What is this LI principle?

[Pamela Galli]

Thanks very much!

[Pamela Galli]

I uploaded the outer walls all joined into one mesh vs all the meshes linked, and the linked ones were cheaper. 

 

However I noticed this -- when I put the linked outer walls beside the whole house I had uploaded the other day, which has the same linked walls, the linked outerwalls had much worse LOD. They disappeared much sooner.  The upload settings were exactly the same. 

 

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

How many materials did you apply? There is a very nasty bug that screws with the LoD change when there are two or three materials.

[Pamela Galli]

About ten materials.

 

 

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

8 materials  is the maximum one mesh can officially have:

Each LOD model must retain all the materials of the highest detailed model. If your model has 8 materials, so must all your LOD models. Ignoring this will result in unpredictable texture location changes. Ignoring the materials requirement won't stop the uploader. If you have a model that is displaying textures improperly, look closely at the materials in your LOD files.
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh_and_LOD

And if you had as you said about 10 materials that might have been the cause of your problem right there.
As you can see the uploader will still allow you to upload with more materials but this might result in ugly visual outcomes regarding the Texture-Mapping.

If you had exactly 8, make sure to again check if all LODs had the exact same amount. 

Not sure if that also is the cause for the too early collapsing LODs, but it might come along with this problem.

[Drongle McMahon]

The normal effect of uploading a collada file with more than 8 materials in one mesh is that the triangles for the 9th and subsequent materials are simply omitted from the upload. From that point, it behaves as if it had 8 textures; so you can use a medium LOD with just 8 textures, but not 7.

[Pamela Galli]

Yes, the one-mesh model had parts missing. But the one I was talking about and compared to the walls that were part of the house, were the linked meshes, not the one mesh.

[Porky Gorky]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

However I noticed this -- when I put the linked outer walls beside the whole house I had uploaded the other day, which has the same linked walls, the linked outer walls had much worse LOD. They disappeared much sooner.  The upload settings were exactly the same. 

 

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This has always happened in my experience. In my tests, if you select multiple objects in your modeling program and upload them, they arrive in SL linked. If you attach them in your modeling program before uploading they arrive as one object in SL. Place these 2 identical  objects next to each other in SL and the linked one will always switch LOD's first. So I have found it is always best to attach the objects before importing them.

But doing this makes the object bigger right which would result in a higher LI? True, however, because it is bigger, an avatars camera can be further away before the LOD switches each time. This means you can get away with allot less detail on the Low LOD due to the distance of the person viewing it and sometimes you don't need the Lowest LOD at all if the build is big enough, if this is the case you just need to create a few small triangles (the same amount as the number of materials used in the model) for the lowest LOD and then you just hide it somewhere in the build. This can help offset the LI cost of having a bigger build.

Also...you need to keep your interiors separate to the exterior incase you are not doing that. When people are inside a building their camera is confined which means they may never see the lower and lowest LOD levels as they never get far enough away for them to switch. With careful planning you can design a house so that a camera can never see for more than say  20m or so without hitting a wall meaning you can get away with using just a High and Medium LOD models inside, saving LI. This is not always doable if you have a lot of glass allowing people to see in from the outside.

Building intelligent interiors can go a long way in keeping the LI down,  I keep my interiors and exteriors separate when importing, rather than attaching them to the exterior before imports, it's more LI efficient.

Also, why don't you want to use a rezzer for the house? 

[Pamela Galli]

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Porky Gorky wrote:

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Pamela Galli wrote:

However I noticed this -- when I put the linked outer walls beside the whole house I had uploaded the other day, which has the same linked walls, the linked outer walls had much worse LOD. They disappeared much sooner.  The upload settings were exactly the same. 

 

---

This has always happened in my experience. In my tests, if you select multiple objects in your modeling program and upload them, they arrive in SL linked. If you attach them in your modeling program before uploading they arrive as one object in SL. Place these 2 identical  objects next to each other in SL and the linked one will always switch LOD's first. So I have found it is always best to attach the objects before importing them.

But doing this makes the object bigger right which would result in a higher LI? True, however, because it is bigger, an avatars camera can be further away before the LOD switches each time. This means you can get away with allot less detail on the Low LOD due to the distance of the person viewing it and sometimes you don't need the Lowest LOD at all if the build is big enough, if this is the case you just need to create a few small triangles (the same amount as the number of materials used in the model) for the lowest LOD and then you just hide it somewhere in the build. This can help offset the LI cost of having a bigger build.

Also...you need to keep your interiors separate to the exterior incase you are not doing that. When people are inside a building their camera is confined which means they may never see the lower and lowest LOD levels as they never get far enough away for them to switch. With careful planning you can design a house so that a camera can never see for more than say  20m or so without hitting a wall meaning you can get away with using just a High and Medium LOD models inside, saving LI. This is not always doable if you have a lot of glass allowing people to see in from the outside.

Building intelligent interiors can go a long way in keeping the LI down,  I keep my interiors and exteriors separate when importing, rather than attaching them to the exterior before imports, it's more LI efficient.

Also, why don't you want to use a rezzer for the house? 

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I don't think we are talking about the same comparison. Both my examples were linked, separate meshes. It's just that one set of walls were part of a house, the other set not part of a house. But identical otherwise.

Why I don't want to use a rezzer: I just like to keep things as simple as possible. A rez box is just one more thing for some buyers to not understand. They copy the contents to inventory and then scream at me that they are not a builder and can't put it together. I have one bad house review because someone could not figure the rezzer out and did not contact me about it.*  Also, with the house one object they can stretch or shrink the whole house so that it can match the scale of their avatar. 

 

*Of course also I have those who contact me because they cannot understand what to if there is no rez box, no matter how many times I tell them to drag it from inventory to the ground.