Gaia Clary

This is a wrong assumption. I try to explain in more detail within this thread: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Understanding-PE-Server-Weight-amp-Scripts/td-p/1004863

I think that the recent confusions about how Scripts influence the Prim Equivalent of meshes needs to be clarified. So here is my attempt to explain it: First of all, you must know that there is not a "duplication of PE due to adding a script" . The correct term is: "duplication of the Server Weight per prim due to adding a script". The following explanation and interpretation is based on the wiki page: Mesh Server Weight Please also remind, that PE = Maximum of (Server Weight, Streaming weight, Physics weight) Since Scripts come into play only in the calculation of the server weigh, adding scripts matters only, if ServerWeight is the dominant weight (which is rarely the case) Here is how ServerWeight is calculated (currently): Server weight(per prim) = cost_scaler * (active_cost * (per_prim_cost + base_cost / num_prims)  The settings (since august-8-2011) are as follows: dynamic_multiplier = 2.0 static_multiplier = 1.0 per_prim_cost = 0.5 base_cost = 0.0  cost_scaler = 1.0 Hence the formulas can be rewritten as follows:  Server weight(per prim) = cost_scaler * (active_cost * (per_prim_cost + base_cost / num_prims)  Server weight(per prim) = 1.0 * (active_cost * (1/2 + 0.0/num_prims))  Server weight(per prim) = active_cost * 1/2 ServerWeight = 1/2 * active_cost * num_prims For objects without scripts: active_costs = 1.0 Server Weight = 1/2 * number of prims in linkset This implies: If the linkset contains exactly one prim, then Server Weight = 0.5 -> rounded up to 1.0) Hence PE=1 is now possible for Mesh prims. For objects with scripts: active_costs = 2.0 Server Weight = number of prims in linkset This implies: If the linkset contains exactly one prim, then Server Weight = 1.0 hence adding a script to a one prim object results in ServerWeight=1.0 Example: If your object contains 200 Prims, and you add ANY(!) number of scripts to it, distributed on your prims however you like, then the Serverweight will become: ServerWeight = number of prims in linkset ServerWeight = 200 Conclusion Only if your object's streaming weight AND physics weight is below number of prims, then adding a script to the object has an effect at all. 

The cool thing about normals in this case is that you can define for each face, how it shall behave regarding ligthing. For sculpted prims we had this ugly problem that whenever we wanted to define a sharp edge, we needed either to collapse 2 rows/columns of vertices, or bake the sharp line into the texture (or both). With meshes you can have one of 2 different lighting behaviours defined on each (model-) face: either you have the "smooth lighting" behaviour (like with sculpties) or you have the "flat lighting" behaviour (which generates the same light response on the entire face). In Blender you find the smooth/flat setting for an object (or for the selected faces when in edito mode). In most cases the diffenrent lighting behaviour on an object is directly dependent on the amount of bending on the surface and it can be "guessed" from the angles of adjacent faces. So i think, that the normal generator is good for those situations where you have forgotten t define the normals but know that the generation will work for you as a nice shortcut for testing. But mostly you better define your normals by yourself ;-)

this "double cost issue" is only related to the server weight: For a linkset containing x prims, the server weight currently equals: 1 + x/2 (without scripts) (1.5 for a single mesh prim, rounded up to the next integer -> 2.0) 1 + x (with scripts) (2.0 for a single mesh prim) And hence the "duplication of costs" only happens when all used prims in the linkset have streaming weight and physics weight below 0.5 and you have more than one prim in your linkset... You also can have as many scripts in an object as you like. So i guess the costs for scripts can just be neglectable. Btw: the server costs is the reason why mesh prims can not have PE below 2 (as you can see above ...)

Moo Spyker wrote: 5. This is also not true... The SL uploader generates out all your LOD levels its only an option to make the manually which there again is way more control over sculpties... Scultpies are just reduced in the texture size so you have no control over what they will look like. My sculpted ships viewed on the lowest object setting are not recognizable at all... Sorry for beeing not so clear about what i meant: IMHO in most cases automated tools create questionable results from an artistic viewpoint. How can an LOD reducer ever know what reduction will make sense ?From my experience i need to add extra work to get good LOD meshes. With Sculpties i only can create them with LOD in mind. And there are enough tools around which help to achieve that (like Multires and Subsurf modelling with Blender) Moo Spyker wrote:all... 6. I don't really understand that at all because even sculpties you have to map out and lay out your textures on top of the sculptie. You still have to do that in 3d or 2d but its the same thing you can see how I had to duplicate and paste the textures over the sculptie. Mesh is more complex in the sense that you can UV map and unwrap the textures on individual faces of the mesh and scale and position them independently, but there is still the complexity with the sculpties as well... Again sorry for beeing unclear: I meant the creation of the UV-layout itself: For sculpties you have no choice. For meshes you must create it by yourself. And it is not always clear (to me) which layout i should choose. So here is another knowledge spot to be mastered for mesh... Please don't missunderstand me. As i mentioned, i like mesh very much and it is realy fun to learn more about how to work with them. But still i think that getting a good and efficient mesh needs a lot of extra work (surely for me and probably for many other people too). Of course there are always people who just "get it" or have experience, or simply have found the right tutorial at the right time...

Here is my personal opinion (well, what else ? ;-) The main reason why everything looks so nonesense like: Massive lack of (easy to understand) information. It is not correct to throw an entire new system into the masses, how good and awesome it ever may be, and then rely on the masses to create the documentation by themself. IMHO this is a very wrong understanding of community support. For me that goes the wrong way ;-) Having said this, PE makes a lot of sense to me. I am not satisfied with a few issues about it, but it makes a lot of sense (to me). Even linking prims together to get lower PE makes sense, when you know where a linkset behaves differently from a set of isolated prims, and what that means to the end users. Also (for me) the Wiki is not very well understandable, it lacks information and a clear structure. And it is even not clear if the information we see there is officially correct. Everything is just floating and based on "rumours and a few knowing people's assumptions" (ok, there IS some information created by LL in the Wiki, and if you dig long enough you will some answers, even if you might not fully understand them (like me too) ... So is it so astonishing, that we see such a huge amount of "i don't get it" ... ??? I doubt that even all tutorial makers in the world will be able to fully document "meshes" as long as all our requests for defining the beast are just not answered (in depth). LL stated that they will add documentation as soon as mesh is developed. That is NOW, no ? So... Please help us. Hey, we are your paying customers... we have a right to be informed... i guess at least... no ?

Although i am completely pro mesh, i still have an eye on Sculpted prims ;-) So i would like to mention some properties of sculptied prims which should not be overlooked: Sculpted prims face counts range from 16 quads up to 1024 quads. So it is no longer true, that sculpties "always" consume 1024 faces. This has changed when oblongs where introduced. Collapsed vertices on sculpties are removed from the mesh before it gets into the renderer. Hence collapsed vertices are effectively not processed, hence they do not realy waste render costs. Since sculpted prims have a fixed UV-map the actual amount of data that needs to be transfered from LL to your viewer is by far smaller than what needs to be transfered for meshes. Creating a mesh needs a lot more skills than creating a sculpted prim. Creating the different LOD's for meshes is some work if you want to make it optimal. Of course there are some automated or at least half automated tools around which help to create LOD's... but you must take care of them by yourself. Only in rare cases the automatic LOD generator in the Mesh importer creates acceptable results. Having the "possibility" to create your own UV-map comes with the "necessity" to actually do that. And sometimes it is not as straight forward to get a good UV-map, as you might think. You are of course right, meshes give us all sorts of benefits and freedom. But with freedom comes responsibility. So we get much more tasks on our desk before we can publish a (suitable) mesh object.And after having worked with meshes for quite a while i still see that making Sculpted Prims takes much less steps and needs much less skills, compared to mesh weaving. From the current experience i hear and read during the last few weeks, i learn that (currently) meshes are well suited for small up to mid range (below 10 meter) objects and attachments. Large objects are excluded because of the high PE. I do not know why it is so. But thats how it is. So people who want to make large objects, are (currently) not very happy with mesh. All others are quite happy (or could be). 

We talked to the MakeHuman developers about 6 months ago. And they ensured that it is no problem to use MakeHuman models in SecondLife. Also it is no problem to sell content made with MakeHuman. Because the license is a bit complicated to understand, we prepared the "The essentials of the MakeHuman license for content creators" This is an annotation to the MH license and it can be found at the bottom of the official license page at http://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/licensing Here is a citation of the relevant part and it should be very clear that MakeHuman is friendly to commercial creators: The essentials of the MakeHuman license for content creators. The text below describes a way to setup a commercial usage scenario for Artwork created with MakeHuman or based on MakeHuman assets. The text shall help you to understand without doubts the implications of the MakeHuman license. So here is what you as content creator can/should do and what you will need to tell your customers what they can do with the purchased content. Feel free to reuse parts or the whole text for your particular usage scenario: The content creator can use content made with and exported from MakeHuman as a base for further processing with other tools (e.g. with blender). can freely sell content based on MakeHuman for any price and as often as he/she wants. is free (but not obliged) to publish the sources of his/her creations. (the export files generated by MakeHuman, .obj, etc...) is obliged to include a copy of the MakeHuman License with the export files generated by MakeHuman. is obliged to state "this content is based on the MakeHuman mesh" at a clearly visible place to address the MakeHuman copyright. is free to add his/her own copyright to the creation regarding all changes from the makeHuman base mesh which can not be done within MakeHuman. is free to restrict the usage of his/her content regarding reproduction and reselling of the content that was purchased from him/her. may not use the exports to create commercial software mimicking MakeHuman’s features. Purchased content may not be reproduced/further processed/resold without prior permission from the content creator. Purchasers of any content based on MakeHuman are still allowed to use MakeHuman itself to create/sell their own content. Purchased content may not be used to create commercial software mimicking makehuman’s features.

I believe that all tutorials from machinimatrix do not have such restrictions. We in fact never thought at all about restricting our free tutorials. I just used very easy shapes and i doubt it makes any sense to put any restrictions on whatever you create by learning from these tutorials. We only have one "commercial" (purchaseable) tutorial and that one has a file describing exactly how you can use it. And i remember that we never imposed any restrictions on the models themself. Just go ahead and go crazy with them ;-) remind: I am only writing about our machinimatrix-tutorials. other tutorial makers surely have different usage-policies.

maybe... SL supports vertex weights in up to 4 weight groups. It is unknown what happens when a vertex appears in more than 4 groups. So maybe the importer just ignores the weight group with the highest weight for the affected vertices and so the weighting gets borked ... I remember that i had some issue like this a while ago. There was one vertex on the inner side of a knee, which created a spike towards the other knee after uploading. Since both knees are very close to each other it could be the fifth weight group striking back here ;-) If you would provide the blend file, then i could tweek the 2.49 Collada-exporter a bit and find out, if the "number of weight groups per vertex" is > 4 at the spiking points...

Floren Seiling wrote: I also struggled with this for many hours. After I found this post I tried Blender 2.49b, but it just crashed on export (using defaults and the scripts linked above). I am curious about the Blender-2.49 crash. Did you open the -blend file with 2.49b or did you link to the object using File -> Link ? While the first method probably will fail, the secnd method always worked for me in 2.49b @Chodai Yoshikawa, Ashasekayi Ra: Thank you for your hints :matte-motes-smile:. Does this mean the bug CTS-660 was fixed meanwhile ?

See here for an explanation (and a workaround): https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/CTS-608

full perm means: You can change it as you like. full perm does NOT mean: You can do with it whatever you want. For example: You can get a texture full perm, which means, you can download it to your computer, modify it, reupload it, reuse it as you like, but this does not imply that you can resell it (or its derivatives) or give it away for free, or reuse it in other einvironments. Except this was explicitly stated in the purchase notifications (the notecard you mentioned...)

Salahzar Stenvaag wrote: If you just want to enjoy in your parcel that model it appears you can do that And one day i come along the path to your region, see this nice environment and think: "WOW that is good for my next machinima prodcution...". Then i ask you about permission to make footage and since it is your private region and you are a kind person, you give me the permission to film. This IS in accordance with the LL license policies about taking footage. And some time later my film gets so much popularity that i am able to sell it to a local tv company (nice dream, however...) and then ... the originator of this nice little environment where the main action of my film took place, comes to watch the film and now ... i am in trouble, no ? So the question is for me, if i as a region owner am still using an asset for my personal usage if i let others visit my region, where everybody can see the object in question... So after learning about creating 3D content, now i will start my next career as lawyer... to survive in the virtual worlds.:matte-motes-evil:

Which Blender do you use ? (Blender 2.5 created rigged meshes do still not work. Exporting with Blender 2.49b should work.) Have you looked into the "Modifier" section and enable the upload of joints ? Did you get a warning about missing weights ? Then this may help: http://blog.machinimatrix.org/spikes-after-mesh-upload-to-sl/

"Mesh Mellows" is on the Main Grid! :matte-motes-big-grin-wink: Actually i have exactly ONE Mesh object on the region ;-) For the brave hearted: The environment of the tutorial III is on "Mesh Mellows". The landing point is just in front of a local teleporter (which looks at you with 2 big Black eyes). When you click on the giant fly, you will be tped to the "other world" Enjoy :matte-motes-evil-invert:

This is Part III of the series: You find the complete article (incouding the first 3 parts of the video tutorials) here: http://blog.machinimatrix.org/kettle-quest/ Enjoy

exactly this is the reason why small pieces are cheaper than big ones ;-) But as long as you know how to make a good LOD decomposition this is acceptable (and even wanted). Drongle McMahon has proposed an idea for customizable LOD transition settings which would allow big pieces to transit to lower LODS earlier and thus get cheaper... but this will not be available in the first release... maybe later...

Although maybe it is (currently?) not a hyper cool thing to do, you still can cut your lighthouse into reasonable pieces, and then use these smaller pieces as "special mesh prims" for "building" your lighthouse. So you can easily create a combination of regular prims (where sufficient) and mesh prims (where needed for details or nicer look). I actually plan to do exactly that with the lighthouse example which we introduced about 9 months ago in another video. thinking of "creating building blocks" made out of meshes may in fact be a good way to get parts of your building activities back into SL ;-) I could imagine to have building blocks for the windows, for the walls, for the light room itself, for the roof... And i can imagine that getting along this route may in fact be a good compromise... However i must admit that i am talking in theory here, as i have not touched big meshes so far.

as far as i know only the physics weight counts for vehicles.

So are there already any servers on Agni which are mesh enabled ? And do we get informed if (when) our own region is added (or will not be added) ?

There are currently a lot of issues still open and/or partially solved. If you want to get a list of possible causes for errors, then i'd ask you to send the list of errors you encountered. otherwise the list of explanations would be quite long ;-) and partially outdated anyways.

Definitions: Prim Can be either a "Regular Prim" "Sculpted Prim" "Mesh Prim" Prims are the smallest separately rezzable entity in SL. Object A linkset containing one or more prims PE Prim Equivalent: the amount of "prims" to be taken from your Prim Budget on your land Texture-Face Separately texturizable part of a Prim, does not need contingous surface (faces do not need to touch each other for having the same texture face) Answers to your questions: Question Answer How much verticies are allowed? Max. number of possible faces? 65536 triangles per LOD for each Prim how much textures per Prim? up to 8 texture faces per Prim How many materials per Prim ? Materials are currently synonym for texture faces How Many Objects per Upload ? One Object containing an arbitrary amount of Mesh Prims. You will get a Linkset when rezzing the upload. You can separate the Prims within the linkset if you like (just like with any other Linkset). Note that a Mesh Prim can consist of multiple unconnected "sub" meshes. Since a Mesh Prim is the smallest rezzable entity, such a mesh prim is an equivalent to a fractional sculpty from the visual impression, but has a cleanly defined Model. It is up to your tool how you distinguish between separate meshes in ONE object or separate Objects. alpha-textures possible? yes, but take care of the Alpha Sorting issue returning back on meshes.In general alpha textures currently create a mess. However there are some exceptions where they work well. normal-textures possible? Not in first release specularity-textures possible? Not in first release environmap-textures possible? Not in first release maximum number of textures per (model) face 1 how to change the center of a mesh? Not supported in first release how to upload a mesh without physics and bounds not supported (every Object needs a physics definition). Best approach: Use simple physics meshes (A single trianlge will do when you are sure that your mesh realy never needs physics)

You will get lower LOD meshes auto generated in that case. The cheapest way is most probably to create your own LOD's. And always take care about the Physics mesh settings. This one can give you significant cost reductions. Hint: The default physics mesh uses the Medium LOD and generates a convex hull from it. This is in most cases not at all needed. I create the simplest possible physics mesh which may be as simple as a cube, or even a flat face if my mesh will never need any elaboate physics behaviour. this brings down physics costs to neglectable values ;-)

Herpes Melodie wrote: My question: When making a mesh, would it be adviceable to start modelling the high LOD, UV it and from there start to remove some edgeloops to lower the resolution down? Not sure how things are in Blender, but in Maya when you remove an edge, or a complete edgeloop/ring it updates in the UV editor as well. So by doing this you could lower the resolution down of your mesh while keeping the remaining UVs (the ones that create the specefic LOD) in place. Is this an idea? Yes, sure you can do it like this. Although sometimes you will want to choose completely different topology for lower level LOD's. In that case you wil probably need to unwrap again and match. However i think that "pinning" the seams of your texture faces to fixed texture-coordinates will do a great job when you need to another unwrap. I typically use the UV layout of my Highest LOD mesh as my initial "texture" for the lower LOD's, then Pin (mostly the seams) according to that layout. that works mostly for me. There may be more clever ways to do it and in case somebody knows, i would like to learn them too ...