Problem creating oblong sculpties

Jasmin Helstein · December 7, 2011

Hello,

I do want to create oblong sculpties. I am using Wings3d and it think that works great however ...
I can create the sculpties themselves in Wings but the program doesn't have the option of exporting oblong bitmaps.
So the idea was to create the sculpties in Wings and export them, import in Blender and create the bitmaps using that.

If i try to create a bitmap in Blender however i receive an error message at best. I've installed and de-installed different versions of Blender, Python and Primstar about a dozen times now and seem unable to get it working and i am so so sick and tired of trying ...

So now the question; Does anyone know another program that lets me import sculpts and create oblong bitmaps ?
Exporting just seems like the easiest way of doing it. I'm not tied to Wings though for the creation of sculpts but i do like the ease of use and the versatility.

thanks

Carbon Philter · December 7, 2011

Hi Jasmin.

Can you say what the problem is with Blender - what format have you exported your model from Wings? Import into Blender with the Primstar/JASS plug-in works with tga, obj, or dae format files and should load up with no difficulty.

Generally however, you start with an oblong sculpt mesh and that's what generates the oblong sculpt map. I don't know Wings so I'm not sure you can create a regular sculpt mesh in that programme then expect to change it to an oblong version by importing to Blender.

Sorry I can't help further other than suggest you persevere and learn to do it all within Blender or one of the other major graphic apps. It gets easier with time. .

Jasmin Helstein · December 7, 2011

I can create oblong sculpt meshes in Wings but i can't create the bitmaps, the program just doesn't know how to handle that. If i create a bitmap in Wings then it will be a square one even with an oblong sculpt mesh.

If i import to Blender i use .obj files and this goes well but when i try to create the bitmap i receive an errormessage.
"Python scripterror: check console" is what it says.This goes for all bitmaps btw. not just the long ones. And i've run into this time after time and i'm just unable to fix it so now i'm looking for another program to do it with.

wrable Amat · December 7, 2011

try sculpty painter,it is free and easy to use.it will let you save it in sculpted or object file if you wanted to take to blender to smooth or define more.

Jasmin Helstein · December 7, 2011

Sculpty painter is easy to use allright but i doubt it allows me to create oblong sculptsies and i do want to use those because i think they are great for making windows, fences, loggs, planks etc.

Josh Susanto · December 7, 2011

I'm still using sculptypaint.

Since it puts out 128x128, that's what I load to SL.

That way, if I later want to shift resolution to one axis or the other, I can squish the map on one side.

128x128 rezzes at 32x32

Squishing to 64 on either or both sides also results in 32x32 rez.

Beyond that:

Squishing one side to 32 causes that dimension to rez at 16 and the other dimension to rez at 64.

Squish to 16 causes rez at 8x128, assuming that I also stretch the 128 side to 256.

Squish to 8 or below is a waste in my case because the map is at 128x128 to begin with.

But if you can produce a map at 256x256, you should be able to squish to 8x512 and produce a rez at 4x256.

I can't guarantee your results, though.

Chosen Few · December 7, 2011

Jasmin Helstein wrote:

i do want to use those because i think they are great for making windows, fences, loggs, planks etc.

Just so you know, you can make those kinds of items far more easily, and more efficiently, with mesh than with sculpties. With very few exceptions for specific use cases, sculpties are all but obsolete at this point.

Jasmin Helstein · December 7, 2011

Chosen Few wrote:

Jasmin Helstein wrote:

i do want to use those because i think they are great for making windows, fences, loggs, planks etc.

Just so you know, you can make those kinds of items far more easily, and more efficiently, with mesh than with sculpties. With very few exceptions for specific use cases, sculpties are all but obsolete at this point.

Certainly not as long as i don't have Blender up and running witch was the reason to post here in the first place.

Besides mesh maybe hot among builders, i'm not sure in SL most people have even heard about it yet and i believe older viewers will still be around for a long time. That's someting to think about when you want to sell things.

but apart from that ...

I've seen what i can do with oblongs and using them to make those items seemed an easy way of doing it. Why is it so much easier and more efficient to use mesh for that ?

Josh Susanto · December 8, 2011

>Just so you know, you can make those kinds of items far more easily, and more efficiently, with mesh than with sculpties.

They're easier to make with mesh by anyone who can actually make mesh (not all of us), and they're more efficient as mesh for users who can actually see mesh (also not all of us).

Sculpts may be obsolete as you say. But that hardly explains why I've been steadily selling more of them every week since mesh was deployed.

I had initially decided to put off getting into mesh until the hype had died down. But now that I've seen mesh and considered it more thoroughly, I've decided that, rather than continue to deal with the broadly ignored shortcomings of mesh, I'll just wait until mesh, itself, is made obsolete by something else.

Chosen Few · December 8, 2011

Jasmin Helstein wrote:

Certainly not as long as i don't have Blender up and running witch was the reason to post here in the first place.

From your original post, it sounded to me like you have Blender running just fine, but you just haven't learned to use it yet. But whether it's working or not, you seem to be missing the point. You're speaking as if Blender is your only option, when in fact, it's just one among hundreds. If you like Blender, great; use it. If you don't, then use something else. You can keep right on using Wings*, if that's what you prefer.

The whole point of mesh is that it's how the whole of the 3D modeling universe works outside of SL. So, SL is now finally compatible with the rest of civilization. With the exception of a relative few highly specialized apps meant for very targeted purposes, every 3D modeling program on Earth creates mesh models. So, take your pick.

*Since Wings itself has no COLLADA export option, you'll just need to use an external converter, if Wings is to remain your modeling app of choice. Autodesk's free FBX converter is one option, which will do it in two easy steps: OBJ to FBX, then FBX to DAE. Another free option is MeshLab, which will do it in one step. I haven't used MeshLab first hand, so I can't speak intelligently on how well it works, but I'd be surprised if there's any problem with it. There are countless other options as well.

Jasmin Helstein wrote:

Besides mesh maybe hot among builders, i'm not sure in SL most people have even heard about it yet and i believe older viewers will still be around for a long time. That's someting to think about when you want to sell things.

I do understand why some people have that limited perception of the situation, but realistically, it's only a matter of time before the uninformed masses catch up to the reality on the ground. People said the same thing about sculpties when they first hit the grid. But it didn't take long before they became commonplace.

The difference with mesh is it's ALREADY commonplace, literally everywhere except SL. Just because a few decidedly ignorant stragglers might be content to just bury their heads in the sand for their own nonsensical reasons doesn't mean you should, too. I simply can't stress enough how important it is to embrace the simple fact that mesh modeling is THE most fundamentally basic element in the whole of 3D content creation. I highly recommend you learn to use it, just like the other 99.99999% of the 3D modeling population of this planet already does.

As for selling things, has it occurred to you that SL is small potatoes compared to the broader 3D model market at large? Any mesh model you make for SL will also be usable in almost every other 3D platform there is. You can sell the same model in a thousand different places, and make a thousand times as much real money from it. With that in mind, I don't know why anyone would deliberately choose to continue making things that can only be used on one platform.

Sculpties were a really clever kluge, back when SL didn't yet have the capability to do any different. But now that SL is in line with everything else, it's awfully hard to defend them any longer. It's time to acknowledge them for what they are.

Jasmin Helstein wrote:

I've seen what i can do with oblongs and using them to make those items seemed an easy way of doing it.

Well, there's easy and there's easy. Compared to a lot of things in life, yes, making sculpties is easy. Compared to arbitrary mesh modeling, however, sculpty modeling can only be described as pretty darn hard.

Before we go any further, you do realize that sculpties themselves are meshes, right? They're just meshes with a very extreme set of restrictions on them. Those restrictions make using them relatively time consuming, and fairly claustrophobic, in comparison with how you can operate when you don't have those restrictions narrowing your path.

Sculpties, as you know, are set up like origami. Every sculpty is ultimately a flat rectangle, which then has to be bent, folded, and twisted in 3D space in order to take on the apparent shape of a three-dimensional object. This means that even for the very simplest of 3D shapes, the modeling process is orders of magnitude more complicated than it would otherwise be if the restrictions were not in place.

As someone who's got at least as much experience and expertise with sculpties as anyone in the world, and whose ability to create highly realistic looking models with them at speed is as top-of-the-scale as it gets (this is what I do for a living, after all, and I've been using sculpties since literally the first day they hit the beta grid), I can 100% promise you, there's not a single sculpty model I've ever made, or seen made by anyone else, that would not have been done much faster, and much more easily, had it been an arbitrary mesh model instead of a sculpty model.

Now, don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to say sculpties are inherently bad. They were arguably the best thing that ever happened to SL, at the time they were conceived. But they are inherently inefficient, and the time in which they were the only game in town has passed. Had SL had proper mesh support right from the start, no one in their right mind would ever have considered utilizing anything so kluge as sculpties.

Jasmin Helstein wrote:

Why is it so much easier and more efficient to use mesh for that ?

The same reasons it's so much easier and more efficient to use mesh for anything at all.

If you want to make a mesh window, it can just BE a window, right from the start. You don't have to do what amounts to folding up a balloon animal into the shape of a window. If you want to make a picket fence, it can just BE a picket fence. You don't have to "loaf-pinch" a square tube into a bunch of sections, and fold it up in all kinds of crazy ways to make it look like it's got pickets. You also can make that fence as long as you want, with any amount of pickets you want, all in the same object, rather than having to string together a bunch of copies of the limited sculpty model over and over and over again to form the length. And you don't ever have to worry about whether or not it's going to collapsing into an unintelligible mess when it's viewed from a distance.

Beyond that, you have full control over how many polygons are in the model, how they're arranged, and how the whole thing is UV-mapped. That translates to tremendous savings in rendering overhead, which in turn translates to a whole lot less lag.

And you can create all of it in a fraction of the time, and with a fraction of the effort, that it would take you to make the sculpty equivalent.

If I really wanted to dive into it, I could spend days and days writing out all the reasons why arbitrary mesh modeling is at least a thousand times easier, faster, more powerful, more efficient, and more FUN than sculpty modeling. But until you've actually learned to do both, I'm afraid you won't really understand.

And therein lies the danger. It is kind of a big subject. Even though it's a lot easier to work without the sculpty restrictions holding you back, there is a lot to learn in order to get there, and it can be tempting to cling to what you already know. That's just human nature. Change of any kind is somewhat uncomfortable for our species, so we tend to resist it, for good or ill.

But I can promise you this. Once you've taken the plunge, and you have become a competent mesh modeler, you will look back on this conversation and wonder how you ever could have imagined that sculpties were the ticket.

Chosen Few · December 8, 2011

Josh Susanto wrote:

They're easier to make with mesh by anyone who can actually make mesh (not all of us), and they're more efficient as mesh for users who can actually see mesh (also not all of us).

There's a simple remedy for that, Josh, as I'm sure you know. It's spelled L-E-A-R-N. There's plenty of information out there already, and if you have trouble understanding any of it, you can always ask for help. There are lots of good teachers here on the forums and elsewhere who would be more than happy to help guide you.

I know from previous posts you said you'd had some trouble trying to get Blender to run on your computer. I can promise you that's not because your machine isn't up to the task. If it can run SL, it can run Blender. The requirements for Blender are far, far lighter than the requirements for SL.

My guess is you just don't have the proper runtime elements installed. If so, this would also go a long way toward explaining why you said you couldn't get GIMP to work either, since it utilizes a lot of those same runtimes.

In any case, as I just said to Jasmin, Blender is hardly your only option. You're free to use almost any 3D modeling program you like. Mesh modeling is mesh modeling is mesh modeling.

Josh Susanto wrote:

Sculpts may be obsolete as you say. But that hardly explains why I've been steadily selling more of them every week since mesh was deployed.

The amount you do or do not sell is not at all relevant to the state of the technology. You make nice looking items, so people buy them. It's that simple.

They'd be just as nice looking if they were arbitrary mesh models. In fact, they could be far better looking, since you'd have so much more freedom to shape them in ways that sculpties just can't be shaped. Plus, they could be far less lag-inducing, to boot. It's a total win-win. There's absolutely nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

In any case, sculpties aren't going away, so there's no reason for people not to buy them. My point is simply that most anything that can be made as a sculpty can be made more easily and more efficiently as an arbitrary mesh.

As for in-world consumers, they will in time begin to discover that (well made) mesh models not only look better than sculpty models, but also have lower land impacts in most cases, and cause less lag in nearly all cases. The market demand will inevitably shift to favor mesh purchases at that point, and sculpty sales won't be as strong by comparison. We're not even close to there yet, of course, but the day will come. It's the inevitable consequence of the facts.

Josh Susanto wrote:

I had initially decided to put off getting into mesh until the hype had died down. But now that I've seen mesh and considered it more thoroughly, I've decided that, rather than continue to deal with the broadly ignored shortcomings of mesh, I'll just wait until mesh, itself, is made obsolete by something else.

Josh, I'm going to put this as gently as I can. Of all the points over which you and I have ever crossed swords, this one takes the cake by miles, in terms of its illogic, and total apparent disregard for fundamental facts. If you truly plan on waiting for mesh to be made obsolete by something else, I hope you have a good supply of longevity pills, because you're going to be waiting for centuries.

Waiting for mesh to be obsolete in 3D modeling is like waiting for notes to be obsolete in music or waiting for colors to be obsolete in pictures. Yes, it's that fundamental. Literally every 3D object you can see on your screen is a mesh model, without exception. This includes every asset in every video game you've ever played or ever will play, every item in every CGI movie you've ever watched or ever will watch, and everything in SL.

Sculpties are merely meshes that have a certain set of restrictions imposed on them. Prims are meshes programmed to shape themselves in response to set of parameters. Ditto for the avatar. The ground is a mesh. Trees and plants are meshes. The only thing that's now been added along side all that is the ability to upload custom-made meshes that can be shaped any way we want.

You're free to pretend all that isn't so, if it makes you happy in your own little corner of the world. But at least do yourself the courtesy to acknowledge that pretending is in fact what you'd be doing.

As for these "broadly ignored shortcomings" you mentioned, would you care to name them? I'll bet dollars to donuts they're either falsehoods of the rumor mill, or just gross misunderstandings of things actually work. That's how it's gone with nearly all the complaints that have popped up about mesh so far, anyway. There's been little or no merit to the vast majority of them. I'd love to dispel any misinformation you might have picked up from who knows where, assuming you're open to hearing truth.

That's not to say there aren't some legitimate issues with SL's present implementation of certain things, of course. There's room for improvement in everything, always. We can certainly discuss those issues, if that's indeed what you're talking about.

Josh Susanto · December 8, 2011

>There's a simple remedy for that, Josh, as I'm sure you know. It's spelled L-E-A-R-N. There's plenty of information out there already, and if you have trouble understanding any of it, you can always ask for help. There are lots of good teachers here on the forums and elsewhere who would be more than happy to help guide you.

So far, I'm learning what a button is supposed to do when I press it. If it actually did what it is supposed to do, maybe I could learn more.

> If it can run SL, it can run Blender.

Nope. Feel free to drop in and check any time.

>My guess is you just don't have the proper runtime elements installed. If so, this would also go a long way toward explaining why you said you couldn't get GIMP to work either, since it utilizes a lot of those same runtimes.

So you're really not talking about learning how to use 3D modeling programs. You're really talking about learning to be a systems administrator. Thanks for clarifying.

>You're free to use almost any 3D modeling program you like. Mesh modeling is mesh modeling is mesh modeling.

I'm free to use any free modeling program which does not work or does not produce mesh, or I'm "free" to pay for something else, which may or may not work, assuming I have any way to pay for it, which I don't.

>The amount you do or do not sell is not at all relevant to the state of the technology. You make nice looking items, so people buy them. It's that simple.

Nonmetric measuring devices are also obsolete, and yet my fellow Americans spend billions of dollars on them and systems that use them every year. If we can't even get them to knock that off after 40 years of gently pointing out their stupidity, then how do you expect people to (voluntarily) give up sculpts when there remain at least some real advantages to them in some instances?

>They'd be just as nice looking if they were arbitrary mesh models. In fact, they could be far better looking, since you'd have so much more freedom to shape them in ways that sculpties just can't be shaped. Plus, they could be far less lag-inducing, to boot. It's a total win-win. There's absolutely nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

Prim equivalency is an issue in terms of size. But I nonetheless expect some people are already loading data out from my products in order to produce mesh versions. I'm fine with that. It's a major reason why I'm putting textures and 128x128 sculpt maps on contents tabs in recent months.

>In any case, sculpties aren't going away, so there's no reason for people not to buy them. My point is simply that most anything that can be made as a sculpty can be made more easily and more efficiently as an arbitrary mesh.

More efficiently, yes. But not more easily, at least if it's something that won't get made unless I make it, and I can't make it in mesh at all.

>As for in-world consumers, they will in time begin to discover that (well made) mesh models not only look better than sculpty models, but also have lower land impacts in most cases, and cause less lag in nearly all cases. The market demand will inevitably shift to favor mesh purchases at that point, and sculpty sales won't be as strong by comparison. We're not even close to there yet, of course, but the day will come. It's the inevitable consequence of the facts.

The market will "inevitably" demand a lot of things. So let's just hold our breath?

(I suppose I might as well also reiterate my suspicion that mesh lag is being somehow redistributed to processing by less active sims).

>Josh, I'm going to put this as gently as I can. Of all the points over which you and I have ever crossed swords, this one takes the cake by miles, in terms of its illogic, and total apparent disregard for fundamental facts. If you truly plan on waiting for mesh to be made obsolete by something else, I hope you have a good supply of longevity pills, because you're going to be waiting for centuries.

It's my current plan. If the other option is sitting at my computer pressing a Blender button that doesn't do anything, such a plan surely can't be any worse, can it?

>Waiting for mesh to be obsolete in 3D modeling is like waiting for notes to be obsolete in music or waiting for colors to be obsolete in pictures. Yes, it's that fundamental. Literally every 3D object you can see on your screen is a mesh model, without exception. This includes every asset in every video game you've ever played or ever will play, every item in every CGI movie you've ever watched or ever will watch, and everything in SL.

Perhaps I should have said something more like "waiting for existing mesh technology to be made obsolete". Calling mesh something new when it's always been in use is what causes such imprecisions. Sorry I participated in that by extension in calling what will follow present mesh as something different, just as others have called previous mesh something different.

>Sculpties are merely meshes that have a certain set of restrictions imposed on them. Prims are meshes programmed to shape themselves in response to set of parameters. Ditto for the avatar. The ground is a mesh. Trees and plants are meshes. The only thing that's now been added along side all that is the ability to upload custom-made meshes that can be shaped any way we want.

Maybe not any way I want. Maybe just any way you can imagine I would want.

>As for these "broadly ignored shortcomings" you mentioned, would you care to name them? I'll bet dollars to donuts they're either falsehoods of the rumor mill, or just gross misunderstandings of things actually work. That's how it's gone with nearly all the complaints that have popped up about mesh so far, anyway. There's been little or no merit to the vast majority of them. I'd love to dispel any misinformation you might have picked up from who knows where, assuming you're open to hearing truth.

1) I've seen it take longer than sculpts to rez. Maybe not everywhere, fine. But I've SEEN it.

2) It's not good for really big things, at least compared to sculpts, in terms of land impact. Fudging the land impact of sculpts to make them less practicable is just a way for someone at LL to even better "justify" mesh land impact.

3) Less control of surface texture for some types of objects.

4) If I can't make it, I also can't edit it. This produces an evolutionary user bottleneck for full perms meshes.

>That's not to say there aren't some legitimate issues with SL's present implementation of certain things, of course. There's room for improvement in everything, always. We can certainly discuss those issues, if that's indeed what you're talking about.

I'm talking about not bothering to use mesh rather than sculpt for the mere purpose of using mesh rather than sculpt.

Mesh is not going to herbally enlarge my br3a5t5 or p3n15, or help me get Prince Kako's inheritance out of thet deposit box in Nigeria.

I may be guilty of imagining a lot of things are a nail just because my only tool is a hammer. But pretending nails no longer exist when we finally get a screwdriver is also wrong.

Chosen Few · December 8, 2011

Josh Susanto wrote:

So far, I'm learning what a button is supposed to do when I press it. If it actually did what it is supposed to do, maybe I could learn more.

If you'd care to be a bit more specific about what button you're pressing, and what exactly happens when you do, I'm sure we could help you.

Josh Susanto wrote:

Nope. Feel free to drop in and check any time.

If your machine is physically capable of running SL, then it's physically capable of running Blender. That's just a fact of computer science. Simply saying "nope" doesn't change that. If Blender's not working, the most likely reason is you didn't install it properly. Something's wrong software-wise, which has nothing to do with the capabilities of your computer itself.

Josh Susanto wrote:

So you're really not talking about learning how to use 3D modeling programs. You're really talking about learning to be a systems administrator. Thanks for clarifying.

I thought it was pretty obvious I was talking about both. In order to use a program, you do have to install it first, along with any requisite components to make it able to run. Once it's running, then you can begin learning to use it.

One wouldn't expect a hunter not to know his way around a gun, or a carpenter not to know how to calibrate his miter saw, or a chef not to know how to care for his knives, right? Well, by the same token, anybody who's elected to become reliant on the use of computers for income, as you have, should make a point of knowing the basic fundamentals of how to run and maintain them. From everything you've written on this forum, it's obvious you're perfectly capable of doing that, despite your pretense to the contrary right now.

.

In any case, it sounds like something went wrong with your Blender installation. No big deal, it happens. But if you're not willing to ask for help in solving the problem, then I'm afraid there's not much to be gained by your participation in these kinds of discussions, for you, or for anyone else. Just popping up to say, "That works for everyone but me," when you spot one of us suggesting to someone else that they try something other other than just the few things you're comfortable doing doesn't benefit anyone.

Josh Susanto wrote:

I'm free to use any free modeling program which does not work or does not produce mesh, or I'm "free" to pay for something else, which may or may not work, assuming I have any way to pay for it, which I don't.

Really? You've tried every free 3D modeling program there is? Wow, dude, you must have been busy, because there are dozens of them out there.

A few I can think of off the top of my head, in addition to Blender, are Wings, Truespace, Art of Illusion, Milkshape, K-3D, and Sketchup. You've tried all those? There are many, many, many more to choose from, as well.

You really mean to tell me you've downloaded every single one of them, and none worked? Uh, was your computer turned on at the time?

I have to say I have no idea what you mean by "modeling program which does not produce mesh". They all do, by definition.

As for what "doesn't work", there's a big difference between whether or not YOU can figure out how to get it up and running, and whether or it actually works inherently. All of the programs I just listed work, as does Blender, and as does any commercial program you might buy. If you're not able to use one or all of them, that's an issue on your end, not a fault of the program. Further, it's something we can likely help you with, if you'd simply care to ask, rather than just cry doom & gloom.

Josh Susanto wrote:

Nonmetric measuring devices are also obsolete, and yet my fellow Americans spend billions of dollars on them and systems that use them every year. If we can't even get them to knock that off after 40 years of gently pointing out their stupidity, then how do you expect people to (voluntarily) give up sculpts when there remain at least some real advantages to them in some instances?

In fairness, I'm not sure "obsolete" is quite the term to apply to something as inherently timeless as a measuring system. I realize you were grasping for an example, though, so I understand what you meant, of course. It was just a bad example.

In any case, I never said anything about expecting people to give up sculpts. I thought I was pretty clear that there are some use cases in which they do have certain advantages. My point, once again, which you seem to keep completely ignoring, was simply that when a particular item can be made more easily and more efficiently as an arbitrary mesh, it only makes sense to do it that way. That's just simple logic. I don't see how anyone could argue to the contrary.

From this and so many of your other posts, you seem to think sculpts are the end-all-be-all of the universe. If you like them so much, by all means keep right on using them. Just kindly don't jump up to challenge the facts when someone points out to someone who's not you that they could potentially save themselves some work by going a different direction, which was my only intent here.

Josh Susanto wrote:

Prim equivalency is an issue in terms of size.

If you need a relatively simplistic item to be infinitely resizable without its land impact changing, then that would one of the use cases I was referring to, in which it could be advantageous to use a sculpty. But the vast majority of models do not fit that description, obviously.

Josh Susanto wrote:

But I nonetheless expect some people are already loading data out from my products in order to produce mesh versions. I'm fine with that. It's a major reason why I'm putting textures and 128x128 sculpt maps on contents tabs in recent months. .

I'm not sure why anyone would bother doing that, but if you think it's something people might want, then sure, include the sculpt maps all you like.

Josh Susanto wrote:

More efficiently, yes. But not more easily, at least if it's something that won't get made unless I make it, and I can't make it in mesh at all.

You sure like to use that word "can't" a lot. It's not that you can't make mesh models, Josh; it's that you won't. For whatever reason, you've decided it's not for you, and you're sticking to that. Fine, that's your prerogative. Just please don't go around saying something doesn't work just because you've resolved not to do it.

Josh Susanto wrote:

The market will "inevitably" demand a lot of things. So let's just hold our breath?

Who said anything about holding our breath? I never said or implied anything of the sort. Please stop making stuff up.

I was simply making a prediction about the future. You're perfectly free to choose whether or not to prepare for it ahead of time.

The larger point, which you ignored, was simply that in the here and now, so many people don't yet understand or care about the differences between mesh and sculpties, that their buying decisions aren't likely influenced by such things as the relative render efficiencies of each. As long as that remains the case, you'll continue to sell lots of sculpties. Once people get wise to it, though, which they eventually will, you can expect that will change. You can choose to deal with that ahead of the fact, after the fact, or not all. It's entirely up to you.

Josh Susanto wrote:

(I suppose I might as well also reiterate my suspicion that mesh lag is being somehow redistributed to processing by less active sims).

Where do you get this stuff, man? Seriously, have you given any thought at all to how the technology actually works? Has it occurred to you that it runs on science and math, immutable principles which cannot simply be overridden by magic?

The lag we've been discussing is entirely client-side. There's absolutely nothing any sim server can do to speed up or slow down the rate at which your video card draws polygons. The more polygons a model contains, the slower it is to draw. There are no if's, and's, or but's about that. The primary reason why almost any (well made) arbitrary mesh model will be less lag-inducing than an equivalently shaped sculpty is because sculpties have so many wasted polygons in them that you can't get rid of, whereas the arbitrary mesh doesn't need to waste anything at all. A very closely related second reason is because a (well made) arbitrary mesh will almost always be more texture-efficient than a sculpty. None of that has anything to do with any sim in any way.

That said, do you have any evidence to suggest in any way that less active sims are doing any extra processing now that they didn't do before arbitrary mesh support was added to SL? Or is this just an example of you not being able to tell the difference between reality and whatever random thoughts happen to pop into your head?

Josh Susanto wrote:

It's my current plan. If the other option is sitting at my computer pressing a Blender button that doesn't do anything, such a plan surely can't be any worse, can it?

I thought you had said you couldn't even get Blender running. Doesn't it have to be running before you can press any buttons in it?

If it is actually running, how about this for a plan? Learn to use it. Or how about this for an alternative? Learn to use any of the dozens of other programs freely available, if Blender turns out not to be the ideal program for you.

If you're truly resolved to just stick with sculpties no matter what, and never touch arbitrary mesh at all, that's fine. But kindly refrain from interjectiong into discussions about mesh if that's the case, since there's no possible way you could have anything useful to contribute if you've opted to have no first hand experience with it.

Josh Susanto wrote:

Perhaps I should have said something more like "waiting for existing mesh technology to be made obsolete". Calling mesh something new when it's always been in use is what causes such imprecisions. Sorry I participated in that by extension in calling what will follow present mesh as something different, just as others have called previous mesh something different.

If by "existing mesh technology" you're talking about the specific manner in which SL has implemented its support for arbitrary mesh usage, then sure, that will continue to improve over time. If, however, you meant mesh technology in the broader sense, as in the underlying foundational principles, that hasn't changed since day one, and it's unlikely it ever will. The things we do with it grow as tools for manipulating it and working with it get better, of course. But mesh itself, meaning models comprised of vertices, edges, faces, and other components, put together to form three-dimensional surfaces, is the same today as it ever was or is ever likely to be.

In any case, I do agree with you fully that the sloppy use of terminology on this forum is quite often confusing.

Josh Susanto wrote:

Maybe not any way I want. Maybe just any way you can imagine I would want.

Are you saying you'd like to use shapes that have more than three dimensions? Because those are the only shapes that can't be described by a three-dimensional mesh.

OK, now let's dive into your alleged "broadly ignored shortcomings". You seem to be misinformed about quite a few things, as I'd suspected. As always, let's take them one at a time:

Josh Susanto wrote:

1) I've seen it take longer than sculpts to rez. Maybe not everywhere, fine. But I've SEEN it.

And your point is?

Look, first of all, you've been in SL long enough to know that there are way too many chaotic factors in play to ever be able to predict what will rez before or after what. The order is affected by all kinds of things well outside the realm of the assets themselves, many of which are even outside SL.

I've seen an 8x8 texture take longer to rez than a 1024x1024. Should I cite that as evidence that 8 is actually larger than 1024?

I've seen Michael Jordan miss a basket before. Should I present that as proof that he sucks at basketball?

I once got in a car accident that was my own fault. Does that mean I don't know how to drive?

Don't assign undue meaning to anecdote, Josh. It's well beneath your intelligence level.

Secondly, if a mesh model contains more data than a sculpty model, then in SHOULD take longer to rez. There are plenty of meshes in use with far more to them than just the 2048 faces of a sculpty. That's not a shortcoming.

Josh Susanto wrote:

2) It's not good for really big things, at least compared to sculpts, in terms of land impact.

That would depend on what "really big things" you're talking about in particular. If it's just a very simple object that could be made from a single sculpty, then the sculpty may well be the better option, if low land impact is the main goal. But for more complex items, that would take lots of sculpties to create, the (well made) single mesh will often come out way ahead, even on large items.

You can call the disparity of land impact a "shortcoming" if you really want, but you can hardly call it "broadly ignored". It's talked about all the time.

It's also well worth noting that if you expand your thinking beyond just land impact, the mesh will almost always beat the equivalently shaped sculpty in every other measurable way. If, for example, lag is the chief concern, then a mesh with low display cost is the clear winner, even if it's got higher land impact than the equivalently shaped sculpty. And of course, if the goal is to make shapes that just can't be made with sculpties, the mesh model is the undisputed winner, no matter what the costs.

Josh Susanto wrote:

3) Less control of surface texture for some types of objects.

That's just patently false. I'm not sure if you just made this one up, or if some idiot was running his mouth about things he didn't understand, and you're just repeating what you heard. But either way, it's absolutely not true, not in any way.

By definition, an arbitrary mesh will ALWAYS yield infinitely more control over surface texturing than a locked mesh like a sculpty. That's an indisputable fact. With an arbitrary mesh, you can arrange the UV layout literally any way you want. This allows you to control your texturing in countless ways that you could never even dream of with sculpties.

That freedom of UV layout includes the freedom to set up your texturing in exactly the same way a sculpty is set up, by the way. So, meshes offer not only options sculpties don't have, but also all the same options sculpties do have.

There's just no way anyone in their right mind could claim meshes offer less control over texturing than sculpties, under any circumstances. I'm actually finding myself consciously trying not to laugh out loud at the very notion, as I'm writing this.

Josh Susanto wrote:

4) If I can't make it, I also can't edit it. This produces an evolutionary user bottleneck for full perms meshes.

The same can be said for sculpties, or textures, or sounds, or animations, or scripts, or any other asset you could think of. There are plenty of people who aren't able to make or edit any of those items, but we don't see any of them trying to pretend their own ignorance is somehow indicative of a problem with the item types themselves. You're the only one doing that.

Now, are there any other "broadly ignored shortcomings" you'd care to pluck out of thin air and try to present as fact, or will that about do it for ya?

Josh Susanto wrote:

I'm talking about not bothering to use mesh rather than sculpt for the mere purpose of using mesh rather than sculpt.

And who do you believe suggested doing so? I certainly didn't. What I did do was attempt to alert the OP to the fact that the specific types of items she mentioned wanting to make could be made more easily and more efficiently with mesh than with sculpties. Rather than respond to that directly, you chose to go off on all these tangents, most of which have nothing to do with anything.

Josh Susanto wrote:

Mesh is not going to herbally enlarge my br3a5t5 or p3n15, or help me get Prince Kako's inheritance out of thet deposit box in Nigeria.

Again, nobody ever suggested it would. What it will do is enable you to create more efficient models than you can with sculpties, as well as make all kinds of items that you can't make with sculpties at all. I don't see why you can't bring yourself to acknowledge such a simple fact. It doesn't cost you anything just to accept the truth.

Josh Susanto wrote:

I may be guilty of imagining a lot of things are a nail just because my only tool is a hammer. But pretending nails no longer exist when we finally get a screwdriver is also wrong.

Nobody suggest pretending sculpties don't exist. So again, your point is?

Josh Susanto · December 8, 2011

>If you'd care to be a bit more specific about what button you're pressing, and what exactly happens when you do, I'm sure we could help you.

It's been over 6 months since I last tried. At that point, no button did anything. I actually thought my mouse was broken the first time I tried. A couple of years ago.

>If your machine is physically capable of running SL, then it's physically capable of running Blender.

It's capable of opening Blender. Yes.

>If Blender's not working, the most likely reason is you didn't install it properly. Something's wrong software-wise, which has nothing to do with the capabilities of your computer itself.

Understood. That's why it also didn't work when installed as instructed on 2 other machines.

(So you're really not talking about learning how to use 3D modeling programs. You're really talking about learning to be a systems administrator. Thanks for clarifying.)

>I thought it was pretty obvious I was talking about both. In order to use a program, you do have to install it first, along with any requisite components to make it able to run. Once it's running, then you can begin learning to use it.

Fine. What are the unstated secret components I have to install along with the stuff downloaded from the Blender site? I tried Python, also, but it just seems to create an extra icon to clutter up my desktop.

>One wouldn't expect a hunter not to know his way around a gun, or a carpenter not to know how to calibrate his miter saw, or a chef not to know how to care for his knives, right? Well, by the same token, anybody who's elected to become reliant on the use of computers for income, as you have, should make a point of knowing the basic fundamentals of how to run and maintain them. From everything you've written on this forum, it's obvious you're perfectly capable of doing that, despite your pretense to the contrary right now.

I'm not reliant on computers for income. I'm reliant on them for one small income stream. In the time I could spend failing, utterly, to get blender to do anything again, I could make a bunch of sculpts that would actually pay. Thus sculpts are the better deal. If I have to pay someone to fix the problem or to teach me how to fix it, the whole production process becomes cost-prohibitive. And the free instructions are bull$hit. They assume that stuff will install, open, and actually do something once it's open. Whatever the secret handshake happens to be, no one is sharing it with me. I just have to live with that.

.>In any case, it sounds like something went wrong with your Blender installation. No big deal, it happens.

Every time on every machine? Sure.

>But if you're not willing to ask for help in solving the problem, then I'm afraid there's not much to be gained by your participation in these kinds of discussions, for you, or for anyone else. Just popping up to say, "That works for everyone but me," when you spot one of us suggesting to someone else that they try something other other than just the few things you're comfortable doing doesn't benefit anyone.

I know that there are plenty of other people for whom it has not worked. They just don't come forward because they care more about avoiding ridicule than about the possibility of getting anything working.

(I'm free to use any free modeling program which does not work or does not produce mesh, or I'm "free" to pay for something else, which may or may not work, assuming I have any way to pay for it, which I don't.)

>Really? You've tried every free 3D modeling program there is? Wow, dude, you must have been busy, because there are dozens of them out there.

I try use the ones that are recommended to me. I'm not going to spend an hour every day scouring Google to see if there's something I haven't tried yet.

>A few I can think of off the top of my head, in addition to Blender, are Wings,

Wings doesn't even open. Not in this Vaio. Not on 5 other PC's. Not on a Mac. I have come to suspect it's some kind of hoax.

>Truespace, Art of Illusion, Milkshape, K-3D, and Sketchup. You've tried all those? There are many, many, many more to choose from, as well.

Thanks for the recommendations. I'll try those.

Actually, I already tried Sketchup. Where are the damn instructions? A video telling me how useful it is isn't instructions.

>I have to say I have no idea what you mean by "modeling program which does not produce mesh". They all do, by definition.

I meant a program that produces sculpts, but not other meshes. I'm using Sculptypaint 092.

>As for what "doesn't work", there's a big difference between whether or not YOU can figure out how to get it up and running, and whether or it actually works inherently.

Yes. I understand that. It is possible, in principle for me to figure oiut how to play an IBM mainframe to a stalemate in Chess. That doesn't mean it will actually happen, ever. I'm actually considered to be a pretty bright person. But whatever it is that allows some people to make mesh and other not, I didn't get. Most of the people who buy my stuff wouldn't even have the first clue about how to produce it with ANY program, and they often tell me so. The fact is that people who can navigate multiple layers of cryptic instructions and/or get the right other people to explain the right other things correctly enough to eventually produce mesh are a small minority of SL users. It just seems like a lot of people because you're surrounded here by communications from them.

>All of the programs I just listed work, as does Blender, and as does any commercial program you might buy. If you're not able to use one or all of them, that's an issue on your end, not a fault of the program.

Not impossible. But Sculptypaint 092 has worked for me on every machine. If I were just too stupid to get anything to work, I wouldn't be producing sculpts, either.

>Further, it's something we can likely help you with, if you'd simply care to ask, rather than just cry doom & gloom.

Thanks, yes. Please walk me through it. One step at a time. I will tell you when I have completed each step.

>In fairness, I'm not sure "obsolete" is quite the term to apply to something as inherently timeless as a measuring system. I realize you were grasping for an example, though, so I understand what you meant, of course. It was just a bad example.

So the Egyptian cubit is not obsolete, either? Maybe I should have used that when I started studying architecture.

>In any case, I never said anything about expecting people to give up sculpts.

True. You did not. But there will be pressure from others to give them up anyway, even where they currently hold some advantage. I have a 10000L bet with someone on this matter already.

>I thought I was pretty clear that there are some use cases in which they do have certain advantages. My point, once again, which you seem to keep completely ignoring, was simply that when a particular item can be made more easily and more efficiently as an arbitrary mesh, it only makes sense to do it that way. That's just simple logic. I don't see how anyone could argue to the contrary.

Because the argument from efficiency and teh argument from ease are separate arguments. I agree on efficiency. I disagree on ease because if most people can't even figure out how to pull the red layer of a photo in Sculptypaint, tracking down the secret auxiliary code that allows other programs to do anything but clog up hard drives will certainly be beyond quite a few of them, as it has been beyond me.

Again, if people want to load my products out and mod them as meshes with 4x as much shape resolution per axis, they are by all means welcome to it. They should look pretty good already at that LOD.

>From this and so many of your other posts, you seem to think sculpts are the end-all-be-all of the universe.

Not at all. I also like regular prims, which I think are underrated for other things, even as much as they are overused for things like walls.

>If you like them so much, by all means keep right on using them. Just kindly don't jump up to challenge the facts when someone points out to someone who's not you that they could potentially save themselves some work by going a different direction, which was my only intent here.

They could save themselves a huge amount of work, but only if getting anything to work for them isn't actually just as much work, or more work. People who have never had their machines crash upon opening Blender may very well find mesh easier to work with than sculpt, and their products will be more efficient. But just because most people who get pissed off and give up never come here to talk about it doesn't mean they don't exist. Ask around among people who do not consider themselves to be builders, and I'm confident you'll find the unintended deterrents to the average user building much of anything are indeed daunting.

>If you need a relatively simplistic item to be infinitely resizable without its land impact changing, then that would one of the use cases I was referring to, in which it could be advantageous to use a sculpty. But the vast majority of models do not fit that description, obviously.

Anything that attaches to an avatar will not fit that model, clearly. I eagerly support the use of mesh for practically anything that is intended to be worn. I can also agree on a lot of furniture and other items that are about the size of an avatar or smaller. In terms of buildings and vehicles being made with mesh, though, the advantage is not that they surpass sculpts, but that they surpass standard prims. To say that mesh corrects the deficiency of sculpts in this regard (which I acknowldge you, for one, did not say) is not a very meaningful statement, because sculpts are already best not used for a lot of things in the first place. Mesh is a 3d option and I'm happy to see it making its way. But it doesn't necessarily replace the other 2 prim types any better than sculpts replaced sphere prims, for example.

>I'm not sure why anyone would bother doing that, but if you think it's something people might want, then sure, include the sculpt maps all you like.

The idea is that if they already think the 32x32 rez sculpt is worth having, they might get some additional utility out of a mesh version if they're willing to convert the thing. I'm trying to accomodate mesh users, and I think I'm probably doing OK with that, considering my prices.

(More efficiently, yes. But not more easily, at least if it's something that won't get made unless I make it, and I can't make it in mesh at all.)

>You sure like to use that word "can't" a lot. It's not that you can't make mesh models, Josh; it's that you won't. For whatever reason, you've decided it's not for you, and you're sticking to that. Fine, that's your prerogative. Just please don't go around saying something doesn't work just because you've resolved not to do it.

I have been unable to do so every time I have tried. Philsophically, we can draw a distinction between that and "can't", but it's a distinction that has no foreseeable practical utility as long as nothing about the tools and information provided to me has changed.

(The market will "inevitably" demand a lot of things. So let's just hold our breath?)

>Who said anything about holding our breath? I never said or implied anything of the sort. Please stop making stuff up.

Sorry, it was intended as a provocative rhetorical question, not as an attributed statement.

>I was simply making a prediction about the future. You're perfectly free to choose whether or not to prepare for it ahead of time.

Yeah. I might build a chain of recharging stations for electric cars, too. Can I depend on you to invest?

>The larger point, which you ignored, was simply that in the here and now, so many people don't yet understand or care about the differences between mesh and sculpties, that their buying decisions aren't likely influenced by such things as the relative render efficiencies of each. As long as that remains the case, you'll continue to sell lots of sculpties. Once people get wise to it, though, which they eventually will, you can expect that will change. You can choose to deal with that ahead of the fact, after the fact, or not all. It's entirely up to you.

I keep thinking that it should have happened by now. Really, I'm amazed that buyers are not as excited by mesh as builders seem to be. Every time I think I better point out to someone that something I've sent to them is not mesh, they've said that they're happy it's not mesh.

((I suppose I might as well also reiterate my suspicion that mesh lag is being somehow redistributed to processing by less active sims).)

>Where do you get this stuff, man? Seriously, have you given any thought at all to how the technology actually works? Has it occurred to you that it runs on science and math, immutable principles which cannot simply be overridden by magic?

I'm not a computer technician. I'm just looking at the question economically and wondering if mesh isn't being bandwidth-financed after the Enron model. I've worked for companies that have done similar things with other nonmonetary resources.

>The lag we've been discussing is entirely client-side. There's absolutely nothing any sim server can do to speed up or slow down the rate at which your video card draws polygons. The more polygons a model contains, the slower it is to draw. There are no if's, and's, or but's about that. The primary reason why almost any (well made) arbitrary mesh model will be less lag-inducing than an equivalently shaped sculpty is because sculpties have so many wasted polygons in them that you can't get rid of, whereas the arbitrary mesh doesn't need to waste anything at all. A very closely related second reason is because a (well made) arbitrary mesh will almost always be more texture-efficient than a sculpty. None of that has anything to do with any sim in any way.

I'm looking at my sculpts to figure out where the wasted polygons are. I can see a few on my more geometric items, but they've never been big sellers and I only ever make them on a whim. My main reason for even considering going to mesh would be to use more polygons per object. Mostly on trees. I currently do what I think are decent trees in 2 sculpt prims, but they might warrant twice as much land impact for twice as much shape. Trying to get that by using 4 sculpts is not a great idea.

>That said, do you have any evidence to suggest in any way that less active sims are doing any extra processing now that they didn't do before arbitrary mesh support was added to SL? Or is this just an example of you not being able to tell the difference between reality and whatever random thoughts happen to pop into your head?

It's just a theory. But a substantial number of sims with no mesh on them I observed to be abruptly lagged and/or borked at exactly the same time that mesh deployed to the main grid. I suppose it could be mere coincidence. But there hasn't been any other satisfactory explanation for the non-mesh end of the phenomenon, much less anything else that would actually correlate chronologically with the mesh deployment.

Josh Susanto · December 8, 2011

(It's my current plan. If the other option is sitting at my computer pressing a Blender button that doesn't do anything, such a plan surely can't be any worse, can it?)

>I thought you had said you couldn't even get Blender running. Doesn't it have to be running before you can press any buttons in it?

It can be open without being running. If you have any experience with Windows Vista, you probably have some idea what I'm talking about.

>If you're truly resolved to just stick with sculpties no matter what, and never touch arbitrary mesh at all, that's fine. But kindly refrain from interjectiong into discussions about mesh if that's the case, since there's no possible way you could have anything useful to contribute if you've opted to have no first hand experience with it.

I'm resolved to stop reinstalling Blender and other programs that have already not worked for me, and I am resolved to point out that they continue not to work for plenty of other people.

(Perhaps I should have said something more like "waiting for existing mesh technology to be made obsolete". Calling mesh something new when it's always been in use is what causes such imprecisions. Sorry I participated in that by extension in calling what will follow present mesh as something different, just as others have called previous mesh something different.)

>In any case, I do agree with you fully that the sloppy use of terminology on this forum is quite often confusing.

Thank you. And not just in this forum, though.

(Maybe not any way I want. Maybe just any way you can imagine I would want.)

>Are you saying you'd like to use shapes that have more than three dimensions? Because those are the only shapes that can't be described by a three-dimensional mesh.

More like: has mesh solved the alpha sorting problem? I've been able to work around it somewhat with multiple sculpts. So far I haven't heard of anyone being able to work around it with comparable principles applied to single-object mesh.

(1) I've seen it take longer than sculpts to rez. Maybe not everywhere, fine. But I've SEEN it.)

>And your point is?

My point is that it's a myth that mesh invariably rezzes faster than sculpt. That is does not do so represents at least one contextual shortcoming wherever it rezzes more slowly than sculpt.

>I've seen an 8x8 texture take longer to rez than a 1024x1024. Should I cite that as evidence that 8 is actually larger than 1024?

OK, then, would you concede that if the inconsistent rez time for mesh is not a shortcoming, that it is misrepresented as a reliable advantage over scultps?

>I've seen Michael Jordan miss a basket before. Should I present that as proof that he sucks at basketball?

It means that a blind man might beat him 1-on-1 if the lights are off. In a number of ways, the lights remain off to mesh. And when they come on, don't expect them to stay one continuously.

>I once got in a car accident that was my own fault. Does that mean I don't know how to drive?

It may mean you're a greater insurance risk than someone who has driven more with the same number of accidents.

>Don't assign undue meaning to anecdote, Josh. It's well beneath your intelligence level.

I'm applying anecdote as a balance to propaganda. Maybe when the propaganda stops, I'll stop using anecdote to balance it.

>Secondly, if a mesh model contains more data than a sculpty model, then in SHOULD take longer to rez. There are plenty of meshes in use with far more to them than just the 2048 faces of a sculpty. That's not a shortcoming.

I would figure as much. But the meshes I saw rezzing slower were nothing spectacular. I'm honestly tempted to make sculpt equivlents just to prove they can rez faster and waste less data.

(2) It's not good for really big things, at least compared to sculpts, in terms of land impact.)

>That would depend on what "really big things" you're talking about in particular. If it's just a very simple object that could be made from a single sculpty, then the sculpty may well be the better option, if low land impact is the main goal. But for more complex items, that would take lots of sculpties to create, the (well made) single mesh will often come out way ahead, even on large items.

Understood. MOST of the stuff I've seen made out of multiple sculpties is crap. But that has as much to do with people not being able to use them correctly as it does with what they're chosing to use (sound familiar?).

>You can call the disparity of land impact a "shortcoming" if you really want, but you can hardly call it "broadly ignored". It's talked about all the time.

I see that it's talked about. But the acknowledgement that it might be a comparative disadvantage in some cases is buried in mountains of other text disparaging sculpts as being utterly inferior for other reasons, only some of which are more than half valid.

>It's also well worth noting that if you expand your thinking beyond just land impact, the mesh will almost always beat the equivalently shaped sculpty in every other measurable way. If, for example, lag is the chief concern, then a mesh with low display cost is the clear winner, even if it's got higher land impact than the equivalently shaped sculpty. And of course, if the goal is to make shapes that just can't be made with sculpties, the mesh model is the undisputed winner, no matter what the costs.

Mesh should absolutely be used where sculpt or some other prim type will not work. I just think people continue to underestimate not only sculpts, but other prim types. My early potted succlents were around before sculpts, and people actually accused me of hacking SL and introducing new prim types in order to build such things.

(3) Less control of surface texture for some types of objects.)

>That's just patently false. I'm not sure if you just made this one up, or if some idiot was running his mouth about things he didn't understand, and you're just repeating what you heard. But either way, it's absolutely not true, not in any way.

Alpha sorting? Solved?

>By definition, an arbitrary mesh will ALWAYS yield infinitely more control over surface texturing than a locked mesh like a sculpty. That's an indisputable fact. With an arbitrary mesh, you can arrange the UV layout literally any way you want. This allows you to control your texturing in countless ways that you could never even dream of with sculpties.

I can already move the verts around on a sculpt all I want once I've sculpted it, and get the same shape with the verts being distributed differently. This is not at all mysterious. I'm just constrained to 1024 data points per prim.

>That freedom of UV layout includes the freedom to set up your texturing in exactly the same way a sculpty is set up, by the way.

That's pretty funny. Have you looked at my stuff at all?

>So, meshes offer not only options sculpties don't have, but also all the same options sculpties do have.

They don't have the consistent option of being made easily by someone without a computer science background.

>There's just no way anyone in their right mind could claim meshes offer less control over texturing than sculpties, under any circumstances. I'm actually finding myself consciously trying not to laugh out loud at the very notion, as I'm writing this.

What I laugh at is how meshes still look like they have textures painted on them, rather than having some kind of more direct relationship between shape and surface textures. Granted, if I end up doing mesh at some point, I expect I can somewhat address that, and most sculpts other than my own seem ot have a similar painted-on look about them.

(4) If I can't make it, I also can't edit it. This produces an evolutionary user bottleneck for full perms meshes.

>The same can be said for sculpties, or textures, or sounds, or animations, or scripts, or any other asset you could think of. There are plenty of people who aren't able to make or edit any of those items, but we don't see any of them trying to pretend their own ignorance is somehow indicative of a problem with the item types themselves. You're the only one doing that.

I see their frustrations not being dismissed as wilful ignorance. That's a difference.

(I'm talking about not bothering to use mesh rather than sculpt for the mere purpose of using mesh rather than sculpt.)

>And who do you believe suggested doing so? I certainly didn't. What I did do was attempt to alert the OP to the fact that the specific types of items she mentioned wanting to make could be made more easily and more efficiently with mesh than with sculpties. Rather than respond to that directly, you chose to go off on all these tangents, most of which have nothing to do with anything.

I believe it's more than implicit in the prevailing tone of rhetoic regarding alleged differenced between mesh and sculpt.

Moreover, the thread originator asked for help with oblong sculpts and was essentially told he should just make mesh instead.

What's unclear about this?

(Mesh is not going to herbally enlarge my br3a5t5 or p3n15, or help me get Prince Kako's inheritance out of thet deposit box in Nigeria.)

>Again, nobody ever suggested it would. What it will do is enable you to create more efficient models than you can with sculpties, as well as make all kinds of items that you can't make with sculpties at all.

When? How?

>Nobody suggest pretending sculpties don't exist. So again, your point is?

My point is that a request for help with oblong sculpts was almost immediately snapped up as another opportunity to convert the OP to Meshism.

Jasmin Helstein · December 8, 2011

Thank you very much for the extensive reply Chosen. Your explanation made the meaning of mesh a lot clearer to me and i'm sure sooner or later it will take over but right now it isn't time yet, at least not for me, i have no intention of selling things outside of SL and my viewer doesn't support it, that may also color my view a bit.

*.DAE is for mesh right ? ... pitty

Josh Susanto · December 8, 2011

Regardless of what you decide, Jasmin, I'm glad to hear that you find this discussion helpful.

Chosen and I are not natural enemies. I think we actually agree much more than we disagree, and that may or may not be visible in our focus on points of disagreement.

Please don't let me scare you away from mesh. It's not actually snake oil; I just get a little testy when I think I see it being sold as a panacaea.

At the risk of seeming to speak for Chosen, I'll venture that we both would like you to make informed and well-considered decisions about what tools to use, rather than simply agreeing with either of us for the mere sake of agreement.

Chosen Few · December 10, 2011

Josh Susanto wrote:

It's been over 6 months since I last tried. At that point, no button did anything. I actually thought my mouse was broken the first time I tried. A couple of years ago.

Sounds like a driver problem to me. Blender's interface is entirely reliant on OpenGL hardware acceleration. If your drivers aren't properly configured, it can run so slowly as to appear completely unresponsive.

There are a lot of solutions to various graphics problems posted on the Blender forums. I bet if you describe the problem in detail over there, you'd have a working solution offered up in no time. There are also plenty of Blender users right here on the SL forums who I'm sure would be more than happy to offer suggestions as well.

Josh Susanto wrote:

It's capable of opening Blender. Yes.

If it's capable of opening it, it's capable of running it. If it's unresponsive, there's a configuration problem somewhere, which can be fixed.

Josh Susanto wrote:

Fine. What are the unstated secret components I have to install along with the stuff downloaded from the Blender site? I tried Python, also, but it just seems to create an extra icon to clutter up my desktop.

Looking at the Blender download site now, it would seem things have been simplified quite a bit since the last time I downloaded and installed Blender myself. (As you know, I'm a Maya user, so I don't mess with Blender very often.) They used to require the download and installation of a whole bunch of separate items (runtime environment, dll's, Python, etc.), before installation of the main executable. It now appears they've bundled just about all of it into a single installer, which is good. Python, still needs to be installed separately, though.

If you installed an older version, from back when they still had everything componentized, you may have missed a component (or several). If you've installed a recent version, that obviously becomes less likely.

Josh Susanto wrote:

I'm not reliant on computers for income. I'm reliant on them for one small income stream.

Whether it's primary income or secondary, it's still income. The point was simply that it will benefit you to learn as much as possible about everything you do that is important to you. Taking the Sylar approach, constantly asking "How does that work?" (preferably without decapitating anyone), is always worthwhile.

Josh Susanto wrote:

In the time I could spend failing, utterly, to get blender to do anything again, I could make a bunch of sculpts that would actually pay. Thus sculpts are the better deal.

What amazingly shortsighted thinking. See the forest through the trees, man. There's such a bigger world of 3D modeling open to you than just sculpties, most of which pays far more than just the selling of "crazy cheap" trinkets in SL ever could. You have but to be willing to learn how to take part in it, just like you first were with learning to make sculpties.

If you've already decided you're going to fail, then you will, of course. Just understand the only reason for the failure is because of that decision. If you were on a mission to make it work, you would.

Josh Susanto wrote:

If I have to pay someone to fix the problem or to teach me how to fix it, the whole production process becomes cost-prohibitive.

There are any number of free classes you can take in SL and elsewhere, and there are countless other free sources of information all over the Web. Books on the subject abound, as well.

By the way, have you ever stopped to think that maybe if you spent half as much time and effort focusing on becoming competent with this stuff as you do on all this woe-is-me thinking, you could make enough money with your expertise that precious little would need be cost prohibitive ever again?

Josh Susanto wrote:

And the free instructions are bull$hit.

Every person who volunteers to post on forums, produce instructional videos, write tutorials, or teach free classes, they're all spewing BS? Wow, man, way to insult all of us. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe your own attitude is the only problem in this equation?

Josh Susanto wrote:

They assume that stuff will install, open, and actually do something once it's open.

Oh, how dare they, the evil sons of bitches! Come on, man. You're being ridiculous. If you're having a problem, ask for help (nicely), and people will. It's that simple.

If no one's able to solve the problem here, the Blender forums are only a click away.

Josh Susanto wrote:

Whatever the secret handshake happens to be, no one is sharing it with me. I just have to live with that.

There is no secret handshake, and no, you don't have to live with it. There are countless helpful souls right here on this forum, and on other forums all over the Web, who would be more than happy to help you (just as I'm trying to help you now). All you need to do is drop the pessimism, and ask.

I know you think the whole "Josh, the conspiracy theorist" act is cute and all, but really, all it does is hold you back. If you're really happy in your misery, then keep it up. But I suspect you'd be far happier if you'd just let it go.

Josh Susanto wrote:

Every time on every machine? Sure.

Let's apply some simple logic here. What's the common denominator across all those machines? If the only thing they all have in common is you, then clearly something you did (or neglected to do) is the problem. We can rule out the possibility that program itself is the issue, because millions of other people do use it successfully.

You should look on that as very good news, by the way, because it means the problem is solvable.

Josh Susanto wrote:

I know that there are plenty of other people for whom it has not worked. They just don't come forward because they care more about avoiding ridicule than about the possibility of getting anything working.

Ridiculed? Seriously? That's what you think people are concerned with? What are we, twelve? Look this isn't schoolyard playground, nobody's going to get picked on by the other kids for wanting to succeed, or for being on speaking terms with a teacher.

It's never a big deal to say, "I tried your suggestion, but it didn't work. Got any other ideas?" People do that every day.

I might suggest you be careful with your use of the word "know", by the way. It seems likely to me that you merely ASSUME there are plenty of people who are afraid of ridicule, for reasons of your own. I very much doubt that you KNOW it. How many people have you interviewed on the subject?

Josh Susanto wrote:

Wings doesn't even open. Not in this Vaio. Not on 5 other PC's. Not on a Mac. I have come to suspect it's some kind of hoax.

Dude, where do you find these computers of yours that can't open such commonly used low-sysreq programs, but somehow can magically run SL just fine? Again, you might want to think about that common denominator.

Josh Susanto wrote:

I already tried Sketchup. Where are the damn instructions?

Have you tried Googling for "Sketchup help"? I just did. Lookee what I found: http://support.google.com/sketchup/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=116359.

Josh Susanto wrote:

I'm actually considered to be a pretty bright person. But whatever it is that allows some people to make mesh and other not, I didn't get.

I think you'd surprise yourself, once you dive into it. It's the very same skill set that allows you to make sculpties, and to build with prims. It's also an offshoot of the skillset that allows you to make textures. From seeing what you've already done, and from our conversations on the forums, I have zero doubt that you can do it.

It seems to me you've just let yourself get thrown off the path so many times by "This program didn't work" or "That program's too expensive" or "Where's the manual for this one?" that you haven't yet given yourself much chance to actually get started in earnest.

Josh Susanto wrote:

Most of the people who buy my stuff wouldn't even have the first clue about how to produce it with ANY program, and they often tell me so. The fact is that people who can navigate multiple layers of cryptic instructions and/or get the right other people to explain the right other things correctly enough to eventually produce mesh are a small minority of SL users. It just seems like a lot of people because you're surrounded here by communications from them.

Sure, most people don't have any idea how to make much of anything, nor do they have any desire to. That's fine. I think we all understand that. But "most people" are not you, and they're not me. That's why they're not participating in this discussion, but we are.

Josh Susanto wrote:

Not impossible. But Sculptypaint 092 has worked for me on every machine. If I were just too stupid to get anything to work, I wouldn't be producing sculpts, either.

I never meant to imply it was a case of you being stupid. My apologies if it came across that way. I do think there's likely something you're unaware of, that you've done (or neglected to do) on all your machines that is causing the problem. That doesn't speak to your intelligence level in any way, only to your knowledge level, which is not the same thing at all.

As for Sculptypaint, I understand it's a Java application, which may mean it works along some different principles than the other programs we've been discussing. I don't know enough about programming to say for sure, but that would be my guess.

Josh Susanto wrote:

Thanks, yes. Please walk me through it. One step at a time. I will tell you when I have completed each step.

I'd be more than happy to, if I were an expert on Blender. But I'm really not. I'd be willing to bet that if you were to post this request over in the Mesh forum, and/or on the Blender forums, somebody would step up.

Josh Susanto wrote:

True. You did not. But there will be pressure from others to give them up anyway, even where they currently hold some advantage. I have a 10000L bet with someone on this matter already. .

Ah, so you've had a vested financial interest all this time in assuming more meaning behind things than is actually there. This is starting to make more sense now.

I'm not sure I understand how anyone could effectively pressure anyone else into using one type of content over another. Last I checked if my avatar hold's a gun to your avatar's head, it's not really going to hurt if the trigger is pulled. What am I missing?

Josh Susanto wrote:

Because the argument from efficiency and teh argument from ease are separate arguments. I agree on efficiency. I disagree on ease because if most people can't even figure out how to pull the red layer of a photo in Sculptypaint, tracking down the secret auxiliary code that allows other programs to do anything but clog up hard drives will certainly be beyond quite a few of them, as it has been beyond me.

The ease of use I was referring to comes after knowing how to use your software. I thought that much was obvious.

If I were to say "It's easier to hit a distant target with a rifle than with a rock," wouldn't common sense dictate that the "assuming you your rifle works" part of that statement is explicitly implied? Do we really need to go off on tangents about what if you're powder's not dry, or what if your barrel's plugged up, or what if you just don't know how to shoot?

Josh Susanto wrote:

They could save themselves a huge amount of work, but only if getting anything to work for them isn't actually just as much work, or more work. People who have never had their machines crash upon opening Blender may very well find mesh easier to work with than sculpt, and their products will be more efficient. But just because most people who get pissed off and give up never come here to talk about it doesn't mean they don't exist.

You speak as if getting the program to work is something that would have to be done every time. I think you know that's just silly. No matter how much of a pain it might be (and it's not a pain for most people) to get it up and running, the fact is it only has to be done once. What I'm talking about is the ongoing practice of actually making things.

Josh Susanto wrote:

Ask around among people who do not consider themselves to be builders, and I'm confident you'll find the unintended deterrents to the average user building much of anything are indeed daunting.

Doesn't that strike you as just a tad irrelevant, Josh? In a discussion like this, why should we concern ourselves with the the assumed thoughts and feelings of non-builders, when the topic we're discussing is building?

If we were discussing kung fu techniques, would it matter that not everyone in the world is a martial artist? Clearly, the techniques in question would only be usable by those who actually are.

Josh Susanto wrote:

I eagerly support the use of mesh for practically anything that is intended to be worn. I can also agree on a lot of furniture and other items that are about the size of an avatar or smaller.

Good. That's a start.

Josh Susanto wrote:

In terms of buildings and vehicles being made with mesh, though, the advantage is not that they surpass sculpts, but that they surpass standard prims. To say that mesh corrects the deficiency of sculpts in this regard (which I acknowldge you, for one, did not say) is not a very meaningful statement, because sculpts are already best not used for a lot of things in the first place.

Well, yes and no. I get what you're trying to say, but your thinking seems to be a bit limited on what's best for what.

I think there are a lot of sculpty vehicle makers out there who would strongly disagree with your notion that sculpties aren't well suited to that purpose. I've made quite a few sculpty vehicles myself that could never have been made from ordinary prims alone. I've got no problem now stating that I've been able to create vastly superior versions of those same vehicles as arbitrary mesh models.

As for buildings, perhaps you should consider that the specific items posed in the original topic of this thread were windows, plank flooring, and fences. Those kinds of items can be made quite well from oblong sculpties, just as the OP had assumed. And again, I've got no problem stating that they can be even better made as arbitrary meshes.

I have made entire buildings from sculpties, in rare cases where such was warranted. For example, I was hired a while back to build a Tron-style city, stylistically based upon the city in the Tron Legacy video game. Every building had to have rounded edges, and many of the shapes were compound curves. If were using regular prims, each building would have required hundreds or possibly thousands of prims, for the exteriors alone. So instead I used megasculpties, of which each one only needed a small handful. Those buildings would be better done as meshes as well.

Josh Susanto wrote:

Mesh is a 3d option and I'm happy to see it making its way. But it doesn't necessarily replace the other 2 prim types any better than sculpts replaced sphere prims, for example.

No one here suggested that mesh should replace sculpties entirely. What I DID suggest was that mesh would work better than sculpties for the specific items the OP was asking about. You elected to make it about more than that, for reasons of your own.

Josh Susanto wrote:

Really, I'm amazed that buyers are not as excited by mesh as builders seem to be.

I really don't find it surprising at all. The reason the buying public is the BUYING public instead of the PRODUCING public is because they don't know or care how things work, for the most part. As I said earlier, that's fine. That's why we have customers.

Josh Susanto wrote:

Every time I think I better point out to someone that something I've sent to them is not mesh, they've said that they're happy it's not mesh.

I would assume that probably has a lot more to do with how you're presenting it than anything else.

Chosen Few · December 10, 2011

Josh Susanto wrote:

I'm not a computer technician. I'm just looking at the question economically and wondering if mesh isn't being bandwidth-financed after the Enron model. I've worked for companies that have done similar things with other nonmonetary resources.

I'm not a computer technician either. But I do make a point of educating myself on the basics of how a lot of the things that interest me work, especially if I'm going to write about them.

With regard to bandwidth and such, it's important to understand the land impacts limit that with mesh, in the exact same way that prims are limited. Even a sim were packed to the gills with mesh models, it still couldn't exceed the amount of resource usage that 15,000 prims would need. So there's nothing in particular about mesh that would benefit from bringing extra servers into the mix, any more than would any other asset.

Josh Susanto wrote:

My main reason for even considering going to mesh would be to use more polygons per object. Mostly on trees. I currently do what I think are decent trees in 2 sculpt prims, but they might warrant twice as much land impact for twice as much shape. Trying to get that by using 4 sculpts is not a great idea.

Trees are particularly tough. If you want to make mesh trees that look great, but have a land impact of only 2-4, you're really gonna have to know what you're doing.

Trunks and branches are cylindrical, which means they inherently require relatively high poly counts. You can counter that to a certain degree, by being very aggressive with the LOD reductions, similar to how Linden trees do it. I don't know if you've ever noticed, but the trunks and branches of Linden trees become flat planes on LOD2. They only pop out to become round when the camera gets very close to them.

Leaves are a bit easier in that you can put a lot of them on a single plane. But they have to be double-sided, which automatically means each cluster requires double the poly count of what it otherwise would. Again, you can temper the land impact by being really aggressive with the LOD drops, but that comes at the expense of lowering the amount of leaves per tree per LOD level.

All game artists have various issues with trees, which is why dynamic solutions like SpeedTree exist. SL was going to incorporate SpeedTree a while back, but that idea had to be scrapped when they decided to opensource the viewer. It's a shame.

Josh Susanto wrote:

It's just a theory. But a substantial number of sims with no mesh on them I observed to be abruptly lagged and/or borked at exactly the same time that mesh deployed to the main grid. I suppose it could be mere coincidence. But there hasn't been any other satisfactory explanation for the non-mesh end of the phenomenon, much less anything else that would actually correlate chronologically with the mesh deployment.

As we've discussed before, it's very unwise to mistake anecdote for correlative data. Assuming things did get borked as you say (and I don't necessarily believe they actually did), you don't think it has anything to do with the fact that enormous sections of SL's architecture had to be completely redesigned in order to get arbitrary mesh support to work? With every change to the server code come some differences in sim performance, and with every change to the viewer come differences in client performance. That doesn't mean anything sinister is going on behind the scenes.

Josh Susanto wrote:

It can be open without being running. If you have any experience with Windows Vista, you probably have some idea what I'm talking about.

Yes, I have experience with Windows Vista, and no, I don't have any idea of what you're talking about. "Open" and "running" are synonyms. "Open without running" is an oxymoron, totally nonsensical.

Josh Susanto wrote:

I'm resolved to stop reinstalling Blender and other programs that have already not worked for me, and I am resolved to point out that they continue not to work for plenty of other people.

Didn't you just say a minute ago that you were interested in seeking help with your installation? Did you forget already?

Josh Susanto wrote:

More like: has mesh solved the alpha sorting problem? I've been able to work around it somewhat with multiple sculpts. So far I haven't heard of anyone being able to work around it with comparable principles applied to single-object mesh.

Of course mesh hasn't "solved the alpha sorting problem". It's not even a "problem", per se, in the first place. It's simply a property of how realtime 3D rendering works. You either learn how it works, and how to work with it, or you stumble over it. Either way, it is what it is, and there's no changing it.

There's literally nothing a sculpty can do that an arbitrary mesh can't, since sculpties ARE meshes. Whatever trick you think you've discovered for mitigating whatever problem you think you were having with alpha sorting, you could do the exact same thing, simply by building your arbitrary mesh identically to your sculpty.

Josh Susanto wrote:

My point is that it's a myth that mesh invariably rezzes faster than sculpt.

And just who is perpetuating such a myth? I've certainly never heard it before. The very notion is preposterous. SOME meshes will rez faster than SOME sculpties, and SOME sculpties will rez faster than SOME meshes. That's just common sense.

Josh Susanto wrote:

That is does not do so represents at least one contextual shortcoming wherever it rezzes more slowly than sculpt.

That's such a bizarre way of looking at it. You seem to be going miles out of your way to insist there's a problem where there isn't one. No two objects will ever rez at the exact same time, not even two of your precious sculpties. That doesn't mean either of them has a "contextual shortcoming". It just means one happened to download before the other.

Josh Susanto wrote:

OK, then, would you concede that if the inconsistent rez time for mesh is not a shortcoming, that it is misrepresented as a reliable advantage over scultps?

Misrepresented by whom, exactly? I've never seen anyone try to make such a claim. If someone were to do so, then yes, it would be a misrepresentation. It would also be idiotic.

Josh Susanto wrote:

It means that a blind man might beat him 1-on-1 if the lights are off. In a number of ways, the lights remain off to mesh. And when they come on, don't expect them to stay one continuously.

It may mean you're a greater insurance risk than someone who has driven more with the same number of accidents.

No idea what either of these statements have to do with the topic.

Josh Susanto wrote:

I'm applying anecdote as a balance to propaganda. Maybe when the propaganda stops, I'll stop using anecdote to balance it.

What propaganda would that be, exactly? Everyone else here besides you has presented only facts. You're the only one trying to pretend there's any more or any less going on than that.

If propagandizing actually were happening (which I'll repeat, it's not), you really think flimsy anecdotal observations would be the best way to counter it? Last I checked, the only way to beat false propaganda is by presenting indisputable facts.

Josh Susanto wrote:

I would figure as much. But the meshes I saw rezzing slower were nothing spectacular.

However spectacular or unspectacular they might have been in appearance says nothing about the amount of data they contain. That's the whole point of arbitrary mesh. It's arbitrary. You can do whatever you want with it. (Of course "can do" and "should do" are two different things, but that's a whole other subject.)

Josh Susanto wrote:

I'm honestly tempted to make sculpt equivlents just to prove they can rez faster and waste less data.

I'm not sure what you think is to be gained by proving what everyone already knows. Some meshes contain more data than an equivalently shaped sculpties, and some contain less. In most cases, a well made mesh will contain far less data than an equivalently shaped sculpty, but needless to say, not every mesh is well made.

Josh Susanto wrote:

Understood. MOST of the stuff I've seen made out of multiple sculpties is crap. But that has as much to do with people not being able to use them correctly as it does with what they're chosing to use (sound familiar?).

I'm not sure what this has to do with the point under which you placed it as a response, but sure, good artists produce good works, and bad artists produce bad works, no matter what the medium. Thank you, Captain Obvious.

Josh Susanto wrote:

I see that it's talked about. But the acknowledgement that it might be a comparative disadvantage in some cases is buried in mountains of other text disparaging sculpts as being utterly inferior for other reasons, only some of which are more than half valid.

I really don't understand why you're so defensive of sculpties, nor do I fathom why you seem to want to view other people's discussions of mesh as some kind of attack on sculpties and/or their users. Nobody's saying sculpties are bad. Nobody's saying you're stupid for using sculpties, or that your children are ugly because you use sculpties, or that you'll never get laid because you use sculpties, or anything of the kind. We're simply discussing the realities of the various asset types. There's no attacking or defending happening, other than by you.

The fact is, for most practical purposes, as well as from a purely technical standpoint, any locked-down mesh like a sculpty IS by definition inferior to an arbitrary mesh, in almost every way that matters, under nearly all circumstances, with very few exceptions. That's not a dogmatic affront, and you shouldn't make the mistake of taking it as such; it's simply a statement of fact, nothing more, nothing less.

I really don't get what you're so apparently afraid of in all this.

Josh Susanto wrote:

Mesh should absolutely be used where sculpt or some other prim type will not work.

Your thinking here is incomplete. It's not just that mesh should be used where sculpties or prims won't work at all. It's also that it should be used whenever and wherever sculpties or prims won't work as well as an arbitrary mesh would.

Josh Susanto wrote:

Alpha sorting? Solved?

I don't know what you think you're asking with this question. Alpha sorting is a process. It can't be "solved" because it's not a problem.

In any case, at the rendering level, which is where alpha sorting happens, all polygons are equal. The renderer doesn't know or care whether any particular surface is part of a prim or a sculpty or an arbitrary mesh. Functionally, they're all the exact same thing.

The alpha sorting glitch, is primarily a function of user error, not at all related to any particular object type. Those who know how to work around it and with it never see it as a problem. As I mentioned earlier, it's simply a property of how reatime rendering works.

You seem to believe you've found a way to deal with it effectively with your sculpty builds. Terrific. I can promise you, whatever your method is, you could do the exact same thing with arbitrary meshes. There's absolutely no reason in the world you couldn't.

Josh Susanto wrote:

I can already move the verts around on a sculpt all I want once I've sculpted it, and get the same shape with the verts being distributed differently. This is not at all mysterious. I'm just constrained to 1024 data points per prim.

Moving vertices around on the model surface is not at all the same thing as mapping UV's.

Again, you're demonstrating just how little you know about the subject you're trying to comment on. It's making it very difficult to have an intelligent conversation.

Josh Susanto wrote:

That's pretty funny. Have you looked at my stuff at all?

Yes, I have looked at your stuff, as you know. I don't see what that has to do with anything, or how it makes what I said funny.

Josh Susanto wrote:

They don't have the consistent option of being made easily by someone without a computer science background.

I don't have a computer science background, and neiher do most of the 3D artists I know. We have art backgrounds. Computers just happen to be the tools with which we create our artwork.

Josh Susanto wrote:

What I laugh at is how meshes still look like they have textures painted on them, rather than having some kind of more direct relationship between shape and surface textures. Granted, if I end up doing mesh at some point, I expect I can somewhat address that, and most sculpts other than my own seem ot have a similar painted-on look about them.

As I'm sure you know, that's got nothing to do with any inherent property of meshes themselves. As we already discussed, good artists do good work, and bad artists do bad work, regardless of the medium. The majority of stuff in SL will always be pretty bad. That's only to be expected in an amateur-created world. I agree with you that you would likely do better than most.

Josh Susanto wrote:

I see their frustrations not being dismissed as wilful ignorance. That's a difference.

If someone were to say textures are inherently uneditable, just because they themselves don't know how to edit images, or that sculpties can't be edited just because they don't know how to edit them, I'd certainly call that willful ignorance. And yes, when someoene says arbitrary meshes cannot be edited just because they don't know how to do it, I must call it the willful ignorance that it is.

Josh Susanto wrote:

I believe it's more than implicit in the prevailing tone of rhetoic regarding alleged differenced between mesh and sculpt.

Tone is a funny thing to try to cite when we're communicating only with text. At least 90% of the apparent "tone" of a post is in the mind of the reader, not the writer.

I have no idea why you chose to use the word "alleged" in this context, by the way. We're talking about fact here, not supposition. Every difference between sculpties and meshes that I've presented here has been a simple statement of fact. The only one appearing to assign any extra subtext to it is you.

Josh Susanto wrote:

Moreover, the thread originator asked for help with oblong sculpts and was essentially told he should just make mesh instead.

I didn't say she SHOULD do anything. My exact words were "Just so you know, you CAN..." It was a two-sentence FYI, nothing more. You're the one who decided to blow it up into something else.

The OP, seemingly did interpret it the way it was meant, and asked in her next post for more information on the subject. I then factually answered what was asked. That's it.

Josh Susanto wrote:

My point is that a request for help with oblong sculpts was almost immediately snapped up as another opportunity to convert the OP to Meshism.

It's not a religious argument, Josh. It's quite unfortunate that you choose to interpret it as such. It's a tragically inaccurate and self-limiting viewpoint, which almost completely blinds you to what's really happening here.

Chosen Few · December 10, 2011

Jasmin Helstein wrote:

Thank you very much for the extensive reply Chosen. Your explanation made the meaning of mesh a lot clearer to me and i'm sure sooner or later it will take over but right now it isn't time yet, at least not for me, i have no intention of selling things outside of SL and my viewer doesn't support it, that may also color my view a bit.

*.DAE is for mesh right ? ... pitty

No problem, Jasmin. I'm glad you found the information helpful, even if you won't be acting on it yet. When you do, we'll be here to help.

To answer your question, the .dae extension is for the COLLADA format, a text-based way of describing mesh objects. It's similar to OBJ, but with more capabilities.

Josh Susanto · December 10, 2011

>Sounds like a driver problem to me. Blender's interface is entirely reliant on OpenGL hardware acceleration. If your drivers aren't properly configured, it can run so slowly as to appear completely unresponsive.

This is a distinction that has no practical use. If Blender works like a screenshot of an open Blender window, then you might as well install the screen shot on my computer and tell me to click on that.

Whatever the problem was, it's apparently now gone. I reinstalled blender, and the buttons actually seem to work now. Thanks for persuading me to do that.

>There are a lot of solutions to various graphics problems posted on the Blender forums. I bet if you describe the problem in detail over there, you'd have a working solution offered up in no time. There are also plenty of Blender users right here on the SL forums who I'm sure would be more than happy to offer suggestions as well.

There was nothing to describe. The buttons didn't work and other people who were using Blender couldn't figure out why. They also couldn't explain why it tended to crash computers other than the one I currently use.

>If it's capable of opening it, it's capable of running it. If it's unresponsive, there's a configuration problem somewhere, which can be fixed.

It's capable of running Blender now. It was not capable of running it 6 months ago. The difference between open and running is the difference between having an active SL window open on your screen while the internet is connected and having it open while the internet is disconnected. Has this never happened to you?

>Looking at the Blender download site now, it would seem things have been simplified quite a bit since the last time I downloaded and installed Blender myself.

True. VERY true. I still have my doubts about whether it will produce anything, but it does open, and at least some of the buttons work. I guess I was just expecting people to notice and mention if there was some kind of big change to the system, such as a change from "not working" to "working".

>(As you know, I'm a Maya user, so I don't mess with Blender very often.)

So you advocate use of free mesh tools you don't use over free sculpt tools you also don't use on the basis of your extensive experience with the costly mesh tools you actually do use? Maybe people should also ask the Pope for gynecology referrals?

>They used to require the download and installation of a whole bunch of separate items (runtime environment, dll's, Python, etc.), before installation of the main executable. It now appears they've bundled just about all of it into a single installer, which is good. Python, still needs to be installed separately, though.

I'm not seeing any need to install or run Python separately. I assume it's installed, but how would I know if it wasn't?

>If you installed an older version, from back when they still had everything componentized, you may have missed a component (or several). If you've installed a recent version, that obviously becomes less likely.

I might have missed that which was never mentioned. I was aware of the Python issue, but I'm still convinced there was a secret handshake that people either didn't realize they needed to share with me, or didn't even realize they were using.

>Whether it's primary income or secondary, it's still income.

Unless it is, instead, a loss. Every minute spent trying to debug something that can only be debugged from the other end is a minute I can't spend building (or having some kind of potentially productive argument on this forum).

>The point was simply that it will benefit you to learn as much as possible about everything you do that is important to you.

Building is important to me. Watching tutorials that skip over the part about whether something will actualy work at all (andy why) is not important to me.

>What amazingly shortsighted thinking.

Focusing on potential long term challenges while ignoring immediate problems is not necessarily a better idea than doing the reverse. Step B is potentially important. But not if you have no way to get past step A.

>There's such a bigger world of 3D modeling open to you than just sculpties, most of which pays far more than just the selling of "crazy cheap" trinkets in SL ever could. You have but to be willing to learn how to take part in it, just like you first were with learning to make sculpties.

I didn't have to take part in anything to learn how to make sculpties. Every button in Sculptypaint 092 does exactly what it says it does, except that surface images load reversed left to right (easy to work around that). Lunapic and Irfanview are similarly transparent. No lessons needed. No tutorials. No endless pages of FAQ's that don't answer the damn question.

>If you've already decided you're going to fail, then you will, of course. Just understand the only reason for the failure is because of that decision. If you were on a mission to make it work, you would.

My failures so far are due to a gap between what people say and what they seem to think they say.

My successes are due to reducing as much as possible any dependency on anyone to say anything to me.

You're doing a lot better than most. Congratulations.

>There are any number of free classes you can take in SL and elsewhere, and there are countless other free sources of information all over the Web. Books on the subject abound, as well.

I don't need classes. I need applications that do what they say they do.

>By the way, have you ever stopped to think that maybe if you spent half as much time and effort focusing on becoming competent with this stuff as you do on all this woe-is-me thinking, you could make enough money with your expertise that precious little would need be cost prohibitive ever again?

It's a social approach I have tried periodically on principle. So far what you're seeing here is an example of this approach being a lot more productive than usual. Otherwise, I can see what the buttons do by pressing them. If they do anything.

>Every person who volunteers to post on forums, produce instructional videos, write tutorials, or teach free classes, they're all spewing BS?

No, that was overstated in a way that is unfair to those people, and I apologize. Their efforts are no doubt sincere.

>Wow, man, way to insult all of us. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe your own attitude is the only problem in this equation?

My attitude isn't what kept those buttons from doing anything when I clicked on them.

>Oh, how dare they, the evil sons of bitches! Come on, man. You're being ridiculous. If you're having a problem, ask for help (nicely), and people will. It's that simple.

People had offered me tons of help. None of it worked. If they'd just told me to wait for some other version, that would have been better advice.

>If no one's able to solve the problem here, the Blender forums are only a click away.

Forums are for software that works. Not for software that doesn't work. The software just didn't work. Period.

>There is no secret handshake, and no, you don't have to live with it.

There was a secret handshake. Otherwise, no one would have been using Blender. And the fact that it now apparently works, when it didn't before, clearly means that something has been included whch was being left out before.

>There are countless helpful souls right here on this forum, and on other forums all over the Web, who would be more than happy to help you (just as I'm trying to help you now). All you need to do is drop the pessimism, and ask.

With Direct Delivery still "just around the corner" as it was in August, can you really dismiss my total attitude on these fora as mere pessimism?

I'm the guy who told all of you that Brooke would lie to you, then told you that she was lying, and then proved that she had lied. If you're not seeing may posts on the Merchants forum attributed to Brooke recently, I hardly think that's due to my mere pessimism.

>I know you think the whole "Josh, the conspiracy theorist" act is cute and all, but really, all it does is hold you back. If you're really happy in your misery, then keep it up. But I suspect you'd be far happier if you'd just let it go.

There has been no conspiracy around Blender. It's simply been a matter of the huge number of people who were unable to use it mostly logging off and forgetting about it rather than speaking up, much as did the thousands of people Rod mentions not completing the registration process for SL accounts.

>Let's apply some simple logic here. What's the common denominator across all those machines? If the only thing they all have in common is you, then clearly something you did (or neglected to do) is the problem. We can rule out the possibility that program itself is the issue, because millions of other people do use it successfully.

I still maintain that millions of others did not use it successfully, but just didn't make as much noise about it here or elsewhere as did people for whom it worked just fine. When most people crash their whole system with a piece of free software, they don't keep trying to get it to work. They uninstall it, eradicate any trace of it from their hard drive, and move on to something else.

>You should look on that as very good news, by the way, because it means the problem is solvable.

The solution is working software. Not positive visualization or deep breathing exercises.

>Ridiculed? Seriously? That's what you think people are concerned with? What are we, twelve? Look this isn't schoolyard playground, nobody's going to get picked on by the other kids for wanting to succeed, or for being on speaking terms with a teacher.

Ridiculed. Yes. People say they are not deterred by the threat of ridicule, but they mostly are. It's a MAJOR reason why a lot of people have told me they haven't asked for help sooner with all kinds of things, including sculpts. As an English teacher, I constantly have to remind my students to just open their mouth and let something come out; that the worst mistake is to say nothing at all.

Josh Susanto · December 10, 2011

>It's never a big deal to say, "I tried your suggestion, but it didn't work. Got any other ideas?" People do that every day.

I find people are generally nicer with help than others expect me to be with it. My own experience demystifying sculpts for people 1-on-1 is one of the reasons I'm comfortable coming onto a forum like this and demanding useful explanations of things.

>I might suggest you be careful with your use of the word "know", by the way. It seems likely to me that you merely ASSUME there are plenty of people who are afraid of ridicule, for reasons of your own. I very much doubt that you KNOW it. How many people have you interviewed on the subject?

I agree it's somewhat open to interpretation. But when people tell me they have been ridiculed elsewhere for asking the same questions they're asking me, that's a bit of a hint. I'm less saddened to think they were ridiculed than to know that they were also not helped.

>Dude, where do you find these computers of yours that can't open such commonly used low-sysreq programs, but somehow can magically run SL just fine? Again, you might want to think about that common denominator.

San Francisco CA, Ashburnham MA, Bogotá Colombia. I agree it's mysterious.

>Have you tried Googling for "Sketchup help"? I just did. Lookee what I found: http://support.google.com/sketchup/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=116359.

You mean this page? Thanks.

>I think you'd surprise yourself, once you dive into it. It's the very same skill set that allows you to make sculpties, and to build with prims. It's also an offshoot of the skillset that allows you to make textures. From seeing what you've already done, and from our conversations on the forums, I have zero doubt that you can do it.

The pertinent skill set seems to be as much social/intuitive as it is much of anything to do with my own creative problem solving methods. The perfect example of what this difference really is exists between the 092 and 093 versions fo Sculptypaint. 092, Cel Edman made for his own use and then distributed to other people, who complained. So then he "fixed" it with version 093, which, for my own purposes, is utterly useless.

>It seems to me you've just let yourself get thrown off the path so many times by "This program didn't work" or "That program's too expensive" or "Where's the manual for this one?" that you haven't yet given yourself much chance to actually get started in earnest.

I have given myself a chance to make stuff that other people are not making by using tools that other people are not using. If I'd stuck with the program you describe, I wouldn't have been able to produce much of anything. How is that better?

>Sure, most people don't have any idea how to make much of anything, nor do they have any desire to. That's fine. I think we all understand that. But "most people" are not you, and they're not me. That's why they're not participating in this discussion, but we are.

I don't have any hard numerical data on most users. What I do know is that the #1 reason cited (to me) for not building things is that users can't make adequate sense of the tools available to them. Even some of the more respected builders on my friends list seem to think that at least half of the standard 3d modeling tools are just total crap that's not worth the headache on my part if I'm already making any money.

>I never meant to imply it was a case of you being stupid.

Understood. Sorry to seem to put that word in your mouth. It was intended as rhetorical hyperbole, only.

> I do think there's likely something you're unaware of, that you've done (or neglected to do) on all your machines that is causing the problem. That doesn't speak to your intelligence level in any way, only to your knowledge level, which is not the same thing at all.

It would seem pretty weird that the same (or apparently same) problem would exist on both brand new and older machines, both Mac and PC. By deduction, the common factor would seem to be something withheld from my use in order to solve or prevent the problem. Others have mentioned similar issues to me as well, so it probably wasn't just me.

>As for Sculptypaint, I understand it's a Java application, which may mean it works along some different principles than the other programs we've been discussing. I don't know enough about programming to say for sure, but that would be my guess.

That is; it works. To date, my only serious complaints would be the mirror imaging issue and the fact that it doesn't load sculpts out at 256x256 but is limited to 128x128.

>I'd be more than happy to, if I were an expert on Blender. But I'm really not. I'd be willing to bet that if you were to post this request over in the Mesh forum, and/or on the Blender forums, somebody would step up.

I'll get there now, thanks.

(True. You did not. But there will be pressure from others to give them up anyway, even where they currently hold some advantage. I have a 10000L bet with someone on this matter already. .)

>Ah, so you've had a vested financial interest all this time in assuming more meaning behind things than is actually there. This is starting to make more sense now.

Agreed. It's better to disagree on something if we're at least on the same page.

>I'm not sure I understand how anyone could effectively pressure anyone else into using one type of content over another. Last I checked if my avatar hold's a gun to your avatar's head, it's not really going to hurt if the trigger is pulled. What am I missing?

What you're missing is that some people at LL have been heavily invested, for a long time in the maximum apparent success rate of mesh in SL. You may also recall that Qarl, the guy who brought sculpts to SL, was fired under rather mysterious circumstances. There clearly is or has been a political aspect the sculpt/mesh question within LL, even if Qarl was not involved. Someone at LL still stands to benefit by making the sculpt supply dry up, one way or another.

>The ease of use I was referring to comes after knowing how to use your software. I thought that much was obvious.

Almost. The ease of use must always be a comparative question. Software that does not run is never easy to use. Even with that issue aside, it's difficult for me to imagine anything much easier to use than Sculptypaint 092. As I've said, the buttons all do what they say they do. Nothing is at all msyterious. All I had to do to develop ease of use was to press the damn buttons a couple of times and see what they did.

>If I were to say "It's easier to hit a distant target with a rifle than with a rock," wouldn't common sense dictate that the "assuming you your rifle works" part of that statement is explicitly implied? Do we really need to go off on tangents about what if you're powder's not dry, or what if your barrel's plugged up, or what if you just don't know how to shoot?

It is implied, but only because it is implied by someone who has not already spent 3 years trying the nonfunctioning rifle.

>You speak as if getting the program to work is something that would have to be done every time. I think you know that's just silly. No matter how much of a pain it might be (and it's not a pain for most people) to get it up and running, the fact is it only has to be done once. What I'm talking about is the ongoing practice of actually making things.

True. If you need a heart transplant, you will probably only need a heart transplant once. But that does not make it an easier surgery than something that will have to be done repeatedly.

(Ask around among people who do not consider themselves to be builders, and I'm confident you'll find the unintended deterrents to the average user building much of anything are indeed daunting.)

>Doesn't that strike you as just a tad irrelevant, Josh? In a discussion like this, why should we concern ourselves with the the assumed thoughts and feelings of non-builders, when the topic we're discussing is building?

Because the reasons they don't build at all aren't so different from my own reasons for not building with certain tools. This is only more true of users who can't even seem to finish the registration process to use SL in the first place. They're not just a bunch of idiots. A lot of them are smart people to whom things which are obvious to computer technicians are not obvious because they are not computer technicians.

>If we were discussing kung fu techniques, would it matter that not everyone in the world is a martial artist? Clearly, the techniques in question would only be usable by those who actually are.

Except that the rest of the analogy is that when someone asks for advice on running shoes, they're always told how much more athletic they could be if they bought a uniform and took karate classes for 10 years.

>I think there are a lot of sculpty vehicle makers out there who would strongly disagree with your notion that sculpties aren't well suited to that purpose. I've made quite a few sculpty vehicles myself that could never have been made from ordinary prims alone. I've got no problem now stating that I've been able to create vastly superior versions of those same vehicles as arbitrary mesh models.

Sculpty vehicles act they're made of spheroids. It's a compromise I can understand people being willing to make only to replicate the design of specific RL vehicles. Otherwise, if the idea is to make a car, why not just make a car?

>As for buildings, perhaps you should consider that the specific items posed in the original topic of this thread were windows, plank flooring, and fences. Those kinds of items can be made quite well from oblong sculpties, just as the OP had assumed. And again, I've got no problem stating that they can be even better made as arbitrary meshes.

If many of them are going to be used, I can see a serious mathematical advantage to using meshes, yes. Assuming that they consist of many straight lines and flat surfaces. Oblongs have become somewhat synonymous with that, but there are plenty of other good uses for them. Ponk Bing's plants, for example, I think must be at least about as efficient as mesh, if not more efficient.

>I have made entire buildings from sculpties, in rare cases where such was warranted. For example, I was hired a while back to build a Tron-style city, stylistically based upon the city in the Tron Legacy video game. Every building had to have rounded edges, and many of the shapes were compound curves. If were using regular prims, each building would have required hundreds or possibly thousands of prims, for the exteriors alone. So instead I used megasculpties, of which each one only needed a small handful. Those buildings would be better done as meshes as well.

Because the precise correspondence between the amount of data needed and the amount of data actually used, yes. I get it.

>No one here suggested that mesh should replace sculpties entirely.

It's a pervasive theme in mesh/sculpt discussions, even if it is never directly stated. If sculpts are a waste of data, then the implication is that they should be replaced by something not as wasteful. Since there's a belief by many that sculpts are inevitably less data-efficient than mesh, it may be construed that these people would have to agree that sculpts should all be eventually replaced. As to my own work, if someone can get a more effcient result with a mesh version, I think they should do that. I'm just not persuaded that this is necessarily always the case as some have seemed to obliquely suggest.

>What I DID suggest was that mesh would work better than sculpties for the specific items the OP was asking about. You elected to make it about more than that, for reasons of your own.

I think that depends not only upon the type of item, but on the specific design of the item. No?

>I really don't find it surprising at all. The reason the buying public is the BUYING public instead of the PRODUCING public is because they don't know or care how things work, for the most part. As I said earlier, that's fine. That's why we have customers.

It has actually been an additional deterrent to me to get into mesh. I was actually more excited about mesh before it was deployed, and I've become less and less excited about it since the deployment.

(Every time I think I better point out to someone that something I've sent to them is not mesh, they've said that they're happy it's not mesh.)

>I would assume that probably has a lot more to do with how you're presenting it than anything else.

I suppose it could be that, but I don't think so. The vibe has been more along the lines of "I like this thing, but please tell me it's not mesh so I won't be afraid to make it even bigger." People tend to like my stuff big for some reason.

Drongle McMahon · December 10, 2011

Next time someone asks me what "exponential" means, I am going to tell them to look at this thread. :matte-motes-dead:

Josh Susanto · December 11, 2011

>With regard to bandwidth and such, it's important to understand the land impacts limit that with mesh, in the exact same way that prims are limited.

Or so you are now told. Of course, people were being told something different earlier. Maybe they'll be told some 3rd thing in due time?

>Even a sim were packed to the gills with mesh models, it still couldn't exceed the amount of resource usage that 15,000 prims would need.

Or, if that happened to be the case, maybe you just wouldn't be told so, or perhaps ever find out about it, ever.

>So there's nothing in particular about mesh that would benefit from bringing extra servers into the mix, any more than would any other asset.

Such would certainly appear to be the case as long as no one asks any questions, sure.

>Trees are particularly tough. If you want to make mesh trees that look great, but have a land impact of only 2-4, you're really gonna have to know what you're doing.

I'm getting a pretty decent effect with an opaque sculpted trunk and a spiral concavity alpha for foliage. I tried putting the trunk and the foliage on one prim, but that had a couple of disadvantages; mainly that alpha sorting inconveniences were then also communicated to the trunk. A mesh might allow me to get the land impact down below 2, but I don't yet understand there's any way to do that without inviting the communication of alpha sorting issues to the trunk, as with the 1-prim sculpted trees I tried.

>Trunks and branches are cylindrical, which means they inherently require relatively high poly counts. You can counter that to a certain degree, by being very aggressive with the LOD reductions, similar to how Linden trees do it. I don't know if you've ever noticed, but the trunks and branches of Linden trees become flat planes on LOD2. They only pop out to become round when the camera gets very close to them.

I do see that. My own concept is that if I'm going to inevitably produce imperfect trees, they might at least be imperfect in some way other than the Linden trees are imperfect. My current tree technique offers a pretty different set of effects to consumers, and I'm not eager to switch to using the same deficiencies for which other builders almost uniformly tend to settle in their own tree products.

>Leaves are a bit easier in that you can put a lot of them on a single plane. But they have to be double-sided, which automatically means each cluster requires double the poly count of what it otherwise would. Again, you can temper the land impact by being really aggressive with the LOD drops, but that comes at the expense of lowering the amount of leaves per tree per LOD level.

My foliage is normally on a round sculpt spun around and folded inside itself to make the surface texture map perfectly front to back for each leaf. The idea of putting my leaves on planes just seems like a way to underperform competitors who have been doing that longer. There are enough other people making trees that look like crosses from the top with just as many prims as I use. There are a few bad angles to my trees. But they can also be used in at least a few ways that the other trees don't work as well.

>All game artists have various issues with trees, which is why dynamic solutions like SpeedTree exist. SL was going to incorporate SpeedTree a while back, but that idea had to be scrapped when they decided to opensource the viewer. It's a shame.

It's a shame for me not because I probably would have used it, but because an explosion in interest in new trees would also mean an opportunity for me to expand my own tree line, much as the mesh deployment meant an explosion of interest in my sculpts, which often hold a person's interest even after the realization that it's not actually one of those exciting new mesh things.

>As we've discussed before, it's very unwise to mistake anecdote for correlative data.

It's also unwise to assume that there can be no correlative value simply because any data that would either support or refute that has been withheld, that is; especially if such data has been withheld, as it has here.

>Assuming things did get borked as you say (and I don't necessarily believe they actually did),

That they did is not at all disputed by LL. They simply don't indulge openly in the same terminology for what happened at the beginning of August.

>you don't think it has anything to do with the fact that enormous sections of SL's architecture had to be completely redesigned in order to get arbitrary mesh support to work?

It could be. But that, being the simple, innocent, obvious explanation, is not even what they provided. Really, they provided what amounted essentially to no explanation at all. If the possible explanation you offer were any more valid than what I offer, why wouldn't they simply have used that rather than ultimately evading the issue?

>With every change to the server code come some differences in sim performance, and with every change to the viewer come differences in client performance. That doesn't mean anything sinister is going on behind the scenes.

It wouldn't have to be sinister. It could simply be a matter of duress after painting themselves into a corner.

> "Open without running" is an oxymoron, totally nonsensical.

If a cyanide bomb goes off backstage at the opera, the opera may be open, but it is hardly running.

>Didn't you just say a minute ago that you were interested in seeking help with your installation? Did you forget already?

I take help that is offered. I do not pester people for help they have already been unable tp provide. If you're still offering, I'm accepting. Thank you.

>Of course mesh hasn't "solved the alpha sorting problem". It's not even a "problem", per se, in the first place. It's simply a property of how realtime 3D rendering works. You either learn how it works, and how to work with it, or you stumble over it. Either way, it is what it is, and there's no changing it.

Working with it also means chosing the tools that will mitigate its ill effects to whatever degree you may find tolerable. I haven't seen anything to demonstrate that mesh users are negotiating alpha better with mesh than I am with sculpts.

>There's literally nothing a sculpty can do that an arbitrary mesh can't, since sculpties ARE meshes. Whatever trick you think you've discovered for mitigating whatever problem you think you were having with alpha sorting, you could do the exact same thing, simply by building your arbitrary mesh identically to your sculpty.

If it means using 1 prim rather than 2, there's no reason to imagine it will work.

>And just who is perpetuating such a myth? I've certainly never heard it before. The very notion is preposterous. SOME meshes will rez faster than SOME sculpties, and SOME sculpties will rez faster than SOME meshes. That's just common sense.

If you're seriously interested in a list of citations to this effect, I expect I can produce one. Are you?

>That's such a bizarre way of looking at it. You seem to be going miles out of your way to insist there's a problem where there isn't one. No two objects will ever rez at the exact same time, not even two of your precious sculpties. That doesn't mean either of them has a "contextual shortcoming". It just means one happened to download before the other.

Fair enough. I still maintain that there's a pervasive mythology surrounding rez rates. I also maintain that it's a perceived advantage that is used to dismiss as less important other possible disadvantages.

>Misrepresented by whom, exactly? I've never seen anyone try to make such a claim. If someone were to do so, then yes, it would be a misrepresentation. It would also be idiotic.

May I quote you? We're going to need that list, aren't we.

(It means that a blind man might beat him 1-on-1 if the lights are off. In a number of ways, the lights remain off to mesh. And when they come on, don't expect them to stay one continuously.)

(It may mean you're a greater insurance risk than someone who has driven more with the same number of accidents.)

>No idea what either of these statements have to do with the topic.

They were your examples. I'm letting you know what I think the meaning would be, as compared to the meaning you may choose to assign.

>What propaganda would that be, exactly?

More or less half of what appeared on the mesh forum before the mesh deployment, for example.

Josh Susanto · December 11, 2011

>However spectacular or unspectacular they might have been in appearance says nothing about the amount of data they contain. That's the whole point of arbitrary mesh. It's arbitrary. You can do whatever you want with it. (Of course "can do" and "should do" are two different things, but that's a whole other subject.)

Then why all the excitement? Just for the data costs? Where was all the discussion of that when mesh was first announced? It seems to me that most of the excitement was over the idea that is was going to be physical and flexible, although a lot of people seemed to be confused or unaware about how many equivalent prims it was going to take to make anything both physical and flexible.

>I'm not sure what you think is to be gained by proving what everyone already knows. Some meshes contain more data than an equivalently shaped sculpties, and some contain less. In most cases, a well made mesh will contain far less data than an equivalently shaped sculpty, but needless to say, not every mesh is well made.

In regard to at least some meshes, I haven't seen anything special about them that should cause them to rez more slowly. I'm not convinced that this has really be scientifically evaluated outside of the beta grid, if even there.

>I'm not sure what this has to do with the point under which you placed it as a response, but sure, good artists produce good works, and bad artists produce bad works, no matter what the medium. Thank you, Captain Obvious. **Only uploaded images may be used in postings**://secondlife.i.lithium.com/i/smilies/16x16_smiley-wink.gif" border="0" alt=":smileywink:" title="Smiley Wink" />

Even good artists produce works consistent with their command of the tools available to them. Giving Picasso an airbrush and telling him "now you can produce realistic surface textures" might further empower him, or it might not. Moreover, if he feels obligated to use it, that might not be an improvement over what he's already doing, even with a lot of practice. Warhol's work improved when he stopped dripping. If nothing had made him believe he needed to drip in the first place, he would have improved sooner.

>I really don't understand why you're so defensive of sculpties, nor do I fathom why you seem to want to view other people's discussions of mesh as some kind of attack on sculpties and/or their users. Nobody's saying sculpties are bad. Nobody's saying you're stupid for using sculpties, or that your children are ugly because you use sculpties, or that you'll never get laid because you use sculpties, or anything of the kind. We're simply discussing the realities of the various asset types. There's no attacking or defending happening, other than by you.

It appears that way to you only because I (and others) don't comment on mesh discussions where I'm not experienced with the mesh technology being discussed. And because we don't comment, the persistent negative comparison of sculpt to mesh slips by naturally, whether it is warranted (as it often is), or not.

>The fact is, for most practical purposes, as well as from a purely technical standpoint, any locked-down mesh like a sculpty IS by definition inferior to an arbitrary mesh, in almost every way that matters, under nearly all circumstances, with very few exceptions. That's not a dogmatic affront, and you shouldn't make the mistake of taking it as such; it's simply a statement of fact, nothing more, nothing less.

This sounds intuitively correct. And yet there seem to be plenty of examples even in the mesh forum that indicate some kind of unobvious exception. The implication that some benefit must inevitably be produced by making a mesh version of something that already exists as sculpt can be easily taken from what we all know about the mathematics of both things. And that's one of the reasons I should have been surprised by the slow conversion to mesh, except that I have also been hearing, almost from the beginning, and even from mesh producers, that the mathematics just aren't as simple as we want to think they are. That they are not, and that the reasons for which they are not, both should provoke as to ask a lot of questions which remain strangely unasked by existing mesh users.

>I really don't get what you're so apparently afraid of in all this.

I'm not exactly afraid. I simply get bent out of shape at the implication that whether people use mesh or sculpt is more important than the question of what they're making or how well they're making it, given all other possible criteria. It's like seeing a guy ask for advice about who to take to a party and everyone answering "whoever has the bigger t1ts".

>Your thinking here is incomplete. It's not just that mesh should be used where sculpties or prims won't work at all. It's also that it should be used whenever and wherever sculpties or prims won't work as well as an arbitrary mesh would.

I can't disagree with that in principle. But if it comes down to one of my sculpt trees vesus a mesh tree that looks like it's on a folded piece of plexiglass because someone wanted a land impact of 1 prim rather than 2 prims, I have certain doubts about how the concept of ceteris paribus is being applied.

>In any case, at the rendering level, which is where alpha sorting happens, all polygons are equal. The renderer doesn't know or care whether any particular surface is part of a prim or a sculpty or an arbitrary mesh. Functionally, they're all the exact same thing.

It cares whether it is part of a prim with an alpha layer, or part of 1 of 2 prims, one of which does not have an alpha layer.

>The alpha sorting glitch, is primarily a function of user error, not at all related to any particular object type. Those who know how to work around it and with it never see it as a problem. As I mentioned earlier, it's simply a property of how reatime rendering works.

It's not a problem provided that you want trees to look like they're painted on crossed pieces of cardboard or plexiglass or something.

If you want anything different from that, it's bound to be a problem.

>You seem to believe you've found a way to deal with it effectively with your sculpty builds. Terrific. I can promise you, whatever your method is, you could do the exact same thing with arbitrary meshes. There's absolutely no reason in the world you couldn't.

Because the advantage to mesh is the lower prim count, but that would require also actually using one less prim, which defeats the effect in question.

>Moving vertices around on the model surface is not at all the same thing as mapping UV's.

If you don't know what I'm doing, how do you know it's different in effect from what you're doing?

>Again, you're demonstrating just how little you know about the subject you're trying to comment on. It's making it very difficult to have an intelligent conversation.

What I know is that unless there's a totally open disconnect between verts and the distribution of surface image data in mesh, the kinds of photo effects I'm using will tend to be wasted on pixel distributions even less coherent that what I already tolerate with sculpts and with my current data redistribution techniques.

Does each vert on a mesh hold the same number of pixels, or does it not?

If there's a simple choice in mesh to evenly redistribute surface data without being distributed according to the limits of polygons of different sizes and shapes, that will make nicer paint jobs on furniture and such, but it's bound to create a lot of extra incongruity between my photo details and the pertinent shape details on photoderived shapes such as I have made the core of my own business.

>Yes, I have looked at your stuff, as you know. I don't see what that has to do with anything, or how it makes what I said funny.

It's funny because it suggests that you either haven't seen or cannot recognize the existing corresponence between shape and color data in my current work. You might almost as well be excitedly telling me "you'll be able to make a plywood box!"

>I don't have a computer science background, and neiher do most of the 3D artists I know. We have art backgrounds. Computers just happen to be the tools with which we create our artwork.

So you've never taken a computer science class? How about an art class that used computers? Never?

>As I'm sure you know, that's got nothing to do with any inherent property of meshes themselves.

I wish I could know that. But I just haven't seen anything that would make me know that. Mesh looks like it's formed and then painted. It does not confuse the eye in regard to distinctions between shape detail and surface detail. Not yet anyway. If I can fix that eventually, I shall. But I'm discouraged in trying to assume that mesh tools are the right tools for such effects by the fact that I still have not seen them.

> I agree with you that you would likely do better than most.

On your much-appreciated flattery, I'm continuing to consider the matter in earnest. Thanks.

>If someone were to say textures are inherently uneditable, just because they themselves don't know how to edit images, or that sculpties can't be edited just because they don't know how to edit them, I'd certainly call that willful ignorance.

I haven't said that mesh can't be edited. I have said that it can't be edited by people who do not have any real access to the tools with which to edit it. That would be true, also, of other types of data. There's nothing extra to install or other secret hoops to jump through with the tools I'm using. If you don't get permission to use the 092 version of Sculptypaint, you won't see the link. There's no question of opening the link and getting a program out of it that mysteriously doesn't work. I still don't have access to the Irfanview plugins, so I still haven't had the opportunity to be flippant with people who don't realize they need to pay to load that stuff in order to do things that other people tell them is available to do "for free" with Irfanview. Lunapic remains free and fully portable because it's a website that requires no plugins for anything I'm doing with it.

>Tone is a funny thing to try to cite when we're communicating only with text. At least 90% of the apparent "tone" of a post is in the mind of the reader, not the writer.

That would tend to be true. But in cases where specific overstatements are repeated as having real value over a period of months or years, the other 10% can become pretty important.

(Moreover, the thread originator asked for help with oblong sculpts and was essentially told he should just make mesh instead.)

>I didn't say she SHOULD do anything. My exact words were "Just so you know, you CAN..." It was a two-sentence FYI, nothing more. You're the one who decided to blow it up into something else.

Yes. I overreacted to your message. I shouldn't be making you pay for the behavior of others, and I do aplogize.

>The OP, seemingly did interpret it the way it was meant, and asked in her next post for more information on the subject. I then factually answered what was asked. That's it.

If I read correctly, I understand that the argument, itself, was somewhat helpful to her. I hope we can both try to look at it that way, even if we still don't agree on much.

(My point is that a request for help with oblong sculpts was almost immediately snapped up as another opportunity to convert the OP to Meshism.)

>It's not a religious argument, Josh. It's quite unfortunate that you choose to interpret it as such. It's a tragically inaccurate and self-limiting viewpoint, which almost completely blinds you to what's really happening here.

It may not have been an attempt at conversion, but it wouldn't look like one to you probably only because there has not been a 5-month campaign to convert you. There is social pressure not merely to consider mesh, but to embrace it without question. But all of this pressure comes from builders, not from consumers.

Sometimes I wish I could think of ways to be helpful around here without being so disagreeable.

Other times, though, I reflect upon the fact that I have anything to say at all that might be useful to read and I'm grateful of that.

Given the earnestness of your responses here, I am inclined to try to find nicers ways to say things next time.

Thank you for continuing the conversation.

Problem creating oblong sculpties

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