PE - Reasonable PE for attachments / accessoires

[Ann Otoole]

The general purpose answer is to make it as low as possible to achieve the desired effect. For now some level of additional polys is needed because we will not have normal/bump maps for a while. Hopefully LL will introduce that later.

If you exceed some as yet unknown value then the avatar may be derendered depending upon settings mentioned at an office hour. In SLv3 you have debug settings for avatar LOD. Might want to play with those. However the derender feature sounded like it might be a slider in preferences. This will enable people with class 0 GPUs or whatever to derender high poly avatars.

I uploaded a nice skull I might want to use in jewelry. The lowest PE it will go is 1. Has a streaming cost of 0.2. The build tool in SLv3 no longer shows render cost. However the render data shows 10 ktris which is kind of high poly for a skull pendant. (needs work) (that is a 0.01/0.01/0.01 sphere next to it)

But PE is just the number related to linking. What you have to look out for is render cost. I don't think we have all the information on render cost and derendering avatars that exceed some unknown maximum limit. So go as low poly as you can. Maybe later we will get all the details on exactly what the deal is with derendering high render cost avatars. Keep in mind LL's idea of bad design began at 1500 ARC and that is pretty lame stuff.

This is what is considered game ready low poly: http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/3dsmax-sea-creature-low-poly/387012

I.e.; some people think SL needs to be 1993 Doom v1 quality. We have to wait to see how badly SL is going to be nerfed.

[Ishtara Rothschild]

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guY Ralior wrote:

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Ishtara Rothschild wrote:

 I don't mind as long as it looks good. If my avatar lags people, they either need a faster PC or more reasonable graphics settings

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No you would be the only one seeing your avatar as you would be auto muted by the viewer. So then you will have to say to yourself wow people will slow computers are just not as good as me, with my top-o-line windows PC. LOL........not

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Yet another reason not to use the official viewer. I'm sure the Phoenix / Firestorm team will find a way to disable that nonsense. People with decent PCs will be able to see me, and on a stone age PC I'd look crappy anyway.

 

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weather the arc number is accurate or not, lag is real thing, and mostly it's caused by people that don't care or don't know what they are doing

 

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People with a high ARC don't lag me (unless they run a ton of laggy scripts, that is). Server lag is a real thing, but client lag can easily be avoided by buying a low-end gaming PC for $400 or building one for $250. It's no surprise that people experience "lag" (i.e. low fps) if they try and run a contemporary 3D game on a P4.

[Ashasekayi Ra]

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StoneDwarf wrote:

Oh cool wasn't even aware of this. Thanks for the tip!

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Welcome ^^

[Leeza Catteneo]

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Maeve Balfour wrote:

[...] It's the LOD factor and associated cost that pushes the PE factor up - being smallish items in the world view, the LODs drop away very quickly [...]

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Thanks for this insight view of your experiences, Maeve =) I experienced the same issue with the LODs dropping away very quickly on smallish items. My plan was to keep the Tris at least in the first 2 spots at a higher level and then drop down hard Now I read your experiences I guess that's the direction I should recon. And I will make some experiments with the physics shape as well.

 

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Maeve Balfour wrote:

All in all... mesh as attachments has a lot of potential :matte-motes-smile:

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Yay for mesh =D I'm really excited. The control for texturing via UVs, the benefit from using actual building tools in the creation software and all =D But oh uh I was so shocked by having a 230PE without having a real "complicated" item =/ Haha. You all helped me a lot.

 

 

 

[Leeza Catteneo]

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Ann Otoole wrote:

But PE is just the number related to linking. What you have to look out for is render cost. I don't think we have all the information on render cost and derendering avatars that exceed some unknown maximum limit. So go as low poly as you can. Maybe later we will get all the details on exactly what the deal is with derendering high render cost avatars. Keep in mind LL's idea of bad design began at 1500 ARC and that is pretty lame stuff.

This is what is considered game ready low poly:

http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/3dsmax-sea-creature-low-poly/387012

I.e.; some people think SL needs to be 1993 Doom v1 quality. We have to wait to see how badly SL is going to be nerfed.

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Thank you Ann! 

Phew, the technical stuff is something I don't feel familar with But I will have a look into that =)

All this could be important not only for ones own Avatar being derendered or so but also if it comes to costumers and their very own needs and decision to whether buy an (attachment) object with high PE or not. Even before inspecting the render costs. I will have a look at both!

[Mikki Miles]

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Drongle McMahon wrote:

 ... was thinking of rigged attachmenhts for LOD distance. :matte-motes-agape:

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I didn't mess around with rigging so far, so I have no idea, what rigging in case of an attachment means, but: would the attachment still be editable/adjustable for the customer, when he/she wears it?

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

One thing to consider for avatar attachments is the camera clip distance is normally 0.5 meters - anything closer than that cannot be seen.  At that distance, one monitor pixel is 0.5 mm.  Thus any geometry or texture details smaller than 0.5 mm simply will not be seen.  For gently curving items like heels and shoe uppers, the triangles that make up a mesh can be considerably larger than 0.5 mm before the curved shape has noticeable flat sides, especially if you use smooth shading.  Nicely detailed attachments are great, but excessively tiny details are just a waste of geometry and textures.

@Mikki - you can wear non-rigged attachments the same as any prim attachments, and edit their position and size.  Rigged items are for when you need it to bend, like a sleeve, and follow more than one avatar bone.

[Drongle McMahon]

The LOD switch distances for the dimensions shown for your skull should be 0.065, 0.25 and 0.5m*. If Daniel is right about the clip distance for attachments, that means at least the two highest LODs will never be seen. In that case, any triangles in those are wasted and irrelevant.

* based on unattached objcet formulae; r = sqrt(x*x + y*y + z*z)/2; r/0.24, r/0.06, r/0.03. In fact, however, there are some sdjustments for very near things, I think.

 

[Mikki Miles]

I know, I already finished some mesh musical instruments, they behave like prim or sculpty attachements.

It would be nice, if rigged attachement could be attached to both hands, or to chest AND left hand. That would be great for things like weapons or music instruments. Would that require an extra bone, or is it possible now?

[guY Ralior]

I think in the last user group meeting notes it was said that that is something that is in the plans for after initial rollout. I agree that it would be a great feature, one thing that will have to be sorted out is which attachment is the active one for when you adjust the shape targets. 

[Leeza Catteneo]

I wanted to give a little feedback =D

I used all LOD slots

Tho, I put the highest LOD item with ~5K tris in the first three spots and an automatic generated veeeery low thingy in the lowest LOD spot. I did that because the hand made LOD files were messed up by the viewer import =/ Maybe I should make a new UV set for each LOD level? I have to investigate this issue.

But anyways. Doing it this way I have a beautiful item attached to my avatar and it looks good from all directions and distances. It changes to the lowest LOD in a distance were I can hardly recognize the shape of the attachment anyways. So thats great!

But the coolest thing is that the item says it is made of 5 prims (which are the 5 objects I exported as seclection) but only 1 prim equivs if attached! And only 6 prim equivs if put on the sim ground. Yay =D

And the streaming cost says 9.3 (inspected with the SLv3 beta) which shouldnt be too much?

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

I guess I was wrong about the clip distance.  Zooming in on large objects cuts off part of them if you get too close, but zooming in on a small object I was able to get 2.5 cm = height of screen, therefore 0.025 mm = 1 pixel on a large screen.  Camera focussed on a large object close to an avatar, and move the camera with alt-mouse & ctrl-alt-mouse will clip the avatar at some close distance if you swing the camera close enough, so it may work based on the physics shape/collision boundary.  I could not find a debug setting for it, but is is clipping and limiting view distances.

 

@Mikki - you can weight a given vertex of an object to any of up to 4 bones, but then it will stretch and bend in response.  If you want a rigid object to move with two attach points, like both hands, that might require some scripting, attach to one, then take the other arm position and adjust the attach point parameters to follow it

 

[Mikki Miles]

Oh, something new to learn. I wasn't even aware that there are functions in LSL to manipulate positions of attach points

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

There may not be, but rigging is not the way to do what you want, since that will make an object bend and stretch

[Mikki Miles]

So it might be perfect for an Accordion ;-)