Creators, how do you want your meshes being served?

[Madeliefste Oh]

It is just as unsustainable as the market of full perms textures. People who make their own textures have to compete with builders who buy full perms packages and 'just slap them on builds'.

But you are not concerned about full perms textures. Do they not devalue virtual goods?

And prims? You don't even have to buy them... they are freely available for everybody, full perms and all. Do they also devalue virtual goods?

[ralph Alderton]

Actually, I don't think anything should be sold full perm, NOTHING SHOULD BE FULL PERM

Full permissions is what's wrong. We need new permissions

Without the original creator who made the sculpty, texture script, mesh whatever - there could be no sale. So we need royalty permissions so every time there is a sale, if you made the sculpty/mesh/texture/script, you get a piece of the action. A tiny royalty from every sale would be healthy

Full perms are bad for creators like you Madeliefste, you should be getting a royaly for every sale of every product that includes any component created by you.

I'm actually on your side Madeliefste. I want you to receive royalties for your efforts not just a one time payment.

[Madeliefste Oh]

Yes, that would be a fair system that rewards all original creators that contribute to an end product. It would also be good to stimulate the join of several talents combined in the end product. I vote for it.

The only minus is, we don't have such a system. And you know how hard it is to convice LL about good ideas.

[Ciaran Laval]

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ralph Alderton wrote:

Actually, I don't think anything should be sold full perm, NOTHING SHOULD BE FULL PERM

Full permissions is what's wrong. We need new permissions

Without the original creator who made the sculpty, texture script, mesh whatever - there could be no sale. So we need royalty permissions so every time there is a sale, if you made the sculpty/mesh/texture/script, you get a piece of the action. A tiny royalty from every sale would be healthy

Full perms are bad for creators like you Madeliefste, you should be getting a royaly for every sale of every product that includes any component created by you.

I'm actually on your side Madeliefste. I want you to receive royalties for your efforts not just a one time payment.

---

Give it a rest Ralph, your protectionism type ideas have never been popular, how much did you want creators to have to pay upfront before they were allowed to create?

There's a huge market for people who sell full perm items, that's why they do it, supply and demand, you want to stifle the supply, which decreases the demand naturally, be careful what you wish for.

 

[Ciaran Laval]

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Parrish Ashbourne wrote:

Ralph, I couldn't find your store or your profile. 

---

Ralph won't post on his creator account, he never does when he comes into threads like this with his complaints about too much competition.

[Toysoldier Thor]

Ralph,

Although I understand what you are trying to say, in the sutuation we are and with the limits of SL permissions, Sculpty Builder Packs with full or near full perms are almost a requrement. 

I create and sell Master Builder Landscape Sculpty Packs - which are generally designed for a target market of master SL builders and/or builders that want to use my sculpt maps as ONE of their input materials to what they sell.  I have been doing this for almost 2 years and I have 6 primary landscape packs that have been making me a solid consistent weekly sales since they each get released.

5 of the 6 of them are Full Perm.  My last pack - I made the decision to make the maps NO MOD but instead offer shadow maps to service those of my customers that need MOD to use maps for templates.  This last pack sells as well as my full perm packs.

BUT... If I were to limit my sculpty builder packs to limited perms that dont allow my customers to make their creations by using some of mine in their builds... my sales would be dead.

Would I like a royalty from each sale of each product that all of my 1000+ customers have used my sculpty maps with?  SURE!  but I also want to win the lottery.  In SL that is not the world we live in.

So... Made is doing exactly what I am doing and exactly what countless other Sculpty Map makers are doing for other builders.  If 100 of my customers all want to make competing river builds using my maps - I dont really care.  As long as my customers and SL residents do not steal / use illegal copies of my landscape sculpty packs.

I am sure there is a % of my maps that are being used illegally and if I find them - they wont be happy campers.... but I make an awesome weekly income from 6 landscape packs that I created about a year ago.  Low maintenance and great base of weekly growing customers.....  I AM HAPPY.

 

[Mickey Vandeverre]

Do you ever wonder if Ralph is one of your buds?

I do.

I chat with some people now and then that have different concepts than I do.  You gotta wonder if Ralph is one of your buds.

[Madeliefste Oh]

---

Parrish Ashbourne wrote:

 I started SL about 4 years ago with zero 3D build, scripting, animation, or marketing experience.  I managed to learn enough in SL on my own, to get a RL full time 3D building job out side of SL.  If I hadn't had been able to buy full perm building components to get started I would have had a very hard time getting to where I'm at today. 

---

Congratulations. That's one of the advantage of 'playing' SL, it gives you the possibility to learn a lot of skills, it's learning in the playfull way. Like you I had no experience with 3D at all when I first came to SL. I became interested in it because sculpties became possibility in SL. First as a buyer, I bought collars and sleeves for blouses, pockets to put on pants and those kind of things. Because I often found them so hard to texture I became interested in 3D, as a tool to help me texturing them. And there started a new love that didn't end till today.

For me it is the same as for you: If I hadn't been able to buy full perms sculpties I probably would have never developped the interest in 3D.

But also people like Domino and Gaia have contributed to my development as 3D creator. They are important because they help me to understand Blender and to 'translate' it for SL. And some people on the content creation forums who are always helping to answer  your questions.

I think we more or less all own credits to other SL residents, whether it is to people who share their knowledge about marketing, who make their scripts available and even to those who learned you as a newbie how to fit your shoes.

We do not all love the same things. I for example have tried scripting for a blue monday, but it's nothing for me. I can understand that there are people who love to script, but I cannot feel a bit of this love myself, nothing of it inspires me. So when I have an idea that needs a script I buy one or I seek cooperation with a scripter to realise the idea together. When I think an animation would put extra value to a product, I buy one or seek cooperation with an animator.

This new development of mesh might be a good stimulation for others to give it a try to work with 3D. Some will love it and become mesh masters by time and some will just not have a click with 3D, like I have no click with scripting. And within a few years somebody who has always been a furniture designer in SL might say: "I never had any experience with 3D but then Linden Lab came with mesh. And now I work for Pixar."

But for the people who just don't have the click with 3D or find the learning route to stiff or rather spend their time on the form of creation they really love, it just want to offer a possibility to work with it with their own talents.

 

 

[WADE1 Jya]

Mesh seems to be really neat on this angle.

If exportable at all, it is a different format so not worth copybotting (can make original work in same time it takes to rip & reformat) & allows creators like me to more freely collaborate with the community while maintaining a cohesive body of work. In a prim & sculpty only environment, such collaborative options were not possible.

I really can't wait now until mesh is unfurled grid-wide :matte-motes-grin:

I disagree with Ralph's rabidly anti-collaborative sentiments, but the one point I agree is it does hurt creators of original goods when dirivitive works are sold alongside with no distinction between these and originally crafted offerings. It is a volume issue that buries & discourages many a good creator, even knocking a lot of talented people out of the game.

IMVU has the perfect solution (here only does it shine, IMVU sucks otherwise), they have two market categories: dirivitive & original.

I would like to see SL adapt similar, as there should be a clear distinction.

[Madeliefste Oh]

Yeah, the more I think about it, the better I like the idea.

It would also set a kind of bottum price or virtual goods. Take the example of the fan. A fashion designer want to add the fan to her design, and she also has the idea to put in some animations. The bottum price of her design would always be the derival amount that is paid to the creator of the fan and the creator of the animations. Upto that bottum price she can add the value of her own work and come to a final price for the end user.

[Pamela Galli]

As I have said in other threads, for some things (like the fan) I would not need to tweak the fan itself, just the texture. For other things -- say, a piece of furniture, I most likely would want to tweak the legs or back to suit my taste, which means I would want to be able to take it into Blender. Otherwise, my chair will look pretty much like everyone else's chair, except for texture, and will not be exactly how I want it to look. I do this a lot with sculpts already.

[Madeliefste Oh]

So you would need a whole bunch of licenses, Pamela. Permission to make derivals of the mesh its self. And since LL does not allow you to upload a mesh model when you are not the IP right holder, you will need a permission from the original creator to allow you to upload your version of the original.

Would it bother you when one of the conditions for the upload permission would be credits. For example a line in your productdescription or in a attached notecard that says 'This piece of furniture was modeled after the orginal 'lounge-chair' by cYo'?

[Toysoldier Thor]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

As I have said in other threads, for some things (like the fan) I would not need to tweak the fan itself, just the texture. For other things -- say, a piece of furniture, I most likely would want to tweak the legs or back to suit my taste, which means I would want to be able to take it into Blender. Otherwise, my chair will look pretty much like everyone else's chair, except for texture, and will not be exactly how I want it to look. I do this a lot with sculpts already.

---

I do not know which sculpty creators you use that allow you to take their sculpty creations out of SL and make a modification to it.  It is not something I allow as part of my license.  My sculpted design is what my customers are buying.  They surely can texture the sculpted prim from my maps all they want and use the map as a texture template, but changing my sculpt map by bring it into blender - not something I allow.

Surprises me that some other sculpty map 3d creators are allowing you to do that Pamela.

[Pamela Galli]

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

So you would need a whole bunch of licenses, Pamela. Permission to make derivals of the mesh its self. And since LL does not allow you to upload a mesh model when you are not the IP right holder, you will need a permission from the original creator to allow you to upload your version of the original.

Would it bother you when one of the conditions for the upload permission would be credits. For example a line in your productdescription or in a attached notecard that says 'This piece of furniture was modeled after the orginal 'lounge-chair' by cYo'?

---

I would be willing to add credits but I don't know where -- the description? What I am talking about is the .dae file, or  a notecard. And I don't imagine many legit creators would want to sell that to anyone who walked in off the street, or sell it cheap. Also I have been investigating buying from non-SL mesh makers who know how to optimize for SL and would sell me an exclusive license (at a price).

[Mickey Vandeverre]

I'm not going to be purchasing anything from creators that require a royalty fee.

Most of my hours are spent on marketing, and that's where the sales come from.  No way am I going to do free marketing for another creator's bits and pieces for them to get a cut for years on end.

[Mylar]

On RL stock sites, such as renderosity, etc, they usually offer royalty free licenses. Some have limited licenses, as in you can only sell so many copies. But it's really down to the individual creators. I've never seen any creator in RL or SL that requires royalties for using their art in your own creation. I have seen exclusive licenses, where you pay a gob load of money and you get full rights and ownership of the work.

I have a few products that I use public domain artwork as part of the texture (it's derivative, I don't just slap the artwork on a prim). I have a sign in my shop that says this, and I cite where the work is from in my MP listings for these products.

[Boaz Sands]

I use photoshop and other 3d programs to texture directly on the objects to ensure proper alignment for seams etc.  So if it were a mesh vest for instance, having the ability to bring the mesh into photoshop to paint directly on the object to create the texture might be something your customers would like as an option.  It would also be nice to see the texure on the object without having to upload it multiple times in SL to get it right. 

If the template/maps are as whonky as SL clothing templates as far as the proportions being different from the front to back this would be something I would imagine your customers would want.

 

 

 

 

 

[Mylar]

One thing you could consider is offering an altered version of the mesh in RL. Make some change like subdividing the mesh or converting some of the faces from quads to triangles or vice versa; Something that makes the mesh unusable if they upload it to SL (or less usable), but doesn't change how the texture is wrapped onto it. Most people who are going to use Blender to bake a texture on the mesh are going to do this anyway...work with a high poly model to do the texture.

[Vincent Nacon]

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

Here is an example to show a mesh template. In mesh land they are not called templates but UV maps.

---

Not trying to be mean or attacking you but.... your UV mapping and texture size is making me cringes.  You really should think about using up all of the unused spaces in a texture. and simpfity texture's DPI to the least instead of most.

For a example, line up all of the wooden sticks straight and stack them next to each others. Flatten and straighten out the fin-paper into rectangle to add more pixels into the area for more details. This way you can take up about 95% of the UV's area instead. If you're worried about the dissorten of the image for the fin, you could apply Photoshop's spherize dissort or polar coord. filter to rectangle.

 

On other hand, if you're thinking about your customers and make it easy for them to texture their own?  While it's a nice idea, but it scream a big no-no for me. Full perm is even worst for the market and your own sales.

[ralph Alderton]

Also, I didn't like to say but if we're now helping  Madeliefste with feedback :

The back and front UV's for the fan should be the same size - right now the back is smaller

As Vincent suggests the sticks should be stacked and there are ALSO way too many  vertical verts and edges in the sticks. As there are 10 sticks that's a whole bunch of unecessary polygons

Also the knob looks seriously dense with  verts and edges as it appears white in the UV - more optimisation needed

Since there are no prim limits for AV accessories I foresee a lot of enthusiastic mesh beginners piling on the polygons and not optimising their models. This is particularly bad with full perm creators as they will be effectively selling and distributing laggy content 

[ralph Alderton]

Hi WADE1, You misunderstand me.

I'm, not anti-collaborative, I'm a big supporter of collaborative efforts

I'm anti Full Perm because it's bad for the creator community

Full perms are unhealthy for many obvious reasons

Royalty perms or derivative perms would be fair, healthy, good for the collaborative ecosystem and great for the economy

 

[ralph Alderton]

Hi Parrish, I'm an old timer. Started as a 3D mesh artist on an Amiga 2000 using programs like Sculpt 4D, Turbo Silver and Calligari and deluxe paint

Background in the 3D game industry and I used to be a vendor of 3D models through the first model banks like Viewpoint and Rem Infographica.

One of the main reasons I am strongly against full perms in SL is :

I still earn royalties from mesh content I created over 10 years ago. If I had sold my RL mesh content with full perms ( do as you like license) I wouldn't have made a healthy living

It should be noted, again, that no 3D artists in RL sell their mesh content with full perms. It would be idiotic

Full perms trivialise our skill set. Being a 3D artist is a non trivial task and full permissions undermine the 3D mesh industry.

Parrish - If you have a really great product, you hardly have to market it. High Quality Product comes first

[ralph Alderton]

Ciaran, Competition is good and healthy.

The only thing I want to protect is mesh artists from being ripped off and not getting their proprer dues

If you're a mesh artist the last thing you want to do is sell full perm or royalty free content - it's a silly thing to do. Unless, of course,  you live in your moms basement and have no real world responsibilities

Full perms are destructive. Mesh artists should value their skills and value their IP

Just because we have full perms and people have become used to the idea of full perms, doesn't mean that they are a good idea or the best way of doing things

[Madeliefste Oh]

---

Vincent Nacon wrote:

 

Not trying to be mean or attacking you but.... your UV mapping and texture size is making me cringes.  You really should think about using up all of the unused spaces in a texture. and simpfity texture's DPI to the least instead of most.

For a example, line up all of the wooden sticks straight and stack them next to each others. Flatten and straighten out the fin-paper into rectangle to add more pixels into the area for more details. This way you can take up about 95% of the UV's area instead. If you're worried about the dissorten of the image for the fin, you could apply Photoshop's spherize dissort or polar coord. filter to rectangle.

 

On other hand, if you're thinking about your customers and make it easy for them to texture their own?  While it's a nice idea, but it scream a big no-no for me. Full perm is even worst for the markut wiet and your own sales.

---

Thanks for your feed back. I see comments from people with a critical eye more as a present then as an attack.

When it comes to efficiency of using texture space, you are right. But on the other hand skin- and fashion artists work with non effecient used texture space for years already. So it is a kind of format the community is used to.

But with the sticks you have a point. It would even make it more easy to apply a wood texture to them when all sticks are lined up next to each other.

[Madeliefste Oh]

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ralph Alderton wrote:

 

The back and front UV's for the fan should be the same size - right now the back is smaller

---

 

Why?

---

ralph Alderton wrote:

As Vincent suggests the sticks should be stacked and there are ALSO way too many  vertical verts and edges in the sticks. As there are 10 sticks that's a whole bunch of unecessary polygons

Also the knob looks seriously dense with  verts and edges as it appears white in the UV - more optimisation needed

 

---

Yes, you are right. This is not a final model I will put for sale, because the model is still too prim heavy. The final model uses less polygons and has a prim count of 3.

But this is what I just had for hand to show people who don't know anything about mesh or texturing mesh how a UV map might look.