Has the introduction of Mesh stiffled creativity in SL?

[Mollymews]

16 minutes ago, Digit Gears said:

"building kits"

this is pretty much where I am.  I try to get full-perms kits as often as I can, preferably with a selection of textures as well.  If not full-perms then at least mod+copy.  And with mod+copy assembled whole objects I sometimes tear them apart and combine with other assets that I have taken from other mod+copy stuff

treating the mesh parts I can salvage from this as enhanced prims pretty much

[Penny Patton]

52 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

If there is even the hint that a user will inadvertently trigger new rules, and that then results in content returns, LL will not do it. 

But LL already has with the change from prim counts to Land Impact. How can you say they won't do something they've already done. It's not the content-apocalypse you think it is.

54 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Animesh has new rules, resulting in it being impractically expensive and for all intents DOA.

Wrong again. Animesh is appearing more and more around the grid, and people are learning that you can make low LI animesh that looks great.

I'm reminded of when people said mesh was DOA because mesh content at the time had higher LI costs than sculpted content.

56 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Punish onion skinned bodies created after a date without a suitable replacement plan, there will be a massive uptick in sales, ending with full perm freebies on the last day and we're just going to keep using them. Forever. BoM is a downgrade over appliers due to lack of materials, it's too little too late and already been delayed once for being under spec. There is no way to gate BoM and expect people to use it, there is no reason to use aside from adding legacy support to the existing onions skinned mess.. There is no way to punish appliers without breaking fundamental parts of the scripting in the process.

The assumption that people will stick with something old and never desire anything new is fundamentally flawed. And you're showing the source of your flawed thinking here. "Punishing" onion skinned bodies. There's no punishment, just a push towards better made new content through a combination of new features and perks.

1 hour ago, CoffeeDujour said:

New tech replaces only if it is sufficiently attractive over the existing tech ... and we live in a world where firestorm and singularity exist with massive userbases who won't budge no matter what. If it's not a natural positive progression, it will just be ignored.

Only partially right, but very short sighted. I remember a time when Kirsten's Viewer was the dominant TPV. Followed by Emerald Viewer. Followed by Phoenix viewer. Followed by Firestorm. Again, almost nobody is walking around in sculpted bodies thinking "This is fine. I don't need better than this." Change happens. Pretending otherwise is just crazy.

1 hour ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Preserving legacy content and retaining its practical usefulness might not be the same thing, but that distinction is not lost on LL and the vast majority of residents.

Again, you're working on the flawed assumption that any change will immediately make old content unusable. I'm not talking changes that would have an immediate impact on the way people experience their content, I'm proposing methods that take years before the impacts are fully felt. 

[Penny Patton]

44 minutes ago, Digit Gears said:

This is where "building kits" can shine, gives people who aren't so savvy at mesh something to play with and mod inworld.

I've always felt that the "Premium Gifts" and Library content LL creates should be featured in a content creation blog run by them. Showing how the content is made. Showing why it's made the way it is. And making the content modifiable, scripts and all, so people can pull it apart and see how it ticks.

Providing "building kits" like you describe would help in that, too. Illustrating how a package of assests can be sold to let people build their own creations out of it. A set of buildings and sim decorations that all share the same texture atlas to show how people can reduce their texture memory use and simultaneously achieve better looking content.

[Cackle Amore]

Well, technically, Emerald, Phoenix, and Firestorm are the same viewer.

Started as Emerald, but then fractured after one of the devs was caught sneaking in questionable and possibly malicious code, so the splintered off side regrouped into what became Phoenix. I think the Firestorm name came around when the SL viewer itself had updated to the "2.0" UI So, Phoenix was kept on old UI, while Firestorm was made to work with the new.

[Penny Patton]

They're related, yeah, but they're not exactly the same. There was a time when a lot of people were still using Phoenix, adamant that they wouldn't switch to Firestorm, but of course they eventually did.

 And it holds true with my point that the old always gives way to the new with enough time. Remember when Wowmeh was the most popular mesh body? Remember when Mutation Industries was making the most popular furry avatars? Or Luskwood? If LL hitched new content rules to new features, those new features would also build up over time making it harder and harder to resist the change, even among the most adamant hold-outs. Much like Phoenix users resisted Firestorm.

Edited June 30, 2019 by Penny Patton

[Cackle Amore]

2 minutes ago, Penny Patton said:

I've always felt that the "Premium Gifts" and Library content LL creates should be featured in a content creation blog run by them. Showing how the content is made. Showing why it's made the way it is. And making the content modifiable, scripts and all, so people can pull it apart and see how it ticks.

Providing "building kits" like you describe would help in that, too. Illustrating how a package of assests can be sold to let people build their own creations out of it. A set of buildings and sim decorations that all share the same texture atlas to show how people can reduce their texture memory use and simultaneously achieve better looking content.

Man, the moles have made some wonderful assets in recent years I would love to get my hands on, there's like, no one else making terrain and landscaping mesh with that sort of toonish realistic style they tend to do 😩

Have ya seen the makeover they gave Linden Realms?

 

But alas, if I was in their shoes, I can understand if they opted out on giving out new stuff, as it could be seen as trying to compete with user made stuff.

[Penny Patton]

1 minute ago, Digit Gears said:

But alas, if I was in their shoes, I can understand if they opted out on giving out new stuff, as it could be seen as trying to compete with user made stuff.

That's always been the argument. However, LL gives out free avatars, I think it would be difficult to argue that this has ever hurt avatar and clothing sales.

And they don't have to release EVERYTHING. Premium gifts are a once-a-month thing. I think. It's actually been a long time since I've heard any mention of them. Anyway, they could release a small pack of content once or twice a year. That's a drop in the bucket.

[Cackle Amore]

Well, the avatars already have a bit of an established thing they do, changing up the starter avatars every now and then.

But I don't think the rest of the 'Library' folders have gotten as much attention

As for premium gifts, I did dabble with having premium a few times, all the gifts were no mod, wouldn't really be a good mix for a build kit.

Edited June 30, 2019 by Digit Gears

[Coffee Pancake]

2 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

But LL already has with the change from prim counts to Land Impact. How can you say they won't do something they've already done. It's not the content-apocalypse you think it is.

Because it was very carefully worked out as a net gain in Li, we got to rez more stuff, not less.

There were a few edge cases where rezzed content went up, but for the most part those problems went away if you were a bit smarter with the link.

2 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

Wrong again. Animesh is appearing more and more around the grid, and people are learning that you can make low LI animesh that looks great.

No, you can't. Animesh has a get out of bed cost of 15-20 Li .. more like 20. The only objects that get considered over 20 Li are houses and vintage prim/sculpt based game boards. Got a new Linden Home? Want to burn a sixth of your entire budget on a single item just because it moves? .. rez, oohh pretty, nope!

Worn animesh has zero such restrictions .. so guess where it's being used. Premiums can have two !! 

This is the same reason almost nothing outside of tech demos and toys uses pathfinding. Although a couple of headbutting pathfinding objects can be used to good effect if you need to upset a neighbors temp rezzor.

2 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

I'm reminded of when people said mesh was DOA because mesh content at the time had higher LI costs than sculpted content.

In the end with subsequent Li changes, Mesh can now have significantly more geometry than similar sculpts, ignoring mega prim sculpt edge case.

2 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

The assumption that people will stick with something old and never desire anything new is fundamentally flawed. And you're showing the source of your flawed thinking here. "Punishing" onion skinned bodies. There's no punishment, just a push towards better made new content through a combination of new features and perks.

You can't compete with an onion skinned body if BoM if is your weapon of choice. Onion skinned bodies have per layer materials and the upper mesh is different around the chest etc. BoM doesn't have materials as that would require new code for the basic avatar and a significantly more complicated texture bake.

We will have the same onion skinned bodies we have right now, only the base layer will allow you to stack and bake your skin and tats .. will that result in the removal of the dedicated tattoo layer, no, why should it. We will still have appliers because of fashion industry paranoia & entrenched workflows, the body will organise the bake, and I can wear semi transparent latex and not flicker anymore.

2 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

Only partially right, but very short sighted. I remember a time when Kirsten's Viewer was the dominant TPV. Followed by Emerald Viewer. Followed by Phoenix viewer. Followed by Firestorm.

Spanning a decade of TPV viewer development like it was 2 weeks, and Kirsten's only had the features it had because he lifted them from Linden dev repositories, much like Niran who took that protect over does now!

2 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

Again, almost nobody is walking around in sculpted bodies thinking "This is fine. I don't need better than this." Change happens. Pretending otherwise is just crazy.

You can't beat a mesh body that is already way over the spec it needs to be, on a single layer, with all the capabilities the SL render engine has to offer. Oh wait, it has 4 independent layers and will just integrate BoM and carry on with no change.

BoM is like bringing a knife to a tank fight, it's a great hood ornament. You're dreaming and seriously out of touch if you think otherwise.

But at least the process for creating root applier layer clothing will be significantly more accessible. Tattoo makers rejoice.

Everyone who's been saving all their legacy clothing later stuff will end up a little disappointed at the drop in texture resolution.

 

2 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

Again, you're working on the flawed assumption that any change will immediately make old content unusable. I'm not talking changes that would have an immediate impact on the way people experience their content, I'm proposing methods that take years before the impacts are fully felt. 

The only way you can expect to remove content from popular circulation is to remove the systems than underpin it, or add new systems that offer more.

Unfettered mesh uploads wasn't a better pointy stick, it was a nuke.

[Coffee Pancake]

4 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

There was a time when a lot of people were still using Phoenix, adamant that they wouldn't switch to Firestorm, but of course they eventually did.

Because the phoenix UI port / recode took significant time and for a while FS was far from feature parity. I was one of the first to switch as we needed to test the RLVa port while Kitty worked on Catznip and wrote the inline spellchecker for LL. (which was originally a requested birthday prezzie, so happy birthday me, you're all welcome).

People didn't naturally migrate .. They cancelled the Phoenix project end of 2012, and LL added breaking changes in 2013 (even then it took several breaking changes to really kill it off .. you would be amazed how many of SL's core features people were willing to forgo in order to keep using it ... important stuff like avatars or textures or inventory .. who needs such things!

Edited June 30, 2019 by CoffeeDujour

[Selene Gregoire]

On 6/27/2019 at 11:55 PM, Morena Tully said:

Mesh is unquestionably miles better than prims. But I do think it's affected the number of people who get into making things to contribute. For newcomers, they have to learn too much. For me, I used  to love making things, but now I only modify what others make, for my own use, because building with prims felt like me as my avatar was creating things with her hands, in her world. With mesh, my RL person has to leave SL, make things with a program, and it just ruins it for me. There's no fix.

There is a fix. LL could have, from the very beginning (before opening to the public), included the tools needed just as they did for prims. They could still add it in. They just don't want to spend the money it will take to do so at such a late date. 

[Sammy Huntsman]

I think with all these events, that are open or are opening up. That is your reason why creativity in mesh is stifled. Back before there were 1000s of events, and more opening. You would see a few big stores, putting their creations in the limited amount of events that were open. But you would see the creators showing more love to their mainstore, and actually taking the time to put an item together. Now with events, they pretty much gotta become a mass production factory, pumping out an object every week, or even every day. So no Mesh has not stifled anything, events have stifled creativity, and quality.

[Penny Patton]

2 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Spanning a decade of TPV viewer development like it was 2 weeks

Ok, I don't know how to put this any more plainly. That, right there? What you said?

THAT.

IS.

EXACTLY.

My.

POINT.

 It doesn't happen overnight. Not with viewers and not with content, either. But it does happen with time. It always does. What do you not get about this? All of your arguments seem to stem from this belief that  no matter how LL approaches it, introducing new rules will have an immediate, apocalyptic effect. I keep saying that LL can afford to take the long view on this. That is precisely why all of my suggestions involve implement new rules in ways where most people won't be effected for years. And by then most of the popular new content will already work within those new rules so most people would still be unaffected. How are you not getting this? I seriously don't know how to put it more plainly.

All of your other arguments are the same, do you not think if LL introduces new rules there won't be an adjustment period where things get smoothed out? That they'll just upend everything from the outset and call it a day? No, of course not. And the examples I've given of ways they could do this all work with that in mind.

And seriously, what is it with you and Bakes On Mesh? I did not bring that up all as an alternative to current mesh bodies. I only mentioned it as an example of a new feature LL could include in hitching the new rules to. You're shadowboxing. In the suggestions I gave the creators of the current popular mesh bodies would have plenty of time to update their bodies to work within the new rules, even if onion skins remain the best approach to applier/system clothing. You could cut the poly count of something like the Belleza Freya in half, put it side by side with the current version, and no one would be able to tell the difference. That's another thing you always seem to forget when you come up with these arguments. You have this assumption that optimizing content is something creators just won't be able to adapt to. It's super easy. And LL doesn't have to be all that strict with the new rules to bring about major improvements.

[steeljane42]

5 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

And seriously, what is it with you and Bakes On Mesh? I did not bring that up all as an alternative to current mesh bodies. I only mentioned it as an example of a new feature LL could include in hitching the new rules to

Not sure about Coffee, but to me BoM and animesh (which I also agree about being completely useless with current formula, aside of attachments and even then, it's questionable given 1-2 attachment limit) are similar to your "awesome" suggestions. At best it would be pointless and not used, like animesh, at worst it would be downgrade that BoM is going to be compared to appliers. Useless features that take a lot of development time and efforts from already a small company that takes forever to make anything (partially because they can't affort to have 100s of developers, partially because of how old and problematic some parts of SL code are).

Either way, you keep repeating same thing over and over again and still trying to push nearly all responsability for SL's problems on creators. Limit this, limit that, add new rules, restrict everything. Maybe eventually it could have a slight positive effect, but first LL should fix what they can fix themselves and then see what else can/should be done. At least they should try to before doing anything else. LGA775 quad core CPUs are over 12 years old, but viewer still uses 1 core for nearly everything. This need to be fixed first. But, yeah, sure, time to add new limits instead, makes sense. /s. If use rl comparison with broken autobahn, then your suggestion would be "limit speed, instead of fixing it". I'd argue it's a terrible suggestion, but that's just me.

---

And to be at least slightly on topic.

I can't say for pre-mesh times in SL or how it used to be creativity wise back then, but if how I call them "mainland ruins" with oddly shaped buildings are any good indicator, then I'll take "stiffed creativity" with mesh over that. I also still remember seeing a lot of weird looking sculpty boots (in 2-3 parts for each boot), shoes, clothes with prim "addons" and lots of painted on shirts and tops when I joined. I will also take fitmesh ones with materials over any of that. Not saying that SL didn't had its charm back then, it probably did, just like some 1st gen mmorpgs did, even with all those terrible things like bad UI, pixelated graphics, bad AI and total lack of QoL things in anything, from inventory management to moving. They were awesome and fun. But would I play them now? Nah, not really. So I'm glad that SL did evolve into what it is now.

[ThorinII]

I don't know. In pre-Mesh times, there were a lot lot more people in sandbox regions, experimenting with prims or sculpts, and actually creating stuff inworld. Building was more often than not a "social" thing: You could meet others who would rez and work on prototypes of their builds, or created them from scratch; and you could show off what you just created, and some would even come and comment on your work or vice versa, or you could get into discussions during breaks. Sandboxes were both a social place and a creative outlet.

After the introduction of Mesh, people would mainly come to sandboxes to unpack their bought stuff. And even this is happening less and less. Now, the sandboxes I used to frequent with my former account -- as well as with my current one -- either have become just places where the same handful people meet to simply chat, or are gone completely because nobody was using them anymore to create things. And why? Because those who create stuff simply log out nowadays, in order to do their thing in Blender or some other program.

So, in my opinion, based on what I've experienced, Mesh indeed has stifled at least the kind of creativity you used to see in sandboxes.

Edited June 30, 2019 by ThorinII

[Fionalein]

1 hour ago, ThorinII said:

Building was more often than not a "social" thing: You could meet others who would rez and work on prototypes of their builds, or created them from scratch; and you could show off what you just created, and some would even come and comment on your work or vice versa, or you could get into discussions during breaks. Sandboxes were both a social place and a creative outlet.

Oh my, the gloryfull bygone days of yore - sorry if I don't buy it. Or maybe it just does not work with millenials anymore... Anyway, everytime I fire up my favourite voxel juggeling survival game some silly newb teleports near me and starts standing in the way or displays other great ways of showing "appreciation" of my building process. I really cannot imagine prim building in a busy sandbox to be any other experience...

Edited July 1, 2019 by Fionalein

[Kyrah Abattoir]

This was a thing you know.

https://secondlife.blogs.com/nwn/2004/06/the_dreadnought.html

(Collaboratively built by about 5 people, I only really made the center section)

Edited July 1, 2019 by Kyrah Abattoir

[Polenth Yue]

33 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

Oh my, the gloryfull bygone days of yore - sorry if I don't buy it. Or maybe it just does not work with millenials anymore... Anyway, everytime I fire up my favourite voxel juggeling survival game some silly newb teleports near me and starts standing in the way or displays other great ways of showing "appreciation" of my building process. I really cannot imagine prim building in a busy sandbox to be any other experience...

It was never social for me. People either kept to themselves or they were griefers. The moment I had land, I left public sandboxes behind unless I had something big to rez. Once a friend got a sim, I moved to their build grid and never looked back. Mesh had nothing to do with it.

I also didn't suddenly start spending time in other programs due to mesh. My building has always involved a certain amount of standing around whilst I'm doing something in another program. Right from the start, I needed to make textures outside of SL. I still spend more time on textures than making mesh, as one mesh will end up with multiple sets of textures. But people don't blame GIMP or Photoshop for creators not always being there to chat.

All in all, a lot of things get blamed on mesh that weren't really caused by it. They were the ways things were going anyway for various reasons.

[Coffee Pancake]

I used to love social building .. My whole region was done like that, I did the buk of the building and texturing but it wouldn't have been anything like as good or as fun if It had been done now, entirely from mesh, with me living in blender, alone.

I mostly miss the rapid way things could be switched about and changed, a prim build is a living thing that can be adapted quickly on a whim, a mesh build is set in stone with even small changes requiring a considerable amount of extra work.

12 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

It doesn't happen overnight. Not with viewers and not with content, either. But it does happen with time. It always does. What do you not get about this?

But that's exactly it, it's not happening, it's never been happening, and LL are on record as recently as last week saying that there wont be a happening.

We're shouting into the wind when it comes to limits.

Textures and associated vram use, we have a shot at making that better, lets just see where the cache and perf changes leave us.

Mesh .. it is, literally, what it is.

 

12 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

All of your arguments seem to stem from this belief that  no matter how LL approaches it, introducing new rules will have an immediate, apocalyptic effect. I keep saying that LL can afford to take the long view on this. That is precisely why all of my suggestions involve implement new rules in ways where most people won't be effected for years. And by then most of the popular new content will already work within those new rules so most people would still be unaffected. How are you not getting this? I seriously don't know how to put it more plainly.

New rule ! Takes effect July 2021 .. when we will start paying attention to it .. June 2021, and our focus wont be on compliance, it will be on how to hack as much content in so we can keep using it for as long as  possible.

Just like EEP almost got out the door before the screaming started and it was yanked back to the drawing board, dispite being in open public development for months and Rider begging on the forums for people to test and submit bug reports.

12 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

All of your other arguments are the same, do you not think if LL introduces new rules there won't be an adjustment period where things get smoothed out? That they'll just upend everything from the outset and call it a day? No, of course not. And the examples I've given of ways they could do this all work with that in mind.

An adjustment period for something like Li isn't a thing. Even if you have stuff showing when you edit that it will have this new Li score in a weeks time, no one is editing all their stuff constantly, no one will see. The first time the vast majority notice is the day half their stuff comes back, and that will be after a tremendous amount of wailing on the forums about how unfair it all is, for months .. because no one reads the forums.

12 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

And seriously, what is it with you and Bakes On Mesh? I did not bring that up all as an alternative to current mesh bodies. I only mentioned it as an example of a new feature LL could include in hitching the new rules to.

In what sense could new rules be attached to BoM? Seriously .. it's a replacement for nothing, it's just going to be really nice to have. It's about as optional as new features get.

New restrictive rules on mesh bodies if they want to use BoM .. none of them will update, and that will be just fine. Their respective creators will probably get praise for dodging the bullet.

12 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

You could cut the poly count of something like the Belleza Freya in half, put it side by side with the current version, and no one would be able to tell the difference. That's another thing you always seem to forget when you come up with these arguments. You have this assumption that optimizing content is something creators just won't be able to adapt to. It's super easy. And LL doesn't have to be all that strict with the new rules to bring about major improvements.

Yes, I agree. Mesh bodies could add BoM and drop 2 whole layers in the process. But that is not realistic.

We will get mesh bodies that are identical to what we have now, in every way, with the addition that the root layer now supports BoM. To do anything 'might' break applier based clothing prior to BoM, and that small 'might' (like all the body sheen addons) is more than enough reason to not touch anything.

If someone comes out with a brand new body and we all decide it's awesome, adopt it as the new defacto standard, and it only has Bom + 2 layers, that is something entirely different.

 

 

[animats]

20 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

Wrong again. Animesh is appearing more and more around the grid, and people are learning that you can make low LI animesh that looks great.

Yes. You can get a human character down to about 30LI and still look good. 10,000 triangles, used well, look OK.

Now we need more low-LI mesh clothing. Animesh can wear avatar mesh clothing, if it's mod and rigged, but much mesh clothing has insane numbers of triangles. You just don't get penalized for that when it's on an avi, except in viewer frame rate.

[Theresa Tennyson]

3 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Yes, I agree. Mesh bodies could add BoM and drop 2 whole layers in the process. But that is not realistic.

We will get mesh bodies that are identical to what we have now, in every way, with the addition that the root layer now supports BoM. To do anything 'might' break applier based clothing prior to BoM, and that small 'might' (like all the body sheen addons) is more than enough reason to not touch anything.

If someone comes out with a brand new body and we all decide it's awesome, adopt it as the new defacto standard, and it only has Bom + 2 layers, that is something entirely different.

 

You're forgetting the reason that current mesh bodies have built-in layers at all instead of removable shells that serve the same purpose - the alpha cut system. Without the ability to use wearable alphas, mesh bodies need to be able to turn small sections on and off and anything worn above the skin needs to be able to be synchronized with the layers below so everything needs to be linked together and controlled by a HUD, meaning that a completely naked body is made up of literally over a hundred individual meshes and is generally worn with a HUD that adds over a hundred more.

BOM allows parts of the body to be hidden with alpha layers so bodies can be made using a fraction of the meshes and in the case where a "layered" look is wanted the exact same geometry of the current clothing layers can be worn as removable separate shells that can use existing appliers, including materials.

I'm one of the biggest supporters of BOM around and I would have been willing to admit that it might not be supported quickly by skin makers because it's not really necessary - until a few weeks ago, when I saw what happened when the "Legacy" body was introduced. It's a body that's overpriced and utterly unnecessary but it's quickly getting support (to the point that those supporting it are dropping support for some older bodies.) Why? It's new, and in a mature market like the mesh avatar accessory market, something new gives customers a "need" to buy things that they don't need. Ironically enough, the fact that system layers are being phased out by so many makers now creates the need for new ones to use with BOM so people will have something then need to buy, and merchants will have something they can sell.

[Blush Bravin]

3 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Why? It's new, and in a mature market like the mesh avatar accessory market, something new gives customers a "need" to buy things that they don't need. Ironically enough, the fact that system layers are being phased out by so many makers now creates the need for new ones to use with BOM so people will have something then need to buy, and merchants will have something they can sell.

This, oh so much this!

I have been saying this for quite awhile when it comes to BoM. There comes a point where you simply don't need 12 dozen items of the same thing. We are in that point where people are complaining that creativity is gone because really it's all been done at least to the limits that mesh allows. And then I hear complaints about BoM breaking appliers and not wanting to have to spend money on new system layers. But look at the shopping patterns. We hear it all the time .. how many pairs of jeans do I really need? How many hairs can I really wear? How many super short skirts can one closet hold? And yet, the same people, me included, who say these things are still buying jeans, hairs, and super short skirts. Why, because we like new. New is the new black. 

I remember the outcry of those when bento mesh heads were being released and so many saying they would not spend money on a new mesh head. Guess what, not only did they spend money to buy a new bento mesh head, they probably have a small collection of bento mesh heads by now. Sure there are those who will balk at spending money to replace something of similar value and use but by far the majority of those who really do spend money shopping will continue to do just that. They will spend their money because it's the new thing. New is good for the economy even if we perceive it as being a bit painful in the process.

[Janet Voxel]

I'm excited for BoM. I can't wait to see how it shakes out; I just don't think its going to shake out the way people think it will. I.E people digging in their inventory for old clothes. People love their body shine. LOVE. IT. They aren't giving that up, kind of makes it seem like a downgrade

13 hours ago, steeljane42 said:

I can't say for pre-mesh times in SL or how it used to be creativity wise back then, but if how I call them "mainland ruins" with oddly shaped buildings are any good indicator, then I'll take "stiffed creativity" with mesh over that. I also still remember seeing a lot of weird looking sculpty boots (in 2-3 parts for each boot), shoes, clothes with prim "addons" and lots of painted on shirts and tops when I joined. I will also take fitmesh ones with materials over any of that. Not saying that SL didn't had its charm back then, it probably did, just like some 1st gen mmorpgs did, even with all those terrible things like bad UI, pixelated graphics, bad AI and total lack of QoL things in anything, from inventory management to moving. They were awesome and fun. But would I play them now? Nah, not really. So I'm glad that SL did evolve into what it is now.

It was good times. Back then SL was like the wild west, every TP was an adventure, you could find a store that made cool stuff that nobody knew about at some mall. There was a certain charm that is gone now, particularly on the social and creative side. It also had a bad side too, people forget that when they go on their "The way we were" stroll down memory lane. Just like I remember a friend building something cool with prims, just sitting there shooting the ish with him for hours, I also remember being attacked by giant penii by a griefer at a sandbox too, or someone crashing a sim or being orbited because I told some weirdo to eff off because he was being nasty. That same creator that made those cool things that only I knew about went out of business, because only I knew about them and nobody was buying their stuff but me. This is the heart of the matter, a lot of creative people don't stick around, because selling is as much of an art as making is and everybody can't do both.

Progress is a double edge sword. I wouldn't want to go back to 2009 either. I would like for things to go back to the "spirit" of 2009, but that's just not going to happen, but at the same time SL is still SL.

[Blush Bravin]

1 minute ago, janetosilio said:

People love their body shine. LOVE. IT.

LOL .. I really dislike body shine. I still powder my nose RL. I just outfitted both Debi and Blush in new mesh heads. First thing I did was turn off all the shine for the skin. I like it on the lips but not the skin. Also, the number one criteria for buying the mesh heads I bought was that they are already BoM enabled.  

I know materials is an issue for some but it's not for everyone. I'm still surprised by how many people use those super bright windlights .. guess what materials hardly even shows under those windlights. I still see people who refuse to turn on advanced lighting model because they say they lag out if they turn it on. So, yes, it's an issue for some but not everyone.

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

1 hour ago, CoffeeDujour said:

I used to love social building .. My whole region was done like that, I did the buk of the building and texturing but it wouldn't have been anything like as good or as fun if It had been done now, entirely from mesh, with me living in blender, alone.

I mostly miss the rapid way things could be switched about and changed, a prim build is a living thing that can be adapted quickly on a whim, a mesh build is set in stone with even small changes requiring a considerable amount of extra work.

Exactly this.

Serendipity, experimentation, collaboration, changing things around, seeing how it works inworld as you build it, getting inputs and distractions from friends and passersby, learning from watching others and edit-viewing their work, the very mindset of Oh I need something, rez a prim, find a texture, make it happen, all of these things are so much easier with inworld building than they'll ever be with mesh work.

It is absolutely magic.