Mesh

[JustaTest]

This is not a complaint thread, just a suggestion that I hope the developers will take strongly into consideration and work with the experienced community artists in making this happen very soon.

I really believe it's time for an update to the in-world building tools. This feature inparticular is what sets Second Life apart from other games. It was very gratifying to build anything my imagination can take me and at the same time being able to interact with people, make new friends from all over the world, or even have others give feedback on how I may improve my builds. The great thing is it was all in realtime, I miss that so much.

As much as sculpties and meshes are such a great addition to how things are made on SL, one big thing was unaccounted and that is the social aspect of builders. The time that would be spent in game building and such is now spent in other programs to build meshes and sculpties. So now the build feature renders itself somewhat useless, aside from the occassional flexies added or invisible bounding box.

For that reason I propose that meshing options to be added in-world. I realize that this is not something that will be easily accomplished, but I have faith it can be done. I honestly don't mind doing things like photoshop or even rendering meshes outside of SL but I would like the ability to build in-world I can spend time with my family and friends and not have them feel ignored.

**Edit**

Giving out a suggestion with no steps or reference on how to go about in changing the building tools is a bit vague so I'll expand my point by adding visual aid. 

http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/5985/conceptmesheditslincomp.png

Here's a quick mockup I made to help illustrate what I mean. Later if I have time I'll add some ideas of how the builder interface can be improved without overly complicating things.

[Tara Chester Member]

I would also like that, but I also doubt we'll see it any time soon. On the other hand, I would also like SL viewer view point/navigation option with ALT+LEFT MOUSE BUTTON incorporated in the exastly same way in offline 3D software, since I found it the best, most useful and easier to use then existing navigation in any 3D software. So, if anyone is listening... 

[JustaTest]

That would be a great feature for them to look into as well.

[Min Barzane]

You can make mesh inworld if you use Mesh studio,search marketplace for it

Its a tool that converts prim build (also sculpts can be used in that build but only ones that are made with Sculpt Studio) into a mesh

[Porky Gorky Member]

I can't see how LL could match the functionality of dedicated 3D modelling programs such Maya, Max, Blender etc. Whatever LL added to the building toolset would probably be inferior in comparison. So even if you could create mesh in world straight out of the viewer then I expect most mesh creators would stick the their 3rd party software.

Even though I do the majority of my creation outside of SL I am still logged inworld at the same time, generally on both grids. So creating in mesh has not reduced my time inworld really.

[JustaTest]

To be fair, 3ds Max and the like predate Second Life by 15 or so years. In addition, their purpose was mostly for work use in the commercial industry. Building in Second Life was more recreational than anything which later turned out to be customary for residents of SL to gain profit in game and out from their creations.

As I've mentioned, SL is basically the first of it's kind to provide socialization and ingame creativity that everyone can witness, not just the maker of it like most offline mesh making programs.  If the developers can provide even the basics of mesh making in the builder interface as well as an export and import function for further modifications, that would be awesome.

[JustaTest]

Interesting, I'll have to check it out.

[JustaTest]

I just looked and unfortunately that's not what I had in mind, but thank you very much. 

[LepreKhaun]

Justatest, keep in mind that everything in SL is, at its most basic level. an asset. All "in-world building tools" do is allow one to change the parameters/attributes/properties of an asset after you rez (instantiate) it.

Moving a single vertex of a mesh, however, would require a new asset to be created, since vertex placement is not an attribute or parameter but is intrinsic to the asset itself- embedded as it is in its collada file definition (as is a pixel color in a texture).

Of course, you could script prims to represent vertices, edges and faces and have a way to interact with them to arrive at some configuration that would then generate a collada file somewhere that could then be uploaded to the asset server, much as the in-world sculpty makers do to generate sculpt maps. However, it wouldn't be trivial.