Announcing Local Mesh In Firestorm Beta Viewer

[Whirly Fizzle]

Local Mesh allows you to preview your mesh creations inworld and see edits you make to the mesh dae file in real time.
Local Mesh allows you to perfect your mesh creations on the main grid without having to waste L$ on test uploads or using Aditi, the beta grid, for free mesh uploads.
Local mesh works for unrigged mesh, worn rigged mesh and even Animesh!
 

For further details, please see Beq Janus's blog post: Announcing Local Mesh

You can try the Local Mesh feature now in the Firestorm Beta 6.6.5.68062
For the viewer download links, please join the "Phoenix-Firestorm Preview Group" and check the group notices.

Release Notes: Firestorm Beta Release Notes 6.6.5.68062

[Extrude Ragu]

Wanted something like this for ages, thank you

[Rick Nightingale]

That... is fantastic!

There have been a number of times I've wanted to make something that would fit perfectly in an existing scene or terrain. This will make it much, much easier instead of frustrating and expensive.

In fact, I think it's made me want to start making stuff again... I haven't for a while.

[Ardy Lay]

Heh, I still see people walking around wearing "local textures" and not understanding why those are "missing textures" to the rest of us.  I look forward to seeing these same people wearing "local meshes" and not understanding why the rest of us cannot see them.

So, what will the rest of us see when looking toward someone else's "local mesh"?

[Rick Nightingale]

Hmm... nothing, I would imagine.

"I see naked people".

[Ardy Lay]

13 minutes ago, Rick Daylight said:

Hmm... nothing, I would imagine.

"I see naked people".

How about one triangle?  That would be good.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

Just now, Ardy Lay said:

So, what will the rest of us see when looking toward someone else's "local mesh"?

According to the article a flat plane for now but later on a proper placeholder object

Quote

The current "Rez" tool, crates a surrogate prim that will appear to other users (and yourself after a relog) as a small flat panel. In a future update, I plan to have a more concrete and visible placeholder object and ideally a way to rez directly as an attachment too.

 

[Charlotte Bartlett]

Was excited to see this.  Not yet usable for us who create multiple part meshes like houses as it splits the DAE into each mesh versus treating the DAE as one (and no ability to select all items to "Rez").

But looking forward to the next versions as hopefully this becomes available.  Anything that avoids me having to use the Beta Grid is a bonus!  Thanks for all the hard work on this, it's going to be so helpful for creators.

Edited October 5, 2022 by Charlotte Bartlett

[Beq Janus]

There are some logistical problems with multipart mesh, which is the main reason I've left it alone for now, I'd definitely like to add that.

The UI, as I think I noted in the blog, is rather rough edged. I hate the sub-component pulldown box for example. One option is to have a directory-like tree structure, another is simply to treat them as the uploader today would and rez the object as a set of component meshes.

Whichever we choose, there are some things to consider, for multipart meshes we need to have a surrogate for each part, and I think we'd probably expect those to behave as a linkset, it will become hard to find lost parts when we rez the initial surrogate on the ground and then spawn unconnected children from it. Link sets are essentially a server side thing, there are a number of "tricks" that we have to play to maintain the local mesh "illusion", notably ignoring object updates from the region for those objects we've "hijacked". The more complicated we get the more corner cases arise, linksets are part of that problem space.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Rick Nightingale]

Yeah, linksets are tricky I imagine. I used it to check a build the other day and just joined all my meshes in blender. Would be horrendous LI if I did that for the real thing but since the triangle count was still below the limit, it worked fine for testing the shape.

Right at this instant I'm using local mesh to make a single-mesh meandering path for my land; twisty, turny, up and down. No way I would bother with that without this ability.

Edit to add: I guess it isn't using physics yet...? It isn't picking up my physics model; no 'prim' option in the physics shape type. It's named correctly with _PHYS suffix. The log does say skipping 'path 0.5_LOD0.dae' etc. but no mention of _PHYS. No worries, that can be checked on the beta grid. It's the shape I need to do in local mesh and that's working great.

Also, I don't seem able to scroll the log window. It can be copied out with Ctrl-A into notepad though.

(I'm not complaining... this is a wonderful tool that I've dreamed about for years. Just reporting )

Edited October 6, 2022 by Rick Daylight

[Beq Janus]

Complaints are fine 🙂 (esp. if delivered constructively) I'll need to collect them up at some point so if you are inclined to raise me a jira that would be great. 

Physics only exists on the server, so I cannot create local physics as such, and I cannot think of anyway to achieve that. I've been suggesting the need for client side physics in SL for a few years now as it would be a major boon to many "game-like" behaviours, enablee us to stop the avatar AOs from ghosting through items etc and have the world be generally more solid, but right now that's not even on the drawing board as far as I am aware.

What I could do, in theory, is rez the physics mesh, with a blue semi-transparent material in the same way that I draw the physics shape in the edit tools (using the "eye" icon) you'd not be able to step on it, but it would let you visualise it. Let me know if that "compromise" is useful or not and I can add that to the list. 

[DulceDiva]

I've been wanting this feature for AGES! Always had to use the official viewer, which as a bit of an inconvenience hence I'm used to the Firestorm interface & buttons. Can't wait to try it out!! 😃😱

[Rick Nightingale]

On 10/10/2022 at 11:44 PM, Beq Janus said:

What I could do, in theory, is rez the physics mesh, with a blue semi-transparent material in the same way that I draw the physics shape in the edit tools (using the "eye" icon) you'd not be able to step on it, but it would let you visualise it. Let me know if that "compromise" is useful or not and I can add that to the list. 

Sorry for the late reply.

To be honest I'm happy going to the beta grid for physics testing. I would go there for most testing anyway, for texturing, optimising LODs and LI etc. I could always just add the physics model as another local mesh, to see it, if I need to.

Thank you for your continued improvements of all of this type of stuff... it really makes a big difference to us!

 

 

[AmeliaJ08]

Oh wow, that is huge and has been a dream feature for so long.

Great work!