WhiteRabbit0

For static assets poly count matters... removing unnessecary loops and getting that land impact lower is nice and ( encouraged by the Land impact calculator ). Ironically the one point where Low poly matters THE MOST... LL didn't think to implement any penalty ( or metric for that matter ) for high poly assets. PLEASE for the love of all that you hold dear in your life RETOPO RIGGED MESH. The backbreaking labor that everyone's PC has to do for SL primarily comes from high vertex count rigged meshes. That is what screws EVERYTHING up in SL, the FPS lag, the viewer crashes, the excruciating load times. ALL of that comes from too many polygons and too many 1024 textures. FYI: there are tools that exist out there to convert Normal to AO maps. Which you can bake into your diffuse. For me the creation of the normal map actually becomes the foundation for the rest of my texture. All my items look really convincing w/o materials and then spring to life with it. And all of them are low poly, low impact. (I'm still guilty of using too many fancy textures.. working on that part... )

Yeah I made an entire lighthouse with materials. 68 prims and more detail than you could get in 600+. Don't say we haven't been making things with materials.. You have to remember Firestorm JUST added them in last release. Things move slowly in SL, most of the people who jumped on the materials bandwagon had already been using them in other environments (like me), it will take awhile for people who are SL excusive designers to finally get into it But it will happen.

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Fitted-Mesh-BUTT-rig/m-p/2492933/highlight/false#M25830 Pandora Wigglesworth : At a bare minimum, the BUTT bone should not get bigger when the avatar shape butt size is reduced. As it is, not getting bigger to match an increasing size and getting bigger when the size decreases, the BUTT bone is completely useless. I'm filing this one as a bug. I don't know if other people can see this JIRA yet but, when it becomes publicly visible, it will be BUG-5131. The JIRA seems to have been accepted and rated as Major so hopefully this can be fixed soon.

So the best way to use this is to basically.. not use it. ok.. got it I guess the best way to tackle this problem will be to make standard Ass & Breast sizing for the female AV basically replace the current standards system with a new one. Perhaps find a working solution that way.

I too am stuck on this butt weighting problem. I'm not sure what to do about it as it leaves this new rig almost completely unviable for clothing and dress making. I tried inverting the bone weights.. adjusting the scale etc etc.. tons of things to try and get the ass to not fly out and expand for no reason at SL AV slider values for butt size that range from 0 to 27. But I have had no luck.. Has anyone posted a JIRA about this or is this working as intended?

Well there's been a bit of an update, the Qarl optimized the code a bit further as was posted here: http://www.qarl.com/qLab/?p=87 Nalates Blogged about it here : http://blog.nalates.net/2013/07/08/mesh-deformer-update-2013-28/ So the hope of getting this on SL Main may have a renwed sparkle. One could hope.

Hey there! If you want any help on getting that LI down from 886 to something like 95, see if I'm on the beta realm or msg me in world.

The intelligent useage of UV maps and custom textures ( now with the ... dear god here I go believing that we might actually get it.... normal maps and specular maps ) can take something that would have a 250K poly count if done in sculpts and prims and knock it down to 5K. It's true, expertise is required, but that's the magnitude of gain that there is potentially. And to reply to the post above stating that "prims and sculpts don't conform", They are built as clothing elements that way, rather than full clothes. 90% of SL Mesh is a full garment, if your arms are too big you can't just scale the sleeves up.

You need multiple materials to do multiple textures, otherwise it's all a single map and you only get 1 tex slot. You will also have to create multiple UV maps for each part of your retopoed mesh, this involves retopoing your original sculpt, then cutting it up and UV mapping each piece seperately... then setting each to a different material in your final retopologized export. I really wanted to stress this, please please retopologize Zbrush models before import into SL Straight Zbrush sculpts kill SL, cause lag and crash viewers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI0tdLwR0P0&NR=1&feature=endscreen. Research it thoroughly and repost here if you have any questions please.

The updated Avatar is something that is often requested but officially no work has started on it. I find it highly highly unlikely that there is any LL project in development currently to do such a thing, however, one of the 100's of possible uses for the deformer is to create said Avatar 2.0, (3.0 really.. current AV is 2.0, just no one remembers 1.0) . It would not be an official release that works with the current baked clothing layers, but it would be manageable with clothing appliers and would be done by the community of designers. There is currently another side project that slightly changes the avatar weighting to reduce the horrendous stretching in the current default AV. All progress on that is documented in the Snowstorm 1800 project JIRA, which if you are thoroughly bored, you can read here : https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/STORM-1800? TLDR version of the JIRA : Slight improvement but might make some current content clip the avatar in areas it did not clip before. Basically, might break content, probably won't be implemented.

The creation and implementation of the deformer in no way will cause the old avatars to be removed from the grid, or impact them in any way whatsoever. Your avatar will remain as it was. It will however allow for the creation of beautiful new avatars that run independantly from the default avatar with much better detail and animation which you can chose to purchase. No one will be forcing you to change though unless LL comes down with some reaaaaaaaally bizarre orders out of the blue.

I suggested this on the JIRA but I will repost it here for completionist purposes. I do believe there should be a restriction on how many deformer enabled polygons a single avatar can wear specifically so calculation time is kept to a minimum, which does require some additional serverside coding from LL, which I eagerly await some, any, response from. Honestly said Zbrush ports just about kill my poor PC when I have 3-5 AV's with them on my screen, I constantly de-render them when I see them, I wish there was restrictions on plain & rigged mesh too.

The deformer itself allows for the creation of Avatar 2.0, 3.0.. 5.0 whatever. Because the deformer operates based off of the approximate shape of the default avatar, you can create a new avatar with it and simply include clothing layers with appliers, very similar to the lola tango setup.

Codewarrior, while what all of your statements are correct, the core of the project works and is ready for release. The only other stuff such as restrictions and method of integration into the viewer which is stuff that we need the wonderful folks at Linden Lab to come to a consensus on. Which involves them actually looking at the project, taking it seriously and having an active conversation with the development community which it would seem they refuse to do due to unknown reasons. So all I have to go off of is that last post where Oz is worried that the community might get the idea that the project is moving forwards, which is just grim news for me.

Because Linden Labs has not come out and stated an official position on this project at all, all I can do is quote Nalates Blog, as she is practically the only source of credible information on this matter. Nalates Urriah wrote: #SL News on the 15th I reported I think the Mesh Deformer Project is setting off to the side. I mention that from Oz Linden’s perspective interest in the Deformer has died out. That drew some reaction in several places. Since a couple of days after the article things have picked up. I doubt I did all that. But, people are getting the word out. There have been other times where it has been mentioned at meetings etc both prior to this and after it, I just can't copy / paste them on demand.

Mass exodus? That video is taken without her even wearing an alpha layer. That's how precisely correct it fits. The deformer is not a magical silver bullet that will remove the need for alphas but it is a 3 fold improvement over the current mesh system. This has been addressed on the JIRA time and time again, but the JIRA is over 100 pages long, so I don't expect people to read it. I know a substantial part of this thread will be repeating what has been stated there over again here, but that is fine. The project is ready for release. Also Oz has repeatedly said this project is low priority because he thought it was evident that the community didn't care about it. I'm trying to show otherwise, again. Hence. Here we are.

What little scraps of information we recieve are fed only though Nalates Urriah, no public channels. And Nalates has stated the following, Nalates Urriah wrote: Resources – people are needed to consider the deformer ( STORM-1716) and avatar ( STORM-1800) and those people need to be good 3D model people with experience in avatars and models. In short not Oz Linden, a networking guy and open source advocate. Base Avatar – When I wrote my mesh tutorial one of the challenges I had was figuring out what the hell the base avatar was. In the viewer there is an avatar some say was taken/purchased from Poser. It was built into the viewer files. The source is lost somewhere in the hard drives of Linden Lab. Then there is the Ruth/Roth shapes, which are different than the ‘no-shape’ avatar. Then there is what we call the New Avatar Shape, which we get when we create a new shape in the viewer. How will a user know which shape was used by the designer? – Update: Judging from comments this is not clear enough. It seems the Lab is seriously concerned about how END Users of products will know which base shape was used in design. Avatar Weighting and Polygon Layout – JIRA STORM-1800 is about problems with the avatar mesh and weighting. It has an effect on the Deformer’s results and has become associated. Lots has been written about that, so I’m not going to repeat it. Check out the Mesh category or Deformer tag here if you want more information on that. Also see: Open-162/ARVD-49 – Avatar_lad.xml having non-symmetrical attachment offsets for several attachment slots. That was a month and a half ago. Then recently: Nalates Urriah wrote: I checked with Oz Linden about the Mesh Deformer Test Garments in Hippo Hollow. I wanted him to remove the old garments that do not work with the current deformer. He prefers not to, being concerned it might signal some action on the Deformer. So basically Oz is terrified of giving the community the idea that the project is going to move forward at all and is actively limiting the general public's ability to see that the deformer actually works by refusing to have viable test garments available to them. I'm terrified she's reporting correctly. Hence. Here we are.

Heh, I picked something the community seemed to pick up on as "important'. Those breasts caught on like wildfire, so I used them as an example. Personally I'd use it to rework the entire avatar to not have such godawful joints and cuts and stretches during animations, there's 1000's of uses if LL would just implement it.

Hello fellow designer! MESH CLOTHES THAT ACTUALLY FIT EVERY AVATAR SHAPE AUTOMATICALLY ARE POSSIBLE, HERE AND NOW. No more standard sizing debacles, no more customers complaining your stuff doesn't fit them, and to top it all off, it makes mesh clothes move with avatar physics. If we can just convince Linden Lab to stop being stupid and release it. Please let your voice be heard and demand they integrate the Mesh Deformer into the viewer as a high priority. THE MESH DEFORMER IS DONE, TESTED AND PERFORMS EXCEPTIONALLY WELL. WE JUST NEED THE COMMUNITY TO DEMAND IT'S RELEASE LOUD ENOUGH FOR LINDEN LABS TO HEAR. For the past year and a half the development community has been testing and refining the "Mesh deformer" beta. It is an AMAZING project that automatically fits all mesh clothes to any avatar shape, eliminating the need for "standard sizing" and a whole host of other difficulties and annoyances with mesh clothes in SL right now. Avatar Physics also works with mesh deformer enabled clothes, enabling a whole host of sexy new products that move and adjust with avatar physics. If you thought the Lolas Tango breasts were a revolution, just imagine them with physics enabled, and adjustable with the avatar shape slider! That is what the mesh deformer does. It works, we've tested it for 6 months now. Demo video of the deformer in action : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ0JJXmOBwc Note the precision that it fits without even using an alpha layer. But we have a problem, Linden Labs couldn't recognize something that enables creativity if it slapped them in the face. Repeatedly. Not to mention them failing to realize the potential growth in the SL economy. So they have put this amazing project on HOLD. They are refusing to dedicate the small amount of staff to get this FULLY FUNCTIONAL AND COMPLETELY TESTED project into the standard viewer. So that is where you, the fashion and design community comes in. We need your voice. Post on this thread, post on the project JIRA here : https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/STORM-1716 Edit 2: Nalates is right, this forum thread now contains most of the information needed to understand the deformer project. The JIRA is almost 100 pages long. Email a Linden, do anything to raise the awareness of this project. Please and thank you, -White Rabbit

Actually it isn't beyond the realm of belief right now that LL does NOT in fact have any staff remaining that are capable of dealing with the deformer and testing said deformer. A substantial amount of LL's staff has been diverted off of SL and is now busy working on their myriad of other games / projects. Corperations compartmentalize stuff, and it is fully possible that LL has simply deemed that SL is no longer relevant enough to dedicate their most experienced personel to. The mesh deformer and many other projects may well have simply been put on hold until their one or two people who can actually implement them into the standard viewer finish up on their Patterns duties or some such. Of course "your game no longer is profitable enough for us to care" isn't an answer that is publically acceptable, thus the silence until there's enough of an uproar that someone in management finally moves a finger. I really do wish though that we weren't stuck second guessing and begging for scraps of information about what might be. Nalates does a fantastic job of communicating all information that LL danes is fit for us. But I have never had a 3rd party blog site be the ONLY source of information about a web service before. There has always been an active website with public forums in which the official developers and community managers posted all information and handled all questions. I regularly post on the forums for other companies, such as Riot, and in the past Blizzard, both of which I've had the pleasure of having my advice heeded, changes made, and responses posted by official employees regarding my concerns and recommendations.

I personally sent 3 test garmets to Oz via inworld notecard mail, as was requested on the official test garmet request page. I don't think anyone has counted those and it is quite possible they were simply lost, along with countless others submitted via the same means. To say that there is a dirth of test garments available currently to the public is a true statement, to say that that is all that were submitted is not.