Liz Venenbaum

You can actually do that, using alpha-masking rather than blending, since there's only fully transparent or fully-opaque pixels. Alpha-masking shouldn't cause any alpha-glitches. Whether you can achieve the desired result with just a texture is a different story, tho....

Ceka Cianci wrote: and i'm sure the textures are baked outside of sl..just like all textures are created outside of sl in some program or another.. also i hope they do make a mesh version..i'm sure with their experience they would know what they are doing with mesh to make it an advantage to using mesh in a build like this.. Well, my point was, that this house is not an inworld build at all... There has been a 3DS-MAx Plugin called PrimComposer around for a while, that allows to build with prims outside SL, use the enhanced texturing possibilites there, and then directly import it into SL as a linkset... I doubt it would be possible to create a similarly credible lighting with just inworld building tools and Photoshop... Ceka Cianci wrote: the only thing is..can you change the texture on a mesh build like you can this one?? i would think you could..but i've only made sculpts myself..not any mesh imports to sl yet.. Well, mesh is very powerful in terms of texturing, so in theory, you make a mesh that can use tiling textures just like a prim-build... Mesh- and prim-faces are treated equally by the viewer, so you can just drag a texture on a mesh like a prim face... In practice, since SL currently supports just a single texture per face, it would require the creator of such comprehensively shaded builds (regardless if mesh or prim) to supply a set of light- or shadowmaps you would have to overlay with your texture of choice in advance in Photoshop (or similar), to not lose the lighting... So, in practice, a total work of art like that should best be kept as it is....

Clarissa Lowell wrote: The average user will catch up once modeling programs become lots easier and cheaper and more widely used even in schools, art classes for example. By that time the modeling in virtual worlds or computer games will be so detailed blades of grass will sway individually in the wind instead of grass being one flat texture on the ground. And I don't mean sculpty prims either. You seem to be a little behind the visual standards of today's computer games http://www.imperial-library.info/sites/default/files/gallery_files/obliv32B.jpg It *does* sway in the wind, and yes, it was released 5 years ago, so you can expect even more in a state of art game... Problem is, it requires a very tight integration between the game engine and video hardware, so this probably can't be achieved by mesh technology alone, but would need LL to extend the current very basic vegetation system used in the viewer... Imprudence once offered an option to have animate standard trees, I don't know why no current viewer seems to implement it anymore

Why is impossible to use quotes from different posts here? Ceka Cianci wrote: it's a beautiful home and looks exactly the same in my sim as it does in those pictures as far as real looking..it just amazed me.. https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Original-Beachfront-residence-by-Abiss-furnished-Mature-1000-animations/2927439 While this is certainly a great example of a traditional prim building, it's a bad choice for the prim vs. mesh discussion. With all the comprehensive baked lights and shadows, it is very likely this is not an inworld building, but done in an external 3D application, 3DStudio Max with PrimComposer, I suspect. So the creator already has a major part of the knowledge needed to work with it, and would probably gladly made it as a mesh build, if the technology would have been available back when he released it, for improved display performance and reduced prim count....

Being a builder, who hasn't released anything yet, but being heavily excited about mesh technology, I want to throw my 2 cents here Amethyst Jetaime wrote: The real mesh elephant in the room is this. Mesh is going to squash a lot of the joy of creativity for the average casual user of SL. People now will do small building projects, like making a gazebo for their garden or simple house to live in, for the simple pleasure of saying 'I made that' or because they don't want to spend the lindens to buy it. Some have created whole sims this way. Sure its not the greatest but it satisfies them. But as time goes on, creating things for SL will become more and more something the average casual user can't do because they don't have the time or inclination to want to learn complicated software or the money to invest in it or the relatively high cost of bringing it into SL. Their small prim built projects will look a LOT more primitive compared to what you can buy from the pros and they will lose the the desire to create things themselves. Yes there will be more and more mesh building 'kits' but anything you make from them won't give you the small ego boost of having your name shown as the creator. While you might be right, this isn't really a viable argument, since it mainly comes down to: "Because a minority wants to draw a small ego boost from their own simple creations, SL must not become more beautiful for the majority who wants it to!" I'm personally very interested in SL attracting a larger user base, which is only possible if it becomes comparibly visually attracting to current computer games on the one hand, and more performant, viewer- and server-sided on the other... I see huge chances for SL in attracting those users from online games, which have an exploding userbase, compared to SL, which is pretty much stagnant, if not declining, who are not satisfied with the static gameplay mechanics offered there and are looking to have extended possibilities to form the world they're playing in.... Mesh alone is certainly not enough to get SL there, but it is a major step on the path... I have seen a few full mesh sims pop up lately, and I'm quite pleased with how they perform, even with shadows enabled, on my PC, which used to be a mid-range gaming system more than two years ago...

Edit: Maybe I was a little unclear about that: The certificate isn't any guarantee about the performance of the script, since that can hardly be judged upon out of context of the sim it should run in. It's just an extended identifier for a certain script, that allows managing script restrictions with minimum efforts for the respective sim's administration.... Trust in SL is usually generated through a creator's/scripter's reputation...

I've been wrapping my mind around a concept I call, in lack of a better name, "script certificates", lately and want to put my ideas for discussion here. As I've seen a few game-type sims employing mesh popping up lately, it becomes apparent that script performance is a major concern for content that relies on high sim-performance. The problem here is, that most users are not aware of the number of scripts they're wearing and how it affects the experience for every user around. The only option available currently to address this is to disable scripts in general, which affects one of the greatest appeal of SL, though: The abilitiy to use your own content and personalize your appearance to your liking. My proposol is to add another possibility for parcel owners to allow more granular control about which scripts can be used: Restrict to certain, certified scripts. -any scripter can obtain a certficate for a script. This certificate is linked to the script, rather the object it is in and will persist with every modification to the same script, and stays the same in every copy. -on every save of the script, an incrementing build number is generated and assigned to the script -if a copy of the original script is edited, a branch identifier is generated, so modifications by different users can be identifed -every parcel owner can blacklist or whitelist certified scripts, as whole or by specific versions and/or branches (imagine someone taking a full-perm weapon script which is allowed on a combat sim and modifies it in a way it breaks the rules of that sim) -if someone enters a sim, all non-certified scripts are stopped and the remaining ones are checked against the parcel restricitions to decide if to load them or not. This could greatly improve the slowdown of sims if someone entering it with a lot of scripted attachments worn. -Since all functionality is kept server-sided, there's no way to exploit the system, and it wouldn't break compatibility with non-maintained viewers, but the UI enhancements to certify scripts and control the certificates allowed on the land. Just to be clear, I'm not talking about forcing every scripter to buy certificates for their scripts, but I think that such a system could be a powerful possibilty for sim owners for who sim-performance matters, like combat, flying or racing games... Thanks for reading, I'm curious to hear your thoughts and complaints, maybe it's just a silly idea :matte-motes-bashful:

Nope, when trying to enter my Paypal information on the SL website, Paypal explicitely asks me to add a credit card to my account to make it work, and this generally seems to be true for everyone over here in Germany... Paypal has a special verification process to be enabled to debit a bank account: They transfer two small amounts of money to your bank account and you have to log into Paypal to enter their exact values... Did that several years ago, and it always has worked for me except for SL and a single payed website I tried to join a while ago. When I joined SL, a friend gave me the hint there's ELDEX for exchanging L$, which accepts my Paypal account and has worked perfectly fine for me... When mesh was announced, I was really looking forward to it, but currently it's just a huge disappointment... I test my meshes on the beta grid and send them to a friend for uploading, going through the upload windows step by step, lol. But since I cannot sell mesh items on the Marketplace, this isn't a solution either...

While I find the need for payment information on file for mesh upload reasonable, I've come to the conclusion that LL isn't really aware of different billing conditions in different countries... I've been on SL for more than two years now, without ever been able to get payment info on file, have built, have shared my technical experience with other user where I could... I've had a Paypal account with verified identity and bank account for years now. It works everywhere else, I have done several purchases where it could just debit my bank account directly... I just never got it to work with SLs payment system. Digging throught the net, I learnt there doesn't seem to be a chance without having a credit card backup on Paypal... You might not be aware of that, but not everyone lives in the US where a 13 year old can get a CC without credit limit (exaggerating here). In fact, as a university student, the bank people would probably laugh at me if I asked them to get one (you need to give proof of at least 3 months of steady income). For our everyday cash-free payment, we have the "Electronic Cash" system here, which is way more convinient and entirely free, so I see virtually no reason to pay for a credit card just to be able to upload meshes into SL... Well, I've lived with it, bought my L$ through a 3rd party service (where my Paypal works perfectly fine... Strange, isn't it?), but then mesh was announced... A friend of mine with similar problems got herself a prepaid credit card, but wasn't able to register it with SL. The response of LL's billing support: "No, we don't accept prepaid cards." Point. Honestly, I don't see any reason for going through the pain of getting a credit card, which I won't ever need except in SL, and whose fees will exceed my mesh upload fees by numerous times... As I said, I can see the IP concerns related to mesh, but putting uncrossable barriers on legetimate content creators isn't a workable solution either...

Most likely, you're using a texture with an alpha channel... Alpha textures won't allow shiny, but this is not limited to avatars but applies to any kind of surfaces, even on regular prims...