Getting your mesh inworld - from the beginning
Typically, I have the center of my mesh object at the center of the screen. Not so good at Cloud Party. Aligning your model so that the red line corresponds to the floor is a very good plan. This will give you more options when taking photos as well as save the hassle of digging your mesh out from beneath the floor or land when you rez it.
Cloud Party let's you adjust the size of your model on upload but by factors of ten (larger or smaller) so making your model the approximate size you want it is also a good practice.
In Blender you can check the size and adjust in the Transform area while in Object mode.
Another good building practice is to make a palette for each build so you can find things easily. Use the CREATE tab and choose PALETTE. Give it an appropriate name. I called this Chair w cushion (not poetic but it works).
With that palette name showing in the sidebar choose Upload. Note that the open palette will be the one in which the uploads appear. If there is no chosen palette the uploader puts items in the NEW palette (not as handy).
By looking at the uploader you can see the size as well as how many materials (texture faces) are specified in your model.
Click on the mesh icon that represents your model. In that new palette you made, remember? It should still be in the sidebar.
An active icon will appear at the top right of your screen and your cursor will have the mesh object attached to it. Place your object in world then hit the ESC key to deactivate the placement tool.
When your object gets into world you can right click on it and choose What is this? You will see a listing of draw calls (times the server goes out to fetch a texture as well as each particle system), triangles and bandwidth.
This chair has two textures and a good bandwidth charge. The tris are more than they should be, but we'll call it good :D.
I generally right click on the mesh object and choose Edit to select it. You will find your favorite method.
When your object is selected, keyboard keys 1,2 and 3 will toggle between the Move, Rotate and Scale options. You can use the X,Y,Z coordinates or move using the mouse.
If your model looks like a keeper, you will want to take a photo of it to replace the default Mesh Object icon.
Right click the object listing in your palette and choose Photo Studio. You will see something like this on your screen.
You can rotate the item as well as zoom in out out with your mouse. When you have the mesh object as you like it, click the camera icon (well natch!) and it will take a photo. You can retake if you don't like your first shot. You can also choose no background (blue as you see here) or ground or water options. Ground and water options will only work if you have placed your object correctly (top photo) in your 3D modeling program.
Adding textures to your mesh object
Many times you will only have one texture on your mesh. You can also plan your UV layouts so that two materials can be added using ONE texture. So the chair could be in one area of a 512 texture and the cushion in another. In this case I am using an old file from another grid where the plan was for the items to be separate for easier modification. That isn't as good a plan at Cloud Party.
So our chair has two materials assigned. It could also use normal and - or specular maps. These will take more calls from the server and increase your bandwidth count so sparing use is most likely the best plan. You decide when you really need that bump and shine.
***Textures are part of a MATERIALS package that are added to your mesh object from the OBJECTS panel. Before we can add texture to an object, it must be part of a material package. ***
With our working PALETTE showing, choose upload.
There are few cases when you will want to use textures larger than 512. 256 often works just fine and the goal here is fast loading.
For the diffuse texture (the one we see as the paint, wood, metal or fabric) there are no changes that need to be made, just upload. For a normal map you would need to change "Texture" to "Normal" in the drop down box.
An hourglass appears in the uploader while the texture loads.
Once the texture is uploaded it will appear as a PREVIEW in the Palette. You cannot use the texture as is. First you need to make it part of a Material set or package (whatever term works for you - works for you).
Clicking on the Create tab again, this time choose MATERIAL. Give the material a name. A new material appears in the Palette with a green globe icon.
Since we are making a material for a DIFFUSE texture, click in the EMPTY area under DIFFUSE > Diffuse (well that's a bit confusing -- but the first big slot under DIFFUSE).
This opens the complete library. You can scroll through to find your texture, lessening the number of files but choosing TEXTURE from the drop down filtering box of the library OR you can search for the texture by name (so a good plan to note what it is called before going to the library).
Double click on the TEXTURE and you will see its name appear in that before to empty slot. SAVE your material and exit out of that pane (in the example's case - Fine Ash 512). Now select the object (chair) and choose the OBJECT tab in the top toolbar of the builder mode of the viewer.
There are many tabs in the OBJECT window. Giving the chair a name is on the todo list, but right now let's look at the MATERIALS pane. There are two slots. One for chair-material and one for cushion-material. In Blender those were called "chair" and "cushion".
Adding the wood texture (a material now remember) is a simple process of clicking on the empty slot associated with wood (chair) and choosing a material from the library. This is where you would add an optional normal map.
Repeat the process for the cushion.
Note that you can take a photo of your MATERIAL as well as that of your mesh object. That way it is a bit more obvious in the library. The texture is also filed in the palette that is associated with this build. You can add other things to the palette at a later date, like an animation or another wood or cushion texture. The PALETTE is simply a means of keeping things organized.
Here are some video links that may be helpful.
Materials to mesh - the piano:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQKbq1aAsmQ
Multiple materials and combining mesh materials for one texture upload:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISqB-sUyUXU
Transforming Mesh Inworld
The most efficient workflow is to change the size, location and rotation of a mesh in your 3D software program (see Getting Your Mesh Inworld). But there are times when we (at least "I") forget -- especially at the beginning.You can of course change your mesh object inworld with the Move, Rotation and Scale buttons in the top BUILD toolbar. Keyboard keys 1, 2 and 3 toggle between the options.
If you want to make LASTING changes to your mesh, ones that affect your PREFAB, you will need to use the TRANSFORM area under MESHES accessed from the OBJECT tab in the top toolbar.
Here you can adjust the OFFSET (from the center of your mesh) ROTATION and SCALE.
Note that the default center of my canister is at the base of the mesh, not the center.
This is because I have set it as such in Blender.
Setting LOD and Phantom
The Cloud Party uploader seems to do a fantastic job with perfect physics and one click ease. There are times however when you may want to change the long distance viewing ability of an object (this could be thought of as the lowest level LODs if you are coming from a grid that uses that method).
That works very well in many cases. Your tables, chairs and bed certainly don't need to be seen from a quarter of a kilometer away. But sometimes you need outdoor plants and props to show up from your landing area.
Change the objects that you want to appear from far away to LARGE.
Handily you can change JUST the instances of the objects that you need to be seen far away.
If of course you are making an item that will always need to be seen from far away (a traffic light perhaps) then you could change the visibility and update your PREFAB or make a new prefab with a long distance view.
If you want to make an item phantom so you can walk through it take the check mark out of the Player Collision box. Object > Meshes> Physics is the path.
Which Mesh is My Prefab?
It is easy to get many versions of the same mesh object in your palette. If you are lucky enough to get it perfect the first time, well - good for you. That rarely happens for me.
Rather than trying to figure out which mesh object was the basis for you final PREFAB, you can simply look under MESHES in the OBJECT tab of the BUILD menu.
Then delete all the meshes which didn't preform to your liking and you have a much neater library -- always a good thing.
Shadow Artifacts
In fact, these are not issues with your mesh (well, I guess you could have issues *wink* but if you mesh looks really clean it probably is) OR with the uploader.
The are most likely problems with the shadow rendering system. Turn off shadows to check.
You can often mask these flaws with clever texturing or a normal map.
Nice tutorial. I hope to see more
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