Prim Equivalencies for Mesh

[Vivienne Daguerre]

It is true that prim equivalencies are not yet finalized. I wanted the Lindens to have a look at this example before they do finalize things to take it into account. I find once things are finalized they tend to be set in stone. I have sent my collada files to Nyx via email.  However various posters here are correct; prim equivalency is not yet finalized and in the end my stew kettle could come in at less than 4 prims.

It may turn out, for all the reasons Drongle listed, that sculpties will still work best for small things and mesh will work best for buildings, and mesh clothing since people tend to care less about prim count on attachments since they don't officially count toward the sim total. I know they still have impact on sim performance, but people don't seem to care about that; vanity wins.

But drat, mesh is sooooo much easier! Sculpty wrangling is such a pain in the butt after having tasted the freedom of mesh.

[Vivienne Daguerre]

Arton, I owe you a big hug! When I set the physics shape type to prim, then the higher resolution kettle came in at 3 prims, and the lower resolution kettle came in at 1 prim.

I thought that convex hull was the simpler choice. It would appear there is much I do not know. I learned something today.

Thank you everyone!! (sheepish grin):matte-motes-agape:

[arton Rotaru]

Ok, I just checked it myself, viewer 23926 creates the convex hull from the HI LOD. That's why you see 4.0 inworld. With a new viewer and a cube Phys mesh, your kettle should be fine.

[arton Rotaru]

Hey, they messed around alot with physics shapes these days. It's hard to keep track on all that all the time.:matte-motes-wink:

[Imnotgoing Sideways]

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Ann Otoole wrote:

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...You actually CAN do this in one prim, but it might take some ...skills. Dolars never were earned easily.

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Prove it.

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Hows about this? ()

Though, LOD will be a bear.  This is NOT what I consider good use for a sculpt. (>_<)

Oh yeah... Given the method I used, I had enough 'spare' vertices to include a spoon. =^-^=

 

Source files here:

http://www.darkly-cute.com/images/Soup%20Pot%20And%20Spoon.blend

http://www.darkly-cute.com/images/Soup%20Pot%20And%20Spoon.tga

()y

[Vivienne Daguerre]

OMG, you are good!!! Nice job You are the sculpty Queen.

[Alisha Matova]

Show off! =P~

[Drongle McMahon]

Can't disagree. The sign of quality here is the flat texture plane for the soup.

[Vivienne Daguerre]

I never used Blender for sculpties, always used ZBrush, and it does not do something like this well. If you ever decide to post a tutorial on how you did that kettle as a sculptie, I would love to see it!!! I did not learn Blender until mesh came along and I realized I needed something more than ZBrush (although ZBrush is great for texturing and detail work).

[Alisha Matova]

This one will point out most of the blender tricks needed.

http://blog.machinimatrix.org/3d-creation/video-tutorials/sculpties-advanced-tutorials/2-in-1/

[Ashasekayi Ra]

Vivienne, I'd recommend checking out Robyn's site: http://robynhuffaker.com/sculptblender/tutorial/

The site has some great sculpty tutorials. He covers making sculpts with multiple parts in this tutorial, http://robynhuffaker.com/sculptblender/2010/03/21/fractional-prims/ 

[Gaia Clary]

This one is a preliminary optimized kettle. Primcost = 0.5 (latest mesh viewer)

I will post more details later.

[Drongle McMahon]

You really need a bumpmap for those peas :matte-motes-delicious:

[Gaia Clary]

i am not done with it yet :matte-motes-evil: i know no bumpmaps available,

but ...

[Drongle McMahon]

Baked soup? Usually people boil it. :matte-motes-big-grin-squint:

[Poenald Palen]

Those are big peas! Plus, they seem to be getting sucked into some kind of a black hole! It is hard to say, SL has odd physics!

Ok, now I am totally off topic! The size of peas in SL is not worthy of a thread on it's own. Ok, back to topic.

Yeah, I think they will be more agressive with prim counts and the overall costs of uploading ect. But, if something has less verts, less file size to load and so on....why not make it cheaper and make an incentive for more to use these! Optimize SL via meshes looks and overall cost reduction, as well as sort of spruce some areas up a little to keep things interesting and give old wayard users something to look at again?

But, yeah...the subsurf thingy and some other issues really add up. I was shocked at what was only 1 prim and all the wonderful holes and angles with sharp edges! I hope we get more materials and more control over shine at least! 

[Feynt Mistral]

I believe the incentive to use low impact meshes will be reflected in the upload cost rather than its prim cost.  Which is a shame, because you can use a goodly amount of verts and polys to produce a much easier to render house (than straight prims), and yet it can end up costing as much in prims or more.

[Gaia Clary]

After doing a lot of experimentation and starting over and over agina, i finally think that i found a way to get away with cost effective meshes for rounded objects. Here my very first kettle below 2 prims:

I wanted the handle to keep as smooth as possible because for me it looked like having too few precision on it disturbs me most. I could get the whole kettle down under 2.0 (size 0.5 meter in diameter) by using a very very very reduced LOD0 (see on the right side) Now i will add more edge loops to the higher LODs and try to keep the whole thing below 2.0

[edit]: Well, render cost is now 2.0:

Here is the mesh (864 faces):

I needed to reduce the faces as much as possible while keeping the overall shape as constant as possible. This i could only manage by introducing triangles. Any attempt to keep with Quads could not get me down to 2.0 while keeping the smooth roundings intact.

And the UV-map:

I have created a separate UV map for the inner part of the kettle (not shown here). The realy cool thing about that is that i can place any flat image into the green area (placeholder for "soup" ;-) ) so i just can go out and find whatever ingredients i wish to see there. And they all will fit. I even can use a 1024*1024 texture there if i wanted to do that  (but which i do NOT want to do).

I guess i can reduce the facecount on the handle a bit too and spend a few more faces on the kettle shape...

As a sidenote: I think that when i do this same object as Sculpted prim then i will start getting issues at least on LOD0 and LOD1. LOD2 might work or not.

[Drongle McMahon]

I like the use of locally higher edge density around the round edges parts. That's one of the thing you can't do with normal prims or sculpties. 48 segments around is a lot. Do you think that's the minimum? If you made the soup a separate object, then you could have a whole set, with bones sticking out of them, or peas, or ....

[Gaia Clary]

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Drongle McMahon wrote:

48 segments around is a lot. Do you think that's the minimum? If you made the soup a separate object, then you could have a whole set, with bones sticking out of them, or peas, or ....

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I wanted to have the edge as smooth as possible. With 48 edges it remains round even when you go very close. So yes, maybe 48 is too much here. I might try it with only 32 edges. that may be good enough for the LOD3. ALthough it appears to me as if that will not do much on the render costs.

What realy matters is the LOD4 shape. When you do an extreme reduction here, it gets significantly cheaper. Ill try with a 6 sided cylinder and see if that makes a big difference in the price.

Regarding the interior of the kettle: Yes, making it a separate object would give it more spice ;-) But i have another plan here which will not only add spice, but also dynamic ;-)

So the kettle quest is not over yet...

[Vivienne Daguerre]

Looking good

[Gaia Clary]

Here is the result of my Kettle Quest:

The text tutorial will be ready tomorrow evening ( http://blog.machinimatrix.org/kettle-quest/ )

[Vivienne Daguerre]

Fantastic job Gaia Thank you so much!