Bakes On Mesh - Releasing Soon!

[Therese Tammas]

Report: Doesn't work yet *shrugs* just a rumor

[Therese Tammas]

Question for anyone ...all the system skin avatars I"ve tried with Ebody doesn't seem to cover the legs....I don't understand it. How do I fix it?

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

50 minutes ago, Therese Tammas said:

Question for anyone ...all the system skin avatars I"ve tried with Ebody doesn't seem to cover the legs....I don't understand it. How do I fix it?

 

Check to see what system items you're wearing. That looks like what I'd expect from a "sock" wearable. Sometimes even shoe bases have unexpected graphics; with mesh bodies you'll never see it.

[Therese Tammas]

2 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Check to see what system items you're wearing. That looks like what I'd expect from a "sock" wearable. Sometimes even shoe bases have unexpected graphics; with mesh bodies you'll never see it.

heh! Basics you'd think I remember! Let me check when I Next log in..thanks!!

 

[Teager]

16 hours ago, halebore Aeon said:

Why, bakes on mesh is literally for avatars and their appliers. So you can have 32 layers, like before the days of mesh. So you can plop on a skin, and not have to worry about having to take up one of your very few layers on your mesh avatar. This has nothing to do with animesh.

I respectfully disagree. There are always more potentially useful use cases for a new technology than the intended/most obvious one.

I've actually been expecting to build BOM functionality into my teeglepet animesh horses instead of adding LI-heavy tattoo layers to them. BOM for these horses would be useful for the applying of unique paint markings, leg markings, and facial markings over your choice of hundreds of base skin colors, allowing for a great deal more customization in creating your own unique horse. It would also open up the accessory market to creators who don't know how to make or rig mesh, allowing them to create saddle pads, blankets, leg wraps, and other skin tight accessories using only textures.

If those BOM add-ons can't be used on a horse that is worn, though, I hesitate to add BOM support. The average consumer will not understand why their horse's unique marking works when rezzed but not when worn (that is, if rezzed animesh does work; i wasn't clear on that from the article and haven't had a chance yet to try.)

So, asking again for @Vir Linden - is full animesh support planned, or is this being viewed as too narrow a use case?

[Cackle Amore]

20 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

I am not enthusiastic at all.  At best it will have little immediate impact that I care about and at worst it could break all of my purchased appliers.  I don't have a great deal of confidence that breakage will not occur.

You should think of it as a good thing. You won't need appliers anymore for your base skin and such. Skin, tattoo layers, even alpha layers can shine once more!

Can even have like basic undergarments as clothing layers again.

[Cackle Amore]

1 hour ago, Teager said:

I respectfully disagree. There are always more potentially useful use cases for a new technology than the intended/most obvious one.

I've actually been expecting to build BOM functionality into my teeglepet animesh horses instead of adding LI-heavy tattoo layers to them. BOM for these horses would be useful for the applying of unique paint markings, leg markings, and facial markings over your choice of hundreds of base skin colors, allowing for a great deal more customization in creating your own unique horse. It would also open up the accessory market to creators who don't know how to make or rig mesh, allowing them to create saddle pads, blankets, leg wraps, and other skin tight accessories using only textures.

If those BOM add-ons can't be used on a horse that is worn, though, I hesitate to add BOM support. The average consumer will not understand why their horse's unique marking works when rezzed but not when worn (that is, if rezzed animesh does work; i wasn't clear on that from the article and haven't had a chance yet to try.

Luckly, the BoM stuff can be used with non standard forms, though you'll of course need stuff tailored made for it.

Ideally, if you've got 3 or less textures for the body, you can hook it up into the skin layer. You can also make use of the eyes and hair as well for their counter parts, and the new universal layer will let you add tattoos to those other spots.

 

As for Animesh, My assumption is probably not, atleast not at the moment. The BoM thing only worked on attachments when I was last trying it out. Couldn't even toggle it on an object if it's just rezzed on the ground. But who knows, maybe someday, I imagine they wanted to finally get it pushed out in a stable form so peeps can finally start to use it.

-------

Hopefully the TPV's won't take too long

Edited August 25, 2019 by Digit Gears

[Gabriele Graves]

6 hours ago, Digit Gears said:

You should think of it as a good thing. You won't need appliers anymore for your base skin and such. Skin, tattoo layers, even alpha layers can shine once more!

Can even have like basic undergarments as clothing layers again.

Just so you know, I am not impressed by people telling me how I should think. I prefer to choose for myself the way I want to think.
Let me further just say, I have been following the development of BoM closely and I do have a good handle on how it works and how it is supposed to work.  So I don't need any lessons in BoM.

All BoM does is trade one set of ways of doing things for others, complete with one set of trade-offs for another.  Like how we will still need appliers for nails because the wearables will not work with the nails of mesh bodies or like how instead of one applier item with many skin tones in our inventory, we will now need one inventory item per option on the HUD, potentially many more items.  We will no longer be able see the graphic of the tone on the HUD, instead our only assistance will be the name on such descriptive items like "LightSkin01".

Of course there are distinct advantages for some use cases but they don't overlap with my use cases and there are definite disadvantages that do overlap with my use cases.

Appliers are not a problem for me, I put on a HUD, press a button and I am done and happy.  This is no worse for me than adding a wearable.  I don't use multiple layers of applier clothing or tattoos.  If I want painted on under garments, I can have them with appliers too so I why should I get excited because they can be worn the old way on mesh now?

I don't care for alpha layer wearables, I like clickable HUD alpha, yes it can be a little limiting in a few cases but I remember the alternative before mesh bodies where most female clothing vendors were just lazy and would alpha out out everything under skirts and dresses.  What could you do then?  You had three options, 1) don't buy, but everyone was mostly the same, 2) go to a paint package and try to draw your own alpha that was better tailored to that clothing or 3) go around getting clothing demos from similar clothing and hope the alphas contained inside were better.  This latter was very hit-and-miss and all the options are tedious or laborious.  The shortcomings of HUD alpha are much less than that, everyone was working to a standard, it gives instant customisability and it works far more easily in far more circumstances - a huge win.  The wearables will probably signal a return to the bad old days of early mesh clothing as far as I am concerned.

I don't care about onion-skin less bodies that much either.  For the foreseeable future I will need onion skin bodies and appliers for the vast amount of content I will continue to use and there is an army of people out there who will do the same.  Yes I would like more efficient bodies, no not at the cost of throwing away all of my appliers.

I already have so much stuff that if only BoM wearables are supported by bodies or heads and/or nobody produces or sells appliers any more, I will probably just stop buying any of it.  Pretty much 95% of everything is just a rehash of what is already around anyway.

I will just be happy assuming everything that works today, continues to work tomorrow and that we can use our stuff the way we have and the way we want. I don't begrudge others BoM or their excitement over it, just don't expect everyone to get excited about it.  Despite what you think, it isn't going to rock the world for everyone.  I will happily tolerate it as long as stays out of my way.
 

Edited August 25, 2019 by Gabriele Graves
clarification of meaning & added missing word.

[Vir Linden]

7 hours ago, Teager said:

is full animesh support planned

Hi Teager,

We are hoping to add BOM support for animesh in the future. Not supported for the initial release.

[Cesartje]

BOM will help those who wants to use their creativity and want to customize their avatar without having glitches and the limits of mesh head layers. I am sure appliers will still work for those who wants appliers - But I am so happy with BOM release and all the new possibilities it can bring. I am tired of the limits of applying one thing and seeying other disappear on the head. So I am more than thankfull. Not to mention the less lag it will bring when heads and bodies without onion layers comes out. 

[arabellajones]

I do know of one mesh body that has the onion-skin clothing layers as a distinct rigged mesh, essentially a piece of clothing. I do make mesh clothing of my own, and the whole business looks a bit tricky to set up but it might be a useful option. I'm picky about this, I reckon there are some horribly-built mesh objects, and it's going to be a while before there's a BOM viewer I can run, but it might be worth the effort. Practically, having skin and tattoo distinct from clothing might work very well. If you can have a set of clothes on an onion-skin add-on, changing them gets easy.

And I don't think BOM throws away the idea of appliers. But I have been using a mesh body for so long that I can't really remember how texture baking handles multiple layers. Layer 2 sits over layer 1, so the application sequence matters?. but I can only recall multi-textures that don't overlap.

I suppose I'd better mention the mesh body I'm referring to: the Psicorp Avatar Core.

[NiranV Dean]

It seems like that some of you don't understand the technical aspect of BOM.

BOM's biggest upside is if applied to combine at least 2 textures into one, you're saving texture memory. The more layers you combine the more memory you save. With just 1 texture saved you get 4MB less (5MB if its an alpha, which we have to assume it is to allow layering in the first place) if its a 1024x1024 texture. Now do this with multiple body parts and 3 layers and you can quickly reduce 200MB avatars to 50MB easily. This can greatly help lower VRAM cards (and Viewers) since usable VRAM is quite limited in most Viewers. 

Less textures also means less downloading and decoding, which means less bandwidth spent, less time wasted loading and of course less time in "decoding" mode and thus less time with drastically lowered framerate.

Edited August 25, 2019 by NiranV Dean

[Darkstone Aeon]

ok well - so for the totally lost and almost clueless - a step by step - 1) can I take my classic avatar Redgraves skin and apply that to my mesh head and body - (please  say yes- if not break it to me easy)  2) if so then follow directions to apply  3) if not - what would I need to  be able to do that?  thanks 

 

Edited August 25, 2019 by Darkstone Aeon

[Blush Bravin]

9 minutes ago, Darkstone Aeon said:

ok well - so for the totally lost and almost clueless - a step by step - 1) can I take my classic avatar Redgraves skin and apply that to my mesh head and body - (please  say yes- if not break it to me easy)  2) if so then follow directions to apply  3) if not - what would I need to  be able to do that?  thanks 

 

You will be able to use your old Redgrave skin on your mesh head and body, but that does not necessarily mean that all the features of that skin will line up correctly with your mesh body parts. It's possible the lips might not be exactly in the right place. I've seen eyes not look right either with the inner corner of the eye being way off from where it should be. I've also seen some old system skins look great on mesh heads. So it will be trial and error to see which skins will work and which ones just simply will not line up properly.

[Darkstone Aeon]

Thanks Blush - is it worth it now to try the new viewer ? if I go back to fs viewer will I be able to see the "redgraves " if I can successfully do this??  Anyone want to walk me thru this inworld so I dont totally screw up - (tho I think starting with a demo head and body is a good clue !! ) 

 

[Gabriele Graves]

1 hour ago, NiranV Dean said:

It seems like that some of you don't understand the technical aspect of BOM.

BOM's biggest upside is if applied to combine at least 2 textures into one, you're saving texture memory. The more layers you combine the more memory you save. With just 1 texture saved you get 4MB less (5MB if its an alpha, which we have to assume it is to allow layering in the first place) if its a 1024x1024 texture. Now do this with multiple body parts and 3 layers and you can quickly reduce 200MB avatars to 50MB easily. This can greatly help lower VRAM cards (and Viewers) since usable VRAM is quite limited in most Viewers. 

Less textures also means less downloading and decoding, which means less bandwidth spent, less time wasted loading and of course less time in "decoding" mode and thus less time with drastically lowered framerate.

I for one, certainly do understand this technical benefit to BoM but it too isn't something that I care very much about.  Sure it sounds like that would be great but the downside having to use BoM which means not using existing appliers for the body again or you lose those benefits.  Not going to happen for a lot of people, not at least for a long time.  You know, I hear people are still holding on to their 2003 wearables, flexi-skirts and flexi-hair 😉  *raise your hand anyone who still has Last Call outfits*

When you combine that with the fact that I only minimally layer textures on my body, (my bake would probably consist of, at worst, 5 textures (skin, one body tattoo, lipstick,  eyeshadow and an alpha), it just isn't going to improve my experience that much.

I already have exceptional SL performance on my setup for the most part and so would be unlikely to notice any improvements from other avatars unless I am at a busy event, everyone is only using BoM and in some bizarre alternative reality sense have also decided to ditch the massive amount of attachments they insist on bringing along.  BoM sure isn't going to help with those attachments which are the main problem there.

Obviously if a person is willing to ditch all of their appliers and stick to BoM only, generally do heavily layer their body/face textures and/or mostly wear applier clothing, have low amounts of VRAM and a slow internet connection then they are probably going to see some benefits on their own avatar.  All the power to them I say and I am glad it will help.

I am not in that category of user and I believe this benefit is being overstated for people like me.
 

[KT Kingsley]

38 minutes ago, Darkstone Aeon said:

Thanks Blush - is it worth it now to try the new viewer ? if I go back to fs viewer will I be able to see the "redgraves " if I can successfully do this??  Anyone want to walk me thru this inworld so I dont totally screw up - (tho I think starting with a demo head and body is a good clue !! ) 

 

You can download and install Firestorm and LL viewers separately, and they won't interfere with each other, so you can choose which one you want to use when you decide to fire up SL .

Barring cockups, when you start the standard SL viewer on Monday (26 August) it will update itself to the newly released version that is the BoM viewer.

The BoM version of Firestorm will follow in due course. I seem to remember some comment that the last version of Firestorm was built with BoM and EEP eagerly anticipated, and that the upgrades will follow, by FS standards, relatively swiftly.

[Xia Xevious]

I am so excited!  I have tons of old skins which I never delete (since maybe 2006)  2 days ago, I played with them.... some of them look... "wow" on my Lelutka head but haven't try on Genus yet!  But the rest of them belong to the trash due bad textures or qualities.  I can't wait to see all the creators to create a fantastic makeups or others for layers!  I now will able to wear eyeliners + eye shadows + dimples + moles + many others together on my face.  Layers are what I need the most!  Thank you for making a great feature for us all again!

[NiranV Dean]

57 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

I for one, certainly do understand this technical benefit to BoM but it too isn't something that I care very much about.  Sure it sounds like that would be great but the downside having to use BoM which means not using existing appliers for the body again or you lose those benefits.  Not going to happen for a lot of people, not at least for a long time.  You know, I hear people are still holding on to their 2003 wearables, flexi-skirts and flexi-hair 😉  *raise your hand anyone who still has Last Call outfits*

When you combine that with the fact that I only minimally layer textures on my body, (my bake would probably consist of, at worst, 5 textures (skin, one body tattoo, lipstick,  eyeshadow and an alpha), it just isn't going to improve my experience that much.

I already have exceptional SL performance on my setup for the most part and so would be unlikely to notice any improvements from other avatars unless I am at a busy event, everyone is only using BoM and in some bizarre alternative reality sense have also decided to ditch the massive amount of attachments they insist on bringing along.  BoM sure isn't going to help with those attachments which are the main problem there.

Obviously if a person is willing to ditch all of their appliers and stick to BoM only, generally do heavily layer their body/face textures and/or mostly wear applier clothing, have low amounts of VRAM and a slow internet connection then they are probably going to see some benefits on their own avatar.  All the power to them I say and I am glad it will help.

I am not in that category of user and I believe this benefit is being overstated for people like me.
 

You seem under the impression that BOM isn't good just because its doing a minimal improvement.

In SL there is no one-solution-to-fit-them-all fix. SL is composed of many problems that bog down the experience, not just one. One of those many issues is texture memory usage. Whether you think your hardware benefits from this or not, it certainly does. Besides, worst case nothing changes, best case people start adopting it and texture memory usage for avatars goes down. There is only one road this whole thing can take from here and its a good one. There is nothing people can do with this that would make it worse.

And while i do have a 6GB GPU and my Viewer supports up to 8GB, not everyone uses my Viewer and no everyone has 6GB to spare not to mention that we shouldnt spare it in the first place just because we can. Regardless of how much VRAM is available we should always strife to go for the lowest possible.

[Sammy Huntsman]

@Whirly Fizzle Will we be seeing a Firestorm Update with BOM quite soon?

[Cesartje]

20 minutes ago, halebore Aeon said:

@Whirly Fizzle Will we be seeing a Firestorm Update with BOM quite soon?

I do hope so.

[Cesartje]

57 minutes ago, halebore Aeon said:

 

sorry, double posted

Edited August 25, 2019 by Cesartje
double psoted

[Therese Tammas]

3 hours ago, Blush Bravin said:

You will be able to use your old Redgrave skin on your mesh head and body, but that does not necessarily mean that all the features of that skin will line up correctly with your mesh body parts. It's possible the lips might not be exactly in the right place. I've seen eyes not look right either with the inner corner of the eye being way off from where it should be. I've also seen some old system skins look great on mesh heads. So it will be trial and error to see which skins will work and which ones just simply will not line up properly.

 

3 hours ago, Darkstone Aeon said:

Thanks Blush - is it worth it now to try the new viewer ? if I go back to fs viewer will I be able to see the "redgraves " if I can successfully do this??  Anyone want to walk me thru this inworld so I dont totally screw up - (tho I think starting with a demo head and body is a good clue !! ) 

 

 Also, I will say that high quality skin artists in the past DO line up well. High quality skins are high quality skins.  Here's my mesh av with a Curio skin ...note not with a mesh head as the bento head didn't do well with the skin, will have to try another bento head. But the body lined up amazingly

 

 

Edited August 25, 2019 by Therese Tammas

[Blush Bravin]

2 minutes ago, Therese Tammas said:

 

 Also, I will say that high quality skin artists in the past DO line up well. High quality skins are high quality skins.  Here's my mesh av with a Curio skin ...note not with a mesh head as the bento head didn't do well with the skin, will have to try another bento head. But the body lined up amazingly

 

The biggest issues with a body will be the hands and feet as well as upper chest bit placement. (Trying to avoid the censor). When it comes to mesh heads though it's a whole other issue. I've tried many skins on several mesh heads with very mixed results.

[Bridget Leavitt]

10 hours ago, halebore Aeon said:

@Whirly Fizzle Will we be seeing a Firestorm Update with BOM quite soon?

I asked in the FS group and they said they're just waiting for BOM to be released to implement it in to FS. I gathered when BOM goes LIVE, the next FS update will support it.