Mesh heads - pros and cons?

[steeljane42]

48 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

This is a false-equivalence.

Just because 100K+ triangles sounds like a small amount by SL's standards, that doesn't mean it is a small amount. What you've done is just point out how incompetent most creators are at creating real-time content, especially the big names that popularize that bad content and hurt residents the most.

No modern game spends that amount of detail on that small of an area. It's ridiculous at the face of it and the literal antithesis of optimization.

I'm aware. For example a model of Kratos (GOW on PS4) is only 80k polygons in total, 32k for his face. It's not the most detailed character ever made, but serves a good example I believe.

However we are discussing SL here and performance boost that can be made by reducing onion layers, not the "games that are made by professional developers with multimillion budgets vs hobbyist creators making stuff in/for SL, often just for fun". Apples vs oranges.

So, no, it's not a false-equivalence, no matter how much you want to believe that. That's just basic percentages. If whole scene has 500k triangles (for example), then you can expect a good boost by reducing triangles amount by 250k, especially if your machine struggles with 500k because of bad/old hardware and/or bad optimization. But if whole scene has 10m triangles, then removing 250k will do close to nothing to performance/fps. Add bloated VRAM usage to the picture, ancient and ineffective caching system that consumes large chunks of CPU time, unless your scene is completely static and you really won't see any difference whatsoever, with or without onions.

Edited January 17, 2020 by steeljane42

[Mollymews]

On 1/16/2020 at 8:56 PM, Tamanni said:

Are there any other major pros or cons with either Genus, Catwa or LAQ that I need to know before making my choice?

a thing to check is whether a head has an internal head/mouth mesh layer.  On some heads when we play an open mouth animation then the lack of this layer lets the background pixels (behind the avatar) to leak/show thru the open mouth of the avatar.  Which can be a little bit oddly disconcerting

 

[Maitimo]

On 1/17/2020 at 8:04 AM, Pussycat Catnap said:

Looks like I need to go check that out. Thanks for the heads up.

So basically we have one brand using BOM the way it should be used, for both their head and their body... and everyone else just using it as a marketing buzzword...

There are three that I know of: Signature now packages all its bodies and heads with a non-onion-layer BOM version as well as the regular onion-layer one in the same pack. I can't recommend the Signature Alice body for women because the only clothing available for it is half a dozen things produced by Signature themselves, and having tried a demo, no other clothing, not even standard fitmesh, is anywhere near close enough to be usable. You'd be limited to system-layer and flexi clothing only. I do know that the Signature male bodies now come with the head included (at least they do with Geralt, which is the one I have), so that's L$3500 for the body AND head. On the other hand its a very basic head with no animations, and there is NO onion-layer head, only the BOM one.

RuthToo is the third, that's the free one, and to my knowledge this is the only one that uses alpha layers for body transparency instead of alpha cuts in a hud.

[Claireschen Hesten]

6 hours ago, Matty Luminos said:

I can't recommend the Signature Alice body for women because the only clothing available for it is half a dozen things produced by Signature themselves, and having tried a demo, no other clothing, not even standard fitmesh, is anywhere near close enough to be usable.

I have noticed Alice gaining more support from brands compared to when i first became aware of it in the last year some people are adding it as an extra rig or dropping one or more flavours of Slink & Belleza in favour of this

[Maitimo]

4 hours ago, Claireschen Hesten said:

I have noticed Alice gaining more support from brands compared to when i first became aware of it in the last year some people are adding it as an extra rig or dropping one or more flavours of Slink & Belleza in favour of this

Oh that is excellent news. 

[Nalates Urriah]

On 1/17/2020 at 12:05 PM, Wulfie Reanimator said:

...snip...

Anyway, I hope it's clear now that there's no problem adding materials to your non-onion bodies. 🙂

Well ... yeah, but... We run into a problem with materials when we try to wear two things that have materials. Think of a skin with water drops and a shiny swimsuit. The skin will have a set of normal and specular maps. The suite will too. But, only one set of materials can be applied to the single layer BoM mesh. There is no provision for baking materials.

Within that limit, adding materials is no problem.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

5 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

Well ... yeah, but... We run into a problem with materials when we try to wear two things that have materials. Think of a skin with water drops and a shiny swimsuit. The skin will have a set of normal and specular maps. The suite will too. But, only one set of materials can be applied to the single layer BoM mesh. There is no provision for baking materials.

Within that limit, adding materials is no problem.

That's true, but that's not what most people are talking about when they say "you can't use materials with BOM."

[Marianne Little]

5 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

That's true, but that's not what most people are talking about when they say "you can't use materials with BOM."

It is the common problem people run into, I think.

It has become popular with "Dewy" or "Shiny" skins. Using materials to set the skin to this shine, will affect everything on the body, unless it an onion body or you use separate mesh clothes.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

2 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

It is the common problem people run into, I think.

It has become popular with "Dewy" or "Shiny" skins. Using materials to set the skin to this shine, will affect everything on the body, unless it an onion body or you use separate mesh clothes.

Maybe so, but I've also advocated for the benefits if having one extra layer on a body specifically for "clothes."

I don't think clothes and BOM are meant to go together, even if the system inadvertently supports it. It's bodypaint -- unless that's what you want, in which case body shine isn't a problem. A clothes layer should bridge the gap on things like butt and cleavage. Obviously, BOM can't be used for both, but that's kind of besides the point.

Baked-in clothes is a bad idea all around. We should forget those as a viable product besides for historical purposes. BOM should only be used for things directly on the skin itself, add-on mesh for everything else.

That's my interpretation anyway.

[Mollymews]

19 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Maybe so, but I've also advocated for the benefits if having one extra layer on a body specifically for "clothes."

i add my agree for this.  I would like at least one onion layer for clothing also. A layer which is less form-fitting than the body layer

where I diverge is that I think that form-fitting clothing does have its uses, like a wet look for example.  I would just like to have the option to go for a more dry look also

[MoiraKathleen]

6 hours ago, Mollymews said:

I would like at least one onion layer for clothing also.

This is what Tonic has for their 'Lite' body.  The last update came with 2 versions of the body - the regular one with all the layers and then a "Lite" version which just has a single layer ( for tattoo or clothing). 

There is a "Lite" version of the Tonic heads, also.