Inventory Purging and What I learned about Mesh and Texture Changes

[Chic Aeon]

OK., THAT was a long title. It made me smile as my paintings used to have long titles and the folks at galleries making up the title cards were "sighing" often :D.

 

Since it is summer and S L O W and since I already have releases finished for August, I decide to rearrange my H and G folders. Currently they  are divided by year from 2013 - 2018. THAT is getting clumsy. I am now putting them into two main folders (H and G indoor and H and G outdoor). These are not MY builds, but blogger copies and items I have purchased or picked up in hunts. 

 

It has been both interesting and tedious and I have just finished 2013 (the first to be completed). It took three days. Whew!   Along the way I found some oldies but goodies to be added to LEA6. I also threw out almost all sculpt items but some grasses and bushes. Anything that didn't work at LOD2 got tossed.  That left me with 800 ish items that are still "up to standards". 

 

BUT the most interesting thing in my journey was noting the changes in the work of popular creators.

 

We would expect their skills to improve and they did. Shadows became more realistic and not so harsh, mesh took on more interesting shapes etc. 

Still,  I could not find one case where LODs have improved (note these are designs from 2013 so other folks came later to the party and a few I know have made some changes).    Mesh isn't higher land impact than it used to be for the same sort of item. Physics in some cases is better, in some not. 

The most interesting thing I found is that one prominent creator now uses up to eight textures per item (not materials although that is likely also, I didn't check that closely) when they USED to use one.  In general I have seen this trend -- also in wearables. 

I did a fair amount of experimentation with textures this year, had a bunch of help from Optimo and I am pretty happy with my now typical texture use and quality. Could my stuff look even  sharper and more like a render?  Sure it could, but it comes to a point when it becomes counterproductive.  So for now I will be building  with one high rez 500 and often 1024 texture for a typical piece of furniture. Others will think that is too much, some not enough clarity. We EACH have to decide where we want our products to be on that spectrum. 

 

As an aside, I went over to a well-known shop today to look at something on sale. This shop is a partnership of various creators so some have good LODs and some not.  When I arrived it took forever (really forever) for textures to load ON SOME OF THE ITEMS.  On others, the ones with good LODs, the complex and sharp textures loaded as expected.  I can't really remember a time where I have had that GRAY look of old LOL.   So that fits in with all of this.  I don't have the hottest machine in SL but I suspect I am in the top 10%. It should NOT be gray for me.  

Just some morning thoughts.