IvanBenjammin

ChinRey wrote: Everything causes lag. Every single pixel, vertice, tri, script line... It's the sum of the load on the weakest link in the chain from the asset server database to the client's computer screen that matters. There's really no definite answer what is the least laggy solution, it depends on what we're trying to make. Ehhhh....Ok. Yes, in the most absolute of terms, everything causes 'lag' (leaving aside the fact that the word 'lag' doesn't mean what most people think it does), but the load that realtime rendering causes on a system is a very well understood science. Your sim (took a look the other day) is excellent evidence that, a) graphics hardware can handle a lot when its fed the right way, and b) its not the environment that causes SL to run poorly.

The answer in SL is free-market capitalism, for better or worse. I fully support the democratic ideal of the platform: everyone has the right to create, in whatever capacity they choose. What bugs me is the stagnation of it - a stagnation that's a kind of feedback loop. Highly popular and influential creators who shun the new technologies (for whatever reason), and pass their opinions on to their customers. New creators who want to establish a name for themselves will imitate the most popular brands, which results in more stagnation. The end result is that we still have threads like this. You have avatars with a higher polycount than characters in the latest gen games, because for some reason individually modelled buttons are important. Then someone sounds off the old "materials cause laaaaaag!" nonsense, and the cycle continues. I may be contradicting myself a bit with these opinions. I want SL to be a platform for anyone to create, while at the same time moving forward, looking good and embracing what's possible.

This is a major soap-box issue for me, so I'll try to restrain myself... Its really easy to do bad normal mapping, and I get the feeling that's responsible for a lot of the negative opinions. It introduces another level of complexity to the texturing process that takes time and a whole lot of trial and error to get right - you can't throw your diffuse texture into crazy bump and expect a good result. When done right, it works fine with shadows, and should work fine with all sorts of different lighting conditions - that's the whole point of the technology. I've rewritten this post half a dozen times to keep the rant to a minimum...

Look at Maya LT - That's about $40/month, though I'm not sure if it has the full suite of animation/rigging tools you'll need. Silo actually was abandoned by its creators, but then they inexplicably came back and started patching it. They're a very small team, and there's much more money to be made selling phone apps...

I used silo for a couple of years, and its a great modelling tool, with a couple of caveats: It doesn't UV very well. The tools are all there, but its missing the vital ability that higher end tools have to preserve UVs when editing the mesh. I also found its UV editor to be quite unstable - undoing certain functions would crash Silo. It will do the job, it can just be quite frustrating. As Arton mentioned, it doesn't export collada, so you'll need something like Blender as well, if only to import obj and export dae. If you're creating rigged items like shoes and clothes, then you'll need blender for a bit more. I sympathise with your Blender distress - I can't get my head around it, either. I've recently dropped Silo for Maya, but I've used Maya in the past (just couldn't personally afford it till now!). I'm not sure whether to recommend it to a newbie or not... on the one hand it makes more sense than Blender (IMO), on the other, its several layers deeper, which can lead to frustration. It also costs real money

Let me share my story, from the other side of the fence. I'm a mesh creator. I spent the better part of a decade in the RL 3d industry, working on banal projects for stupid clients. I would work insane hours to meet deadlines, to receive a fraction of the value my labor was charged out at. I was never a very good cog in the machine. I loved my craft, but hated cutting corners on quality to meet deadlines. It didn't matter that no one would notice my obsessive attention to detail, it had to be right for me to be satisfied with my work. Worse was fixing the mistakes of other people in my office, suffering stress and sleepless nights because they didn't care about the quality as much as I did. ...And it would ultimately be for a developer to open a new mine, or build some enormous new shopping complex (my role was to create visualizations to show people that, hey, its not going to look that bad...). My sister-in-law had been in SL for years, and when mesh was introduced she encouraged me to get involved. At first, mesh was very much a niche product, so I attempted to learn prim and sculpty building techniques as well. It was like trying to sculpt clay with oven mitts. I gave up in frustration, found a banal job, and life went on. A little over a year later, after losing that job (due to what I later recognised as pretty severe depression) I came back to SL. At this point, mesh was much more accepted, and I could ignore prims and sculpties entirely. I rediscovered my love of the 3d craft. I was able to create things that interested me, to my own deadlines, for people who actually appreciated the hard work I put into it. Sure, I don't make a lot - especially compared to what I could earn as a cog-in-the-machine - but the sense of satisfaction I get makes up for it. A customer will give me positive feedback, or show me something they've made with my products, and it makes my day. For many 3d artists, there is little artistry in what they do. The job title is actually somewhat misleading, especially if the work is TV ads or architectural visualization. In SL, I can be an artist, and that's worth more to me than I can put into words. So that's my story. While the change in SL hasn't been welcome to you, its one of the best things that ever happened to me.

KaycieLee wrote: Thanks for all of the supportive and sympathetic responses. I had really hoped LL would weigh in here with some sort of answer to the problem, or at the very least an acknowledgement that they were aware and dealing with it. At this point, I am going to be forced to let my parcel, and in fact my premium account, go, and return to free account status. When my current supply of Lindens is gone, that will be the end of my purchasing, as I have no confidence whatsoever in the safety of LLs handling of my account. I cannot afford to give access to my real-world finances to a company that has demonstrated they are irresponsible, and simply don't give a damn about their PAYING customers. I really feel for you, I just recently had a terrible experience with customer support involving a substantial amount of money. In my case, it was cashing out to paypal, changing of email addresses, and supposed 'security issues.' I'm not going to get into specifics - I think that may be against the TOS now (lol) - but the support I received was literally zero. I was told there was nothing they could do, and nothing I could do except wait and cross my fingers. All I wanted was a little bit of information, a little transparency... Nope. At least in my case it was money going the other way, but I totally agree that it seems like they just don't care.

Apologies if this is a 'yeah, duh..' type comment, but have you got your shadow settings covering projector lights? In the official viewer, you have 'none', 'sun/moon', and 'sun/moon and projectors' settings. If that's nto the problem, projector lights do have an 'ambient' light value which works just like a regular light (ie: not casting shadows).

I make stuff!

You're either going to have a seam, or you're going to have distortion, there's no third option without either (unless you want to talk about 3d painting and/or baking of textures ) I would personally go with Rollig's version, because a) I prefer a little distortion over seams, and b) its a more efficient use of UV space, which means less texture waste. It's also worth bearing in mind that distortion will be more or less of a problem depending on the type of texture.

Bobbie, I don't mean to sound like I'm ranting at you, specifically, but: ??? Do people still think of Materials as 'the newest shiny'? Normal mapping is about as old as SL itself Firstly, how long it takes for textures to load in your viewer is dependent on how many textures and their resolution - the size of the building is entirely irrelevant. Secondly, 'materials' aren't handled the same way as diffuse textures. Any graphics card that's less than 10-12 years old has been built to handle normal mapping efficiently. They load much faster than a regular texture, and take up far less VRAM. As always, if a user is having loading issues with SL, its almost certainly caused by avatar textures and mesh density, not their environment.

Naiman Broome wrote: Hello , I have a small texturing problem in world , I have this plane made of 8 faces squares in my mesh model , in 3dsmax the texture uvmapping is fine and I see no seam line , but in SL I see this gray line following the path of the junctions between the planes ... http://i.imgur.com/uRxHDbm.jpg How can I get rid of this and why in 3dsmax I do not have that? On right the 3dsmax Uvmapping and on left the SL result , even tiling at 0.99 or less the line persists . Please show us what your UV map looks like. Chic and Rollig are right in that you need extra pixels around your UV islands (its called 'padding' btw ) unless you're doing a fully seamless/tiling texture. You can also get nasty seams when reducing the resolution of textures - I can see that the texture in 3dsmax is higher res than the one used in SL.

Just take my brain out and put it in a jar. Goodbye, meatworld! This was an enjoyable thread to read, lots of diverse opinion. I get the feeling however, that a lot of people expressing skepticism haven't actually tried VR - understandable given that its not readily available yet. We're in the very early days of this tech. If you're old enough to remember the early 90's, you might remember how clunky, slow and gimmicky the web was. 25 years ago, there wasn't a lot of overlap with RL. Now, its utterly interconnected. A lot of VR skepticism stems from the current interfaces available, which is fair enough, but kind of like judging the potential of the web based on your 28.8k modem. Lots of comments about how you don't want to be completely disconnected from reality - you want to be able to hear the doorbell, etc. Well, that's an issue with headphones, not VR. As someone who gets motion sickness, I kind of agree that it doesn't sound like a good idea to put full immersion headsets on kids in the backseat of a car. But what about AR goggles? What if they could look out the window and be educated about what's passing them by? What if they want to see what the town they're driving through looked like in the 1950's? The educational and psychological benefits are HUGE. Consider the child confined to bed in a hospital. Consider the person with cerebral palsy. Consider the most agoraphobic person you know in SL and the potential for them to experience things they would never have the chance to otherwise. This, IMO, is what we need to be thinking about, not how VR will change the life of an average, neurotypical human. Me, I just want the ability to 3d model with my hands, inside virtual space.

BilliJo Aldrin wrote: Actually, the Confederate Battle Flag is seen around the world as a protest flag against authority. It is only in America that it has been painted with the racist label by groups such as the NAACP, who won't be happy until every shred of evidence that there ever was a Confederate States of America is erased from existance, including the images on Stone Mountain Ga By the way it wasn't a civil war. A civil war is fought by two factions trying to gain control of the central government. I'm sorry, but that's just not accurate. The confederate flag has very little relevance to the rest of the world - about the only time its seen is in TV/Film where its associated with bigotry, racism, or general ignorance. It's been prominent in some of the coverage of protests against the Obama administration, but I'm sorry to say the connotations in those cases are about the same. I'm pretty sure the definition of a civil war is "A war fought between citizens of the same nation." But I'm sure you could claim you weren't the same nation, so call it what you want.

BilliJo Aldrin wrote: Actually my comment may God have mercy on our souls was in reference to the monster our federal government has become. As for the other person saying the flag was flown in response to segregation, the truth is the southern state governments were asked to fly that flag as part of the *gasp* national celebrations and remembrances of the 100th anniversary of the Civil War. Perhaps by the 200th anniversary all this PC madness wil be over with and each of us can be proud of our heritage without being labelled racist hatemongers. So, this might come off as snarky, but I don't really intend it to be... I'm just curious as to why the battle flag of the losing side of a civil war is seen as a symbol of pride? I truly don't understand. I mean no offense, but the connotations attached to that symbol for most of the rest of the world are pretty negative... For what it's worth, I think the USA is focusing on the wrong thing. You had yet another mass shooting, and it seems like the flag was seized on as something to demonize because it was more comfortable than talking about the elephant in the room.

Just because I'm curious, what does the rest of the world think? Do the Koreans just roll their eyes at American arrogance to think their internal squabbles mean anything? [removing long statement about gun control before I post this, I don't want to start that 'debate'...] The confederate flag to me (I didn't realise it wasn't their national flag till I read the coverage on BBC) symbolizes the american redneck stereotype and all the ignorance that goes with it. That some consider it a symbol of pride just multiplies that perception of ignorance. The idea that southern states can fly it in a semi-official capacity after losing the war is....bemusing. I can't speak for the koreans (who it should be remembered never finished their 'civil war', and for whom the division between north and south is a little more relevant..), but yes, the rest of the world rolls their eyes at American arrogance.

Perhaps try uploading it again? There was maintenance recently. Its always taken 5-10 minutes to show up in the associated listing window for me. General process is to upload to marketplace, then go and update my in-world listing. When I come back to MP it shows up.

Don't stress about it, all they really want to know is that you're a real person, and that you live where you say you do.

Poppies for everyone! In Europe they're representative of Armstice Day, but they're our ANZAC day symbol. 100 years, and no Gallipoli veterans left alive. "Lest we Forget"

Just a comment on inverted normal maps and tangent axis/swizzles etc: Rather than inverting your repeats in SL, or rebaking with correct tangents (ie: +y instead of -y), all you need to do is invert the offending channel in Gimp/Photoshop. I'm not sure how to do it in Gimp, but in PS its as easy as going into the channels tab (usually under layers), selecting the correct channel and hitting ctrl+I. In most cases it'll be the green channel (y axis).

Yes, that 8bit in PS means 8bits per channel, so 24bit total.

I really, really wish people/trolls would stop with the doomsaying, because it helps no one - especially when their information is just flat-out wrong. Yes, its possible, particularly with modelling/texturing skills. There is a new platform in the works, but its not replacing anything. A great deal of content will be transferrable, but possibly not by direct inventory transfer: The new platform will be using a different scripting language (C#, instead of LSL), and most likely a different animation/rigging system. Hold onto your original files to cover your bases. But really, its a way off yet, and I repeat, its not replacing SL. Its a new platform because LL have realised they need to build something new to compete in the future VR market. As long as SL is profitable, it will continue. SL being profitable is contingent on people building content and customers buying that content, so as long as those things keep happening, there's nothing to worry about.

Gavin Hird wrote: I worked in Apple product management. I know my audience. ;-) And for the record, Photpshop was delveloped for the Mac as was Excel originally. Macs being used by 'creatives' became a self fulfilling thing. There was a time when Photoshop ran better on Macs because of better hardware acceleration. Those days are long gone, but somehow the stereotype persists, in part I'm sure because of bearded baristas telling their customers that 'Macs are better for graphics'. Good displays, but nothing you can't get for PC when you're spending Mac money.

I have a couple of diplomas. The paper is very high quality, and they've got my name in a fancy font. They're definitely not worth the student loan I have, though. I credit my formal education in 3d with helping me to find direction and getting me started in the industry, but everything I learnt in that setting, I could've learnt on my own.

You can do what Jake suggests in his last post - convert it to grayscale and calculate a new normal map from that (or draw it by hand, there isn't a lot of detail there). Alternatively, don't use a unique texture set for the corner pieces, but rather use the same as used by the straight sections (so they have the same straight UVs, but are bent in 3d space). This may lead to some distortion of your texture, but this can be mitigated to an extent with extra edge loops. This is often how its done in game development, where additional textures are used only where absolutely necessary.