No Threat from Meshes

[Harm Xue]

Honestly, I don't weight MESH as a threat or not. It's a step forward. It's a proven efficient technology. And like it's been said in many threads, other gaming environments have been using it for ages with remarkable results, translated in much much higher FPS.

As Imnotgoing Sideways, has tried to explain, the new PE system is actually the real "lag counter" that we probably should have had a very long time ago. And can show us just how laggy the favored prims actually are.

Also, as Medhue Simoni, tried to explain, MESH will clearly show who has taken the time to optimize their builds and not just dump something visually pretty with total disregard for it's weight on the system we all share, and suffer the consequences.

I do hope that LL will take into consideration all the issues and concerns from the creators. As I see it now, looks like there are already some major FUBAR on the LL side. Hope that gets fixed soon.

On a final note. MESH won't be here 6 months from now. MESH is here. Do a search in the marketplace for mesh and you get 5403 results. MESH viewers are here. There is not much missing for all this to turn "real".

[Robert Galland]

Nice post, Harm.

[Chelsea Malibu]

Perhaps I need to clarify what the word "threat" means as I by no way said meshes where bad, I said they where not a threat to "old school" builders.  If someone is not a threat, it means there is a compatibility.  You may have missed that part so, I'm reiterating it here.

Consider one thing though as you rant about near non existent prim counts you claim to be able to accomplish and that is how linden labs generates income.  They sell prim space.  The 10 x 10 prim design was done specifically for that and prim limits on sims are designed as such as well.  Do you actually think that prim count plays any other factor on performance or how the system must work?  

Fact is, LL sells hosting in the form of land and the need for land is based on storage space, aka prims just like any other hosting provider.  They sell you virtual world hosting and the more content you need to store, the more space they sell you.  By Philips own admission, they are a hosted platform provider.

[Ciaran Laval]

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

Still mesh can be interesting for lower primcount, not in all cases but in some. The 'hidden advantage' with mesh is linking. When you have one mesh rock it will always have a minimum primcount of 1. But when you link 10 low poly mesh rocks that all have a primcount of 1, the total prim count of these ten meshes becomes 6. When you link 20 mesh rocks the primcount becomes 11.

So as single object mesh can never win on prim count compared to sculpts of prims, but as soon as you start to link meshes you surely can save on prim count.

---

Yes, I was messing around on the beta grid yesterday and had three mesh objects that had a land impact of 6 (land impact is the new prim equivalency), when I joined them together it was land impact 4.

For those who want to try out the new system on the beta grid, download the mesh project viewer and login to the beta grid, you may need to take the Mesh quiz again to upload mesh to the beta grid, I did anyway.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Alternate_Viewers

[Toysoldier Thor]

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Harm Xue wrote:

...

On a final note. MESH won't be here 6 months from now. MESH is here. Do a search in the marketplace for mesh and you get 5403 results. MESH viewers are here. There is not much missing for all this to turn "real".

---

OK I will repeat myself Harm since the message is not really getting across to some of the Sculpty Creators that have become MESH Evangelists and love Mesh so deeply that they are not seeing the current state that MESH exists in its evolution into SL.

We all know that MESH is already TECHNICALLY IN PRODUCTION.  Maybe I should repeat that we all know this fact.  We all know that if you want to build a Mesh Sheep in Zbrush - you can.  We all know that if you want to take this Mesh Sheep into the production SL Grid - you can.  We all know that if you want to place your Mesh Sheep onto SLM or your inworld store and sell it - you can.  And we know there are the hyper excited Mesh Lovers that - come hell or high water - have gone through all the hoops to actually technically accomplish all this.

And for this ~2% of the entire SL main grid of the population that is so excited about mesh that they have done all of the above.... you should be very happy with yourselves that you (and only you) can see yourself riding this new MESH SHEEP on your sim.

The problem is... that Mesh is NOT MAIN STREAM ON SL and wont be for at least 4 - 6 months.

As you look puzzled at me saying this, let me explain why.

1)   In order for MESH to be mainstream, the vast majority of the population of SL residents must take the step to upgrade to LL's V3.  Its the ONLY viewer that currently supports it without bugs.  Firestorm's latest release with mesh was buggy and still needs a lot of work.  As such, since most of the SL Residents refuse to use LL's Viewer 2 (and as such Viewer 3), only an extreme minority of SL residents currently have any use for mesh.

2)  Related to this issue, most SL Residents will likely not use mesh until Firestorm viewer with mesh is production released and stable.  So, all you MESH SHEEP creators / Merchants have pretty much no one to sell your Sheep to and you wont until the SL population finally migrates to firestorm.  That wony be until at least January.

3)  As Mesh Creators are happily riding the Mesh Sheep that only they can see on any sim, they also have to help LL and fellow mesh creators figure out the mesh glitches that have cropped up... likely very poor modding and adjusting of a mesh as an attachment on an avatar and causing alpha textured prims disappear when a mesh is in the view of SNAPSHOTS and how to effectively deal with selling a mesh object that another creator can use for a bigger build and sell.

4)  The fact that most Sculpty Creators (that will eventually be the Mesh Creators of the future) are staying out of Mesh creating and promotion on the grid until they see that all the factors above are addressed.  This causes even slower evolution of mesh to the mainstream when customers can only find a few small pockets of mesh products to buy which tells them its too early to buy.  They only get a few early samples of mesh builds with no variety to select great quality mesh products in the category they want.  So... the adoption of mesh stays slow until the MAINSTREAM of sculpty creators start making mesh products to buy in SL.

5)  Mesh is still extremely confusing to the majority of the SL Population - both creators and buyers and users.  As such, this slows adoption to mainstream since few want to buy something that they dont even understand nor most cannot see on the grid.

As such.... I will say it for the 100th time.... although technically Mesh is on the main SL grid.... its not a viable mainstream product / technology to invest time / effort in until Mesh has evoled far enough along that creating and selling Mesh is viable.

In my prediction - that is not until Q2 of 2012.

And since Medhue already stated - that creating mesh items that work on the grid will be easy.  We dont need to waste our valuable cycles learning and building mesh products where the rules can still change and we would have to potentially redo our work on creation, importing, and product packaging.

 

But Harm... this is where most of us Sculpty Creators whom will soon enough be your competitors on mesh  want to commend you and Medhue for being on the BLEEDING EDGE and working out all the hurdles and bugs and perfecting the way mesh will work when it finally becomes stable and a viable product to make and sell.

CHEERS TO YOU BOTH!

 

[Toysoldier Thor]

Chelsea,

The MESH Evangelists are are so blindly excited about the technology that they are not looking at the BUSINESS aspect of Mesh.

They dont care that what they create has no viable market to sell it to.  They are happy if a few ppl will buy their creations now - but they are just as happy to rez their mesh creations and stand by them and admire them (even though most ppl standing around them see nothing).

They dont see that when you said THREAT - you meant Mesh was not yet a threat to the SCULPTY market.  I sorta think that my declining sculpty pack sales since Mesh's announcement may be a factor to mesh impacting my sales.  Not because ppl are buying competing mesh versions of my product... but because potential sculpty customers might have bought into enough of the "mesh is live and here now and it spells the demise of sculpty" hype that they are postponing sculpty purchases.

There is the technical side and business side of mesh.  The Mesh Evangelists dont care about the business viability of mesh - they just are so excited to creat mesh objects in SL that the business side is not a factor to them.

[Madeliefste Oh]

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

 

The Mesh Evangelists dont care about the business viability of mesh - they just are so excited to creat mesh objects in SL that the business side is not a factor to them.

---

What makes you think the business site is not a factor for mesh creators?

Being the first one can be a strong point for a business, or being the only one in a niche. By the time you start learning others who started as a beta tester to build up their merchandise may have well filled shops.

Working now for future profits is not such a bad business strategy at all. Mesh is still slow and it will take some time to be adepted. But by the time everybody can see mesh, they at least have a range of products to sell.

 

 

[Josh Susanto]

Mesh is not a threat to sculpts.

Mesh HYPE is a threat to sculpt marketers.

[Toysoldier Thor]

---

Madeliefste Oh wrote:

---

Toysoldier Thor wrote:

 

The Mesh Evangelists dont care about the business viability of mesh - they just are so excited to creat mesh objects in SL that the business side is not a factor to them.

---

What makes you think the business site is not a factor for mesh creators?

Being the first one can be a strong point for a business, or being the only one in a niche. By the time you start learning others who started as a beta tester to build up their merchandise may have well filled shops.

Working now for future profits is not such a bad business strategy at all. Mesh is still slow and it will take some time to be adepted. But by the time everybody can see mesh, they at least have a range of products to sell.

 

---

The fact that Business Viability is not being a factor right now for you and other bleeding edge early adopters of mesh (i.e. for those of you already racing to put mesh up for sale to a SL population that is far from mainstream readiness to buy) is because you are creating product for a market that does not now and will not for 4 + months exist.

You are creating product for a current market that is about 2% of the population and with an anticipated minimum 4 month window of slow adoption before we MIGHT see some faster adoption in Q1 or Q2 of next year.  During this time, LL is still working out the logistics and bugs on mesh existing on the main grid (and could still possibly make changes to the viewers or sim server code to correct these bugs).  This potentially add more risk of all your effort if a change could damage your uploaded mesh OR force you to rework how they were made or packaged.

More power to you and others that want to race to the starting line that is still several months away from the Starting Pistol going off.  You have personally decided all this effort to figure out how mesh might work and to work with LL to fix bugs and to try to sell a product that 95% of the population cannot see... is worth it.

And you are right in that next spring when the adoption of Mesh as a technology begins to take off and become part of mainstream - you will have a store full of products all ready to sell.  GREAT.  You deserve the initial sales you will get.

But for us Sculpty Creators that would rather use our personal time on other more mainstream creating and selling activities UNTIL mesh is more mature and until there is a market of any reasonable size to sell to, we will get into creating MESH Products then.  At that time the process and logistics will be much more streamlined.  The MP will be much more ready to accept and market Mesh as a product in MP.  And we will be using far less cycles to get our Mesh products onto the market.

I am not worried that my sculpty creating competitors like you and Medhue will have a full store of products ready to sell when the mainstream SL customers are ready to buy.  Why? 

Because my large base of customers have bought my landscape terrain sculpties over the past years because of my artistic freehand creative talent.... not because I sell a sculpty.  I have a lot of competing landscape sculpty makers but they cannot duplicate my artistic style.  So, when its time for mainstream MESH to be created and sold by me... I will produce them and I will put them for sale and I am very confident my large existing base of customer that want a MESH version of my sculpted landscapes will come to my store to buy them.  They will not come to the mesh merchant simply because he/she has the largest inventory of mesh objects.

That is my strategy.

And I think your strategy is good for you.  In fact your strategy is good for me too.  Because you are clearing the path of MESH on SL for me to have an easier entry next year.

Thank you!

[Ciaran Laval]

Where are you getting this 2% figure from? There are a lot more than 2% of people using Mesh enabled viewers.

Linden Lab do not seem to like sculpts, you need to read very very carefully what is being said.

[Josh Susanto]

Lindens don't like sculpts just like they won't like mesh when they find the Next Big Thing.

But users want what they want. So far no one is producing mesh versions of my products and they probably should not because of the implicit ideal size of the item and the comparative PE cost at such a size. 

Competing mesh products will give people more options, but not consistently better options, and the shift to viability for mesh viewing for most users stands to be a sufficiently gradual process that I can expand into mesh as the demand for similar products in mesh becomes more apparent.

I'm pretty sure that people don't buy my products because they are sculpt versus some other kind of prim. I'm pretty sure that they buy them because they are the item they want. With a lot of what I produce, a mesh version just isn't going to be what people want if they get a chance to compare the two options, and if they want the stuff now, there's no reason for them to stop wanting it later just because it's not mesh.

In the meantime, the reason for people to get enthusiastic about working with mesh is because it's intellectually and artistically rewarding; not because it's a guaranteed good investment. Mesh makes the previously impossible possible, and I support research into its application on that basis. But I'm not thrilled about the continued slinging of snake oil now that everyone should be able to examine the matter personally and decide what they must almost inevitably decide; not everything should be mesh.

 

[Madeliefste Oh]

I'm not sure, because I have not experimented with large meshes very much yet, but what I have understand from others is that mesh is not very effective for landscapes. When this is the field in the market you want to stick too, and how no plans the broaden your merchandise, you might as well stick with sculpties.

Though I was a beta tester, I'm just slowly building up my mesh merchandise. Actually I have just two mesh products available yet. And the next creation I'm going to do will be a sculpty again. At least for some time I will go on with making sculpts as well. My customers still ask for new sculpties as well. At this moment sculpts is still a good market. But I'm glad I have experimented some with meshes already, so now I more clear image how to integrate mesh in my current business model. 
And I don't know what the future will bring. I think that most avatars don't give a damn of something is made out of mesh, sculpts or prims, as long as it looks fab and isn't too prim heavy.

But my business is not only about making money. My business is the first place a way to challenge ourselves, to learn new things and to become better skilled in fields that interest us. Sometimes you have to find these challenges in yourself, sometimes you find them by listening to customers and this time we found one because SL is offering us new toys in the toolbox. It is interesting to play with those tools, for your own development as creator.

But I found it interesting to pioneer in the beta program as well. I cannot say I have had a big influence on the development of mesh for SL, I was not a very intense tester myself. But still I found it very interesting to follow the proces of a part of the creating community working together with Lindens. I learned a lot from it, it gave me a broader view on 3D design (which is handy, not only for SL but in general).
One of my conclusions is: if you want to contribute to SL or have a voice in the development of (parts of) SL beta programs are a much better place to state your opinion then the forums.

[Toysoldier Thor]

Im just using an arbitrary estimate but you tell me what you think or any facts you have on how many LL V3 viewers have been installed on the main grid.  Most users are now entrenched Phoenix loyalist and are waiting for Firestorm to come out of beta with mesh. 

As such, you tell me the actual adoption to date of V3.  I am in SL every night and I sure as heck am not seeing an avatars walking around with V3 over their heads.  Its hard enough to see any more than about 30 40% of V2 users.

Regardless... the vast majority of SL Population does not and will not for then next couple months have a MESH capable viewer.... as much as all you Mesh Evangelists would wish otherwise.

I suspect that anyone that is massively promoting and pumping and blogging about how Mesh is here and its awesome and everyone has it.... they are only doing it to try to help LL speed up the adoption rate.  Sorry - but it will not be mainstream until 2012.

[Toysoldier Thor]

that is awesome Made and that is a very wise and logical set of reasons to play with mesh.  If the objective of playing with mesh is to learn and prepare and expand your knowledge base - very wise!

But if there are mesh creators out there with the PRIME OBJECTIVE of racing to create a store full of mesh objects in the days and weeks to capture a big marketshare of customers in SL begging for Mesh objects... I think these creators are fooling themselves.

As for the Mesh landscape.... All I have heard is the same you have.... a much as a mesh landscape terrain would be awesome for the physics and detail fo the mountain terrain (I cane wait for that day), there are too many limits on PE cost and disappearing alpha textured prims (i.e. grassy / flowered prims over the landscape will go POOF with the mesh bug).  Sculpty landscapes are still the only viable option.

 

[Ciaran Laval]

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Josh Susanto wrote:

Lindens don't like sculpts just like they won't like mesh when they find the Next Big Thing.

But users want what they want. So far no one is producing mesh versions of my products and they probably should not because of the implicit ideal size of the item and the comparative PE cost at such a size.

 

---

PE is dead, Land Impact is the new measure and it is on the beta gird now, it will be on the main grid soon enough. Yes you're right, users want what they want.

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Josh Susanto wrote:

Competing mesh products will give people more options, but not consistently better options, and the shift to viability for mesh viewing for most users stands to be a sufficiently gradual process that I can expand into mesh as the demand for similar products in mesh becomes more apparent.

I'm pretty sure that people don't buy my products because they are sculpt versus some other kind of prim. I'm pretty sure that they buy them because they are the item they want. With a lot of what I produce, a mesh version just isn't going to be what people want if they get a chance to compare the two options, and if they want the stuff now, there's no reason for them to stop wanting it later just because it's not mesh.

 

---

The same with sculpts and prims, horses for courses, when sculpts were released there were a lot that simply weren't a better option, this isn't new. There are still a lot of sculpts that aren't a better option, it's all about options.

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Josh Susanto wrote:

 

In the meantime, the reason for people to get enthusiastic about working with mesh is because it's intellectually and artistically rewarding; not because it's a guaranteed good investment. Mesh makes the previously impossible possible, and I support research into its application on that basis. But I'm not thrilled about the continued slinging of snake oil now that everyone should be able to examine the matter personally and decide what they must almost inevitably decide;

not everything should be mesh.

 

---

Just because people are investing time in Mesh, it doesn't mean they think everything should be mesh, I've made the point that there's no need to change everything mesh elsewhere on these forums.

 

 

[Ciaran Laval]

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

Im just using an arbitrary estimate but you tell me what you think or any facts you have on how many LL V3 viewers have been installed on the main grid.  Most users are now entrenched Phoenix loyalist and are waiting for Firestorm to come out of beta with mesh. 

As such, you tell me the actual adoption to date of V3.  I am in SL every night and I sure as heck am not seeing an avatars walking around with V3 over their heads.  Its hard enough to see any more than about 30 40% of V2 users.

---

I have no idea how many people are using mesh enabled viewers but 2% is absurdly low when we're talking about the official Linden Lab viewer. However you Antimeshies might like to think it's 2%

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

 

Regardless... the vast majority of SL Population does not and will not for then next couple months have a MESH capable viewer.... as much as all you Mesh Evangelists would wish otherwise.

I suspect that anyone that is massively promoting and pumping and blogging about how Mesh is here and its awesome and everyone has it.... they are only doing it to try to help LL speed up the adoption rate.  Sorry - but it will not be mainstream until 2012.

---

Here you're just getting silly, people promoting, pumping and blogging about mesh are inevitably going to have to point out the issues with mesh viewers and that some people won't see mesh rendering properly, mesh will live or die because it becomes attractive to users, not because someone is blogging, promoting and pumping it.

 

 

[Medhue Simoni]

I think you are making some of my points for me, I'm just looking at it a different way.

First tho, what annoys me is the speculations. I'm not saying from you Toysoldier, but from everywhere. Some people have fears about mesh, those fears can turn into witch hunts to demean that which they fear. Any1 that wants to make a 10k prim mesh can do it and say "look at how unreasonable this is". Any1 with fears of clothing not fitting can buy anything and say it doesn't fit their avatar right. I'm not saying they even do this consciously.

What I"m really saying is that, it is time. From a creators stand point, the same model I created a year ago is the same model I'm uploading today, with a few mods. Nothing LL does, at this point, is gonna change the model unless I decide to change it. Mesh is ready, and now is the time to work out all it uses and best practices. Most of this is related to either clothing or builder packs. Why? Because this can't really be worked out until it hit the main grid and creators see more use cases. At some point tho, if you plan on improving your buisness in SL, you will have to learn also. Many of which can't be explained clearly in a forum or even a video.

As to whether mesh is marketable, I have yet to release a mesh that did not sell in the first week. I'm not making the kind of stuff every1 is looking for with mesh either. The products I'm working on require efficiency to reduce lag and increase fun. Whether it sells now or in 6 months is of no concern to me.

This leads me to the talk of lag. Why am I so gungho about mesh? Lag reduction!!!! The sooner all major merchants start selling mesh, the quicker we will all see a reduction in lag. Full Avatars, shoes and hair designers would probably be the most significant reducers of lag, mostly because those items tend to be primary lag producers.

Soon, very soon, almost all viewers will see mesh, unless the devs simply don't implement it.

If there is a time for a smart business man to jump into the game, it is shortly after the release, when the peak is at it's highest. Heck, maybe I should be happy that people keep speculating, it drags the hype further along. Plus, as long time merchants in SL, we understand that everything is about long term gains. Few people could pay us by the hour. The key is how much visibility a product gets over it's lifetime. The way things work with ranking and other marketing in SL, Getting there first can bring huge benefits for any product.

For me tho, none of this is about being first. I sell things that evolve. I need to see those products in use to see how to make it better. What is out today, will not be the exact same as 2 years from now. Every single product has special properties that are unique to each product, and I'm not always going to understand how the product will be used the most.

Ultimately, my message is that any1 can learn to make mesh. I did, you can. I'm still learning. It's endless. The longer you wait, the longer it will take. At it's core tho, making a mesh is not much different than making that same object in SL with prims. It is really that easy, just 1 step up. Well, maybe a few steps, lol.

 

[Ciaran Laval]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

 

Ultimately, my message is that any1 can learn to make mesh. I did, you can. I'm still learning. It's endless. The longer you wait, the longer it will take. At it's core tho, making a mesh is not much different than making that same object in SL with prims. It is really that easy, just 1 step up. Well, maybe a few steps, lol.

 

---

Quite a few steps indeed, I'm playing with making basic prim shapes such as walls, the advantage I see is that I can link 10 prims and they have a land impact of five, half the impact native prims would have for exactly the same look.

The downside at the moment is texturing inworld, I've learnt after a tip off on another forum how to upload a mesh that will have faces the same as a native prim that can be textured inworld individually, I haven't figured out how to scale them so that the textures when applied use the same metrics though, although I'm sure the answer will be found eventually.

Providing end users with UV Maps is good if you're selling them as a building tool but not good for consumers who just want to click and change the texture inworld.

However you're right about use cases and why more is better.

[Toysoldier Thor]

And you are being naive to believe that just because LL V3 is the "official" viewer that was just recently released - that it instantly will be downloaded and adopted the first week by the SL Population.

-  First of all, the majority of SL Population does not use LL's Viewers (the largest viewer used is Phoenix)

-  Second, in general most SL users are still V1 or 3PV version 1 viewer users (i.e. LL V1.23 or phoenix or some of the other generation 1 viewers)

-  If you are one of the majority of viewer users that are loyal to Phoenix (like me), most of you have not made the Firestorm Beta a main viewer since it is still BETA.

-  Even if you are a Firesstorm Beta user (one of my laptops are), only the latest Firestorm Beta supports mesh and it has enough bugs in its mesh deploy that many of us beta users are not trying the latest firestorm.

 

So as much as you want to believe that just because LL released V3 - everyone instantly upgraded to V3, you are being silly for thinking that.

Maybe the population is not 2% that can see Mesh - but surely not more than 10%.  And I truly believe this is a stretch to believe that more than 10% of SL residents have actively upgraded to V3.  NOOO WAY!

 

[Couldbe Yue]

the meshanistas have though..  and there seems to be a lot of early adopters around and a lot of them are at least trying, if not buying whatever is currently out there.  

Whatever the proportion though, it is going to increase and it is time for you to hit your modeller software of choice to start building a collection.  Even if you only create the models and wait until later to optimise for sl and bring them in at least you're on your way.  They're not going to back it out and it is going to get more popular.

Just relax and try to enjoy the pain Toy and everything will be fine

 

[Toysoldier Thor]

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Couldbe Yue wrote:

the meshanistas have though..  and there seems to be a lot of early adopters around and a lot of them are at least trying, if not buying whatever is currently out there.  

Whatever the proportion though, it is going to increase and it is time for you to hit your modeller software of choice to start building a collection.  Even if you only create the models and wait until later to optimise for sl and bring them in at least you're on your way.  They're not going to back it out and it is going to get more popular.

Just relax and try to enjoy the pain Toy and everything will be fine

 

---

Although I do not think for Generation 1 of MESH in SL, landscape terrains will not be viable, I am hoping that some day Mesh will be a viable option.  I am hopeful the glitches like disappearing textured prims in the view of a Mesh will eventually be fixed (right now can u imagine a rolling field terrain with alpha textured grasses that poof away because the mesh ground underneath makes them poof?), but all are saying that terrain mesh will have a very high PE to a sculpty. 

I would love mesh over sculpty for terrains so that the BOUNDING BOX issue can be addressed once and for all.  The mesh terrain will need its physics enabled so avatars can walk on the mountain, volcano cone, hills, cliffs, etc.  But it will be far better than with sculpties where avatars either walk 2 meters+ over the surface or invisi-prims are needed.

I already have all my terrain sculpties as objects in either Blender (my old ones) or Zbriush.  The problem is that these mesh objects were developed using the resolution of the sculpties in SL so that I could see what i was sculpting would be similar to what was inworld (same resolution limitations). 

When I eventually do create mesh versions of my landscape terrains, I would want to use much more detailed resolution (more vertices) so that I can provide more realistic definitions of the formed terrain.  I am sure this is where the substantial increase in PE cost will come in.

So Couldbe... a technical question for you.  If I were to create some new Volcano Cone 16,000 vertices mesh (my terrains use a flat type mesh tool as a base), how does the completed mesh get optimized prior to entering SL?  Do you run the completed mesh into some mesh optimizer?

Just a question for all those MESHANISTSA's

[Alisha Matova]

MESHANISTSA here! Lol

 

The point of mesh is to not wind up at high 16000 vert models and then optimize. Rather, it is to build your model in a low poly method that saves 1000s of verts. Search YouTube for low poly.

There are some final optimization steps for uploading into SL, LOD levels and physics shape. But these won't turn a vert heavy model magically into a low prim/land cost object. Your low poly workflow controls that.

[Couldbe Yue]

I'm not the one to ask about mesh or sculpties.  I think sculpties were a poor technical solution that in the long run caused more grief than not (how about that for putting the cat amongst the pigeons? )

As for mesh, I decided a couple of years ago that I wasn't going to learn it as the cost/benefit didn't look attractive. Also I didn't expect sl to still be going by now!  My mesh experience so far has been finally getting around to creating and texturing a door knob (it did start out to be a light bulb but that turned out to be too tricky) and once it came to the bit about having to optimise it for sl I decided that I wasn't that interested after all.

So I don't really have a stake in this particular little adventure but I do know demand when I see it and there's a buzz around mesh atm.

[Madeliefste Oh]

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

 

I would love mesh over sculpty for terrains so that the BOUNDING BOX issue can be addressed once and for all.  The mesh terrain will need its physics enabled so avatars can walk on the mountain, volcano cone, hills, cliffs, etc.  But it will be far better than with sculpties where avatars either walk 2 meters+ over the surface or invisi-prims are needed.

---

It is possible, but prim expense. The more accurate you want your physic shape to be, the more prims it will cost.

But why not try it out for yourself?

Just safe your sculpt model as a colada file, and use the same model as physic shape while uploading to SL.

Then reduce the polygones in your sculpt model, make it as low poly as possible, then upload that model as physic shape while uploading.

And notice the difference in prim count. Also note the difference in SL while walking the mesh.

Decide if the higher prim count is worth the more accurate physic shape.

 

[Ciaran Laval]

Nowhere have I claimed everyone is using v3 or Mesh enabled viewers, you're going off on a tangent there, i said the 2% was an absurdly low estimate.