Medhue Simoni

Pamela Galli wrote: I have never been sure if it is even possible to edit a review. Has anyone actually done this? Yes, it is possible. I've had quite a few customers edit them after I've explained something to them or helped them with a problem, in some way. Plus, I always try to say thanks or addressing things in the review after they are posted, and I can edit those too. Not to you, Pam, but to other who think that buyer beware, or the free market, without intervention, is bad for consumers. It is quite the opposite, overall. In a truly free market, like the SL marketplace, it is the consumers that benefit massively because of all the competition. While it might be true that some childish merchants will rip off a few people, they are not without consequence, whether LL gets involved or not. I often compare the market to karma. In a sense, that is all it really is. Those merchants that generate good karma, will attract more customers that want to recieve this good karma. Those merchants that create and spread negative karma, will repell customers. Yes, the justice is not instant, but it is going on whether we see it or not. It's not magic, or some being that enacts justice, just the nature laws of interaction. Any kind of regulation that could be enacted by a government, or such, will being inheritly costly, with little to no effect overall, and could limit the market, causing prices to rise. I would not be against people forming a Better Business Bureau or whatever, or some journalists out there spreading the word about bad practices.

Pretty cool video! Maybe, you should do a video just about the special affects. I've played around alot with the skeleton, and made a few avatars with crazy skeletons, but I'd still want to take the course. Time is always the issue. I'm getting pulled in many directions these days. lol I just want to add 1 things about Fitted Mesh. IMHO, the real problem with it is that is it locked to the avatar shape. If LL had just created the bones to ONLY deform the mesh, instead using existing bones and trying to match the avatar's shape with the collision bones, then it would work much better. If the meshes morphed from new bones, independent from the SL avatar's shape itself, then the new bones would have their own set of sliders, in the SL UI, and the wearer could adjust those sliders to make the clothing better fit. I really don't see why LL still can't do this.

What program are you using? Blender? Maya? Max?

It seems there is a reference to my statements in the meeting, so I'll address it. LL should look at this situation from the merchant's point of view. We have a marketplace that has many, many issues, and is in no way better than Xstreet was. Well, maybe direct delivery has some benefits. I'll give you that. The Listing Enhancements are a joke, and have been broken for years now. Why can't this be fixed? You do realize that it is completely ridiculous that it is still broken? You do realize that you make money off this feature? Why is it stil broken? I run my own marketplace. It works. All of it works, and never fails. I have coupons, and they work, everytime. I can process any credit card there is. I can post any kind of data on it, including 3D viewers that allow users to see the models in 3D, and it's wireframe. I just posted a complete 3D demo of some of my animations for a product. Can we do this on LL's Marketplace? And LL has a team working on it full time. The reason I made my original post was because I have little faith in LL's team. I have so little faith in you, because of what I see on your Marketplace. Again, how exactly do you allow the Listing Enhancements to be broken for this long? I can only assume that your team is under staffed and you need help. Part of that help is getting competent people to test what you do. I pay people to test stuff all the time. The more important the product, the more people I pay to test it all. It's a common practice.

Well, thanks for spending the time to inform us all of the horror ahead of us all. Personally, I just don't have the time. As I said in my 1 and only other post in this thread, LL needs to actually do something to get merchants involved. They need to give us a reason, other than LL might totally f it up. That is not really a big incentive. If they f it up, then they better revert immediately back to the old system. DUH! I didn't go off on LL to be an a$$. I did it to wake them up, and really get merchants involved. If we have no incentives, then we have other things to do, that do have incentives. Like I said in my other post. at the very least, they should suspend commission fees for merchants that give feedback, and try the system. If I were LL, I would actually get the top 200 merchants, and pay them directly to test the system. As a business person, it's a 1 time cost to ensure that you get good feedback. I'm not trying to get paid by LL. I don't give a crap. I have better things to do. I would rather not deal with this at all. That said, the only way I'll be involved, is if I was paid. I'd rather others were paid, people I know and trust, like yourself Sassy. Question to LL: Why don't you have a video tutorial for merchants who want to try this? It literally takes 5 min to make a video. Plus, video can be shared to spread the word. oops, just watched the video of the meeting. Seems videos are coming.

I made 2 suggestions, both about animation. #1 - fix the animation uploader, which breaks every single looping animation, and has gone on for over 7 years now. The 7+year old jira was attached. #2 - Give us custome skeletons, so we can make NPCs that actually move like real people and animals.

I like this 1 better.

Sorry Pam, I didn't mean to reply to you. Personally, I have neither the time nor the money to waste testing things for LL, especially when I have to do alot of work to get that set up on the beta grid. Who is going to pay me for that time? What benefit do I get helping to test LL's stuff? How can myself, doing all that work to test this on the beta grid, actually reflect what will happen on the real grid? They are night and day, especially for something like this. Now, if LL wants to pay me, for my time, I'd be very happy to test whatever the F they want, where ever they want. Maybe, as some kind of basic incentive, you should eliminate the commission fees for those that help you, at the very least. Allow me to also point out the difference between LL asking for help, and some other developers, like for instance the team that made Avastar, or even Blender. Everything they do helps me. if they ask me to test something, I'll gladly do it, even if it doesn't directly affect what I do. I know that what I say to them will be taken seriously, even if it doesn't result in a change. I'm not banging my head against a wall. Helping to make Avastar or Blender better could never hurt me, no matter what they do. LL on the other hand, has literally thousands of bugs they simply chose to ignore. Go look at all those people that spent hours of their life trying to fix something, and it doesn't get fixed because LL did nothing. Go look at Blender's open bugs, and compare those to your own. Seriously, if LL wants help with something, they should pay people, just so that their time spent is not ignored or wasted. I'll just add that I don't blame this on the employees of LL, but the management over the years.

If you post some image of the distortions, maybe we can help a little more. As it is, you have said the arm pokes through, which should be an easy fix. Yes, something like a poncho can be 1 of the most difficult things to rig, when you can't add any bones. I actually turned down a job where someone wanted me to rig their komodo. Now, if we had custom bones, then you could just set up extra bones to have more control over the poncho, and the folding of the clothing. Plus, with a poncho, you have the extra headache of it having 2 sides that will cross over each other.

Drongle McMahon wrote: why do users tend to begin with the most complex projects ? Because they are optimists? I am a pessimist, which is why I don't do rigging at all. :matte-motes-smile: Smart! It saves alot of brain damage, banging your head against the desk, especially for fitted mesh.

Just thought I'd put up some screenshots of some other prominent platforms with marketplaces, and how different their forums are to SL's. Renderosity Daz And the kicker, Unity. It's almost like LL hates us. lol

Try to look at it this way. That merchant is creating negative karma. That negative karma was absorbed by you, to the point you will never deal with them again. As you said, other have had issue with them. That karma gets passed around. You can choose to take that karma and use it to your own advantage, or learn a good lesson, if not just about that particular merchant. You could also choose to hold onto that negative karma, and have it affect you over and over again. I would take comfort in the thought that, in the end, this person is really only hurting themself. Or, if you know how to create, and this person seems to be doing well, despite being an a$$, then that must mean there is a big need for what they are selling. The best business people generally aren't geniuses, just able to see a whole in the market they can fill. Pretty much all of my kid related things sell very well.

arton Rotaru wrote: While polygon crunchers can do a decent job, I can still do better manually. Going lower in polycount while keeping the shape and shading alive. For me, creating the LoD models is the easiest and quickest part of the whole asset creation process. The medium LoD model is done rather quickly by just removing a bunch of edgeloops. It's done within minutes. From there the low LoD model isn't too far away. Continuing removing edgeloops, merging some verts here and there. Crucial for smaller props in SL is the lowest LoD, because it has to be very low, as we know, to keep the LI down. But since it has to be this low in polycount, it can be even box modeled from scratch and remapped onto the texture within minutes. Oh, I get it. Probably half of the things I model are avatars or npcs now. Generally the mid LODs are just me desolving loops. After that tho, it gets sketchy. Things with bones need that extra geometry to bend those joints correctly. I still have thousands of verts to reduce down, and removing more loops will destroy any structure left in the mesh. I don't see much difference in whether I remove those thousands of verts or Blender does it. When I get within a set range, I stop it and manually clean it up. On some things the Low to Lowest is so few verts left that it is much better to do that manually too.

Drongle McMahon wrote: Blender's decimator preserves the UV map now. Oh goody. I'll have to go and play with it again. Does it respect UV seams etc.....never mind, I'll soon find out. ETA: Ah. On first glance: unsubdivide doesn't conserve the UV. The other modes do up to a point, but I think I can get better results manually, especially for drastic reduction. Certainly better than it used to be. Might be some use for it, but .... I think if you are starting with a medium to higher poly mesh, it is worth using the decimator. If your model is already very low poly, I don't see how the decimator will help much at all. So far for me, I almost always end up doing the lowest LOD by dissolving verts.

IvanBenjammin wrote: Drongle McMahon wrote: Blender's decimator preserves the UV map now. Oh goody. I'll have to go and play with it again. Does it respect UV seams etc.....never mind, I'll soon find out. ETA: Ah. On first glance: unsubdivide doesn't conserve the UV. The other modes do up to a point, but I think I can get better results manually, especially for drastic reduction. Certainly better than it used to be. Might be some use for it, but .... If you're looking for a decimator that preserves UVs, take a look at Meshlab. Its an app designed for cleaning up 3d scans, but has a bunch of decimation functions. I've only started recently using it again after discovering that one of its decimation functions can preserve UVs. Its my new friend for making organic-ish LODs You always want to do a manual pass over decimated models, of course. I've played with Meshlab. It's pretty extensive, once you understand how it works. You can even highlight areas to just reduce those areas. I just like Blender better because it's all part of my workflow.

Perrie Juran wrote Oh, I'd much rather they focus on working on the System. And I know a lot of users have done a lot of work doing tutorials, etc on best practices. Maybe they should allow us to post those tutorials in Tips and Tricks which hasn't had any new material added since 2011. They do have a section in the Wiki, but I think alot of people just don't know this, or want to use it. Personally, I like the forum environment. I've done lots of tutorials, but I'm just some guy that kind of learned this stuff. Basically, the only reasons I do tutorials, is either someone asked me to, or it's a product tutorial. Sometimes, I'll post these on the forums. The forums are nice because if I do get something wrong, someone can correct me. Maybe if we had a way to link forum discussions with the wiki and knowledge base, that would be the best solutions, and have LL highlight really good discussion in the forums. I also think there is the issue of quality, or precieved quality. If I make a tutorial, I'm not going to prepare that much. I might go over what I want to talk about a few times, but to me, it's freeballing it, and just get it done. I'm not going to make but a dollar or so a month on a tutorial. It's hardly worth the time invested, other than helping out someone that was clueless. My point is, if they are waiting for professional tutorial makers to do it, they'll be waiting a very long time.

Perrie Juran wrote: I've been following this thread out of general interest and thought this exchange between Monty and Torley would be of interest to people because LL practices and the need to educate people have been brought up. I don't want to start a thread hijack but my personal opinion is that LL has really missed the boat on the value to them in educating people as to best practices, that it would yield a greater ROI than the ROI on all the money they are investing in infrastructure. That is definitely an interesting exchange. More best practices are definitely needed. That said, I think it is also something the community can do. We've had many discussions about efficiency and things of that sort, but there is no way to highlight those threads. I'd rather Lindens did actual work on the system to make it better. They created a pretty awesome pathfinding system, which easily rivals any other on any platform. The thing is, we don't have custom skeletons to make those NPCs actually look good using that pathfinding. Of course, I'm more into animating and armatures than most, so I'm highly biased. Give me custom skeletons PLEASE. I want to bring my bat into SL. Although, I will also likely rig him with the SL skeleton, as an avatar. This is just the flying animation roughed out. It's been changed significantly.

Drongle McMahon wrote: Medhue, where is lowest LOD?* At this size, the LI is very dominated by the lowest LOD. So, apart from that, your models look ok. I guess I would have had less detail all the way down, and more drastic reductions, but that's a matter of choice - I'm not so interested in guns that I would be looking closely at them. It woud be interesting to know the actual triangle and vertex counts (uploader's version). The default targets for the autoLOD are 1/4 the vertices at each step. Yours looks like a lot less pruning than that, but that doesn't mean much. I haven't used the Blender decimator for ages. It used to destroy the UV maps. So I only use Dissolve now, which takes longer but keeps the maps intact. Does the decimator preserve UV maps now? Before Dissolve, I used to spend much more time fixing UV maps than reducing the geometry. *One triangle? Actually, for this case, two triangles (for both sides) with the right shape and suitable texture, might be quite reasonable. Maybe four, so you still have the magazine from head-on. This version is for Unity, not SL. I likely did go a little overboard when I modeled this originally in 3ds Max. I reduced the final for Unity a little in the stock and grips. I wanted it to be highly detailed for FPS games in Unity. Most FPS games today, it's incredible how detailed the weapons are. This was literally 1 of my first 10 models that I ever created, and when I originally uploaded it to SL, I just use the uploader to create the LODs. Blender's decimator preserves the UV map now. Like I said, when the model's geometry is evenly laid out, the decimator does a decent job. I'm not sure I'd use it for the Lowest LOD in SL, as I'd likely just reduce the model by hand from the Low LOD. I guess the reason I bring it up is that, if LODs are a problem in SL, and so many creators and just using the uploader, then this would be a much better way, which give much better results. I want to know what people like yourself think about it. If you want to look at the model, you can goto my website and see the model in a 3D viewer. I think I made the environment for the 3D veiwer a bit dark tho. I'm using Sketchfab for the 3D view. http://www.medhueanimations.com/collections/3d-models/products/medhue-tommygun

leliel Mirihi wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: I'll show an example, and then you all can rip me apart, and tell me to stick to animating.Triangles - High 2814, Mid 1406, Low 350 This model was 1 of my first decent model, but I recently decided to sell it for Unity also. It's a little hard to judge from that one picture so take this with a grain of salt. High LOD looks fine for the most part. The only problem I see is the receiver, it was literally just a box with stuff bolted on. Yours is too high poly for that. Mid LOD seems a little higher than it needs to be but I'd have to see how it behaved in SL to properly judge it. Low LOD is way higher than it needs to be. Nobody is going to see those curves on the hand grips or stock at those distances, the barrel could just be a prism for all anyone cares, etc. Some artistic criticism if you want as well. The front hand grip is in the right place but the wrong shape and missing some parts. Also the overall gun seems a bit off assuming you're modeling the original Tompson and not the M1928 and variants. Thanks for the critique! I can't say I disagree with you. Originally, when I first created the Tommygun in 3Ds Max, I did not add in the front grip. I wanted it to be 1 handed in SL. When I decided to sell it for Unity, I added the front grip. I probably should throw in some animations to hold it, reload, and shoot.

While we have so many here that know their LODs, why not have you guys criticize my mesh, and LODs. Just remember that I like to animate more than anything. Modeling and everything else is just my set up to animate something. I do love to learn tho. When I first learned to model, during SL mesh beta period, I just let the uploader do all the work. Then people like Drongle and Chosen stressed making your own, so I did. Then I started using Blender. I know I'm going to get ripped apart for this, but especially lately, I've been using Blender's decimate modifier alot for my LODs. Generally, I try to reduce the model keeping the geometry symetrical. Originally, I thought it was far to random to reduce a model in good ways, but after playing with it on quite a few models now, I find the results to be pretty good, and in Blender, you can stop at any point and then go in and finish it up by hand. I find that when your geometry is evenly laid out, the decimator can do a decent job. Ultimately tho, it's about saving time. After spending days modeling and texturing a model, the last thing I want to do is spend hours creating LODs. Using the decimate modifier turns that into a half hour of playing around. I'll show an example, and then you all can rip me apart, and tell me to stick to animating. Triangles - High 2814, Mid 1406, Low 350 This model was 1 of my first decent model, but I recently decided to sell it for Unity also. Basically, I just don't understand why a modeler would not use something like a good decimator, if they can get good results. Please be gentle. lol

Don't get me wrong ChinRey. I think the topic is important, and it's great that people are pointing it out. I think my point is ulitmately not to just blame the creators. Like you said tho, things are getting better. I personally like to make more things for avatars than anything else, as it's kind of easy to make efficient things for avatar, which is why I don't understand why so many go so overboard. They can, which is probably why. The creators I have the most sympathy for, are the home, buildings, and landscape designers, which are the primary creators that do need good LODs to see far away. I've made a few large structures for myself, but I didn't jump through all the hoops to make them the lowest land impact. I'd rather just bite the bullet on the prims and have 1 mesh to deal with. lol

Drongle McMahon wrote: I don't disagree. Poor choices by consumers are as much to blame as the producers who choose to exploit those choices. No difference between RL and SL there, except maybe that RL does have a few laws to eliminate the worst abuses. Still the cynical exploiters can still make the most money (ever heard of Gerald Ratner?). Fortunately for me, I'm not trying to sell anything. So I can ignore the destructive realities of commerce. Are they poor choices? Some, most likely are. Others, are making a conscious choice for what they think is better, for them. Just like in real life. Most of the time, even with our marketplace of millions of items, the consumer doesn't really have a choice. Yes, it seems crazy, being that there are so many items, but that is ultimately the truth. This is also why I like SL's system of allowing anyone to create things. Goto any other 3D marketplace, and try to find something specific. It's impossible to find even a few items, with the specs you need. Recently, I was thinking about setting up a small theatre, as a place for people to watch my videos in SL on my land. When I went looking for chairs, I found a few, but they were all much more detailed that I needed them, and many more prims than I thought was needed. So, of course, I just made my own. My main requirement was that I didn't want them to cost more than 1 prim each. To make that happen, the lowest LOD is 2 triangles, 1 for the back, and 1 for the seat. These are for theatres, so no1 will ever see the last LOD. In a stadium tho, they might not look as good zoomed out. Really, it's a shame you and Chosen Few don't sell on the marketplace, as I'm sure some of those items would be huge sellers for those that need it.

Pamela Galli wrote: that is how it was originally. Then then land owners staged a spam-in, in the merchant forum, and were awarded their land forum where they coulad advertise. And people think merchants are pushy! lol Even though many of us are land owner, we don't have the leverage that land barons do.

Amethyst Jetaime wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: ... Our social network should be for both social, and business, but in those 2 distinct categories so that people see and find what they want. Beyond those few items, I'm hoping for better marketing systems in the other world being created. Actually I wish there were two forums, one social, and another for land and products. Well, that is the great thing about forums, I don't see the threads or topics I don't goto. So, they already work that way. I was speaking more about SL's little social network, which is alot like Facebook. Many residents like to fill their feeds with beautiful images of their lives in SL. Some of them are quite amazing. I would want LL to add another feed to that social network, just for merchants to post products on their own feeds, which would also be linked to a feed where people can see all of them. I'd be fine with LL charging for this too. I'd suggest just charging people some cheap, like 10 or even 50 lindens per image.

Perrie Juran wrote: Getting back to this. I do understand how the costs of doing business get passed on to the consumer. I'm not that dumb. I don't think anyone is dumb, especially you. What I do think is that people tend not to think about these things, and mainstream media has been pushing for more taxes on businesses, as if businesses actually pay the tax. Propaganda overrides intelligence almost every single time. Perrie Juran wrote: But why should LL absorb the cost of your advertising? There has to be a ROI for them. And eventually someone is going to pay because there is no free lunch. This gets very similar to the discussion over VAT, especially as it related to land costs in SL. Some people felt that LL should have just absorbed VAT. There were arguments for and against it, but the bottom line still comes down to LL's perception of how it affects their bottom line. Their decision in the matter was to not absorb it. IMHO, the only similarities I see here are that they are 2 items that people want other people to pay for. lol On the advertising, LL should absorb it because it generates economic activity, which results in us and them making more. Heck, each 1 of us could create a forum and let people post on it for free, and it would cost us almost nothing to do that. If it benefited us, we'd do it. Why does anybody have a forum? There are costs, Yet they are everywhere, and always free. I don't see how advertising on them is more work, or not a good thing. As far as VAT goes, although I feel for my european friends, you could argue that they did this to themselves. If they want all this "free" stuff, then the money must come from somewhere. Why should LL pay for their healthcare, or unemployment, or whatever? LL doesn't benefit at all. With marketing on the forums, LL sees some benefit. VAT can only hurt LL. It's only a negative to them. Perrie Juran wrote: It's your choice not to pay Unity's marketing fees. You may not like their business model but it does appear to be working for them. If you are able to parley what they are doing into greater profits for yourself then all the more power to you. It still does not make what they are doing wrong. It would only become wrong for them if it put them out of business but even that would rightfully be their choice. Afterall we are afterall talking about free enterprise here. Never did I say Unity was wrong. I might have implied that it's not smart, but I never said, or implied they were doing something wrong. The thing about business is that you never know how things would have been different unless you try it. As with almost everything, the complexities are many times too vast to know in the end what the best direction is. All you can do is keep your mind open, and collect as much information as you can. It also depends on your goal. Like, maybe, Unity thinks that charging a commission and their approval system gives them more control, which results in a better product. Personally, I see this as misguided, as I've watched other companies do the same, and places like SL, and Youtube that have a completely different approach. I think SL and Youtube have a much better system that caters to the largest markets possible.