Attachment Hierarchy?

[cariboustag]

It's your favorite recluse back with a question again! Excuse my phrasing if the terms are wrong, but the idea is there. I remember reading on one of the many, many threads here a specific list of which attachments attach first, or prioritized on the skeleton. Such as, I don't know, things attach to Avatar Center would attach first. (Incorrect example, probably, but that's the gist).

But now I can't find the thread, or the post, and it's driving me practically mad. If anyone has any idea what I'm on about, a helping hand would be much appreciated. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, or I'm entirely mistaken, feel free to call me a lunatic.

[Persephone Emerald]

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Edited October 2, 2023 by Persephone Emerald
Misunderstood question

[Rowan Amore]

[Orwar]

   Are you referring to the alpha priority? If so, see Rowan's post above. If not .. What?

[Persephone Emerald]

8 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

This is interesting. I usually attach tops and dresses to the spine, but maybe I should attach them to the chest, in hope they might rez a fraction of a second sooner?

[cariboustag]

16 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   Are you referring to the alpha priority? If so, see Rowan's post above. If not .. What?

Nope, Rowan got it. I KNEW I should've saved that image. Surprised anyone understood my insane rambling, but I'm thankful.

Edited October 2, 2023 by cariboustag

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Right. So this is rez order??? Meaning that if the body is attached to the chest, it will rez before my clothes, attached to something else??

Very useful!

Edited October 2, 2023 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Rowan Amore]

https://beqsother.blogspot.com/

[AmeliaJ08]

The hierarchy only applies for rigged items if we're talking about the alpha priority thing, unfortunately. The bangs glitching with eyelashes thing could be fixed if it worked for unrigged items too

Edited October 2, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[Scylla Rhiadra]

51 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

The hierarchy only applies for rigged items if we're talking about the alpha priority thing, unfortunately. The bangs glitching with eyelashes thing could be fixed if it worked for unrigged items too

But this does or does not also rank the order in which they actually attached to your avi?

[Wulfie Reanimator]

5 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

But this does or does not also rank the order in which they actually attached to your avi?

It has nothing to do with attachment order, it's only used for the order in which rigged attachments are "drawn" on the screen. It helps with alpha-glitches.

[cariboustag]

7 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

It has nothing to do with attachment order, it's only used for the order in which rigged attachments are "drawn" on the screen. It helps with alpha-glitches.

This is what I had originally meant, but was too inarticulate to voice. I appreciate everybody's help deciphering my nonsense.

[ValKalAstra]

5 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

But this does or does not also rank the order in which they actually attached to your avi?

Did a quick test with scripts just to be sure. Nothing fancy, just a simple line spitting out which slot something is attached to, triggered on rez and then adding a few copies on various of my avatar's slots to see which loads first. The result is not entirely random but definitely not the listed order.

 

[cariboustag]

Just now, ValKalAstra said:

Did a quick test with scripts just to be sure. Nothing fancy, just a simple line spitting out which slot something is attached to, triggered on rez and then adding a few copies on various of my avatar's slots to see which loads first. The result is not entirely random but definitely not the listed order.

 

Now this is interesting. Seeing as I meant to ask about alpha fixes in a hilariously clumsy way, the actual real question being answered intrigues me. I wonder what it is? I appreciate your initiative to experiment and puzzle it out.

[AmeliaJ08]

8 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

But this does or does not also rank the order in which they actually attached to your avi?

I don't think there is any order to that. I mean there might be but I've never noticed anything, would be interesting to know but from the way I see avatars load it seems quite random.

[Persephone Emerald]

8 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

I don't think there is any order to that. I mean there might be but I've never noticed anything, would be interesting to know but from the way I see avatars load it seems quite random.

When you see other avatars rez, you don't know which attachment points they're using. 

I know my mesh body is attached to Avatar Center, and it does appear later than I'd like. My mesh head is probably attached to neck, since hair attaches to my skull. I need to pay attention next time my avatar rezzes to see what appears first. It would be interesting to see if attachment points make a difference.

[AmeliaJ08]

2 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

When you see other avatars rez, you don't know which attachment points they're using. 

I know my mesh body is attached to Avatar Center, and it does appear later than I'd like. My mesh head is probably attached to neck, since hair attaches to my skull. I need to pay attention next time my avatar rezzes to see what appears first. It would be interesting to see if attachment points make a difference.

Interestingly rigged stuff doesn't even seem to rez as a whole, you'll often see mesh appear but (I'm not a creator, bear with me since I'm not sure what I'm saying is technically accurate) unweighted/unrigged, a rigged item often floats on its attachment point before snapping to a body in the correct shape so I assume mesh data is loaded before the weights. I notice this in busy regions the most but on a fast sim with few avatars it isn't very noticeable, go to a busy club though and I often see floating clothes as avatars load.

 

[Orwar]

38 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

Interestingly rigged stuff doesn't even seem to rez as a whole, you'll often see mesh appear but (I'm not a creator, bear with me since I'm not sure what I'm saying is technically accurate) unweighted/unrigged, a rigged item often floats on its attachment point before snapping to a body in the correct shape so I assume mesh data is loaded before the weights.

   That's something else entirely, though. The attachment point is technically pretty much irrelevant for any given piece of rigged mesh, rigged mesh hair will go on top of your head regardless of the attachment point is the skull, your right hand, or left hind foot. 

   When you see a disembodied backside floating around the room it's because mesh bodies aren't singular pieces of mesh, but rather linksets of mesh bits, the body was probably modelled in one piece but because of the technical limitations of mesh avatars pre-BOM they got chopped up, uploaded in chunks, and re-stitched to form one object again (if you play around with the build menu whilst in edit mode you'll see - Maitreya for example consists of 74 linked pieces of stuffs). One reason for this (could well be others, too) is that before BOM, the only way to alpha a mesh body was via giving a face 100% transparency, and since any given piece of mesh is limited to a certain number of faces (8, methinks?), you had to work around that limitation in order to multiply the amount of possible faces to create smaller alpha cuts (the alpha tab of a body's HUD basically shows a map of separated faces).

   The 'attachment points' are just the avatar bones, and whilst you can wear a rigged hair on your right hand without even noticing, attaching an unrigged piece of mesh to any given bone means that it will be aligned to that bone - it's why an unrigged wristwatch goes on your left forearm (unless your avatar is sinister), and why that wristwatch 'stays on the wrist' even when your avatar moves about.

   This is also a possible explanation why the alpha priority is for rigged mesh only; if you'd attach an unrigged mesh veil on your tongue rather than your skull to raise its priority over your eyelashes, the veil would move around if the tongue was animated. Which would be pretty useless as it would cause more trouble than it would fix.

[AmeliaJ08]

20 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   That's something else entirely, though. The attachment point is technically pretty much irrelevant for any given piece of rigged mesh, rigged mesh hair will go on top of your head regardless of the attachment point is the skull, your right hand, or left hind foot. 

   When you see a disembodied backside floating around the room it's because mesh bodies aren't singular pieces of mesh, but rather linksets of mesh bits, the body was probably modelled in one piece but because of the technical limitations of mesh avatars pre-BOM they got chopped up, uploaded in chunks, and re-stitched to form one object again (if you play around with the build menu whilst in edit mode you'll see - Maitreya for example consists of 74 linked pieces of stuffs). One reason for this (could well be others, too) is that before BOM, the only way to alpha a mesh body was via giving a face 100% transparency, and since any given piece of mesh is limited to a certain number of faces (8, methinks?), you had to work around that limitation in order to multiply the amount of possible faces to create smaller alpha cuts (the alpha tab of a body's HUD basically shows a map of separated faces).

   The 'attachment points' are just the avatar bones, and whilst you can wear a rigged hair on your right hand without even noticing, attaching an unrigged piece of mesh to any given bone means that it will be aligned to that bone - it's why an unrigged wristwatch goes on your left forearm (unless your avatar is sinister), and why that wristwatch 'stays on the wrist' even when your avatar moves about.

   This is also a possible explanation why the alpha priority is for rigged mesh only; if you'd attach an unrigged mesh veil on your tongue rather than your skull to raise its priority over your eyelashes, the veil would move around if the tongue was animated. Which would be pretty useless as it would cause more trouble than it would fix.

Yes I know about linksets and how attachment points work etc but I have seen rigged mesh behaving as static as it loads which implies there's some sort of process going on with the model data being loaded before its weighting information... at least, I think. Only happens when things are performing badly though so it might just be very unnoticeable under normal conditions.

The alpha priority thing though... yes, people would still need to attach their items to logical positions (and it sometimes isn't clear which are logical, you have to trial and error this stuff as a noobie to find appropriate attachment points) but you can of course have multiple items per point and if 'skull' has a very high priority for rigged mesh it would make sense to me if this also applied to unrigged mesh so things like unrigged bangs were not a nightmare as far as alpha glitching goes.

 

 

 

Edited October 2, 2023 by AmeliaJ08