ChinRey

I had a different problem with the profile pages earlier today, uplaoded a picture to my feed and it never turned up. I wonder if there is a connection there.

Phil Deakins wrote: The clarification I need is this. Do you mean that Mesh Studio can't get a smooth transition between the sides of the 2 normal prims?, or that a smooth transition can't be achieved with normal prims? You can't get a smooth trasition between the curved parts and the flat ones with normal prims and that measn you can't with Mesh Studio either. The flat surfaces shouldn't be a problem, it's the curved ones that are. Phil Deakins wrote: I suppose my question boils down to, which is best for that purpose - 4 normal prims or 1 mesh? It's not that much difference really. With four prims and convex hull you get a land impact down of 2. With mesh you can get it down to 0.5.

Conifer Dada wrote: When checking other peoples' profiles I noticed that some open straight away and others have a padlock button like I have on mine. I've seen that once recently too. The profiles we see inworld are actually web pages from my.secondlife.com and handled by the itnernal web browser and obviously what happens is that the log in data isn't always transferred between the viewer and the website. LL made some major changes to the way html is handled by the viewer recently so most likely that's where the bug is.

KarenMichelle Lane wrote: And let's not forget the recent mention about the imagery being manufactured with many objects available from several well know 3D sources. I haven't heard about that but well, the two wonderful poster pistures they've published are clearly not live snapshots from Sansar. It would have been too much of a coincidence if they were and both just happened to capture exactly the same cloud formations in the background. But those still pictures don't mean anything anyway. They could have been taken anywhere, even in Second Life. What matters is how the graphics in Sansar will work as a three dimensional dynamic environment and we know absolutely nothing abuot that yet.

Phil Deakins wrote: 1. Sculpties were not very good for sharp edges. I think it could be done with a bit of fiddling, but they weren't straight forward. I'd like to elaborate a bit on Arton excellent but rather short reply. It's a bit hard to explain without demonstrating but the normals of a mesh ( in the word's widest definition which includes prims and sculpts) tells the rendering engine which way each face is pointing and thus how much light it gets from a light source. With flat or sharp normals, the entire surface of each face is given the same amount of light. With smooth normals, the face is gradually darkenned or lightened towards the edges to match the shading of the other faces it is joined to. Prims always use sharp normals for flat surfaces, such as the sides of a cube and smooth normals for curved ones Sculpts always have smooth normals and the ony way to emulate sharp ones is to have two vertices at exactly the same point so that the adjoning faces don't share the same vertices. With mesh - or maybe we shuold call it "full mesh" or something like that - you get to choose. Phil Deakins wrote: 3. Is Mesh Studio good enough to make a sharp edged mesh from, say, a linked set of cubes and rounded prims, so that it looks as good as,straight-edged, with some rounded-edged, prims? E.g. a flattened cube, standing vertically, with an equally flattened half cycluinder on the top edge. In prims they can look like one prim with sharp edges and an accurate curve on top.. Would they look as good, or as good as makes no difference, if Mesh Studio created a mesh of the prims? If you mesh with the right resolution (2/24 for the high res model, 2/15 for mid, 2/9 for low and 2/6 for lowest, what Mesh Studio produces will look exactly like the prim original. In your example that is a problem though since you can't get a smooth transition between the cube sides and the cylinder curve with prims.

Rolig Loon wrote: I have no experience with Mesh Studio, but my understanding from what others have said is that it makes rather clunky, poorly-optimized mesh objects. That is not correct. Mesh Studio is able to produce mesh at least as well optimized for SL as any other mesh application. Dong so is not staight forward of course, you have to understand both how mesh works and how the program works but that is true for all other 3D modelling software too. Rolig Loon wrote: Whether that means that it can't make a cube with sharp edges, I do not know. It can. In fact, it's the only way it can make a cube. The limitation with Mesh Studio is that it can only reproduce as mesh exactly what you make with prims and prim cubes always have sharp normals of course.

Magnus Brody wrote: Here's how to set your default view to anything you feel better with changing default camera view Strongly recommended!!! I've yet to hear of anybody going back to that tacky default camera angle after trying to correct it the way Natale Urriah described! a Fallen Angel wrote: I wonder if those desperate-to-please-and-show-off people over in Answers are a bit annoyed that you posted this query in General Discussions. Nah, we can show off here too, No problem

Vulpinus wrote: ... 1 LI??? Maybe that's a bit too much but certainly well below 2.9. You can easily get the download weight down well below 1.0 simply by splitting it up into four separate meshes, wall, two window frames and door frame. That would increase the server weight to 2.0 though. Whether that's a good idea depends on the weight balance of the rest of the house. Vulpinus wrote: It's just occurred to me that I might not need the inside planes of the medium LOD model - I'll never get so far away that it will be needed, even in my mansion. The theoretical switch points for this particular mesh are 35, 140 and 280 m for mid, low and lowest res model respectively, a little bit lower (32, 129 and 258) if the mesh has four or five faces. That means you have to be a bit careful not to reduce the mid model too much even on the inside but you can simlify quite a bit. The low and lowest models you can just thrash. (Me, I would actually have kept fairly detailed models of the outer wall even at those LOD levels but I may be a bit over-sensitive to LOD issues.) For the mid model, aim for 68 tris. You may have to go up to 76 but hopefully not. (You will need to do some simple retopology for that, not just delete polys.) There may be a little bit to gain by improving the file's compressability. Even something as simple as aligning the door opening with some of the edges of the door frame may improve the LI noticeably. Your model is fairly well optimized already though so there may not be that much to gain here, unless you want to edit the dae file manually that is.

when you get the Jethro Tull reference wrote: No, lots of new and original ideas have actually resulted from cockups and incompetents getting things completely wrong. That's true. It's surprising how much development has come from people trying to replicate the past and getting it wrong. when you get the Jethro Tull reference wrote: ***Call me when you get the Jethro Tull reference Wow, that's along name!

SirLeighBastard wrote: Luddites! ***Call me when you have stopped living in the past Quite interesting that you choose to use such a historical reference for a post like that. Seriously, it's not about living in the past, it's about recognizing it. I can build better than Eric Linden, much better. But that is not because I'm a better builder. I'm not and I don't know of anybody else who is either. And it's not only because we have so many new possibilities. It's because he and other great builders of the past paved the way for us. If we couldn't study and learn from what they did, we'd be just stuck reinventing the wheel over and over again. It's the same in all fields of human activity. Every single "new" idea and invention mankind has ever come up with has been based on something from the past. So no, history not about living in the past, it's about maintaining a platform to build a future on.

Vulpinus wrote: Thanks for your input Gaia, it's much appreciated. So, is having a face connected to another like I have, with only a single vertex, potentially not a good thing? Looking at that another way, is there some significance to having faces connected by a common edge? It's a safety measure. Usually it makes no difference but sometimes just aligning the vertices to an edge is not enough. Vulpinus wrote: I've made a lower detail version for the medium LOD and a physics shape, and it comes in at 2.984 LI. Nice! Yes, nice Now, get it down to 1 LI! It is certainly possible even without sacrificing LOD.

Prokofy Neva wrote: Could you be less opaque about what sim and what build you are talking about? Oh, I said that in my second post. At the northeastern corner of Iris there was a group of all five of Eric Linden's Atoll Huts. Three of them are original and still owned by LL. The other two, owned by the SL Public Land Preserved and were replaced by my replicas. I posted a picture in my profile if you are interested: https://my.secondlife.com/chinrey/snapshots/569e3a179934e00804000001

ViktorStorm wrote: I see a lot of land go up for auction, and peope getting it an selling it for 2 -3 times as much as they paid for it. I see this to be a problem, as people that want land cant get it, but the land scaplers eat up the auction land for cheap or drive the price sky high, and sell it to rip people off, and dont give people a chance to have fun bidding on land, and have fun owning it. If it's any comfort to you: I'm standing on a piece of land at a once very popular sim right now. It was bought on auction at a ridiculous price by somebody who immediately put it up for sale at an even more ridiculous price. Almost two years later it is still for sale. I honestly can't imagine anybody ever buying it but even if that happens, there's no way the seller will be able to cover the tier they've had to pay in the meantime. That's what usually happens these days. Auctioned land is bought by optimists who haven't realized the SL unreal estate market has collapsed and will end up paying more in tier whilst trying to sell the land than they'll ever make from it.

DavidThomas Scorbal wrote: Strange that the original is considered the one that you move ... There is a relatively easy way to work around that: Copy-drag, move the copy out of the way, select original and use ctrl-Z to snap it back into place.

Vulpinus wrote: The faces terminate on the same vertices (no 'doubles'), although when I checked each one, for some reason some were off by a tiny amount. 7.50002 instead of 7.5 for instance. I put them all to 7.5 and reuploaded but could still see the flickering line. How do I stop this happening? Yes, the "prim gap" issue also exist in other 3D applications. Nowadays we use 64 bit floats while SL is still old enough to use 32 bit ones. That reduces the problem significantly but doesn't completely eliminate it. One solution that usually works is to merge the vertices and then split them again. The snap function in Blender can also be very helpful: first open the Display section in the palette to the right and change grid scale to a very low number - 0.001 or 0.002 perhaps. Then select all and Snap Selection to Grid in the Mesh menu.

HarrisonMcKenzie wrote: On the one side, works should be left alone and be allowed to stand for themselves. To go in and alter a work because you can (or think you can) do a better job is a bit disrepectful to history. Just in case there's a misunderstanding here, I didn't replace those houses. I made those modernized versions of them because I though (and still think) the design is great and would be very suitable for many modern SL settings if it wasn't for those inevitable 2005 details like semi-transparent walls, awkward UV mapping of tapered prims and sky high land impact. It never occured to me that anybody would use them to replace the existing buildings. I used the phrase "mixed emotions" in the title, the biggest part of that mix is surprise, really. Oh, and the person who did replace the old buildings didn't do it just because she could or for doing "mesh for mesh' sake". She really needs those prims she saved. That's another aspect of the authenticity issue btw. Unless I'm mistaken, back in 2005 you could still just pay for extra prims if you were running short. So you can say that she is simply using a modern feature as a substitute for one that existed back then but not anymore.

Suki Hirano wrote: Most people will leave SL if they still look like the above pic 1 in 2016, and that's a fact. Yes but to be fair, the main difference between those two pictures is the skin (and probably a bit of photoshopping) and that has nothing to do with mesh bodies at all.

Amethyst Jetaime wrote: I think you should seek the creators permission to do that, unless the build was clearly released into the public domain. It was of course. Amethyst Jetaime wrote: If it was, any changes you made to it should remain in the public domain. That is a very interesting topic in itself. Ultimately every single creative work of any kind is to some extent based on somebody else's earlier work so if we take that to its logical extreme, everything should be public domain. There is no legal issue in this case but from a moral point of view, yes, this was a border case and I did consider giving it away for free. In the end I decided not to for a number of reasons. The solution I ended up with was to charge a symbolic price, make absolutely sure anybody looking at the build know the background and where to get a free copy of the original and then leave it to each potential user to decide.

Freya Mokusei wrote: Always forward! Oh yes, definitely. But without a past there is no future. Sometimes it's hard to find the balance between evolution and preservation. That's why I ask for others' opinion in this case. Btw., I forgot to mention adn inc ase anybody hasn't figured out yet, the buildings are the Atoll Huts at Iris. Hmm... Maybe I shuold have made a mesh Moth Temple too while I was at it.

Not sure how to put this... A while ago I made a set of updated versions of some of Eric Linden's most iconic buildings that he made for a specific place but that has later been used all over Second Life and even on other grids. I tried my best to keep the original look and feel, only adding a few more details and of course reducing the land impact - the kind of things I hope Eric would have done himself if he had had access to mesh. Apparently somebody thought I had done a decent job - yesteday two of the original buildings, rezzed by Eric Linden himself at the sim the were originally meant for, were replaced by my replicas. I'm honored of course but also a bit uncertain, should historical SL builds really be updated this way? What do people think about that?

Unfortunately that is not possible. To make room for the entire upper body on a single texture, the developer of the Second Life avatar (none other than Eric Linden, I think) had to make a compromise, using the same UV mapping for both arms. There is at least one mesh body that uses a different UV mapping but most don't and I don't know if the one that does has a solution to that particular problem.

Syo Emerald wrote: So there is nothing extraordinary happening here, that hasn't happen in 2010, 2008 or before. Actually there is. You should have said 2011 and you'de be right. Because 2011 was the year SL's decline began and it's been shrinking at a fairly steady rate of about 100 sims a month since then. So if you've been away for eight months, you come back to a grid with about 800 fewer sims and that's noticeable, very noticeable.

Unfortunately that is a common problem. There are quite few serious gacha resellers but also many who don't understand the basics of good marketing. So you get keyword spamming and items in misplaced categories on MP and massive group spamming inworld. The only advice I can give is keep flagging ToS violating listings on MP (and AR inworld spam). Maybe eventually LL eventually realizes it's easier for them to deal with the root problem rather than process all those complaints.

Rolig Loon wrote: A good builder will link the mesh structure to a prim, let that prim be the root of the linkset, and set the mesh building to physics type NONE. Ummm, I'd say a good builder will know how to make mesh with proper physics and won't need to use that kind of workarounds. As you said earlier in your post, it's only mesh with faulty physics that cause this issue. Correctly made mesh causes no such rezzing problems at all. (Edit: when I wrote "good builder" I meant good mesh builder of course. There are great builders who create wodner with prims and/or sculpts without knowing anything about mesh or mesh physics at all.)

The shortest answer: A prim is a ready made building block. It comes in seven basic shapes and you can twist them and combine them to create an amazing number of different builds. The prim was the original buiding material for Second Life and I believe even today most of what you see there are made from prims. Technically a prim is mesh, the only real difference is that the shapes are predefined.