Am I really the only person that does not like mesh?

[steph Arnott]

As I said before, mesh is good in builds were it impossible to make prims work. I wanted a vaulted celler ceiling and it was just impossible to do what I wanted. The rest of the build was just normal prims, tho I passed out when I try to link them and the prim count came to some 30,000 and when unlinked was 57, LOL. I seen whole builds in mesh and to me they depth just looks wrong. As for importing work that not there's it never occurred to me, but obvious when it was mentioned, I just not that type. When I build it is passed on as mod/copy, it my opinion if it bought it yours to change it as you want, mesh is what you get and that's it. When mentioned about plastic avi I just thought they were just peeople learning jobs, oops, LOL.

[Pamela Galli]

That store filled with ripped mesh now seems to be circling the drain -- since the stuff was ripped from 3D sites and not SL, I imagine everyone who bought something from them will find it missing.

 

[HisaDrug]

I couldn't agree more. Mesh products are definitely "pushed" to me even when I do my own business people would come n ask me if what i make is mesh or not. The funny thing is alot of people don't even understand exactly what mesh is. They just assume mesh is "the newest." Despite all that, I see people turning back to prims n value more on aesthetics now. I think it's a good sign. 

I see lotta those ppl "pro-mesh," who state they only n exclusively wear mesh, often times they laugh at you not wearing one of those mainstream mesh clothes. They hear "mesh" n they're all over it. Sometimes it's like the dispute between Mac & PC. Mesh & Prim. Anyway I'm one of those designers who are trying to prove aesthetics should come first more than anything. Technology, awesome programs to bake mesh n constructions can be dealt with the customers who only seek high-end products, but with me, I'm all about artwork n sendng a message so hopefully things would change soon. 

[Czari Zenovka]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

I do love mesh. But I am sad to say that my worst fears about the changing content landscape are being realized.

Over in the "Ripped Content" thread in SL Universe, someone posted a link to a Pinterest page that some anonymous person had created. On that page was posted professional looking ads of very nice furnishings content for sale in a new marketplace store. And paired with each marketplace picture was a picture of that exact same mesh, as adverstised on varous 3D model stores like Turbosquid and DesignConnect. The meshes were created by a variety of 3D artists. The SL merchant had simply bought them and imported them into SL -- where it is unlikely that the actual creators of the content will ever know.

Imagine instead of me spending a week modeling and texturing a chair, I just bought one for $20 on a 3D marketplace, and in violation of their clear EULAs and licensing, started selling it. Now there is a business model with a huge competitive edge!

Last week, I was was told by a participant in the Food Fair that another participant had been ejected because her merchandise -- food and appliances -- had been taken from a 3D mesh site, which did not permit resale.

Some of these 3D sites will specifically mention Second Life, forbidding anything to be imported for any reason. Apparently SL has quite a reputation for being a den of thieves. And so it is.

 

This is all new behaviors. There are no external sites selling hundreds of thousands of sculpts, or regular prim content. Those are exclusively SL content. Mesh is something else. 

It is hard to see how original content creators can compete, with those who can upload twenty chairs in the time it takes original content creators to create one. Because ultimately what we are selling is our time. Those who produce the most quality content in the least amount of time win.

 

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You said it much more eloquently than I, Pam.  I know you are a creator that takes immense pride in her work and spent hours upon hours (and probably more hours) learning Blender instead of purchasing mesh models and coloring them.

[Czari Zenovka]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

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Jillian Skinstad wrote:

I really don't like the new mesh products and resent having it "pushed" at me if I want something.  So many of the excellent artists and designers have left or are leaving SL.  This could be because they cannot create or compete with the mesh products, or that LL is just not profitable anymore.

In an inverview the LL CEO gave (not sure where I saw the video, but believe it related to Gamers Magazine) he stated the average noob stays in SL

ONE MONTH!!  

Does this tell anybody anything?  I first came to SL about five years ago when at times there were 65,000+ logged on and people stayed inworld for years.  The average logon now might be 40,000 - I have no real way of knowing other than what I read.

The new viewer is not working (like I expected something different) and I am just so very disappointed seeing something I have enjoyed for so long being destroyed by what I see as corporate greed and lack of understanding of their target market.  Hopefully I am wrong about all of this, but after crashing every five minutes with the new viewer, not rezzing and walking around with half my body invisible trying to make some mesh outfit fit I still have to wonder if it was really worth it.

 

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I agree with you 100%.  IMO, it takes a lot more skill to make amazing items from prims than just purchasing a mesh model or sculptie map from someone else then texturing it and putting it up for sale.  There *are* some merchants who learned how to create their own mesh and are incorporating it into their builds but many are purchasing a mesh model of <whatever>, texturing it, and selling it.

I have disliked mesh from the outset and will not purchase any mesh items.

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Czari, please don't take this as a personal attack because it isn't meant to be but there's something I feel you should address. For quite a while you've been putting up posts that say two things at the same time:

A. "I can't see or use mesh because my computer won't run the necessary viewer."

B. "Mesh looks bad and is ioroblematic to use."

This raises the question:

Given the facts of "A", how can you be qualified to make statement "B"?

Your opinions of the look of mesh were necessarily secondhand and I assume largely from still images, and as far as the practicality of it said you based it on comments from other creators who were having problems of it. Forums are often areas to hash out problems - by the same logic you should say that you'll never purchase anything with a script in it because people certainly bring up problems with scripts in the creation forums.

You can say you like tomatoes; you can say you've tried tomatoes and you don't like them. But if you want to be considered qualified to give an opinion you can't just say, "Tomatoes are poisonous - it says so in this old book."

[i used this example because for quite some time Europeans DID think tomatoes were poisonous.]

 

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I have had a PC that can run mesh viewers and high graphics for the past month.  I can now see mesh and/or wear mesh and have done both.  My opinion is the same.  The huge issue is the inability to mod mesh and, as another poster mentioned, some people are latching on to the new cool thing and are replacing builds and/or parts of builds with mesh when the original didn't need messing with.

 

[Czari Zenovka]

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HisaDrug wrote:

I couldn't agree more. Mesh products are definitely "pushed" to me even when I do my own business people would come n ask me if what i make is mesh or not. The funny thing is alot of people don't even understand exactly what mesh is. They just assume mesh is "the newest." Despite all that, I see people turning back to prims n value more on aesthetics now. I think it's a good sign. 

 

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I'm glad to hear content creators like you are still here.   I have experienced the flip side of your issue - one of my very favorite vintage stores from whom I've purchased clothes since 2007 cleared out all their non-mesh clothing, shoes, etc. within about the first week (it seemed) that mesh was introduced.  Couldn't even find any non-mesh items in a clearance area (I would have purchased it all...or a lot of it...lol).  The merchant uses a guestbook system for communication so I  posted an entry that I was sorry to see that she was only selling mesh clothing now and that I would, unfortunately, no longer be a customer.  No response as I pretty much expected.

[Perrie Juran]

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PeterCanessa Oh wrote:

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steph Arnott wrote:

Another thing that bothers me is that mesh is almost an elitist creation ...

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Second that.  I can't upload mesh in SL because I haven't got PIOF.  Can't get PIOF because LL won't accept my debit card [last time I checked].  

Can't

won't get a credit card with all the expense that entails just so I can upload mesh.  NB: it's the only SL creation type that is restricted.

 

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What expenses?  Unless you are in some kind of odd situation or live somewhere that doesn't have it, no fee to HAVE credit cards are pretty ubiquitous.  Get one, get your PIOF, but never use it.  If I have heard correctly, once you get the PIOF status, you retain that status even if you cancel the card.

I will emphasize that I can not personally attest to retaining the status.

[steph Arnott]

It is retained. I allwayys use a pre paid card, purely becouse no one can take what not there. Any how i will carry on in prims and only use mesh if i have too.

[Pamela Galli]

Czari I am not at all above purchasing mesh models and coloring them -- IF they are sold full perm and licensed for resale, as in SL. I often use these things as promos or gifts. Like this week's gift is a birdcage I bought -- I added a singing bird (which I also bought full perm), a bird feeder with birdseed, and a stand. 

 

What this store an others are doing is entirely different. They are procuring models from external 3D sites which specifically prohibit ANY kind of resale. 

[Czari Zenovka]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

Czari I am not at all above purchasing mesh models and coloring them -- IF they are sold full perm and licensed for resale, as in SL. I often use these things as promos or gifts. Like this week's gift is a birdcage I bought -- I added a singing bird (which I also bought full perm), a bird feeder with birdseed, and a stand. 

 

What this store an others are doing is entirely different. They are procuring models from external 3D sites which specifically prohibit ANY kind of resale. 

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I thought about that after I posted, BUT you still have taken the time to learn how to make sculpts and meshes while I know there are a lot of merchants out there that ONLY buy mesh and color them, thus the dozens upon dozens of look-alike products.  What I was trying to get at is you are the type of creator that "creates" - while you may use purchased mesh models, that is not the entirety of your line...by a long stretch.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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steph Arnott wrote:

As I said before, mesh is good in builds were it impossible to make prims work. I wanted a vaulted celler ceiling and it was just impossible to do what I wanted. The rest of the build was just normal prims, tho I passed out when I try to link them and the prim count came to some 30,000 and when unlinked was 57, LOL.

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This is the result of the mesh being convex hull physics, and when you add in the prims they are calculated as convex hull.

Conves hull is more accurate on he burdens things like cuts, hollowing, and toruses impose on the servers. So while as a prim build it is 57 prims - the server has always since 2003 felt it like being punched by a 30,000 prim build.

- Convex Hull just charges you for that burden, rather than the rest of SL.

It can be pretty shocking though, as we are so used to using cut prims, toruses, and the like - we don't think they harm SL like this, but they do.

Mesh is actually less laggy / server harmful than those kinds of prims, most of the time.

 

A second potential cause can be scripts inside of complex prim cuts. These blow up on the convex hull calculation. Possibly for the same reasons as above, or possibly a bug. This issue is often hard to replicate - leading me to think its a bug. It will happen on one linkset but not another and I at least haven't figured out the pattern.

 

[PeterCanessa Oh]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

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PeterCanessa Oh wrote:

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steph Arnott wrote:

Another thing that bothers me is that mesh is almost an elitist creation ...

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... a credit card with all the expense that entails ...

 

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What expenses?  Unless you are in some kind of odd situation or live somewhere that doesn't have it, no fee to HAVE credit cards are pretty ubiquitous...

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In the USA?  Not in the UK, where a monthly minimum fee is the normal, if not the only, business model followed by credit-card companies.  This is just one reason most of us will ONLY use debit cards - exactly what LL will not accept.  Our banking systems are different, our credit systems are different, our e-payment models are exactly the same.  Except when it comes to LL who seem unable to accept 99% of what the rest of the world does every day.  *sigh* Not meant to be a rant but, seriously, LL is the ONLY company I can't pay!

 

[Perrie Juran]

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PeterCanessa Oh wrote:

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Perrie Juran wrote:

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PeterCanessa Oh wrote:

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steph Arnott wrote:

Another thing that bothers me is that mesh is almost an elitist creation ...

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... a credit card with all the expense that entails ...

 

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What expenses?  Unless you are in some kind of odd situation or live somewhere that doesn't have it, no fee to HAVE credit cards are pretty ubiquitous...

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In the USA?  Not in the UK, where a monthly minimum fee is the normal, if not the only, business model followed by credit-card companies.  This is just one reason most of us will ONLY use debit cards - exactly what LL will not accept.  Our banking systems are different, our credit systems are different, our e-payment models are exactly the same.  Except when it comes to LL who seem unable to accept 99% of what the rest of the world does every day.  *sigh* Not meant to be a rant but, seriously, LL is the ONLY company I can't pay!

 

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Cool, I do know I don't know the fine points of this stuff in other places.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

That store filled with ripped mesh now seems to be circling the drain -- since the stuff was ripped from 3D sites and not SL, I imagine everyone who bought something from them will find it missing.

 

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That should be STORES.

I find one of these almost every time I go looking for mesh objects.

Its usually pretty obvious - most of the time they copy known IP, like characters from comic books. SOme of it is only obvious because I used to shop at Daz3D and other sites for doing Poser work - so I see things like 'rows of buildings in medieval style' that well... I bought from somebody on Daz3D 8 years ago...

And this again... while you have to know the 3D art community to recognize, they tend to take from the big names there.

 

What we need, is a button in marketplace to AR this stuff...

That the infringe option is only for your own stuff shows that they really don't care to police this one bit, but merely to meet the minimum standard to keep themselves from being a joined party in a lawsuit...

- Insufficient categories.

(blacked out the product because this was just the first product listed on marketplace for me when I logged in, used merely to get this screenshot, and not something I actually flagged.)

 

[PeterCanessa Oh]

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Jenny Siddeley wrote:

Sculpties are just unoptimized and very restricted meshes though, my guess is this bedroom set was made the same way meshes are being made, and anyone who made it definitely has the skills to make awesome meshes.

Also, most people (especially merchants) can get a payment info on file, it hardly makes meshes "elitist" in my opinion...

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Scuplts are indeed just limited meshes, as are prims of course.  That bedroom set was made by me, as a 1-prim sculpt, which I am allowed to create in (or import into) SL like everything else ... except mesh.

The two points I was trying to make is:

1) Mesh is the exception when it comes to using SL; it's the only thing not open to everyone

2) No, "most people" can't get PIOF for the simple reason that LL accepts such limited forms of payment.  Their model works well for the USA but emphatically NOT for the rest of the world.

As this and my post above are saying much the same thing (again) let me clarify:  LL have tried several approaches over the years so, to be fair, they are trying to make it easier for us to pay them.  For some reason though they seem about the only company on the internet (and THE only one with whom I deal) that I can't pay.

I can't say I've ever lost any sleep over this; but it does make mesh the 'elitist' exception in SL creation.

[Aethelwine]

I love mesh.

The laq Decor furniture in particular (as well as their house) is amazing prim value for quality and mod so you can add your own animations.

Similarly I love Mesh clothes they stay fitting when you sit down without your legs sticking out and the Meli Imako stuff is realy nice and easy to retexture and be creative with.

Prims still have their uses, but mesh adds hugely to the SL experience,

[PeterCanessa Oh]

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Aethelwine wrote:

I love mesh.

The laq Decor furniture in particular (as well as their house) is amazing prim value for quality and mod so you can add your own animations.

Similarly I love Mesh clothes they stay fitting when you sit down without your legs sticking out and the Meli Imako stuff is realy nice and easy to retexture and be creative with.

Prims still have their uses, but mesh adds hugely to the SL experience,

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Sorry, yes, this.

Mesh is a great addition to SL, I have no wish to suggest otherwise.  Done properly it is THE way to create 3d content.  Done badly, as others have pointed out, well .. it's bad.  So is anything else done badly so I don't blame mesh for that.

[steph Arnott]

It still does not address the fact that mesh is not being or going to be done by 90+% of people in SL becouse its just plain to hard to do.

Bad spelling

[Pussycat Catnap]

Mesh is not bring?

Might have a translation error there - not sure what you mean by that. Do you mean that it prevents many people from becomming content creators?

This is true, but it was already the case. Most people who join SL never build much of anything.

What mesh HAS done is taken cutting edge content creation away from many of the old crowd, and haded it to a different crowd.

A redisribution of focus / creation power.

That's regretabe for those left behind (self included), but the benefits seems to outweigh the costs - the new batch of content creators are giving us some pretty wonderful stuff.

 

 

[steph Arnott]

This is the result of the mesh being convex hull physics, and when you add in the prims they are calculated as convex hull.

Thanx for the explanation i understood upto the word Hull, LOL

Any how there no going back so the younger will have to do the rest, i stay doing what i good at and enjoy.

Loved the talk all, i exhausted my comments,

[Pussycat Catnap]

Edit any prim and look at the options for physics type:

Prim, convex hull, and I think one other option.

 

[steph Arnott]

Ok will do, Asante

[steph Arnott]

The prims are set to prim, if i change it to convex the edit says the count goes from 28 to 14, when i add the mesh it stays the same at 14. weather that a true count i dont know and what the diff of changeing to convex hull is beyond me. Are you saying i should be changeing sliced and cut prims that are link to convex hull?

Added

Well first i heard of this.http://sl.governormarley.com/?p=1598

[PeterCanessa Oh]

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steph Arnott wrote:

It still does not address the fact that mesh is not being or going to be done by 90+% of people in SL becouse its just plain to hard to do...

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Nah, sorry - designing clothes textures is MUCH harder for me than scripting.  Scripting (programming) for the next person is impossible compared to animation.  Animation is simple for Boris (he's a great animator, whoever he is!) but there's no way he'd build a house.

I won't buy 'hard' as 'elitist', only whether you have to jump through extra LL loops to be able to do it.  For instance, scripting and [prim] building should be the easiest and most accessible because you don't need any external programmes at all.  Does that mean people can do it equally well?  No, obviously.  "Equality of opportunity" does not result in "equality of outcome"; essential lesson from RL.  Any authority - in our case LL - can provide the former but can never guarantee the latter.

[ETA: what Pussycat Catnap said ... "That's regretabe for those left behind (self included), but the benefits seems to outweigh the costs"]

[Pussycat Catnap]

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steph Arnott wrote:

Ok will do, Asante

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?

 

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steph Arnott wrote:

The prims are set to prim, if i change it to convex the edit says the count goes from 28 to 14, when i add the mesh it stays the same at 14. weather that a true count i dont know and what the diff of changeing to convex hull is beyond me. Are you saying i should be changeing sliced and cut prims that are link to convex hull?

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Hmm, well there goes that theory. Sometimes prim objects explode in count when you set to convex hull. MOST of the time they lower - and torus, hollowing, or cuts tend to be the determining factor that cause them to blow up. Note that even if they lower, the "bounding box" can move causing invisible walls or holes in walls. Everytime I set a bunch of stuff to convex hull, I then go around bumping into all the edges to make sure its all still where its supposed to be. Otherwise you can have "fun" moments like vanishing through the floor of your home... I wrote some stuff on it a long time back: http://catnapkitty.wordpress.com/category/second-life/reducing-prim-costs/