Mesh sales have taken off

[Pamela Galli]

I reported a few months ago that ppl seemed wary of mesh. There were a lot of myths going around about it. There was not exactly a stampede to buy it.

Now, I would like to report, momentum has accelerated quite a lot. I don't have a lot of mesh stuff because rather than downloading copies off the internet, I am making it, and I am very very very slow - but what I am making (furnishings so far), is selling briskly. Finally.

However, I am seeing full perm mesh homes on the marketplace, cheap, so the more of those that flood the market, the harder it will be to remain competitive at reasonable prices.

[Maeve Balfour]

Nice to hear that Pamela - I have often wondered how mesh products are doing in regards to sales. I think it's one of those chicken and egg things... the more people can see it inworld, the more readily they will embrace it.

You can be rightly proud of yourself, though, in making everything yourself. I think genuine customers who want quality will recognise that fact, and hopefully learn to avoid the rip-off merchants selling stolen content.
Still, being competitive with the low price full perm builds would be difficult - although I often wonder at how (or if) buyers are able to customise their textures on these builds - I would assume most of these use a plain AO shadow map which would be a pretty low resolution across an entire build... customised textures would be terribly blurry and distorted. So it might be a point of leverage there...

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

On a sidenote... I am pretty disappointed lately with what I am seeing on the MP - the stolen content is really beginning to flood in now. Certain individuals are hammering out new stolen meshes pretty much every day (lifted from games, mostly AV replacements), and I think others are seeing how easy it is, and beginning to do it as well to make a lazy fast buck. It's really gathered pace the past few weeks. Much of it is just meshes dumped into SL from what I can tell.. some are too lazy to even rig them (calling game ripped characters "statues"). Many I suspect don't even have UV-maps. Almost NONE of them specify LI costs (usually an instant clue).
There's only so much one can do in regards to notifying the original IP owners / creators. It's pretty sad, the way this is going (though I am hardly surprised by the fact).

[Medhue Simoni]

Heck, I still only have a few mesh for sale but I sell something mesh everyday.

Hmm, I just searched mesh avatars and I didn't see too many ripped characters. Then again, I would never spot them as I'm not much of a gamer. What I did see. OMG! I can't believe how many people are making human avatars to replace the default avatar. A good 90% are all female avatars too. Hello creators! Women love to buy clothing. Almost no clothing, except unrigged meshes and sculpties will work on a human mesh avatar. It doesn't make sense to think that women are going to give up the joys of shopping for clothing just because of 1 avatar.

So, we will have this awesome new tool called the deformer coming, that will revolutionize clothing in SL, yet these creators decided to make avatars that can't work with it. I'm dumbfounded again.

[Pamela Galli]

Something tells me the "creators" did not make anything, just uploaded it.

 

Not all of the stuff that has been or will be uploaded is ripped -- there is more than enough legally obtained stuff to upload and fill SL several times over. This is not like sculpts, folks.

[Madeliefste Oh]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

I reported a few months ago that ppl seemed wary of mesh. There were a lot of myths going around about it. There was not exactly a stampede to buy it.

---

Mesh sales have been taken off for my brand since Phoenix has mesh integrated in the viewer. Nowadays I don't see much difference anymore in sales for sculpted items versus mesh items. In both categories I have items that sell very good, and items that hardly run. 

I often get requests from customers to make a specific item for them. When I ask: 'Can it be mesh?', about half a year ago the standard answer was: 'Oh no, please, I would like to have a sculpty'. Nowadays I get that answer much lesser.

On the other hand I do get more questions like 'Do you have or plan to make a sculpted version of your this-or-that mesh object? While I never had the request till now for a mesh version of one of my sculpties.

Most people seem to have at least two friends who ' have a computer that cannot run a mesh viewer'.

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Pamela Galli wrote:

 

Now, I would like to report, momentum has accelerated quite a lot. I don't have a lot of mesh stuff because rather than downloading copies off the internet, I am making it, and I am very very very slow - but what I am making (furnishings so far), is selling briskly. Finally.

 

---

 

I'm a slow creator as well. Though I work with 3d for more then two years now, I'm still in a learning process and develloping my skills. I also am a detaillist, and I can imagen that counts for you too. The more details you pay attention to, the more time it will cost to make something that fits your own standards. But I think that in the end this eye for details is what often is recognised by customers as 'quality', and above all good quality is what sells in SL.So the disadvantage of working slowly and thus produce less products then when you work fast has it's advantage as well in terms of quality.

[Johan Laurasia]

It's not particulary easy to find content "ready to upload" to SL.  Sure, there's alot of collada content out there, especially Google 3D warehouse, and some of it does translate to SL pretty well, but alot of stuff that really looks good isn't optimized for gaming situations (more for rendering where vertex count doesn't really matter).

EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF MESH CONTENT that I sell was created entirely by me, in Blender, and I wouldn't consider using someone else's content for an item I would sell.  I do at times use reference photos to create something, but that's standard practice in all 3D modeling and not considered stealing in any way.

If anyone out there is selling content that they did not create, then the creator should be informed so they can register a complaint with LL.

[Medhue Simoni]

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

I often get requests from customers to make a specific item for them. When I ask: 'Can it be mesh?', about half a year ago the standard answer was: 'Oh no, please, I would like to have a sculpty'. Nowadays I get that answer much lesser.

On the other hand I do get more questions like 'Do you have or plan to make a sculpted version of your this-or-that mesh object? While I never had the request till now for a mesh version of one of my sculpties.

Most people seem to have at least two friends who ' have a computer that cannot run a mesh viewer'.

---

I think most people still do not understand completely what the issues are and why they should use mesh.

Yesterday, I had a customer ask about my combat system. They are running a Old Western themed sim. After explaining the system to them, they ask me to come see their sim. The whole sim is very well done, with tons of stuff to play with, which makes my system perfect for them.

The bad part was that there were tons of sculpties. This lowered my frame rate to about 16, when mine usually hangs around 35 fps. Don't get me wrong, the sim and some of the items they chose to use are definitely beautiful products. The issue is total data.

For example, there was this stunning animated blacksmith. I can't even imagine the total data this costs for your pc to render it. The blacksmith easily used 40 sculpties, all with their own textures. Now compared this to a well made mesh version. It might need 2-3 separate meshes, and 1 texture. 2 textures at the max. Can you imagine the total data difference?

There was even 1 section with a good 50 horses, which was impossible to walk thru. The diliation on the sim was .995 but I couldn't move fast because of all the data my pc was trying to process. Imagine, if all those horses were mesh. You are talking gigs of data that you are saving.

I pointed much of this out to them, showing them some mesh examples and making them view the mesh/sculpty comparison in wireframe mode. They were shocked. I've tried to explain this to other sim owners, but generally, they just don't want to hear it. I have little time for people like this and it is very likely those people will lose out to the 1's that do listen. Not that I'm some expert. It's just obvious.

 

Oh, and I been trying to get people to ask the creators for mesh versions. I understand how much it costs to acquire all those items that people buy for their sims, and asking the creators to redo those items in mesh is really the only viable way to get those items again without paying an arm and a leg for them.

[Pamela Galli]

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Johan Laurasia wrote:

It's not particulary easy to find content "ready to upload" to SL.  Sure, there's alot of collada content out there, especially Google 3D warehouse, and some of it does translate to SL pretty well, but alot of stuff that really looks good isn't optimized for gaming situations (more for rendering where vertex count doesn't really matter).

EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF MESH CONTENT that I sell was created entirely by me, in Blender, and I wouldn't consider using someone else's content for an item I would sell.  I do at times use reference photos to create something, but that's standard practice in all 3D modeling and not considered stealing in any way.

If anyone out there is selling content that they did not create, then the creator should be informed so they can register a complaint with LL.

---

I am happy to buy mesh kits in SL and use them with the stuff I create. And given the fact that there is a ton of stuff out there on the internet that is legal to sell in SL, I am not saying I am above doing that either.  Just that I have not so far.  But this is my full time job, and I have to do what it takes to stay competitive, as long as it is legal. And keep in mind not everyone is so scrupulous about the legal part, and I have to compete against them too.  This is not the way I prefer things to be, but it is the way things are. If I am spending a huge amount of time creating content the value of which is being driven down by cheap uploaded mesh, I have to do something different.

[Pamela Galli]

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

 

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I'm a slow creator as well. Though I work with 3d for more then two years now, I'm still in a learning process and develloping my skills. I also am a detaillist, and I can imagen that counts for you too. The more details you pay attention to, the more time it will cost to make something that fits your own standards. But I think that in the end this eye for details is what often is recognised by customers as 'quality', and above all good quality is what sells in SL.So the disadvantage of working slowly and thus produce less products then when you work fast has it's advantage as well in terms of quality.

---

This is a model that has worked well for you and for me til now -- but things change, and I think this model is vulnerable.

[Medhue Simoni]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

 

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I'm a slow creator as well. Though I work with 3d for more then two years now, I'm still in a learning process and develloping my skills. I also am a detaillist, and I can imagen that counts for you too. The more details you pay attention to, the more time it will cost to make something that fits your own standards. But I think that in the end this eye for details is what often is recognised by customers as 'quality', and above all good quality is what sells in SL.So the disadvantage of working slowly and thus produce less products then when you work fast has it's advantage as well in terms of quality.

---

This is a model that has worked well for you and for me til now -- but things change, and I think this model is vulnerable.

---

Well, I think it comes down to what you choose to make, and believe me, it's not obvious what to make, lol.

Recently, I released a few different products. 1 I agonized over, the other I did in a few days. The 1 I did in a few days, sells many times more than the 1 I agonized over. I would have never guessed that the other product would sell more. It seems way more obscure than the 1 I worked weeks on. Not to the public tho. It seems people have been waiting for the other 1 for a while now, lol

So, I think it is way more about what you make than how long it takes. That said, as business people, we all have to make business decisions. If you always focus on getting the product esoterically better, It's likely you will be left in the dust.

For me, the first step is to get a good outline of the product done. Then, see how it all fits together, tweaking where needed. At some point, I have to get it to the market tho, and that is always a business decision. Plus, in my case, I need to see the reaction of customers, as what I make is all very subjective and very much based on opinions. After I get some feedback, I will make changes, if needed right away, or save that feedback for when I update the product at some future date.

Generally, for my customers, they love this format. Most love what they initially get, but when they get the update, they are very happy. In some cases, they prefer the old 1, and that is fine also. For you 2 tho, I understand that it doesn't quite work that way.

[Madeliefste Oh]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

 

This is a model that has worked well for you and for me til now -- but things change, and I think this model is vulnerable.

---

I think the complete SL economy is vulnerable. Hours spend online are declining, more people leave at the backdoor then there are coming in at the frontdoor, and price dumping is still going on. It is not inconceivable that one day you need to have another source of income next to SL to make a living out of your content creation.

Putting much time the creation of your content is not a waist of time in my opinion. When you invest time in improving your skills, you invest time in your own future. Mesh is not only interesting for SL, there are a lot more applications for 3D objects. In the future you might want to sell your content on other platforms or sites as well. 

Based on what I make in SL, I am asked to do some custom 3d work for a rl compagny. It pays very well. They told me they will have more work for me in the future.

[Pamela Galli]

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

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Pamela Galli wrote:

 

This is a model that has worked well for you and for me til now -- but things change, and I think this model is vulnerable.

---

I think the complete SL economy is vulnerable. Hours spend online are declining, more people leave at the backdoor then there are coming in at the frontdoor, and price dumping is still going on.

It is not inconceivable

that one day you need to have another source of income next to SL to make a living out of your content creation.

Putting much time the creation of your content is not a waist of time in my opinion. When you invest time in improving your skills, you invest time in your own future. Mesh is not only interesting for SL, there are a lot more applications for 3D objects. In the future you might want to sell your content on other platforms or sites as well. 

Based on what I make in SL, I am asked to do some custom 3d work for a rl compagny. It pays very well. They told me they will have more work for me in the future.

---

 

I guess it might come to that. I like having a store, and talking to customers, etc. -- but I do have to spend a huge amount of time explaining how SL works to some customers, or playing 20 questions to figure out what their problem is, to say nothing of those who are rude, and so on, and I would miss none of that.

[Pamela Galli]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

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Pamela Galli wrote:

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

 

---

 

I'm a slow creator as well. Though I work with 3d for more then two years now, I'm still in a learning process and develloping my skills. I also am a detaillist, and I can imagen that counts for you too. The more details you pay attention to, the more time it will cost to make something that fits your own standards. But I think that in the end this eye for details is what often is recognised by customers as 'quality', and above all good quality is what sells in SL.So the disadvantage of working slowly and thus produce less products then when you work fast has it's advantage as well in terms of quality.

---

This is a model that has worked well for you and for me til now -- but things change, and I think this model is vulnerable.

---

Well, I think it comes down to what you choose to make, and believe me, it's not obvious what to make, lol.

Recently, I released a few different products. 1 I agonized over, the other I did in a few days. The 1 I did in a few days, sells many times more than the 1 I agonized over. I would have never guessed that the other product would sell more. It seems way more obscure than the 1 I worked weeks on. Not to the public tho. It seems people have been waiting for the other 1 for a while now, lol

So, I think it is way more about what you make than how long it takes. That said, as business people, we all have to make business decisions. If you always focus on getting the product esoterically better, It's likely you will be left in the dust.

For me, the first step is to get a good outline of the product done. Then, see how it all fits together, tweaking where needed. At some point, I have to get it to the market tho, and that is always a business decision. Plus, in my case, I need to see the reaction of customers, as what I make is all very subjective and very much based on opinions. After I get some feedback, I will make changes, if needed right away, or save that feedback for when I update the product at some future date.

Generally, for my customers, they love this format. Most love what they initially get, but when they get the update, they are very happy. In some cases, they prefer the old 1, and that is fine also. For you 2 tho, I understand that it doesn't quite work that way.

---

I start getting a little panicky and desperate after I have worked for weeks on something and am only halfway finished. I think I will never be able to pay for the time it took. Yet over several years, it seems to pay off. Hopefully as my mesh skills progress and I don't spend a couple days a week floundering around trying to figure out how I broke something, I will speed up. But the texturing is always the thing that takes the longest, and that doesn't change with mesh. Each texture I upload about 20 times before I get it right, all the while despairing I will ever finish the project.  It would be a different experience indeed if I was not trying to make a living.

[Madeliefste Oh]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

I guess it might come to that. I like having a store, and talking to customers, etc. -- but I do have to spend a huge amount of time explaining how SL works to some customers, or playing 20 questions to figure out what their problem is, to say nothing of those who are rude, and so on, and I would miss none of that.

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My partner in cYo did some rl work as well. He was for example approched by an rl real estate agent who wanted of 3d picture of a couple of houses they sell. He got their floor plans, builded the wall like in the floor plan, what is easy to do. The most work was putting in the furniture. But since he had made some furniture items already, he could fill most rooms with stuff he had available.

In rl achitecture 3D is an important development, its is a very big market. Many architects are learning 3D or working with it already. But their work is about the contruction of the building. For presentations and such they will need furniture and decorative elements, it's all way too time consuming to make it themselves.

So I can imagen in the future something like this might be an interesting field for you, when SL can no longer garantuee your income.

[Medhue Simoni]

On that note-

There are also some other immerging programs and online environments. Recently, I've decided to start making animations to sell on DazStudio's website. This is exactly why I was encouraging creators to learn mesh. Once you get good at it, there are many other doors, especially for people with a history of being their own boss.