Group Photo idea

[Irene Muni]

I'm not sure if we have already talked about whether an account can send multiple photos. Of course I disagree with 5 photos of the same avatar with different outfits. But what about the same account sending 2 or 3 photos with different avatars (different shape, different age, different "animal species" ...)? Perhaps this can be included in the agenda of the next meeting.

(What's my opinion? I have no problem with multiple photos of avatars sended by only one account IF this is clearly explained in the intructuions notecard: "you can send 1 to X photos ... if you send more than 1 photo you must show totallly diferent avatars ...", something like that).

(Or perhaps this is only my concern LOL I know what's my account, but I'm never sure what's my avatar: usually I use 3 or 4 very different avatars ).

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Irene Muni wrote:

I'm not sure if we have already talked about whether an account can send multiple photos. Of course I disagree with 5 photos of the same avatar with different outfits. But what about the same account sending 2 or 3 photos with different avatars (different shape, different age, different "animal species" ...)? Perhaps this can be included in the agenda of the next meeting.

 

(What's my opinion? I have no problem with multiple photos of avatars sended by only one account IF this is clearly explained in the intructuions notecard: "you can send 1 to X photos ... if you send more than 1 photo you must show totallly diferent avatars ...", something like that).

(Or perhaps this is only my concern LOL I know what's my account, but I'm never sure what's my avatar: usually I use 3 or 4 very different avatars

).

---

You bring up a good point, Irene.  It's certainly something that needs to be considered... I'll make sure to bring it up at one of the various meetings Knowl has scheduled for Sunday.  *head spins at the thought of attending so many meetings*

It's my thought that we should place no such restrictions on photo submissions.  Considering the scope of what we are trying to do, I have no problem with multiple submissions of the same avatar in different clothing.

I'm much more concerned about the logistics required in making sure that we don't include the same exact photo more than once... not to mention the possibility that, unless we have a cohesive system in place (which I intend to make sure we do), more than one editor could be working on the same photos at the same time.

Honestly, multiple different photos of the same avatar is the least of my concerns.

...Dres

[Dresden Ceriano]

So here's the deal... I have a mainland parcel that I'm not using and for which I have no plans.  I propose that we use this parcel as our main base of operations... our headquarters, so to speak.

I'm prepared to change the parcel name to reflect our project, set it to our administrative group (giving anyone in the group rez rights), host an area for us to work on the project, as well as a central gathering place where we can get together whenever, but also provide a definitive place for group meetings.

It's a rather large parcel, so prim count should not be a concern.  In the next few days, I will be working on setting up an area where we can rez things, build things and go as far as to build the final project before we place it at it's ultimate location.  I will also work on establishing a central meeting area (with proper seating... male poses and all *winks at Knowl*), where we can hold any future meetings (except for the excruciatingly overabundant ones Knowl set up for Sunday).

My greatest hope for this offering is that it will help to codify our cohesiveness.

...Dres

[Luc Starsider]

This is mostly a short reply to the group notice you sent, Peggy. But first...

@Irene. Good point about multiple photos of the same avatar. Don't really know what I think about it... Guess it should be ok?

Peggy. I'm sure you're right about the technical workings for snapshots. You know more about it than I do. What I know is that the pictures turned out with a bigger difference in quality depending on the resolution of the snapshot. I realize there may be differences in computer setup, software and editing methods that affect the result, which is why it could be interesting to hear other peoples result on a similar test.

You're right that the end result is what matters. Getting as many residents as possible to participate is the goal, and giving easy directions to enable everybody to send snapshots is key. We have all presented out views and been heard. Thus, I'm not going to pursue this anymore. I'll be fine with whatever is decided in the end, really I will, and will work with whatever pictures we get from people. We'll end up with something amazing regardless. That's what we aim for.

- Luc -

[Luc Starsider]

It's absolutely great of you to make your land available to the project in this way! Bunch of kudos to you for doing that!

(I hope there is more than one pose available, though, just in case I manage to make it to a meeting... )

- Luc -

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Luc Starsider wrote:

(I hope there is more than one pose available, though, just in case I manage to make it to a meeting...

)

- Luc -

---

What kind of pose were you thinking of?  I'm sure I can set you up with a pose that makes you look as if you're in stirrups.

...Dres

[Luc Starsider]

Ach! I should read what I type, shouldn't I, and make sure I type all the words I meant...  

Sorry about that, and nevermind...

...

- Luc -

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Luc Starsider wrote:

Ach! I should read what I type, shouldn't I, and make sure I type all the words I meant...

 

Sorry about that, and nevermind...

...

- Luc -

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Oh give me a break, Luc.  You meant every word you said... leave it to me to twist your meaning into something nefarious.  I'm good at that, if nothing else.

...Dres

[Luc Starsider]

No, no, Dres.

I may have started trying to make a silly joke, but I'm not now. I really didn't type what I thought I did. And it was just silly anyway, and not what it read like.

- Luc -

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Luc Starsider wrote:

No, no, Dres.

I may have started trying to make a silly joke, but I'm not now. I really didn't type what I thought I did. And it was just silly anyway, and not what it read like.

- Luc -

---

Oh please, Luc... I know just what you want and I'm prepared to give it to you... just slip on these handcuffs and all your dreams will come true.

...Dres *hands you handcuffs and sternly looks you in the eye*

[Luc Starsider]

/me backs away slowly...

- Luc -

[Charolotte Caxton]

Really? Male sit poses? I specifically did not include any just for you, sigh. I suppose I still have a lot to learn.

Thanks for the headquarters offer. Sounds much larger than the temporary meeting place and besides, my butterflies are getting tired of all the company, so thanks, sounds great and I see no reason why not to accept.

Keli brings up a really good point about mesh, that others have touched upon before. One, it will dramatically cut down on prim cost, and two, from what I have seen, textures applied to mesh are much more crisp and refined in detail than textures applied to prims. However, I don't know if the textures have to be applied before upload to inworld or if you can just apply the same texture to a mesh object inworld and get the same results.

So, for our display medium, I say put it on mesh.

But what about those residents who can't see mesh? Seriously? If that is still relevant then they are missing out on a lot more of Second Life than just our project. I think even the old style Phoenix supports mesh now, so I don't really see it as being a problem. 

[Perrie Juran]

My apologies for not getting back to this thread sooner.

I didn't see where anyone had contacted Gracie so I left her a message about this thread.  With her experience doing the 1,000 Avatar project I thought she might have some pointers to help out with.  Hopefully she will reply here.

I know she put a lot of hours into it and I imagine she did go through a bit of a learning curve.

One issue I have seen here is the choice of poses.  If a central spot is set up for people to do their snapshots perhaps a pose stand with several carefully collected poses for people to choose from could work.

[Gracie Kendal]

A friend just pointed me to this  forum post. I couldn't read all the comments, way too long LOL but I am the creator of the 1000+ Avatars project. The installation  with photos of all 2000 portraits I took is still up at Coyote (the link is in the destination guide or my blog... can't log into SL to get an slurl right now) plus you can also see info on my blog www.1000avatars.wordpress.com.

[Charolotte Caxton]

Here is the slurl to your project

http://secondlife.com/destination/1000-avatars-project

A friend and I had been to see it a while back, when it was still taking submissions, but procrastination kept me from submitting. At the beginning of this thread, Tamara cited it as an example of what had already been done and several of us have been to visit since.

In our planning, we often use it as a type of reference point, to compare our vision to what has been done to what we want to do.

I really admire what you did and I think it is fantastic the way you presented it. 

[Luc Starsider]

Mesh CAN save prims, but as Dresdens experiment showed early on, it's possible to save prims using regular prims as well.

Mesh is subject to the same limitations as prims as far as textures are concerned, so the quality and crispness will be the same for mesh objects.

But, I guess, whether it's possible to use mesh is all down to the design of the display. Let's discuss...

- Luc -

[Charolotte Caxton]

No, I think textures can look better on mesh, the reason I say this is because I have two sets of eyes from the same creator in the same style, one made of prims and the other of mesh. The mesh textures look much better.

I also believe I have read that this is true in general, could you when you have time do an experiment? Just put the same texture on a prim cube and a mesh cube, outworld if you would, and then upload them and compare? Thanks

[Charolotte Caxton]

As to the design of the display, if we were just going to use panels anyways, it shouldn't really make a difference.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Charolotte Caxton wrote:

Really? Male sit poses? I specifically did not include any just for you, sigh. I suppose I still have a lot to learn.

Thanks for the headquarters offer. Sounds much larger than the temporary meeting place and besides, my butterflies are getting tired of all the company, so thanks, sounds great and I see no reason why not to accept.

Keli brings up a really good point about mesh, that others have touched upon before. One, it will dramatically cut down on prim cost, and two, from what I have seen, textures applied to mesh are much more crisp and refined in detail than textures applied to prims. However, I don't know if the textures have to be applied before upload to inworld or if you can just apply the same texture to a mesh object inworld and get the same results.

So, for our display medium, I say put it on mesh.

But what about those residents who can't see mesh? Seriously? If that is still relevant then they are missing out on a lot more of Second Life than just our project. I think even the old style Phoenix supports mesh now, so I don't really see it as being a problem. 

---

"So, for our display medium, I say put it on mesh."

You run into a problem here if people are self submitting pictures.

Though we haven't heard any current numbers to my knowledge the last official comments put 25% of Resis NOT USING mesh viewers. 

I am among them.  Not by choice per se but because mesh gives my computer indigestion and the graphics don't look as good.

[Charolotte Caxton]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

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Charolotte Caxton wrote:

Really? Male sit poses? I specifically did not include any just for you, sigh. I suppose I still have a lot to learn.

Thanks for the headquarters offer. Sounds much larger than the temporary meeting place and besides, my butterflies are getting tired of all the company, so thanks, sounds great and I see no reason why not to accept.

Keli brings up a really good point about mesh, that others have touched upon before. One, it will dramatically cut down on prim cost, and two, from what I have seen, textures applied to mesh are much more crisp and refined in detail than textures applied to prims. However, I don't know if the textures have to be applied before upload to inworld or if you can just apply the same texture to a mesh object inworld and get the same results.

So, for our display medium, I say put it on mesh.

But what about those residents who can't see mesh? Seriously? If that is still relevant then they are missing out on a lot more of Second Life than just our project. I think even the old style Phoenix supports mesh now, so I don't really see it as being a problem. 

---

"So, for our display medium, I say put it on mesh."

You run into a problem here if people are self submitting pictures.

Though we haven't heard any current numbers to my knowledge the last official comments put 25% of Resis NOT USING mesh viewers. 

I am among them.  Not by choice per se but because mesh gives my computer indigestion and the graphics don't look as good.

---

How would it be a problem if users self submit? It would be us putting it on the mesh panels, not the users.

25% not using mesh? What viewers still don't support mesh?

 

[Luc Starsider]

I'm not sure any of this is going to make sense... I think it is really hard to explain in a good way.

It is possible to get objects to look better using mesh, no doubt. The eyes could have separate textures for the iris and the rest of the eye, enabling you to use a separate 1024x1024 texture for each part of the eye. The detail possible with this approach is not possible for system eyes, for which you  can use only one 1024x1024 texture all together.

It would be possible to increase the possible detail on a cube by making a cube 2x1 polygons (in stead of 1x1 as I did on the cube I sent out in group). We could then apply pictures 1024x1024 to each of the polygons, which would give a higher degree of details. I wouldn't use 1024x512 textures for this like we have discussed up to now, because of the possibility of stretching of the texture. It would make it difficult to edit and prepare.
What this would mean is that the size of texture that would cover each cube would now have quadrupled - Each texture would change from 1024x512 to 1024x1024, and you would need two of these to cover the cube.

Pluss, the number of polygons for each cube would increase possibly not giving any savings on prim count. I don't think this would be the case, but it is possible. Would have to check.

If you want to, you can have a look at how textures differ on mesh objects by applying the same texture to the cube I sent out and to a regular cube. The result and details should be the same.

If the design are cubes, then I don't think mesh is going to give any savings on prim count. See previous answer.

- Luc -

[Perrie Juran]

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Charolotte Caxton wrote:

---

Perrie Juran wrote:

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Charolotte Caxton wrote:

Really? Male sit poses? I specifically did not include any just for you, sigh. I suppose I still have a lot to learn.

Thanks for the headquarters offer. Sounds much larger than the temporary meeting place and besides, my butterflies are getting tired of all the company, so thanks, sounds great and I see no reason why not to accept.

Keli brings up a really good point about mesh, that others have touched upon before. One, it will dramatically cut down on prim cost, and two, from what I have seen, textures applied to mesh are much more crisp and refined in detail than textures applied to prims. However, I don't know if the textures have to be applied before upload to inworld or if you can just apply the same texture to a mesh object inworld and get the same results.

So, for our display medium, I say put it on mesh.

But what about those residents who can't see mesh? Seriously? If that is still relevant then they are missing out on a lot more of Second Life than just our project. I think even the old style Phoenix supports mesh now, so I don't really see it as being a problem. 

---

"So, for our display medium, I say put it on mesh."

You run into a problem here if people are self submitting pictures.

Though we haven't heard any current numbers to my knowledge the last official comments put 25% of Resis NOT USING mesh viewers. 

I am among them.  Not by choice per se but because mesh gives my computer indigestion and the graphics don't look as good.

---

How would it be a problem if users self submit? It would be us putting it on the mesh panels, not the users.

25% not using mesh? What viewers still don't support mesh?

 

---

My bad, my misunderstanding on what the mesh was intended for.

The repositories for many pre-mesh TPV's are still available.  I have downloaded and saved the install files.  Firestorm Beta is an example.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

Quick question because I'm truly lost on things mesh.  That ability to place more than one texture on a face of a mesh object (at least, that's what I understand you said) seems to say that more textures are going to be rendered by anyone's graphics.  Prim count has two issues.  One is the parcel's resource usage (which we have focused on and are focusing on here) and a prim has to be rendered no matter what the texture is to makes up the prim.  My question is placing two 1024 x 512 textures on a mesh object (which is a prim) going to have the same texture rendering impact as it would if the textures were placed on two regular prims?  My understanding of graphics rendering of graphics says yes it would since a texture has finite file size and that size determines how much work a graphics card/adapter needs to preform no matter what the size of the prim it's place on is.  An example is prim jewerly.  A necklace might have 10 gemstones, each with it's own texture and each of those textures could be different ( one a diamond, one a ruby, one an emerald, etc).  Your graphics card has to render every texture for you to see it.  The gemstones can be so tiny that you would have to zoom extremely close to identify what it is (diamand, ruby, or whatever) and the texture size determines how easily or difficult it is for people to see the necklace completely rezzed.  A necklace with 10 1024 by 1024 unique textures will take substantially longer to rezz than a necklace with 10 128 x 128 unigue textures. 

Does a mesh, somehow, prevent such a rendering load on a graphics card?  I can't see where would unless the textures were baked on the mesh before upload.  It just a question I have before I can get behind using mesh prims for displaying anything.  Trading texture load for prim count just doesn't seem like a good trade off to me.

[Knowl Paine]

Thank you Gracie :smileyhappy:

I will definitely have to visit the Installation in Coyote. ty

Our Group will have a Meeting on Sunday.

After the Group meeting, I will have a better summary of the Group's plan.

I would enjoy meeting with you in SL to discuss and hear your opinions and insights about photo projects.

If you have some free time, I would like to meet with you. I will send you an IM Inworld.

 

Sincerely, Knowl

[UncommonTruth]

I'm not familiar at all with dynamics of mesh.. so whether or not the display would look better, save prims, whatever.. I have no idea. I do know that I have a lot of friends who are on viewers that don't support mesh. That's the main reason I don't use mesh clothes lol, shoes are the limit for me since I don't want to appear naked to so many people. My point is that I don't like the idea of using mesh panels, even if they are superior.