Topic: Problems with shading on imvu

[CatNoir]

Hello, I have this problem with imvu where my mesh has this wierd dark shadow on it no matter what texture i put on it. It also refuses to take texture other then 1 color. The only way to get rid of the shadow is to check "self illuminated" and thats an option i do not wish to use... Does anyone have an idea how i can fix this? Do i have to do it in blender or imvu itself? Also the "self illuminated" option does NOT change the fact i cant use anything else then a solid color as texture... added in a picture to show what the problem is (the darker part on the bell)

[kat]

Without looking at the mesh that seems about right... all meshes shade relative to light sources as a function of being three-dimensional objects and the rendering engine used.

What you may be able to do to control it better is set up Mesh Smoothing to take advantage of the natural splits the mesh has (the raised area around the waist).

If you exported using FBX it'll allow that to happen without the object having a material and texture assigned and/or when imported into IMVU, it'll display the colour assigned to the material in Blender. That should be replaceable just swapping it out with the texture that should be there (as you would normally - the difference between FBX and XMF is the latter loads the mesh white because it doesn't automatically assemble the corresponding XRF).

[CatNoir]

Thank you for the fast reply, I have to admit im not that experienced with blender yet.... i know that i used the "smooth" option on all the parts of the bell already in that picture. I watched your tutorial on youtube and i tried with the textures as shown in your video but for some reason i was not able to aply different textures to each part of the bell, it basically set all to 1 color and if i selected another color for another part it automatically changed it for all others to. Its a bit frustrating cause i spend a lot of time finally getting the bell in postion on the avatar and now i can not do anything with it aside a plain color with no detail and a dark shadow on it.... Also, swapping the texture as you would normally do when you "recolor"  something on imvu doesnt help, it will still give me a plain color bell with no texture even if the picture itself is textured. Would you be able to help me if i provide you more screenshots? and if so, what do you need the screenshots of? Again thank you for helping me out. i really want to learn how i can fix these problems.

[kat]

Post a pic of the item in situ in Blender, that's should provide enough info.

If you're wanting to assigned several *image* to different areas of the model see this on applying multiple material if you're using Blender 2.79, or this if you're using multiple materials in Blender 2.8+.

[CatNoir]

I am using Blender 2.8 and i hope this is the screenshot you were asking for. I couldn't figure out what the Situ was so i hope this is good. If not let me know and i make a new one. Also i included a imvu screenshot in create mode where i applied a spriped texture to the bell and you can clearly see its taking 1 plain color from the texture and changes the whole ball to it instead of actually using the texture. And thats basically what i want to fix. I want to be able for the bell to displa the image i use in imvu rather then picking 1 random color from it and using that in its plain form.

[kat]

Ah yep.. so what you're missing there are the material assignments (as noted already) and also UV maps - if you assign bitmap images directly to areas of the mesh as you have done, FBX appears to convert those into materials we can't really do much with in IMVU. Watch the Creatormas Baubles video if you haven't already as that goes through the process of making a similar item.

[CatNoir]

Thank you SO much, thanks to your help i fixed the problem! The method in the video was shown different then the one u have to use in 2.8 and i think that is where i got confused. With help of one of your previous links i fixed the texture problem and finally have my bell. Thank you again!

[kat]

Yeah, there's quite a few differences between the two that can make it confusing. Glad you got there in the end though!.