Mesh Vehicle Report with Pics.

[Toysoldier Thor]

Hey HD... regarding Zbrush and this build....

Generally how did you approach the build inside Zbrush?  In Zbrush is this one large Tool with all the bike parts being SubTools of the Bike Tool?  or were major sections of the bike a tool with subtools and then you somehow aligned them within SL?  Did you ever use PolyGroups?  Did you do all your texturing of the bike parts in Zbrush or where and how?

[HD Pomeray]

Hey Toysoldier,

I'm sorry, I didn't meant to lead you in the wrong direction.  When we were talking about modeling without concern to poly count and I said I love working with millions of poly's in ZBrush I meant I LOVE working in ZBrush, but not that I built this maodel in it.  I do my poly modeling in Carrara Pro 7.  I did however do a lot of my sculpty work in ZBrush.  The xRAZxORx body I have in my shop was all done in ZB, but for this new build it is all traditional poliginal modeling like you would do in Carrara or Blender, or 3DS Max.  

[Baloo Uriza]

Wow, at 11381, you still have a long way that you can go.  Under 1000 is good, under 500 is great.  Over 2000 is likely to be a major source of viewer-side lag for all but the newest machines, especially in regions with lots of other objects.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

I'm sure the 11k can be reduced by even more work on especially the lower LoD models (using imposters for example for wheels and other flat bits) so it won't interfere with the looks when viewed up close. But the way I understand the numbers as used by LL now, the display weight is calculated the same as the avatar draw weight. And where 40k is LL's norm, twice that or even a lot more seems to be the users standard. In that perspective I think 11k is not all that bad.

500-1000 for an object that detailed? I really don't think that's possible without losing too much of the geometry, I could be wrong though. The display weight is closely related to the download weight, so if it was excessive I'd expect a higher number for that.

[HD Pomeray]

Well...  I hope more people will chime in on the Display weight question because if that really does need to get to 1000 to be what we need to shoot for... we are back to Mesh being unusable for anything other than a table or a chair.   This is exactly where I was hoping this thread would go so we can all have a clear understanding of what is acceptable and what is not. 

Here is what I do know.  The lowest LOD's are already reduced to almost nothing.  Like 8 sides and 10 verts in most cases.  I also know that I am on an older machine and I'm not seeing a jump in lag or a drop in frame rates when it is rezed.   As a matter of fact the mesh bike rezes twice as fast as the old sculptir/ prim bikes.  And most importantly, if you compare this to a bike that is built from standard prims and sculpties, with even way less detail, you will see that the new mesh bike way out performs the old way of doing things.  There are literally thousands of the sculpt/prim bikes all over the grid and if the stats shown in the picture below are typical, which I believe they are, then how could you say we need to get to 1000 on the display.  The way I see it... We are heading in the right direction. no ?

EDIT: I just took a look at several other  sculpt/prim bikes built by other builders, and they are all coming in at around 20,000 Display Weight as compared to the mesh bike hear at 11,381.  Again, I think this is a move in the right direction and this would explain why the Mesh bike rezes twice as fast as the sculpty bikes.

 

Sculptie / Prim Bike Stats

 

100% Mesh Stats

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

I am not at all sure that I want to ride a bike, in SL, which has the complex moving parts you describe. Some of the old techniques may be less load overall, than the new. Do you rotage the wheel, or rotate the textures? Fake a detail with a texture (with LOD effects) or do it with mesh, also with LOD effects? I don't know which is better.

But here I am, sitting on a different continent with all that does to how SL behave, and I am unsure what I would get from all the detail. So maybe I'm not quite the same market, and there are a lot of potential customers, for any product who are outside the USA.

It's not that you're doing anything wrong, but it may be that my sweet spot, in the compromises necessary for a good mesh vehcile, is not yours 

[arton Rotaru]

There is nothing wrong with the bike. Just compare the physics cost of the sculpty and the mesh version. There you see what is good for vehicles and what not.

There is nothing wrong with the display weight as well.

49 Download Weight might look a bit high for a object at this size. But that heavily depends on the details and the LODs. Rather small parts like this require some higher poly Medium and Low LoD. Or they will look like nothing way to early.

 

[Baloo Uriza]

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

I'm sure the 11k can be reduced by even more work on especially the lower LoD models (using imposters for example for wheels and other flat bits) so it won't interfere with the looks when viewed up close. But the way I understand the numbers as used by LL now, the display weight is calculated the same as the avatar draw weight. And where 40k is LL's norm, twice that or even a lot more seems to be the users standard. In that perspective I think 11k is not all that bad.

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Right, it is calculated the same.  And the Lindens have more or less indicated the same 500/1000 values as I quoted for being a tad on the heavy side.

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

500-1000 for an object that detailed? I really don't think that's possible without losing too much of the geometry, I could be wrong though. The display weight is closely related to the download weight, so if it was excessive I'd expect a higher number for that.

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It's amazing what you can do with well-designed textures these days.

[HD Pomeray]

WolfBaginski, I have to agree with Arton, and not just because this is my build but because of the obvious advantage Mesh has over comparable sculpty bikes.  Just look at the numbers, they tell the story.  My original post was to report to this forum the numbers I was getting with a mesh bike build that had considerable more detail than the present day sculpty bikes.  Also in the original post, the first picture I showed was of the weights it was registering.  To be honest, it was not until the question of the display weights came up did I think to check them against the sculpty bikes.  Again... look at the comparison pictures... we can all see the numbers.   I also went out and checked the numbers on many other sculpty bikes and found that all of them that were in the 30 prim range were close to... if not over 20,000 display weight.  The mesh is coming in at 11,000.  This isn't a discussion of my bike as much as it is of Mesh bikes in general.  After all... I did the first  comparison to one of my own sculpty bikes, one of my best selling bikes too I may add...  LOL, and willingly posted my numbers up on the forum so we could all see a good comparison.

As far as your comments on the moving parts and the load overall, I honestly can not tell you if it is better to rotate the mesh wheels or to rotate the textures.  I can tell you however that on this mesh bike, along with probably 90% of the sculpty bikes out there, we are rotating the wheels and not the textures.  Maybe someone reading this forum can let us know which is the better way to do it.  My old bikes rotated the textures and from riding both, I think rotating the mesh wheels is better because I used to notice at times the texture rotations lag, whereas this bikes wheels move smooth and steady.  I can understand that if you were to be out looking for a bike to ride "you" may wish to find one that is very minimal for whatever reasons you may have, and of course that is your prerogative.  But when I was describing the moving parts of this bike, it was in a discussion about how best to combine parts during the upload.  I was not saying this bike has more or less moving parts than other bikes out there.  To be honest, it is probably in the average range for moving parts and features of today's bikes on the market.  I think if you look around you would be hard presses to find the minimalist bike you alluded to in your post.  Having said that, with the clear advantage mesh has over sculpty vehicles, you are correct...  I could widdle this down to a bunch of flat parts and load it back up with mant textures to fake the eye, but would we be gaining anything ?  Maybe, I'm not sure.  I am however sure that this mesh bike has 5 times the detail of the sculpty bikes (whether you like detail or not), it has less textures due to the fact that it does not need them, and even with all the detail, it's display weight is half of the comparable sculpty bikes.  "Here's your sign" 

So I guess time will tell what the market really wants.  For now I think we have taken a really good look at how sculpty vehicles and mesh vehicles stack up side by side.  I also think that my first mesh bike came out looking pretty darn good and that the numbers make good sense to continue refining how we use mesh.  As we all know, there are some wickedly talented people in SL.  You can bet that there are some amazing things coming from our content creators just around the corner and from where I'm standing, mesh will be a big part of that.    

[Baloo Uriza]

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HD Pomeray wrote:

Well...  I hope more people will chime in on the Display weight question because if that really does need to get to 1000 to be what we need to shoot for... we are back to Mesh being unusable for anything other than a table or a chair. 

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I think you're being oversimplistic.  Take a look at how mesh efficiency is accomplished in other 3D environments and in industry.  About the only people who don't care about rendering efficiency are folks who are prototyping objects for real world manufacturing.  For games and virtual realities, there's a very real need for efficiency and sacrificing the minor polygons that make objects harder to render but don't really provide any additional detail that couldn't be conveyed in the texture.

[arton Rotaru]

@Baloo,

it looks like you missed that the ARC/Display Weight has changed to a complete new accounting. Have a look at the comments in this Jira.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/STORM-1679

The new calculation is documented here.

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

As for the other games. Well this discussion isn't really worth anything. We don't have all the features that other games have. A lot of the Items created for SL are "primary" objects to the customers. So most of them will be more detailed than they could be.

Though, I think there will be a market even for very low poly filler objects. If you build a combat region, where the look is more or less secondary, you may build a bike with a fraction of the details, of course.

 

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Baloo Uriza wrote:

Right, it is calculated the same.  And the Lindens have more or less indicated the same 500/1000 values as I quoted for being a tad on the heavy side.

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I wonder how they came up with those numbers..anyway, I had a friend rezz me some detailed sculpt bikes and the display weights were..hold your breath....20752, 22624, 29846, 39646, 40428, 49334 and 70204. Landimpact ranging from 32 to 171 prims.

I'm not saying those are good numbers..and the bikes were insanely detailed, but according to the owner of the bikes there were no performance issues other than at sim crossings. I'm very interested what a 500-1000 bike will look like. 11000 is as good as fairly detailed hair and I bet most bikers, unless they're hells angles, have pretty simple hair. This alone would balance out the display weight. As I said, 40k for an avatar is considered the upper reasonable limit. at a quarter of that the bike seems fine.

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Baloo Uriza wrote:

It's amazing what you can do with well-designed textures these days.

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The textures were good when SL started in 2003 and are always very helpfull. They are often no alternative for geometry though.

 

 

[Baloo Uriza]

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arton Rotaru wrote:

@Baloo,

it looks like you missed that the ARC/Display Weight has changed to a complete new accounting. Have a look at the comments in this Jira.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/STORM-1679

The new calculation is documented here.

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

 

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Aah, interesting.  The ARC colors still give you goals to shoot for; I'll have to see where the yellow and red values are now.

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As for the other games. Well this discussion isn't really worth anything. 

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Sure it is; we're talking about polycounts and how they effect the renderer.  Nothing else.

[Baloo Uriza]

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

The textures were good when SL started in 2003 and are always very helpfull. They are often no alternative for geometry though.

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True, but I'm referring to the "rediculous level" of detail.  Stuff like relatively fine grooves and flanges and stuff that you'd only notice if you were really close to the object and not at more of the distance it would be generally viewed at.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Baloo Uriza wrote:

True, but I'm referring to the "rediculous level" of detail.  Stuff like relatively fine grooves and flanges and stuff that you'd only notice if you were really close to the object and not at more of the distance it would be generally viewed at.

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You are completely right on what you say, but not on what you imply..or something like that:)....

What you are saying is it makes no sense to build detailed objects that aren't visible from a distance, which is ofcourse true. But going by the numbers and HDs remarks on his LoDs, I'm pretty sure there is no detail from a distance. This is why LoD models are so important, detail needs to match the viewing distance.

The fine grooves and detailed motor will add to the object as an object, when zoomed in. That's where SL differs from video games. In video games the experience is always about the entire scene, in SL it's not. In video games you have very limited camera movement, in SL you have full freedom.

I bet if HD had uploaded the bike using the autoLoD with looks matching the viewing distance (so no custom LoDs), the display weight would have been insane, but it's not. In fact I'm pretty curious what the numbers would be..HD?...could you try that out?

[Baloo Uriza]

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

The fine grooves and detailed motor will add to the object as an object, when zoomed in. That's where SL differs from video games. In video games the experience is always about the entire scene, in SL it's not. In video games you have very limited camera movement, in SL you have full freedom.

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That somehow makes the GPU more capable of rendering higher detail at an acceptable framerate how?

[HD Pomeray]

@Baloo

I can totally understand where you are coming from about the fine details.

In RL I'm an architect and I use 3D modeling to render conceptual designs for clients all the time.  I would never think of modeling, for instance, window moldings because you would Never see the difference between the geometry and a nicely shaded texture. I fully agree with you.  But, what you referred to as a ""ridiculous level" of detail"... "Stuff like relatively fine grooves and flanges and stuff that you'd only notice if you were really close to the object and not at more of the distance it would be generally viewed at."  may not be ridiculous to others.  As a matter of fact, motorcycles in SL and RL are mostly viewed up close.  To custom bike builders, again in SL and RL, it IS the fine details that count.   When I modeled this motor, I had a real V-Twin engine sitting here in front of me and yes... I counted the cooling fins... I measured the distance between them and I made this engine as true to life and as accurate as I could because I know there are RL bikers in SL that are going to look at it very closely.  I wanted to give them something to look at and discuss.  So what you may see as "ridiculous" others may view as an accomplishment.  And... the bottom line is still...  the bike has a display number that is half of what is out there now.  Ridiculous to who?

[Baloo Uriza]

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HD Pomeray wrote:

@Baloo

I can totally understand where you are coming from about the fine details.

In RL I'm an architect and I use 3D modeling to render conceptual designs for clients all the time.  I would never think of modeling, for instance, window moldings because you would Never see the difference between the geometry and a nicely shaded texture. I fully agree with you.  But, what you referred to as a

""ridiculous level" of detail"... "Stuff like relatively fine grooves and flanges and stuff that you'd only notice if you were really close to the object and not at more of the distance it would be generally viewed at."

  may not be ridiculous to others.  As a matter of fact, motorcycles in SL and RL are mostly viewed up close.  To custom bike builders, again in SL and RL, it IS the fine details that count.   When I modeled this motor, I had a real V-Twin engine sitting here in front of me and yes... I counted the cooling fins... I measured the distance between them and I made this engine as true to life and as accurate as I could because I know there are RL bikers in SL that are going to look at it very closely.  I wanted to give them something to look at and discuss.  So what you may see as "ridiculous" others may view as an accomplishment.  And... the bottom line is still...  the bike has a display number that is half of what is out there now.  Ridiculous to who?

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That's all fine and good, but I'm just saying, don't break the renderer for everyone else by going overboard. ;o)

[HD Pomeray]

 

Absolutely Brother... I hear you loud and clear... and I promise not to go over ... ummmm   lets say 12,000???  LOL   

But .... There is always a BUT....  ya know... Kwakkelde saw bikes out there at 49334 and 70204...  

No stopping everyone else... 

I can assure you ... I'll be responsible  :-)

[HD Pomeray]

I bet if HD had uploaded the bike using the autoLoD with looks matching the viewing distance (so no custom LoDs), the display weight would have been insane, but it's not. In fact I'm pretty curious what the numbers would be..HD?...could you try that out?

@ Kwakkelde

I don't have to try it, I saw what the calculations were coming in at in the uploader before loading in the custom LODs and you are spot on.  Parts that I was able to get down to 1 or 2 LI were starting out at insane numbers upwards of 50 LI.  It would be interesting to bring the bike back in with no LOD models to see what the display numbers would be.  I could try it out in the aditi and see... but there are 31 parts... gonna have to do that another day.  I'll let you know. 

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Baloo Uriza wrote:

That somehow makes the GPU more capable of rendering higher detail at an acceptable framerate how?

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It doesn't and I never said so, but there's a couple of things to take into consideration.

When someone zooms in to admire a build, something that's more likely to happen in SL than in a video game for the reasons I gave, the framerate doesn't have to be 40 per second. Also, when zoomed in that narrows the view, so you'll see more of the object and less of the surrounding objects.

I really don't think SL needs video game performance. Certain sims might be focussed more on performance than looks, I've said so many times in the past and someone mentioned it in this thread. Sims like that are an exception though and can't be the benchmark. Where as I understand video gamers won't accept anything below 50 fps, SL is perfectly playable at 20-30 fps, personally I like 25-30 and accept 10-15. Some of that difference will be caused by how SL works, but there's plenty of room left for extra detail.

As I said, with the possible custom LoD models, you can make sure the detailed geometry is only visible when up close. This means you as a builder can set the detail (and load on the graphics card for that matter) to video game specs in for example a racing environment, where the distance between the object and the cameras makes sure the highest LoD doesn't show. You can have the best of both worlds if you put enough time and efford into it.

 

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

No hurry, just interested.. and those 1-2 you have now opposed to the 50 you started out with, aren't shocking numbers to me, although I have to admit I didn't think the difference would be quite that big... As you noticed yourself, hard work pays off:)

[HD Pomeray]

Well Guys... I think we beat this one to death huh? LOL

I want say thanks to all that contributed to this thread.
Marianne, StoneDwarf, Kwakkelde, Luc, my good buddy Toysoldier, WolfBaginski, Arton, Dronggle, and of course Baloo.

I learned a lot here through this thread. Thanks Guys !

Oh... and last but not least... Thanks to LL for giving us MESH !!! It Rocks !

 

 

 

 

[Toysoldier Thor]

The point I was trying to make might be best explained in an analogy.  So lets try this story...

 

HD, you are now magically a long time successful designer and manufacturer of fine sports cars.  Your sportcars are well renowned for the incredible shape, design, lines, features, and of course their amazing horsepower output.  Customers have been impressed and flock to your cars for years. 

With all that your cars offer the market, due to limitations of the technology available to you and any other manufacturer of sportcars, gas milage was not one of them.  For this generation of vehicles, your cars averaged 10mpg.  Not great but about normal for cars of this horsepower and amazing design.

Then the automotive industry introduces a new revolutionary technology for you and all other manufacturers to leverage.  This technology allows you the pack in even more horsepower and ironically it also can be used to potentially improve gas milage at the cost of horsepower - at your discression.

So you wisely decide to use this new technology and completely overhaul your line of sportscars to create a completely new sportscar completely based on this new technology.  You release an amazing new car design with even better and more precise lines and double the horsepower.... and with all this, you are even able to increase the gas milage to 20mpg!

Your customers that actually bought your previous generation of sportscars had no real issues with your cars getting 10mpg because it was acceptable considering all the other aspects of what they were paying for.   So when they see your new design with revolutionary more accurate lines and better horsepower... and then find out you even doubled the gas milage to 20mpg... honestly... they instantly love the new car and well... nice that it now can hit 20mpg - but they really didnt care in the first place.

So... all of a sudden you showcase your new sportcar to the critics of the automotive technology industry (you know - the ones that are easy to critisize but likely will never buy one of your cars since they couldnt really care less about the design or horsepower of your car - they care about the new technology you used and how you are using it). 

So you show them and ask them "what do you think"?  A couple of these critics say.... "What??  Im not impressed at all.  20mpg?  Thats terrible!  You could have easily got 50mpg or more - especially if you would have replaced some of those fancy fenders with some basic plastic designs and if you would have reduced the horsepower and gutted your design.  Im not impressed since you did not use this new technology wisely"

They dont care that you would have to give up on all the critical factors of your sportscar that makes your car an industry leader and highly desirable.  They only cared that you didnt push the new technology get the most mpg out of your car.

That was what frustrated me.

[HD Pomeray]

That's kool Bother... and I do appreciate what you said.   It's just that I see it as constructive criticism and I appreciate what anyone has to say.  When I posted my pics and numbers in this forum, I hung my ass out there fully knowing there would be some criticism, and I accept that.  As a designer in RL I know you have to put some skin into the game or you'll never advance.  This thread was awesome and  I learned a few things that will be very helpful.  I also learned a few things that worked out better than I thought.  I didn't even know that the bikes display numbers were as good as they are.  Baloo was the one that brought that to light by saying they seemed high.  That forced me, Kwakkelde and a few others to look and see what the sculpt bikes were coming in at.  Surprise !!!  Mesh wins !!  LOL   Baloo has a lot of experience in the 3D gaming industry and he is totally correct in his thoughts of reducing mesh as much as possible with the use of good textures.  It is just that in this particular case, geometry is more important.  In another situation... it may not be.  

It's all Good Toysoldier...   BTW ... have you ever thought about writing novels ??  LOL