How much complexity is normal for an average avatar?

[Muffinstuff]

I put on an older, scripted watch the other day and immediately took it off after Firestorm scolded me (it added 60K complexity to my avatar). Shame. I prefer watches over "other" attachments. 

[Marianne Little]

14 hours ago, Ghostwitness said:

Having recently returned from a six year break I find myself with old clothing/accessories with a complexity of 125000 to 150000 depending on what I try to wear. 

No prim items on me, although my inventory is full of prim and high complexity mesh clothing.

Not wanting to dish out a ton of money, I’ve gone with a $L1 Altamura bento body and parts. My clothes need a complete revamp.

Where is a guy to go for low complexity clothes at discount prices that will work on my discount body?

I would suggest you make a thread with "Altamura free body" in the title, so people that are familiar with it see it. And join the Altamura group inworld and ask there.

I am sure you can use other clothes with it too, if you are lucky. You must demo and see what body parts you can hide.

The weekend sales are 50 - 75 L. Most are for females, of course, but it one "Manly Weekend". It has furniture and other stuff also, the seller think it's "manly" so they put it up.

The other sales like Happy Weekend, Saturday sale, Fifty Linden Fridays and Wanderlust Weekend can have male items too. Happy Weekend is the largest sale and you always find male items there. Especially sport clothes and sneakers. Go to the Seraphimsl web page and scroll down to "Blog feed". They link you direct to the galleries, and has direct teleport.

Happy Weekend always post their gallery late, depends on what time zone you are in. It is 10 AM Saturday their time, but for me it is late afternoon in my time zone.

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

On 8/12/2021 at 4:15 AM, Coffee Pancake said:

That's what we all thought .. turns out, if you have a reasonably modern graphics card the poly count isn't the problem.

 

I'm not saying high poly models aren't bad and entirely unsuitable for a real time environment, but the render time is a drop in the ocean next to iterating over every object one by one when processing avatar animations.

So we have proof on this from a technical source? As it defies normal logic for technology. I'd be curious on the technical source of this change.

 

I'm hearing of even modern video games having technical issues from too high polygon elements being allowed into production code, so wondering on the exception here.

 

Edited August 13, 2021 by Pussycat Catnap

[Nalates Urriah]

3 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

So we have proof on this from a technical source? As it defies normal logic for technology. I'd be curious on the technical source of this change.

 

I'm hearing of even modern video games having technical issues from too high polygon elements being allowed into production code, so wondering on the exception here.

 

If you look at video card promotions you will find they have moved away from advertising how many polygons per second they can render. Do some research on graphics card benchmarks and you'll learn why they have moved away from polygon optimization to other metrics. The TL:DR is the polys per second was hitting hundreds of millions per second and headed toward billions. So even adjusting for polys per frame time in SL newer cards can render a whole sim in a single frame and have time left over. The number is just not a good metric of performance.

Basically they have optimized polygon rendering to the point it is not a bottle neck. They have moved on.

Polygons per second is about as helpful as ACI/ARC... Yeah it a number and it has some meaning but for optimizing games there are better metrics in both cases.

If you watch your GPU performance with HWMonitor, you'll find even in a laggy region the GPU is only running at 25% to 50%. It's not the polys that are bottle necking the FPS.

 

[Coffee Pancake]

3 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

So we have proof on this from a technical source? As it defies normal logic for technology. I'd be curious on the technical source of this change.

We spent a lot of the last year examining SL with external profiling tools, LL and FS have recently got on board with similar tools.

(Think fast timers, but actually useful)

So yes, there is 'plain as the nose on your face' levels of proof with the right tools.

Suggest you give the latest Caztnip Beta a whirl to see the impact these new tools have had on viewer performance, we're up to 200% faster than all other viewers with like for like settings at this point and we haven't even touched avatars yet.

 

The following is from our twitter feed, intentionally picked high settings to demonstrate the differences we've been able to achieve so far.

https://get.catznip.com/downloads/beta

 

 

3 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

I'm hearing of even modern video games having technical issues from too high polygon elements being allowed into production code, so wondering on the exception here.

Modern games are GPU bound. The ability of the GPU to pump out frames is the limiting factor. High poly models have a direct impact on how long it takes the main loop to complete.

SL is CPU bound, the GPU is bored most of the time because of all the processing that has to happen between every rendered frame. The rendering part is a tiny part of the main loop.

SL isn't slow because of the render code, it's everything that has to happen every single frame before the viewer can unleash the GPU.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

On 8/13/2021 at 12:21 AM, Nalates Urriah said:

Using my laptop with CPU only graphics and my desktop with NVIDIA I get different vales for ACI.

I disagree that it is worthless system. Those ACI and ARC systems got people thinking about the complexity of their avatars. That has value.

If you mean it is an imprecise system, then yes, it is that. But, it is something.

That is true, some people have started paying attention to how complex their avatars are. That's good.

But those people are going by the complexity numbers according to the current algorithm, which is the part that I call worthless. The numbers aren't just imprecise, they're way off.

You'll get completely opposite results often. Relatively simple objects skyrocket because of the way things are added up, while very complex objects are able to abuse those same calculations to get away with very small complexity numbers.

I don't think a large number of the people who have started thinking about their complexity because of ARC have any idea how to estimate an object's complexity by eye (including looking at the wireframe) or with other tools in the viewer (like the inspector, texture resolutions, etc.) and they shouldn't have to!

Edited August 14, 2021 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Coffee Pancake]

11 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

I don't think a large number of the people who have started thinking about their complexity because of ARC have any idea how to estimate an object's complexity by eye (including looking at the wireframe) or with other tools in the viewer (like the inspector, texture resolutions, etc.) and they shouldn't have to!

This.

There is also the social effect of giving everyone a score or mark of some kind .. how many friendships have been averted because of a judgement score based on a junk number in red hovering over their head?

[Rathgrith027]

On 8/12/2021 at 7:15 AM, Coffee Pancake said:

That's what we all thought .. turns out, if you have a reasonably modern graphics card the poly count isn't the problem.

The number of rigged objects (and attachments can be many objects) is such a huge drain everything else is just painting the viewer different shades of red to see which makes it faster.

I'm not saying high poly models aren't bad and entirely unsuitable for a real time environment, but the render time is a drop in the ocean next to iterating over every object one by one when processing avatar animations.

 

Mesh bodies with alpha sections that can be toggled on and off are especially bad. A mesh object can only have 8 faces. Add up all the toggleable sections a body allows, divide by 8, that's how many rigged meshes are needed to make it work .. times that number for each onion skin layer and bam, so many rigged meshes and you're not even dressed yet.

 

It's never that one thing or that one person is making it bad, it's death by a thousand cuts. That one person is just the straw that broke the camels back.

I know I asked you about this subject before on the Reddit (at least regarding what you already answered here).. but what do you think would be the solution for this problem? We have other platforms who use similar technology to SL (One I won't mention due to maturity, but the initialism is HS2) regarding rigging multiple objects to a single skeleton and they don't have the issues that SL does in environments where multiple characters who are using multiple rigged, be they fitted to the character or just plain old rigged - objects on the same skeleton. As for Alphas.. wasn't part of the point of BOM that we could retire the use of alpha cuts on avatars and go back to using the more optimized system of just having an Alpha Map? Or am I missing something?

[Coffee Pancake]

I think our course of attack is going to be peeling apart exactly what's happening for each rigged object for each avatar for each frame and seeing what we can do that doesn't look weird on screen. There may be some unnecessary stuff going on, it may not be very smart, but that's a future project. We have some ideas for shortcuts we can take with things like shadows

A contributing factor is that we're not strictly rigging everything to the same skeleton, every object is basically independent and has it's own set of weights and the sheer number of objects that need to be calculated stacks up very quickly. The bones might be common, but it's easier to think of it as every object being it's own avatar.

You're right about BoM being intended to replace alpha cuts, and some bodies are now BoM only (like Kupra), the issue is that once a feature exists in a body, vendors are unwilling to retire it as that could cause breakage with stuff made for that body.

[Janet Voxel]

11 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

You're right about BoM being intended to replace alpha cuts, and some bodies are now BoM only (like Kupra), the issue is that once a feature exists in a body, vendors are unwilling to retire it as that could cause breakage with stuff made for that body.

There's also a lot of pushback from customers when a body is BoM only. A lot of creators still don't know how to make an alpha layer, which leads to a lot of customers wanting a body with alpha cuts. It's a cyclical problem.

[Persephone Emerald]

On 8/11/2021 at 7:51 AM, Coffee Pancake said:

The number of rigged objects worn by an avatar is what matters (not just attachments as an attachment can be made of many rigged objects), everything else is practically incidental unless you're on low end hardware.

 

So non-rigged hair is better than rigged hair? That should be an easy choice.   

My complexities on all my avatars (one male included) are pretty much always under 50,000. Folks should have Show Complexity turned on when choosing outfits and when weeding their inventory. This helps alot when deciding what to wear and what to delete. Consider if others will even look at the details on your rings, shoes, etc. Try wearing system layers for underwear, tank-tops, stockings, or other under layers. 

Also consider your script load. Being able to manually Tint items instead of needing a HUD to tint them can be a good option. 

 

If all this stuff we're wearing were weighing us down and making us move more slowly, we might want to wear less of it. -  Oh, wait it does.😉  

Edited August 14, 2021 by Persephone Emerald

[Persephone Emerald]

30 minutes ago, Janet Voxel said:

There's also a lot of pushback from customers when a body is BoM only. A lot of creators still don't know how to make an alpha layer, which leads to a lot of customers wanting a body with alpha cuts. It's a cyclical problem.

Are you saying it's easier to make Alpha Cuts for multiple mesh bodies than it is to make one or two Alpha Layers for them? Before mesh bodies, creators made Alpha Layers all the time. There are even pre-made ones available for free on MP.

[Rowan Amore]

Personally, I like the option to alpha one specific spot on the fly instead of sorting through numerous alphas if all I need is one armpit.

[Rathgrith027]

1 hour ago, Janet Voxel said:

There's also a lot of pushback from customers when a body is BoM only. A lot of creators still don't know how to make an alpha layer, which leads to a lot of customers wanting a body with alpha cuts. It's a cyclical problem.

A solution to the problem would probably to integrate the creation of Alpha layers into the viewer - wouldn't be that hard to make a program integrated into the viewer that could work like substance painter, but instead of texturing it could be used to precisely make layers for alpha on the base LL body (and third party ones thereby, as they're all designed to follow similar UV maps, at least those that are BOM compatible.)

  

1 hour ago, Persephone Emerald said:

So non-rigged hair is better than rigged hair? That should be an easy choice.   

My complexities on all my avatars (one male included) are pretty much always under 50,000. Folks should have Show Complexity turned on when choosing outfits and when weeding their inventory. This helps alot when deciding what to wear and what to delete. Consider if others will even look at the details on your rings, shoes, etc. Try wearing system layers for underwear, tank-tops, stockings, or other under layers. 

Also consider your script load. Being able to manually Tint items instead of needing a HUD to tint them can be a good option. 

 

If all this stuff we're wearing were weighing us down and making us move more slowly, we might want to wear less of it. -  Oh, wait it does.😉  

There's not much benefit to Rigged Hair other than convenience on initial setup, but that's only if said hair was made with your head in mind (LL body and the more non-furry/anime heads such as those sold by the big ones like Lelutka, Catwa, and Utilizator's Normie head.). Once you've fitted it using scale and positioning in edit mode the first time, the benefits of rigged hair become moot, since unrigged and rigged hair (and objects in general) are fixed to a offset on a bone on the avatar's armature (skeleton). The difference is that when it's rigged, parts of the mesh object follow other bones, such as with shirts, pants, etc.

Edited August 14, 2021 by Rathgrith027
Clarification

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Are you saying it's easier to make Alpha Cuts for multiple mesh bodies than it is to make one or two Alpha Layers for them? Before mesh bodies, creators made Alpha Layers all the time. There are even pre-made ones available for free on MP.

No, making alphas isn't hard.

But avatars with alpha blocking has meant that no one has needed to make those anymore, and when alpha was needed clothing could talk to the body and have it hide parts as required. Taking away this functionality by releasing a pure BoM only body leaves customers with clothing that needs an alpha and doesn't come with one.

[Sammy Huntsman]

On 8/13/2021 at 1:41 PM, Coffee Pancake said:

SL is CPU bound, the GPU is bored most of the time because of all the processing that has to happen between every rendered frame. The rendering part is a tiny part of the main loop.

I mean if that is the case and with more heavily detailed mesh. Why isn't LL rendering graphics purely with GPU? It would be much better than having to use your CPU for purely everything. 

[Danielle Atheria]

I've been between 80k--110k Depending on who much jewelry i have on.

[Rowan Amore]

14 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

I think our course of attack is going to be peeling apart exactly what's happening for each rigged object for each avatar for each frame and seeing what we can do that doesn't look weird on screen. There may be some unnecessary stuff going on, it may not be very smart, but that's a future project. We have some ideas for shortcuts we can take with things like shadows

A contributing factor is that we're not strictly rigging everything to the same skeleton, every object is basically independent and has it's own set of weights and the sheer number of objects that need to be calculated stacks up very quickly. The bones might be common, but it's easier to think of it as every object being it's own avatar.

You're right about BoM being intended to replace alpha cuts, and some bodies are now BoM only (like Kupra), the issue is that once a feature exists in a body, vendors are unwilling to retire it as that could cause breakage with stuff made for that body.

What is the m 2 number underneath everything?  

https://gyazo.com/5f1ec724bd1a92e9c1dbd967c8963715

And why isn't my text green?

 

Edited August 14, 2021 by Rowan Amore

[Rathgrith027]

29 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

What is the m 2 number underneath everything?  

https://gyazo.com/5f1ec724bd1a92e9c1dbd967c8963715

And why isn't my text green?

 

m^2 is meters squared, I believe. though i'm fairly certain that unless that's the maximum high level LOD range, that I have no idea why it's referencing area.

[Maitimo]

42 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

What is the m 2 number underneath everything?  

https://gyazo.com/5f1ec724bd1a92e9c1dbd967c8963715

And why isn't my text green?

 

I think thats the area of all the textures you're wearing. I've seen Firestorm jelly-doll an avatar because the texture area was too high, even though the actual ARC score wasn't.

I try to keep my own complexity under 40k for general day-to-day, going to clubs and suchlike. For a busy shopping event or fair I try to stay under 15k. My special fantasy costumes sometimes go higher, but almost never above 150k.

I'm at one of those parties right now and someone here is over two million. I temporarily un-jelly-dolled her to see what impact it had - my fps dropped from 40-ish to 13. But I don't notice any drop with an avatar of, say, 100k. 

[Rowan Amore]

23 minutes ago, Maitimo said:

I think thats the area of all the textures you're wearing. I've seen Firestorm jelly-doll an avatar because the texture area was too high, even though the actual ARC score wasn't.

I try to keep my own complexity under 40k for general day-to-day, going to clubs and suchlike. For a busy shopping event or fair I try to stay under 15k. My special fantasy costumes sometimes go higher, but almost never above 150k.

I'm at one of those parties right now and someone here is over two million. I temporarily un-jelly-dolled her to see what impact it had - my fps dropped from 40-ish to 13. But I don't notice any drop with an avatar of, say, 100k. 

What I noticed was before I took that picture, I'd forgotten to take of my Maitreya HUD and the m2 was over 200.  The pic was after.  So it's not things visible to others?   I think I need to do some research on that one.

[Janet Voxel]

4 hours ago, Rathgrith027 said:

A solution to the problem would probably to integrate the creation of Alpha layers into the viewer - wouldn't be that hard to make a program integrated into the viewer that could work like substance painter, but instead of texturing it could be used to precisely make layers for alpha on the base LL body (and third party ones thereby, as they're all designed to follow similar UV maps, at least those that are BOM compatible.)

That’s a really good idea!

[Nalates Urriah]

6 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

What I noticed was before I took that picture, I'd forgotten to take of my Maitreya HUD and the m2 was over 200.  The pic was after.  So it's not things visible to others?   I think I need to do some research on that one.

Your HUDs only affects you. HUDs are more of a texture load on the graphics card than a render issue. HUDs typically have extremely low polygon counts, in the range of 1 to 30.

It is possible to make HUDs with many buttons on a single prim by using click-location detection... X,Y on face... It is just tedious building them. It is much quicker to make prim buttons and only detect if the prim was clicked and not bother with X,Y processing. So, we often get HUDs with lots of buttons using HUGE textures on each button. That will fill up a graphics card's memory.

As far as I know the m2 is only calc'd for avatars. Possibly other in-world objects too. But not the UI/HUDs. The point of the calc is to stop griefer objects from overloading the graphics card.

[Rowan Amore]

1 hour ago, Nalates Urriah said:

Your HUDs only affects you. HUDs are more of a texture load on the graphics card than a render issue. HUDs typically have extremely low polygon counts, in the range of 1 to 30.

It is possible to make HUDs with many buttons on a single prim by using click-location detection... X,Y on face... It is just tedious building them. It is much quicker to make prim buttons and only detect if the prim was clicked and not bother with X,Y processing. So, we often get HUDs with lots of buttons using HUGE textures on each button. That will fill up a graphics card's memory.

As far as I know the m2 is only calc'd for avatars. Possibly other in-world objects too. But not the UI/HUDs. The point of the calc is to stop griefer objects from overloading the graphics card.

How does that  explain then why the m2 was over 200 when the HUD was attached yet went below 100 when I detached it.  

Edited August 15, 2021 by Rowan Amore

[Wulfie Reanimator]

6 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

How does that  explain then why the m2 was over 200 when the HUD was attached yet went below 100 when I detached it.  

The Maitreya HUD has 26 unique textures. That's a lot of surface area. Specifically, the HUD alone has 129 sqm of texture.

Edited August 15, 2021 by Wulfie Reanimator