Very New and need help please

Hello everyone,

I just became a resident of SL. I have always enjoyed making objects and textures and see that it is available to do in this program. I have been reading and trying to find out things but I must not be looking in the right place. So I would appreciate some help please . First how do I Import my own textures what format do they have to be in. Is there a specific size that SL responds to better? Is there a way to find the textures that are in the SL folders and to open them so can get a better understanding of what the program uses best.

As for objects what format do they have to be in? If you could please point me to some good tuturials or reference pages would be much appreciated.

Please have a look at my web site Ktn3d.com there are many seamless textures there.

Thanks in advance for all the help.

Crym

Dear Crym,

Let me see if I can possibly address this in order...
Importing textures and preferred formats. Importing a texture is simple. One goes to File-->Upload Texture, then point it to the intended texture. If you wish to upload more than one texture at a time, it's file-->Bulk Upload. This will allow the selection of multiple files. As to format: The best format is .tga. 24-bit TGA (no alpha transparency) is good for regular work, and the 32-bit .tga (with alpha transparency) allows for transparency. Sizes should be even multiples, 256x256, 512x512, etc., but can be of odd sizes, if you do not mind some distortion. If you do not mind loss of detail, you can also upload .jpg file formats.
The built-in textures I believe are stored locally, but the gurus here would be more suited to answering that question than I.
As to objects, there is currently no ability to import objects into SL, and none forthcoming in the near futuer. There are some scripts to do so, but they are VERY prim-inefficient (producion builds of hundreds of prims) and require some basic understanding of building and scripting to use effectively, not to mention a fair bit of work outside of SL to prepare them for use, and more time in-game.
I hope I've helped at least somewhat.

Yours,
Mika Kyubi (Muromachi)
Kitsune-at-Large

Hi Crymzon, and welcome to SL.

You'll find many of the in-game textures in your Library folder. It's at the top of your Inventory window. Just click on the Inventory button, at the bottom right of the SL interface, to open that window. Then click on the Library folder at the very top, and find the Textures folder in there.

Building, as Mika said, has to be done internally, using primatives. It's a little odd, if you are used to using 3D programs, (for instance, the vertical axis is Z, not Y, for some reason,) but it probably won't take you long to get used to it.

The best way to learn how to use Prims is to go to The Ivory Tower of Primatives, and work through the self paced tutorials in there.

I'm afraid that I don't have the 'address' on this computer, but if you click on Find, and then on People, and enter my name (Robin Sojourner) in the Search field, you can get to my Texture Tutorials from my Picks, and I have landmarks to the Ivory Tower and the Particle Lab there.

So you can pick up landmarks to find out how to use the Prims, how textures behave in-world, and everything you need to know about using Particles all at the same place.

To use landmarks, of course, just double click on them, and click the Teleport button on the dialog that opens. (You probably already know that, but I'm not sure how new you are. )

Everything in-world is UV Mapped, by the way, which can lead to oddness in using textures since there aren't enough vertices to hold the maps in place on a lot of the prims, and they distort if you taper or twist the prim. But all of that is explained in my Texture Tutorials, if you want to go through them as well.

If you have any other questions, of course, feel free to ask!

Hope this helps!

Thanks a bunch to both of you. And no Robin I hadnt figured out the teleporting to much yet so thank you for that as well. People have been very friendly and helpful & it has been deeply appreciated. Im sure i will be asking alot of things in the future but you both have given me a great place to start. Thanks again & Merry Christmas

Crym

Hi Robin,

Speaking as someone who isn't used to 3D programs particularly but is used to maths and physics notations, I would expect Z to be the vertical axis, just like I'd expect rotations to be worked in radians. I'd also expect rotations to be measured anticlockwise from positive x - all of which they are!

At some point LL must have had a mathematician in charge of their structures, because any maths person would be comfortable with this. I didn't know about the "unusual" x, y, z but the degrees and radians thing throws some people, and anyone who navigates rather than measures angles as a mathematician expects clockwise from North...

Great, Crymzon! I'm glad I was able to help.

Eloise, is that what it is? In most 3D programs, the X is width, Z is depth, and Y is height.

I'm used to rotations being counterclockwise, too, at this point, because most graphics programs do it that way. (SL uses degrees, by the way, unless you start scripting.) But I have to admit that seemed wrong for the longest time.

Do you happen to know the reasoning behind any of this? Or is it all just "The Way It's Done?" I'm very curious.

Because it seems to me that degrees are more accurate than radians for artistic purposes, since 1 radian is 57.something degrees, and it all goes to pi. It gets very unweildy when you just want something to face a certain way. So why is it used? Any idea? (As I said, it's not really important, I'm just curious. I want to know the "why" of nearly everything, and this is no exception. )

Y as height has always seemed to me to make sense to me, because the computer screen is width and height, X and Y, while the "extra" axis, Z, goes into the depth. But I have no idea if that's the actual reason it's done that way, or not.

I never thot much about that XYZ thing before, but now that it's been brought up, it's getting me increasingly curious.

Hello Crymson

I've got nothing much to add after Mika and Robin (besides you look like a 3D pro), but let me just say thank you for the link to your site. What a treasure trove you got there! I love the retro fabrics and the variety of barks

If I may add from my bookmarks, Forseti Svarog has a really nice and concise tutorial for those who are itching to try their hands on prims;
http://secondslog.blogspot.com/2005/09/tutorial-texture-of-our-world.html

Some rather advanced tips and tricks from Bedazzle team;
http://bedazzle.grfx.at/portal/modules.php?name=Content

And Robin's tuts library definitely is a must-go, along with Lumiere's Ivory Tower. Amazingly comprehensive and thorough. Thank you all for sharing!

Since Z is always considered the depth axis, it makes sense to have it be the vertical axis in SL. The 2d plane you're extruding from (generally) is the ground plane. Many 3d design apps consider your screen to be the 2d design plane so the Y axis (going away from you in a front view) is considered depth. Not all 3d design apps are that way. 3ds Max for instance also uses the vertical axis for Z and the ground plane for X and Y. Personally it drives me batty to work with an app like Maya that's not configured that way.

Hmm, I suspect the answer is "convention" - but I'll try to explain why!

Rene Descartes is the father of x, y, z co-ordinate systems. According to the wikipedia he gave us x, y and z was added later, although I seem to recall he was inspired by the need to precisely define the position of a fly in his bedroom, which would imply a 3D system from scratch to me. Ah well.

Anyway, x,y defines a plane (anyone who remembers some geometery can tell you any 3 non-co-linear points define a plane because you can always draw two lines through them, and that defines a plane that they lie in. Having them orthogonal is also a convention.) and when developed that plane was most usually drawn on paper on a desk and was thus (roughly) horizontal. Once you've got a horizontal plane, then z becomes the obvious measure of the vertical direction.

It's tempting to say that the 3D programmes, and indeed 2D graphics programmes have carried this on, and rotated the "paper" to match. It's not quite true of the way the screen is drawn, usually top right is (0,0), and +x goes to the right (which is good), +y goes down (which is also confusing from a straight mathematician's POV, it should be -y possibly, and really -z). I don't play with many of the 3D programmes, but I know there are some 2D ones that use their co-ordinate systems properly (i.e. with 0, 0 in the bottom left hand corner, flash does I'm pretty sure, whilst PS doesn't ah well.

Radians are actually used internally (in fact quaternions I think for all rotations), it's just the interface we use for building that displays them in degrees. The calculations for converting aren't 100% precise (there are points on the curves used where there are discontinuities etc) which is why sometimes you'll find you change one value, hit return and the object resets all three rotation fields. For symmetrical shapes this doesn't matter, for asymmetrical ones it's a pain. They're pretty much all at multiples of 90º btw if you want to experiment. Why use radians? Well they're sort of "pure" to a mathematician. Actually they let you very, very quickly calulate lots of things to do with arcs and sectors of circles. Remember calculating circumferences and areas of circles? 2?r and ?r^2? If you've got an angle øº then the arc length is ø/360*2?r and the area of the sector is ø/360?r^2. But Ø radians gives an arc length of Ør and an area of (Ør^2)/2. We don't talk about angles that way, because, as you so correctly say the numbers aren't easy for us to work with. But they're no easier or harder for a computer a chomp away on, and some of the steps (like dividing by 2) are way faster for radians. (Actually, I'd have to check but I strongly suspect 1/360 is irrational in binary since 360 is a multiple of 10, which makes radians usually more accurate as you're only dealing with one irrational number in the internal maths.)

Hope that helps explain a bit why!

Hey Chip, since I can sympathize completely with the frustrations that can come with working with two different coordinate systems, here's a little tip for you next time you use Maya. Switching between Z-up and Y-up is really easy. Just go Window -> Settings/Preferences -> Preferences -> Settings. (Yes, I know the menu layout sounds a little weird, but when you look at it, it does make sense). When you're on the perferences dialog, the first thing you'll see at the top is the section for World Coordinate System. There's a radio button for Up Axis. Just click Y or Z, and hit Save.

Also, when you import or export models, motion data, etc, you have the option to assign Y-up or Z-up configuration. If the choice differs from the current global settings, Maya can rearrange the data to compensate so everything works out.

Of course, this won't help you if you're modeling for a scene that someone else already created, unless you want to get really funky with Mel and have Maya rebuild the whole thing for you every time, and then have it put it back when you're done , which you COULD do, but I'm sure you'd agree it's not really worth it. For solo projects though, if you prefer Z-up, there's no reason not to switch it and then just leave it that way.

For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure Maya uses Y-up simply because that's how it's usually taught in geometry class, making it the configuration with which most people are already familiar. On a graph for example, everyone knows that X is horizontal and Y is vertical, and vertical is usually thought of as "up and down". Z-up, on the other hand, is less "laymanish". It's more consistent with cartography, where the entire XY plane is considered "the horizontal" and "up" is considered to be altitude. Z-up is very commonly employed for motion capture systems and gaming environments, as I'm sure you know, while Y-up is more common for film modeling. Since Maya is meant as a platform for just about all things 3D, it follows that it's able to switch between the two. One or the other had to be the default, of course, and Y got the honor in Maya.

By the way, if the geometry class/graph thingie isn't a satisfactory explanation for this or any of Maya's little quirks, there's always the old standby. It's written by Canadians.

LOL! Chip, you must really, really get into SL. Because, ummm, I'm still looking at a computer screen here. And it's still 2D, with X as the width, Z as the height, and Y as the depth. (Unless I camera around, of course.)

Thanks for the explanation, Eloise. I can see now that radians would be easier if you don't ever translate them to degrees. It's the translation that's hard, and I've never worked with them without needing to translate.

I'd have to check the other programs, by the way, but LightWave has 0,0 at the bottom left, with the positive X to the right, the Positive Y going up, and the Positive Z going back (away from you.) I would find it very confusing if positive Y went down in a 3D program, although I kind of expect it in 2D. Humm.

UV maps are also drawn with 0,0 in the lower left, which is exactly where it should be, even though they are usually 2D. (There is a W axis, but it's not used so much in hand drawn maps.)

I guess, in the long run, it all comes down to what you're used to. All the programs I've used, except SL, use Y as the vertical axis. (I've never even seen Max, since I'm on a Mac.) So it seemed to be just another of the SL oddities to me.

But thanks, everyone, for a very interesting thread!

Absolutely. In fact, I think that explains a lot of the history as well.

People have long been used to X and Y - the 2D co-ordinate system is pretty much the first we are explicitly taught (few people even realise when they use 1D systems )

So Z is usually felt intuitively to be an "add-on" to extend XY (IMO). It could almost be defined as "the new" or "the extra" dimension.

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To a 2D game developer, X has almost always been the horizontal axis, with Y as the vertical (starting from the top, because that's how computer video memory works) - although most of us felt the system was actually more naturally YX rather than XY because of significance - but I digress

When 2D platform games became 3D first-person shooters, the newaxis was obviouslly depth into the screen. I mean, it just makes sense, right?

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To a map-maker (or virtual world simulation developer) X is obviously longitude, right - it horizontally around the globe, after all. And only a fool would not assign Y to latitude.

What's that? You want a 3D world? OK - no prob - we'll introduce Z as altitude

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And to a mathemetician - well X, Y and Z are just variable names - along with P, S, t, rho, theta, fredX, interest_earned_on_pension, etc etc etc. Sometimes these values are correlated in ways that can be represented using arbitrary axes, that are sometimes orthogonal.

When you ask mathematically inclined game developers to develop a 3D world simulator - all bets are off Just about any orthogonal system they choose can be justified, and is as good as any other - because no matter what they choose they're gonna be meeting conventions I'm used to and breaking rules you're used to, or vice-versa.

As far as radians go - they grow on you remarkably quickly when you start using them.
they're all cute and friendly (yes, I'm a geek)

I was scripting a cabinet door yesterday and I wanted it to open almost fully, but not quite. 90 degrees would've looked artificial - so maybe another half of that - nah, a touch wider, make it another half of that.

Now that I've unlearned what they taught me about the mighty degree at school, and learned about the circle's natural measure of "distance travelled around the edge" AKA the radian - I intuitively knew I wanted 7 eighths of fully open, or in LSL, PI * 7.0 / 8.0

For the purposes of this post I had to calculate that to be 157.5 degrees - WTH does that number mean anyway?

All you need to remember is that a straight line (180deg) is called PI, and all other angles are considered to be fractions and mutiples of that. A full circle is 2.0 * PI (or TWO_PI in LSL), a right-angle is PI_BY_TWO (PI / 2.0), a smidgin is PI / 100.00 or some other arb number (PI / 128.0 if you're a binary nut)

I feel this giant whooshing going over my head reading this thread.

sure - but on which axis was it whooshing?

Robin, intellectually I agree with you, I'm looking at a computer screen, it's a 2D picture. But just like TV where I see a 2D picture and interpret it as part of a 3D world, I do the same with SL - in some ways MORE in SL because I can move around and see the things change as I do so, rather than relying on the camera operator and director to choose what and how I see. I can also see if the "set" is a cut away or an "actual" house or whatever.

I can, just about, flip a mental switch and stand still and say "It's a wonderful perspective drawing done by a computer" but as soon as I move and interact, and in fact normally by default I perceive it as a 3D world in which the objects are "real" and they have a length, breadth and height, and a latitude, longitude and altitude too.

At this point I guess the rest of my defaults kick, and I'm entirely comfortable with x being EW, y being NS, z being up-down - maybe that's because I've not re-educated myself to the 3D software though.

LOL! I work with 3D in 3D too, Eloise. I think you kind of have to, to make it work.

I was just teasing Chip.

Mostly because I work more with 3D in a 3D graphics program, where you really do extrude things from a 2D shape, than I do in SL, where a 3D shape appears when you use the "Create" wand.

In the 3D programs, too, there are several viewports or windows, and most of us work with 3 or 4 of them open at a time, so although we're working on a 2D screen, we're seeing the thing we're working on from several sides at once, and one of them is normally the Top view, where the Z axis does, indeed, run from the bottom of the viewport to the top. (But it's still the Depth, not the Height, of the object. )

But yeah, it's easy to forget that we're really looking at a 2D "window" into the 3D world, and I just had to point out that we were, in all cases.

It's like when my sister and I were arguing, when I was 3 and she was 4, about whether Mighty Mouse's girlfriend wore a pink dress or a blue one. My mom started to laugh, and said that it was gray. We both disagreed, but she pointed out that it was a black and white tv; everything was gray. Which gave me pause, because I'd completely forgotten that. I was seeing it all in color, supplied by my own mind.

Isn't the mind a wonderful thing?

hehe, I'm just biased. I've been using 3ds since 1991 and it's always had Z as the vertical axis so I was thrilled to discover that SL is set up the same way. Other apps that use Y for vertical will always seem "wrong" to me, even though it's all arbitrary anyway. When working in 3ds I switch between 4 or 5 different coordinate systems depending on which view I'm in and what I'm trying to do, but the "world" coordinates are Z vertical. When I was teaching animation classes getting people to understand the various coordinate systems was always the hardest thing. For some reason a lot of people have difficulty wrapping their brains around it. I'd often use "up-down, left-right, back-forward" just to avoid having the explain it for the 87th time. "No, not THAT viewport."