Level of Detail

[Aria Aurelia]

Does anyone know what the best setting would be to upload a plain mesh panel and keep it from disappearing with LOD?

[Dot Dakota]

I upload my meshes with the top one High  "load from file "

the oone below that Medium  "Use lof above"

 

and low and lowest i set to 0 .. 

works fine for me for indoor things .. even if i cam out more than 1024 i can se it 

 

[arton Rotaru]

7 hours ago, Aria Aurelia said:

Does anyone know what the best setting would be to upload a plain mesh panel and keep it from disappearing with LOD?

The best setting is to make all your LOD models yourself. This way you have full control how each and every LOD will look. Depending on what it is, an imposter model for the lowest LOD is a possibility to keep even the land impact very low as well.

[animats]

A "plain mesh panel"?

If it's just a scaled cube, use a prim.

A good lowest level of detail for a mostly flat object is a mesh cube, 12 triangles, one face texture.

[Chie Salome]

If you mean a plane, 2 tris are 2 tris.  Just select the same file for all LoDs and physics. 

If you mean something more complex, it depends on the size and typical placement of the object.  For example, if it's something fairly large, like a painting frame, to be placed and viewed only in a small room, you can probably get away with just High and maybe Med.  If it's a small trinket, or if it's for outdoors/huge rooms, all LoDs should be set up.  Either way, making all LoD models manually is the best practice.  As arton said, making imposter models (like textured plane in place of detailed door) helps with LI but you can start from dissolving edge loops that don't affect the general shape of the object.

You might want to consult this nifty feature of Firestorm (I believe) which lets you see exactly at what distance the object switches LoDs.  Test uploading on the beta grid helps.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

There are plenty of variations of these mesh panels already uploaded.

Free and fullperm, with proper physics: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Mesh-Display-Panels-05-LI/19358603

[LittleMe Jewell]

On 8/7/2021 at 9:14 PM, Wulfie Reanimator said:

There are plenty of variations of these mesh panels already uploaded.

Free and fullperm, with proper physics: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Mesh-Display-Panels-05-LI/19358603

I never understood the rational for using Mesh for that.  Just create an inworld flattened box and stretch it as needed.  Change type to 'convex hull' and it immediately goes from 1 LI to 0.5 LI.

So.... why mesh?  What am I missing here?

[Wulfie Reanimator]

39 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

I never understood the rational for using Mesh for that.  Just create an inworld flattened box and stretch it as needed.  Change type to 'convex hull' and it immediately goes from 1 LI to 0.5 LI.

So.... why mesh?  What am I missing here?

Prims have a minimum size limit of 0.01 meters which isn't always small enough. Having an infinitely thin surface has its own appeal. Flat prim cubes still have their 6 sides that you have to hide.

And even though they can be further sliced to 2% of 0.01m, you're forced to use a particular orientation for the cube (+Z forward) instead of +X as you normally would, which causes headaches for scripts.

With mesh panels, you also have the convenience of being able to set a single texture for both sides at the same time (perhaps flipped on the other side to keep text readable), again making scripts simpler.

[Coffee Pancake]

2 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Prims have a minimum size limit of 0.01 meters which isn't always small enough.

But it should be .. if something is smaller than that, it shouldn't be geometry.

[Sammy Huntsman]

2 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Prims have a minimum size limit of 0.01 meters which isn't always small enough. Having an infinitely thin surface has its own appeal. Flat prim cubes still have their 6 sides that you have to hide.

And even though they can be further sliced to 2% of 0.01m, you're forced to use a particular orientation for the cube (+Z forward) instead of +X as you normally would, which causes headaches for scripts.

With mesh panels, you also have the convenience of being able to set a single texture for both sides at the same time (perhaps flipped on the other side to keep text readable), again making scripts simpler.

I mean if creators retopologized their meshes and optimized textures and scripts, I feel like you can keep the detail but sacrifice the vertices 

 

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

But it should be ..

It's a question of scale, would you really want to be seen with fingernails 1cm thick?

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

It's a question of scale, would you really want to be seen with fingernails 1cm thick?

At normal avatar scales, finger nails shouldn't have any thickness, or curve.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

5 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

But it should be .. if something is smaller than that, it shouldn't be geometry.

I don't disagree with your point, but I think you missed mine.

5 hours ago, Sammy Huntsman said:

I mean if creators retopologized their meshes and optimized textures and scripts, I feel like you can keep the detail but sacrifice the vertices

Part of "optimizing your scripts" is adapting your build, which prims aren't always enough for.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

9 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

At normal avatar scales, f

Agreed, but I spy the odd hint or two of abnormality in many of our Slitizens. Some people live for nothing else but closeup shots of eyelashes and accompanying makeup.

There are some things I have made in SecondLife and exported to a 3D-printer that have to be made 10 times and scaled down externally because of the minimum dimension. I know itt's not a problem, but also for some things I make such as the handrails for steam engines, the minimum 0.01 dimension means the assemblies from which the mesh or sculpts are to be made must also be scaled up and the finished item then re-scaled before use. It's not a big issue except that in order to make the assembly to fit precisely in the build, the build also has to be scaled up...

[Penny Patton]

18 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

I never understood the rational for using Mesh for that.  Just create an inworld flattened box and stretch it as needed.  Change type to 'convex hull' and it immediately goes from 1 LI to 0.5 LI.

So.... why mesh?  What am I missing here?

In addition to the points made by others, a mesh plain will be lower poly than a prim cube. That's fewer faces and vertices for your videocard to render. Optimization is always a good thing if you value framerates, even for simple objects like that.

[ChinRey]

On 8/16/2021 at 1:58 PM, Penny Patton said:

In addition to the points made by others, a mesh plain will be lower poly than a prim cube. That's fewer faces and vertices for your videocard to render. Optimization is always a good thing if you value framerates, even for simple objects like that.

That's only half the story. Yes, it is usually possible to reduce the tri count for the gpu by using mesh rather than prims. But prims are much lighter on bandwidth and the cpu. When Avi (Bar-Zeev) Linden was developing the prim system he found that this more than compensated for the few extra tris procedural objects like prims inevitably have.

If I remember right (@Coffee Pancake, can you confirm this?), tests done by the Catznip developers recently got a similar result.

 

On 8/5/2021 at 4:37 PM, Aria Aurelia said:

Does anyone know what the best setting would be to upload a plain mesh panel and keep it from disappearing with LOD?

You may already figured out the answer but just in case:

• If the mesh has less than - say 12-15 tris - don't even think of making LoD models. Use LoD above all the way.
• If the mesh has less than about 35-40 tris, first try to use LoD above all the way. Consider making LoD models if the download weight is higher than 1.499.

Edited August 17, 2021 by ChinRey

[Penny Patton]

On 8/17/2021 at 3:16 PM, ChinRey said:

That's only half the story. Yes, it is usually possible to reduce the tri count for the gpu by using mesh rather than prims. But prims are much lighter on bandwidth and the cpu. When Avi (Bar-Zeev) Linden was developing the prim system he found that this more than compensated for the few extra tris procedural objects like prims inevitably have.

That's good information that I wasn't aware of!