FinnfinnLost

To be fair, with all the stuff added (and some removed) as well as the interface overhaul in 2.8 and 2.9, it might as well be its own major version. They're just numbers after all.

@OptimoMaximo means you need to scale the stuff you need to the size that you need. I presume Cinema 4D will be offering you some options when importing files, maybe play around with those a bit. It may be some quirk in the file, maybe link where exactly you got your skeleton from.

I'm gonna prefer the bandwagen that includes "recommending a switch to a software that costs >2000€ per year unless you buy 3 years in advance is not good advice for a single request for something that's apparently easy to work without". Whichever that might be.

Uh, not at all. Can't see a thing with the wireframe all over the place. Maybe someone else can make sense of this?

Always kinda difficult to tell from screenshots alone. We can't really see where exactly those bones are. From here it looks like the eyebrows aren't all that well placed, especially eyebrow inner? Bit at a loss here. Not all that experienced with rigging either.

Looking at the bento reference, it could work. I'd say rig it and play with the pose a bit. For testing purposes, automatic weights should give you a rough idea.

Okay, okay. What do you want here? Do you just not want to move the camera yourself and make screenshots? Is there some other issue? I'm very confused.

Granted. Can't quite shed the developer's perspective. I'll try harder from now on.

Yes, but it CAN be used to make more efficient content. What if a creator realizes that a small object isn't recognizable at longer distances regardless of quality, even at very high resolutions? In that case, deciding to not render it at all might be the better option. I'll concede that whatever performance advantage is there is probably not worth the LI exploits that would happen.

Rotate them around a bit and find out which parts move. Then you'll have their functions fired out in no time.

As a learning project, sure. But if it already exists, and you got lots of stuff to model, why not take a shortcut there?

Am I the only one wondering why you'd want to "squish flat" bones?

I am well aware. Putting tri limits to zero seems to be a very fun thing for many creators to do. I was merely pointing out that, while it would be great to force artists to make at least somewhat acceptable LODs, the possibility of zeroing out must remain.

Since you're presuming stuff now for the whole purpose of mocking me for an argument that I DID NOT EVEN BRING UP, nor was I planning to, I think we're done here. Back to topic, I actually thought of something else. Zeroing out LODs is, something that should remain, even if strict tri limits on custom ones would be enforced. There's a performance advantage to be had when not rendering small things at long or even medium distance at all.

Sorry, but the last part is absolutely messed up. You're creating art for an interactive experience that is expected to be smooth. You can't just claim you're being held back by programmers and be done with it. If one thinks it's justified chucking HUGE amounts of model and textures at people and then going "Ah, but the engine should be SO MUCH BETTER", at this point it's not even an engine limitation anymore. No matter the engine, 1 GB of textures for one single models is entirely not feasible for any hardware but the most high-end stuff. Quite frankly, I find your disrespect for programmers a bit insulting. In fact, I recently received a video by an artist, it was supposed to play in an embedded context. However, the system lacked the resources to properly decode it, resulting in stutters all over. And you know what? Instead of yelling at me to buy better hardware or write my own optimized media player, he edited it to be easier on resources. Ya know. Working with the limits of the system. It's alright to report bugs and it's okay to be furious about bad performance. It's not okay to go "FINE! I'm going to make everyone's experience suck until LL fixes it!". That's called a tantrum.

I write code for a living. Not in the graphics department, but certain principles still apply. Also, it's great that id did it. But as a content creator it is your job to make sure you work WITH the engine, not churn out stuff that bogs it down and then insist on changes in the implementation. Sure, you can ask for features or optimizations. But as long as you're not absolutely certain these features or optimizations will be available to you, it's your responsibility to create stuff that works with what is there right here and now, even if it is suboptimal. Especially since we are in a productive environment here, where stuff that is created by both LL and the community directly impacts the (paying) users. Since we're using other companies as an example, UE4 has a beautiful implementation of global illumination. That doesn't mean I get to yell at LL for not implementing that feature to make use of it. I also appreciate the civilized discussion.

Looks pretty good and has lots of potential for customization if you ask me. Although I don't particularly care about torpedo breasts. There should really be some generous hard limit on tris for an avatar.

That's a logical fallacy if I ever saw one. You can read a 2GB text file in chunks if whatever algorithm you're running on it allows it. If you want to draw a model then you need the entire model and textures in memory, preferably the graphics card's. Yes, texture streaming is a thing. But you still gotta render whatever is on screen. Furthermore, there are numerous bottlenecks that have nothing to do with the game code, but the GPU's pipeline and the connection to the rest of the system. If the memory bus can't keep up, you get long delays before a high-quality texture can be rendered. If you fill the VRAM with unoptimized abominations, it will cause the GPU to either give up entirely or fall back to, for example, system RAM. Bottom line, performance is also at the mercy of what you do with/to the graphics pipeline. And the performance of that , in turn, is heavily impacted by the content you wish to draw. Had two courses about this kinda stuff. Who'd have thought it would get useful in the SL forums of all places?

Thanks for the numbers and example images. Those figures do look pretty good for a body and yes, with proper LOD handling that would give decent performance while still giving a good amount of detail. Those system heads look pretty good. They could use some more geometry around the cheek bones and the chin, if you ask me, but other than that they're cool.

Don't see anything that would prevent it at first glance. Would have to convert it, upload it and then apply the textures and ideally create a physics model.

That would be very interesting indeed, but for it to work we'd require the actual source file without any changes that may have been made by the SL uploader. Ideally, it would be pre-triangulation as well, makes examining the topology easier. At least for me. I highly doubt the more popular body creators would agree anyway, what with compromising a large part of their work.

@Gabriele Graves Different workflows exist, but you are mostly correct: Overall, optimization will probably lead to less complex models. However, during optimization you can also notice that additional geometry's required to refine certain spots. When reducing geometry you're also able to add more in case you need more detail. Ideally, you'll simplify the mesh to the point where you can afford subdividing the whole model to make it smoother. It may seem counter-intuitive at first, but bear with me: Subdividing basically means turning a quad (a four-edged face) into four ones, by extension also quadrupling overall complexity. You can do this at the very start to get a fairly good impression of what the model can look like, but without optimization it's just not feasible for performance. However, when you remove geometry from the unsubdivided model, its complexity will be decreased. By extension, any subdivision will also add less geometry in places where you, for example, merged two faces into one. The trick is to find spots where less geometry is needed and remove the surplus. Flat areas that don't deform much are good examples for that. Afterwards, if you add a subdivision, every area will be smoothed out according to the amount of geometry you added. Further fine-tuning can then be applied.

I appreciate the elaboration. And yes, I can see how alpha cuts would increase the complexity. HOWEVER: Stretching textures have little to do with the amount of geometry. I can stretch a triangle to oblivion and back and as long as I have a long texture with good UVs, it's going to look crisp. So you can ignore those stretching textures for the purpose of this discussion. I looked at Ellie from The Last of Us and all I see is lower resolution due to technical limitations, no stretching due to faulty UVs. This leaves features specific to SL. With the example Ellie, with her clocking in at ~30k polygons (with decent topology AT MOST 60k tris assuming none of these polygons are tris already), this would mean that for the added detail, which is negligible and could have been done using normal maps, and SL specific features you would need enough geometry to model her thrice. Regarding attachments and animations... you rig clothing and attachments to the existing armature and fit them for a mesh body of your choice. This does not require additional geometry on the body unless the topology on areas with high deformation is severely screwed up. This would make any RPG with an equipment system playable only on the most cutting edge PCs, which would not include mine. About my model, you may wish to read my description again. There is no optimization and no normal mapping going on. But I just attempted to throw raw amounts of geometry at her which would allow me to smooth the crap out of it. For the torso+legs+feet I would go from 4.8k to 5.5k. And if I wanted to smooth the whole body without giving any thought to optimization, I can actually subdivide the whole thing, which means turning every single quad into four ones, which would push it to ~20000: https://paste.pics/C3D6N Let's assume for a moment that I decide to quit optimizing right now and add hands and arms. If I estimate this using the amount of geometry required for legs and feet, this would put the torso at ~6.5k, again, assuming no optimization of the mesh, and the whole body at, rounding up, 16k. Let's add hair for the sake of getting the whole thing to 20k without subdivision. If I add a subdivision after that, I'd be at 80k for a whole naked body. A result which would get me slapped by any 3D artist for modern games. Can anyone confirm that, just to make it work with common SL features, I would need MORE THAN TWICE the amount of geometry on that character?

... this is not acceptable. At all. I usually try to stay friendly and any newbie to 3D is going to produce way too complex models, I was the same. So, as a disclaimer: If you produce models like these, but are trying to improve, don't feel bad. I'm still working on it as well and am nowhere near the optimization skills I desire. But this is a character model that the creator is generating no small amount of income from. If I purchase a model for a videogame, I can expect a certain quality. Yes, I've looked at the body and yes, it's a very pretty model. But this is ludicrous. She has about the same amount of detail to her as Adam Jensen from Deus Ex: Human Revolution (the full character, that is). And he's just shy of 26k. On the bright side, you just motivated me to resume work on my female character mesh. Without arms, hands and hair, she's currently clocking in at 13k without optimization (read: baking finer details as a normal map). She still has a cute butt and rather elaborate boobs: https://paste.pics/C3CAT I don't mean to brag, really, I don't. I just want to point out that if my FIRST HUMAN MESH EVER, and I'm not doing this for a living, achieves this tri count, there's no reason for someone who has a large customer base to produce something like that. Maybe I'm totally wrong though. If anyone can think of a reason, I'd be glad to hear it.

This. I'd say stick below 10k. I'd recommend making a really low-poly version as your first "production-ready" version. Enable smooth shading and see if it resembles the shape you're going for. Rig it and see if it deforms properly. With your basic topology in place, add more geometry and detail until you're happy or hit your maximum tri count. More subtle details can be added via normal maps without increasing the amount of geometry. Are you using Blender? If so, I can share some personal experience that could help.