Mesh/Uploading a simple mesh

Mesh

• Basics

• Advanced

• Project Information

• Technical Information

• Mesh creation tools

Uploading a mesh is a straightforward process, similar to uploading an animation or texture. This tutorial covers the workflow for uploading a basic object with basic properties. If you're new to mesh, this is where you'll want to get started. This tutorial bypasses a lot of the more complex customization and advanced features of mesh; we'll get into some of those advanced features in a later tutorial.

Get a Second Life compatible mesh file

Second Life's mesh import is able to read COLLADA (.dae) files.

1. Grab your favorite 3D editor, create your model and export it as a Collada (.dae) file.
2. You are impatient and just want to try ? Then check out the duck.dae from collada.org.
3. Save the file to your hard drive in a folder where you can find it later.

Upload the mesh file to Second Life

Upload Model window

Next, take the file that you downloaded to your computer and upload it to Second Life:

1. Select Build > Upload > Model from the menu at the top of the Second Life Viewer.

   Alternatively, open My Inventory, click + at the bottom, and select Upload > Model.

   A file upload window opens.

2. Find and select the duck.dae file from your computer.

   The Upload Model window opens.

3. Enter a name for your model in the Name field.
4. Click the Upload button.

   Two new assets appear in your inventory: one in the Meshes folder, the other in the Objects folder.

   For the duck object, these new assets are named LOD3spShape.

   Note: For this tutorial, we only care about the asset in your Object folder.

Add your mesh object to the world

Rezzed object

You can now manipulate your mesh like any other object in your inventory:

1. Find the LOD3spShape object in your inventory's Objects folder.

   If you're having trouble finding the object or have a large inventory, use your inventory's RECENT tab view.

2. Drag the new object from your Objects folder to any place on the ground inworld where you have permissions to build.

   A duck model appears on the ground.

You can use the duck mesh as you would any other object -- scale it, texture it, attach it, script it, whatever you like.

Experiment with other Mesh files

Download menu from COLLADA Test Model Bank

You can also experiment uploading other files from COLLADA's repository. Due to the fact that Mesh is still in beta, you may not have success with all of these:

1. Download any .dae file from the COLLADA public repository.
2. Follow the above steps to upload this file to Second Life.

A video tutorial

Check out the video tutorial Meshes II which is about "Howto upload a Collada file to Second Life"

Continue on to Uploading a multi-face mesh.