Mesh Clothing Resizer project hits its funding goal

[Innula Zenovka]

Just read over at SLU that the Mesh Cothing Parametric Deformer Project  (adjust mesh clothes to fit your shape, rather than adjust your shape to fit them) has hit its funding target, so let's see what Qarl makes!   

[Jacki Silverfall]

Yay! This is wonderful news!

[Ceka Cianci]

oh i can't wait to see what they post up as the progress..=)

[Sassy Romano]

It's good news for LL.  Downgrade the JIRA to "one day maybe" and then watch as their customers pay a third party to develop the solution that they can then import for free.

I just hope it doesn't set a precedent that LL will do this for other necessary features.

[Maelstrom Janus]

I argued that mesh would remove the onus from Lindens to provide building tools and cause a stagnation of the inworld building system... the entire idea of mesh was introduced to placate a group of elitist technophiles. Ive seen very few mesh items and discovered that clothing made from mesh is useless because it cannot be made to fit an avatar...

We heard the 'mesh heads' going on about how wonderful it was...just the same as some while back we heard lindens rave about moving avvy's beween virtual worlds another marvel which mysteriously vanished - presumably because lindens realised that being able to take your content from sl to other worlds might actual encourage people to move....

Everyone raving about meshes should have put their energy in getting lindens into improving and upgrading the inworld building system... although that would have improved building for the hoi paloy  rather than giving more to a technical elite....

 

 

[Raster Teazle]

I think he should offer it to 3rd party viewers only unless LL pays him to add it to the official viewer.

[Maelstrom Janus]

...And Im sure that cost would soon be passed on to sl users.... No thanks !!

[Maxwell Graf]

I thought that I would reply to your comments, as it seems that you may be a bit confused about mesh, its use, its implications on SL and the people that use it, though I can only offer my opinion on the topic and may be incorrect. I will try to make as few assumptions as possible in doing so.

Firsty, your comment that mesh was introduced to placate a group of elitist technophiles; While this may seem an adequate description from the outset, of both the reason behind mesh introduction and those who wanted to use it, let us consider a couple of facts:

• The same argument was said re. the introduction of sculpties, which is now a popular building tool in SL, as opposed to being limited in use by a specific, isolated group of individuals with the desire to keep the technology to themselves. It is now common, and from the outset was proliferated by a large number of tools and tutorials and in world classes to help people adopt and use it.

• Considering that previous building tools (i.e.- primitives and sculpted primitives) are proprietary to Second Life, while the rest of the world outside of SL has used polygon mesh modelling techiques since about 1970, one would be forced to conclude that an element of elitism is being established not by mesh creators but by those relying on the proprietary building methods which remain isolated within Second Life, not the other way around. The numbers would argue against your statement.

• Granted, there is a certain amount of technical advancement one has to surmount in order to use mesh building methods, in many ways they are easier to work with than sculpted prims, since the limitations and specific aspects of working with sculpted prims limit what you are capable of doing to them and how you can create with them; Having a limited and fixed geometry and texture placement, sculpted prims are largely inefficient as a building method, since any linkset containing more than one of them still forces the rendering and processing of all the goemetry and texturing inside the prims which you never see. The largest obstacles in using polygon modelling are learning the interface of the software you choose and learning the best way to optimize the geometry and texturing for SL, both aspects which can be assisted by the huge amount of tutorials online and user base which has existed for years outside of SL. In this regard, its easier to learn than sculpted primitives ever was. Its just different, so it can be easy to assume that it is much harder. The "hoi paloy" segment of the outside-SL population using mesh polygon modelling is many times larger than the "elite" mesh creators in SL.

• Unfortunately, the problems associated with mesh in the early stage it's now in here have prevented a lot of people from using it. Mesh clothing doesnt fit you, something that we have been trying to address for months, and which finally holds promise for change with the recent funding to create a fix for it. Client stability has been difficult, bugs are rampant and theres a lot of issues with computers being able to handle it, which has been compounded by the fact that downloading a client cabable of viewing mesh is an option for the user, verses the forced downloads we all had to take when sculpted prims were introduced; back then, when you logged in, it downloaded for you. Boom - we could all see sculpted prims. Not so with mesh, and until it is made better and easier to use, it wont be adopted by most people. This is a primary difference, and one which forces mesh to be better if it is going to survive as a building method here.

In conclusion, please consider that mesh has a way to go yet but is what the rest of the world outside SL uses in order to create 3D content. It is not designed for an elite segment of the population, its designed to open up creation of content in ways which have already been established as standard outside of SL so more people can create with it as an OPTION. Prims arent going away, sculpted prims arent going away. It is merely another tool in the toolbox. While a certain segment of the population will excel in the use of them and as a result may see more sales, that is a choice that the consumer will make, and the result of the effort of the creator to adapt and embrace the new tool. Thats not elitism, thats capitalism and it exists in SL because competetive markets are how this works. Because someone makes the effort to learn a new tool thats more common outside of SL than within it doesnt make them an elitist, it makes them a competetive businessperson, and if they sell a few more items than someone who doesnt make mesh, then it is a reward for the extra effort they have put forth, and may actually pay back some of that money they spent on studio max or maya in order to do it, though thats certainly not a requirement either, blender is free and very capable.

Does it make someone an elitist because they want additional or new methods to create with, or does it make someone an elistist if they prefer to use only a proprietary building method which exists only within SL? Does that elitism extend only to the difficulty of the tool itself or does the proportion of those using it define the status? I think trying to place a label on either segment of the population is wrong. There is room for both, especially when the tools used are optional.

[Raster Teazle]

Ah, Hello!  All costs are already passed on to SL users.  That's kinda how a business is run.

[Medhue Simoni]

I would only like to add, that mesh is efficient, and lag reducing, compared to any other way to build. Not just a little bit too. In many cases, it is massively more efficient to render.

[Mikki Miles]

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Raster Teazle wrote:

Ah, Hello!  All costs are already passed on to SL users.  That's kinda how a business is run.

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that's right. and your point is...?

 

 

[Aveline Stein]

I very strongly doubt that the people that donated to this project will raise their inworld prices on items to cover what they have spend. Mesh clothing being enjoyable to use on the grid will create sums of turnover that dwarf the project cost.

[Innula Zenovka]

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Raster Teazle wrote:

I think he should offer it to 3rd party viewers only unless LL pays him to add it to the official viewer.

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Since the funds were collected on the basis that 

The code and any resulting user client would be available under the snowstorm open source codebase for Second Life to anyone who wished to use it. Generally, this code is used for the development of third party viewers. When completed, this code would be public domain, available to those residents of second life who are either software developers, creators or consumers of mesh clothing and attachments. It is our hope that the developers of Second Life will adopt this code to include it into the official client releases as well.

I think that would constitute fraud, wouldn't it?

[Raster Teazle]

@Mikki Miles

That was directied at Maelstrom Janus.  (Tip: Read above post where it says "Reply to")

[hibit Spad]

I want to thank everyone the organized and contributed.

 

 

[Raster Teazle]

Yeah

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Innula Zenovka wrote:

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Raster Teazle wrote:

I think he should offer it to 3rd party viewers only unless LL pays him to add it to the official viewer.

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Since the funds were collected

on the basis that 

The code and any resulting user client would be available under the snowstorm open source codebase for Second Life to anyone who wished to use it. Generally, this code is used for the development of third party viewers. When completed, this code would be public domain, available to those residents of second life who are either software developers, creators or consumers of mesh clothing and attachments. It is our hope that the developers of Second Life will adopt this code to include it into the official client releases as well.

I think that would constitute fraud, wouldn't it?

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Yeah, your right.  It just bothers me that LL cut ties with such a talented person who ironicly is going to be working on the very thing that they might have had him work on already had he still been on LL payroll.  A person that gave us Sculpties and was already involved in the mesh project before being pushed out the door.

[Ashasekayi Ra]

Thanks for the post, Max. Well written.

It is the ultimate cliche in SL for someone to cry "elitism" as soon as any new technology enters SL. And really, there is a certain irony in even calling mesh "new technology" since it has been the standard in 3D for ages. Yet, there needs to be a conspiracy to bring a standard technology into SL? Seriously?

But anyway, I'm glad this community effort was successful. I can't wait to see what Qarl comes up with as a solution.

[Maelstrom Janus]

Mesh has been introduced at the expense of improvement to the inworld building system and so far I see its impact on sl has minimal....you can blah on about it as much as you like it was introduced to satisfy the demands of a bunch of techs...try looking round and listening to your group chat...

[Maelstrom Janus]

The only good thing to come out of getting ready for mesh was 64 m prims...of course I wish lindens had put the effort into giving us 100 m prims and 99% hollowing far more useful to my builds than something I cant even work on inworld... if the idea is to get folk inworld then having them use a system of software that can't be used inworld to create seems a bit of a retrograde step.... if lindens want to provide us with some inworld software to create meshe objects plus a decent tutorial instead of a patronising warning about copyright infringement great...

 

In the menatime do the majority of sl users a favour and get working on the existing inworld building system  !!

[Sassy Romano]

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Maelstrom Janus wrote:

Mesh has been introduced at the expense of improvement to the inworld building system and so far I see its impact on sl has minimal....you can blah on about it as much as you like it was introduced to satisfy the demands of a bunch of techs...try looking round and listening to your group chat...

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While you're asking for the same inworld tools to build with, ask for upgraded tools to texture sculpties with, tools to edit sound wave files, tools to create inworld clothes to the current common quality standards, tools to create animations with.

You see, it's not the beginning anymore.  I accept that things move on, i've had to learn new tools, none of this was in my skill set before coming here (well maybe a couple of fringe bits) but all of the above require, yes REQUIRE external content creation tools in order to provide a quality result.

Yes, if you really want to create clothes in SL using the built in tools you can but do you think they'll match up to well textured creations combining excellent Photoshop/Gimp work and prim parts?

Can the inworld animator tools compare with externally created motion capture animations?  I don't see many animation merchants who specialise in dances selling with great success against the main mocap vendors.

Sound editing?  NONE.  End of story but LL have given us nothing but nobody has complained.

Sculptie texturing, how do you do that with specular ligthing, ambient occlussion and other texture effects inworld?

Time to move on and learn the tools like everyone else i'm afraid.  There will be inworld mesh tools available from other creators but mesh is going forwards, choice is either to catch the bus or stay behind.

[Knutz Scorpio]

OK, this is my practical experience with mesh.  Shopping around for a really nice car and pretty much all of them I saw were sculpty, and up close most of these sculpty cars looked down right awful, and add to that having to wait in the show room for all those sculpties to rez.  I did find some sculpty cars that were really well done, but zoom in close and it took no time to find at least one really bad defect.  Then I went to a place that had some cars done in mesh sitting among their regular sculpty cars, the mesh cars were rezzed almost immediately while the rest was still sculpty globs slowly forming, and on the mesh cars I couldn't find any of the ugly distortions that are so easy to find on sculpties.

Having to use an out-world app to create mesh?  Have to do that with sculpties anyways, and without the limitations of sculpties mesh may be easier.  And for a mesh capable viewer I'm using Firestorm and have no problems with it, and there are several other viewers available that can view mesh.

[Siddean Munro]

That's my experience with mesh as well.  My mesh stuff is done and rezzed and finished while my sculptie stuff is still weird textured blobs.. for a good 15-20 seconds or more while they all load.  

As for using out-of-world programs to create mesh - well you mentioned sculpties, and we also use out-of-world programs to create sounds, animations, textures, poses, etc etc.  Some scripters use out of world editors to write LSL and then just copy/paste it into a new script.  I use notepad or wordpad to write notecards because SL is notoriously crashy and the last thing I want to do is lose my product manual.  So yea, using an out-of-world solution to create an inworld product is a complete non-issue and I don't really know why people keep bringing it up.

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

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Siddean Munro wrote:     So yea, using an out-of-world solution to create an inworld product is a complete non-issue and I don't really know why people keep bringing it up.

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Perhaps they think the Linden programmers will do a better job on in-world mesh tools than (Blender contributors, Autodesk, Google, Smith Micro)?  No, that's not likely, people who specialize in that type of software tend to have a better grasp of how it works and make less errors.  Their development teams are also lots larger.

Perhaps they think the Linden programmers can come up with the One True User Interface that everyone will love? Umm, No, see Viewer 2.  Outside software gives you choice of UI.

Perhaps they think it's better to work in an all-in-one tool?  If it were, professionals would do that.  Instead, they use multiple specialized tools for each task.

Perhaps they think it is ease of learning? Sure, just point me to the Viewer manual.  What, you say there isn't one?

Perhaps they think it's immediate results? Um, I keep 3ds Max and SL viewer both open, and can upload to Aditi and see my changes in under a minute.

[Siddean Munro]

Plus, if LL do it, they are taking the opportunity for some enterprising coder to write a tool that converts prims into meshes and uploads them, like the inworld sculpty building tools that convert prims to sculpties and export RGB maps for the user to upload.  You know someone's gonna eventually make something like that

[Medhue Simoni]

Been done already. I forget who tho, but I went to the demonstration.