Abnormally high LI and upload costs

[Suki Hirano]

I'm trying to upload some rigged attachments and I don't know why some of them have abnormally high LI and upload costs. For example:

• Attachment A has ~35k triangles, 4 LI, only 14L upload cost when minimum LOD set to 0
• Attachment B has ~40k triangles, for some reason shows as 46 LI, whopping 60L upload cost even when minimum LOD set to 0
• I tested another object and purposely made it extremely detailed by smoothing it in blender, ~120k triangles, only 4 LI and 17L upload cost
• They're attachments so physics is not relevant

Does anyone know what else other causes high LI, other than triangles? Because that's obviously not the problem, when 120k triangles has 1/4 the upload cost of 40k triangles.

Edited April 2, 2017 by Suki Hirano

[arton Rotaru]

Physics shapes are always relevant, even more so during the import process. So first thing to check is the physics weight shown in the import window.
(Why not just use a box as the physics shape anyway? Any attachment can be rezzed on land as well, instead of being attached.)

Another thing to check is the actual triangle count of the lowest LOD. Depending on how your mesh is build, GLOD may fail to reduce the triangles, even when set to zero.

Edited April 2, 2017 by arton Rotaru

[Suki Hirano]

50 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

Physics shapes are always relevant, even more so during the import process. So first thing to check is the physics weight shown in the import window.
(Why not just use a box as the physics shape anyway? Any attachment can be rezzed on land as well, instead of being attached.)

Another thing to check is the actual triangle count of the lowest LOD. Depending on how your mesh is build, GLOD may fail to reduce the triangles, even when set to zero.

Ah, seems the LOD generator didn't really reduce it far enough. I went back into blender and added decimate modifier about 5 times to reduce the # of faces down to about 15, then used that as the low/mid LOD's, now the upload cost is a normal 15L with 4 LI.

Thanks.

[Chic Aeon]

Be sure and CHECK the visual LODs inworld after you upload (the beta grid is good for that). It won't do you any good to have your (hair, shoes, jewelry etc) disappear at ten meters away. Not everyone is using LOD setting of 4. 

You will discover that  sometimes the uploader will do a good job and other times it will not.  Also test your Avatar Complexity of the item. Honestly 4LI is a lot these days, most of my (high end - smart designers) items are 1 and can be seen from great distances and have LOTS of details.  

It all comes with time. Practice and paying attention to settings and smart modeling is key.

The decimate modifier is not REALLY your friend IMHO. Best not to rely on it :D.

 

@arton Rotaru had a very good point. Depending on how things are modeled, some items cannot be set to one li per material for the lowest setting. There's a hint there that maybe you should be modeling differently *wink*. Sometimes our ideas don't translate well into game assets. Just the way it is.

 

 

 

[arabellajones]

I have seen some horribly complicated meshes.

Like a pair of boots with a total complexity of over 22k. (Complexity is currently calculated in the same way as display weight). It's no wonder that mesh avatars and clothes take such a long time to load when the creators do stuff like that.

Switch to wireframe view. The default avatar needs a higher triangle density in some places, the stretching on the upper arms has always been a problem, but nothing needs a mesh with such tiny triangles that it looks solid in Wireframe.

The uploader isn't brilliant. I have had better results with manually reduced meshes. I keep some small cubes and the lowest detail for the materials that would be invisible at long distances. Even a big object has some detail smaller than a viewer pixel at a distance. A door I made soon can be reduced to a simple cube-like box. The uploader can often lose that basic shape, and whatever the object, losing the rough shape can look bad.

I don't use the uploader function that handles edges. The basic technology that handles hard and soft edges gives you a lot of control. Way back when SL was new, you still often had to make a mesh (in other environments) that used two edges, very close together, to get things looking sharp. By the time SL started using mesh, the hard/soft tech was a commonplace, and SL uses it. This is what the uploader option depends on,

You can uses a high-res mesh to generate a normal map. I think I would use mesh detail for the seams on a pair of denim jeans, because not everyone uses the advanced lighting model, but I'd drop them from all but the highest level of detail. Do you bake normals and specularity into the texture? It depends what the detail is, I think. It can make a big difference if you work with very high texture resolution, and then reduce to 512 pixel before uploading.

Imported meshes often use a lot of detail, that is wasted in SL. The "game" mesh may be the right sort of level for Medium LOD.

But I have worked hard on efficient meshes. The Marketplace seems to have no way of finding such stuff. The whole Complexity thing seems a bit pointless when you see it ignored by Linden Lab.