Mesh Generator vs Mesh Studio - inworld mesh creation tool reviews?

[Pussycat Catnap]

Are there any reviews of these two competing products?

Each will take prims or sculpties assembled together in SL, and if you have fullperms - deliver to you a collada file of a mesh of the same construction.

But how do they differ?

Does either have features or limits the other lacks?

Has anyone worked with both of them?

 

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Mesh-Studio/2993083

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Mesh-Generator-Convert-Prim-into-Mesh/5445477

 

And it looks like there's a third entry in this field also:

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Prims-to-Mesh-Converter/6502340

So... any comparrisions between all of these?

 

[Laurent Bechir]

I can't answer about comparison, but here is another prim to mesh tool :

 

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/MeshConvert-convert-prims-build-to-mesh/5968750

[Pamela Galli]

I would be interested to know how these are different from using, say, Singularity to export regular prims AND sculpts as .dae, then import as .dae.

[Aquila Kytori]

Mesh Generators can :

Convert a collection of prims to a single mesh.

Reduce the number of faces used to make up a prim cylinder or sphere.

Delete faces in the prims that are 100% transparent.

..................

[ChinRey]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

I would be interested to know how these are different from using, say, Singularity to export regular prims AND sculpts as .dae, then import as .dae.

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Unlike Singularity's dae export function Mesh Studio and Mesh Generator both allow you to adjust the curve resolution and that's rather important if you want to make quality mesh with high LOD and low LI.

As for the difference between MS and MG, they both have their strong points but they're similar enough you probably don't need both.

Mesh Studio's main advantages are:

• Better control over curve resolution
• Better support
• Works flawlessly with Sculpt Studio
• Comes with a growing library of ready-made sculpts approved for meshing by their creators.

 

Mesh Generator's main advantages:

• Cheaper
• Works flawlessly with Prim Generator
• Supports all kinds of sculpts

 

The sculpt-to-mesh conversion issue is a bit problematic for several reasons:

A sculpt map has a tremendous number of vertices and tends to make rather poor mesh. Mesh Studio has a system for eliminating superfluous vertices from the sclpt map and I suppose Mesh generator has the same, but there are limits to how well they can do the job. Generally speaking in-world converters are good enough for quick-and-dirty mesh but if you want quality, you really need to clean the files up with an external editor such as Blender or Maya and once you're into that, you might as well use an external converter too. There are also issues with UV mapping, normals and physics models for sculpts of course, these may or may not be problems and if they are, the solution is again editing before uploading.

The biggest problem, however, is copyright. I know that is why Mesh Studio doesn't include unlimited sculpt support. There are no technical reasons why it can't convert any sculpt map you feed it into mesh but by limiting it to maps made by Sculpt Studio and registered at the SS/MS server as meshable, TBB hopes to limit the possibility of copyright infringements.

 

Update:

Just found out about one more rather important difference between Mesh Generator and Mesh Studio. Mesh Studio now uses smooth normals for curved surfaces while apparently Mesh generator doesn't. That's rather important since smooth normals mean you can get much smoother curved surfaces with much lower LI.You can let the uploader generate those smooth normals of course but that's not really an ideal solution.

[Sireus Shiras]

I have used both and they are both great tools the Mesh studio seems to mesh prims 20 half +1 LI example something that is 10 prims will end up as 6 prims. where as the Meshe generator seems to make most things a LI of 1.

[ChinRey]

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Sireus Shiras wrote:

I have used both and they are both great tools the Mesh studio seems to mesh prims 20 half +1 LI example something that is 10 prims will end up as 6 prims. where as the Meshe generator seems to make most things a LI of 1.

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That depends on your settings. Both scripts give you very good control over the LOD models and the LI.

But that brings up one problem with Mesh Generator that I've realized is much more important than I used to think: The lack of documentation and help.

There is a horrendous amount of garbage quality mesh created with Mesh Generator all over SL these days - including, I have to say, the example meshes that come with the script. This is not because MG can't produce good mesh, it definitely can, it's because nobody tells the buyers how to use it properly. The saddest part of this is to see all the excellent sculpt makers who have switched from Prim Generator to Mesh Generator and started producing mesh of a quality no self-respecting content creator would ever offer for sale anywhere.

Just to make one thing absolutely clear: there is no software, in world or external, that will let you just push a button to turn your carefully crafted model into SL mesh. You have to understand a little bit of how mesh works - land impact, LOD, physics models etc., etc.

Unfortunately it seems far too many Mesh Generator don't realize this because nobody ever tell them. And the result is that SL becomes littered with even more poor quality mesh - and MG earns a bad reputation among serious builders.

Mesh Studio is a bit different there because the buyers have access to good support. Builders Brewery have Mesh Studio classes for beginners and Sweet Meshes, the official Mesh Studio support group, offers tremebdous help to mesh makers at all levels.

[Sadine1488320682]

Yes, I absolutely agree with the lack of instruciton on the mesh generator. This tool is only as good as the instruction given on how to use it. When I take a 17 prim build and end up with a 43 land impact mesh, something is really really wrong. But I have no idea what it is except to spend hours and hours experimenting to see if I can figure it out. 

If anyone knows of a tutorial out there for using these In World Mesh Generators, please post it here. Or, if someone is willing to make a tutorial (in English), there are many people here in SL that would be very grateful. I'm sure there are some basic understandings of Mesh that are not intuitive, common tricks, and pearls of wisdom that newbie mesh creators like myself would benefit from.

[ChinRey]

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Sadine wrote:

I'm sure there are some basic understandings of Mesh that are not intuitive, common tricks, and pearls of wisdom that newbie mesh creators like myself would benefit from.

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There are so many tricks an techniques. The most important one is to never trust the uploader. The uploader tries to be helpful and offers to generate LoD models and physics model for you. It even offers to split meshes with too many faces into separate ones for you. Don't let it! It always messes things up. So:

• If any of the menus in the "Level of Details" tab says "Generate" and the corresponding Triangle Limit/Error Threshold is not 0, you are doing it wrong. (Plants are a special case here btw. It is never right to zero out a LoD model for a plant, so if you're making one of those and you see the word "Generate" anywhere in the uploader, you're doing it wrong).
• If the "Level of Detail" menu in the Physics tab says anything but "From File" you're doing it wrong (unless you know exactly what you're doing and one of the LoD models just happens to be spot on for the physics too).
• If you try to upload a single mesh with more than eight different textureable faces, you're doing it wrong.

I think that's the place to start. Even the most inexperienced mesh maker can create far better LoD models and physics models than the uploader and you can easily improve both LI and quality that way.