Doing homework on smart shopping

[marinathewitch]

13 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

Low impact does NOT necessarily equate with OPTIMIZED.  Do your  homework and make wise choices *wink*

So, I want to make wise choices and spend my lindens well.  That's why I read forums, blogs and such. But as a (kinda sorta) SL-newbie things sometimes are hard to figure out and I've hit "my head is about to explode" threshold more than once. So I brought my homework here in hopes that maybe more experienced older siblings users will help me finish it and check for mistakes. Maybe it even will be helpful to others as well.

 

This is checklist of sorts I compiled for myself to look for when shopping. This one is for furniture/houses/stuff you rez. 

 

Here is the part I am more or less confident about:

- Locate the demo before buying anything

- Check mod/copy/transfer permissions and see if all that are needed from this item are checked (if it is gacha and I do not care for item being "no copy", next thing I do is checking Marketplace to see if anyone selling the item for lower price)

- Is it mesh or prim - don't want to link the two as it causes added LI that would be avoided otherwise

- Land Impact - the lower the better, but not if it compromises LOD optimization

- LOD - check at 1.25, 2, 4, consider from what distance item will be looked at

- Textures - are there reasonable amount of them and in reasonable size - is there a way to check those apart using FS feature?

- Check if demo item is set to Full Bright, if so - think twice

- Check how it looks with and without ALM enabled

- Check animations and if those can adjust them without going elbows deep in the scripts 

 

And here is my "errrrm, I kind of know it's important but not sure what to do" part of the list:

- Scripts - I don't know even what to look for in this department, any advice? I think I've read something about 1 script per linkset being optimum - is that correct of is my memory playing tricks on me? Does it matter if scripts are mod/no mod when it comes to furniture or buildings?

- Physics? Completely lost here. I know that in houses bad physics might cause problems with rezzing things in them, but have no idea what good physics should look like and how to check it, especially in no rez areas (which most stores are), or what else is affected. 

- What about animesh? What to be on a lookout for?

Maybe I've missed something else?

 

And if this thread doesn't belong here, point me to the right forum. x__x Was debating between general and mesh myself, but it is not necessarily about mesh items and not about creating them for sure, so I am flipping my virtual table and just posting it.

Edited April 11, 2019 by marinathewitch
on a hunt for typos and poor grammar

[ChinRey]

34 minutes ago, marinathewitch said:

- Is it mesh or prim - don't want to link the two as it causes added LI that would be avoided otherwise

That's not nearly always the case. If you understand how land impact actually works, you can often save a ton of LI by linking meshes and prims and even sculpts together.

 

34 minutes ago, marinathewitch said:

- Textures - are there reasonable amount of them and in reasonable size - is there a way to check those apart using FS feature?

Sort'a. The display weight can be checked in any viewer and it gives a rough indication of texture density.

Edited April 11, 2019 by ChinRey

[Chic Aeon]

38 minutes ago, marinathewitch said:

So, I want to make wise choices and spend my lindens well.  That's why I read forums, blogs and such. But as a (kinda sorta) SL-newbie things sometimes are hard to figure out and I've hit "my head is about to explode" threshold more than once. So I brought my homework here in hopes that maybe more experienced older siblings users will help me finish it and check for mistakes. Maybe it even will be helpful to others as well.

 

This is checklist of sorts I compiled for myself to look for when shopping. This one is for furniture/houses/stuff you rez. 

 

Here is the part I am more or less confident about:

- Locate the demo before buying anything

- Check mod/copy/transfer permissions and see if all that are needed from this item are checked (if it is gacha and I do not care for item being "no copy", next thing I do is checking Marketplace to see if anyone selling the item for lower price)

- Is it mesh or prim - don't want to link the two as it causes added LI that would be avoided otherwise

You can often link prims to mesh (and sometimes sculpts) successfully. If you link a CUBE (flattened in this case but doesn't matter) to a picture to put a shadow texture on for example and then change the item to CONVEX HULL in the FEATURES tab of the build menu you an have a painting with shadow for the same land impact. Linking sculpts to prims can cause some issues, but as long as you have items that are copy you can certainly TRY .  

In the case below I linked a 3 land impact gateway to a sculpted bush (1 land impact). When LINKED, the 4 land impact became 5. Long ago when we changed from "prims" to land impact some really monstrous recalculations could happen, but not these days. So not as big a deal, but always good to note.  I have very few sculpted items these days but these bushes I still use often :D.

Quote

- Land Impact - the lower the better, but not if it compromises LOD optimization

- LOD - check at 1.25, 2, 4, consider from what distance item will be looked at

- Textures - are there reasonable amount of them and in reasonable size - is there a way to check those apart using FS feature?

- Check if demo item is set to Full Bright, if so - think twice

- Check how it looks with and without ALM enabled

- Check animations and if those can adjust them without going elbows deep in the scripts 

Sounds like you are an excellent shopper and the FS Inspcet Object feature gives a lot of good general texture info. I don't know of any better way at the moment. 

Quote

And here is my "errrrm, I kind of know it's important but not sure what to do" part of the list:

- Scripts - I don't know even what to look for in this department, any advice? I think I've read something about 1 script per linkset being optimum - is that correct of is my memory playing tricks on me? Does it matter if scripts are mod/no mod when it comes to furniture or buildings?

Scripts are almost always no mod unless they are public domain scripts. I rarely by scripted objects but imagine others can help you with this. 

Quote

- Physics? Completely lost here. I know that in houses bad physics might cause problems with rezzing things in them, but have no idea what good physics should look like and how to check it, especially in no rez areas (which most stores are), or what else are affected. 

You can see how the physics model is made by turning on (and off when you are finished natch) physics shapes.

We don't have as much "bad physics" as we used to, but one simple things people can do before buying a structure is to walk into all the rooms and into the walls and THROUGH the doors.   The rezzing on the floor issue can be worked around just by adding a prim to rez on. This can be textured as carpet or wood floor OR made invisible.  Most demos won't be in places where you can rez a cube on the floor :D.  

 

Quote

- What about animesh? What to be on a lookout for?

Maybe I've missed something else?

 

And if this thread doesn't belong here, point me to the right forum. x__x Was debating between general and mesh myself, but it is not necessarily about mesh items and not about creating them for sure, so I am flipping my virtual table and just posting it.

A very good list. For ME personally the LODs are the biggest issue.  If the mesh is heavy and laggy I usually just delete it (I rarely BUY things :D).  If something is  overly textured (that 1024 matchstick head comes to mine) it may get tossed also or saved for a photo shoot only. Those are my three big areas I look at before blogging something :D.  

Edited April 11, 2019 by Chic Aeon

[Qie Niangao]

2 hours ago, marinathewitch said:

- Scripts - I don't know even what to look for in this department, any advice? I think I've read something about 1 script per linkset being optimum - is that correct of is my memory playing tricks on me? Does it matter if scripts are mod/no mod when it comes to furniture or buildings?

(As already mentioned, scripts are rarely distributed with Modify permission; there are exceptions, including the now open-source AVsitter, but most folks aren't interested in modifying scripts anyway. That's unfortunate because it's a lot of fun, but it helps to be a geek.)

Practically speaking, there's no good way to tell how resource-intensive an individual script may be, but it's easy to count scripts and script count does affect resource use -- and that's crudely reflected in its effect on the "server" weight component of Land Impact. So yeah, fewer scripts are better than many scripts. There are some things that scripts cannot do remotely -- e.g., sound effects -- so some scripts scattered 'round the linkset may be unavoidable.

Also, it's a good idea to examine a running instance of a scripted object for the rate at which it emits object updates. (The toggle for viewing these is Control-Alt-Shift-U from Develop/Show Info/Show Updates to Objects.) Scripts that change and move stuff around may need to generate object updates, but that's a source of lag for server, network, and viewer, all at once.

Edited April 11, 2019 by Qie Niangao

[Fionalein]

Good physics depend on your intentions,... a box suits most but for me as a kitty boxed roof physics are a big no no... I sit up there

[Fenix Eldritch]

3 hours ago, marinathewitch said:

- Textures - are there reasonable amount of them and in reasonable size - is there a way to check those apart using FS feature?

Dunno about checking the number of unique textures without being able to edit the object and inspect each face in the build tool, but there is a way to check the size of the texture on the currently selected face. In the official viewer I think it's under Develop > Rendering > Selected Texture Info. There's also a keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+Alt+Shift ⇧+T . A quick glance at the Firestorm wiki shows that it maintains similar shortcuts. There's also a similar function for materials, I don't know off the top of my head what that displays - it may present the size of any additional normal/specular texture data, but I'm not at a viewer to  confirm at the moment.

Regarding scripts, I'd echo what Qie said: less is generally better, though there are some functions that still need support scripts in child prims like sound effects. Checking for excessive object updates with  Ctrl+Alt+Shift ⇧+U is also a good idea.

As for physics shapes, it's highly dependent on the object's use. If the object is modify-enabled, you can always switch to convex hull which is usually less heavy (but the object's physics shape becomes shrink-wrapped for lack of a better word - this may or may not be tolerable depending on what you object is used for). You can also set the physics shape to none to negate it entirely - but that's only doable for child links, not the root. Again, not a big deal if you already have modify rights.

Animesh allows a rigged mesh object to have its own copy of the avatar skeleton. if worn, it will animate independently of your own skeleton. The only thing to look out for is if two animesh objects use conflicting bones - but since you're only allowed to wear on animesh object/linkset at a time, the odds of that are low. I suppose it could be an issue if you link multiple animesh objects into one attachment.

Edited April 11, 2019 by Fenix Eldritch

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Wow. Do I suddenly feel really inadequate as a shopper.

[marinathewitch]

@ChinRey, thanks for correction! And for pointing to the Display weight. I completely forgot about existing of that tab behind "More info" link, but making a habit of checking it might do me some good.

As for understanding how land impact works - I actually don't. Yet. Barely scratched the surface of this part of SL knowledge while playing with plywood blocks. Sometimes I wander off to builders forum, stumble upon threads like this one and feel the world I know being shaken.

Then I run in terror after facing unimaginable.

 

@Chic Aeon, you took me on adventure of jumping between sandbox and random stores and wandering through the sea of blue things! *O* On a serious note though - thank you for detailed explanation and screenshots, very much appreciated. To me, with English being 2nd language, Convex Hull sounds like some sort of spell from Harry Potter, so I got scared by it and avoided touching anything near those words altogether in hopes that it will be OK. 

6 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

Linking sculpts to prims can cause some issues, but as long as you have items that are copy you can certainly TRY .  

Sounds like you are luring me into some havoc. 😄 I will have to try it now! There are some sculpts in my landscaping folder somewhere, they likely will not protest against being turned into experiment subjects.

6 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

For ME personally the LODs are the biggest issue.  If the mesh is heavy and laggy I usually just delete it (I rarely BUY things :D).  If something is  overly textured (that 1024 matchstick head comes to mine) it may get tossed also or saved for a photo shoot only.

Most of my worries go for textures at the moment. LOD issues are right in my face most of the time as I don't run around with overhyped settings. Texturing is sneakier but bites just as bad.

 

3 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Also, it's a good idea to examine a running instance of a scripted object for the rate at which it emits object updates. (The toggle for viewing these is Control-Alt-Shift-U from Develop/Show Info/Show Updates to Objects.) Scripts that change and move stuff around may need to generate object updates, but that's a source of lag for server, network, and viewer, all at once.

Ooooo a new toy! *O* That's a great tool and I didn't know it existed! I will use it. And being a geek helps in general. 😄 But being a script magician takes specific kind of personality. My brain just doesn't work in the way that would let me to enjoy tinkering with scripts. I can fix a small thing here or there, but would rather leave the big game to others.   

From everything I am reading here about scripts and physics my main conclusion is that buying no-mod items is a big no-no. Well, it was before as well, but mostly because I need to resize almost everything.

 

3 hours ago, Fenix Eldritch said:

Dunno about checking the number of unique textures without being able to edit the object and inspect each face in the build tool, but there is a way to check the size of the texture on the currently selected face. In the official viewer I think it's under Develop > Rendering > Selected Texture Info. There's also a keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+Alt+Shift ⇧+T .

Catznip gives me this on fully selected object (it's a demo in a store, so I don't have modify permissions):

Which is pretty darn cool! Checking similar option for materials (it's in the same menu, so was easy to locate) resulted in getting some info I don't fully understand. o__o' But one cannot have everything I guess.

a

3 hours ago, Fenix Eldritch said:

Animesh allows a rigged mesh object to have its own copy of the avatar skeleton. if worn, it will animate independently of your own skeleton. The only thing to look out for is if two animesh objects use conflicting bones - but since you're only allowed to wear on animesh object/linkset at a time, the odds of that are low. I suppose it could be an issue if you link multiple animesh objects into one attachment.

Sounds surprisingly non-horrifying! I wouldn't worry about animesh too much then. So far my personal wishlist in this area doesn't go further than having an animesh cat walking around a parcel and minding her own cat business. 

Edited April 11, 2019 by marinathewitch

[Lindal Kidd]

Good grief.  If I incorporated all this stuff into my Smart Shopper class, there'd have to be a prerequisite for an advanced degree.  Nice job, though, Marina.

[Selene Gregoire]

1 minute ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Good grief.  If I incorporated all this stuff into my Smart Shopper class, there'd have to be a prerequisite for an advanced degree.  Nice job, though, Marina.

I was just about to say something about losing all desire to shop and the fun being sucked out of shopping, having to jump through all those hoops but I was having trouble trying to word it so it wouldn't offend.

Mostly, I just stick with the creators I know or have been suggested to me by those I feel I can trust in that regard.

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, marinathewitch said:

From everything I am reading here about scripts and physics my main conclusion is that buying no-mod items is a big no-no. Well, it was before as well, but mostly because I need to resize almost everything.

Multiple threads have come and gone about the many ways Modify permission comes in handy. One way that relates to scripts is that without modify permission on the containing object, its scripts can't be removed, replaced, or even reset and set running after anything goes wrong.

I did say something that in retrospect may be cutting corners a bit too close: "Practically speaking, there's no good way to tell how resource-intensive an individual script may be...." Actually, one can get a reasonable assessment of how much script time is being used by an object (not each individual script inside that object, but that rarely matters). One complexity is that you need to run your own script to get that information about somebody else's object. I'll be honest that I don't often use my laggy homegrown script menace detector when shopping, but now that I think about it, that's mostly because I re-script most everything I buy. But anyway, I didn't want to completely ignore the fact that it is possible to see deeper into a product's script resource demands.

[ChinRey]

One thing about land impact is that with well made content you should never really run out of it unless you have prim babiaes or a lot of breedables.

Say you want to furnish a Linden Home for example. Most pieces of furniture can easily be made at 1 LI each these days - that's with good solid LoD. Some more elaborate ones need two or three or even four or five. How much furniture do you have room for inside that house?

When it comes to landscaping, it is possible to fill up a whole sim with good looking dense base vegetation at 250 LI. Add another 250 for some special features and it's still only 500.

Houses...

• Small cottage 1-10 LI
• Cottage 10-30 LI
• Small house 20-50 LI
• Family house 30-80 LI
• Mansion 100-300 LI

That sounds about right.

All of this is with proper LoD that holds up well at any view distance even with LoD factor set to 1.

---

To put this into a bit of perspective, take a look at this:

https://greaterconiston.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-village-of-kintyre.html

Or if you want to see the build, not just the pictures:

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Buttermere/64/182/3011

The Village of Kintyre is a rather elaborate little town in a quarter sim sized skybox. It is currently located at a mainland region but originally it was designed to make use of some of the spare prims of a homestead sim that was already fully decorated at ground level. Think about that: this is what they had room for on a homestead prim quota after they had filled up the ground with everything they wanted and needed there. And as if that wasn't enough, this was back in 2013 and it's all done the old way, no meshes, only prims and sculpts, and no land impact manipulation, just good old prim count. And of course, this was before LL increased the region prim limits.

Edited April 11, 2019 by ChinRey

[Rolig Loon]

1 hour ago, marinathewitch said:

From everything I am reading here about scripts and physics my main conclusion is that buying no-mod items is a big no-no.

No, that's not true, or at least true only in a limited sense.  If you drop a no-mod item ( like a script) into an object with mod perms, it becomes no-mod.  As a scripter, I will reinforce Qie's statement that scripts are very rarely distributed with mod perms.  They are too easy to steal (or to just muck up badly).   So, if you really need to resize something and it's no-mod, you'd better hope that it has a built-in resizer script. If it does, you're fine.

[animats]

1 hour ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Good grief.  If I incorporated all this stuff into my Smart Shopper class, there'd have to be a prerequisite for an advanced degree.  Nice job, though, Marina.

Yes. It's too complicated. 

Most likely problem is a really bad low-LOD model. Maybe 80-90% of non-clothing mesh items look terrible at lowest LOD. That may be acceptable for small items, but it's unacceptable for buildings. If you buy anything big, be sure to look at it at lowest LOD. Make sure it doesn't degenerate into loose triangles. Makes the neighborhood look crappy.

Demo house from major seller at lowest LOD. They kept plenty of triangles, but not the right ones. This is the LL uploader's automatic low-LOD generator in action. Don't use that for anything bigger than a chair.

 

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, Selene Gregoire said:

but I was having trouble trying to word it so it wouldn't offend.

That can be difficult sometimes, yes. I'll take the chance to post my view anyway. If people are offended, well, so be it.

 

2 hours ago, Selene Gregoire said:

Mostly, I just stick with the creators I know or have been suggested to me by those I feel I can trust in that regard.

Let me try with a story - it may be a longish one.

About year or two ago I was lucky enough to meet and become friends with one of the oldest, best, most creative and most popular of the old plant creators - who is also one of the builders I admire the most. During one of our long chats he started telling me the basics of making mesh trees. I didn't wnat to say anything, I jsut gave him a couple of my oaks to show him I already knew the basics. He was absolutely shocked. Not in his wildest dreams had he imagined it was possible to make SL trees with that much detail at such low land impact and lag. That was a rather nervous moment for me, when you stand on the shoulders of a giant it's generally a good diea not to flaunt to him how high you can reach. Fortunately this was a very gentle giant and besides, he had plenty of other things to flaunt himself so it all went very well - except we both lost a night's sleep ina  12 hour marathon chat.

I have a lot of admiration for the Grand Old Builders of the past. The worked miracles to build this virtual world and they created the foundation all current good content creators work on. But so much has changed the last ten years and so many of them have not kept up to date with the development. Why should they? As one of them ocne said to me, people buy anyway. Even worse, many of them honestly believe they are up to date and know what is and what isn't possible to do with sculpts and mesh and materials and you-name-it and because of the authority they earned from their past works, people tend to believe them.

[Selene Gregoire]

59 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

 

 

Let me try with a story - it may be a longish one.

About year or two ago I was lucky enough to meet and become friends with one of the oldest, best, most creative and most popular of the old plant creators - who is also one of the builders I admire the most. During one of our long chats he started telling me the basics of making mesh trees. I didn't wnat to say anything, I jsut gave him a couple of my oaks to show him I already knew the basics. He was absolutely shocked. Not in his wildest dreams had he imagined it was possible to make SL trees with that much detail at such low land impact and lag. That was a rather nervous moment for me, when you stand on the shoulders of a giant it's generally a good diea not to flaunt to him how high you can reach. Fortunately this was a very gentle giant and besides, he had plenty of other things to flaunt himself so it all went very well - except we both lost a night's sleep ina  12 hour marathon chat.

I have a lot of admiration for the Grand Old Builders of the past. The worked miracles to build this virtual world and they created the foundation all current good content creators work on. But so much has changed the last ten years and so many of them have not kept up to date with the development. Why should they? As one of them ocne said to me, people buy anyway. Even worse, many of them honestly believe they are up to date and know what is and what isn't possible to do with sculpts and mesh and materials and you-name-it and because of the authority they earned from their past works, people tend to believe them.

Not sure what you're getting at as I never said I was asking creators for suggestions. "By those I feel I can trust" does not refer to creators. It does refer to people I know who have good judgment in such things. I certainly do not go around asking creators to recommend other creators whose work may (or may not) be of higher quality, if that is what you were thinking.

Edited April 11, 2019 by Selene Gregoire

[ChinRey]

23 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

Not sure what you're getting at as I never said I was asking creators for suggestions. "By those I feel I can trust" does not refer to creators. It does refer to people I know who have good judgment in such things.

I misunderstood you then. But I still stand by what I said and even if it isn't relevant to your reply it still is to the thread as a whole.

[Selene Gregoire]

48 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

I misunderstood you then. But I still stand by what I said and even if it isn't relevant to your reply it still is to the thread as a whole.

I couldn't agree more. 

[Bree Giffen]

For me, fullbright AND no mod is an automatic reject. No mod/copy is acceptable but I prefer mod/no copy. Physics, as in set to physical, is never needed in housing/furniture. I do check that my camera works properly with the object rezzed. Sometimes there is invisible stuff that affects the camera. I like mod for the option to set things phantom. I just don't like constantly bumping into tables and such. Also, mod is good for linking items. I try to link as much as possible. LOD isn't too important as I use a very low draw distance inside a small skybox. Scripts are not an issue as I don't have many scripted furniture.