York Jessop
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Posts posted by York Jessop
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Tarius Auxarmes wrote:Baloo Uriza wrote:As with every other building tool so far, it's not the tool that creates the lag. It's idiot builders who think "efficiency" was taken out of the dictionary and don't understand why fewer polygons is better. I imagine these are people who go golfing and try for the high score for basically the same reason.
This exactly. Its not mesh thats the problem, its the idiots who dont know any better and in alot of cases, load stuff down way beyond whats needed.Just like the person who was using over 9000 polys for like a 20 step spiral stair mesh and over half of those were all in the railing. That thread is on the second page now and has like 6 pages if you wanna go read it.If you had read that thread yourself you would have realised that the person was asking for advice on how to reduce poly counts, to imply they are an idiot for creating an initial 'nurbs' based model is grossly unfair. We are all still learning how to make meshes and as you keep stating, PE counts reflect how efficient a mesh model is. Its up to the customers to decide what they want and its up to everyone else to decide if they want to visit said sims.
Just to point out, that 9000 poly mesh staircase was reduced to 1000ish after it was converted into a poly based model and after they asked for and got alot of advice about meshes, not to mention they wouldnt have been able to import it as a nurbs models anyways as its not supported.
Granted people are going to upload high poly models, and as a result will have high PE as a result but you should aim your insults at those who deserve it, not those who are trying to understand and learn about mesh.
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Ah yes, the old convex hull thingy, ive said it a million times lol, why oh why is the default physics always a convex hull, it should automatically default to 'Prim' if you have nominated a physics shape imo.
I've no idea how this is going to work when people use faux rezzers and the such, its going to be a pain to have to explain to everyone who buys your products that they need to manually change the physics shape.
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I have no idea what could have caused that but for future reference, I would highly suggest uploading your mesh objects to the beta grid before you upload to the main grid, you will save yourself a ton of L$!
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Would also like to convey my thanks to the Linden team, its been a long wait but one thats really worth it!
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Josh Susanto wrote:I warned you people months ago that there had to be a downside to mesh and that the downside would almost inevitably be massive lag.Why else would LL institute a "prim equivalency" cost?Whatever.Nobody is taking seriously my current warnings about other things, and they won't care about what I warn them next, no matter how many times I turn out to be right.
When most people know meshes dont cause lag in comparison to prim or scuplties then no offence but noone is going to take you seriously.
As Nalates pointed out, meshes came out within the last 24 hours, the amount of mesh objects on the grid right now will be tiny and be having zero affect on lag.
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Tarius Auxarmes wrote:There is one thing not many people are saying and thats that they are making mesh harder to use on purpose. See, the one thing about mesh is the fact that it has potential to replace everything on the grid and be more efficiant in doing so in many cases. They dont want it to replace everything so they are trying to limit it some by tacking on penalties and such..
I dont think this is the case, the fact that you need alot of techincal knowledge to create meshes is a large enough deterant to ensure scuplts and prims remain in use.
I do however agree the high script cost is a problem, i hope they can figure out a way to properly count script weight as its currently very difficult due to the unknowns of whats in a script.
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Its on the main upload window, bottom left corner
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From what I understand, the physics shown in the upload window refers to the convex hull, not the 'prim'.
Jira here:
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/CTS-729
On the plus side, even for 1k prims that looks really good
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Ahh I see, I must have read about an FBX plug in for cinema 4d then. I hope you find the tools you need in cinema 4D, I know what its like trying to use a 3D program your not used too, I had used maya a long time ago but decided to try blender as it had more SL support but I just couldnt get used to it so I went back to Maya.
Also didnt know about soft/hard edges making a difference to PE (albeit not very much) but the point was the same, soft/smoothing lets you use a simplified shape to get a similiar appearance.
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As Drongle mentioned, its just a shading effect so it doesnt add any more polys or make any difference to your PE. I personally use Maya so im not sure about cinema 4D or if it has an equivalent.
Are you able to export .obj files from cinema 4D? If it doesnt have soft or hard edge tools, you could always import it into blender and do it from then, then reexport it as collada.
EDIT: Just reading about cinema 4D, I understand it uses an FBX exporter for collada? Hate to say this but you may experience alot of problems with that, Maya has one too and I had no end of problems with it, I eventually removed it and installed the OPENCollada plug in which works flawlessly.
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Inea Wemyss wrote:After reading this thread, I am starting to wonder if I have always worked backwards? :smileywink:
I thought the exact same thing when Gaia mentioned she started from the top and worked down heh, theres nothing in the rule book to say you need to work that way, the reason i do is because it makes it alot easier with textures, what I found was when i started with my basic shape, then move to the next LOD to get more detail I ended up going back down again to make sure the textures were ok, it was like a yo yo effect. By working from the top down you can start with a whole and start removing or simplifying your model without losing texture faces and without having to really 'add' stuff, its way easier imo to do that.
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Ah i see, the one thing I think you might find over time is that what you can create with mesh will blow its prim version out the water, in terms of looks and prim counts. Appart from modeling, texturing, LODs and physic's shapes thats all there really is to know, to be able to sucessfully import meshes, I would say your pretty much there
Physics shapes are just very simple mesh models that are invisable to you, the one important thing they have to be is generally the same dimensions of your main model (height/width/depth) as when you import it it will use the bounding box of your model for its position, you know when people make scuplts, make them phantom and then use invisable prims to make the bit you can walk on? Its the same principle with meshes.
On the physics tab, you can import your physics model and it will appear in the preview window, this lets you check if its positioned properly, or you also have the option to use any of the LODs as your physics shape too, this is where the benefits of custom LODs comes in again, I try to use the Low LOD as my physics shape.
A good work flow would be:
High LOD > Your main model
Medium LOD > Your low poly version
Low LOD > Your physics shape
Lowest LOD > Your 'billboard'
By using the above as a template this is how I go about making a mesh:
1. Create the high detailed model and texture it and save it as HighLOD
2. Using the HighLOD model, I then start stripping it out, reducing polygon counts and details until im satisfied i have a good low poly version, tweak textures if needed, then save it as MedLOD
3. Using the MedLOD as a guide, I start 'boxing' my model, as in making a super low poly version that only accounts for where I want to it to be solid, instead of having those curves I would square them off, the idea being to have the lowest possible poly count without losing the basic shape, textures dont need much tweaking at thos point as its a model that will either be something you see from far away or invisable as a physics shape, this would be saved as LowLODPHYS
4. At this point I would import all 3 LODs, and let the Lowest LOD be generated by the upload window, then I would click the physics tab and set the physics shape to use LOD and then in the drop down select use Low LOD. I would then click close edges and then analyse, to check it looked ok in the preview window. If it does then I would make sure textures is ticked in the last tab and then upload it ready for use.
4a. To create the low poly version, I would do everything in step 4 again except instead of importing the HighLOD, I would import MedLOD twice using them for both the high and medium LODs
5. Once imported and rezzed, I would right click > edit > click features tab and then change 'Convex Hull' to 'Prim' under Physics Shape Type. That will make sure its using the physics shape you uploaded.
Of course I would do all of this on the beta grid first
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Those triangles are the generated LODs (Level of detail) which are directly linked to your 'Object Detail' slider in the graphics settings, if you move the slider up it will show the highest LOD much quicker.
LODs are in 4 stages, High, Medium, Low and Lowest, High being the model you made and imported and the last to load as you approach it. The upload window then lets you either generate the rest of the LODs (which reduces triangle counts and why your model starts looking like a bunch of triangles) or you can upload your own LODs which are basically simplified models of your main model. Basically continuing what you have done already in reducing poly counts, the benefits to this is you can control the appearance of your model much better and if you do it right you can lower the PE even more.
The way it works is that your lowest LOD will count for the most in terms of PE while the highest counts for the least, the reason for this is because the lowest LOD will always render first and for the longest in most cases.
Alot of people use a 'billboard' (just a flat square) for the lowest LOD as in most cases the majority of residents will only ever see it from far far away, personally i let the upload window generate the lowest LOD with the lowest amount of tri's (you can control that too)
Im not sure what kind of business you run or are intending to run (do you just sell building components?) But with meshes you can control everything including your work flow and methods, to give you an example, in the house that im building im taking it in 2 parts, the first is the exterior shell, this has all 4 custom LODs but only has exterior walls and features there is nothing on the inside, the 2nd part is the interior shell, this only has the 2 highest LODs as the interior cant really be seen or needs to be seen from far away, this give me alot of control over PE counts and makes it alot easier to work on.
I guess if your working on interior features like stair cases, how far a resident is ever going to be from it until its behind a wall or obstruction should be something to consider, you could in theory reduce the 2 lowest LODs to 1 triangle which should help even more with PE.
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Miyo Darcy wrote:York Jessop wrote:I noticed your railings are probably taking up the majority of your poly count, it is possible to create a cylinderical appearance with a radius of 6 segments, just use soft edges. You could probably drop the poly count by 60% by doing that whilst keeping an acceptable visual look, Also I would consider squaring off the ends of your steps, its not ideal but again you could shave off another 2/3rd from the steps poly count.
That was absolotly correct. I did play a bit with my railings now and reduced it from 10 sides to 5 sides which looks still great in my opinion. Not round anymore but a complete other style.. I could also use 6 as you said but I decidd for 5 now.I also did reduce polys on the middle pole and pole details.And look...I just went down from 9125 polys to 1904 polys now. That should be ok for an spiral stair case? I will check out PE now.Anyway I am so much happy that I´ve got so many feedback from you all.Thats why SL makes soooo much fun. Best community everGlad to hear and that sounds much much better, hope the new PE is good
Its a really tough question on how much PE a model should have, the one thing is if you have the prims spare you can enjoy a much higher detailed model. Its something I found myself constantly thinking about when planning my builds and it felt limiting. I decided for my first 'sellable' building to just go with the creative side rather than the technical side and I expect my first luxury home to be around 1000PE which is high, yet when I compare it to other builds ingame right now I would say it will be much much better than those 2000+PE luxury mansions you see.
I may be wrong but I think the first thing a customer thinks about is the visual appeal, if they like it they will then start examining all the other aspects like PE and footprint ect and in some cases be willing to sacrifice those over looks.
If you are intending to sell it, you could always create 2 versions, a HD version and a low poly version, its actually quite easy to do that once you have created your LODs, just use the medium LOD as the high LOD and create a simple low LOD to put into the missing LOD slot while using a default 2tri for the lowest one.
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I noticed your railings are probably taking up the majority of your poly count, it is possible to create a cylinderical appearance with a radius of 6 segments, just use soft edges. You could probably drop the poly count by 60% by doing that whilst keeping an acceptable visual look, Also I would consider squaring off the ends of your steps, its not ideal but again you could shave off another 2/3rd from the steps poly count.
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Like Gaia im still testing alot with optimisation, one method i use which is incredibly time consuming, is to triangulate everything (there is usually a tool that does this automatically, then start merging your tri's, in most cases i can reduce vert counts by 50 - 75% using this method but as mentioned it is very time consuming and if you have a function to preserve UV coordinates make sure its turned on! (learnt the hard way on that one!). You could do your UV maps after this but i found its much easier to UV quads than tris.
Triangulating everything is always a good practice, it leads to alot less problems when you do finally import into SL as you pretty much import exactly whats in your scene rather than having the collada exporter translate it.
Another method i found is to use soft edges for your curves, curves can use alot of edges but with a soft edge you can get the same appearance with much less egdes.
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I would expect that the streaming weight will be the highest for that build and as such will most probably be looking at roughly around 400PE for that file size which imo is way too high for a staircase. To give you an example the exterior of my mansion is currently standing at 117kbytes and 68PE and its not small.
You can go to onto Aditi the beta server and do a free test upload to see what your PE is.
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In a small limited number of scenarios, adding a script will be unworkable, this is usually due to creators making 100's of tiny mesh models to link together in some kind of attempt to reduce PE counts on very large builds. Instead of these creators trying to get around the rules and limitations they will be best to just build meshes in how they are suppose to be built. If you want a spaceship that spans an entire sim then its going to cost alot of PE for example, if you build it out of mini meshes and link it then dont expect it to render properly or be able to use scripts.
Ive been involved in the discussions about the naysayers of meshes for abit now and I hate to say this but there are people out there who are searching painfully for seemingly unrealistic scenarios where meshes will be useless and as a result have declared that meshes as a whole are doomed from that start.
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Ishtara Rothschild wrote:York Jessop wrote:The downside to meshes is that you need a version 2 viewer (um thats it)
That's one hell of a downside though. Once viewer 2 runs as performant and crash-free as Phoenix and comes with an alternative v1.2x style interface, I'll begin to care about mesh.And a few months later, people might be able to wear mesh clothes without looking like boxbot for 70% of the SL populace. Right now, it's utterly pointless to care about mesh. You can't possibly use or sell it at this point. It might as well not have been implemented yet.I understand Firestorm is pretty close to being mesh enabled, I think Kristens is already enabled. But in regards to V2, have you tried the latest build? I rarely crash if ever, seems to be good on performance too, but thats only what ive personally experiencedQie Niangao wrote:The last straw was the decision to double the server weight Prim Equivalence ofonlyMesh-included linksets for having a script anywhere inside. As if they hadn't already made Mesh boring by removing most any reason to script it at all, they had to uniquely penalize it for having scripts anywhere near it. Screw that.
Just want to point out this is not true, a script adds 1PE per linked object in a linkset, they also said they are looking at other methods as the current 1PE per script is not ideal or accurate. In most cases server weight wont surpass the upload weight making scripts add nothing anyways.
There seems to be alot of mis-information out there.
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Hum not sure about that Chaos, Ive always used no physics shape or uploaded a custom one. Are you actually nominating a physics shape either by using a current LOD or using a custom one? both those options should allow you to choose the 'Prim' setting.
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Thats one side of the coin for sure, i think scuplts will be useful in alot of situations like trees for example, but i think meshes are as useful in lots of other areas. In most cases where scuplts are not useful (like large builds) meshes are competing very well in terms of prim counts. I cant really say im dissappointed with it really, my current project is standing at 50PE and i have no doubt at all that if i did the same with prims it would be 4 times more at least.
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Hope Dreier wrote:Actually what concerns me is the Mesh has a variable Prim Equivalence value that is not intuitive, for example it was reported to me that a 25 prim build linked to a 2 PE Mesh suddenly became a 250 PE object. There are also still unknowns or at least uncertainties about what happens when changes in PE suddenly over flow region/parcel prim count limits. All that having been said, progress is our most important product.
I think that must have been an exception, in most regards prim counts are much lower, I agree with Imnotgoing Sideways, in that replacing current prim builds with mesh builds is a very wise thing to do and I personally hope many adopt that kind of idea as it really does benefit everyone (much less lag).
I actually did a test build because I too was very worried about what the comparison really was like, i took a friends house which was 168prims and created an almost exact duplicate as a mesh, it came out ironically at 68prims at which point I fully committed myself to mesh building.
It is true that its very difficult to get into, Blender is not an easy program to navigate and to add ontop of that all the other complexities of building mesh its a major put off for alot of people, I sincerly hope that we see alot more mesh tutorials coming out over the next few months.
Once you understand the basics, its actually fun to work with, instead of rezzing a cube in world, you just rez your cube in the 3D program, the freedom comes from all the tools you have, instead of just resizing and moving, you can resize, move, scale, extrude, split, drag or combine, and you can do this to the edges, the faces or the verts(the points where edges meet). You can also accurately texture and bake shadows, baking shadows is actually done automatically for you, you just tell it where you want your lights, ask it to bake and hey presto all those textures you made now have nice shadows on them. The freedom to create really is beyond anything we have seen before and to top it off, its cheaper (prims) and looks much much better.
I too was sceptical, I thought this was another ploy by LL to tax us more, to restrict us to the point that prim and scuplties would be superior but I was wrong, it is better in everyway.
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Have you accidentally turned off construction history? Along the top bar there will be a scroll icon, make sure it doesnt have an 'x' in it.
Maya can be temperamental at times, if everything fails to get it back you can reset everything by renaming your maya preferences file
C:/Users/<Username>/MyDocuments/maya <- rename it to *maya or _maya, when you start up maya again it will have reset everything, if that doesnt work and you want your preferences back, then just go back into that folder, delete the new 'maya' folder it created and rename your old *maya or _maya file back to maya.
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It's the reason I returned to Second Life, I know there is resistance to it, more in the case of how complex it is to understand but I think once we start seeing what can be done with it we will all enjoy the benefits of highly detailed models with less prim counts and more importantly .. less lag.
Its like asking the question, are you bothered about scuplties compared to prims, the difference is meshes compared to scuplties is a similiar comparison.
There are alot of restrictions with prims, they are expensive to build (in terms of prim count) and horribly in-efficient on lag, they show 'seams' everywhere and its like building houses with lego.
Scuplties are abit easier in that you can have a cushion that looks like a cushion, they only cost 1 prim in most cases but are laggier than prims, and are not practical for larger objects.
Meshes are almost complete freedom to build, you can have complex shapes included in your build, they perform very well and with a prim for prim comparison, they cost alot less for alot more. They also are textured inside the 3D programs that are used, and can be baked with shadows and realistic shading before they are even uploaded into second life.
The downside to meshes is that you need a version 2 viewer (um thats it)
You should start seeing some difference in the marketplace in terms of quality and prim costs once the roll out is complete
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Are you using automatic mapping? if so try increasing the number of planes it uses I found I get better results even tho its not perfect.