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Is there anyone else who feels the same as I do about having a Second Life withour mesh?


GaryPreston
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1 minute ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

"So [the baking system] ONLY works if the uv mapping exactly corresponds to system avatar us mapping, anything else, epic bake fail. You can't use it to bake clothing textures for "some mesh dress that somebody released the uv's for"

Is the bolded red statement true or false?

Please be assured that I'm not debating you because I think you're a "noob" - I know you've been around for quite a while. I picked you as a target because of your post history. Congratulations!

PAY ATTENTION - LAST POST TO BE WASTED ON OBVIOUS LASTNAMER FORUM TROLL

 

USING A SYSTEM CLOTHING TO MESH BODY SSB APPLIER SYSTEM WILL ALLOW YOU TO APPLY ANY TEXTURE TO YOUR HELICOPTER/DRESS MESH TROLL CAVE THAT YOU CAN DROP IN A SYSTEM CLOTHING LAYER YOU CREATE BUT, IT WILL ALSO APPLY TO YOUR SYSTEM AVATAR, AND LIKE A COMPLETE MORON YOU ASSUME A RUMOURED SYSTEM FOR AUTOBAKE WILL COME WITH AN OFF SWITCH, WHEN NO OFF SWITCH IS NEEDED FOR IT'S INTENDED USE, SO *YOU* CAN USE IT TO APPLY NON SYSTEM-AVI-UV-MAP TEXTURES TO YOUR HELICOPTER/DRESS TROLL CAVE WITHOUT APPLYING THEM YO YOUR BAKEFAIL HOBBY AVATAR

 

YES YOU CAN APPLY YOUR HELICOPTER PAINT OR SOME RANCID FLORAL DRESS VIA A MISS-USED SYSTEM, YOU CAN DO THAT NOW WITH OMEGA APPLIERS, IF YOU ARE PREPARED TO PAY TO ADD OMEGA SUPPORT TO YOUR HELICOPTER, BUT ONLY A MORON WOULD WANT TO

 

YOU WANT TO QUOTE OUT OF CONTEXT, LIKE MOST OBVIOUS TROLLS... 

 

LET'S RECAP... WHEN APPLYING SKIN/TATTOOS/CLOTHING LAYERS TO A MESH AVATAR, THE SSB SYSTEM WILL ONLY WORK IF THE MESH AVATAR CONFORMS TO THE SYSTEM AVATAR UV MAPPING,

iF YOU HAVE PROBLEMS WITH THIS CONCEPT DUE TO AN OLD REZ DATE, THAT'S NOT MY PROBLEM
 

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10 minutes ago, Klytyna said:

LET'S RECAP... WHEN APPLYING SKIN/TATTOOS/CLOTHING LAYERS TO A MESH AVATAR, THE SSB SYSTEM WILL ONLY WORK IF THE MESH AVATAR CONFORMS TO THE SYSTEM AVATAR UV MAPPING,

See, the problem is, there is no evidence that you are correct. On the contrary, at the Content Creation meetings on Thursdays, some of the Lindens agree that the UV mapping is irrelevant. That said, I can imagine that the system would need you to specify which set of system clothing sets you want to use on your mesh. I say that because the sets are broken up into 3, meaning the head, upper body, and lower body. So, say for my snake, if I were to choose the upper body as the set for my whole snake, as my whole snake UV is on 1 map, then the only layers that will apply to my snake would be those that cover the upper body.

You seem to be assuming quite a bit here. Where is your evidence that the UV maps are somehow hard coded in, and what exactly would be the point of that code?

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3 minutes ago, Medhue Simoni said:

See, the problem is, there is no evidence that you are correct. On the contrary, at the Content Creation meetings on Thursdays, some of the Lindens agree that the UV mapping is irrelevant. That said, I can imagine that the system would need you to specify which set of system clothing sets you want to use on your mesh. I say that because the sets are broken up into 3, meaning the head, upper body, and lower body. So, say for my snake, if I were to choose the upper body as the set for my whole snake, as my whole snake UV is on 1 map, then the only layers that will apply to my snake would be those that cover the upper body.

You seem to be assuming quite a bit here. Where is your evidence that the UV maps are somehow hard coded in, and what exactly would be the point of that code?

they are not hard coded, you can miss-use anb applier system to apply any texture on any mesh, but if the uv map of the target doesn't match up it's going to look insane.

System textures are 6 parts not 3, head , upper, lower, eye, hair & skirt.

Now for a non himan mesh avi, yeah you can ignore system avi uv mapping, as long as you are really really clear that your 'shirt' isnt a shirt, and wont work on a humanoid avi at all because its a snake, or an elephant, yeah you can create speciality avatars with such a system, but frankly it's easier making a damn applier, "Snake skin - green" or "elephant skin - Pink" to apply to your specific mesh, avoids a lot of confusion AND allows you to specify normal maps and specular maps for a better appearance normals and speculars that MATCH the specific skin tone.

 

Damn sight easier and better than messing around making a shirt thats not a shirt, and applying it to your system avi as well

But appling your snake hide or elephant hide to a female humanoid body, is that going to work? Hell no! I don't see why you people have problems with this concept, hell if you made an elephant you know how crap it would look with a standard sl avatar skin on it because of the uv differences right?

 

All I am assuming is that a system intended to apply old skins and cloths to as yet unmade mesh isn't going to be very useful for painting helicopters or making elephants pink, a fairly reasonable assumption.

 

It's also a reasonable assumption that mesh makers who have 'improved' the system uv map for their mesh bodies or heads or hands or feet, wont be happy at having to un-improve them, to work with old pre mesh skin, tattoos and clothing, so dont expect said rumoured system to mean you can wear your favorite 2010 skin on a new bento head unless you make it your self specifcally to do so.

 

You started this derail of the original thread with a snippet from one of these weekly meetings, so are they proposing an actual universal baking system with materials support for any kind of mesh, or just 'wear old skin and clothes on the mesh avis we hope people will make'.

 

It saddens and worries me that the possible future of SL Avatars is being discussed at secret meetings by people who don't know how many parts there are to a system avatar texture set, or why a diffuse only system won't apply materials.
 

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8 minutes ago, Klytyna said:

It saddens and worries me that the possible future of SL Avatars is being discussed at secret meetings by people who don't know how many parts there are to a system avatar texture set...

There's nothing secret about those Linden meetings, anyone can attend.

It's the content creation user group, held every Thursday in world: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Content_Creation_User_Group

 

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19 minutes ago, Klytyna said:

It's also a reasonable assumption that mesh makers who have 'improved' the system uv map for their mesh bodies or heads or hands or feet, wont be happy at having to un-improve them, to work with old pre mesh skin, tattoos and clothing, so dont expect said rumoured system to mean you can wear your favorite 2010 skin on a new bento head unless you make it your self specifcally to do so.

So, tell us how different the UV mapping of any mesh body that uses Omega appliers is from the default avatar mapping?

GRRR! No spoiler tags! Oh well... Imagine this is next is hidden.

Omega compatible mesh (i.e. almost all popular human mesh bodies) is based on the default avatar mapping. The only real changes needed are erasing the toe shading and fingernails. Most skin makers already have made these changes years ago for Slink appliers. Belleza tried re-mapping the hands and feet for their initial mesh body but they were slapped hard by the other skin makers who wouldn't make appliers for their bodies and changed them back. What exactly do you think an applier applies, anyway?

 

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On 2/18/2017 at 11:57 AM, GaryPreston said:

these avatars are becoming so relatively complicated that they take very long to rez properly with the result that even with the newest viewer updates

 

On 2/18/2017 at 2:19 PM, Lindal Kidd said:

Also, have you noticed that Mesh avatars (and mesh clothes) often have a LOWER complexity than traditional avatars with old style prim and sculpty clothing attachments?

 

On 2/18/2017 at 7:22 PM, Aethelwine said:

I find the opposite.

With mesh I rarely have a render weight higher than 30,000, back before mesh my render weight with flexi hair and flexi dresses would often be above 300,000.

I just have not seen the lag you used to get at clubs where you rubberband across the dancefloor, bumping in to people barely able to walk amongst all the grey textured people.

A few other people mentioned this to, but you get the idea.

You're all right. You're also all wrong.

With the introduction of mesh, LL gave content creators the ability to create content that is much, much more optimized and easier to render. They also gave creators the ability to bloat badly made content to an even greater extent than was possible in the past. Because of this you will see mesh content at both extremes.

Super detailed avatars with a draw weight close to 30,000 or even lower in some cases.

Low detailed avatars that somehow manage to have a draw weight pushing 300,000, killing the framerates of all those around them.

Part of this has to do with the fact that avatars don't have any real "land impact" restrictions, so content creators feel they can create much higher polycounts for their attachments than they would for content rezzed in the environment. A 100 prim chair would never fly these days, but a mesh hat with a prim equivalence of 100? "Sure, why not? More polygons means more quality!" many content creators would say.

Another factor are textures. SL has never had much of a cap on texture use and mesh, which allows creators to break up a surface into many separate textures, has given way to avatars wandering around with literally half a gigs worth of textures. That's half a gig worth of files you need to download before that avatar is properly rendered. Half a gig worth of VRAM used on your videocard, killing your framerates while ramping up the "texture thrashing" issue many experience in SL.

 

Not to mention lots of no-mod mesh bodyparts with many invisible layers, tattoo and clothing layers that many never or rarely use anyway, just invisible polygons that your videocard still needs to put just as much effort into rendering, even if you don't see them.

 

 So, yes, mesh has helped a lot of people reduce their avatars's performance impact, greatly. But it's also helped some drive up their impact by at least as much.

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24 minutes ago, Klytyna said:

Now for a non himan mesh avi, yeah you can ignore system avi uv mapping, as long as you are really really clear that your 'shirt' isnt a shirt, and wont work on a humanoid avi at all because its a snake, or an elephant, yeah you can create speciality avatars with such a system, but frankly it's easier making a damn applier, "Snake skin - green" or "elephant skin - Pink" to apply to your specific mesh, avoids a lot of confusion AND allows you to specify normal maps and specular maps for a better appearance normals and speculars that MATCH the specific skin tone.

What I want, as a creator, is the layers, so that customers can easily customize it, and other creators can make products for it. Who says the shirt layer for my cobra is not going to be a shirt? I really don't think it needs pants tho, so it works out perfect for me. lol

With these layers, I could give the customer the ability for choose for any number of patterns and designs for that cobra. It would be almost infinite. In order to do something similar, I would literally have to multiply the total polygons by 5 or more.

If you can choose which of the 3 sets to use, then human body creators could still break the bodies into slices for hiding things, that is still using the same amount of total polygons., and then choose which set those meshes belong under. This would also solve many of the fears of decreased texture resolution with baking, because each mesh could use the max resolution available.

I think you were making my arguments for me, when talking about the snake or elephant example. If you can do that with them, why is it not better for human avatars also? You are now creating your own avatar that can do everything the default avatar could ever do, and much more. As a creator, that kind of customization is crazy cool, without creating all these appliers and coding huds or any of that crap.

 

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17 hours ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

There's nothing secret about those Linden meetings, anyone can attend.

It's the content creation user group, held every Thursday in world: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Content_Creation_User_Group



 

If people don't know it happens at all, it's secret... How many content creators know about it in SL? in percentile terms? 1%? 2%? Less ?


 

6 years and theres still no script commands for projector lights, script commands to determine avi shape gender, came in last year, but the jira asking for that is older than I am.


 

And yet some tiny group, in consultation with Lindens most people have never heard of, are setting content policym, and worse, setting it on weird assumptions. One of those 'creators' still doesn't know who many textures are backed in a system avi, still thinks it's just 3, and had problems understanding why a 'diffuse map only' system wouldnt apply 'materials' that require 3 separate maps per surface.


 

Meanwhile we have another pro for this system who apparently hasnt heard that a typical skin maker has to upload 30 or more textures to cope with the different 'improvements' on standard uv mapping, including one body where they moved the nipples


 

I'd rather see the future planned by JIRA than by a clique of tech-fails at some obscure weekly event.


 

But we digress from the purpose of this thread.

 

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7 minutes ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

@Klytyna Then why don't you come to the next content creation user group & tell everyone how it should be done?

I'll bring the popcorn :)

Funny...

My local residents association, has had the same 3 people on the committee for 15 years even though 99% of the residents have never seen them let alone voted for them, obscure meetings by a clique, closed ranks against outsiders and all that,

 

If I'm going to waste an evening in SL, I'd rather waste it on something fun with people who actually listen...
 

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42 minutes ago, Klytyna said:

Meanwhile we have another pro for this system who apparently hasnt heard that a typical skin maker has to upload 30 or more textures to cope with the different 'improvements' on standard uv mapping, including one body where they moved the nipples

 

 

I specifically mentioned Omega, the universal applier system, didn't I? And I have personally made Omega appliers from old system skins that fit multiple bodies straight off.

(Oh, you do realize that every skin requires multiple texture uploads per skin tone, don't you?)

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1 hour ago, Klytyna said:

And yet some tiny group, in consultation with Lindens most people have never heard of, are setting content policym, and worse, setting it on weird assumptions. One of those 'creators' still doesn't know who many textures are backed in a system avi, still thinks it's just 3, and had problems understanding why a 'diffuse map only' system wouldnt apply 'materials' that require 3 separate maps per surface.

Linden Lab has announced the group, and talked about the group, formally known as the Bento Group, for over a year. What kind of creator are you that you don't know about it? Don't you keep up with every aspect of SL? If you didn't notice, I was being a little sarcastic there.O.o

I brought the topic up because I wanted more eyes on it. The Content Creation group is open to anyone, and no 1 need sign any NDAs. Some of the meetings are even video recorded for your YouTube pleasure. I have no idea where this particular topic of baking meshes came from, but I do think it is a pretty revolutionary idea. I want more creators to think and talk about it.

If you didn't notice what I was doing in my comments to you, I was leading you. Leading you down the similar thought process that anyone that knows anything about 3D and game creation would go thru, given they understand anything about how things work in SL. In leading you, you pretty much proved all my points. Do I really care how many different texture maps there are for the default avatars? Not really, but it proved to be high enough, and the whole system could be versatile enough to accommodate any kind of avatar, created and working however you wanted. Do you really think I don't understand SL materials, or bumps and speculars? Have you seen my Bento avatars? My point was, that it doesn't matter if the baking system ONLY uses Diffuse. You can still set the bumps and speculars yourself, as the creator, or make a hud for that, or whateverTF.

Edited by Medhue Simoni
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2 hours ago, Klytyna said:

And yet some tiny group, in consultation with Lindens most people have never heard of, are setting content policym, and worse, setting it on weird assumptions. One of those 'creators' still doesn't know who many textures are backed in a system avi, still thinks it's just 3, and had problems understanding why a 'diffuse map only' system wouldnt apply 'materials' that require 3 separate maps per surface.

 

Let's try to simplify things for you...

The reason people are interested in using the baking system is because it is a texture compositing system. It can take multiple textures from a wide variety of sources and combine them into a single texture. That's all it does. It's really fairly sophisticated - it can make a composite texture from a variety of people's textures without the need for them to give away the actual textures, and can assemble them in an exact order. It produces three of these composite textures. The reason people are "forgetting" about the "other three" precious, precious textures of the bake is the eyes, hair and skirt bakes can't composite sophisticated textures, meaning they aren't that useful. If you were running a pig dairy and brought in all the pigs you could find with teats, you'd discover that half of them weren't very useful.

The problem with the baking system as it is now is that these composite textures can only be applied to the base avatar. (They're also 512 by 512 pixels but that could theoretically be changed.) If they could also be sent to other things, such as mesh avatars, you would eliminate the need for tattoo/makeup layers and the alpha cut systems, both of which are complex kludges that exist only because mesh bodies can't have an in-world composited texture applied to them.

Now tell us why that possibility wouldn't be a good idea using reasoning more sophisticated than, "I said it wasn't earlier."

 

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15 hours ago, Medhue Simoni said:

If you didn't notice what I was doing in my comments to you, I was leading you. Leading you down the similar thought process that anyone that knows anything about 3D and game creation would go thru, given they understand anything about how things work in SL. In leading you, you pretty much proved all my points. Do I really care how many different texture maps there are for the default avatars? Not really, but it proved to be high enough, and the whole system could be versatile enough to accommodate any kind of avatar, created and working however you wanted. Do you really think I don't understand SL materials, or bumps and speculars? Have you seen my Bento avatars? My point was, that it doesn't matter if the baking system ONLY uses Diffuse. You can still set the bumps and speculars yourself, as the creator, or make a hud for that, or whateverTF.


 


 

You're not leading me anywhere Med, old boy.

If you had ACTUALLY given any real thought to the system avi bake concept for skinning your bento snake, you wouldnt have suggested using shirts that are not shirts, you'd have gone straight for skin. 3 textures, a head texture for say internal parts of the snakes head, mouth fangs etc, upper body for the scales on the sides and back and lower body for the underbelly scales, and since all 3 can have tattoo layers worn over them plys clothing layers for the body, you've got customisation of the basic skin there.

 

I didnt have to spent time thinking of this, or go to a meeting, it should have been bloody obvious as soon as the concept was mentioned.

Problem is... diffuse only... and now you admit avatar bake doesnt do normals and spec, but claim thats not a problem because "you can add them from a hud", funny, see, the idea of materials is that the normal and specular maps should bear some relevance to the diffuse, normal maps to apply bumpyness that matches the paint on the diffuse layer, but if you just have 1 normal and 1 sec or even 3 pairs or whatever in a hud, thats going to severely limit how 'flexible' your ssb bake is going to be.

I used to make shaders for 'virtual textures' in a moddable game, there, texture maps were composited from various layers with complicated blending techniques, every layer could abnd often did have its own alpha channel, so I'm used to 'live' virtual composite textures, was using them back in oh 2004?

The way you really want to do it is forget  a composite texture baking system based on system avu skin/clothing, and push for an actual customised universdal mesh applier, that any 'creator' can pull the 2 no mod scripts from the SL inventory Library, one to drop in their mesh, one to drop in an 'applier' prom, with easy to use nc based setup, where you specify the uuid's of the layers you want to bake, in the order you want them baked, not just for diffuse but for normals and specular too, and which face of which p-rim in the linkset these virtual textures get applied to, then drop the card in the applier, it reads it commits the info to memory and deletes the card, exactly the same way a maitreya applier does when you make one, then you can just sell your Medhie snake skin applier to all your Medhue snake customers.

Now, that would be a system worth having, not this lame attempt to make do with a half baked idea thats actually intended to let old fossils wear old clothes on new avis and nothing much else.

You havn't 'been leading me toi support' your vision, you have shown me your vision is severely lacking, a half baked half solution that will appease idiots and leave us further from a decent system.

 

Edited by Klytyna
Blody editor left out the para breaks...
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7 hours ago, Klytyna said:

If you had ACTUALLY given any real thought to the system avi bake concept for skinning your bento snake, you wouldnt have suggested using shirts that are not shirts, you'd have gone straight for skin. 3 textures, a head texture for say internal parts of the snakes head, mouth fangs etc, upper body for the scales on the sides and back and lower body for the underbelly scales, and since all 3 can have tattoo layers worn over them plys clothing layers for the body, you've got customisation of the basic skin there.

My snakes were originally made for the Unity3D game engine. It was made to be efficient, and all of it's texturing is done on 1 UV map. I have no reason to change that. Everything that needs to happen can happen on 1 set of texture layers, almost as easily as 3, with less complexity. The only real good reason to change it, would be to get more texture resolution. To me, the real question about how the baking system will work, is how they handle SL faces. We'd likely need to be able to change those faces individually.

No actual work, besides talking, has been done on this yet. This is why I'm bringing it up. Constructive criticism is good. I don't see why it would be a negative. If creators don't like the results, then they just don't use it. Let the market determine whether it is worthy or not. I bet the overall market will love it, and creators will be forced to use it, or lose in the market.

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8 hours ago, Klytyna said:

The way you really want to do it is forget  a composite texture baking system based on system avu skin/clothing, and push for an actual customised universdal mesh applier, that any 'creator' can pull the 2 no mod scripts from the SL inventory Library, one to drop in their mesh, one to drop in an 'applier' prom, with easy to use nc based setup, where you specify the uuid's of the layers you want to bake, in the order you want them baked, not just for diffuse but for normals and specular too, and which face of which p-rim in the linkset these virtual textures get applied to, then drop the card in the applier, it reads it commits the info to memory and deletes the card, exactly the same way a maitreya applier does when you make one, then you can just sell your Medhie snake skin applier to all your Medhue snake customers.

 


 

So, a creator could produce a composite texture using textures they have enough permissions to that they could get the UUID? Congratulations - you've just invented Photoshop.

Now tell us how someone who owned Medhue's elephant could wear Hindu ceremonial paint from another creator without needing either a separate layer or the original textures.

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I'd like to thank Medhue for persisting and explaining what seems to fall on deaf ears.

 

There's one big problem that no amount of appliers can fix, but baked layers have no problems with:

Combining several textures with a blended alpha layer without risk for glitches.

If my mesh avatar has freckles on the tattoo layer, she can't can't have any tattoo's, because they will glitch.

But maybe it's my lucky day and i don't see them disappear or flicker, so i add tattoo's on the underwear layer, and then sheer tights on the clothing layer. That is 3 blended alphas (that can't be made masked without looking like crap) ontop of eachother, and i'm nearly guaranteed that one of them will glitch. But since it's my superlucky day, they don't. Oh wait, but i have this really cute applier undies that i want to put on too, because mesh panties ontop of tights really make no sense. But i can't. I have used up all my available layers in my onion avatar, and i'm starting to feel like it's 2007, where you could have one shirt, one underwear and one jacket, and that's IT.

So not only will my tattoo's, freckles and tights most likely alpha-conflict, i'm also limited to how i can layer things.

Now, if i go out, people seeing me will have to load 4 separate textures, one for my skin, for my freckles, for my tattoo and for my tights.

4 times as many as really needed.

If the deferred texture was baked, i could wear as many different tattoos, beauty marks, scars etc as the system allows to layer.

They would not alpha glitch. Also no matter how many textures i'd stack, people would only need to download and render 1 composite texture.

 

Whatever UV map layout is used is really, completely irrelevant. People will adapt to the standard they find most useful for their creation, or make their own, and mark things up accordingly.  Assisting customers with issues relating to standards, like Omega compatibility (and lack thereof) already happens, and it wouldn't change. Having different UV maps on different avatars isn't exactly news.

 

Another thing is that this uses mostly what we already have in place, meaning it has a chance of actually happening.

Surely it would be fantastic to have a photoshop equivalent in SL for texturing, but that's not likely going to happen within my lfespan, and avatar baking is a good feature that is underutilized because it can't be used on mesh bodies.

 

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As it was said before, everyone is welcome to the content creation meetings.  It's not a secret club, and you have the adress now. Don't have time? Well, that is a priority no one can make for someone else.

Also don't think that the Content creation meeting dum-dums couldn't come up with something bigger and smarter than putting system clothing layers on rigged worn mesh.

First time i suggested baking textures on rezzed prims, was shortly after we got server side appearance. I'm also pretty sure i wasn't the first to ask for that even. There are feature requests for it, in different iterations, jiras that other people have written. I suggested it again when this subject, of avatar bakes on mesh came up. There will be people who suggest it again, most likely.

So it's not a bunch of uneducated dumbs that sit on the meetings and direct where things are going, it's that some things have already been suggested, and rejected several times, and will continue to get rejected, yet we will still ask because who knows, maybe next time.

 

Can't have composite textures. Ok. Can perhaps have avatar bakes on worn mesh. Great, we take it!

Edited by Lexbot Sinister
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Dohhhh Whirls... what kind of flame fest did you drag me in to...   stop baiting me into messes like this, I have more important things to waste my time on, like playing Don't Starve.

Feh... fine.

@Klytyna - 

It's not a Linden that came up with the idea to allow the Serverside Baked output textures to be applied to Rigged Mesh Avatars, it was mine.

The reason is pretty simple.  It's not for reviving millions of system layer clothing assets, ( though that will happen too as a byproduct ), but rather for giving users a reliable way of applying skins, tattoos and stocking/lingerie layers to mesh bodies without the mesh body designers having to use additional polygon shells.

Presently all standard mesh bodies contain 3-5 copies of the original body "shelled" or "layered" overtop the basic layer.   Each copy of the body is used solely for applying a tattoo layer or a freckle layer or a piece of lingerie/clothing to that mesh body.   This means that anyone viewing that avatar has to render four copies of the entire mesh body at all times, This makes that mesh body 4x as laggy.

Additionally, on top of the polygon count cost, there's the cost of keeping individual textures in memory~ all at 1024x1024 pixel size.

This means for each part of the body~ a fully tattooed mesh avatar with system layer lingerie on will have:

3X 1024 textures for the skin layer ( head, torso and legs )

3X 1024 textures for the tattoo layer alpha blended overtop that ( head, torso and legs )

2X 1024 textures for the lingerie layer ( torso and legs )

This leads to a grand total of 8 x 1024 textures stuck in memory.  This is before we even get to whatever mesh clothing that's presently being worn on top of that body.

Now.  Using the serverside baked textures on all body parts eliminates the need for the extra 3 layers of "shelled" copies of the mesh body, making the rez time for the mesh asset 4x faster than it presently is, but it also culls the texture count down from 8x 1024x1024 textures down to just 3x ( baked head , body & legs ), more than doubling the efficiency there as well.  This texture efficiency boost doesn't even take into account the massively reduced render complexity differences that come from rendering layered alpha blended textures of tattoos overtop skin layers.

But because of the way that the serverside baker operates, it doesn't have to stop at just there.  Allowing use of server compounded textures would allow for users to wear multiple tattoo layers, multiple stocking and lingerie layers.  A lot of people love to customize every singled detail of their avatar down to single tattoos, single moles, single scars etc.  This ability was lost with the arrival of mesh bodies, but would be regained by this feature.

The original notion of this thread was that someone lamented the arrival of mesh because of the aberrant load times.  This is a very valid concern, one that the Lindens actually take rather seriously.  So, this proposal that you're so thoroughly upset about is actually a massive ( 4-5X ) optimization, that would allow him to continue to enjoy SL in a much more ideal way~ as well as make SL events 4-5X less laggy.

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You had me at...

6 hours ago, polysail said:

for giving users a reliable way of applying skins, tattoos and stocking/lingerie layers to mesh bodies without the mesh body designers having to use additional polygon shells.

Thank you many times over for getting the ball rolling on this. There was a mesh body being offered free for a limited time that had 8 layers!

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It's not the first time it's been suggested that we should be able to use avatar bakes on mesh, the topic came up already with the first mesh bodies, where people started to question the necessity of appliers. Some went as far as to make Jiras, and illustrate how it could function inworld ( Darien Caldwell, but i bet there was more).

The showstopper there was that if you are wearing a full body alpha, in order to hide it from cutting through the mesh body, the avatar bake becomes fully alpha too. And then there is nothing to apply on the mesh but a full alpha... That's where people stopped testing, because LL had to make it so the system body was fully alphaed out, while that alpha was then omitted in the bake itself.

LL was not interested at that point, at all. Mesh bodies were for a small fringe of fashionistas. We did say that this will be the next norm but... yeah.

So now i'm both happy and a little jaded when we could potentially, eventually get to apply avatar bakes onto worn mesh. happy, because it would be a great improvement, if implemented well enough for creators to want to adapt ( Like upping the bake limit to 1024, from 512).

Jaded because this is so much " We told you so, for many years now" and i wish it had been done proactively, and we wouldn't need to have so much unnecessarily render-heavy content.

 

Nobody *wanted* to make onionskinned avatars, but that was the only option in the evolution progress of avatar appearance.

When the userbase of SL longs for something, it will be made.

If there are no convenient tools for making what we want, we will use the inconvenient ones.

 

 

Edited by Lexbot Sinister
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On 3/21/2017 at 2:18 AM, Klytyna said:

Cathy Foil My Response: I am sorry but you are wrong.

Yeah... You appear to be suffering from Tech-Fail. The auto-mated system he was talking about is based on Server Side Baking, where the system takes yur system skin and system alpha and system layers and bakes them into a single texture for each of head,  upper body, and lower body. So this system ONLY works if the uv mapping exactly corresponds to system avatar us mapping, anything else, epic bake fail. You can't use it to bake clothing textures for "some mesh dress that somebody released the uv's for".

Cathy Foil My Response: You do not have to follow or use the UV layout of the SL avatar to use the baked automated texture system on the mesh clothes that do not use the same UV layout.  The texture that is to be applied to the mesh clothes just needs to be created to fit the UV layout of the mesh clothes.  Yes when the texture is applied to the default avatar it will look weird on the default avatar mesh because the default avatar UVs are different but the default avatar will be invisible.  Besides you are just thinking of human avatars.  Even if human avatar and clothing designers decide to not use the automatic texturing system non human avatar makers can take full advantage of an automated texturing system.

Remember this project is just at the very beginning stages.  All of the possible limitations and technical problems have not been discovered or solutions figured out.  It was the same way at the beginning of the Bento project.  I am not saying your concerns are not valid or without merit.
 

Your list of winners is suspect too... How exactly does a designer benefit when instead of buying their new products, people can just go to World-O-Crap Discount Freebie Warehouse and get ne of those 'complete fashion store in a box system layer collections from 2006, for a linden and have them work on their mesh bodies and clothes. Just means sales go down and people wear a lot of ugly old crap thats best buried.

As for your supposed 'benefits' lets take a look at some.

1. No need for the three clothing layers - Trust me, you tell a 3d modeler that they dont need parts B,C,and D of their mesh but will need to remake part A, they will simply remake part A with more polygons, so your 'big reduction in lag' won't happen.

Cathy Foil My Response:  Who said anything about remaking any existing mesh?  Yeah I know mesh clothing designers are not going to stop modeling fine details into their clothes in favor of an automated texture or any texture for that matter.  Fine mesh details help sell clothes.  Where the lag reduction will come from is from mesh bodies no longer needing to be multiple upon multiple upon multiple polygon layers to simulate the basic layers of the default avatar.

2. No need for huds and alpha cuts - Yeah, see that's gonna be a problem.  "hey guys, all the mesh clothing you have that doesnt have an old system alpha layer, is now useless because THAT woman over  there took away your alpha  huds... Get the Tar and Feathers, Get HER!"

Cathy Foil My Response:  If a designer prefers using huds to the ease of using an alpha applied to the default avatar no one will be stopping them.  NO existing content will be broken by the addition of an automated texturing system.  No one will be forced to use the automated texturing system.  You are jumping to unfounded conclusions. 

3. No need for appliers - Erm you talk as if thats an urgent problem we need to address. Meh

Cathy Foil My Response:  Appliers may or may not be a big or annoying problem for content creators and or their customers.  The automatic texturing system will make thing easier in many ways for the content creators and make things easier for their customers.  Just right mouse click on it in your inventory and wear it.  No need to open up a Hud or mess with an applier.

4 Easier to use and more versatile - Maybe, just a lottle, but it's not exactly rocket science using a mesh body now, you have to be pretty dim to have problems, frankly.

Cathy Foil My Response:  Every advancement from sculpties to rigged mesh to now Bento has added complexity and difficulty for content creators and their customers.  It has made the learning curve for new residents that much steeper.  The automatic texturing system is a step in the direction towards making things easier for both content creators and their customer helping to lessen that learning curve.  Frankly I am amazed you failed to grasp that.

7. Mesh makers can concentrate on making mesh - They do already dear, its called Full Perm Template, and theres tons of it, get with  the program.

Cathy Foil My Response: Yes if you don't want to make textures for your mesh you can sell them full perm.  So what about those who don't want to sell their mesh creations full perm?  Screw them?  Well dear I don't like your program.  I do my best to try and figure out solutions that benefits everyone.

6. Allows texture makers to make textures for new mesh - Yeah that happens already too, see point 7, you really need to keep up.

Cathy Foil My Response:  You really are pretty blind in seeing the possibilities.  I don't need to keep up I am way ahead of you.

AND Finally... the point we all knew was coming and which is the whole point of the discussion...

5. Lets you use all that tired old crap from 2006 just like the  good old days when i could just double click on stuff without thinking, and hey presto, bad skin and ugly clothes happened auto-magically!

Cathy Foil My Response:  You really believe people will use the automatic texturing system just to wear crappy ugly old clothing textures and skins from 2006?  You think people will be happy the way they looks with ugly old textures just because they are automatically applied?  Of course they wouldn't!  But are there some great older skins and clothing textures?  YES!  Those will be the textures people will wear when they feel like it.

Will this mean less sales of new mesh and skins?  NO!  Being able to use all your old favorite skin textures on a new mesh avatar and clothes makes people happy and interested in staying and logging into SL.  The more they stay and are happy in SL the more likely they are going to buy new items.

Mesh hating Neanderthals of 2006 Unite! Abandon these meshy Cro-Magnon ways, leave your mesh houses, burn your mesh clothes, back to the prim caves!

Cathy Foil My Response:  See my above response.  Ever hear of the story "Chicken Little"?  Read it.  You might recognize yourself in it.

I'm not even going to dignify point 5 with an answer, see my previous post about cave dwellers dressed in 2006 prim goat skins

Cathy Foil My Response:  I am not going to bother with reading your previous post about cave dwellers.  Different people like different things.  Some people prefer the default SL avatar and system clothes to mesh clothes.  Some people prefer building with prims or sculpties.  They are just different ways of creating and I seen prim builds and sculptie builds that are just as good as any mesh.  Just because someone doesn't like what you like or wear the type of mesh you wear or come up to your standards doesn't make them less or wrong.  Quite frankly your choice of words calling someone a cave dweller just shows me how unevolved of a human being you really are.

 

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