[Creators, how do you want your meshes being served?]

Here is an example to show a mesh template. In mesh land they are not called templates but UV maps.

[Creators, how do you want your meshes being served?]

The customers of my sculpty business are mainly builders and creators. They use my products in their own creations. Sometimes just as a prop with little to no changes to the orginal and sometimes in a very surprising creative way.

The sculpty maps we provide are full perms. We don't put them on 'no mod' to prevend downloading the sculpt map to our customers own computer.  The reason we do so is that it gives our costumer freedom to work with the sculpt model in a way it suits him. We have the idea that most of our costumers only use the Photofiles to create their own textures, but we still want to give the minority that prefers to work with 3D painting the possibility to do so.

With mesh coming up, we won't change the character of cYo. We will still be a sculpty shop, but besides we are going to offer meshes. Meshes that are customizable, just like our sculpts. But with meshes we cannot give creators the freedom to download the mesh to their own computer, because you cannot download a mesh from SL. 

Now I would like to know from builders and creators when a business like mine offers meshes that can be textured by you, is it important to you to be able to buy the model itself? Or will a texture template for the mesh do? I mean a texture template like used in clothing design, provided by Chip Midnight or Robin Wood, but then not from the avatar body, but from the 3 model, the mesh.

Who of you is actually working with painting directly on the avatar or directly on sculpty models? And who of you is doing really fine with templates?

I try to get a picture if there is a need among SL creators for having the actual mesh model available outside SL or not.
Feel free to contribute whatever you think about this subject. 

[What are those strange spikes?]

I have experience several times now when I'm in a mesh sandbox on maingrid that here and there spikes pop up, where they should not be. Sometimes I see them on the object I'm working on, sometimes on my fingers or legs, sometimes in the land. Tonight they were more like triangles, normally I see much longer spikes...

What is this, how does it happen?

[Full perms meshes - downloadable?]

Thanks for your feedback, Pamela. I will keep it in mind. 

Buying models on sites like Renderosity and such for your SL business won't be easy. I'm not an expert on buying models, but as far as I have seen most of them come with a licenses that restricts further distribution. So you can buy them, and probably you can upload them to SL, but that is about it... you will be end user of the model, cause you are not allowed to spread copies.

Apart from that prim count will be a big issue. The majority of the models that are not designed for SL will be much to prim heavy for use in SL.

 

[Textures look good in Blender but blurry inworld?]

I don't know what you can do to improve this one, but for the next time would tip would be: start with a 1024 x 1024 texture to work on. You can always shrink that down later if the sculpty can do with a lower size texture. But scaling up an original of 512 x 512 to a bigger size cannot improve the quality, because the quality is just available in the origin.

 

[Full perms meshes - downloadable?]

The creative minds are my current customers. Except for sculpts I offer them the Photoshop files that are build up in several layers to work with. It is highly appreciated and I have a lot of returning customers. Sometimes people show me their products and I see the most wonderfull things and creative use of my sculpts. For me it's highly fascinating that an object I made comes in the hands of a second creator who adds his own ideas en interpretation to it and I find it very stimulating to work in this segment of the market.

cYo Mesh is going to operate in the same style as cYo Sculpts. Next to the models we will offer the UV maps and some example texures, and then it's to the rest of the creative community to add their own ideas and their own handwriting and make it part of their creation.

[Full perms meshes - downloadable?]

Before I decide how I'm going to handle the whole thing, I just want to be sure if it's downloadable in any way or not. 

I think this is a complete different situation then with sculpty maps, which are only usefull in SL or third party grids based on SL code. 3D models have a much wider use then only in SL. I'm trying to make up my mind about how I must handle this copyright wise.

On the one hand I think I want the model to stay in SL. I can offer well layout UV maps for people to work with for texturing.
On the other hand I think there are interesting developments going on when it comes to 3D painting. And why not give other residents in SL the possibility to paint directly on my models?

I find it hard to decide where to draw a line between protecting my rights and giving others the freedom to create with help of my products.

[Mesh Support on the Marketplace]

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Gadget Portal wrote:

 

Encouraging sales of a product not supported on all of the grid and only with select viewers... That's something else entirely.

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Yep, that is something very different indeed. I will be interesting to see what will happen with this gap between LL's plans and the viewer choice of the majority. I'm most curious. I think it's one of the major issues that determine the succes or failure of mesh.

[sculpts look terrible!]

When you upload the sculpt map to SL, you must activate 'use lossless compression' in the upload window.

[Where do I find Mesh inworld]

You will never see any mesh that is one prim. The lowest possible primcount is 2 prims.

Like with normal prims you can right click them. And you see for example:

As you see this 1 object exists out of tien parts... the editors says prims, but that is misleading, you must read prims as 'parts' en the number of prim equivs tell you how many prims the object takes.

[Full perms meshes - downloadable?]

When you make a mesh full perms and give it away or sell it, Is the receiver able, in whatever way, to download the mesh from SL to his computer?

I didn't see any option to do so, but I might have overlooked some thing.

And storages proggies like Second Inventory, how do they handle mesh?

[Sharing pics of new mesh work]

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Gaia Clary wrote:

From just looking at the image i count about 100 faces on the entire object. even taking into account that it has a front side and a back side. Also the fan is very small (surely much less than 1 meter bounding box radius ;-). So from all experiences i have so far, it should be no big deal to get its PE down to 2. Which of the weights does make it go up to 3 ?

---

Actually I have no idea, Gaia. I still don't understand how the PE is calculated. My mind just doesn't seem to function when it comes to formulas that calculate things. I'm this far that I understand I must try to keep the number of polygons as low as possible and that adding a simplified physic shape helps to keep the primcount low. But for the rest, the whole proces of how the prim count is calculated is one big abracadabra to me. I just leave it up to the uploader to do the magic trick of prim count calculation and see what comes out.

When I used the uploader the prim count that it gave was 1,8. But the scale of my model was too small, so once uploaded I had to make the object bigger... and that is what made it count for 3 prims in stead of 2 prims.

[Mesh Support on the Marketplace]

That is a general danger, which is not specific mesh related. It can happen as well when somebody sells skins, furniture or scripts. But that is not a reason to to not allow people to sell skins, furniture or scripts on the marketplace. There is always a chance that there are a few rotten apples in the basket, there will be some in the mesh basket as well, just like in all other sectors of the market.

But people who can make meshes would be rather stupid to develop a sales strategy that gives them a bad name and no returning customers. They have the skills to make something better out of it.

 

[Sharing pics of new mesh work]

I had a request from a customer for a fan. Actually she had asked for a sculpted fan, but I was curious to see how it would come out in mesh.

Result: 8 prims.

 I showed it to her. It was not the a big issue for her that the fan was in mesh in stead of in sculpt. But the fan itself was not what she had ment to be. She wanted a traditional Japanse fan. She explained to me that those look exactly the same at the front and the back, and the sticks are hidden between the paper.

It was more easy to model a complete new fan than to adjust the first one.The model is also much lighter, the result after upload was 3 prims.

The fan untextured:

Making the UV map was at least as much work as making the fan itself. But once the UV map exists it's very easy to make new texture variations.

 

 

 



 

 



[Texture quality.]

To me it looks you have applied the texture to a sculpty. Texturing sculpties can make the texture look fuzzy, specially when they are rezzed as very big objects.

With for example a cube you have 6 sizes and on each of them you can put a 1024 x 1024 texture. Not that it will be necessairy in most cases, but it's possible. The sculpty doesn't have this possibility use different textures on different sides. You must cover the whole thing with one an the same texture.

Then you can also have with sculpties that the underlaying grid is not spread equally so the texture stretches more at some part of the sculpt then in other parts, which also causes loose of quality. There is not much you can do about it.

Personal I prefer to upload my textures as tga's in stead of jpg's. And png only for textures that need transparency.

[Mesh Support on the Marketplace]

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Steph Catseye wrote:

By leaving it uncategorized people will buy it without knowing what they buy, won't be able to use it and blame the merchant for shortcomings he has no influence on!

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There is a lot a merchant has no influence on, like how LL calculates prim count for mesh, what possibilities of meshes are and are not supported. Or when third party viewers will be able to show mesh... or whether the majority of resident will find mesh important enough to step over to viewer 2, while they are more happy with a viewer 1. 

But the thing a merchant has influence on is when, where and how he will market his own products. When merchants feel the platform is not stable enought to sell mesh yet, they just should not sell it. When they don't want to receive complaints from V1 users who will see the meshes corrupted, they should not sell it, or warn the buyer for this before he purchases. 

There will be a day that mesh is released on the main grid any way... with all the short comings is still has. My idea is that this day is not so far away anymore. It is up to you as mesh creator whether you want to make your products available in this current stage of mesh development, or not.

There are pro's and there are cons for coming out with new products in an early stage. It's for the merchants himself to weight these pro's against these cons. And it's for him to deal with customers who don't understand this product or have problems with his product. It might  consume a lot of time to deal with these things, but it might also be a very good learning experience that leads to more education for his customers or better products for consumers.

 

[Why do we bake?]

When you bake, you always bake a texture, not the sculpty or the mesh it self. You can use a program like Photoshop to make textures for your sculpties or meshes, but you can also use tools that are in a 3D program to make textures for your sculpty or mesh.

For example the 'shadow maps' that many sculptymakers are selling together with their sculpts is a bake. It is a bake of the ambient occlusion (self shadowing of the sculpty) in the 3D program.

When you texture your model with help of the 3D program you can work in layers, you can compare it to Photoshop, where you can also work with layers. By putting layer over layer you create the texture for the model. The program it self can also create layers, like for example a layer for lightning, or a layer for reflection of the surrounding, a layer for transparency.

When you bake a texture for a mesh or sculpty you make a choice for the layers you need an put them all together in one picture. Like when you export a Photoshop file to a jpg or tga file, the picture will combine all and everything into a single layer that you can upload to SL.

 

 

[What are we going to call it? Chatbook, SLitter?]

I call it SLetwork

[Problems with physic shape]

I have a problem with fysical shape as well, but its of a different kind.

When I try to upload the fysical shape it doesnt have the right rotation. In my 3d program both mesh and fys. shape have the same rotation when I export them to colada. But once I try to upload it, the fys. shape is rotated 90 degrees.

 

I don't see a way to rotate the fysical shape in the uploader. Am I overlooking something, or is there just no posiblity to let the uploader know how I want to fysical shape to fit over the mesh?

[Mesh Vs Sculptie]

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Vivienne Daguerre wrote:

I was thinking more about your post, Madeleine. If you are making things intended to stand on their own in world, like a chair or a lamp, and it is not likely to be linked, then I think you would do best to make it as a sculpt if you can make it nicely as one prim. If it will be 2 prims at least, then consider mesh, for you can get better detail where you want and need it and make it look nicer.

---

I make things like a bottle, a book, a lipstick, a sack, or objects like 'four pillows in one prim'. When I make two prims objects they are ment to functions as independent parts, for example a jewelry box with a rotating lit, so the box can be opened and closed.

When I would make such an object in mesh I still need two meshes. I don't know what the PE count would be, when I link them I did not try yet, because when it comes to rotation appears another problem for me: I cannot set the pivot point in mesh yet. 

---

Vivienne Daguerre wrote:

If you are making things designed to be linked into mesh builds, like window frames, arches, pillars, corner brickwork, etc. then make it in low poly mesh. Once linked to other mesh, these things can count for less than one prim.

You will have to include warnings though that linking your mesh parts to non-mesh can increase the prim count of the non-mesh parts substantially. The customer will need to be educated.

---

That is also a point. How are you going to market those kind of objects? How is a customer suppoosed to understand what the prim count will be for his specific use of the object?

You will need to tell your customer things like:

When rezzing the mesh in size A the prim count will be Z

When rezzing the mesh in size B the prim count will be Y

When linked to a box the prim count will be X

When linked to sphere the prim count will be W

When linked to torus the prim count will be V

When linked to a combination of boxes and spheres the prim count will be U

When linked to a mesh the prim count will be T

When put in a script the prim count will be S

When linked to a scripted prim the prim count will be R,

etcetera...

 

How am I suppoosed to answer questions like: I have a bathroom set that consist of 15 prims. It has a tap with running water and animations. When I buy your mesh 'liquid soap' what will be prim count be after I link it to my bathroom set?

 

It's all way to complicated for the sector of the market I'm working for.

 

Apart from the lowest possible the prim count 1, that cannot be beat by mesh, it's also very clear to the customers that a 1 prim sculpt will stay 1 prim while working with it. Whether you link it, or script it or resize it: 1 prim is 1 prim.

And when someone wants to link my sculpts to a mesh, it is not my responsibility to educate him about the prim count. I just can send him to the mesh maker who can explain him all about it



 

 

[Mesh Vs Sculptie]

Thanks for sharing. I was excited about modelling 'the real way' too. I had plans to leave sculpts behind me and concentrate my business around meshes. But I changed my mind, because of PE.

Though it has much more advantages to use mesh, the arguments for mesh are just ´a lot of technical bla bla´ to the average costumer. We don't only operate in a 3D program, we also operate in the economy of SL. People who buy our merchandise care about: Does it look good? Is the prim count low? Does it have an affordable price?

I mainly make one prim objects. For my objects the primcount of meshes will at least be double as high as for comparable sculpties. When the object uses a script the primcount will be four times higher then a scripted sculpty. Rezzing a prim costs money. Mesh is simply too tier expensive for the kind of merchandise I offer.

For a while I was very disappointed it packed out this way with mesh. But now I have a new strategy for my business. We will simply stick to the good, old, prim low sculpts for rezzable objects. The only segment of the market we are going to develop meshes for will be  avatar attachments.  Meshes are super... as long as you don't have to rezz them.

[Mesh Support on the Marketplace]

We can not predict how mesh will be available for and adapted by the market. When you are fine with using sculpts, why not just stick to them? In het beginning there won't be much prefabs available anyway. Just keep an eye on what happens in the clothing mesh market, and then one day when will find a mesh you just can't resist, give it a try to work with mesh. There is nothing to hurry as long as you are happy with sculpts.

[Mesh Support on the Marketplace]

The big difference with texturing sculpties and texturing meshes is that meshes will make life easier for you. Most sculpts are hard to texture. For a sculpty you must always use the complete canvas to cover the sculpty. With mesh this will be very different. Creating textures for mesh will be more like creating clothing with help of the clothing templates.

Meshes are textured with help of uv maps. This uv map is a 'fold open' of the mesh model. I will show you some examples to visualise the differences:

 

Sculpt texture, you use the whole canvas for the texture:

 

This is how the UV map looks for the mesh model I have shown on the first picture:

 

This is how a textured UV map can look:

[Mesh Support on the Marketplace]

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Arwen Serpente wrote:

Hi Toy and Madeliefste, just a comment on my post and your responses. The issue I raise regarding IP rights was one that was brought up by a prefab sculpty maker (not me). That was the terminology they used. Maybe they used the incorrect terminology because for sure they are not selling their "IP" rights, they are selling a product with an end user license. This creator does not allow their sculpties to be used with their name on them as creator, so to abide by their TOS, the user needs to use the maps (or I guess attach a root prim of the final creator). So, that sculpty creator raised the possibility of selling the files for their customers to import themselves. That's why I am so confused about this - right now, I use sculpty maps inworld (doesn't matter to me whether they are full perm or no mod because I don't upload to my computer, I just build with them inworld) because I like my name on my creations. As a clothing maker, I really prefer maps because I can switch between maps to get just the right one to fit the project. I really dislike building with someone else's full perm objects - much more timeconsuming and difficult (not to mention the whole "created by" bugaboo). So let me be completely Meshnoob here, when I buy from a Mesh prefab maker, what am I buying? An object? A map to create an object? A file to download the maps? Lol, are they even maps that we use in the sculpty section of the edit window? Honestly, I haven't a clue. I would bet I'm not alone.

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Meshes don't work with maps, like scupties. When you buy a mesh model in SL you buy the model itself, the shape so to say. This model is not defined by a colormap, but uses a very different technique to be a shape in SL.You won't be able to change the creators name of the model, but you will be able to attach a (invisible) prim that shows you as creator.

For a clothing designer and for a buyer of clothes prim count is not a hot issue. So one prim more or less on a jacket won't have many influence on the marketability of your product as clothing designer, while that one prim more still gives you the possibility to add your name as designer of the end product you sell. 

 

[Mesh Support on the Marketplace]

Toyboy,

As a mesh creator you also put your OWN terms in a license based on your own rules. After all it are your IP rights and it's up to you to decide under which conditions you spread copies of products based on your IP right. LL has nothing to say about your IP rights. Whether you want to pick the fruits of them by exploring them commercialy or you want to share them on non-commercial base, it's just your decission.

The fact that you have to pass a gate at the doorway for uploading is different then with other products in SL. And like with a lot of things in SL it is just 'take it or leave it'.
What LL is actually protecting, by putting a gate for uploads, is you, the mesh uploader. In my opinion it is good that you are aware of what you can and cannot upload to SL. This awareness can save you a lot of problems and costs. For example when you model a nice Barbie and upload it to SL and sell it as a mesh Barbie and somebody of Mattel happens to find out about it, they will not go after LL, but after you. When you happen to have the bad luck to get IP right issues with such big compagnies be prepared to pay a lot for infringing their rights.

But when you are the legit IP right holder for a design it actually doesn't matter that you have to pass through a gate to be able to upload your models. The fact that you have been through this port changes nothing in the relationship with your customers when it comes to IP rights. It's simply up to you how to deal with them and how to put conditions for use of your products, and not to LL.