But what about modding a mesh home?

[Pamela Galli]

It just occurred to me that if I link my house together in the most efficient way, that will likely prevent people from modifiying the way they do with their non mesh houses. 

I know some people don't touch their houses but a lot of them like to use the parts to make something or other, or change things. So it seems like they could still do that to some extent if I made each wall a mesh -- and include windows or doorways etc.

So, interested in which merchants see is more important -- being able to mod or lower LI?

[Mercedes Avon]

I am a merchant but more importantly I am a consumer. I currently "live" in one of your homes. I also just helped set up a rental community that uses all your homes. I modified every single one of them in some way or another. Thus, for me personally, I would much prefer a modifiable build over lower land impact. I may be the exception though and not the rule. I am sure responses will be split.

[iCade]

As a consumer as well I will have to agree with the above poster. Low LL is nice, but if it's at the cost of having a no mod house I'll rather make do with the higher LL.

All the houses I purchased on here are mod, I wouldn't even look at a no mod house twice as even the prettiest house needs a bit of a personal touch whether that would be by taking out a wall to place a new one with an aquarium laid in or to simply get rid of an extra room that is not needed.

[Drongle McMahon]

This is a very important point. One of the fears induced by the introduction of mesh was that it would take away the creative enjoyment and enterprise, that are a major attraction of the platform, from those who did not want to learn mesh. The truth is that modular construction with mesh components provides the best of both worlds. It can give improved appearance and lower land impacy, while still allowing creative expression. This applies whether you are selling the components as an assembled whole, or whether you decide to also sell the separate components .. as extensions perhaps. If it were an all-or-nothing choice, I would vote for the modular approach, for this reason. However, I don't see why you shouldn't provide both modular and composited versions of the same build, allowing the customer to choose between adaptability and lowest land impact. Just a little bit more work  to join things up and an extra upload fee, I guess.

A major condideration with modifiable meshes is the ease with which users can change textures. Simplest for the user is to just slap on stock tileable textures. That requires careful design of the UV map with regard to scaling and orientation of UV faces. If you want to use baked textures and provide an ambient occlusion overlay, the UV mapping considerations are quite different. With some effort it is possible to arrive at a compromise that works for baked textures and tileable textures. As usual, the compromise may not be as good as either single-purpose map for it;s specific task, but the dual use map can be worth the effort in terms of xersatility of the product.

[Morgaine Christensen]

I am a merchant and a customer.  Generally, my homes are purchased from other merchants. First thing I look at is to see if the house/building permissions is Copy/Modify,  if it isn't I move on to those merchants that do.I want and need the flexiblity to make adjustments. 

For this reason, when I build houses/buildings they are generally Copy/Modify.  There will be an occasional build that is Copy only due to the usages of items included from other vendors.

I am curious what a mesh house would be like.  Am I able to easily change the textures, say from known texture vendors for walls and such?  Or, would I have to make some special textures and/or alter them.  If I can't use standard textures I am not sure I would be interested in buying a mesh house.  But, that is my personal preference.  

Mesh is a whole new world for lots of folks.  Educations is sorely lacking in my opinion. You might have to educate your customers too about retexturing.  Will you include the UV or AO maps with your creations ?  Can they use straight 3-D Textures from popular Texture merchants?

[Pamela Galli]

Not just replying to Mercedes (waves at Mercedes):

 

Thanks for that input -- I know a lot of people like to mod, and I always encourage them to do so, so the thought of handing them a house that can only be retextured makes me uncomfortable.

Modding mesh can not be as flexible as regular prims -- you could be able to retexture or unlink and copy pieces or stretch them a little but that's about it.

 

Maybe I should just provide two versions.

[Pamela Galli]

---

Morgaine Christensen wrote:

I am a merchant and a customer.  Generally, my homes are purchased from other merchants. First thing I look at is to see if the house/building permissions is Copy/Modify,  if it isn't I move on to those merchants that do.I want and need the flexiblity to make adjustments. 

For this reason, when I build houses/buildings they are generally Copy/Modify.  There will be an occasional build that is Copy only due to the usages of items included from other vendors.

I am curious what a mesh house would be like.  Am I able to easily change the textures, say from known texture vendors for walls and such?  Or, would I have to make some special textures and/or alter them.  If I can't use standard textures I am not sure I would be interested in buying a mesh house.  But, that is my personal preference.  

Mesh is a whole new world for lots of folks.  Educations is sorely lacking in my opinion. You might have to educate your customers too about retexturing.  Will you include the UV or AO maps with your creations ?  Can they use straight 3-D Textures from popular Texture merchants?

---

Yes I talked to Charlar quite a bit about LL launching an eduction campaign that consisted of something besides promoting a handful of mesh merchants.  He was on the case -- until he stopped being a Linden. So as so often before, I threw in the towel. I just wage my own little campaign on my blog. Your questions are good ones.

 

My houses will all still be modifiable -- it is the linking into meshes that cannot be modified.  For example, if I link the whole exterior into one mesh, the exterior would be like one big prim -- you could not separate the walls.

 

You can change to your own textures with a mesh house -- maybe not all textures, depending on the build, but tiling ones at least. I build houses for retail, not builder kits, so I will not be including any textures but I am sure kit-makers will provide them.

I am not interested in facilitating retexturing, since I often will have several different shaded versions of a texture depending on which face of which prim I am putting it on -- IOW I create a baked texture look tailored to each house.  People can retexture if they want but they will destroy a lot of the value, IMO. The same will be true for my mesh houses.

Here is a pic of my little mesh test house -- you can see the very subtle shading on the walls, floor,  ceiling and window sill -- you could retexture but would lose that.  This particular house is all one 8 prim mesh, so any texture would be applied to the whole thing -- but it could be split into separate meshes for each wall etc.

 

 

 

[Drongle McMahon]

How flexible thet are depends mainly on how small the mesh components are - a compromise as usual. But think of the extra interest for customers, and the extra market, for things like alternate widows/doors. It should be possible to make versatlility the overriding aim, if you decide that's a selling point.

[Medhue Simoni]

Nice!

I think this method is much more in the spirit of SL, and it just so tends to be a semi-efficient way to create. Yes, you can be a maniac and go for the super efficient method, for mesh bragging rights, but the extented use of the object could be compromised.

Plus, It not only makes it easier for the customer, but also makes for an efficient creation method for you the creator. This is what I like about animation. The more animation that I made, the less work it is to make something new. At some point, you will have made all the basic structures of the vast majority of items you need for your medium or market, from then on, everything becomes a mod of something else.

Here's a basic example of this with my boxing ring. The ropes are actually the same ropes that I used for the bridge that I made. Being that each part is less than 1 prims, the total cost of the ring is only 7 prims, which also happens to be the most efficient way to do this for physics. The customer can make any shape ring they want. Everything has it's own faces, meaning every rope, clamps, pad, pole and the base can be retextured separately, but it is all on 1 texture.

 

[Rosemaery Lorefield]

When I build a structure, I try to keep in mind that I have never, even once, just plopped down a house and not modded it in some way. Sure, I like to hope that what I made is great as is, but it is more realistic to understand that people love to customise.

I would vote for modifiable over lower impact

[Casper Priestman]

Mesh for the most part is to fascilitate more complex shapes whether it's a smooth curved wall or an avatar. From the standpoint of houses-skyboxes-builidings etc, most are planar surfaces and cubic in nature, there really is no need to make an entire house out of mesh. Notice I said "entire" because there are definitely places where mesh rocks the house, stairs being an example. or roofing, windows, etc. The smart merchant would adapt to making buildings moddable. Even a mesh wall can have 8 definable texture faces that a consumer can slap a texture on. As to a house losing value by changing baked textures....I ask....whose value? Surely not the person who bought it and lives in it, and if they're not happy with how they've changed it...drag out another with the original texture scheme intact. Consumer friendly buildings in SL will be moddable and a combination of mesh and primitive IMHO. A lot of builders are being spoiled at the moment because it's easy enough to build an object  and bake an AO texture offline. Hybrids....they're not just the cars you drive

[Jenni Darkwatch]

Depending on the house, it might be possible to still get a reasonably low LI by making the walls modular but keeping only the outside detail at lower LODs and make the inside a flat surface? Best of both worlds maybe?

It's a good question, never thought about it. From a consumer point of view, I do like moddable - in fact I usually will not buy no-mod items. On the other hand, with mesh I'll compromise somewhat. The object IMO should still be mod permission, but obviously not necessarily _quite_ as moddable as a pure prim build.

[Ashasekayi Ra]

As a consumer and a merchant, I'd say that modular is the best way to go. It would give the customer the ability to extend or remove parts as they like which gives the ultimate flexibility. On the building side, it also makes less work for you because you could reuse standard modular pieces throughout various builds.

[Pamela Galli]

Thanks all -- I was not sure which way to go but the consensus seems to be to go for versatility at this point.

[Charlotte Bartlett]

Ditto on that Pamela

Mine are modular and grouped so windows, blinds, frames, stairs etc can be reused.   I of course link them for larger linksets in world but the purchaser can unlink and reuse,retexture etc.

With good mesh building it doesn't really hugely change the overall LI either.

[Lee Lovenkraft]

I have a question I discovered that there is an addon for making houses for blender it is called Archimesh will that work for ceating homes for sl? its an awesome addon and I hope it works out because it looks like it could make hme creations faster and more realistic