Rod Humble interview and new Drax Files

[Perrie Juran]

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Amie Kaestner wrote:

"I actually regard the Second Life community as far more polite and less vitriolic then many video game communities I’ve managed, maybe it’s just my experience but for me it’s a step up." - Rodvik Humble

 

Something tells me Roddy hasn't been to a welcome area lately.

 

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Let's see.  His feed  is closed, His E Mail is probably set to filter out E Mails with profanity, He never posts in the Forums, don't know the last time he posted over in SLU, there is his broken promise to the Merchants to improve communications with them, the JIRA's are closed.

The general population of SL may be a little more civil then other places, but that doesn't mean that their aren't people who get pisssed or who are pisssed. 

Basically he has closed the doors to any one except those he knows talk nice.  But just because someone talks nice doesn't mean they will be right or have the best in ideas.  As the old cliche goes, "The road to hell is paved with people with good intentions."

There are a lot of us who have a passion for SL and while we may not wax vitriolic, we still feel like the doors to communicate are closed to us.  That just is not a good thing.

 

[Perrie Juran]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

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Perrie Juran wrote:

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I guess overall one of my concerns is that the new creation tools, because of the learning curve involved, that it may serve to discourage more people than to encourage them at this present time.

 

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7 years ago, the only thing I knew about 3D gaming came from the Editor that came with Far Cry. I didn't know anything at all about animation. Then, I found SL. Doing animation for SL happens all outside of SL and is brought in. For this reason, importing meshes isn't much different to me. I learned how to make meshes because I heard LL talking about it, just like I learned how to make animations before that. All the information is online. SL is like a massive introduction into the basics of 3D creation. Every single 3D program has a set of primitive to start with, almost exactly like SL. This is why, in some areas, you won't see much difference between some prim and mesh objects, especially when sculpties are brought into the picture. What people don't see, is what is going on behind the scenes, and how much more efficient that mesh is over the prim version.

With mesh, a creator has total control over everything. Just creating good UV maps for meshes helps to lower the resources needed to render it. The only reason that I understand all this is because of the Far Cry game and how everything was made in there. I edited lots of clothing in the game and it was crazy how efficiently made each texture map was. Most of the lag issues in SL are directly linked to inefficiencies in the creations that populate it. Some are ridiculously extreme too, because people can. I agree that their are some beautiful things that were made with prims and sculpties, but it doesn't help to reduce lag by saving those old things. Plus, new things will come.

 

My point is tho, that mesh is necessary to cut down on the lag and resources every1 is using. Prims, by their very nature promote inefficiency. My other point is that everything happens in steps that are easy to learn step by step. Learning SL creation is 1 step, and it makes learning 3DS Max, Maya, or Blender easier. I first got a copy of 3DS Max a few years before I found SL. It was massively intimidating. I was clueless, no matter how many tutorials I did. It was all just too much new info. When I broke it out again after hearing LL suggest mesh was coming. Like magic, I was making meshes in no time at all. Ok, yeah, I'm more of an animator, but SL has now brought me into the whole 3D metaverse, and now I sell digital items in just about every 3D market possible, with more opportunities daily. It's hard to keep track now. SL is now a gateway to the professional 3D community. I really don't look at it like the pros are going to walk all over us. I look at it like the pros better watch out for their 3D competitors in SL.

It wouldn't surprise me at all to someday see mesh creation tools in SL. That would make things really interesting. I'm not sure I would prefer that as a creator, over 3ds Max, but it would be fun to manipulate them inworld. How would the UV map be made tho? Hmmm.

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All excellent points.

[Ceka Cianci]

if they want to retain any kind of decent numbers in new users..

they have been told time and time again..

clean up the areas that those users get their first impressions of this world..

thier info hubs..

LL needs to take them by the hand and give them a soft landing into this world..

 

instead what have they done..ended the mentor program leaving it up to users themselves to decide to go and be mentors..

and also drop new users all over the world..

they have so many new users chased out of this world by other users ..and it's LL's changes that increased that happening..

they can't even get two feet in the door before they meet the worst part of SL..those that hang in info hubs to give new users a hard time or flood them with advertising and scams..

 

Sorry rob but this has been something told over and over when it came to holding onto new users just getting here for the first time..

 

400k a month..you guys should be trying harder to keep those people..not us..

[Prokofy Neva]

This is interesting, but sad (for an old-timer like me) that the Game God will not descend into the World this year and do one of his walkabouts. In the past, whether it was Philip Linden or M Linden, they would actually come inworld for the birthday and give a speech.

Now, to be sure, you couldn't get near the sim unless you knew somebody who knew somebody who knew a Linden, but you could at least press your nose to the glass on the next sim over, and if they put 4 sims together, that meant at least 160 lucky people would get to be present for the event. In the old days, they used to have relay radios put on sims where you could hear the Great Leader speak as in a Fireside Chat. It was fun.

But now he's only viewable not in real-time, on a machinima prepared by Draxtor. So it's like a canned televised message from the president, not live.

It would be one thing if the world was so big that it no longer made sense to appear for 160 or 16,000 spread out on many sims with radios. But the world is smaller and has shrunk.

Then as for his "state of the union" address -- well, half a billion dollars in user-to-user transactions is a great story and a great secret in Silicon Valley that should get more attention. But this "creativity" fetishizing loses sight of the fact that 10 percent of the population are making most of the content for the other 90%, and that it is really far more about consumers and amateur creativity of decoration, lifestyle, RP, etc. than about the physical act of creation on Blender or whatever.

It's also true as others have said that the new tools of mesh and materials and such are elitist and are no longer doable inworld. If somebody has jimmied up some inworld facsimile, that doesn't count and probably only works for certain photorealistic textured buildings or something, not complex stuff.

 

[Medhue Simoni]

Hey Prok! Good to see you still around and kicking.

 

I completely and totally agree with hearing the CEO speak at the birthday event. It was really 1 of the few events that I looked forward to every year. I would have even come to a convention, eventually, just to see the speeches and presentations live. Sadly, those will probably never happen again either.

Of course, I have to defend the creativity and mesh parts, as I truely think they are misconceptions. There are over 3 million items for sale on the Marketplace. Now, I have no idea how LL came up with this 10% figure, but even if they are correct, that's a fricken super high number, not a low number. Think of it like this, if you have 10 friends in SL, 1 of them is likely a major supplier of something in SL. The bottom line is, almost every single person that sticks around in SL, has numerous creative moments. If you want to think of designing a room or putting together a garden as "amateur creativity of decoration", I guess that is your opinion, but I don't think of it like that, especially designing an RP sim. Heck, like I said earlier, even I buy items instead of making them. Why make something when some1 else already has. So, even I, the elitist, that knows all the programs, am reduced to a lowly consumer and decorator. Thank god, as I'd never want to make everything I wanted or needed. I have enough trouble keeping up with animation work.

Making a mesh in 3ds Max, or any other mesh creation program, is almost exactly the same as making an item in SL. There is little to no difference, essentially. The same way that you would make a bicycle in SL, is how you would make a bicycle in 3ds Max, even down to holding shift and moving the item to create a copy of it. Creating a UV map for the mesh, that is different, and LL's convoluted Land Impact system makes mesh different in reguards to creation. It's not that complicated. It's actually pretty basic. It all just looks intimidating. Like I said earlier in this thread, making a mesh in 3ds Max is 1 small step up from making a prim object in SL. So many focus on mesh not being created in SL, which to me is kind of goofy to focus on, as everything, besides prims, is created outside of SL and brought in. I don't see the difference.

I should probably mention the differences between a mesh created in a program, and the prims that are created in SL and reimported into SL as a mesh. Of course, I haven't ever used it, but I understand a little about the concept. You don't get all the benefits of an actual mesh, you'll be using more verticies than is required, and no benefit with texturing. An SL cube, for example, has many more verticies than a normal mesh cube. This is because it needs those extra verticies to be able to make that cube into the various shapes that we can in SL. I'm not against any1 using the tool to make meshes, but every1 should understand that it's not efficient just because it is a mesh. That goes for all mesh tho, as a creator can easily make a mesh that is much more inefficient than a prim build.

[Jo Yardley]

Yes but 3ds Max is very expensive and so are many other mesh programms.

And the ones I tried (free ones) were too complicated for me, and I've been building with prims for 4 years.

So if it wasn't for Mesh Studio, I'd probably still not be building any mesh stuff and be very upset about it.

LL should incooperate MS into its viewer.

Bring the joy of making mesh to everyone, for free.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

And the response is -- that's great, but not everybody likes that look. It's a look that works great for 1920s Berlin. It's not a look that works great for everything. Photorealism often just looks terrible in SL because it doesn't fit with the rest of the world which is Linden-made (like roads and trees) from drawings or a "fantasy" look for a virtual world.

Photorealistic textures substitute the photo for the prims -- but then that means the feeling of heft or depth or weight disappears and you feel as if you are moving among postcards. It doesn't matter if those postcards are hugely convincing and competently done. They still have a feel that doesn't fit in many places. Prims give you more of a feeling of immersion because each individual object has dimensions on the grid; the sculpty is often something you can't place another object on and ditto the mesh because it has no solidity.

This is something that no one ever talks about and for some people spending a lot of time chatting in IMs or just dressing their avatar, the look and heft of the world doesn't matter. But it does to others, especially those who grew up thinking in terms of "prim craftsmenship".

Constantly affirming that photorealism "looks better" and shows off 3D tools better just doesn't matter, because these are questions of feeling and taste and custom, and people either like it or they don't.

[Jo Yardley]

But that doesn't make much of a difference for making mesh or not.

You can make fantasy stuff or use non-photo textures for mesh as well.

[Prokofy Neva]

The people who are in the privileged creator class always find it hard to admit it and admit that SL is increasingly becoming a world of creator haves and have-nots, they always try to downplay it and minimize the difficulties and learning curves of the tools because they are uncomfortable with the idea that they are in some tiny guild of craftsmen and everybody else isn't.

But that is most definitely the case in SL and those outside of the guild get it completely. It doesn't matter if there are 3 million items for sale -- hundreds of them might be pieces of junk that I make, for example, that no one will ever buy except as a joke. And there are millions of freebies that people don't value and just don't purchase. It's completely misleading to cite a figure like 3 million and pretend that means we are all little Michaelangelos. We aren't.

Each person who purchases content and makes a house, whether it rezzes out with all its furniture in place or whether they place it after shopping trips (more often) is in fact an example of the "amateur creativity of decoration" that is not understood and promoted enough in this world and therefore the "differently abled creativity" of the consumer versus the prosumer is not supported enough and retention fails.

It's ridiculous to go on affirming that ordinary people -- let alone very savvy power users like myself who run sims and put out content and even make content -- are going to become guild masters. They're not. Some people are good in art; some aren't. Some have good eye-hand coordination, a sense of depth and 3D imagination -- others don't. Just as you said, you don't make every piece of furniture or picture on your wall in your home, you buy it from those who can make them and put them out -- but that's my point, that secondary act of decorative creation is not supported as much as it could be.

To be sure, LL does much more than it used to in that regard by having "Picture of the Day" and supporting some of the shopping hunts and such. But by and large, Rod Humble is a perfect example of the creator fetishism that has plagued Linden Lab from the start and harmed retention.  There's been a reluctance by the Lab to admit that the content they themselves make is in fact often the most compelling and  increases "real estate value".

Once again, solving the problem of usage and retention in SL is not about guild-masters endlessly affirming and even hectoring others and claiming that the skills are easy, and that people are just stupid or lazy if they won't devote their attention to mastering them. The problem is conceding that the guild-mentality is an obstacle for other users, and the gulf is only widening. When the CEO can only fly around warbling how wonderful it is that other masters in his guild craftsmen make stuff, he hasn't figured out that most of his customers are consuming stuff, not making it, and he therefore hasn't structured the user experience accordingly.

[Porky Gorky]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

Making a mesh in 3ds Max, or any other mesh creation program, is almost exactly the same as making an item in SL. There is little to no difference, essentially. The same way that you would make a bicycle in SL, is how you would make a bicycle in 3ds Max, even down to holding shift and moving the item to create a copy of it. Creating a UV map for the mesh, that is different, and LL's convoluted Land Impact system makes mesh different in reguards to creation. It's not that complicated. It's actually pretty basic. It all just looks intimidating. Like I said earlier in this thread, making a mesh in 3ds Max is 1 small step up from making a prim object in SL. So many focus on mesh not being created in SL, which to me is kind of goofy to focus on, as everything, besides prims, is created outside of SL and brought in. I don't see the difference.

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I agree with this. I found the transition from building with prims in SL to 3D modeling in 3DS Max almost seamless. Within a few days I could create anything in Max that I could with standard prims in SL. This gave me a great foundation to build upon as I learned the numerous more advanced creation tools.

I think there is a double learning curve to mesh which allot of wannabe and current mesh creators tend to ignore. Learning 3D modeling is only half the battle, learning how to optimize your mesh for best performance in SL is a whole other ball game and it is an area in which a lot of current mesh creators are failing badly. 

So even though 3D modeling is essentially easy to learn, especially if you have experience of the toolset in SL, creating a fully optimized mesh end product in SL is not so easy. 

 

[ImaTest1488314069]

Being able to make mesh isn't the whole of it. Being able to make effective mesh, is more of the whole thna not, though. Mesh, while complicated in it's own right, is made even moreso when people aren't as clued in on how to create it in a way that will reduce the load on people/the servers. That includes using programs that do it for you.

There is a lot of absolutely beutiful mesh out there. There are a lot of wonderfully talented creators out there too. But there is a lot more beautiful mesh with a huge land impact, and a lot more creators who aren't quite ready to take on the task of making effective mesh. The majority of sl is not ready for mesh, despite what people think. As, like I said, mesh in and of itself is not the whole, effective mesh is. Look at some of the mesh clothing out there for a prime example. Beautiful and people love it, but if it had to be rezzed on the ground, the land impact would jump sky high. That's not effective, by any stretch. We should be finding ways to make sl more enjoyable for more people. That includes people with high end systems right on down to people without. Effective builds are part of that. Beauty can't, well shouldn't surpass functionality. You need both, imo. The mesh creation tools out there don't always make effective mesh either. There was one that was taken down not too long ego because the things it was creating were coming out with huge land impacts. Virtually making the product useless. The entire reason many buy those products is to not only make mesh stuff, but make effective mesh stuff. However, when you use them, you're not the one making mesh, youre building with mesh. The program is making mesh for you. Not a knock on the product, as it's awesome and very helpful for a lot of people, but it's not the same thing as building those bits in an outside program by yourself.

I visited a friend's  store earlier today that was absolutely stunning. It was made entirely of mesh. I mean it was really breathtaking. But the land impact of it was massive. Not only does all that rendering have a cost for customers visiting, but also the landowner/renter in "land impact". The store has been around since at least 2005, that i know of. It was once a store built from prims. I know the owner well. The prim count of the original build was something along the lines of 35-ish. When she moved to sculpts it jumped down to about 25. Now, as mesh, it's 360 something land impact. That's absolutely nuts, considering it's just a basic building and uses no more than 20 prims! Beautiful or not, that building is NOT effective. It's gorgeous and people are of course free to use however many prims they want to for their builds. But store owners, and sim owners need to, or should, take into account their customers as well. That store takes ages to load now, because of the high rendering cost. She's getting ready to strip it down to a sculpt store again, because she's received many complaints about the lag and slow rez times.

So, yes, mesh is wonderful, but it's only as wonderful as it's impact, in sl. Sl is one place where rendering cost truly matters, unlike some other virtual environments, or dare I say it, games. Taking only what works for you into consideration is a really stupid move made by way too many content creators. You have to consider the experience(s) of others as well.

Mesh in sl is awesome, can be awesome, but can also be detrimental if not used wisely.

As for Rod..I honestly don't think Rod has any clue what SL is really like these days. I think he's guessing and thinks he's doing a good job at it, based on his responses. If he and his staff actually had to spend any measurable time in sl and deal with the same things residents do on a daily basis, his tune would be different.

The little bit he, and staff, DO visit sl,. it's always for some news story, some show, something that puts them in the limelight. It's never just because. It's never to check out an actual problem. It's never to visit sims that aren't already well known. That speaks volumes to me, about him. If he can't be bothered to utilize the product he wants us to, what's that really say about his faith in the product to begin with? Not much, if you ask me. Love the dude, but, he's got a long way to go before I'd believe a word he says. I love news stories as much as the nest person. But I love people who have faith in their products and their customers even more. If I were the man behind the curtain, you can bet your butt I would make my staff spend time inworld and I would do so myself too. Not just for publicity either. I doubt he's that busy he hasn't a few moments to spare here and there. If he is, he's doing something seriously wrong. I'd want to know how the users are experiencing things. Having them tell me via posts here, elsewhere and on JIRAs does nothing. I'd want to SEE it and FEEL it(ok as much as one can feel in sl). You can't do that without coming in. Sorry, you just can't.

I miss the days of seeing lindens inworld regularly, lindens that seemed to care. Even if they didn't really, they did a great job of pretending sometimes while they worked on issues. Now they don't even do that. How they can call this progress is beyond me. Progress is the product of the whole moving forward. Some areas of sl progressing while others aren't-or worse going backwards, is not progress of sl. I love sl, I'm going nowhere. Sl has come a long way. But we've a very long way yo go and it would do Rod well to really get to know the people that put food on his table, and to quit pretending we don't.

[ImaTest1488314069]

holy typos

Ignore them, I'm dosed up on sinus meds, and too lazy to fix.

[Jo Yardley]

If meshing it doesn't lower the landimpact, I usually don't bother, especially with the confex hull settings, prim land impacts can be very very low.

When I mesh buildings I get to add a lot more details and still keep the land impact lower then the original prim one, most of the time anyway.

 

 

[Amadeus Hammerer]

Sorry, maybe it's my bad english, but I don't get the point.

Some of you don't like meshes because you need external, complicated program for it?

Well, first as Jo said, you can use an easy inworld tool to turn all your prim creations into mesh.

Next, SL creators have allways used external software for the inworld creation, graphic programs like photoshop for example. And don't tell me that's a cheap and easy-to-use program.

The Lindens are not inworld?

Oh I think this depends on their job. You can meet them in meetings but also suddenly in your shop

Michael Linden for example can be met often inworld. And I think many of them do often, but not with their Linden-Accounts.

Yes, I miss the time too, when you talked to a Linden in the Live chat and he or she said "Wait, I'm coming over to help you!" but  I also remember when Oskar Linden opened the mesh-volunteers group and asked people to help him reproduce a jira entry.

 

[Jo Yardley]

Exactly!

For all expensive complicated programms out there, there are free and easy alternatives.

Even for photoshop and mesh software.

BUT I still would like LL to offer these to their users as part of the viewer.

Shouldn't be that difficult.

 

As for Lindens being inworld, they are.

Just because you don't see them, doesn't mean they aren't everywhere.

As Rod himself said, he uses alts, lots of them.

There may be a Linden right beside you at this very moment... or not

I've had Lindens visit our sim, public and anonymous.

But I also agree that I miss the time when Lindens manned the support chat.

Everytime there was an issue, you would not only get to talk to a Linden but in some cases they could teleport to you and actually fix the problem for you.

Last couple of times I called chat support all I got was someone who clearly knew very little about SL and just mumbled something about filing a ticket.

Either way, I think it is a good idea that Lindens show their noses a little more, even if they are just exploring a bit, have a do-not-disturb-status or fly very high in the sky.

It is just nice to see them pop up on your radar, even if they are not there to do anything, it is nice to know that those in charge use their own product.

I know for sure that they do know, but well, if they are undercover, we can't really be sure.

 

[Perrie Juran]

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Prokofy Neva wrote:

And the response is -- that's great, but not everybody likes that look. It's a look that works great for 1920s Berlin. It's not a look that works great for everything. Photorealism often just looks terrible in SL because it doesn't fit with the rest of the world which is Linden-made (like roads and trees) from drawings or a "fantasy" look for a virtual world.

 

Photorealistic textures substitute the photo for the prims -- but then that means the feeling of heft or depth or weight disappears and you feel as if you are moving among postcards. It doesn't matter if those postcards are hugely convincing and competently done. They still have a feel that doesn't fit in many places. Prims give you more of a feeling of immersion because each individual object has dimensions on the grid; the sculpty is often something you can't place another object on and ditto the mesh because it has no solidity.

This is something that no one ever talks about and for some people spending a lot of time chatting in IMs or just dressing their avatar, the look and heft of the world doesn't matter. But it does to others, especially those who grew up thinking in terms of "prim craftsmenship".

 

Constantly affirming that photorealism "looks better" and shows off 3D tools better just doesn't matter, because these are questions of feeling and taste and custom, and people either like it or they don't.

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I need to make another trip to Berlin one of these days soon to see the builds In World.

One thing that has always been an issue with "pictures" of things in SL is that In World they don't always live up to expectations.  I am not saying that specifically referring to Jo's buildings.  That is just a general observation.

One of my best friends is an SL artist and she just obtained some Mesh avatars.  She had been very impressed with some of the pictures she had seen and thought she could use for some of her art work.

We spent a lot of time comparing them to our regular Avatars and our conclusion was that at the present time, as far as the In World experience goes, our regular Avatars looked more 'real' or 'natural' than the mesh Ava's did.  Other people may feel different about it.  We were expecting to be impressed by them but we were not.

Also Medhue mentions reduced lag because Mesh is more efficient.  This may be true in some or many cases.  But I do wonder.  There is a thread (I couldn't find it right now) where one of the Mesh experts links about 50 prims to a mesh object and winds up with an impact of like 10.  What I am wondering is if what he really did was find and exploit a loophole in the accounting system.  The servers and the viewers still need to deal with all those prims.  I do think that is a legitimate question.

Maybe some one else knows offhand the thread.  I'll try and dig it out later.

 

[Porky Gorky]

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ImaTest wrote:

I visited a friend's  store earlier today that was absolutely stunning. It was made entirely of mesh. I mean it was really breathtaking. But the land impact of it was massive. Not only does all that rendering have a cost for customers visiting, but also the landowner/renter in "land impact". The store has been around since at least 2005, that i know of. It was once a store built from prims. I know the owner well. The prim count of the original build was something along the lines of 35-ish. When she moved to sculpts it jumped down to about 25. Now, as mesh, it's 360 something land impact. That's absolutely nuts, considering it's just a basic building and uses no more than 20 prims! Beautiful or not, that building is NOT effective. It's gorgeous and people are of course free to use however many prims they want to for their builds. But store owners, and sim owners need to, or should, take into account their customers as well. That store takes ages to load now, because of the high rendering cost. She's getting ready to strip it down to a sculpt store again, because she's received many complaints about the lag and slow rez times.

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There are things that can be done to reduce the LI of larger mesh buildings such as not including lower LOD's and using separate small interior spaces with limited camera view distances to reduce the need for lower LOD's, but this is not practical when building large and open plan as most stores tend to be. From personal experience of building large mesh structures, I am really not satisfied with the LI's I am getting. I am now moving away from 100% mesh and trying to find a balance between using prims/sculpts for large structural sections and relying on mesh for the finer details that will set the build apart from regular prim and sculpt builds. I think there is a more ideal balance to be found between prims, mesh, render times and LI for larger structures.

Mesh is awesome in the creative freedom it offers, but that comes at a price for some types of content, big open builds being top of that list unfortunately.

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Porky Gorky wrote:

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ImaTest wrote:

I visited a friend's  store earlier today that was absolutely stunning. It was made entirely of mesh. I mean it was really breathtaking. But the land impact of it was massive. Not only does all that rendering have a cost for customers visiting, but also the landowner/renter in "land impact". The store has been around since at least 2005, that i know of. It was once a store built from prims. I know the owner well. The prim count of the original build was something along the lines of 35-ish. When she moved to sculpts it jumped down to about 25. Now, as mesh, it's 360 something land impact. That's absolutely nuts, considering it's just a basic building and uses no more than 20 prims! Beautiful or not, that building is NOT effective. It's gorgeous and people are of course free to use however many prims they want to for their builds. But store owners, and sim owners need to, or should, take into account their customers as well. That store takes ages to load now, because of the high rendering cost. She's getting ready to strip it down to a sculpt store again, because she's received many complaints about the lag and slow rez times.

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There are things that can be done to reduce the LI of larger mesh buildings such as not including lower LOD's and using separate small interior spaces with limited camera view distances to reduce the need for lower LOD's, but this is not practical when building large and open plan as most stores tend to be. From personal experience of building large mesh structures, I am really not satisfied with the LI's I am getting. I am now moving away from 100% mesh and trying to find a balance between using prims/sculpts for large structural sections and relying on mesh for the finer details that will set the build apart from regular prim and sculpt builds. I think there is a more ideal balance to be found between prims, mesh, render times and LI for larger structures.

Mesh is awesome in the creative freedom it offers, but that comes at a price for some types of content, big open builds being top of that list unfortunately.

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Thank you for prodding me to write what I've been meaning to for a while. I've got quite a bit of experience with how RL buildings go together. They aren't really all "built in the field," but nor are they all prefabricated. Certain pieces are mass produced and ordered from catalogs like residential windows and electrical items, some are custom-made in a shop and brought to the site ready to assemble like structural steel and precast concrete, and with many important areas like poured concrete, masonry and stud walls there's really no more efficient way of making them than putting them up in the field itself. Each method is chosen by how it can be done best for that project. You don't really want to have a carpenter with a miter box crafting your windows in your front yard and the carpenter doesn't want to either.

The reason for the current re-written land impact statistics is to give people a more realistic judgement of how their builds affect a sim. Just because you could make a grand-piano sculpt that would be "1 prim" that didn't mean it put the same load on the server that a plywood cube did. If using mesh reduces your land impact? Good. If it makes it skyrocket? You need to revisit how you're doing things, and that may well involve not using mesh. In the grand scheme of things it's good to have plenty of tools but the key is knowing what tool to use where. Might be the newest tool; might be the one handed down from your granparents.

[ImaTest1488314069]

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Jo Yardley wrote:

 

Either way, I think it is a good idea that Lindens show their noses a little more, even if they are just exploring a bit, have a do-not-disturb-status or fly very high in the sky.

It is just nice to see them pop up on your radar, even if they are not there to do anything, it is nice to know that those in charge use their own product.

I know for sure that they do know, but well, if they are undercover, we can't really be sure.

 

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This is the main point as to why I say what I say about them being inworld. Sure they may be around on alts, but what good does that do us, if we don't know? Merely having them present, and known, makes a difference. Having them present and unkown, does not.

If Rod comes in under Joe Blow, who is going to know? More importantly, who is going to care? Why would we? He's an average resident like the rest of us in that scenario. And as much as we love ourselves, we're all pretty average when it comes to that. My impact in sl is no bigger than yours, your mother's, or even your dog's.

People who can SEE the powers that be in game, will, often, feel better about them. Even if it only gives us the idea that they might care, it's enough to restore our faith in them. Of course there are all kinds of ways their appearance(s) in sl could be made better, or have more of an impact. That, is probably best left to another thread though.

If I were Rod, I'd want to have a much larger impact on my customers than he does currently. I would want my staff to know my product in and out, through and through. Because I don't think one can offer supoort for a product they don't know. Then again, I despire the whole scripted support thing, so that probably feeds my opinion a great deal.

If I were the CEO, I would make certain my customers know I care. I would make certain all my staff care-or they wouldn't be my staff, period. I would improve the customer service. Which, for me, also includes customer appreciation and understanding. They can't do this without more experience.

I do honestly doubt many people when they say "lindens are inworld all the time, just not on linden names". If they really were, they'd understand the trials, errors, problems, bugs, and frustrations so much more. They don't, though. The reason they don't, is because they're not around to experience them. So, until someone can actually prove to me they truly do understand them, I will continue to believe the inworld appearances are as low as I currently believe they are.

They really did used to be a LOT more frequent. Having them do so made a much larger impact than anyone is willing to admit, it seems. At least anyone at the lab. There is no reason to be undercover as much as people claim they are. Sometimes, yes, and it's definitely needed. All the time, or most? Absolutely not, that's just a ridiculous excuse.

But this has been an issue for some time now, and I don't have faith it will be changed anytime soon.

(ftr, I am also in the mesh group created by them as well, others too, it's not nearly as active as it ought to be and the primary users of that group are residents, not lindens-but that's a different topic for a different day)

[Jo Yardley]

/me nods

Yes I agree with you, they should be more visible.

But still it was good to hear that they are at least more online and more part of our world as many of us thought.

Eventhough I already knew, it was still nice to hear Rod talk about actually exploring SL, wandering around communities with alts and having an island where he loves to build and script.

I now think that at least some Lindens are probably more like regular users then I thought before.

Either way, you are right, even if it is just for PR and morale, it would be good to just order all LL employees to spend a few hours a day inworld with their Linden avatar.

Just like women were told to wear makeup during WW2, it makes no sense, it uses up resources, but it was good for morale

[Medhue Simoni]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

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Also Medhue mentions reduced lag because Mesh is more efficient.  This may be true in some or many cases.  But I do wonder.  There is a thread (I couldn't find it right now) where one of the Mesh experts links about 50 prims to a mesh object and winds up with an impact of like 10.  What I am wondering is if what he really did was find and exploit a loophole in the accounting system.  The servers and the viewers still need to deal with all those prims.  I do think that is a legitimate question.

Maybe some one else knows offhand the thread.  I'll try and dig it out later.

 

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A mesh can be fractions of a prim. When you links these meshes that are only fractions of a prim, you get that added bonus. Let me give an example. Lets imagine you made a dining room table with plates, silverware, and a cup for each seated spot. The plates, silverware and cup, if modeled efficiently, should each be .1 or .2 prims. Let's just say .2. Let's imagine the table is 2.8 prims. Separately, each item counts as 1 prim. 3 prims for each placement dishes X 4 is 12 prims plus the table, which brings us to 15 prims. If you link them all together, you will get that fractional bonus. So, each set of dishes now adds up to .6 X 4, which is 2.4. You link the table, and now you are at 5.2 prims, or 6 prims. Now imagine you link the chairs too, at 1.2 prims each. You end up with a whole dining room set for 10 prims. Let's recap, you are using 17 separate items, and it is only adding up to 10 prims.

Of course, this is just an example I pulled out of my head, but that is basically how it works.

 

@ Jo - Keep opening the mesh program from time to time. Eventually, things will start to click. Blender is free, and it is as good or better than 3ds Max, and Maya. Granted, it's difficult to wrap your head around. I'm not all that proficient in Blender, but I will be learning it more and more over the next couple of years. Why? Because I think it really is the future of 3D. I just can't get over the UI and controls differences. I'm too comfortable in 3ds Max, right now.

@ Prok - I have grown up in 3d, right here inside SL. Just like many others. And, just like many others, I've made this all my profession. Many of us went from knowing nothing to now being contracted by gaming companies. For me, I knew this was possible, as animation basically works the same across all platforms. When mesh came, I was happy because I knew that builders in SL would now have the same opportunities that I have. When I goto other 3D creation forums and people ask what my background is, I proudly give my SL credentials. I do this because I know, even if they don't, that there are creators in SL that can blow away most of them. To me, SL is the platform for 3D creation, and brings a whole other side to being a creator. And that is that people can actually use what you create.

Now, people might look at those of us that love 3D and want to learn everything about it as being elitist, or a separate class than prim builders, but I don't see it because I started from almost zero. I learned just like every1 else here in SL. To me, that is the beauty of it all. Some1 that knows nothing can come into SL, push some prims together, find their niche, and open a business. Yeah, the day mesh was released, any dream of living off pushing prims together faded. That's life tho. Things change. If you want to stay on the ride and keep enjoying, you must accept that change. I love to help people learn to build. With PRIMS! I watch as newbies are amazed that they build something, or even just editted 1 of my AOs. I watched as they start to realise the magic that is SL. It's all still there. I still use mostly prims. We are all 1, not separate. And the best part of all, most of us are willing to help others as much as we can. I just don't see the divide.

[Gavin Hird]

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Jo Yardley wrote:

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

Mesh is the least accessible form of content creation yet devised by LL. So much for enabling creativity.

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Is it?

I found it pretty easy to learn how to make mesh and it has opened up a whole new way of building and being creative for me.

 

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Mesh is for most a massive learning curve both because you not only need to un-learn traditional SecondLife creation skills, but also because of the often prohibitive cost of mesh compared to sculpts, you need to learn to master low poly mesh creation and optimization. Add to that the often very tricky part of uv-mapping and texturing a low poly mesh to make it look good in comparison to other building methods. 

 

[Gavin Hird]

The unfortunate thing about mesh creation more or less happening in its entirety outside of SL is that it  removes the bulk of the creative process out of SecondLife where newcomers earlier could watch the progress of, learn from and be inspired by the building process, they now more or less see a finished, polished product they have no idea of how was created. It is then easy to think this is not for me or I will never master it.

It can be compared to most younger people don't have the skills to make RL clothes any more because it moved off to China, and they have become passive consumers of garments they only have a vague idea of how was created. 

It also skews the economy because builder tended to need more land for their creative process, off the shelf textures are largely replaced with custom uv-mapped textures and so on. 

[Medhue Simoni]

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Gavin Hird wrote:

The unfortunate thing about mesh creation more or less happening in its entirety outside of SL is that it  removes the bulk of the creative process out of SecondLife where newcomers earlier could watch the progress of, learn from and be inspired by the building process, they now more or less see a finished, polished product they have no idea of how was created. It is then easy to think this is not for me or I will never master it.

It can be compared to most younger people don't have the skills to make RL clothes any more because it moved off to China, and they have become passive consumers of garments they only have a vague idea of how was created. 

It also skews the economy because builder tended to need more land for their creative process, off the shelf textures are largely replaced with custom uv-mapped textures and so on. 

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Oh, I understand. 1 day, it would not surprise me at all to see LL built tools for almost all creation processes in SL, even animation. There is no reason they can not do both mesh and animation creation all inside SL. That would be super cool. I'm not sure I'd actually use those tools over 3ds Max, Blender, Poser, or Daz, but I'd love that others would have it to use. We aren't there yet tho, and as of now, it doesn't look like we are heading in that direction. Today tho, I help people learn 3ds Max, Daz, and other programs inside of Skype. Yeah, not as cool as SL, but some1 can watch me in the program, and I can see what they are doing in the program.

Even to this day, when I'm standing 3000 meters in the air on a platform, talking to a fellow creator about something 3D, we'll still rez prims. We might even layout a whole design for a mesh build using prims. It only takes a few minutes. Most of my whole sim still uses prims. There is no reason to change most of them. I still show people how to build prims. I was thinking about making a prim building tutorial. To me mesh is just another tool. There was some people upset when sculpties came, but not like how people are acting about mesh. And mesh are a thousand times better than sculpties. I don't like the account system, and think it is overly complex. The accounting system alone is enough to scare off most.

I hear ya about the textures and UV maps, but this had to change. I see similar things in animation. More and more, my animations won't work with these creature that have crazy bone lengths. It would be much easier for me if every1 used the exact same skeleton, but that is not reasonable. Off the shelf textures have their purpose. To use them on everything, would be outrageously inefficient, which is what we are dealing with now with some of the lag. This means that market has to change, just like my animation market is constantly changing. Maybe, instead of selling those textures to use inworld, those are now better sold to be used in Photoshop. Just a thought.

[Gavin Hird]

What beats me most about mesh based creation is how the (land) cost of mesh is very unfavorable compared to sculpts and for larger builds also prims. It often throws the creative process from being creative on to a track of optimization and re-topo to reach a target LI – it therefore fast becomes very technical and not very fluid or even fun. (In addition the mesh importer often throws the LI in not very intuitive or logical directions, where the final outcome depends on how and if you ungroup meshes.)

I have for my own part a 12 sim OS running standalone where I don't have to worry about LI and where you can experiment,  be creative and see how far you can push the viewer and the sim performance with complex and many meshes in a small area.

I consistently find that the mesh builds are super efficient performance wise compared to sculpts regardless of how complex they are. The setback comes of course when you try to move creations into SecondLife, where you have to optimize the heck out of them to get to down to a LI that is acceptable (own land cost or in competition with sculpted items.) Most of the time I don't find the effort worthwhile.  – So I have 2 years worht of creations more or less sitting there outside of SecondLife. The flip side is I had fun in the process and learned a lot :-)