Mesh

[Zhoie Zimermann]

I'm looking to my fellow merchants to help me out so I can understand how Mesh is going to impact my business. (I make furniture). I can't find the answers I'm looking for on various sites or live support. All I hear is talk from residents and I don't want to just believe everything I hear from them. I'd much rather hear it from a merchant who has done their homework on the subject. Here is what I'm hearing and I'd love to know the validity of it:

-Mesh sculpts/products are going to look 100x better than what we see now making older objects unsellable

-Mesh objects are going to be next to no prims making older objects unsellable

-If your business does not upgrade to mesh, you have no hope of surviving

-Because Mesh objects are going to be so many less prims, LL will likely raise the cost somehow to compensate for this

Can't wait to hear responses (again, I know nothing on this topic)  thanks :)

[leliel Mirihi]

 

1. Partially true. Meshes will look better, but not by that much. Sculpties will still be competitive, altho things made entirely out of prims will probably be killed my meshes.
2. The opposite. Prims and sculpties have a significantly lower prim cost then their actual rendering cost. LL does not want to make the same mistake again. There are a few types of objects that can be made with meshes at a very low prim cost. However most objects should have the same or higher cost than prims/sculpties would, tho usually with more detail.
3. True in the long term, perhaps, but it's not like you have to make the change over night. It took almost a year for businesses to transition to sculpties after their release.
4. See #2.

 

[Ann Otoole]

Things that look fine as sculpts will be more affordable. That pretty much sums it up.

[Zhoie Zimermann]

leliel, thank you for that !! Very helpful.

[Medhue Simoni]

But....... Any mesh created efficiently will actually be a fraction of the data that some1's pc will need to download. Besides the massive benefit in total triangles, mesh allows you to create a perfect UV map with custom faces. Yes, it seems that LL is purposely going to up the prim cost on mesh to make them seem equivalent to normal prims, but the reality is that the mesh version will possibly be a fraction of the total data of the prim version.

Here is a simple comparison of 2 hammers in wireframe mode. The 1 on the left is a sculpty hammer, and the 1 of the right is a mesh hammer. Notice how many fewer triangles the mesh hammer has, and it could actually have less, where as the sculpty mesh is set and can't be changed. The sculpty hammer is 2 sculpties and uses 2 textures. The mesh hammer uses 1 UV mapped texture, is 1 mesh with 2 submeshes, and has a prim cost of 1. If I wanted, I could put all the textures for all the tools on 1 1024x1024 texture, to make using all the tools even less total data. I did this with all my mesh eating utensils. Now, these are just simple objects, but you can imagine how much the benefits pile up as the objects get more complex.

No, I don't think mesh will drastically change most markets in SL, at least not right away. Irreguardless of what LL does to make them cost more, if you have a sim full of well made mesh objects, Every1's pc that is viewing your sim will be downloading considerably less data than a sim filled with regular prims or sculpties.

[Madeliefste Oh]

It will all depend, Zhoie, on how mesh will be accepted by the community. Wether mesh will be a succes and a competition to existing businesses depends on the power of the masses.

When for example only v2 users can see meshes properly and populair 3rd party viewers are not able to support mesh properly, then mesh will only have a low influence in SL. But when all viewers can support it, and the masses will love mesh, well in that case you will loose a lot (of not all) of your business.

In this stage it's just speculations and gambling, cause we don't know yet if the majority of the SL participants will love mesh or find it not intesting at all.

[Zhoie Zimermann]

this has all been extremly helpful, thanks !

[Josh Susanto]

I expect mesh will be more effective at replacing some types of items than at replacing others.

I'm not that worried about it.

In fact, I'm eager for mesh to come out so that everyone can shrug and go back to buying my sculpts.

[Vick Forcella]

The utlra big difference between a Sculpt and Mesh is that Mesh can have a physical shape and a Sculpt not. Suppose a mountain made of a sculpt, you would need to hide primes below it to walk over the sculpt shape. With Mesh you just walk on it.

Mesh can push out builders that don't (want to) use the off-line tools, but the same would be true for sculpts.

Rendering is supposed to be about as fast as normal prims. But there will be plenty of bad builders that will compensate for that benefit.

[Josh Susanto]

[but there will be plenty of bad builders that will compensate for that benefit.]

I'm counting on that.

I'm counting on a period of massive mesh disillusionment as an opportunity to get my own mesh chops together, using money from the inevitable revival of interest in decent sculpts.

Laugh while you can.