Faces Per Object

[GManB]

I am creating a large (13 meter long), snake-like dinosaur for a sim being developed by a museum to potentially serve as a virtual exhibit. (FYI .. LI or texture count is not an issue for this project because the principals want high resolution and accurate details in the models).

I have UV mapped the snake into 24 UV tiles and in all but one there is only one UV shell. Additionally, I have given the shell(s) in each UV tile an instance of a shader (just a simple lambert). The results in an object in SL with 24 'Faces'... I know that prims/objects are limited to 8 faces but this seems to work. I have 72 texture files (color, normal, roughness for each UV tile). When I have the Select Face option checked in the build menu I can select each of the 24 faces and correctly apply the three map files. All seems to work fine.

 

1. Is this expected behavior and the limitation of 8 no longer applies?
2. Does this just happen to work and problems could occur down the road?
3. Maybe the limitation of 8 is only if one wants to address the faces programmatically?
4. Should I consider breaking the model into three objects, each with 8 UV tiles and shaders?

 

Thanks,

Greg

[animats]

8 faces per prim. More per linkset.

[GManB]

2 minutes ago, animats said:

8 faces per prim. More per linkset.

Hhmmm... lol... I knew that. But, the snake is a single object in Maya and I assumed it was a single object in SL. However, I see now that since it has the 24 shaders the upload process splits it into three links. This is good news!! I was a bit concerned but it's good since each link has only 8 faces!

Thanks!!

G

[Aquila Kytori]

I just did a quick test.

I exported from Blender an Object with 10 materials assigned to it.

When rezzed inworld the single object was now a 2 "prim" linkset.

On the positive side : there was no visible seam at the join so any expected vertex normals issues had been taken care of by the SL mesh Uploader.

Negative point : When the SL uploader divides your model like this you loose all control over the Physics/collision surfaces of the objects in the new linkset. When rezzed, the Physics Shape Type options are only Convex Hull or None. (no prim option).

 

[ChinRey]

3 hours ago, GManB said:

Hhmmm... lol... I knew that. But, the snake is a single object in Maya and I assumed it was a single object in SL. However, I see now that since it has the 24 shaders the upload process splits it into three links. This is good news!!

It's generally bad news and not really news either since it's a few years old now.

Yes, the uploader will split meshes with more than eight faces but as usual it does a horribly bad job at it. The function can be useful for test uploads and objects you're only going to keep for a little while but for anything that's going to stay in SL you should do it yourself in Maya and Blender. It only takes a few seconds and gives you much better cntrol of the result.