, just try a different one.
So, what do we need to do then?
Make a mesh cube from a prim box in only 4 Steps
Step 1: Rezz a Box
First, we need a prim. I recommend a simple box, as it's the most simple piece available and usually works best as a root prim due to it's low poly count. It will still be higher than a cube made directly in a 3d modeling program but it will be low enough to serve us well as a root prim.
So, in Second Life, rezz a BOX.
Step 2: Save as Collada
Now we need to download this box to our hard drive. Yes, Second Life allows us to do that, even in the right format. We can't export any textures we don't own, but we don't need them anyway. All we need is the object itself really.
Right click on your box to bring up the menu.
Click on "More" until you see "Save as".
Click on "Save as" and then select "Collada".
Step 3: Select the texture settings
In the export window, UN-check "consolidate textures".
This will give your mesh box the same faces as on the prim box in Second Life, so your mesh box will have 6 faces to texture differently.
If you leave it checked, the whole box will only have 1 face and the texture will be applied on every side of the mesh.
Check "Apply texture params".
This will keep the texture settings as they are on the prim. When it comes down to texturing, your mesh cube will behave just a regular prim box.
You don't need to export the textures
that are on the prim. All we need is the object itself.
When you're done with the options, hit "Save as" in the export window.
This will save the prim as a collada file on your hard drive.
Step 4: Upload the collada file as mesh object in Second Life
Note:
If this is the first time to upload mesh to Second Life, you might need to enable mesh upload on the Second Life website. In order to do that, go to the Second Life website and log in to your account. In your "Account" tab, go to "Mesh Upload Status" and follow the instructions there. After you have completed that, you can go ahead and upload your mesh box.
For more detailed information, also check the official Second Life Knowledge Base.
In Second Life, go to the top menu and select "Build" > "Upload" > "Mesh Model".
Select your saved Collada file (.dae) and open it.
This will open the mesh upload window in your viewer.
Basically, we would be ready to upload it now. If we don't make any further specifications, the uploader will calculate all necessary values for us, so you could just go ahead and click "Calculate weights & fee" right now.
If you're fine with the default level of detail and physics behavior, you can just skip the following paragraphs. Just hit the "Upload" button and you're done. 👍👏
Done! Yay!
or... not?
However, if you want, you can customize (and improve!) the SL behavior of your cube quite a lot in the uploader.
Let's go over the most important stuff:
Physics Model:
The physics model refers to the SL physical behavior of the mesh, where it has holes, where it is solid and so on. For more complicated mesh pieces, you might want to make your own pyhsics model. Note that the more complicated and higher your physics are, the more likely your object will have a higher Land Impact (LI).
For our simple mesh box, "Cube" would be the best choice. It will give us solid, yet simple Second Life physics.
Once you have hit "Cube", you will notice that our box in the preview window will turn blue. This is the physics model that gets displayed in blue in the uploader.
Level of Detail:
The LoD (= "Level of Detail") settings determine how stable our mesh will be when seen from further distances.
Highest: displays all details, seen from close distances.
Medium: seen from further away
Low: seen from even bigger distances
Lowest: seen from far, far away
The higher the level of detail is (especially on long distances, lower and lowest), the more Land Impact will our mesh have.
In case of our cube, we can apply a rather high LoD as it has so few triangles that it hardly matters. Even at higher LoD settings, we still can make it quite big before it's LI starts to increase. So we can make it pretty stable if we want to.
I would recommend the following LoD-settings for our cube:
Highest: Load from file
Medium: Use LoD above
Lower: Use LoD above OR Generate, Triangle limit = 54 (half the triangles of the LoD above)
Lowest: Generate, Triangle limit = 0 (as few triangles as possible)
Once we see 4 green checkmarks beside the LoD settings, we can go ahead and click "Calculate weights and fee".
Uploading:
In the lower part of the upload window, we now see how much Land Impact our mesh will have at the current size (this can change when we scale the object inworld!) and how much we have to pay to upload it.
Our cube should only have 0.5 LI and cost 11 L$ to upload. That's as low as it can get.
When you hit "Upload" now, your mesh gets uploaded into Second Life.
Please note that you will have to pay the upload fee from your L$-Balance. The mesh will go into your objects folder under the model name shown in the uploader. You can change it there before uploading if you want - but you can also change it inworld later, so it doesn't matter. Your uploaded mesh will always be fullperm for yourself.
That's it!
Congratulations, you have successfully uploaded your own mesh cube, without even touching any 3D-modeling software.
Please note that mesh, no matter how simple, will change it's LI according to it's size. Our cube, we can scale up quite a lot before it will become more than 1 LI but eventually, it will increase. Linking your mesh can decrease the total LI of the linked build, compared to the total LI of the unlinked pieces.
But what am I telling you - you know this already.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. I wish you very happy building and enjoy your 100% mesh builds with your name as the creator!
If you have further questions or suggestions, please leave a comment, I'd love to hear your thoughts!
See you next time,
Wolf Song
P.S.
To all our clothing creators:
Once you have added your awesome new root prim, please take your time to pick a suitable attaching point for rigged clothing. Do not just leave it at Right Hand.
We all have accidentally double clicked on some random item in our inventory before, and thus, involuntarily worn it - at the default attaching point "Right Hand".
This usually causes another item worn in the same spot to be replaced. If we now are wearing our clothing in the right hand, chances are that we suddenly stand naked in a place we better shouldn't. Be so kind and save us from the embarrassment by picking a different attaching point.
Thank you! 😅💗
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