How did Second Life Change Materials?

There are gotcha’s in this latest main SL Viewer 3.8.4, in the mesh upload. You can use more than 8 materials now. Gaia Clary has changed AvaStar to export more than 8 materials. But, the announcement of that change comes with a warning: don’t.

POTETO_BackStage Pass - surfash.bade SOME KIND OF BOUNCER MAN

POTETO_BackStage Pass – surfash.bade SOME KIND OF BOUNCER MAN

Also Drongle McMahon commented on the problem and what happens when we exceed the allowable polygon limit per material for mesh items. See: Second Life’s Limits

So, why does Gaia say don’t? Because the 9th material is split out into a separate linked object. I find that rather surprising. I also think it is a major addition to the learning curve. All this seems to run counter to the Lab’s normal criteria for changes and new features.

So, what is the point of having sixteen materials on an item in Blender if it imports to SL as 2 objects with 8 materials each? No one had offered a good reason.

Get Avastar-1.6-98_blender-2-70 if you want to try the 8+ material thing. I think this is an alpha version… If you are thinking about using it, you may want to get more information from the in-world support group.

There are other things happening too. See Drongle’s comment in the Knowledge Base. This one has to do with file naming changes for mesh uploads that come with this new viewer version. Gaia makes no mention of AvaStar is going to automatically create those names, I doubt it.

3 thoughts on “How did Second Life Change Materials?

  1. Pingback: Second Life Project updates 40/2: viewer and misc. notes | Inara Pey: Living in a Modem World

  2. Material limit is not new to my knowledge . Prim have such a limit , sculpty had only one face and now mesh cannot be ported in SL / OpenSim with more then 8 faces (material) per object . The way around that if necessary is to split your object. Now think about it . A materiel is also a UVmap if you want SL / OpenSim to know how to apply your texture.

    We are all advocate of lower texture size to provide for a pleasant experience with low lag. So multiplying the material = multiplying the UVmap to map them . If your object is 247 different pieces like I have seen built these days with each a maximum of 8 faces do you realy need more face to texture that object appropriatly.

    In blender you can group and split objet. Doing it in accordance not on geometric form but on materiel content is rather smart. Just a tought . More in opensim, 3d.gimisa.ca:9000 gimisa5 region import mesh building tutorial.

    Hope it helps.

    GiMiSa

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