Before/After examples showing what you can do with mesh

[Charlar Linden]

Heya folks,

I'm looking for some examples of objects that you've created as a replacement for an existing prim/sculpt object. I've seen some which were really cool, but we need some that will make an impact on those creators and residents who might not be as technically astute as you all are. 

If you have something, please send me a screenshot of the mesh object side by side with the prim/sculpty.

thanks - we're getting close

Charlar

 

[Dresden Ceriano]

This I'd like to see myself, being that I'm not that "technically astute" as far as mesh goes anyway. But I'd like to add that it would also be nice to know the difference in prim count verses prim equivalency for the objects.

...Dres

[Gaia Clary]

Hey. I just finished my sword escapade. It is not a master piece, but maybe it is a usefull example:

From left to right:

• Optimized Mesh (3PE)
• First mesh version with more detailed Guard (4PE, see closeup below)
• Sculpty Version (4PE)

 

Here are some closeups of the objects:

 

I must admit that i did not create a baked texture for the sculpty guard. Originaly i used a simple brushed metal texture as you see on the first image above (sculpty on the right side)  It could look better. maybe i will fix that later.

 

I have added a separate material for the edges so i did not need to bake the dark edges into the guard texture. The guard texture itself is tiled and uses the symmetry of the guard to save texture space.

Here i have modelled the edges as a separate mesh to see if i can gain anything by modelling. I do not think, that it was worth the effort.

The texture for the Sculpty has a different mapping. This was unintentional. Note that for the mesh i used a completely different texturing approach: the side of the coin got its own tileable texture and the flat side of the coin is textured by a planar image.

For the Sculpty i baked the entire texture into one image.

Now the conclusion for me is:

 

• While for the sculpty i had to do a lot of experimenting until the model quality came out as wanted, the quality of the mesh model was ok for me from the beginning.
• I had a lot of trouble to create the LOD meshes for the mesh version, while LOD of the sculpty came out good right from the beginning. The most challenging part on the mesh side was to keep the textures compatible, because i needed to do some radical reductions on the lower LODS which forced me to unwrap each LOD separately and then match the maps of all 4 LOD versions. That was a lot of work. On the positive side for mesh the LOD behaves much nicer.
• While texturing was a charm for mesh, i had some trouble to get it good for the sculpty. The most challenging part was the impression on the blade. I needed to tweek the mesh to the extreme to get enough tecture space on that part of the object.

 

[Wote Botha]

Figured i'd join in on this.

It's still not finished and probaly not the best example but what the hell.

First time i'm showing this as i've had non stop trouble with exporting and importing crashes. Figured out most problems but still got issues with OpenCollada not preserving UV maps.

These 6 images work as a good comparison between my current unfinished 'Bookstore' on Agni and my mesh equivalent on Aditi though.

Prim 01

Mesh 01

Prim 02

Mesh 02

Prim 03

Mesh 03

Couldn't figure out how to upload images but given the file sizes I guess this'll do.

And for a little extra information:

The Original is at 140 prims

Mesh is at 40 prims (Unoptimized and only one LOD atm)

Quite happy with the results so far

[Vivienne Daguerre]

Here is a picture of a fireplace I made using prims and sculpts. It is 10 prims.

I remade it on the mesh grid, keeping the sculpted flames and logs. It is only 5 prims, and it is so much better! I was able to put extra vertices where I wanted detail and did not waste vertices where I did not need detail.

 

[Flea Yatsenko]

I'm making a dancefloor that can have programable tiles. The sculpty version required the dance floor itself (which was like a rounded off hexagon), and another one slightly larger around it inside out shaded a different color to give a cool cell shaded effect. Each tile was two prims.

With Mesh, I was able to make a single mesh hexagon (with sexy sharp corners instead of smooth shaded edges), a border, and a joint between the border. Since I could assign different materials, I made one object with three different materials and control them via script.

Each tile was 3 PEweight, but when linked it is a little over one per object. I saved about 1300 triangles per object and halved the number of prims.Considering you will need about 50 or more tiles for a floor, you're looking at saving around 65k triangles people won't have to render.

PE Weight is finally becoming fair enough to give people a reason to use mesh over sculpts when mesh is far more effecient to render.

[Constance Flux]

@Charlar, It's interesting to observe that you are asking people to show their mesh goodies.

There has been more than 300 views but only 4 generous kind people have shown their stuff.

I wonder why this is ?

Is it because not many people are interested in mesh ?   Nope don't think so

Personally I am loving mesh but I won't be showing my mesh goodies.

This is a commercial environment and very competative and I'm not sure how astute it would be to show my wonderous, better than prims or sculpty meshes. With all the bandits, pirates and copycats lurking,   I'd show my 'Fu Fu' before I'd show my meshes !  :matte-motes-bashful-cute-2: 

[Vivienne Daguerre]

The way that I see it is that these comparisons help all to see the benefits of mesh. There are some who hesitate to move from viewers based on Viewer 1 to go to Viewer 2, and if they do not make the transition, they will not be able to see mesh.

I am hoping these comparisons will encourage people to bite the bit and brave the inconvenience of learning a new UI so that they can enjoy mesh.

That is good for business.

If someone were to try to steal or copy my design, I would probably have the best documentation possible for my DMCA report! I find most people are good and honest. There are bad apples, but I am not going to change the way I live my life and conduct myself because of them.

[Zalandria Zaius]

Basic stools blender 2.5. Vertices are probably way to high for this item, but PE is o.k. I'm still in the learning phases of blender so was doing some basic prim building first. I have some other more advanced stuff now but this was my test subjects for learning to upload and get LOD figured out etc..

[Drongle McMahon]

NOt at all identical, but similarly inspired. Supposed to be very old radio sets. All dimensions less than 1m. Mesh on the left PE=19; prim & sculpt on the right, PE=29. Both ridiculously detailed. Mesh at least 20x as much work.

[Madeliefste Oh]

Actually at the moment I'm working 'backwards'. The very first mesh I ever uploaded was a very detailed can, with ribs modeled in the metal top and set very smooth. At that time there was no PE count yet.

Now the prim count comes to 77. The effect of the ribs is something I can archive as good with a texture on a simple ONE PRIMS sculpty.

So every mesh I made that can as well be done as sculpt, will end up as a final product in sculpt.

[guY Ralior]

I would think that a picture of something you made posted in the forums would work as a poormans copyright. It is timed and dated. When I made my first record this is what we did to ensure that when we shopped our record around we weren't just gonna have some record company say they don't like it and then have another band put it together. We took a copy of our record and and sent it to ourselves in a sealed envelope with the date we created it and of course it would be postmarked. Once you receive it you don't open it and if you have a issue you can use that in court as proof you made the record at that time, unless someone else can prove you stole it from them first it's called a poormans copyright. I would think a picture on the forum could do the same??

[Dresden Ceriano]

Actually, wouldn't it be more like posting your songs on YouTube? I wonder if that would work as well, legally. I mean, could it be that that is the updated version of a poor man's copyright? It's an interesting thought.

Btw, I would think that the reason there are so many views and so little posting is that there are far more people not working with mesh than people that are. And it's not only mesh developers that read this forum... I do and I haven't even tried mesh yet. Sculpties zapped my determination to get into 3D modeling a long time ago. But hey, I might give it another try in the future... you never know.

...Dres

[guY Ralior]

I do think that you tube would work as well, when I was making records there was no you tube

[Medhue Simoni]

This is an example of my mesh bigwheel next to the prim/sculpty version. The prim version is more like a cross between a bigwheel and a tricycle, lol. The prim version is 24 prims, and this mesh version is 18 PE, but I could have gone alot lower. 18 PE for this makes all the LODs pretty darn detailed tho, and the current version is worn, not a true vehicle. We may make it a true vehicle tho.