Feature-creep: Houses

[Publik]

I need a project. What comes to mind is something I've always enjoyed: architecture. However, I've been away from SL for a year or so and I don't know what new things exist or have become standard. What kind of things would you require in a house? What kind of things would you like to have in a house? What have you never seen that you think would be cool? Would you like it built from prims, sculpties, or mesh? What prim-cost would be acceptable? In short, what is your dream home, and what can it do?

Edit: Actually, what do people do in their homes aside from **bleep**? That's about the only thing I can find on the market: homes with "hundreds of non-freebie animations" in the bed/couch/kitchen sink.

[Satann]

Haha I must be boring because I usually just -stand- in my skybox, change clothes, take a photo or voice with a friend. But I know what you mean

This is actually a really good topic and I'm interested to see what people say. For ME, it would be a skybox (unless I lived on my own sim, I've had lots of on-land property issues with neighbors) within a 0L-1000L range. It all depends on what it offers and how it looks (I usually can find ones that are beautiful from hunts, promos and sometimes even freebies, though). 

Now that I started typing I'm kind of...lost of what to say. I like modern and urban designs. Loft-ey type looking places. Places with porches and maybe a little yard. Nothing too...slapped together looking? Definitely a combination of prims and sculpties. I don't use my mesh viewer often enough to say 'build a mesh place' yet.

Cheers and Second Life is glad to have you back

[Void Singer]

lower prim counts and higher details through use of mesh are the hot thing right now, the trend before that was instant redecorating options (built in mini rezzors and texture changes which all require custom scripting).... other than that houses are still just houses

[Publik]

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Satann wrote:

Haha I must be boring because I usually just -stand- in my skybox, change clothes, take a photo or voice with a friend. But I know what you mean

This is actually a really good topic and I'm interested to see what people say. For ME, it would be a skybox (unless I lived on my own sim, I've had lots of on-land property issues with neighbors) within a 0L-1000L range. It all depends on what it offers and how it looks (I usually can find ones that are beautiful from hunts, promos and sometimes even freebies, though). 

Now that I started typing I'm kind of...lost of what to say. I like modern and urban designs. Loft-ey type looking places. Places with porches and maybe a little yard. Nothing too...slapped together looking? Definitely a combination of prims and sculpties. I don't use my mesh viewer often enough to say 'build a mesh place' yet.

Cheers and Second Life is glad to have you back

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So as a hangout?

In which case, would walls that can display media be interesting? IE sitting on the porch with a buddy and you go "Oh, did you see that ____ youtube video? The one with the cats?" and you tap the nearest wall and go to youTube with them?

What about being able to easily move furniture around, IE two guests? Rez two chairs where you need them by touching the floor at a position. Three? Same deal.

As for the aesthetics and the topic of modern architecture, are we talking Frank Lloyd Wright or some of the boxy looking buildings? I've got a little pool-house I started a few minutes ago that's trying to move away from all the 90 degree angles SL has going on. If I can get sketchup to behave, it might turn out pretty good

Is privacy a concern? Security?

As for prim/mesh/sculptie, I really hate sculpties on a fundamental level. Sure, the concept is cool, but it would have made more sense to just implement mesh support. It doesn't help that I've never found a way to get them to turn out right I'd rather play with mesh, since that's new and I can make it do what I want.

My ultimate aim is for a house that's intuitive (yeah, yeah, buzzwords) and doesn't need stupid menus or commands.

[Publik]

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Void Singer wrote:

lower prim counts and higher details through use of mesh are the hot thing right now, the trend before that was instant redecorating options (built in mini rezzors and texture changes which all require custom scripting).... other than that houses are still just houses

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Oh, scripting and texturing are fine. Over rezzing an entire scene, would it be better to have one set scene or have different parts you can rez in place separately?

[Void Singer]

best one I saw did scenes using individual pieces configured by notecard so that users could modify or create their own scenes. for best effect, additional copiable drop in scripts for +mod furniture so they could be automatically removed on scene change.

[Freecilla Kuhn]

As far a prims, sculpties or mesh goes, use the one that serves the purpose, don't add a sculpty or a mesh just to have it there unless it's needed. I find most people need a low prim house and they want spacious areas so they can add their own furniture while still not having it cramped so their friends can still move around easily. Something other than a box is always nice too.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Mesh isn't that hot in houses yet in my opinion, and I've been keeping a close eye on this.  The viewer I use tells me what  viewers people are running and I've been watching while out and about.  A large percentage of people don't even run mesh viewers so wouldn't be interested in mesh homes.  I've also been asking people who do run them and most  either are not interested in a mesh home or are taking a wait and see  approach, not running out and buying them. I personally live in a very popular large sailing estate with more than 100 Sims and haven't seen a mesh house yet.    I admit, this isn't anywhere near a scientific poll, but I have been doing a lot of observing and asking a lot of people.  This may change in time, but I think it will be a while yet.

You may want to take a look at the marketplace and sort the houses there by 'best selling' to see what is hot on there and the features they offer.  There are fewer than 10 Mesh houses there now and they aren't near the best seller level yet.  You may also want to go to the most popular shops that sell homes in world  and see what features they are offering. It looks to me that a combination of regular and sculpted primps are the most popular homes.

The land market is depressed now.  With the RL economy the way it is many people just don't have the money anymore to pay tiers, particularly for larger lots.  A lot of estates that rent land out are closing down because they can't find tenants.  People are living on smaller lots, downsizing or just don't have a home. 

If you are looking to sell, I'd suggest you consider smaller homes that are relatively inexpensive, not luxury mansions.  If you just want to build for your own enjoyment and not looking to sell a lot or have a big return, then the sky is the limit.  There are still people around that can afford a homestead, a quarter sim or better and want the luxury lifestyle.  They are just fewer and farther in between.

 

[Qwalyphi Korpov]

The resident who provided the previous content, if any, has replaced it with this generic statement.

[Coby Foden]

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Publik wrote:

In short, what is your dream home, and what can it do?

Edit: Actually, what do people do in their homes aside from **bleep**? That's about the only thing I can find on the market: homes with "hundreds of non-freebie animations" in the bed/couch/kitchen sink.

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If I was to buy a house now, the most important thing would be that it is in proper scale 1:1. Not oversized 1.25 times larger, nor even 1.5 larger. Those oversized are for the giant avies. As my avatar is close to true RL height I would not want oversized house to consume most of the limited land area. I would like to have lots free space around the house too.

Preferably the house should be built with prims and mesh, no sculpties. Lots of dimmable windows. No kitchen (we don't get hungry in SL), no toilets (we don't need to pee). Bedroom, hmmm... I really see no use for it. Avies don't sleep and pixel *bleep* does not interest me.:smileytongue: Unfurnished house as I would like to buy the furniture separately. Open spacious balconies would be nice. The appearance of the house should be suitable for some tropical island scenery. No need for any animations nor poseballs, one can buy what one might need separately. Just a good looking empty house what can be decorated to ones liking.

[garey Solo]

What is this mesh everyone  talking about? Whats the difference between mesh & sculpty? I've seen some great houses in the marketplace selling for less than 500L . I dont know why a creator would go to the time and trouble to make such an item and then sell it for a pittance.

[Sy Beck]

Has anybody built a large mesh house yet?  I've asked around in a few building groups, but nobody knows of one.  If you know of one can you PM me or IM me inworld with either SLurls or LMs.

[Void Singer]

as you said, people are waiting to see what comes out... there aren't many doing mesh for houses, so the market is ripe for it...

while viewer tags are helpful, they don't give a full picture... there are several TPVs on market with mesh support now and one I know doesn't come up in those tags (cool). there a few off directory ones that also support advertising as any viewer of choice or even changing them on the fly.

[Pamela Galli]

When Phoenix is mesh enabled, you will see a lot more mesh. I am not going to put out any mesh things until then because I don't want 80% of my customers to see a blob.

[Publik]

I *started* one, but ran into general problems with mesh. I think the correct design decision is to make small parts out of mesh, not an entire home. Then take the small parts and use them as prims. That way, you can have extremely simple and low-cost geometry that isn't some prefab shape. I'll post le pix after class.

[Void Singer]

yes, whole buildings of mesh probably aren't workable right now, but individual elements can be done to great effect adding a whole new level of detail and making some previous design possibilities much more workable.

[Emma Krokus]

Stunning house!

 

Emma:) 

[Publik]

I might actually do that Makes them sound affordable.

[Publik]

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Coby Foden wrote:

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Publik wrote:

In short, what is your dream home, and what can it do?

Edit: Actually, what do people do in their homes aside from **bleep**? That's about the only thing I can find on the market: homes with "hundreds of non-freebie animations" in the bed/couch/kitchen sink.

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If I was to buy a house now, the most important thing would be that it is in proper scale 1:1. Not oversized 1.25 times larger, nor even 1.5 larger. Those oversized are for the giant avies. As my avatar is close to true RL height I would not want oversized house to consume most of the limited land area. I would like to have lots free space around the house too.

Preferably the house should be built with prims and mesh, no sculpties. Lots of dimmable windows. No kitchen (we don't get hungry in SL), no toilets (we don't need to pee). Bedroom, hmmm... I really see no use for it. Avies don't sleep and pixel *bleep* does not interest me.:smileytongue: Unfurnished house as I would like to buy the furniture separately. Open spacious balconies would be nice. The appearance of the house should be suitable for some tropical island scenery. No need for any animations nor poseballs, one can buy what one might need separately. Just a good looking empty house what can be decorated to ones liking.

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With the scale, I agree that to-scale housing looks better, but then you have to deal with the camera being stuck in the ceiling. In your case, the ideal house would not be pre-furnished, but if the furniture included was what you were thinking of getting anyways would it be a plus? And if you don't want it to be furnished, why? Is it that it would look like every other copy of the house, or that the features are not there?

Open and airy or closed and concrete, and would you use it as a hang-out or?

[Publik]

Prim vs Mesh

Here's a little example Mesh trounces prims, in this case a mesh roof had 1/8th the land impact as a prim version, not to mention a far superior performance in the other metrics.

[Publik]

Quick example of a probably soon-to-be-dropped style, done in mesh. Has an impact of something like 26, though it's made in one batch instead of separate parts like I should have done. I also didn't import it right and didn't do physics right, so there are invisible prims for collision. Optimized, it might be 1/2 - 1/4 the impact.

[Kylie Jaxxon]

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Qwalyphi Korpov wrote:

a tiny suggestion:  don't call your business 'Publik Housing'

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Haha....I like it!!!  :matte-motes-silly:

[Publik]

Which is more appealing: a skybox or a ground-level home?

Or something like this?

[Coby Foden]

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Publik wrote:

With the scale, I agree that to-scale housing looks better, but then you have to deal with the camera being stuck in the ceiling. In your case, the ideal house would not be pre-furnished, but if the furniture included was what you were thinking of getting anyways would it be a plus? And if you don't want it to be furnished, why? Is it that it would look like every other copy of the house, or that the features are not there?

Open and airy or closed and concrete, and would you use it as a hang-out or?

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[Gripe on] The camera sure stucks to the cieling in low rooms with the ridiculous default "looking world from top of a tree" camera location. It's not natural to view the world like that. I wonder what was the 'bright' idea for that default location! It even feeds the silly trend to make avatars excessively tall. For short RL sized avies the default location is even worse. :matte-motes-agape: [End of gripe] 

There is an easy fix in debug settings which allows to set the camera much lower. And the camera will not stuck to the ceiling in low rooms anymore.

The debug setting what I adjust is "CameraOffsetRearView".

X = camera distance behind the avatar, Y = camera offset to the side from avatar, Z = camera height

 

The default settings are: X = -3.000 / Y = 0.000 / Z = 0.750

I set it to: X = -3.700 / Y = 0.000 / Z = 0.100

This lower camera location really makes a big difference how the world and avatars look. Much more natural perspective than with the default settings. :smileyhappy:

 

About the furnishing: The main reason why I would like to buy furnishing separately is that then I can furnish the house individually, just with the things what I like. I guess that in a pre-furnished house there always would be some things what I might perhaps not like. And individuality is the thing I'm after.

About the house itself: Open, airy and wooden looks is what I like. A nice place to hang-out.

[Aylin Moonshadow]

I know this may sound silly but I would like to see outlets on the walls.  The batteries in my vibrator died months ago and I have yet been able to find a place to plug them in to recharge them.  Very frustrating.

I bought some lamps on the market place that have cords attached but again no place to plug them in.  This living by candle light is beginning to ruin my eyes.