Help: Getting to know and exporting Mesh

Thread Started By ZeroThe10th

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#1
WARNING!!
::THE TEXTURE SAVING PART OF THIS TUTORIAL IS OUT OF DATE, TEXTURES SAVE AUTOMATICALLY NOW A DAYS SO IGNORE THE PART ABOUT MANUALLY EXTRACTING
AND CONVERTING IT.::



With Second life almost fully in mesh, following this guide will help you keep up with the times and share the wonderful mesh creations coming out everyday.

Lesson 1. Identifying Mesh

Mesh is different from prims and sculpts, and because of that you'll have to extract it differently from the older prims, but how can you tell what is mesh and what is oldprim?

The secret is the webbing,
When you select a mesh item in build mode( and with select highlighted enabled)
The mesh's triangles will glow. This is what we call the mesh webbing.
Old prim/Sculpt items do not have this webbing. So if you see webbing then it's mesh.

No webbing sculpt/prim
[Image: le7mr.jpg]

Webbing =Mesh

[Image: 2cpap1f.jpg]

------------------------------------------------------
Okay now that you know what Mesh looks like it's time to extract it from the game.

Unlike old prims you CAN NOT XML EXPORT MESH

You have to export it as a Dae or as OBJ.
DAE and OBJ are 3d /Mesh files
OBJ exporting more or less captures the Mesh and it's data but doesn't properly capture it's physics.
DAE exporting captures everything the obj does, as well as the physics, but not the weights.
Neither Dae or OBj will capture Weights.
(Weights= Rigging/ Bone control over the mesh)
So if you extract a rigged mesh dress from the game it will need to be weighted before you can wear it like the original, but that is for another topic.

Okay! back to the lesson

Method 1: using eXtinction viewer.
Pros: eXtinction has the best mesh extractor not only can it extract in OBJ but DAE as well.
Cons: The texture extractor is kind of slow, and there is no save all textures button. There is but that causes trouble as I will show you.

Step 1:
Right click on the object you wish to extract for this tutorial we'll be taking this gazebo thing here.

When the pie menu comes up we're going to Navigate our way to the Extinction menu.
Which is More> More>eXtinction
From there we are going to go eXtinction > Export DAE
[Image: 2r5b58x.gif]

When you are extracting your DAE it is very VERY VERY VERY important that your filename has .DAE at the end.

[Image: 29igd1.png]
If .DAE is not at the end of the file name it will not save properly.

Once you save your Dae go through the menu pie menu and do the same again this time select Export OBJ
Saving the OBJ is the same as creating a backup for the file.
Just in case something goes wrong with the Dae you have the Obj as a back up.

Step 2: Texture Extraction
With the mesh extracted we have to get the textures.
Navigate though the pie menu

More>More>eXtinction>Obj Textures
When you select the Obj Textures this menu will pop up.

[Image: 99299t.png]
It will bring up a list of all of the textures assigned to the mesh

The Uuids as well as the picture dimensions and the type of texture it is.

The types of texture texture is important
But before we get into that , at the top of the menu push the Typ/Type button and arrange the the textures by type.

[Image: 1zvpy14.jpg]

All of the Image files are textures and you save those by pushing the cptoinv button

Sculpts files should NOT BE SAVED and be avoided.

Why? because there are no sculpt maps in mesh, and the viewer will try to save something that is not there and it will mess up the saving. That is why you can't select save all to inventory.

The textures you saved from the list will go into your inventory.
These files are temporary and will go away if you crash or sign out.

So lets save them.

Go to your inventory and find the extracted textures in your TEXTURE folder.
Hold click on the first picture.
Hold down the SHIFT key
then click the last picture, this will select them all.
Let go of the shift key and right click on the selected pictures
This will bring up the save menu
With the save menu open select Save as.
[Image: 200sr9y.jpg]
When the next menu comes up just click next and then save.
The viewer will save all the textures to your computer in a nice folder.

TIP 1: By Default the textures name is the UUID so if you have a lot of textures you can just copy the UUID and use it in your builds without spending the Ls.

[Image: bgs5sj.jpg]

Okay that's pretty much it when it comes to extracting mesh with eXtinction.

Tip 2: I can think of is when you're extracting mesh items/building you can not extract one piece of a linked object.
For example say there is a linked building and you just want to grab the window.
so you go edit mode> edit linked parts> select the window> extract as Obj/Dae
The viewer will crash, I've tried a number of viewers and this still happens, you'll have to grab the whole house, open it in blender or some other 3d program and take the single part you want off
Or if you can afford the upload, upload the whole thing and take off the item you want.
But never do the edit linked parts things, yeah the viewer will crash.

Tip 3: The texture ripping with eXtinction is a little slow and i recommend it for single objects and not massive builds unless you have time, and when it comes to mesh extraction as well as all kinds of exporting you have to be fast. In and out before the owner or security notices.

So with that said I would recommend duel wielding viewers. Use eXtinction for the Mesh ripping and Darkstorm for the texture ripping.
Now Darkstorm does have Mesh ripping and you may be thinking why can't i just use darkstorm for the texture and mesh ripping.
Well m' friend the reason why is because Darkstorm has a really bad mesh ripper.
It gets the job done yes but it does not capture mesh as well as eXtinction and unless you do something you can only extract OBJ, which means you'll have to convert it into Dae and it won't be as accurate as it was in world and all so using darkstorm as a texture ripper and eXtinction as the mesh ripper works out best. With that said

Sub-Tutorial: Ripping textures with Darkstorm

1: Right click on the item bring up the menu
[Image: 69qm12.jpg]
2: Select Darkstorm> DS textures

3: A texture menu will pop up, SAVE ALL TO DISK
[Image: 33f3jva.jpg]
4: You will be prompted with a save menu, create a new folder and save your textures there.
It may give yo an error about something already existing but just ignore it.

5. That's it the textures will be saved on to your desktop and they will be saved in a JC2 format
You can view and convert these files by using XNViewer
found here

[To see links please register here]


Okay that's all for this lesson, stay tuned for the next lesson on exporting Mesh hair or whatever...
Byye
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Page 2 (The above is first post of this thread)
#11
thnsk for this
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#12
Light bulb moment about eXtinction, had been struggling using darkstorm until i saw this THANK YOU!!!
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