Do you get lower complexity using baked on Mesh vs Onion Avatar?

[DilliDallagio]

19 hours ago, Haselden said:

And I was wondering before I finally try baked on mesh. Will this also lower my complexity for my avatar drastically? Compared to the normal onion avatars we use now?

The answer to the question, in general, would be... it depends. Some body creators have BoM specific bodies that do away with the onion skins. Those would be less complex. Other creators, like those that make Altamura, apply BoM as an Omega applied technology to retrofit existing onion skinned bodies to use it. BoM, by itself, in that application would have little if any impact on improving or worsening existing complexity.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

48 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I take ChinRey's word on this because I have zero expertise about rendering complexity of fitted mesh. Is there a different assessment of the situation??

Yes; "Complexity" is a completely useless metric for any rigged mesh. Some time ago I did a comparison here on the forum between three different heads, which showed that a head that was 5x less detailed had twice the complexity of the other head.

But I also think the same might apply for even non-rigged mesh. The difference between (as a quick example) my hair's rigged/unrigged version is within 100.

Edited December 26, 2019 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Chic Aeon]

1 minute ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Yes; "Complexity" is a completely useless metric for any rigged mesh.

But I also think the same might apply for even non-rigged mesh.

Very true if you use land impact as the comparable term.  You need to look at the TRIANGLE COUNT to see what is really going on. Some very small rezzable items can be more than many of my houses (that is not an exaggeration AT ALL).

[Wulfie Reanimator]

24 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

Very true if you use land impact as the comparable term.  You need to look at the TRIANGLE COUNT to see what is really going on. Some very small rezzable items can be more than many of my houses (that is not an exaggeration AT ALL).

I would never look at LI when talking about rigged mesh. Incidentally I just added an edit to my post, in which I refer to an older thread where someone else thought LI was important for attachments, which I corrected them on. Triangle count is not everything, either. There's number of textures and whether those textures are alpha-masking or blending, etc.

Edit: Another funny thing I just noticed. My hair (the one I mentioned) has 1400 complexity with 73400 triangles and 3 textures. A rezzed product display I'm looking at right now has 87 triangles and 7 textures, but 2200 complexity.

If I rez my hair and scale it up to be massive and attach it (so it looks no different from before) the complexity is the same as its rezzed version. This showcases how you can cheat to get lower complexities, but that's kind of besides the point. The hair was originally about the same size as it appeared on my head with that 1400 complexity. The complexity-scale is just not correct.

Edited December 26, 2019 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Chic Aeon]

28 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

I would never look at LI when talking about rigged mesh. Incidentally I just added an edit to my post, in which I refer to an older thread where someone else thought LI was important for attachments, which I corrected them on. Triangle count is not everything, either. There's number of textures and whether those textures are alpha-masking or blending, etc.

Edit: Another funny thing I just noticed. My hair (the one I mentioned) has 1400 complexity with 73400 triangles and 3 textures. A rezzed product display I'm looking at right now has 87 triangles and 7 textures, but 2200 complexity.

If I rez my hair and scale it up to be massive and attach it (so it looks no different from before) the complexity is the same as its rezzed version. This showcases how you can cheat to get lower complexities, but that's kind of besides the point. The hair was originally about the same size as it appeared on my head with that 1400 complexity. The complexity-scale is just not correct.

MY comment was to the person above regarding NON-RIGGED MESH. 

[ChinRey]

3 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

I take ChinRey's word on this because I have zero expertise about rendering complexity of fitted mesh.

It's not my word really, for the most part I'm only the messenger here.

The fact that the render complexity for fitted mesh was off, was failry obvious for anybody to see but everybody were looking at the formula to figure out what was wrong. It wasn't until @OptimoMaximo brought it up in a thread here and @Beq Janus took a really close look at the viewer code and did some thorough testing the real reasons were revealed. For the most part I'm simply referring to Beq's research but it most be correct because it came with a lot of cool pictures. And if that wasn't enough, Vir Linden confirmed it all when I asked him.

Edited December 26, 2019 by ChinRey

[Wulfie Reanimator]

5 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

MY comment was to the person above regarding NON-RIGGED MESH. 

Sorry, who mentioned non-rigged mesh? You only quoted me, right above your post...

Edit: Right, you quoted before I clarified why I thought that.

Edited December 26, 2019 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Chic Aeon]

2 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Sorry, who mentioned non-rigged mesh? You only quoted me, right above your post...

 

In the post that I quoted and answered:  "But I also think the same might apply for even non-rigged mesh."

 

[OptimoMaximo]

14 hours ago, ChinRey said:

It's not my word really, for the most part I'm only the messenger here.

The fact that the render complexity for fitted mesh was off, was failry obvious for anybody to see but everybody were looking at the formula to figure out what was wrong. It wasn't until @OptimoMaximo brought it up in a thread here and @Beq Janus took a really close look at the viewer code and did some thorough testing the real reasons were revealed. For the most part I'm simply referring to Beq's research but it most be correct because it came with a lot of cool pictures. And if that wasn't enough, Vir Linden confirmed it all when I asked him.

And my theory was partially confirmed, if you remember. Attachments were showing massively increased in size, which affected the overall bounding box size. To this day I still stand by my theory (too long to rewrite here) but, as for this specific thread goes, bacause of BoM I would say it helps reducing render cost of avatars even though it's not quantifiable with the current system. Polygon number reduction along with skin data is one thing, the other side is texture memory and a lot less alpha textures on screen. Albeit a different and better designed feature would have been preferable, I think BoM does its dirty job on avatars and we'll see its benefits in the long run. I still think it's a necrofeature and leaves more than a lot to be desired and a similar feature should have been implemented in a totally different way though. 

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

On 12/25/2019 at 9:04 PM, Chic Aeon said:

So far --- I didn't install the BOM viewer partly because I didn't care and partly because friends had a lot of issues and went back to a previous version ---- I am NOT seeing a lot of odd colored blue and yellow folks. So as far as I can tell BOM isn't going over the way LL hoped it might.    You can get your complexity down really pretty low just by choosing some well-made clothes and hair.   I have a friend with Lara and a altamura head and she stays under 30,000 with not much effort at all. I am normally around 40,000 or so.  

I think you are right. to many issues and with not everyone upgrading, they will have to at some point. Why bother.  Altamura is the only body I know of (please correct me if I am wrong) that you can actually wear the alpha files that come with some older outfits so the fit mesh can fit.

[MoiraKathleen]

1 hour ago, Tarina Sewell said:

I think you are right. to many issues and with not everyone upgrading, they will have to at some point. Why bother.  Altamura is the only body I know of (please correct me if I am wrong) that you can actually wear the alpha files that come with some older outfits so the fit mesh can fit.

I wear alphas that came with some of the older mesh outfits on Slink's version of the BOM body.  I also went with one of Slink's new bento/BOM heads.  I am more than pleased with the reduced number of scripts I'm wearing, the lower complexity readings and just the ease of dressing due to no longer having to worry about alpha cuts and appliers.

 

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

16 minutes ago, moirakathleen said:

I wear alphas that came with some of the older mesh outfits on Slink's version of the BOM body.  I also went with one of Slink's new bento/BOM heads.  I am more than pleased with the reduced number of scripts I'm wearing, the lower complexity readings and just the ease of dressing due to no longer having to worry about alpha cuts and appliers.

 

Ah, thank you! I wish Lara would allow this, maybe I should switch to slink.. God knows I have tons of slink shoes leftover I can never wear...... I might have a lookie loo at those bodies.

[Beq Janus]

As has been noted, the actual improvement to your complexity numbers depends somewhat on whether the mesh creator has entered into the spirit of BOM and actually taken steps to reduice the onion layers. Where they have done so, then your complexity will decrease. I switched from my legacy Slink body to the Slink Redux and saw a nice improvement with the added benefit of having perfect control over the alpha now (should I choose). However, I think that the reduction to your complexity is a small reward for "doing the right thing". The long term benefit to people moving to BOM is that rendering a scene with lots of avatars in it becomes far less work for the viewer. In moving to BOM, with a more efficient BOM body/head, you are contributing to the greater good of everyone shopping/dancing with you. 

The complexity numbers do not tell the whole story, while we can argue back and forth about what the "correct" complexity is we need to accept that it is really just a guide, and the actual benefit to an individual depends on their computer and video card, the amount of RAM etc. What we can say with some certainty is that with BOM the viewers that are drawing you will have to do less work to render you. A pre-BOM mesh body is made up not only of multiple mesh layers, but also of tiny fragments of mesh that are organised to allow you to selectively hide bits of the mesh by making them invisible. As a result a typical pre-BOM body is made up of tens of different meshes.

Thus you have 2 distinct aspects of the mesh body/head that affect your complexity. The alpha slicing and the onion skin layering. BOM addresses both of these if your mesh creator chooses to fully embrace it. Sidean from SLink went all out and the Redux body models (which are offered alongside the legacy pre-BOM models) use the bake system to reduce the onion skins required and at the same time uses the bake system "alpha" masks to eliminate the need to have sliced and diced meshes. As a result the body retains the same mesh structure and shape, but dramatically reduces the drawing overhead. There is an added benefit too that the alpha can be precisely defined by a clothing creator, giving far more freedom than the old legacy models had.In the old system a designer had to ensure that the lines of the clothing followed the body segments so that when setting an alpha you didn't have a hole in your body on show.

Other "BOM" body models have for the most part just allowed BOM textures to be applied, leaving their avatars just as complex as before. As a result they are not going to give you the same kind of reduction in complexity, in fact probably none at all. I suspect/hope that this will be an interim step while the creators do all the rework that is required. It is worth noting too that while SLink have stolen a march here and really set the target for BOM bodies, the existing pre-BOM "legacy" SLink models are still shipped alongside and there is good reason for this.

BOM pros and cons

PROS

1) Far lower rendering overhead, less work means more frames per second, lower lag. (but realistically only when it is widespread)
2) perfect alphas, but only when your creator makes one or you create one. Creators can and will provide these especially as demand grows, many never stopped; those that support standard sizing and non mesh avatars, and those that remember pre-2011 will know all about this. 
3) No more texture hogging, laggy HUDs that eat up all your resources...

CONS

1) no simple auto alpha. outfit folders can get you some of the way, RLV can help too (if you have it).....
2) no HUDs means no fat packs of appliers with a simple UI

Hopefully Maitreya, (as the clearly dominant female body at present) will follow in the footsteps of SLink and allow people to choose between old and new depending on their needs; more people would then have a chance to enjoy a new slimmer more lightweight second life in the new year 🙂 . At the moment I can choose to wear the original SLink models where I need appliers or don't have time to make an alpha etc. or I can use the BOM edition when I want to feel less of a social burden and reduce the impact I have on others at shopping events etc.

Beq

x

[Lillith Hapmouche]

Just had my fair share of cringe-worthy, facepalming moments in a certain mesh head info group.

My "favourite": BOM takes too long to load, it's no instant update compared to appliers, because it needs to load the whole baked texture.
... Sweety, by the time you have opened your applier, chose a texture and have it applied to your head, the baked texture has probably loaded twice. 😑

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

Will we need to buy new skins for BOM heads and bodies or can we use wbat we have?

[Wulfie Reanimator]

Just now, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

Will we need to buy new skins for BOM heads and bodies or can we use wbat we have?

Applies cannot be used with BOM.

But if the creator of your current skin/tattoos/makeup/whatever makes an update to include system-layers for it, you won't need to buy anything new.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

4 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Applies cannot be used with BOM.

But if the creator of your current skin/tattoos/makeup/whatever makes an update to include system-layers for it, you won't need to buy anything new.

System layers ... like the old clothing and skin layers for the system body?

Edited December 29, 2019 by Ingrid Ingersoll

[Fritigern Gothly]

56 minutes ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

Will we need to buy new skins for BOM heads and bodies or can we use wbat we have?

We can use what we have as far as our old fashioned system layers go. Using alphas in general does not work well (depending on your body, that is) so I still use my alpha cuts.

Other system items that work (again) are:

• Skins (the nails that are usually painted on the skin don't work well with Mesh bodies, so I usually wear gloves and socks/stockings/shoes)
• Tattoos
• Clothing (pants, jackets, shirts, skirts...)
• Shoe bases (remember how they were often textured to match our prim/sculptie shoes?)

59 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Applies cannot be used with BOM.

But if the creator of your current skin/tattoos/makeup/whatever makes an update to include system-layers for it, you won't need to buy anything new.

That is not true at all. I mix BoM and appliers all the time. You just can't use a SKIN applier and expect BoM to still function, because in order to enable BoM, you need to apply a "magic texture" as the body part's skin to which you wish to use BoM (these can be upper body, lower body, head, hair, eyes and shirt, as well as left arm, left leg, plus 3 auxiliary parts).

[Qie Niangao]

5 hours ago, Fritigern Gothly said:

We can use what we have as far as our old fashioned system layers go. Using alphas in general does not work well (depending on your body, that is) so I still use my alpha cuts. [...]

What doesn't work well about using alphas? (The "alphas" in this case being the alpha masks that apply to a BoM surface making parts transparent.) Just hypothetically, if they were the exact shape of the alpha cuts selected for an outfit, they'd have exactly the same effect right? So... is it that they're difficult to create? or difficult to manage in inventory? or???

I ask because for me they're a godsend. But before BoM, I enthused about auto-alpha (scripts that automatically select alpha cuts when worn, usually as part of a mesh garment), but even they were a constant frustration with some items having auto-alpha and some not and some having slightly screwed-up auto alphas; then it became a battle to fix the auto-alphas the clothing creators screwed up except they were always embedded in no-mod items. <additional rant goes here>

Anyway, I've had problems with alpha cuts ever since I got my first mesh body, so I'm just curious what folks are finding problematic about alpha masks.

[Edit: Or, wait, does "depending on your body" refer to the "BoM" bodies that still use alpha-cuts instead of alpha masks? Yeah, for sure, those alpha masks really don't work well.]

Edited December 29, 2019 by Qie Niangao

[Fritigern Gothly]

12 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

What doesn't work well about using alphas? (The "alphas" in this case being the alpha masks that apply to a BoM surface making parts transparent.)

As I said, it depends on the body. If your body's alpha mode for the skin textures is set to none or to mask, then using alphas will turn your body bright red.

[Qie Niangao]

Ah, okay, got it. I'd edited-in reference to that possibility shortly after I posted. (I'd been thinking of "not work well" being about cases where they work, just not well.) Anyway, yeah, I gave an alt one of the bodies that do that, so he's still flipping alpha cuts too. 

[Wulfie Reanimator]

6 hours ago, Fritigern Gothly said:

That is not true at all. I mix BoM and appliers all the time. You just can't use a SKIN applier and expect BoM to still function, because in order to enable BoM, you need to apply a "magic texture" as the body part's skin to which you wish to use BoM (these can be upper body, lower body, head, hair, eyes and shirt, as well as left arm, left leg, plus 3 auxiliary parts).

My wording was bad, I know how BOM works. What I meant to say was that you can't use scripted appliers to add things to the same surface that's already using BOM.

They said "BOM heads" so I interpreted that as "head that is using BOM (presumably without onion layers)." In that case you cannot use appliers because the applier would override/remove BOM.

If there are onion layers, you can of course use appliers on them while keeping your skin as BOM.

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 hour ago, Fritigern Gothly said:

As I said, it depends on the body. If your body's alpha mode for the skin textures is set to none or to mask, then using alphas will turn your body bright red.

 

A full-body alpha that uses check boxes to blank out entire body sections will do that.

Wearing a clothing alpha (partial alpha determined by a texture) will do nothing if the body is set to alpha type "none" - you'll see the skin and associated layers as if no alphas are worn.

If the body is set to alpha-masking and the cutoff is set to anything other than 0, they will work the way they work on the default body.

[Fauve Aeon]

The complexity numbers are still in flux it seems, regardless? I was wearing full mesh, Maitreya body with alpha cuts, Lelutka head, both with no BOM,  a full mesh kimono with 3 layers, geta and tabi, detailed mesh bra, mesh hair with lots of big flowers, extra kanzashi, smoking a scripted pipe, these are mostly very dense meshes...and my complexity was still under 100k...AND lower than someone standing next to me wearing NO mesh at all, human Classic avatar wearing just prims, sculpts and flexi. She was over 100k. I was rated 1, she was rated 4. I took a screenshot for reference and I may ask someone in the know about it privately...but I’m not about calling people out on their stuff. If I think they are too high and feel they are lagging me, I just quietly de-render them. The 3 estates my partner and I rent in - the ones we spend the most time in and choose to support, are very ‘live and let live’ regarding avatar complexity. It’s very nice.

Some of my old prim items and some very detailed mesh things take my complexity easily over 500k, without even realizing it unless I turn on avatar complexity and enable the nag pop-up about high complexity. As an experiment, I just got dressed without referring to the numbers. Complexity over 500k. I took off 2 earrings and 2 fairly small hair ornaments...dropped under 100k. 

Edited December 29, 2019 by Fauve Aeon

[OptimoMaximo]

21 minutes ago, Fauve Aeon said:

The complexity numbers are still in flux it seems, regardless

As far as the complexity rating goes, it wouldn't be a bad system if:

It would take into account bad LoDs. Currently it doesn't AND the distance thresholds suffer of a severe miscalculation. From this miscalculation, exploitation of the system arose, biasing the complexity numbers to make wearables APPEAR to be lighter weight than what they actually are. 

It would take into account the number of parts a linkset is made of. Your nonBoM bodies are made of dozens of pieces, each one split in different texturable faces to allow alpha slicing. This is what contributed, mainly, to the exploitation of the system as mentioned above, because making proper LoDs for such setup is basically impossible. Each single part of your body is, therefore, a call to draw a single object that is, internally, made up of several subobjects (texturable faces) . Each one of them has deformation data going along with it, which should clarify to you why it isn't a good idea: lots of separate data to pull into your viewer just for the body to render and deform along the skeleton. 

When you say that some accessories make your complexity score skyrocket, it's because the creator didn't care for a reasonable number of polygons and made the small ring on your pinkie finger more detailed than a full avatar alone, also using a flawed set of LoDs because that small ring has to show in full glory at any distance, despite the fact that it wouldn't take more than a bunch of pixels on screen at all times except when placing the camera at 2 centimeters distance. Combine this type of content creation habits with the problems mentioned above along with an uploader that penalizes lower LoDs with more than a few triangles, and you get the figure as per why some items make your render cost skyrocket, as opposed to other items that apparently are light weight but in the end exploit the system using practices at least as bad as those that rank your avatar among the "one million avatar rendering cost". 

With this said, also content made of prims , especially the flexy, can have the same effect: they have a proper lod setup and waste a lot of polygons. Plus the flexy feature, that is run realtime.