No Threat from Meshes

[Toysoldier Thor]

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Ciaran Laval wrote:

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.

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You lost me on your lack of claims.  LL V3 Viewer is the only production viewer that sees Mesh.  LL V2 doesnt nor do any of the production 3PVs nor does any stable Beta version of Firestorm.  As such, the % of those that have upgraded to V3 and are using V3 should be = to the users on the grid that are able to see MESH on the grid.

My prediction is that only about 2% - maybe as high as 10% of ALL SL RESIDENTS can see Mesh.

How is that absured? 

So tell me - what is your guess / facts / estimates on how many of all the SL Resdients can currently see a Mesh object on the main grid?

[Toysoldier Thor]

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

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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.

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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. 

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See Made you lost me there.  So you are saying that a Mesh object that comes into the SL grid by default does not have any physical along its surface?  If not, we need to do more and import more to make a mesh object in SL have physics along its surface?

And this is also where you and Alisha are confirming what Landscape Mesh will likely not be an economically feasible alternative to Sculpties until the PE costs are reduced for mesh.

Many of my landscape terrains are using the flat type object (i.e. all vertices are one side of a virtual piece of paper).  As such when I hand sculpt a landscape terrains, my current limitation for sculpties is that I am only allowed (i.e. heavily rationed) to use 32x32 or 1024 vertices.

I so much want to use far more vertices for my landscape than 1024 because this is one of the heavy limits of sculpty landscapes now.  Despite this drastic rationing of only 1024 vertices, I can make a SL sculpty terrain look not too bad. BUT, there is so much important detail lost that I had hoped Mesh could now provide.

In order to provide a rally nicely detailed terrain that looks much more realistic, I would love to work with a piece of mesh paper of 128x128 or 16,000 vertices.  But even if I had to rediuce it to 64x64 or 4096 I might be able to still create something ok.

And here you both are suggestion that the key point of Mesh optimization is to reduce the vertices count back down to the rationed limit that I have always hated.  If this is the only way for a mesh to be cost effective is to use a resolution equal to a sculpty's 32x32, then this is exactly what at least for sculpty landscape creators, MESH is cost effectively useless.

So you all are promoting mesh as being so cool and lighter in PE cost than a sculpty - but not telling everyone that this is only possible if yuo ration the hell out of a mesh to be as limited in vertices as a sculpty.

 

 

[Ciaran Laval]

I don't know if you ever use the official viewer but when there's an upgrade it gets advertised to you, if you have the auto upgrade ticked, which is the default, it downloads it for you and tells you it will install on next run, you don't have to go out of your way to get it.

[Toysoldier Thor]

If you are saying that 16,000 vettices is an example of gross non-optimization - then I am quickly losing excitement over mesh on SL.

My major point of excitement with Mesh coming to SL was that I could finally use much higher and detailed vertices.  But if 16,000 vertices is considered be horrid and will cost 1000's of PE to rez.... now I really have lost excitement of mesh.

Great for all of you that are making little itty bitty shoes or furniture.... but I make Terrains!  This could be 1/4 sim in size or at least 20x20m in size. 

[Toysoldier Thor]

like the majority of SL Residents, I tried and hated and never returned to LL V2 back in 2010.

I am and will be a loyal Phoenix and eventually Firestorm user.

So when you walk by the club in your cool Meshed clothing and hair - until firestorm supports Mesh effectively and is a mainstream viewer to replace phoenix, you will be an invisible avatar to me (and the major of SL residents that do not use LL Viewers)

[Alisha Matova]

No. All I said is, it is better to model in an optimized way, rather than trying to optimize last.

 

Honestly, just try uploading something. All will be obvious once you start playing with it.

[Madeliefste Oh]

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

 

See Made you lost me there.  So you are saying that a Mesh object that comes into the SL grid by default does not have any physical along its surface?  If not, we need to do more and import more to make a mesh object in SL have physics along its surface?

And this is also where you and Alisha are confirming what Landscape Mesh will likely not be an economically feasible alternative to Sculpties until the PE costs are reduced for mesh.

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The whole point with mesh is... all is flexible.

What you can do with it is flexible, and that it costs in terms of prim count is also flexible. When I make for example a small barrel, it will have prim costs of 1. Now when I decide to make a barrel town, and I make my barrel very large after uploading it to SL, my barrel might end up in largest size with a prim count of 8 (not sure about this number, but something like that).

So that is the first disadvantage you have when you are a creator of large objects. The larger the object, the higher the primcount. So this is pain point one for landscape objects.

Physics is a second thing.

The final prim count of a mesh is calculated by three factors. One of these factors is the weight of the physic shape. (The other two are download weight and server weight). The more complex your physic shape, the higher prim count the final mesh will have.

Now say I make for my barrel a physic shape that increases my primcount by x2. My normal sized barrel mesh will be 2 in stead of 1. Now when I make this barrel really big, the largest size of the mesh will have a prim count of  2 x 8 = 16 prim count.

 

 

[Couldbe Yue]

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

like the majority of SL Residents, I tried and hated and never returned to LL V2 back in 2010.

I am and will be a loyal Phoenix and eventually Firestorm user.

So when you walk by the club in your cool Meshed clothing and hair - until firestorm supports Mesh effectively and is a mainstream viewer to replace phoenix, you will be an invisible avatar to me (and the major of SL residents that do not use LL Viewers)

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well, at least they're not naked.  I don't know how many times I got caught out because I was wearing a sculptie top and nothing underneath when that invisible sculptie at certain distances bug was around.  I learnt but not before the occasional embarassment here and there (it's hard to be taken seriously when you're growling at someone and they're making cracks about your boobies..  sigh)

[Dartagan Shepherd]

The naked truth, mesh has better control over Level Of Depravity.

Edited to say sorry Couldbe, did take you seriously, realized that this comment might be guilty of the very thing you were talking about in not being taken seriously. These things come out faster than I can hit the cancel button sometimes. Foot in mouth.

[Darrius Gothly]

[Couldbe Yue]

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Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

The naked truth, mesh has better control over Level Of Depravity.

Edited to say sorry Couldbe, did take you seriously, realized that this comment might be guilty of the very thing you were talking about in not being taken seriously. These things come out faster than I can hit the cancel button sometimes. Foot in mouth.

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lol I did like the response and I learnt a long time ago that dignity and sl do not go hand in hand, so there's no apology necessary.

and it's a good mesh selling soundbite.  If you can't control your depravity, use mesh!

 

[Ciaran Laval]

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

So when you walk by the club in your cool Meshed clothing and hair - until firestorm supports Mesh effectively and is a mainstream viewer to replace phoenix, you will be an invisible avatar to me (and the major of SL residents that do not use LL Viewers)

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Considering I usually go bald, I'm not a fashionista and rarely go to clubs, that's an extremely unlikely scenario you're dragging up there to try and prove a point

Firestrom has been released with a Mesh beta version because people were asking for it, there's a demand for it and yes it is buggy but the devs released it because of demand.

[Harm Xue]

Wow, these threads move faster than local chat with 10 people talking!

With that said, maybe i should mention i haven't even tested mesh and it's not really up in my list of "to do".

So, i don't know if i fall in the...what was the word..."meshanistas"!

Although i have kept moderatly in the loop to see how it's coming, for the simple fact it is undoubtedly an advance for SL.

Like i mention, i think there are some severe implementation flaws by LL, probably under the assumption mesh wouldn't have so many...meshanistas.

As for how fast changes/improvements are embraced by the SL community. Time will prove who is right, and if this was a solo project, only baby of LL, then maybe it would take a good amount of time, but, with the Phoenix team, working on this for as long as they have in the form of Firestorm, they are a going to be a major boost in all this.

Finally, just like many others, i did try the first v2 base viewers and manged to stay logged in for about 5 minutes, back in 2010. But try these same viewers now, namely the Firestorm, even the beta one, and they they really aren't as hair pulling anymore. Again, another point for mesh implementation.

Just my 2 cents, and, not a meshanista, but definitely not with my head in the sand.

[Medhue Simoni]

This is what I did yesterday. The mountains are 41 PE each, with no optimization at all, other than how I created it. It is only like 600 verticies. I'm sure I could get the PE below 30 with some tweaks and a custom physics box for it. It also has a huge cave inside the mountain. I've done no texture work on the mountain tho. This is just a texture I used for placement until I make my own.

The bridge is only 31 PE, and took alot longer to make than the mountain. I'm quite happy with the results. I tried the bridge a number of different ways, but all as 1 mesh seemed the best way to me. Then the user can resize it however they want. I don't know if I'll sell any of this. These are just some things I wanted for my combat system and sim.

[Toysoldier Thor]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

 

This is what I did yesterday. The mountains are 41 PE each, with no optimization at all, other than how I created it. It is only like 600 verticies. I'm sure I could get the PE below 30 with some tweaks and a custom physics box for it. It also has a huge cave inside the mountain. I've done no texture work on the mountain tho. This is just a texture I used for placement until I make my own.

The bridge is only 31 PE, and took alot longer to make than the mountain. I'm quite happy with the results. I tried the bridge a number of different ways, but all as 1 mesh seemed the best way to me. Then the user can resize it however they want. I don't know if I'll sell any of this. These are just some things I wanted for my combat system and sim.

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OK Medhue, your example is exactly what proves my point.  Your mesh is so rough that I could so easily have created that same ultra course (minimalistic) level of detail with 2 or 3 sculpty maps.  You only made it look good with a good texture that mocks up the missing details in the mesh.  Using textures to add limits of sculpties is what the landscaping groups have been doing for a long time.  What you created with 30 PE is something I could EASILY have created with 3.

This is what I thought you and some of the other Meshanistis are missing in my point.

I dont want to be restricted in creating the current chunking rock blobs you have created and that has been possible in SL since the evolution of Sculpty Maps and that a creator / landscaper needs a well designed texture map to add the landscape foms that the sculpty couldnt possibly add.

I already find that 1024 vertices are not enough with Sculpties.  You have created something with 1/2 the vertices that Sculpty maps offer me now and it would cost me 3000% more in land cost to deploy it.

I want mesh for what it has the possibilities/capabilities to do but what any of my customers will pay through the nose if they want my creations .... I want to create landscapes using 4000 vertices of detail.  AND I want mesh to give me another thing that sculpty doesnt, I want an accurate "walk on the surfacce" physical layer.

When you are creating shapes that are as massive as a shoreline or a mountain, YOU NEED MORE VERTICES.

So... do me a favor.... create what your created using 4000 vertices and tell me the upload cost of it.  And include a relatively basic physics for it.

 

 

[Medhue Simoni]

Toy, no offence, but 4k for terrain is just wrong. I mean, maybe if you are talking with realistic grass also, then I'd give you 4k on that, not for rocks. Go look at any real game in wireframe mode. Even the most realistic game with crazy environments don't use 4k in verts for just a small section of terrain. Go look at the kind of environments using the CryEngine3. I spent a good couple of years modding the original CryEngine.

The measure of a true 3D professional artist is not just how realistic their creations are, but also how beautifully efficient it is. Form and Function. Does a gun fully detailed using 500 prims look awesome and realistic? Hell yeah it does! But can you use the dang thing without lagging every1 out? As 3D artists, the ultimate goal is to create something as realistic as we can while using the least amount of data. That is pure beauty in 3D. Is there a place for 500 prim shoes, guns and landscaping? Yeah, in photos, you sure as hell can't film it at a decent frame rate or use it in a heavy combat area.

Oh, and any blockyness you see in these mountain are there cause i put them there. I want the mountains to be cliffs with carved thin ledges to walk along. When I actually make the texture for it, this will be obvious. And actually, this whole exercise was just to see how low I could get something like the bridge, as I want a whole floating city, 300 metter in the air, that you can climb up to with rope bridges linking the floating land masses.

[Toysoldier Thor]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

Toy, no offence, but 4k for terrain is just wrong. I mean, maybe if you are talking with realistic grass also, then I'd give you 4k on that, not for rocks. Go look at any real game in wireframe mode. Even the most realistic game with crazy environments don't use 4k in verts for just a small section of terrain. Go look at the kind of environments using the CryEngine3. I spent a good couple of years modding the original CryEngine.

The measure of a true 3D professional artist is not just how realistic their creations are, but also how beautifully efficient it is. Form and Function. Does a gun fully detailed using 500 prims look awesome and realistic? Hell yeah it does! But can you use the dang thing without lagging every1 out? As 3D artists, the ultimate goal is to create something as realistic as we can while using the least amount of data. That is pure beauty in 3D. Is there a place for 500 prim shoes, guns and landscaping? Yeah, in photos, you sure as hell can't film it at a decent frame rate or use it in a heavy combat area.

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OK well then based on what you are saying, all you have proven to me is that all the rumours from many in the MESH beta and discussions is that MESH Landscapes are useless!

Your mesh model cost 3000% more than a sculpty and I could have attained exactly what you created with a few more detailed sculpty.  In fact, I can be afforded 10 sculpties (with 1024 vertices each) and create a much more realistic creation then what you did with a mesh that would cost me 30 prim.

If I cant use the power of Mesh efficiently to create a more realistic SL Landscape.... then Mesh is not all the exciting for me.

Your last post has single handedly depressed me on the possibilities of MESH.

MESH IS AWESOME in theory and only if you are going to make a shirt or a pot or small crap.... but dont you dare use Mesh for the awesome details that it could do but is not realistically feasible.

SCULPTY RULES !!! 

[Medhue Simoni]

I beg to differ. The mountain that this will replace, was well over 100 prims by a very good, well known, creator. If you can create anything close to this, with a cave inside for less than 30 prims, with a walk path all the way up to the top, I'd love to see it. Heck, I'd buy it.

And actually, I'm just now playing with larger meshes. Like I said before, every object is unique and needs specific kind of tweaks to lower PE. Very little optimization has gone into either of these items and I feel the counts are reasonable. At least enough for me to work around.

[Toysoldier Thor]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

I beg to differ. The mountain that this will replace, was well over 100 prims by a very good, well known, creator. If you can create anything close to this, with a cave inside for less than 30 prims, with a walk path all the way up to the top, I'd love to see it. Heck, I'd buy it.

And actually, I'm just now playing with larger meshes. Like I said before, every object is unique and needs specific kind of tweaks to lower PE. Very little optimization has gone into either of these items and I feel the counts are reasonable. At least enough for me to work around.

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100 Prims budget of Sculpties??  OMG... that is almost an unlimited budget for me to create that requirement in 100 prims.  See now where you talk about MESH efficiency, there is also SL build efficiency.  Your Well known builder might be artistic but he/she is surely not prim efficient.  Thats downright bloat horrid.

I have built my entire 7 floor art gallery buidling with spiral staircases and patio sky dome and extensions for 90 prim!

I have helped customers of my Sculpty landscapes create exactly what you mentioned for 50 prim or less.

This is where you and I differ - and since my entire SL merchant and creator time is spent creating and selling to landscape terrain customers (including many of SL finest and most well known landscapers) trust me when I tell you that 100 prim mountain and cave in my sculpties is BLOAT.

I guess that is why my landscape packs sell so well

But back to the point.  I do want to thank you medhue for doing tis experiment and crystalizing the efficiencies of MESH vs SCULPTY regarding landscaping.  It entrenched what most have already believed - MESH is not a good land efficient option for landscaping.

Ironically, and this is where I believe LL has missed the boat on Mesh regarding their calculation of PE, you have also shown clearly how bad and unfair the LL PE Policy is.  So you created a 30 PE mesh model mountain.  You needed 600 vertices to do it.  If I wanted to use 30 equivilent Sculpties (at a prim cost to the land of 30), I have available to me 30,720 vertices!

So do you see why so many of us think LL is trying to promote Mesh to reduce lag and then on the other hand they shoot themselves in the foot when I can get 30,120 more vertices to work with on my sim than an equivelent mesh?  Why would I use mesh when I can use 30 sculpties and get 50 times more vertices to work with at the same price!!??

[Medhue Simoni]

First, I can't believe I'm arguing with some1 that has not even made a mesh yet or tried anything. I do things how I do them, for specific reasons. You, obviously have other reasons. If you choose to think you can't make terrain using mesh at 4k in verts, you can choose to believe that. Actually doing it tho, how you want to do it and testing how it works, that is not the same. I'm not going to do your test for you. I have my own plans. This was just me having my plans to test these types of objects and how I would make them, consciously thinking about how the items might be used.

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

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Why would I use mesh when I can use 30 sculpties and get 50 times more vertices to work with at the same price!!??

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Why? Cause my 1 mesh, is going to rezz a hell of alot faster than your 30 sculpts, and impact every person's frame rate that is viewing it by a fraction of what your sculpties will. No1 needs any technical knowledge at all to see the difference between a mesh and a sculpt. All you need to do is rez both and see how long it takes to rez. Plus, you get an as exact physical shape as you want, with no hassle to the customer, dealing with hidden prims to add physics to a sculpty build.

As far as, your claim that 2% can see mesh. That's BS. The first day it went live, I got invited to a beach party. The only mesh I had ready and remotely related to the event was a skateboard. Every1 at the party could see the skateboard cause they all just updated their viewers like normal when LL updated it. Plus, 16k new residents sign up for SL every single day. They use the official client. The only viewers , that any1 uses, that can't see mesh are Pheonix and 1.23. We already know that Phoenix users are way less than half the total users. So, I have no idea how you think 2-10% even remotely sounds reasonable.

I would venture a guess, that probably 80% of all the people walking around with single word names, can see mesh. Every1 else, i old enough to understand why they see boxes and spheres, or know enough where to find out why they are seeing them. Like I said, soon, all viewers will see mesh.

[Toysoldier Thor]

Lets just agree to disagree.  You say Mesh is far less laggy than 30 scultpy but then turn around and think that 4000 vertices is HORRID for mesh when I can get 4 Sculpty maps to = 4000 vertices.  Of course a 600 vertice ugly mesh mountain is going to be less laggy then a very well defined set of sculpties. So if your objective is to remove lag then get rid of sculpties and mesh.  Lets go back to the day of prim cubes.

SL is supposed to be moving forward in advancements in realism of experience.  Then you turn around and promote that we should all ration mesh to vertices less than 1 sculpty could have done already.  Thats advancement Medhue??

As for your claims of viewers.... I cannot believe you used that utter BS stat from LL of 16,000 new signups a day as an arguement.  Most of these are one time logins that never return - almost everyone knows that and even LL's own quarterly metrics prove that out.

Anyway.... enough of this argument.  You are a MESHanista and are blindly in love of Mesh at any cost.  I am a landscape builder that (until your example today) believes some time in the next 6 months Mesh will be an awesome new technology for what I make and sell.  But as the topic of this thread says....

MESH IS NOT THREAT TO SCULPTIES - at least not for my landscape business.

Good luck Medhue and enjoy Meshing and promoting mesh.

[Medhue Simoni]

Actually, prims are laggy too, compared to the same thing in mesh, even a cube.

[Madeliefste Oh]

Though lag is something that influence us all, and we all will profit from less lag on the grid, in my opinion it is not something that has much influence on sales.

You won't sell a pair of shoes by the argument that they are low lag. Or maybe a few to roleplayers, but the average fashionista who is not ashamed to walk around with 10k avatar attachements, doesn't care a bit for low lag, and might not even know that attachments cause lag.

Or when people experience a lot of lag from scripts that their neighbour runs, you hear them for example talk about 'I have bad land'. 'Maybe you are on an old server'. 'I don't know, but I decided to move'. 

My idea is that the majority of residents is very aware of lag, but not of causes of lag. When making a purchase the contribution of an object to lag is not taken in consideration (except by a specific group of the market, mainly role players).

It must look good and it must be as low prim as possible. I'm convinced that 'low prims' sells above 'low lag'.

[Medhue Simoni]

You are most definitely right. This is also why mesh should be prefered. If you want all that detail, like little beads and accessories, Mesh makes those things cost almost nothing. Not just in prim cost, but also in frame rate and streaming costs.

If SL is to compete with other services and games, it needs to run fast, even on a laptop. The old ways, produce lag monsters of every sort. Educating the users is part of this, and the merchants that create the items.

The other day, I got an outfit to record a demo video with. It was a character and added alot to the feel of what I was promoting. The whole outfit looked amazing, but it was all done with sculpties. I lost, on average 5 fps, trying to record wearing them. Eventually, I had to take most of the sculpties off and mod everything to now fit the new shape. Thanks god the creator sells mod/copy.

[Ciaran Laval]

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

Lets just agree to disagree.  You say Mesh is far less laggy than 30 scultpy but then turn around and think that 4000 vertices is HORRID for mesh when I can get 4 Sculpty maps to = 4000 vertices.  Of course a 600 vertice ugly mesh mountain is going to be less laggy then a very well defined set of sculpties. So if your objective is to remove lag then get rid of sculpties and mesh.  Lets go back to the day of prim cubes.

SL is supposed to be moving forward in advancements in realism of experience.  Then you turn around and promote that we should all ration mesh to vertices less than 1 sculpty could have done already.  Thats advancement Medhue??

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LL claim that the old system is not a realistic way of measuring resource usage, Mesh will be measured in a fashion that LL consider more realistic.

If LL were to use the same measure for all content, it would cause chaos, Sculpts and Prims for the time being seem to be considered legacy items and won't be measured the same way.

This does mean that in some cases Mesh won't be a wise choice, for the time being at least.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/FAQ_for_mesh_content_creators