Help me clear up a couple of things

[Janet Voxel]

A lot of creators are pushing out relays instead of an actual BoM product. My question is, when you use a relay with the product you had prior to BoM, is it truly BoM?

Example: My favorite head put out a relay  yesterday. The relay allows me to use system skins, tattoos, makeup etc. What happens to the onion layers my head had? Are they still there if I use a relay?

 

 

Edited January 13, 2020 by janetosilio
Typo

[Anna Nova]

38 minutes ago, janetosilio said:

A lot of creators are pushing out relays instead of an actual BoM product. My question is, when you use a relay with the product you had prior to BoM, is it truly BoM?

Example: My favorite head puts out a yesterday. The relay allows me to use system skins, tattoos, makeup etc. What happens to the onion layers my head had? Are they still there if I use a relay?

 

 

I think the key question is: 'do you take the alpha off?'.  If you take the alpha off, it's really BoM.  That means that all the things (system layers: skins, tattoo, non-mesh clothes), but probably not alpha textures,  get sent to the LL BoM server (which explains the delay), turned into one single texture and applied to the BoM layer.  You may also have other layers.

[Theresa Tennyson]

58 minutes ago, janetosilio said:

A lot of creators are pushing out relays instead of an actual BoM product. My question is, when you use a relay with the product you had prior to BoM, is it truly BoM?

Example: My favorite head puts out a yesterday. The relay allows me to use system skins, tattoos, makeup etc. What happens to the onion layers my head had? Are they still there if I use a relay?

 

 

The onion layers are still going to be part of the model and need to be downloaded, etc.

However, even with exactly the same head/body you should see a performance increase if the skin and a texture that would otherwise be on an onion layer are combined and the onion layer is turned off versus the head having the skin on the base surface and the additional texture on an onion layer. When I did some controlled tests I found that displaying "occupied" onion layers is a pretty significant performance hit.

To answer your philosophical question I would consider it "true" BoM but not optimized BoM. It's more of a factor with bodies - a body optimized for BoM will have things like alpha masking enabled to allow worn alphas under clothes and the option to smooth over nipples, crotch details, etc. on the main body layer. 

Edited January 13, 2020 by Theresa Tennyson

[Janet Voxel]

1 minute ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

The onion layers are still going to be part of the model and need to be download, etc.

However, even with exactly the same head/body you should see a performance increase if the skin and a texture that would otherwise be on an onion layer are combined and the onion layer is turned off versus the head having the skin on the base surface and the additional texture on an onion layer. When I did some controlled tests I found that displaying "full" onion layers is a pretty significant performance hit.

To answer your philosophical question I would consider it "true" BoM but not optimized BoM. It's more of a factor with bodies - a body optimized for BoM will have things like alpha masking enabled to allow worn alphas under clothes and the option to smooth over nipples, crotch details, etc. on the main body layer. 

Perfect! Thank you for answering my question. True BoM, but not optimized BoM, I like that.

Now for my next question (it’s more of a creator question): As a creator, wouldn’t converting an existing mesh be a matter of just taking the base mesh, possibly adjusting the UV, possibly rerigging and uploading the new mesh? 
 

Or am I oversimplifying the process?

[Tarani Tempest]

On 1/13/2020 at 9:28 AM, janetosilio said:

Perfect! Thank you for answering my question. True BoM, but not optimized BoM, I like that.

Now for my next question (it’s more of a creator question): As a creator, wouldn’t converting an existing mesh be a matter of just taking the base mesh, possibly adjusting the UV, possibly rerigging and uploading the new mesh? 
 

Or am I oversimplifying the process?

Bakes on Mesh is just a texture that is applied to mesh.  Nothing needs to be done to the actual mesh, it has nothing to do with rigging.  You can apply the Bakes on Mesh code on any worn bit of mesh. The BoM 'relay' HUDs ...are really just skin appliers.  They use the omega or brand specific scripting to apply their skin, to apply the BoM code.

The BoM Huds apply the bakes on mesh code, and that is True BOM.  The mesh bodies themselves just need the creator to allow system alpha layers to be used, that comes with a body update.

Converting worn mesh to allow BoM is way more simple than most believe it to be.

[Janet Voxel]

1 hour ago, Tarani Tempest said:

Bakes on Mesh is just a texture that is applied to mesh.  Nothing needs to be done to the actual mesh, it has nothing to do with rigging.  You can apply the Bakes on Mesh code on any worn bit of mesh. The BoM 'relay' HUDs ...are really just skin appliers.  They use the omega or brand specific scripting to apply their skin, to apply the BoM code.

The BoM Huds apply the bakes on mesh code, and that is True BOM.  The mesh bodies themselves just need the creator to allow system alpha layers to be used, that comes with a body update.

Converting worn mesh to allow BoM is way more simple than most believe it to be.

I see, so converting to BoM is just a matter of taking your mesh, whether its a head or a body and reuploading it as a bakes on mesh body?

[Tarani Tempest]

49 minutes ago, janetosilio said:

I see, so converting to BoM is just a matter of taking your mesh, whether its a head or a body and reuploading it as a bakes on mesh body?

No, it's just a matter of applying the Bakes on Mesh texture to any worn mesh.... as soon as you apply that code, it's converted. Its done inworld.  Anyone can do it to any modifiable worn mesh.  With bodies and heads, the majority of them are not modifiable....but, the BoM code/texture/uuid, can be applied using ordinary skin appliers.  Anyone that has access to Dev kits and the freely provided internal textures, can make a BoM 'relay' HUD :

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Internal_Textures

That is true 100% Bakes on Mesh, the real deal.

Now any fun perks to go along with a BoM body , as Theresa pointed out....an optimized BoM ... that is up to w/e the creator wants to add.  Creators do need enable the ability to use system alpha layers (so we don't turn red :P), also simple and done inworld. 

[Dean Haystack]

On 1/15/2020 at 10:19 AM, Tarani Tempest said:

Bakes on Mesh is just a texture that is applied to mesh.  Nothing needs to be done to the actual mesh (...)

Nothing "needs" to be done, but it SHOULD be done. As someone else pointed out...

On 1/13/2020 at 5:21 PM, Theresa Tennyson said:

The onion layers are still going to be part of the model and need to be downloaded (...)

I'm gonna give you some numbers, the Maitreya Lara mesh body (plus hands and feet) has 253,824 triangles. Belleza Jake, 179,545.
Those are the bodies alone, add in a head, eyes, hair, some clothes, shoes, and you are looking at ~700,000 triangles.
For reference, a modern video game will use ~100,000 triangles on their main character models, lesser ones can use 50-25,000.
Your typical Sunday night clubbing avatar on Second Life is rocking 7 times more triangles than what's on display in a modern AAA video game.
Not naming any names, but I saw someone on Flickr the other day commenting on how a wearable prop (something relatively small your avatar is suppose to hold in their hand) being sold at an SL event was built using 1,3 million triangles... for a prop...
For textures, in a modern game a main character will use about 30-50MB worth of textures at the very high, while on SL, well... you are looking at 100-200MB on your average avatar, when not a LOT more in some cases.

Then people wonder "why can I run games no problem, but SL struggles?"

LL has said before they don't like to enforce hard limits since that hinders creativity, but it is clear that content creators on SL can't police themselves.
Bakes on Mesh was developed in an effort to cull this, both triangles and textures, it will help immensely with texture memory BUT the mesh on these heads and bodies should be reworked as well to cut down on triangles by at least half since the clothes layer has some use, the tattoo and underwear layers on the mesh should be completely eliminated, only they won't.
First, because that would mean work.
Second, to ensure the product would stay retro-compatible they would probably have to ship them in 2 versions, and do you know how many people have complained about their Lara hands not working with the Bento AO when they were using the old ones instead of the actual updated Bento ones? Content creators tend to make their products fool proof for this reason, so they won't wanna open themselves to support requests by people that are wearing the wrong thing and can't take 2 minutes to read a notecard with all the answers to their questions.

[Dean Haystack]

Rejoice, the Maitreya V5.0 is out and all the layers come independent! So people only have to wear the ones they need when they need it without having to walk around with all those triangles.
Now just crossing my fingers others will follow, I really wanted that for my body for ages. But I doubt it.

[Amorenna Bae]

On 2/3/2020 at 6:27 AM, Dean Haystack said:

Rejoice, the Maitreya V5.0 is out and all the layers come independent! So people only have to wear the ones they need when they need it without having to walk around with all those triangles.
Now just crossing my fingers others will follow, I really wanted that for my body for ages. But I doubt it.

Maitreya's solution to this was so elegant and I can only hope all the body designers do this eventually.

[Marianne Little]

13 hours ago, Amorenna said:

Maitreya's solution to this was so elegant and I can only hope all the body designers do this eventually.

I consider to go back to the ordinary Slink instead of Slink Redux. And then walk around with 3 onion layers the whole time, when I could have used just one instead. But Redux took it too far, taking away all the layers. 😢

[Kyrah Abattoir]

On 5/2/2020 at 1:41 AM, Amorenna said:

Maitreya's solution to this was so elegant and I can only hope all the body designers do this eventually.

Didn't they literally "just" unlink the onion layers? Instead of also eliminating slices with alpha masks?

Don't get me wrong no onion layers is great, but 50+ slices have a non-negligible impact.