importing 3d objects

Sorry if this has been discussed before as i am a complete newbie but was just wondering if it was possible to import objects made in other programs such as 3ds max into second life. Guesing probably not but would like clarification.

cheers

Bigfoist

nop

Prims are very network friendly compared to polygons so they are here to stay for a few revisions to come.

Unfortunately, no, but LL has said they'd eventually like to go that direction. It's unlikely to happen, however, until the internet gets several thousand times faster than it is right now. The reason is the dynamic, streaming nature of SL. Because SL is unlike other online worlds, in that its content is entirely user created, it is always changing. Therefore, information about how to build the world has to be constantly streamed in real time from the server to the client and back. All machines using SL are able to construct objects quickly only because all objects are made of the same building blocks. Every machine involved has pre-programmed knowledge of how to create a cube, a sphere, a cylinder, etc. Therefore the only information that needs to be streamed over the internet is where to put them and how to size them, which is a very small amount of data.

Were outside 3D models to be imported, that kind of compact description would not be possible. The full instruction set for how to create every single polygon would need to be streamed to every single client machine for every single object, which would take forever and then some.

Just so you know, this question comes up whenever anyone with any modeling experience joins SL. At first, the in-world modeling tools seem childish, even silly, and you spend 90% of your time saying "If only I could import my Maya models, or my 3DS models, or my CAD models..." As you spend some time in SL though, you'll begin to discover that this "limited" tool set, which you find so silly at first, actually forces you to employ creative problem-sovling skills and techniques that you would never normally consider. As a result, you end up becoming a better modeler both inside and outside of SL.

To use myself as an example, outside of SL I'm a Maya person. I can atest that my poly counts per average model have gone down tremendously since I started using SL while the quality has gone up, and my texturing skills have improved a hundred fold. The same is true for just about everyone I know who is in the 3D field who uses SL. Quite simply, it forces you to pay attention to detail in a way you otherwise woudn't, and that process provides tremendous growth potential for you as a modeler. Give it a few weeks and you'll see exactly what I mean.

I totally agree. For some lay people who has never used any 3D software app, they might be surprised to find that they are actually able to grasp the basics of 3ds or Maya modeling and texturing easily after being in SL for some time.

Actually, it can be done, despite what's mentioned above. See here. I've been working on the more user-friendly version, but without power at my home this week it's become... shall we say, difficult.


But said linked script is more of a kludge than it is a real tool. It does indeed use every face to create prims, and in doing so makes the data that needs to be streamed a bit large.

That said, it does work. But without some of the fundamentals of 3D design, models don't look that great in Second Life compared to tools like Blender or Maya.

See the image I attached to my first post here for an example.

Correction: Just got power back.

I can understand why they want to build in SL, I've seen too many
people import models in 3DMAX, and then into a 3D engine, like a
flight simulator or game, and because they weren't in a VR environment,
the models were just too complex, and stupid polygon counts,
enough to mess up the 3D VR engine, that expects highly optimised
models designed for the VR from the ground up.

So actually, building in a VR world itself *forces* you to build
at the most optimum level, simple way of enforcing that all the models
have the least polygon count, or built the most optimal way.

So interesting really. It should be possible to import parametric
primitives, there is probably a free modeler out there, that is
geared around parametric primitives, that can used offline.
I suppose it forces everyone to the same skill levels, and forces
everyone to be "original", so makes sense all the way.

Just of us lazy people, well, it's tempting!

I don't know if anyone knows, it's also the best method to be creative.

Give an artist a older computer with restrictions, and it will force
them to be more creative.


Give a programmer 64K of space and it's amazing the things they
can manage to do.

Games on the old 8 bit platforms were way more creative
every single byte was used the maximum, so restrictions make them
creative.

We are spoilt in this day and age, we are very wasteful of space,
and in VR you need to built to the most optimum level at all times
to maintain speed.


Try it for your self. Get an OLD machine.
That means pentium 100mhz . Yes 100mhz, NOT 1GHZ!!
and that machine will just have 256MB or ram.

Try modelling something on this platform, it seems impossible,
but it's not!!

You see to keep the speed up in modelling and keep it interactive
it *FORCES* to build things the best way possible, otherwise
it's impossible to model in the most creative way.

Once you've done something, import it into a modern
machine and modern 3D engine and prepare to be amazed
how fast the model runs!

With shaders, you can even go a step further for little memory
store complex shader textures.

If you ever ran POVRAY in the days when 100Mhz processors
were the fastest processors, that work is still showcased
as the best ever work done in ray tracing.

So in short, having to build in 2nd life with restrictions takes
a very high level of skill, a skill with modern 3D modellers,
just don't have.

Heh. I learned 3d modelling in Lightwave 3.5 (and other programs, including Imagine, POV Ray, and Rayshade) on a 33 mHz Amiga 500 (It had a 68030/882 processor upgrade from the standard 7 mHz 68000).

Don't recall how much memory it had offhand, but it was way less than 256 megs. Less than 8, I believe. I don't think even the hard drive held 256 megs. I want to say 100, which was a huge improvement over using floppy disks, and prior to that, cassette tapes...

Operating under restrictions is something I'm all too familiar with.

All this talk of old computers has got me reminiscing a bit. The first digital art I ever did was on a TRS-80 Color Computer, which my father bought me for my birthday. I was maybe seven. If I remeber correctly, it had 8K of memory when it was new. A few months later, we got it upgraded to 32K, and then it was really screamin'.

It had no hard drive, loaded everything off cassette tapes. That's right, cassette tapes. An RCA cable plugged into the back, and connected it to a tape recorder. To load a program, you'd enter the command for find, which I believe was simply "f ", followed by the program's name, and then press play on the tape recorder. You'd then wait and wait wait until the right spot on the tape was reached, and then you could use your program.

I used the machine all the time for 2 or 3 years. I can't remember if I got bored with it or if it was simply overshadowed when my brother got a Nintendo (NES, but no one called it that back then; it was just Nintendo), but whatever happened, my computing career was put on hold for the better part of a decade afterwards. I didn't get another computer until shortly before I left for college.

Anyway, I can't remember the name of the painting program I used to use, but I do remember I used to spend hours and hours with it. The machine itself could only do one of 5 colors in each pixel (white, black, red, green, or blue), so it required some creative thinking in order to make secondary colors. It was all about checkering. If you wanted purple, you'd do a checkerboard of alternating pixels of red and blue. If you wanted light green, your checkerboard would be green and white. If you wanted to do a gradient, man would you have to think.

The painting process was pretty interesting. There was no such thing as a graphical interface. The Lisa and its quick successor, the Mac, were still a couple years off, and Windows a couple more than that. So, everything was text. First you'd enter a command to select a color to paint with, then you'd move the cursor around the screen one pixel at a time with the arrow keys, and finally you'd press P to apply the color. There were two modes to paint in, equivilent to what we think of as a brush and bucket today. Depending on which mode you were in, P would either affect one pixel, or all the contiguous pixels of the same color as the pixel you were currently on. To paint a line across the screen, you'd hit arrow p arrow p arrow p... a couple hundred times.

I used to paint all kinds of things, but I remember by ultimate goal was always to be able to draw a circle. I never really got it quite right. I remember coming up sith some interesting curves and spirals along the way, but the perfect circle always remained elusive.

If you want a real challenge some time, try drawing a circle on a screen, one pixel at a time, using only arrow keys. It's really hard, especially when you're seven.

Laughing here reading your post Chosen.. I know not the right forum but couldn't resist sharing

My first "interface" with a computer was the very, very olde Sinclair ZX 80 .. similar if not same protocol of functions as the TRS - 80 ( rem buying a lot of salvage books from a company downtown at the time for a song so rem the name ... GREAT basic prigramming for the newbie I recall)

Anyway.. the ZX- 80 was "top-of-the-range" then .. I mean .. wow!
.. programming in Basic
.. also casette driven
.. 24 K ? memory is vague on that

Memories bring back good & bad ..lol

Bad - trying to program a simple word processor & a "parktown prawn" ( huge corn cricket.. at a guess 150mm long) crawled over my foot as I sat in the enclosed veranda .. <shudders>
I was so engrossed in the little screen to observe the creepy crawlies .. was summer time & patio door open for all to come visit .. welcome or not .. <chuckles>

Good - my most awesome highlight of this forerunner's computer ability was a flight simulator ( casette proggie) ... flew from South Africa to New York .. took around 12 ( or more ) hours!! ( real time computer running time) and I was so very, very overwhelmed to almost tears when I finally saw the Statue of Liberty "on flight arrival" !

So, to summarise, there is no way to import models from outside SL properly/easily?

I used Bentley's MicroStation95 some years back while I was at college studying design. I liked the ability to work with numbers easily, rather than freeform. I'm big into my geometry and like to be VERY precise about where things go and their size. I had a play with the SL build engine however and found it to be "not too bad", though I was getting very annoyed with the 3D perspective for working in and the camera never seemed to go where I wanted it to. I like my 1st/3rd angle projection views!

I now use 3DS Max although I still work with very simple shapes and low poly counts, obviously I think since a building doesn't need complexed shapes. I tend to use standard prims and shy away from NURBS etc since they're just not needed for what I'm doing.

I can easily knock up some fantastic buildings which I'd really love to sell to members of the community. I have an awesome shopping complex idea that would be perfect for SL but I don't have the patience to work in-game. A simple GMax plugin would be ideal; one that checked your creation for the number of objects etc, converted anything that wasn't prims into prims (where possible, maybe identified objects that needed to be changed prior to import) and then uploaded the item into your users inventory ingame. How perfect would that be? Come on Linden, that's GOLD!

ZX-80 and ZX-81 had 1KB of memory, ZX-82 (Spectrum) had 16KB and later 48KB.

Pretty much. The closest there is so far would be my hack of code, shameful as it is.