"Local mesh" capability in some viewer?

[Noel Loordes]

Some viewers (e.g. Firestorm) allow to preview textures in-world from local files, updating automatically if the local file changes.

Is there a viewer, that offers a similar option for mesh? This would be incredibly useful for fine-tuning mesh, as it cuts down the edit-save-upload-attach cycle to a fraction of the time, allowing entirely different workflows. So far I couldn't find any such feature.

While the Beta-grid allows to avoid over-head costs from uploading mesh repeatedly, it doesn't speed up the workflows, or rather even makes it slightly slower by requiring to redo the final upload on the main grid.

[Rolig Loon]

1 hour ago, Noel Loordes said:

Some viewers (e.g. Firestorm) allow to preview textures in-world from local files, updating automatically if the local file changes.

ALL viewers have that function.  It is a feature of the standard SL viewer, from which all the others are derived.  See http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Rolig_Loon/Local_Textures

No, there is no similar feature for mesh, since a mesh object actually has to be in the SL servers before you can rez it and see it in world. Local textures work because the texture can remain in your computer and be rendered directly by your own graphics card as you view a textured object in world.

[Beq Janus]

15 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

No, there is no similar feature for mesh, since a mesh object actually has to be in the SL servers before you can rez it and see it in world. Local textures work because the texture can remain in your computer and be rendered directly by your own graphics card as you view a textured object in world.

There is no such feature but there is no technical limitation per se, a mesh is no different to a texture in how and where it is cached, a local mesh is entirely viable, the preview window in the uploader is after all a local mesh view, albeit very limited, making it work though, that's a whole other matter. The devil is in the detail.

I have a TODO item on my personal project list for build tool improvements, to add local mesh support to Firestorm (and ultimately contributing back to the lab so everyone gets it). It is, however, a lot of work.

The concept is simple enough, but because of the way that SL imports mesh there is a lot of messing around and I suspect a lot of issues. You need to manage multiple temporary models and changes to those that roll up into a single temporary mesh. some of those models are potentially auto-generated, tweaking those might cause them to break and the viewer is not necessarily able to handle that "live" at the moment. How do you get the edit tools to show the LOD Model or physics shape that you are working on etc etc. (Clue: the next release of FS has the first stab at those).  Overall, getting it to work, is probably not *too* hard, but then making it usable and safe for people, in general, is a lot more work (consider things such as the bug in materials when using local textures and people that have edit rights on your stuff and how that can extend to meshes).

It is one of those ideas that you think, "oh that shouldn't be too hard", then you realise why it wasn't already done as you plan out all the things that go into it :-) 

Small steps along the way are happening.

[ChinRey]

4 hours ago, Beq Janus said:

There is no such feature but there is no technical limitation per se, a mesh is no different to a texture in how and where it is cached, a local mesh is entirely viable, the preview window in the uploader is after all a local mesh view, albeit very limited, making it work though, that's a whole other matter. The devil is in the detail.

It should be possible to make a function that superimposes a local mesh file onto an SL scene of course. But with the limited access to the HAVOK libraries, it won't be possible for a third party developer to get an exact value for the physics weight. I don't know about others but much of my time on the beta grid is spent testing various physics models.

Oh, and imagine people filling up their land with temporary meshes only they can see to save upload fees.

A completely different possible solution to the OP's issue (which I'm very familiar with myself btw), would be to allow items to be transferred from the beta grid to the main, upload feew of course being charged when the item is transferred. There shouldn't be any big technical problems for that but certainly lots of practical ones that need to be sorted out.

Edited January 9, 2018 by ChinRey

[Beq Janus]

5 hours ago, ChinRey said:

It should be possible to make a function that superimposes a local mesh file onto an SL scene of course. But with the limited access to the HAVOK libraries, it won't be possible for a third party developer to get an exact value for the physics weight. I don't know about others but much of my time on the beta grid is spent testing various physics models.

It is not overlaying really, in the same way that local images work it would be fully part of the local scene. A mesh is an asset with a UUID, the UUID points to an underlying mesh UUID, which in turn represents the SLM compressed Mesh. The temp mesh solution would allocate a local UUID for both the asset and the underlying mesh, and construct the SLM as it does for upload today. The full physics access that the uploader has today would be available. Though I take your point that part of the problem will be the physics shape as we can at best only simulate that. As I said, a lot of things would have to be written to make this happen and the physics limitation could be addressed on the way. I also believe that an iniviewer, in-situ mesh preview with full material support has massive productivity benefits without the final step of physics production. 

6 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Oh, and imagine people filling up their land with temporary meshes only they can see to save upload fees.

Entirely up to them, they'd be gone next restart and they'd be living a lonely life. Might as well spin up an open sim :-)

6 hours ago, ChinRey said:

A completely different possible solution to the OP's issue (which I'm very familiar with myself btw), would be to allow items to be transferred from the beta grid to the main, upload feew of course being charged when the item is transferred. There shouldn't be any big technical problems for that but certainly lots of practical ones that need to be sorted out.

That's an option though I cannot see them (LL) going for it. Raise a Jira and propose it though you never know, I'm happy to raise it at the Content Creator UG if you can't make it and if you have a Jira I can point Vir at; that said, if you enable SLM caching (MeshImportUseSLM)  in FS (which was known to cause some issues in the past, but I use it by default and don't tend to have issues, ymmv) You can quite happily upload to Aditi and then move to Agni and find the upload settings replicated. Not quite the same as transferring but a step in the right direction.

Beq

[Callum Meriman]

On 1/9/2018 at 8:36 PM, Beq Janus said:

How do you get the edit tools to show the LOD Model or physics shape that you are working on etc etc. (Clue: the next release of FS has the first stab at those).

The new feature coming in the next FS is the single most impressive improvement to working with mesh for years. Being able to see just the physics for the single object you are working on is a complete godsend.