Has the introduction of Mesh stiffled creativity in SL?

[Orwar]

8 hours ago, Evangeline Arcadia said:

• Does the greater skill set that comes with Mesh mean less people are creating for SL? If not, why do you think so?
• Is another impact that there is less variety of objects created for SL? If not, why don't you think so?
• Do you think there isn't much difference now compared to 'Prim' days, just a different set of creators plus those who transitioned to Mesh?

•    Yes and no. Learning how to manipulate prims had a softer learning curve than mesh which has a pretty big one at the start, but if you really want to make mesh there's nothing really stopping you from doing it, there are more tutorials available for how you create mesh in Blender than there were for how to use prims, as Blender has a larger application than SL. There are tons of resources to learn from, all it takes is time.
•    I think that some things that we miss from the past, such as the Steampunk communities and such, make it appear as if SL today has fewer options - I'd argue that this isn't true, the amount of options are still there, and indeed more so than before, but that particular community is less active now than it used to be. It's easy to see what's missing, but difficult to take in the full scope of what's currently on offer.
•    There's certainly a difference, but it doesn't appear to me that the changes are negative - if we turn the question around and ask whether SL would still be live and kicking if the progression to mesh had never occurred, I suspect that SL would have a much harder time getting new folk getting into it as visuals are important for the first impression, even if I think that actually using mesh bodies and such has a steeper learning curve for a beginner than prims and system layers had. But even back then, there were people running around with several pairs of shoes on and their boxers on top of their trousers. The UI and navigation of SL has always been daunting for new people.

[Raevyn Addams]

1 hour ago, Blush Bravin said:

I love it all! I love prims! I love mesh! Both entice my creative juices. Honestly, we need both, IMO. To say one is better than the other is kind of like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Prims and old texture based clothing has its place in our world and wardrobes, but so does mesh. Why limit yourself by liking one more than the other?  

^ This.

Now I'm not an old soul like many of the previous posters before me. Mesh came about pretty much just as I arrived in SL, so I remember the teething pains and the complaints from people who didn't want to have to "upgrade", or at least, didn't want to have to let go of prims for mesh alternatives. Back then as a noob I attended building classes, but for the most part I learned as I needed to; when a situation called for it I'd try to erect walls or create basic furnishings right there in real time on the spot. Granted, my texturing skills left a lot to be desired. I sold things here or there. I didn't take it seriously. I dabbled more than anything as I solved my own problems, but then I came into the game late and had no real desire to jump aboard the mesh train. I'm kicking myself for it now.

Fast forward a few years and mesh is now common place. On the marketplace mesh certainly seems to dominate prim alternatives in some areas (though not completely). It is a lot harder to just create things in real time, but not impossible. I still do, and I'm still at the same building sandbox I was when I first started. I still attend classes here or there because there is so much to learn, and in a way it feels like if I don't I'll get left behind again. Personally I do feel a lot more pressure when building prims and converting to mesh, not because of any in-world judgement, but because it's NOT done in Blender. The baked shadows and textures lend a degree of detail I can't compete with in in-world mesh construction. But this also means I have to get creative in finding solutions. That's not totally a bad thing, but in its own way its equally as frustrating. It almost feels like the bar has been raised; great for consumers (and yes, I am also one) but the demand seems to be for greater detail and lower land impact, not really something we had to worry about too much with LI heavy prims back in the day or at least I don't remember the demand being similar to what it is now. We were just happy to have things, even if it was 200 prims! 

Technology is always moving forward and SL is no exception, but it does feel to me that unless you're willing to really commit and learn to use an external program you're really not going to compete as well as you possibly could. I guess that's business. But I don't think I'll ever stop building in-world purely because it's easy, or at least convenient. I don't have to be alone (unless I choose to be 'unavailable/busy'), I can get immediate feedback, and I don't have to worry about transferring files; I just upload and I'm done. Plus it's just simply relaxing. There's something to be said for the act of creating something out of nothing, and truly creative types will always find an outlet one way or another.

[LibGwen]

The thing I hate about mesh is how its use as clothing eliminated unisex clothing and variability in avatar proportion.  Everyone has to have the same few bodies and dress like a caricature of video game masculinity or "female"-ness.  A woman avatar can't "dress casual" or cobble together her own ensembles. (e.g. tuxedo with feminine touches, or the way Laura Holt dressed in the old "Remington Steele" TV show).  A male avatar has to have his shoulders stuffed; he can't be a student or artist.  If you're a furry, alien, robot, or beautiful freak, forget about wearing human clothes at all unless you've dug them out of a store's dusty archives of system, flexi, and sculpty clothes.

This is not a quality of mesh, it's a quality of how little effort clothing designers want to put into the stuff they present to their customers.

Edited June 27, 2019 by LibGwen

[Kiera Clutterbuck]

nope, not for me

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

It feels to me like there is less diversity of creativity on the grid these days and has been for awhile. I agree with others that the focus on events plays a big part in this. There's the pressure to keep churning things out for them and also a financial pressure to make sure the limited selection of items at an event are likely to sell in high volumes. Put the two together and I would guess it's difficult for many event-orientated creators to find time to make a greater range and diversity of items.

There also seems to be fewer ways to find smaller creators. I used to run into all sorts all over. I don't remember how it happened, it just did. Or at least it felt that way. The shopping groups should be a way, but they're often so enormous I get lost in the notecards and give up.

About the lack of diversity in communities, I wonder if those various imaginings and fantasies didn't get sucked into the fantasy of a perfect (mesh) body in a perfect (mesh) house, with a perfect (mesh) wardrobe, a sort of imagined hyper-realism. Not everyone of course, but perhaps enough that they lost the critical mass needed to be self-sustaining. Maybe I just hope this is true because then there's a chance people will eventually grow tired of the quest for perfect hyper-realism and get back to doing fantastical things which are properly impossible in real life, like taking a contraption you built in your back yard out for a flight over the sea  

[Theresa Tennyson]

56 minutes ago, LibGwen said:

The thing I hate about mesh is how its use as clothing eliminated unisex clothing and variability in avatar proportion.  Everyone has to have the same few bodies and dress like a caricature of video game masculinity or "female"-ness.  A woman avatar can't "dress casual" or cobble together her own ensembles. (e.g. tuxedo with feminine touches, or the way Laura Holt dressed in the old "Remington Steele" TV show).  A male avatar has to have his shoulders stuffed; he can't be a student or artist.  If you're a furry, alien, robot, or beautiful freak, forget about wearing human clothes at all unless you've dug them out of a store's dusty archives of system, flexi, and sculpty clothes.

This is not a quality of mesh, it's a quality of how little effort clothing designers want to put into the stuff they present to their customers.

Theresa Tennyson murmurs through her fingers, "Apparently the lack of creativity has hit searching and shopping too."

[Jules Catlyn]

A little sidestep but this thread made me think back and reminisce about places like Forgottten City 

[Kyrah Abattoir]

Well these are my two cents, I love mesh, since I've been a 3D modeler for most of my life, so don't theorize that I hate mesh or something like that

• Prims strongly encouraged texture recycling, which is a good thing and is almost completely ignored today. I suspect there might be a trend to see it as low quality or inferior, but it's also that, for a beginner it's simpler not to take that in consideration.
• Most of the mesh creators I see are in this weird place where they know enough to cause a lot of damage, but what little they know is geared towards producing a profitable result as quickly as possible, rather than producing content suitable for a realtime platform.
• There was very few ways to "cheat" with prims, (with the exception of avatars), level of detail was non-negociable and all the prims you used where accounted for.
• The quest to "more fidelity for less LI" has generally led secondlife towards a very uncertain path, which is still keeping a lot of people locked out of Advanced lighting despite current graphic cards being 20 to 40 times faster than what was available when advanced lighting was introduced.
• The promise that mesh content would lead to better performances in SecondLife did not pan out because the vast majority of current conte t creators only care about improving their skills so long as it goes towards more unit sales, high performance content is still a market externality.
• Because it is even harder to audit content, users are even more in the dark than before when it comes to judging what they buy or use, outside of very superficial considerations.
• The ever growing selection of mesh bodies makes it exceptionally hard on new creators, add to this sometimes arcane requirements to even be "allowed" to compete.
• Ironically, the more bodies we have, the more likely it is that creators will simply latch to whichever is the most popular and ignore everything else.
• It moved a huge chunk of the creation process offline, and with it, concurrency and a lot of what makes SL a truly unique platform (I still remember my first couple of months in Cordova, can you?).
• It magnified the copyright violation problem, back in the days, ripping sounds and textures from games was rampant because people where desperate to have "something" to play with. You would recognize a lot of it, but most of the time you didn't, prims are a very transformative medium, because you can't just copy something from a game directly, even when you try, it comes out as different.

[Polenth Yue]

The new options have helped me make things, rather than hindering me. I started out with sculpties because I wanted to make mushrooms that were better than sticking spheres and cylinders together. When mesh came out, I learnt how to use Blender, so I could start converting sculpties into mesh (and then move on to making things from scratch). I learnt to rig because I wanted a mertail. Having projects is a good thing for me, because it pushes me to try new things.

[KanryDrago]

Not a creator its true just for info but I do look at avi's and the places I go there are still a lot of people in the standard avi's with system clothing. I look at them and I really don't see any creativity over and above mesh. The avi's don't look good and the clothes they wear don't look good.Now maybe I only see people that can't be bothered but I have yet to see someone in all system that looks anything like decent

[Parhelion Palou]

This thread started out with creativity and has wandered more into creativity in items for sale. It's quite possible that some of the best creators in SL have never sold anything. SL is big and none of us will ever see most of it.

I like mesh a lot, though its use in clothing isn't of much interest. I've ended up doing region-sized designs ... build over a period of several months, let it sit until a new idea pops up, bulldoze and start again. Mesh flowers and plants blow away all the old prim/flexi stuff. I'm still looking for good trees, but I've found a few that I'll use always and more that I'll use in areas where you can't see them from far enough to notice that they've turned triangular. I buy mesh components, such as castle walls, windows, paths, etc. that I can mix & match to make what I want. They're almost always full perm and have the information I need to make my own textures if necessary. I use both prims and mesh where each works best. Mesh has made it easier for me to create what I want, so I'd say it's helped my creativity.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

But what is being sold affects all of us @Parhelion Palou whether you buy anything or not, other people will, and unlike the real world, what people do around us in SL affects us.

Business imperatives greatly impact creativity.

[Parhelion Palou]

2 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

But what is being sold affects all of us @Parhelion Palou whether you buy anything or not, other people will, and unlike the real world, what people do around us in SL affects us.

Business imperatives greatly impact creativity.

Business imperatives greatly impact creativity among those who sell their creations. They're limited to creating things people will buy. Clothing makers seem to have become afraid to be different. What I see now in clothing is a lot of people following the herd. Fortunately, the home & garden side isn't quite as constrained.

Other than business, there's a big part of SL that creates for the sake of creating. I don't see that the introduction of mesh has stifled their creativity at all, since they can choose to use it or not.

[Coffee Pancake]

Prims came with some pretty solid limits, and exploring those limits while pushing the medium as far as possible is where both creativity and mastery flourished interdependantly. More importantly, and I think this is the crux of the issue, that flourish was more easily seen and appreciated. Everyone could rez a prim, and everyone could look at an object and be amazed.

We saw a similar exploration of feature scope with sculpts, some quite amazing things were accomplished ... even if the hackery involved in getting them all to render created a lasting LOD nightmare. 

Mesh offers no such limits and the few we have are routinely hacked around to the determent of everyone's frame-rate. Creativity has been separated from mastery, the skill to design a thing and the skill to implement a thing are different disciplines. Compounded with many of the tricks prim builders learnt being lost as they didn't transition to the new medium, in part builders who couldn't reskill and in part because tricks and optimizations are no longer required.

This is much the same with web content, your computers specs go up, yet the content remains basically the same whist evermore inefficient ways of delivery are drempt up.

 

Opening the door to external tools and libraries has pushed a lot of content away from an individuals art towards pick and place assembly. (This is especially noticeable in fashion).

 

Are we better off .. from a tooling perspective, absolutely; But the complete lack of meaningful limits from the outset is going to haunt us, forever, and any attempt to retro fit new rules will result in vast swathes of content being unrezable or unwearable, neither of which are paths the lab will take.

In a sense, the market has decided in favor of maximizing profit whilst competing on price, and we're now flooded with cookie cutter off the shelf content from business that simply aren't operationally viable if art and creativity are to be part of their process.

We have gone from shopping in exclusive specialist boutiques to walmart, right down to the imported products at prices local business can't compete with.

 

[Damian Mills]

16 hours ago, Evangeline Arcadia said:

What do you think?

• Does the greater skill set that comes with Mesh mean less people are creating for SL? If not, why do you think so?
• Is another impact that there is less variety of objects created for SL? If not, why don't you think so?
• Do you think there isn't much difference now compared to 'Prim' days, just a different set of creators plus those who transitioned to Mesh?

Yes, the barrier to entry of mesh creation means there are way fewer creators than there used to be and a commensurate drop in variety.  In addition, a lot the current "original mesh" is anything but... huge poly count downloads from the internet and that leads to nasty performance problems.  

On the other hand, mesh is mesh.  There are skirts now -- and they actually span legs and move pretty reasonably so long as it's not a floor length dress.  There are shirts that are not painted on bodies.  The list is endless.  So we have lost in random creativity and performance, but we have gained in terms of realism.

I guess it's up to the individual to decide if that's a good trade-off or not.

[Morena Tully]

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.

[Qie Niangao]

6 hours ago, Morena Tully said:

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.

Yep, that's exactly how I feel. I mean, under extreme duress, or to knock out a quick doo-dad, I'll fire up Blender, but because it's not in-world, it's just no fun.

I'm sure there are people who enjoy working offline in Blender. Come to think of it, I know some people like that. Not me.

I think there's something else going on too, though, something about the maturation of the platform and our heightened expectations for content quality. As a result, everything requires a larger investment in time and attention than it used to, just to qualify as worthwhile content. So, to justify that level of effort, the results must either appeal to a bunch of folks -- the market success criterion -- or it must qualify as "art" at least in the creator's view. That makes it less likely a new "creative" thing will emerge from idle play, as happened all the time with prims. It still happens, surely, with folks for whom fastidious Blender operation is as enjoyable a pastime as quick-and-dirty prim-wranging used to be for me.

[animats]

12 hours ago, Morena Tully said:

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.

Yes. I was discussing this at Creator User Group, and commented that the typical creator probably has Blender, Photoshop, and Firestorm all open at once. Maybe two copies of Firestorm, one on the beta grid. Someone in the meeting sent me an IM: "That's my working environment". That's not the normal user experience. The social aspect of SL is completely lost.

(I was commenting on this in connection with clothing for animesh characters. A clothing change requires baking a clothing texture file on a skin texture file in Photoshop to create a clothing-on-skin texture. Then you upload an image (L$10), and put the texture on the animesh character. There's talk of Bakes on Mesh eventually helping with this, but it is apparently a ways off.)

Ideally, SL would have in-world mesh editing. Like Sinespace now does, at least for buildings. Something like viewer-embedded SketchUp would be useful.

Meanwhile, we really need to get LOD generation under control. The current alternatives are 1) terrible low LODs, and 2) way too much time in Blender making manual LOD models.

[Adam Spark]

On 6/27/2019 at 7:16 AM, Evangeline Arcadia said:

I've heard the line of thought mentioned here and there that before Mesh, when Prims were used to create objects and clothing, there was more variety, more 'creativity', but also maybe more possibility for anyone to create in SL (I'm talking mainly about items to sell inworld or on the Marketplace).

For example, with the steps creators now need to go through to create clothing in SL it appears a greater skill set is needed compared to learning to use prims to create, so I wonder if it actually inhibits people creating for SL (i.e. you need learn a 3D modelling program, learn rigging, and also have to create for a number of different mesh bodies, not just the standard avatar, plus others skills I may not be aware of) . I'm not saying it definitely does, I'm wondering if this is true.

Sure, before there was some learning curve to in order to build well with prims , but to me this is far less steep ( and maybe daunting for some) and involved than having to learn 3D modelling and rigging. If this theory is correct, then that may lead to fewer creators, and therefore potentially less variety. This seems to me to be true, just by what I see on the marketplace and inworld (but that could just be my tastes). In Prim days, because you could so easily rez prims and get to creating right there inworld, I would guess that more people were likely to give it a go. Of course, nothing to stop anyone doing so now, but in terms of selling items to others I think it's far more challenging in competitive terms because Mesh is better for land impact, and maybe because of realism etc. But I accept this may be a misconception,  and would like to hear others thoughts and perspectives on this.

I'm not knocking Mesh as such. In terms of reduction of land impact, and I think probably the ability to create more 'realistic' items, I think Mesh is great. I only ever buy stuff that's low LI now. If I were to see a mesh house that's say less than 25LI and a similar one I like that's made from prims that's 100LI or more, I know which one I'm gonna get:). 

It's possible that the introduction of Mesh has brought more creators to SL (those who had the 3D skills or background), which offsets the loss of creators who don't learn the skills and stop making new items for SL.

What do you think?

• Does the greater skill set that comes with Mesh mean less people are creating for SL? If not, why do you think so?
• Is another impact that there is less variety of objects created for SL? If not, why don't you think so?
• Do you think there isn't much difference now compared to 'Prim' days, just a different set of creators plus those who transitioned to Mesh?

 

I don't know if it has stifled creativity. I would say with the advent of builder kits - which lets face it, a lot of creators are using these days - things are pretty much settling back to the prim days at least to some degree. I think this is especially true for clothing (Full disclosure: I use kits. I come up with ideas and do texturing. I am not a mesh builder. Speaking for myself, kits are the only reason I do mesh currently, though I do hope to master Blender eventually).

People are still producing non-mesh, so I don't know how many have stopped creating altogether that would still be here without mesh.

I will never agree with anyone who says that it hasn't stifled the community, though. The beauty of prim building remains collaboration in-world. Teaching a Second Life resident to build with prims is an experience. Watching builds come to life is an experience. Helping them come to life when a friend needs it is an experience. All three are lost on mesh.

The prim counts, however, make me forgive that... to a degree.

Edited June 28, 2019 by Adam Spark

[RoxyCyn]

I started building motorcycles before mesh came along & at that time builders were either purchasing parts from other creators or making parts themselves from prims & sculpt maps.  We would then assemble the motorcycles piece by piece from a mix of those types of parts and apply textures and color accordingly.  Builds were typically original style creations from the perspective that each builder was making their own finished creation from an assemblage of parts, much as custom builders in RL build their bikes using parts created by other custom builders, an original manufacturer or they fabricated them themselves.  Bikes in SL at that time were either an original style or a recreation of something seen in RL. As mesh came along, talented parts creators continued making parts that we could assemble to make into our own original design or style of bike or we could recreate to the best of our ability those styles that we see in RL.  We also had the ability to create our own parts using various tools available to us in SL.

Now, with mesh being so prevalent, we're seeing most parts sold in-world are uploaded from models and sold as individual parts or as kits that are assembled as complete motorcycles. There are some creators making their own parts from scratch, but these are fewer and fewer as time passes.  Plus, there's quite a few products that are simply stolen or 'ripped' from games.  The appearance and resemblance to their RL counterparts is amazing by comparison and sometimes the attention to detail is outstanding.   Some creators are making truly original parts using in-world tools or tools offline then importing them to SL.  If I create a part, my favorite method is to create a model in-world using prims, then converting it to mesh & it remains a truly original part that I created & I find that to be most satisfying.  I have tremendous respect for other people that build using that method as it's very demanding & time consuming, but again it's an original.  The uploaded models & stolen content from games tends to retain all the original RL trademarks, names & branding associated with the item (such as Harley-Davidson, Indian, Honda, etc. to name a few), rather than any attempt to follow the few & simple rules here governing use of RL trademarks. 

Personally, I still like to build a bike piece by piece as an original design or style that I developed or envisioned using mesh parts, prims & sculpt maps as a combination of those parts to the final product, regardless as to whether I created the part from scratch or I purchased it in-world from others in their legitimate stores.  That is & will always remain my favorite way to build as it's the most creative (to me) & provides the best overall performance in the end.  There is a demand by customers for factory-looking motorcycles that they see in RL, so for those customers the many bike kits bring great detail & realism for them (proper trademarks being removed if you are doing things as you should, but often other builders are not so scrupulous).

There is a trend, however, among builders or creators to upload mesh models that they find on the internet, some legit & others stolen or 'ripped' from games, & they are sold as original creations or judged by bike show judges as being original parts simply because the creator or builder in-world uploaded something they found on the internet.  These are not truly originals created by that builder by any sense of the word or definition, but simply something found & uploaded.  Several bike shows have a category for original creations & any build where all the parts do not have that builders name on them are not allowed & considered not to be originals, even though not one item was originally created, but again, simply uploaded from another source.  I do not enter bike shows so it matters not to me how they handle them; this is just an observation on that trend.

This is not to be construed as any sort of complaint & I'm not looking for any sort of solutions or changes to be made.  Rather this is my observation over time from a content creator that has been building since before mesh & continuing now with mesh.  I enjoy what I do & will continue to use my best practices accordingly & appreciate all the support received for so many years from many loyal customers.  In some ways I miss the old days of prims & sculpt maps as they were generally originals & you had to build everything piece by piece.  On the other hand the mesh parts & kits available now can be very detailed & beautifully put together if good practices are utilized & the end result is the customers have wider choices available to them.  Sorry this went on so long.

[Mollymews]

with mesh clothes and the perceived shift to sameness

i think for human wear there is probably less sameness now in terms of of texture and cut with mesh than there was with layer/prim. In this more narrow view of 'normal' human wear

what I think makes it appear that mesh is more samey in this narrow view of 'normal' than it was with prims, is that prims don't/didn't conform to body movement as well as mesh does

so because of this in the pre-mesh days we made less normal wear relative to making other wear.  Other wear design driven by the fact that prims didn't conform well, which resulted in innovative, interesting and different ways to create and wear attachments distinct from 'normal'.  Which then lead us to create clothing layers that further extended and enhanced the non-normal wear look in the pre-mesh days

so we see less of the other wear clothing today than we used to see. Which leads us I think to that sameyness feeling today

[Penny Patton]

On 6/27/2019 at 8:57 PM, CoffeeDujour said:

Are we better off .. from a tooling perspective, absolutely; But the complete lack of meaningful limits from the outset is going to haunt us, forever, and any attempt to retro fit new rules will result in vast swathes of content being unrezable or unwearable, neither of which are paths the lab will take.

Oh, come on now. This just isn't true. There are ways LL could introduce reasonable new rules for content creation while leaving existing content mostly unaffected. And you know this. I know you know this because I've given you examples of how LL could potentially do it.

1. LL could introduce new rules that only affect content created after a certain date. Linking older content to newer content would apply the new rules to the linkset. Much the same as linking old prim content to new mesh content. Otherwise, old content would be unaffected. 

2. LL could hitch new rules to all new features. Want to use the shiniest new features? You have to adapt to the new rules. They've already done this once before when they changed from prim limits to Land Impact. If I were LL I'd retroactive apply the new rules to the most recent features, like animesh and bakes-on-mesh. If LL announced the change within the next 6 months or so, those features would still be "new enough" that it would not be too bumpy of a transition.

The benefit of either of these two approaches is that legacy content is preserved entirely.The down side is that the benefits of the new rules won't be felt by most SL users for several years. However, new content always replaces old content with enough time. You rarely see people walking around in sculpted prim avatars or pre-fitmesh bodies anymore. Within a few years most people will have adjusted to the new rules at their own pace. Of course LL would still want to announce the new rules well in advance, and work with content creators to give them the tools and information they'd need to adapt.

 A third method LL could employ would be to provide a carrot and have people voluntarily adopt the new rules. New rules for rezzed content could come along with land-impact increases. All new sims would come with the new rules on by default. Old sims could switch over at the sim owner's request. Similar benefits could be offered to avatars. An attachment point increase, a small stipend increase, or something else.

 All of these methods would accomplish the goal, and simultaneously preserve legacy content. LL could even combine these methods.

 

 

[Penny Patton]

I'll add this to answer the OP's question. If the introduction of mesh has stifled creativity at all, it's only because of the complete lack of further developments with SL's in-world creation tools.

 And before the anyone falls all over themselves saying LL would be wasting money making the in-world tools as complicated as Blender, LL does not have to do that. There are plenty of ways LL could have incrementally improved upon the in-world building tools. More prim options. Simple, sculpt-like mesh editing. Sure, you still wouldn't be able to do as much with them as someone who knows Blender can outside of SL, but not everything needs to be so complicated and detailed and you'd still be able to create in-world content that was at least in the ballpark of content created in a third party program, the tools would still be simple and easy for anyone to pick up on.

 

ETA to add that the rise of the "No-Mod plague" has also had a detrimental effect on creativity in Second Life. It used to be a lot more common for people to buy stuff, pull it apart, and throw it back together in new and creative ways. Modding is often much easier than creating new content from scratch, but these days there's so much less of it. People often wear clothing as it is off the rack and never change it, because they can't. They're not allowed to. You can really see the difference between the anime/furry communities, where most content is modifiable and even comes with PSDs of the textures/UVs for people to edit, and other communities where no-mod is more prevalent and everything is locked down. 

Edited June 30, 2019 by Penny Patton

[Coffee Pancake]

21 minutes ago, Penny Patton said:

1. LL could introduce new rules that only affect content created after a certain date. Linking older content to newer content would apply the new rules to the linkset. Much the same as linking old prim content to new mesh content. Otherwise, old content would be unaffected. 

And all the stuff that's already uploaded and doesn't need something as blunt as a link change in order to be recycled? The cut off would have to be 'last modified', which a technicality away from 'last rezzed'. 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. Don't forget all the fun we had and still have with megaprims, and how utterly unwilling LL have been to touch them.

We have been having this discussion for years at this point and if nothing else, it should be clear by now, that nothing is exactly what LL care to do about the problem.

Quote

2. LL could hitch new rules to all new features. Want to use the shiniest new features? You have to adapt to the new rules. They've already done this once before when they changed from prim limits to Land Impact. If I were LL I'd retroactive apply the new rules to the most recent features, like animesh and bakes-on-mesh. If LL announced the change within the next 6 months or so, those features would still be "new enough" that it would not be too bumpy of a transition.

Animesh has new rules, resulting in it being impractically expensive and for all intents DOA. Without a dramatic drop in Li cost to rez, will never see it replace tweened prims or alpha switching, when really we should be using it for literally everything that moves. Till then, it's for animated attached decorative pets .. yaaaay more attached over detailed geometry.

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.

Quote

The benefit of either of these two approaches is that legacy content is preserved entirely.The down side is that the benefits of the new rules won't be felt by most SL users for several years. However, new content always replaces old content with enough time.

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.

Quote

You rarely see people walking around in sculpted prim avatars or pre-fitmesh bodies anymore. Within a few years most people will have adjusted to the new rules at their own pace. Of course LL would still want to announce the new rules well in advance, and work with content creators to give them the tools and information they'd need to adapt.

 A third method LL could employ would be to provide a carrot and have people voluntarily adopt the new rules. New rules for rezzed content could come along with land-impact increases. All new sims would come with the new rules on by default. Old sims could switch over at the sim owner's request. Similar benefits could be offered to avatars. An attachment point increase, a small stipend increase, or something else.

 All of these methods would accomplish the goal, and simultaneously preserve legacy content. LL could even combine these methods.

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. This has been restated very plainly more than once over the last few days at the SLB interviews. The very existence of Sansar being cited as a way to start over with the new rules.

The best we can hope for at this point is that Oz finds a graphics developer, who not only knows the content landscape of SL, but knows how to work actual magic.

[Cackle Amore]

On 6/28/2019 at 1:55 AM, 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.

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