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Mesh Open Beta Begins on October 13th


Jack.Linden

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Following on from my previous post, I am delighted to announce that we will begin the Mesh Open Beta on Wednesday, October 13th, allowing all Residents to experiment with our new mesh upload fuctionality. We’re extremely excited about this project; here is what to expect from the beta program:

On October 13th, you will find a new “Mesh Project Viewer” on the Downloads page, which will be available for any Resident to download. This Viewer cannot connect you to the main grid; instead, it will take you to a development grid (called Aditi) where mesh has been enabled. After you download the Mesh Project Viewer and log in to Aditi, you can then experiment with mesh without impacting your regular SL account. The mesh features should be fully functional, so you’ll be able to upload mesh files, define their physical shape, apply them to objects, and link multiple mesh objects together.

Some aspects of mesh are complex, but don’t worry -- we will also provide documentation explaining how to get started with mesh, along with some simple examples to get you started.

The main purpose of the beta is to have as many folks trying out the technology as we can, so that we can improve the quality and iron out any issues early. I’ll blog again on our progress shortly and will also let you know how best to file bugs or give us other feedback. We are still actively working on the user interface for mesh, so you should expect this to look a little rough for a while as we polish it up and make changes based on your feedback.

So, if you’re someone who is comfortable trying out beta software, and you’re interested in creating mesh objects in Second Life -- a whole new level of creativity -- please do put October 13th in your diary!  The more involved you get, the better it will be!

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Looking forward to seeing what a mesh i can make

Oh what about cost to upload mesh on aditi? No way to get any moola there.

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I can and do dole out the L$ on ADITI for testing purposes all the time. I'll make sure that every account on ADITI has enough 'moola' to test mesh when the time comes.

 

__Oskar

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I would think the test/beta run would be free esp on the Aditi grid. Either way it will be fun to experiment with!! Thanks for adding this in LL!

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Do we have any poly per prim numbers yet? and also wanted to know about the sizes that are going to be allowed? will we still be restricted to 10x10x10? I am also excited about this! I have already started my mesh objects to import and wanted to see what my restrictions are!

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Does this mean that the NDA has been resinded?  So that the people that were not part of (and didn't know about) the closed beta can now find out what functionality wil be part of mesh, so they can scramble to catch up.  For Example, is rigging and multiple "animations" allowed, if so how are they activated.  If something is attached to an "animated" mess will it move with it?  Can we specify different mesh density for different viewing at different distances?  Are all the capabilities of COLLADA supported?

Please provide the doocumentation as soon as possible.  And please if the NDA is lifted, can someone that was in the closed beta provide tips and hints and maybe even more information from their prospective.

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  • Lindens

Yes, mesh will be free during the testing on aditi.  Details of pricing once it goes live on agni have not been finalized yet.

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I am extremely worried this will destroy the SL economy. With so many torrents offering free (illegal) mesh created objects such as furniture,  at such high level and supposedly low prim count and upload charges, surely this will put MANY people out of business and result in everyone just uploading their own things. As beautiful things i know can be made in mesh, i know the tens of thousands of stolen content that is easily accessable and could be brought in world to destroy the market.

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  • Lindens

Spritely, yes, the NDA has been lifted - see the post announcing that at http://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2010/09/14/next-steps-for-mesh-import.

Rigging is is attachment based; if you import a mesh with compatible bone weight information, you will be able to use it as an attachment that will animate along with your standard avatar.  If you wish, you can use an alpha mask to make your standard avatar invisible, giving a fully mesh-based appearance.  It is also possible to use multiple mesh attachments, so for example you could have a mesh jacket or mesh hair that animates along with your mesh body.  Specifying different mesh densities (LODs) for different distances is supported.

More documentation is coming soon.

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Hurray! Thank you LL! I look forward to jumping in and starting the learning and experimenting. I think the open beta will do much to alleviate much of the anxiety around the coming of mesh. There will be bumps, rough spots, and occasional frustration to be sure, but if there is one thing we SL residents are good at, it is helping each other.

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Very excited to play with mesh in SL im a user of Lightwave 3d rendering software so im converting some of my meshs from that to the collota file format for SL mesh. Also can you tell us more on File formats that will be used to import meshs into SL. so we can get ready.

Thank you

Damian.

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Will you be making available pre-rigged avatar models for those of us who know nothing about this feature?

I make clothes and would love to make bendy boots and jackets etc but rigging sounds very complicated.

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Kittrannia, rigging is not really all that hard, but I'm sure that LL will supply us with a rigged model, probably in a collada format. If not then within minutes of release, some1 will give out a free rigged model, and probably in a number of formats to fit each program. Plus, there are hundreds of tutorials on Youtube about rigging in just about any program you can think of.

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I am so super excited about mesh import.

Yes mesh will probably shake things up in the economy to the detriment of some but mostly to the benefit of all.

SL has to grow and evolve or it will die.

Those worried about their businesses I ask would you rather not have mesh and have that business for just a few more years at best or would you rather add mesh and see SL thrive and be around for another ten years?

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Suite, It's just not going to be that easy. I've not tested anything yet, but from what I understand, what we'll be importing is a collada file, or dae file. This means that the person who imports the mesh will need to own and know how to use a 3d model making program like Blender, 3ds Max or Maya. I think Dazstudio also allows for collada creations. It is not just a matter of downloading an obj file and then uploading it to SL.

The only things I want to know are more details on the collada format.

Also, it was real interesting to see how the mesh is applied to the skeleton. It makes me wonder if it would be possible, someday, to create a mesh tail with it's own bone structure and attach that. Oh boy that would be super cool. Imagine making a hand with it's own bone structure. Who knows tho, maybe we'll be able to script a mesh hand to work with an ao. Anyways, as an animator, I love SL's current bvh animation system, and I think it is far superior than any other way to use animation in a virtual world, so seeing that collada and our current system can easily work together makes me very happy. But.... I'd love to know more about how future plans for collada, animating, and SL will be moving.

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"After you download the Mesh Project Viewer and log in to Aditi, you can  then experiment with mesh without impacting your regular SL account." - Jack Linden

As far as that reads to me is it won't cost to try this during the Beta though it also means they work won't be saved to the servers other then temporarialy on Aditi so if you get something you like done in Mesh keep the file on your hard drive incase they decide to take it to full functionalitty on the main servers

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Will it be possible, either now or in the future, to directly create avatar meshes (instead of just mesh attachments and alpha skins)? This would make some awesome non-human avatars.

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LadyDi, you can make non-human avatars with the current mesh implementation already

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Abel, there is no size restriction for mesh models. You can make them any size you want. However, at the last beta meeting Lindens said that large size mesh models have a high streaming cost and to avoid that large models will have a higher prim cost. There are some objections from beta testers however. Things are still pretty much on the drawing board.

You can find some additional information on this here: http://bit.ly/awb80H

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