in-world versus external sculp and mesh makers?

[steph Arnott]

If you happy then thats good, i happy with mine. I never like sculpties any way, look good but not user freindly.

[Knowl Paine]

 It is my opinion, that it is best to learn everything you can, using the tools you already have. If you can create something beautiful, using rudimentary tools, you will have the foundation to master the advanced tools.

Creation is the manifestation of an idea. The best solutions, arrive on a "need to know" basis. You can have too many options.

If you see a Builder standing in a sandbox, staring down at a single lone cube, for about an hour, that is person with too many options. When you can build anything, you start to question what is worth building.

"Well, how many prims is it? Maybe I should make it offline, that means I have to log out. Then I get lost in a 3rd party development software program. I'm have so much fun building there, I forget about SL".

I have the most fun, and build the best things, when I don't worry about the prims, or what other people will think.        

[Rolig Loon]

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Knowl Paine wrote:

 [ ... ]

Creation is the manifestation of an idea. The best solutions, arrive on a "need to know" basis. You can have too many options.

If you see a Builder standing in a sandbox, staring down at a single lone cube, for about an hour, that is person with too many options. When you can build anything, you start to question what is worth building.

[ ... ]      

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I love it, Knowl.  Psychologists have called that paralysis of options.  Children face it all the time, so wise parents learn to ask the "red boot -- green boot" question ("Would you like to wear your red boots or your green boots?") to cut through the cloud of options.  When I find myself staring at a plywood prim, I just start making something.  Anything.  Even if I don't know what it is.  It takes my mind off of deciding, so I can just see where the tools and the materials will take me.  When I'm unencumbered by having to reach a specific goal, I often end up discovering a path to a destination that I never suspected was there.

[Knowl Paine]

Hello Rolig,

It might be spreading to Adults, because I have some of the signs and symptoms :smileyvery-happy:

Free form building, is confidence in ability in action. A good build definitely evolves; I might make the same object 20 times, each time a little different. 

A number of my builds, started from seeing a shape, in a different build I was working on.  :smileyhappy:

 

[steph Arnott]

I came into SL to chill. My builds and scripts evolve from nothing and when I do finish something I try to make it as efficient as SL allows. Mesh has it's merits, but some see it as the be all and end all, which is simply a false cannon. The whole point of SL is to be in it, not outside and just uploading 40 hours of mesh builds and as for triangles I frankly could not give a hoot. SL was not constructed that way, if LL had a problem with it they would have made mesh compulsory, but then LL know full well others just want to make simple things and have fun. To my mind mesh in SL is too limited in modifying and visual. A vast amount of people are running mid range computers or laptops, not super top end machines and as such prims work far better. As for sculpties, they were a stop gap.

EDITED: Grammer.

[arton Rotaru]

What the whole point of SL is, will every individual determine for themselfs actually. One reason for the introduction of mesh was to give people the opportunity to reduce the rendering load, compared to the existing tools. Which would benefit lower end computers the most.

As for the visuals, I'm still not sure what your issue is there actually?

 

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Knowl Paine wrote:

If you see a Builder standing in a sandbox, staring down at a single lone cube, for about an hour, that is person with too many options. When you can build anything, you start to question what is worth building.

"Well, how many prims is it? Maybe I should make it offline, that means I have to log out. Then I get lost in a 3rd party development software program. I'm have so much fun building there, I forget about SL".

      

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 If you see me starring down on a prim cube for an hour, most likely I'm working on some scripts. I guess a lot of those who are starring at a cube are doing this. :matte-motes-wink-tongue:

I also don't log out of SL when I model in a mesh editor. Still IM'ing with my buddies, and the like. If I have to concentrate on something in particular, I wanted to be alone most of the times anyway. So being able to do that work offline isn't that bad, actually. At least not for me.:matte-motes-smile:

[Optimum Actor]

This all reinforces the idea of at least making prototypes in-world, revising and refining them in-world until finalized, and then then maybe exporting those out-world as Mesh and re-importing a refined and tested version, after maybe some external editing. For me the reason not to use the originals would be too much lag. For example, this set which I built has has over 1500 prims in it:

...and the Slum City is a free prefab from the Market place has a bit over 2300! Now the second is fabulous for free item but try shooting a machinima or machinicomic there and you have problems of lag, especially if you have a lot of avatars in one scene  The top example really only needs to be used for external shots - otherwise only the individual linksets (it's organized in 13 linksets in a Builders Buddy) and set dressing need be used at any one time. But even so, if it's a regular set and going to be re-used (which is the case) simplifying things by using mesh might (I hope) reduce that down considerably.

Coming back to in-world tools that might assist in that then, I have a short list of three:Celzius, Mesh Studio, and Mesh Generator. The last two can be applied to already built items (though MG is limited to 32 prims) and all work by having scripts in the base prim which point you to external pages where you can download a COLLADA file. Everyone seems to agree that post generation editing (using Blender or some other 3D program) is helpful to make mesh more efficient (and/or add texture areas).

BUT - Singularity and other viewers can download Collada files direct from a linkset anyway (though there is not support for setting up texture area in-world yet) and is free. The thing is that there seem to be improvements in rendering in the pipeline, including

and

, so maybe the sensible thing to do is wait, and see what the next generation of official and alternative browsers brings up in features. And of course the above listed makers may be improved as well, or new ones be created.

Not everyone has the needs that a machinima or machinicomic group does, so what makes sense for me might not apply to others.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

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arton Rotaru wrote:

What the whole point of SL is, will every individual determine for themselfs actually. One reason for the introduction of mesh was to give people the opportunity to reduce the rendering load, compared to the existing tools. Which would benefit lower end computers the most.

As for the visuals, I'm still not sure what your issue is there actually?

 

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Knowl Paine wrote:

If you see a Builder standing in a sandbox, staring down at a single lone cube, for about an hour, that is person with too many options. When you can build anything, you start to question what is worth building.

"Well, how many prims is it? Maybe I should make it offline, that means I have to log out. Then I get lost in a 3rd party development software program. I'm have so much fun building there, I forget about SL".

      

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 If you see me starring down on a prim cube for an hour, most likely I'm working on some scripts.

I guess a lot of those who are starring at a cube are doing this

. :matte-motes-wink-tongue:

I also don't log out of SL when I model in a mesh editor. Still IM'ing with my buddies, and the like. If I have to concentrate on something in particular, I wanted to be alone most of the times anyway. So being able to do that work offline isn't that bad, actually. At least not for me.:matte-motes-smile:

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Not always, I was doing that yesterday for 3 hours.. I was playing with the materials stuff in GIMP and Genetica. You can make some really awesome floors and walls now. I was asked several times what i was doing as no one could see the textures but me.

[steph Arnott]

Optimum Actor said

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the Slum City is a free prefab from the Market place has a bit over 2300

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I got the city from the marketplace and rezzed it. The build was done in 2010 and is before rubber banding was introduced. I reduced the prim count to 1000 just by resetting the bounding physics and that was not all of it just a quick test, also the prims are as was at the time 10 x 10. So, many of the flat faces of the buids would only requir one prim instead of six. 

EDITED: As i was doing other things.

 

[arton Rotaru]

Yeah, that's not an easy decision. If it's only temporary builds for machinima, the prim count doesn't matter much. Lag could be an issue though. I think I would do a mix. Wherever it has boxy shapes I would leave them as prims. And only adding detailed/complex stuff as mesh, as you did already. Building prototypes inworld, and rebuilding everything with mesh would be a waste of time IMHO.

[Optimum Actor]

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steph Arnott wrote:

Optimum Actor said

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the 

Slum City

 is a free prefab from the Market place has a bit over 2300

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I reduced the prim count to 1000 just by resetting the bounding physics and that was not all of it just a quick test, also the prims are as was at the time 10 x 10. So, many of the flat faces of the buids would only requir one prim instead of six. 

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How does one do that? Is there a link i can follow for help on that?

[Rolig Loon]

Unless I misread her note, I think Steph was just pointing out that the freebie Slum City was built in the days before we could make prims larger than 10x10x10. You can reduce its prim count dramatically by replacing, say, a 6x6 array of 10 x10 x1 prims (36 prims) with a single 60 x 60 x 1 prim.  Then, converting Physics Shape from PRIM to CONVEX_HULL saves you another whopping number of prims, as long as they aren't torii, dimpled spheres, etc.

ETA:  Change Physics Shape in your Edit tool >>> Features tab.

[Optimum Actor]

Ah! I've seen references to the 10m limit in older SL references but it never seemed to be an issue when I was building Not familiar with convex hull but I just did a search and found this thread, with an explanation by yourself! Shall go read it.

 

UPDATE:

Might need to go back and re-edit some builds.

[steph Arnott]

OK, try my best to explain the physics. You have 10 prim boxes in a line (linked). That's 10 prims to the physics engine, I,e each box has 6 sides, 12 edges and 8 corners.(convex_hull) Put them in a bin bag and suck the air out and the physics is  that, just the outside shape. The best way to understand is make a flat prim with a hole in it and convert it from a prim to convex hull. When you walk on the hole you will not fall thru it. So any build that needs to be walked thru or dropped in has to have the physics set to prim. A build can be set to convex hull and individual prims that need the physics set to prim.

ADDED: The Land Impact of 10 drops to 5. Also the triangles as been said before, 1 prim is 414, 10 prims is 545. I could set the linked prims to none in the features, that drops the phys to 0.1. As for mesh in SL unless it beyond prims it is a waste of time, and to the comments, i can do mesh too.

[Optimum Actor]

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OK, try my best to explain the physics. You have 10 prim boxes in a line (linked). That's 10 prims to the physics engine, I,e each box has 6 sides, 12 edges and 8 corners.(convex_hull) Put them in a bin bag and suck the air out and the physics is  that, just the outside shape. The best way to understand is make a flat prim with a hole in it and convert it from a prim to convex hull. When you walk on the hole you will not fall thru it. So any build that needs to be walked thru or dropped in has to have the physics set to prim. A build can be set to convex hull and individual prims that need the physics set to prim..

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So clearly one has to be selected in converting. I have some places withat's be useless, but others (like a wall with a big window that never opens in the middle of it) it'd be a good thing. Thanks.

 

[steph Arnott]

You wil have to experiment, convert the build and any areas that are wrong, set those individual pieces back to prim. You normaly can have the door ways convex, but depends how you cunstructed it. BTW When the biuld is convex hull you can add mesh to it, but watch the impact count. I usually add them last . This is all convex_hull, even the door ways. the roundals are indevidual prims, when i did it as mesh the land load was exactly the same, but i did not like the way it looked with advanced lighting. I think i is about 240 prim cound with convex, was about 800 as prim.

[arton Rotaru]

Changing the physics shape type to convex hull can only cut down the prim count, and reduces the physics load on the server. It won't help reducing the rendering load though. Replacing some 10m prims with larger prims can cut the triangle count down ab bit, though.

Prim count as is should be not an issue for temporay machinima builds. So, I'm not sure if it's worth the hassle.

Only way to reduce the rendering load is by using fewer polygons, and reduced number and size of textures, basically.

[steph Arnott]

The example you show of all those triangles on a prim is incorrect, that is not the Tris count. If you show the render info that will give you the correct info.

ADDED: Actualy dont, there no point as you are convinced you have all the answers.

[arton Rotaru]

I don't know why you post with an attitude like that?

Saddly I have to say you are wrong. The Display Weight is not triangles, It takes all kinds of things into account. Textures, Alpha, Particles, Glow, LOD etc.

The triangle count on an object doesn't change with the various Physics Shape Types, same with the Display Weight, it doesn't change either.

A prim cube has 108 Triangles in High LoD, not 404, and also not 414 as you wrote.