Whole mesh building

[Maeve Balfour]

In regards to faces... I think Ciaran was talking about MATERIAL FACES (as opposed to triangle faces/polygons, which is what I believe you may be thinking of instead).

These material faces act the same way as the faces on standard prims, in the way you can apply textures, brightness, texture offsets etc via the SL build menu. With each individual mesh, you can have up to a maximum of 8 different material faces in this manner. Also useful, is the fact that these material faces don't necessarily have to be clumped in one spot - you can scatter the relevant triangles assigned to a material face all over a mesh at random, if you wanted to - which can be especially handy for complicated texturing via UVs etc.

If you were worried about how many TRIANGLE faces you can use in a mesh (NOT material faces), I doubt that you will go anywhere near that limit, since you obviously know your way around mesh making and how to keep to a vertice budget etc.

.....

I'm not much of a Blender user (yet), but I believe you can export components of a Blender scene via an export selection option or similar (I'm sure I've seen that mentioned in posts in the forums here before).

:matte-motes-smile:

[Syle Devin]

I'll have to look for that option to export selection than. I was sure blender could do it I just haven't seen a way yet. Also I was thinking of triangle faces since I know about the 8 texture limit. I already plan to export as more than 1 mesh so that shouldn't be a problem. Glad to know there is a high enough triangle limit that I don't have to worry to much. Even then I am uploading in more than 1 mesh so that's no problem either I think.

Also I think I understand what your saying about scattering of the triangles. Just depends on how the UV is layed out for that to work well. That is one thing I still have to learn how to do well, layout UVs. Uv maps can be quiet confusing when everything looks the same.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

There is no given triangle limit, there is a limit on vertices though. It's 65k per material face, resulting in about twice as many possible triangles. One would really have to try to reach that limit:)

[Maeve Balfour]

Thank you for the clarification Kwakelde - and yah, if someone managed to hit the vertice limit, it would have to be a seriously heavy duty mesh LOL (although unfortunately, I reckon I've seen some examples in world which would quite possibly nudge that figure, judging by how overly dense the triangles were packed in - and these weren't large meshes by any means).

:matte-motes-smile:

 

[Pamela Galli]

Started a thread asking ppl about their use of / thoughts about mesh here http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion-Forum/Mesh-Love-Hate-or-Don-t-Care/m-p/1379415/message-uid/1379415#U1379415

[Pamela Galli]

The above-mentioned thread has now received a lot of good information about why people do and do not like mesh, as well as how many consider it not on their radar at all. Not as good as a detailed survey, but a starting point.

[fsp412]

I feel if the computer supports Second Life, most newer viewers (with exception to Android and iOS) will support Mesh. Mesh is coming quickly, and the benefit on prims (if done properly) can be especially beneficial with buildings, where prim count is so important. 

I personally would wish more developers would create buildings in Mesh. As of now, there seems to be a minority, and I seen some that had partial mesh, and partial conventional. In my opinion, if you are going to do it, it should be done completely. 

This is just my thought. 
Frank

[Chosen Few]

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fsp412 wrote:

I feel if the computer supports Second Life, most newer viewers (with exception to Android and iOS) will support Mesh. Mesh is coming quickly, and the benefit on prims (if done properly) can be especially beneficial with buildings, where prim count is so important. 

I personally would wish more developers would create buildings in Mesh. As of now, there seems to be a minority, and I seen some that had partial mesh, and partial conventional. In my opinion, if you are going to do it, it should be done completely. 

This is just my thought. 

Frank

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The thread you're replying to is ten months out of date.  Most people are using mesh enabled viewers these days.

You are right that buildings (like just about everything else) can be made much more efficiently as mesh models than as prim builds, not to mention look better, and have better behaving physics. Some people understand that, and are doing a fine job producing well-made mesh buildings.  But, as is always the case with everything in SL, most people do it mediorcely or poorly.

In part, that's perfectly normal, just the nature of any environment in which the content is user-created.  But SL in particular also has this odd vocal minority of "resist all change at all costs" types, who stubbornly cling to old ways, old viewers, old habits.  It's hard not to feel a little sorry for those people, as they miss the boat on so much.  The reality is that those who are not willing to embrace constant change will never be able to fully enjoy any computer-based hobby.  But it's their choice to make.

A wise man once told me, "The best thing you can do to help the poor is not to become one of them."  The same concept applies here.  The best thing you can do to help underskilled or underknowledgeable content content creators is to become a highly skilled and highly knowledgeable content creator yourself.  So, if you believe SL will benefit from having more mesh buildings in it (which it will), create a ton of good ones yourself, and then help other people to learn to do the same.