Mesh vs. Oldskool

[Pammymy]

Dear Residents, when i finally read up with the mesh i was frightened.

Implementation of the mesh would mean ALLOT of free/opensource 3D models may be imported. Meaning there will no longer be need of any builds such as furniture etc. These could even be ripped from other games, witch is very hard to trace. How do you think about this?

[hibit Spad]

Pammy,

You read only the briefest descriptions of what mesh is and could be.   If you had read the mesh subforums here, you would have seen where the beta test community is ticked at LL for the costs being levied against mesh. 

That's one. 

Two

If you had looked at the the proposed technicals of mesh from when work was first started you would come to understand that most models at a site like Rendorosity are not going to be importable into SL with out major work.  So much work in some cases that you might has well have designed the thing from scratch.

 

three

 

People said the same things about sculpts.  and yet my house is not made form sculpts.  some of the furniture is yes, but not all.  And the reason that not all the furniture is made from sculpts is teh technical limitations of sculpts.  This is the same reason you are not goign to be inundated by mesh.  The technical limitations.

 

Before going into a panic why don't you go and read the mesh forums from the very beggining to the most recent postings.  I think you will find that mesh will intorduce a new element of creativity into the marketplace which will yes displace some retailors.  But that happens in the RL everytime a new technology comes into being.  Prims, Sculpts, mesh  each has its place and the sum will create an even more interesting and varied SL.  Will people inport stuff from outside SL?  Probably.  But they already do now.  How many people import free textures rather then buy them in SL? 

 

 

 

 

[Ceka Cianci]

mesh is just another additive it won't be the main course..

it will be nice for some things but we are still gonna be using the others..

maybe mesh as a base then the others for details..things like that..

i wouldn't worry about mesh taking over..i think they all will help enhance each other..

[Nix Manx]

Its actually the other way round, prims for base mesh for detailed stuff but even that is debatable. Meshes will be prim equivalent, in other words they will be comparible to prims with the cost being attached to detail, scuplties are another ball game altogether, they will remain very useful for small objects like furniture etc however at a significant cost to performance, meshes will be able to compete in terms of looks and performance but not in terms of prim count.

Mesh Pros:

Looks significantly better than just prims

Performs and renders better and quicker while adding 'detail'

Will create a brand new sub market

Great for avatars due to unlimited prim allowance

Looks as good as scuplties without the insane lag

 

Mesh Cons:

Hard to create (have to know how to use 3D programs, have to create many LoD, and have to texture and understand physical meshes)

Currently very very expensive to upload to the point it may result in meshes being completely unviable (may change if LL listen)

Cant beat scuplties in terms of prim counts (Scuplty 1 prim/Mesh min 2 prims - infinity and beyond)

Prim equivalents for large objects are very expensive (Dont expect mesh super structures or natural creations like rockfaces)

Prim equivalents for medium objects will be comparative to current prim builds but with a great amount of detail removed as a result.

 

In regards to copywrite, Lindens will be agressive on this no doubt and you will see lots of imported stuff but the quality and costs of importing will be enough to put people off, why pay $10 (not L$) to upload a few models if they dont sell?

In addition because the minimum cost to upload is L$150 per mesh, to fill a sim with mesh cubes would cost around $4500USD (ikr) so small meshes wont be cost effective either.

 

 EDIT: Amazing LL listened and reduced the min mesh upload fee to L$10 \o/

[Deej Kasshiki]

Hey nice way attitude to take there hibit. Someone who's obviously not technically savvy asks a legit question/expresses an understandable anxiety and once again the mesh zealots attack.

Just FYI, I've gone onto your precious mesh forums and because I'm a lowly networking engineer IRL and not a 3-D artist working for ILM I have no idea what you guys are talking about most of the time. How computers work and how they connect I understand. How to stack primitives to make stuff I understand. How to manipulate stuff using something like Maya, no clue.

Maybe you guys would attract more of us average residents to your cause and we'd lobby LL to ease up on all the mesh restrictions if you weren't so damned condescending. Save your vitriol for the Lindens.

[Pammymy]

Dear residents, thank you for responding. Still i think furniture builders etc. will be beaten by technology. Why would one design a 'weapon' or 'jewel' if they can simply get pre-moddeled ones from the web? Almost like sculptpacks you can combine for products. I think meshes will be used for converting game 3d models to SL in a more applicable way as it has been mass attempted with sculpts.

[Nix Manx]

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Pammymy wrote:

Dear residents, thank you for responding. Still i think furniture builders etc. will be beaten by technology. Why would one design a 'weapon' or 'jewel' if they can simply get pre-moddeled ones from the web? Almost like sculptpacks you can combine for products. I think meshes will be used for converting game 3d models to SL in a more applicable way as it has been mass attempted with sculpts.

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Furniture builders will mostly be untouched to be honest, if you imported said weapon or jewelry via mesh you would be looking at, for example, around 10-20 prims, if you did the same with a scuplty it would be 1 prim regardless of how complex it is.

That 7 prim scuplty dining table and chairs will be 20-40 prims in a mesh. It does have its restrictions even for unoriginal importers.

[Penny Patton]

I believe Linden Lab is still planning to limit mesh uploads to verifiable accounts, those being accounts with payment info on file or Premium accounts. I think they even said you'd have to apply for the ability to upload mesh, and the right to upload mesh could be revoked.

 

 What this means is that people will not be able to upload mesh models they do not have the proper rights to without consequences. Probably one of the most sensible approaches LL has taken.

[Rage Riptide]

I could very easily have got some pre-made meshes and called them or passed them off as my own. That's easy. But I practice what I preach and try to be original, I like to create, so I began the process of learning how to make a mesh character from scratch.

It's not easy nor is it fast. The lessons learned can be applied to everything else and I only had to learn once. But that's me. I'm not time poor so from the other point of view I can see the easy road to riches. Or percieved riches anyway. I'm sure there will be much copied crap and if it isn't optimised, it will be crap. The buyers will decide, well, the informed buyers at least.

[hibit Spad]

Try reading using a neutral tone of voice instead of the negative tone of voice you seemed to have assumed.  And I am sorry you don't understand much of the discussion in the mesh forums, but let me ask you a question:  If you are telling a workmate about why the DNS router is down, or perhaps you are discussing verious network strategies with a potential vendor do you use "jargon and technical language"?  or do you use inacurate and dumbed down terms that mislead? 

 

Technicians use technical terms because it is those terms that describe exactly what is trying to be communicated.  No more no less.  And for your information I do not always understand the graphs and formula and other stuff that others are using.  but I can pull from those discussion the tone and and feelings people have about what is being communicated.  I am often able to get a feeling for how far things are progressing and for how the community of developers is feeling about implementations even if I don't full understand all the reasons behind those feelings.

 

I wonder Deej how many times you have heard around your workplace about how the network engineers use jargon and are condescending.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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hibit Spad wrote:

let me ask you a question:  If you are telling a workmate about why the DNS router is down, or perhaps you are discussing verious network strategies with a potential vendor do you use "jargon and technical language"?  or do you use inacurate and dumbed down terms that mislead? 

---

"The gremlins ate one of the routers again."

"Oh!"

"Yeah, Joes in the back with a blowtorch rooting them out. He's zapped a few so far, but its getting messy. Sent Daisie off to call a medic and get a new router."

"So what's you doing out here?"

"I don't think Joe's going to make it. I'm off to Starbucks to put in a req for a new Java engineer."

"Told you we should'a hired those guys in India."

"Yeah... you think gremlins are bad... you ain't seen nothing until you've seen one with 10000-arms."

(walks back to IT after getting coffee down the block)

Joe: "So you get management off our backs?"

"Don't worry, they won't be coming back here for a few more hours at the least."

 

 - Ever seen somebody's eyes glass over. You might as well be telling them it was gremlins.

 

 

[Deej Kasshiki]

Oh I hear it a lot and that's why I go out of my way to speak in much less technical terms when I'm explaining concepts to non-IT people. But that's only a part of what I was addressing. It was the overall, "well peon, if you had bothered to actually read x you would understand how mesh is the best ever..." tone of your original post. I've seen the same attitude from many of the mesh advocates.

That's one of the things that's really turning me off mesh.

The bottom line for me is this; SL is unique because of the user created content and the sandbox nature of the world. It can never compete with the top-tier 3-D games that are created by professional 3-D artists and optimized to the nth degree for performance. It will therefore never look like Crysis, but I accept that tradeoff for the unique nature of SL and its community. Does that mean that the game shouldn't advance technically? No. But mesh will not be the silver bullet that many people are trying to sell it as and in the process denigrating anyone who disagrees with their opinions.

[Dogboat Taurog]

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Deej Kasshiki wrote:

Oh I hear it a lot and that's why I go out of my way to speak in much less technical terms when I'm explaining concepts to non-IT people. But that's only a part of what I was addressing. It was the overall, "well peon, if you had bothered to actually read x you would understand how mesh is the best ever..." tone of your original post. I've seen the same attitude from many of the mesh advocates.

That's one of the things that's really turning me off mesh.

The bottom line for me is this; SL is unique because of the user created content and the sandbox nature of the world. It can never compete with the top-tier 3-D games that are created by professional 3-D artists and optimized to the nth degree for performance. It will therefore never look like Crysis, but I accept that tradeoff for the unique nature of SL and its community. Does that mean that the game shouldn't advance technically? No. But mesh will not be the silver bullet that many people are trying to sell it as and in the process denigrating anyone who disagrees with their opinions.

 

i have to agree, some of us dont have the time to learn about mesh, SL will change for the worse for a lot of part time hobbyists and that was part of SL's charm.

it seems all the good things are going and SL is becoming a commercial failure.

concurrency is going down anyway amd making it harder to access will kill it off.

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[hibit Spad]

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Deej Kasshiki wrote:

 

The bottom line for me is this; SL is unique because of the user created content and the sandbox nature of the world. It can never compete with the top-tier 3-D games that are created by professional 3-D artists and optimized to the nth degree for performance. It will therefore never look like Crysis, but I accept that tradeoff for the unique nature of SL and its community. Does that mean that the game shouldn't advance technically? No. But mesh will not be the silver bullet that many people are trying to sell it as and in the process denigrating anyone who disagrees with their opinions.

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Hmm.  pardon me if I dont recall correctly but it seems to me I was not denegrateing someone for not believeing that mesh will be some magic bullet.  I do believe I was saying just the opposite.  That mesh will not be the end of other forms of build/creating.  If I reccall correctly the only potential denegrating I practiced was to say some one is ill informed or not educated enough to understand why they were wrong.