Medhue Simoni

Ok, forgive me if this is vague or you already did this, or understand it. And, I'm just taking a quick look at the script. First, I don't see where the script ever tells the system to stop the idle animation. That seems to be the issue that you are having. Just add in a stop animation function for it. The 3 animations are keyed into the script. To change them, you have to change the keys for them. string reload_anim=" ";string reload_sound="48b5926c-805d-330b-13c4-992226ca7351";string fire_sound="500ed264-e574-ce2c-2a80-ca2058438abb";string safety_sound="f1c12ed9-7f5c-cb7f-9741-b940715b7e7e";string active_anim="05a935a1-46e6-8cc3-ce7d-08fe8fea16d1";string idle_anim="05a935a1-46e6-8cc3-ce7d-08fe8fea16d1";

Deja Letov wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: As far as users with high or low end PCs. Who cares!!!! If you make for the HIGH end pc user, than it works right for every1. If you do not, the higher end pc users, who again had the extra cash to splurge on a PC and probably has the extra cash to buy more SL items, is going to look at your items and not be so impressed compared to 1 with all the texture maps. For the life of me, I don't understand why any1 would purposely cater only to lower end machines. I'm actually excited for materials so don't take this comment as meaning I don't, but I do want to answer this question because I also cater to people on lower end PCs. Why? Because a lower PC has NOTHING to do with how much they spend in SL. I've talked to many people with awesome machines but they don't spend anything in SL because they have better games to play. I don't focus on creating for people with a higher end PC because that's NOT the majority of customers. Plus, if I make sure they look GREAT for lower end, they will look great for higher end too. Rather than looking GREAT only for higher end and looking OKAY for lower end. Most people are on your average every day machine. Sure as a creator, we have these awesome super graphic and fast processing machines, but I don't create for creators. So why would I purposely cater to lower end machines? Moola my friend. $$$ They are where the money is. I understand what you are saying, but I'd also argue that there are exceptions to everythings. Your observations aren't always the norm. Imperically, people who don't have money, don't spend money. I'm not saying that people shouldn't make things that are affordable to most. We all should do that. I'm just saying that it is a serious business mistake to cater only to low end machines. Early on in my SL career, I learned that it is easier to make more if you create items that cater to those with the money to spend. Of course, animation is a bit different, as you can make a whole huge package, but any1 can just buy the individual animations. So, I'm never really out of the range of any customer. By creating large packages for people with the money to spend, I instantly became profitable quickly and quit my day job the first year. I'd have to sell thousands of small packages to make up for only a few sales of large packages. At 1 point, at least in the animation market, it was kind of a battle to see which merchants would release the largest animation or AO packages. Why? Causing people were buying them like crazy. Now, of course, Deja, I understand you've gotten a certain amount of success in SL, but don't let this success blind you from the obvious. In no way am I saying don't sell to lower end machine or to the average SL user, it's a given that they are the main customers. Many times now, I've told myself to focus more on the usual customers, and it's still something I need to focus more on. With my Lycan update, it's a huge package, and every update just gets larger and larger. I love the product but it's getting to the point that the size of the package is scaring some customers off. The customers tho, are telling me they want more. What is the solution? What I decided to do is break the whole package up. I used to try and put everything in 1 package, to try and give the cusotmers the most bang for their buck. This just keeps pushing the price higher and higher tho. Now, I'll try to supply the original package at a reasonable price, and put all those extras into smaller packages. Hopefully, the end result is more overall sales, more returning customers, and the customers can pick and choose what they want.

Alicia Sautereau wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: As far as users with high or low end PCs. Who cares!!!! If you make for the HIGH end pc user, than it works right for every1. If you do not, the higher end pc users, who again had the extra cash to splurge on a PC and probably has the extra cash to buy more SL items, is going to look at your items and not be so impressed compared to 1 with all the texture maps. For the life of me, I don't understand why any1 would purposely cater only to lower end machines. As an high end pc user, that needs another upgrade..., and a couple hundred euro`s to throw away each month in sl alone, i won`t be throwing it your way... Unlike others, we can pick what we buy, and if i have to give your competitor more money for the same item and he isn`t being a dipstick, i`ll gladly spend my money with some one that cares about all their customers Where did I say I didn't care about all my customers? I said I don't care what kind of PC they use. I love how people want to add their own biases to other people's words. Does it make it easier for you to get angry at people? My items are created so that they work for every1, not just 1 type of user. Whether they use a low end or a high end, the products work exactly the same, and look as good as I can make them for both. You can shop with whomever you want, and it won't affect me at all.

I made a video showing a plugin for Photoshop to make bump maps. Personally, if I'm not learning something new, I'll just get bored. I'm excited about materials. It's just in time for my update to my Lycan AO and avatar. With all the new things that LL has implemented, this is definitely going to be the largest improvement to my Lycan/Werewolf package since I got my mocap system. Using Gaia Clary's Avastar Plugin for Blender, makes the whole character creation process much easier. My new Lycan will have a working Jaw Bone too. I actually used the unused mskull bone as his Jaw Bone. LL also added the option to upload anim files, which is what you need to use to animate unused bones. As far as users with high or low end PCs. Who cares!!!! If you make for the HIGH end pc user, than it works right for every1. If you do not, the higher end pc users, who again had the extra cash to splurge on a PC and probably has the extra cash to buy more SL items, is going to look at your items and not be so impressed compared to 1 with all the texture maps. For the life of me, I don't understand why any1 would purposely cater only to lower end machines. As for more work on the creators end, this is all up to the creator. For some, especially people new to 3d design, the process is going to be long and hair pulling. It doesn't have to be tho, there are tools like the Adobe plugin, and Avastar that make things sooooooo much easier. I'm a newb at creating avatars. Real avatar makers can seriously run circles around me. BUT...... I have skills other avatar makers don't have. This is the world of SL. Where creators of all types duke it out in the market. It really is a thing of beauty. About LAG, well, a good content creator can use all these new features to create something thousands of times more efficient. On this Lycan avatar I'm making, fully clothed and decked out, he is coming in at 25k on the Avatar rendering meter. Other mesh avatars that I've seen are all over 200k. Mine even has little hairs all over him that amount to 10 times the vertices of the whole avatar alone. Even with this extreme hair, his rendering cost is super low. Heck, the bump and specular maps are only 75kb each.

This is a quick video I created to show how the Plugin works. Here is a link to the Nvidia downloads page for the Plugin. https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop .

I think you also have to understand too, that you learned how to texture in the looks that you wanted with shading. Now, you kind of do all that in the normals and speculars. The object will look realistic, with realistic shading from all angles, and you can leave all the hard, Land impacting detail to the bump maps.

Daz is a great animation program, but I have also seen problems with any animation moving in any direction. It's like the program is doubling or tripling the distance. Maybe this has something to do with the scale of the SL figure versus the scale of the genesis figure. I don't see these issues when I animate for the genesis character. What I do, is I animate the character in Daz, then I bring the animation into SLat or Qavi and adjust it.

Well, what you can do, is use the extra bones. There are 5 extra bones in the skeleton. 1 is the mskull, and the other are like mfootleft, mfootright, mlefttoe, mrighttoe, or something like that. These bones are not being used, so, in theory you could use them to animate your back legs. I use Avastar, and I'm currently making an avatar that uses the mskull for a jaw bone.

Here is your evidence. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SH-2550 No, you can't do and dang thing about it, except beg LL to fix it.

What you are seeing is a 7 year old animation bug that LL refuses to fix. The uploader adds frames to an animation. Essentially, it is adding more 1st frames. We get around this bug by adding an IN% to loop the animation properly. The problem with this solution is that the bug will still show when the animation is first played. For this reason, I've been begging LL to fix this for years now. They just ignore the bug. Plus, other animators come along and say the bug is not a big deal. Well, it is a huge deal, and the bug essential breaks every animation uploaded. You'll only notice it, if you are an animators and doing some complex animating. Most customers don't know enough to know why the weird crap is even happening.

2 of the best programs I've ever used, are both free. The crazy part is that both are 2 of the most versatile programs out there, and import and export in the most formats. DazStudio Blender The best SL animation program, is also free. Qavi is good but I'm talking about SLat. I will complain about 1 program that I just updated. I don't get the whole Photoshop package, cause I don't need it. Generally, I don't do a whole lot of texturing, so I've just used Elements 2.0 since it came out. It would still work with all the different plugins for most programs. I recently got a new PC, to use 2 computers together, and have 2 monitors that could be used for either PC. The problem was, I lost my Photoshop Elements 2.0 disk. So, I said what the hell, I'll get the latest version. I thought about the whole CS package, but again, I don't need it. Paid 60 bucks and got Elements 11.0, and it's no different than 2.0, except with a now horrid UI. Worst purchase in years! Oh, and then I found the 2.0 disk and installed it. How can a company sell the same dang thing and throw a different number on it? I could pay a coder to make those changes.

Sounds like you have bones still set at zero. The way SL animation works, the first frame is your positioning frame, and it tells the system which bones are going to be used. If you keep a bone in the first frame the same in the 2nd frame, it will be overriden by the default animations. So, your 1st frame, and your 2nd frame have to be totally different, if you want the whole body to be animated.

Since this topic is the Mesh Deformer, I'll bring the conversation back around. Yesterday, I got Avastar for Blender. I've played with it before, over a year ago, but I had way too many animation things to do to really get into it. I made some clothing items real quick. Actually, I made them in 3ds Max, as my Blender skills aren't that good yet, and then brought those into Blender. Today, I got the latest Deformer viewer and uploaded some clothing. OMG, I loved it. I wanted to just go make all my own clothing, upload them all and just use that viewer from now on. I'm a guy. I don't really care that much about what I wear. I have the same about of clothing in RL, that I have in SL, which is not much. So, I can only imagine how this would be for a woman. I could make any mesh clothing fit however I wanted. If the jacket is made to be tight fitting, it doesn't matter. I can make it loose fitting. The deformer turned what is now a horrid experience that could never be a pleasant thing, to something you would actually enjoy, because you can do things that are unthinkable in RL, and it just fits when you put it on. I said it on the Jira, but I'll say it here also. WTF is wrong with you LL!!

Coby Foden wrote: I'm wondering: • You say that mesh [avatars] would be better than avatar 2.0 would be. • To be better mesh avatars would then need more polygons than default avatar 2.0. (How else they could be better?) • Then, concerning lag, how could the "better" mesh avatars be less laggy that default avatar 2.0 would be? Then there is the problem with mesh avatars, it would most likely turn out to be so that each mesh avatar would need their own specific skins and clothings, not being compatible with each other - more headaches for clothing designers and consumers alike. You pointed out that the standard avatar is big part of the success of SL - indeed it is so. With mesh avatars there is no standard. With default avatar 2.0 there would be the standard again. I would like see that Linden Lab would finally take the step and implement better default avatar. It could even be possible to make it so that present default avatar and the new default avatar would co-exist. Surely it would add complexity for the viewer and server codes, but I think it would not be impossible to make it so. Over longish period of time the present default avatar would die naturally out of old age as less and less people would be using it, and less and less designers would create accessories for the old avatar. Even though the present avatar is highly customizable, everybody knows how very bad its mesh is. As an animator you surely know how easily the mesh breaks even in some slight animations in some places. It surely would be the time to upgrade the avatar mesh. Or should we perhaps be satisfied with it forever - as long as SL exist? My thinking is that mesh avatars are not the solution for the underlying problem. Well, here's the thing about LL making an Avatar 2.0, most the things they'd need to do are the same as improving a mesh avatar, except the ability for other mesh avatar creators to use those features. If LL worked on the mesh avatar, we could have custom bones added ons. We could have custom morphs. We coud have multiple clothing layers. We coud have everything the SL avatar has and much much more, on any custom made avatar. Then.....all LL has to do is pick a mesh avatar from the marketplace to be the new default, or commission a creator to make 1. The male and female don't even need to be of the same original mesh. The next step in avatar creation is not in how we did it 10 years ago. Today, we can do it better, and give every creator access to those features. Imagine, LL finishes all the features for mesh avatars, and then they release Avatar 2.0. We could get the sources files from LL, and create our own customly morphed head, maybe an elephant head, and you can sell the morph to any1. This is how Genesis works in Dazstudio. I can morphs a human to a lizard, or a dog, or an alien with 3 fingers. There are literally hundreds of thousands of morphs for the genesis character, and they are easy as pie to make using a zbrush plugin. Yeah, I'm an animator, and that experience tells me that I've never seen a perfectly created, perfectly rigged, nor perfectly weighted avatar ever in my whole time animating. I have never seen a figure that didn't have a few different issues. I've easily animated hundreds of different avatars on, at least, 15 different platforms or programs. The Genesis figure, in Dazstudio, has won all kinds of awards, and you should see what I have to put up with on that avatar. lol

I know a few people are now using DazStudio to make animations for SL, so I'm posting this to show 2 great plugins that make animating in DazStudio a dreamy experience. lol Almost..... Must halves!

Hey Cathy! I don't think LL is dragging their feet because Qarl made the deformer. I think it is a number of concerns, all of which I don't think are all that important, at least compared to clothing just fitting you. Some of the concerns may have to do with the creators of clothing, and implementing this and it possibly changing down the road. Again, I'd blow off this concern because clothing is a unique market. 1 whole section of the market is all about what is new. Yes, there are older products that aren't updated, but I don't see where these are damaged by a deformer. It's up to the creator to decide to use the deformer or not. Plus, compared to all the work it take to create the garmet initially, modifications to make it work with the deformer are simple. If LL is concerned about the cost to clothing creators reuploading their garmet again, they should have thought of that before they released mesh. Those creators are currently uploading their garmets dozens of unneccessary times already. If I was a clothing creator, the deformer is a dream improvement as it makes their job dozens of times faster. If I was an active clothing designer, I wouldn't mind reuploading because of a major improvement, as that major improvement will ignite a boom in sales all over again. It's worth every bit of work to reupload the garmet and give your customers a more pleasant clothing experience. All that said, constant having tiny improvements implemented on a regular basis in other markets, could really annoy creators in other market, but I really do think the clothing market is unique. Plus, I think you have to ask yourself, what are SL's big advantages over other 3D environments or games? I'd say it is the customization of the AVATAR. Now, people can complain all they want about the base avatar, but there is no denying that the customization of it goes far far beyond any character in any game, ever made. So, this is SL's strength. No deformer hurts this strength. Neglecting the animation system hurts this also. Now, IMHO, LL's main core focus should always be to ensure that their avatar is maintained and improved, when possible. I am not 1 of the people that are calling for a new Avatar 2.0. That, to me, right now, is complete craziness. Part of the big success of SL, was that it gave creators a standard avatar to work with. Each creator was not putting out a totally unique avatar that was not compatible with anything else. It was the compatibility that made creating for that avatar profitable enough to continue to do it. I'm not saying that totally unique mesh avatars are the wrong way to go for a creator. I'm just saying that SL would not have grown the way it has without that standard avatar that every1 could create for. SL grew quickly because every1 was focusing on 1 avatar, and making, literally, millions of products for it. To put out a brand new Avatar 2.0, would be suicide to all the original avatar products, and force creators to do or die. There would be a long transition of awkwardness. The work to implement it would be quite the headache, and a massive cost. In the end, we already have mesh, and that basically takes over, and is better than Avatar 2.0. It would be much more efficient for LL to continue improvements on mesh avatars, than trying to create an Avatar 2.0. If LL just improves mesh avatar features, a few beautiful mesh avatars will become popular, dictated by the consumers, and other creators will start making items specifically for those avatars. The last point I want to make about Avatar 2.0, is that we already know that the avatar is a major source of lag. I don't see how putting out another avatar with more polygons is going to help with lag, especially considering creators already go overboard with polys for clothing. I'm not really talking to you Cathy, mostly to all the Avatar 2.0 people.

Theresa Tennyson wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: Examining the LI, I almost get the sense that LL wanted to allow people to make small object with lots of detail. For whatever reason, they thought this would be a benefit. So they designed the LI to account for size. So, what I'm saying is, they purposely gave a benefit to something being small, so that the polygon count could be higher. Again tho, I'm struggling to understand how they implemented this. If this is the case tho, why weren't they smart enough to make size irrelavent after it reaches a set size. In the real world, yeah, a larger size means more matter, but not in the virtual world. You don't have more data filling the spaces. LL's main concern is server performance, not viewer performance. This is what the land impact calculations are intended for. Large meshes require more physics calculations from the servers to account for collisions, etc. and a big box will be collided with just as much as a large complex sculpted shape of a similar size. A small complex item only briefly puts a load on the servers when it's being uploaded - since it's small there are fewer chances for things to collide with it. The complaints about land impact ballooning with the new land impact calculations are almost always because of the physics score of an object and there are usually ways of lowering this score dramatically while having the object look absolutely identical in world. Believe me Theresa, I completely and totally understand the details of what makes a mesh tic, and why the LI goes up. My point was that LL based the LI on the past, when server resources were a problem. The problem with this, is that LL has total and complete control over the server resources and what they can handle, besides the fact that servers improve every single year, without exception. What LL doesn't have control over is the PC that people are using to run their viewer. Many years ago, people thought, "Oh yeah, SL will get better for every1 because PCs are also improving every year." Nice thought, but that didn't quite happen the way every1 thought. People moved to laptops, and the manufactures of those laptops didn't give a dang about PC games. Then, some thought, well laptops will get better, and out came the iPhone, and now the iPad. The bottleneck was always, and will always be the amount of data that is streamed. Ultimately, my point is that LL was extremely short sighted when they created the LI system. That shortsightedness has made mesh for large structures, which would benefit from mesh the most, extremely cumbersome, and hardly worth the effort.

Those are good points, and I agree that the problem is not as big as it might seem. At the same time tho, it's not irrelevant. It has happened to me, a number of times, I just don't talk about it. Not some obscure product either, but my most popular and most expensive products. How do I respond to these problems? I do what is required of me to protect my work by filing a DMCA. On the product in question, I released a brand new version that was a massive update, so that the copybotted version became irrelevant and more easily spotted. What I also do is try to understand why it is happening and what I can do proactively. Now, of course, some1 that boldly goes and copies a known creator's most popular product and sells it, is not some1 worth reasoning with, but people do buy the stuff. Why are they seeking out some low life to get cheaper products? Well, it's probably the only way for them to have it. So, what I try to do is give those people another option that they might be able to afford. Another thing I've tried to do is make more full perm animations available. Part of the reason copybotting goes on also is that people just don't have another option, at least in their eyes. So, I try to make things available, when I know it won't hurt my business. For the most part, the majority of people understand that if too many people take advantage of the creators, there will soon be no creators. So, yeah, breaking copyrights on products is not widespread and everywhere, but again, it is a significant problem. LL doing nothing, as they have, makes the problem worse. The reason I agree with Phil on the Marketplace aspect, is because the MP is THE place to sell in volume. Maybe PIOF is not the proper way. Maybe all that is needed is acurate personally information. Maybe restrictions shouldn't be the answer. Possibly, a system could be implemented that takes a product down and puts it under review by LL, if that product gets flagged a number of times. All I'm saying is that when a copybotted product makes it to the MP, that is a whole other kind of damage to the creator than some person selling a creators stuff in some obscure inworld store. LL should take such things extremely seriously.

Gavin Hird wrote: What beats me most about mesh based creation is how the (land) cost of mesh is very unfavorable compared to sculpts and for larger builds also prims. It often throws the creative process from being creative on to a track of optimization and re-topo to reach a target LI – it therefore fast becomes very technical and not very fluid or even fun. (In addition the mesh importer often throws the LI in not very intuitive or logical directions, where the final outcome depends on how and if you ungroup meshes.) I have for my own part a 12 sim OS running standalone where I don't have to worry about LI and where you can experiment, be creative and see how far you can push the viewer and the sim performance with complex and many meshes in a small area. I consistently find that the mesh builds are super efficient performance wise compared to sculpts regardless of how complex they are. The setback comes of course when you try to move creations into SecondLife, where you have to optimize the heck out of them to get to down to a LI that is acceptable (own land cost or in competition with sculpted items.) Most of the time I don't find the effort worthwhile. – So I have 2 years worht of creations more or less sitting there outside of SecondLife. The flip side is I had fun in the process and learned a lot :-) I agree completely and totally with everything you said. I was in the mesh beta and have been complaining about it since the land impact stuff was introduced. It goes against everything I've ever learned and experienced in 3D. I really can't even begin to understand why LL made the LI work the way that they did. Maybe it has something to do with the LODs, but still, it's convoluted. The whole LI stuff turns mesh into this animal you are forced to work around if you want to use it. With my own tests, if I completely ignore the LI, and just make all the meshes for a sim efficiently, the overall result is a smoother experience, and ok prim counts. Getting some1 else to realise that extra cost of a large mesh object is worth it, is nearly impossible, especially on the marketplace right next to a 1 prim sculpty version. To me, the logic of it all is backwards. SL's main problem is the amount of data that is streaming. Server cost is a none issue. It solves itself overtime. I don't see how something larger is more streaming data, as I don't see the load time affect in SL, unless that mesh has a ton of polys. To punish a mesh object simply because of the server impact is just wrong, as the server space is not the issue. Of course, I'm not an expert in any of this, so I can only speculate based on my own knowledge and tests. If it were me, most of the cost of an object would be directly connect to it's polygon count, and texture size. Object size would be irrelavent. Examining the LI, I almost get the sense that LL wanted to allow people to make small object with lots of detail. For whatever reason, they thought this would be a benefit. So they designed the LI to account for size. So, what I'm saying is, they purposely gave a benefit to something being small, so that the polygon count could be higher. Again tho, I'm struggling to understand how they implemented this. If this is the case tho, why weren't they smart enough to make size irrelavent after it reaches a set size. In the real world, yeah, a larger size means more matter, but not in the virtual world. You don't have more data filling the spaces.

Prokofy Neva wrote: Once again, solving the problem of usage and retention in SL is not about guild-masters endlessly affirming and even hectoring others and claiming that the skills are easy, and that people are just stupid or lazy if they won't devote their attention to mastering them. The problem is conceding that the guild-mentality is an obstacle for other users, and the gulf is only widening. When the CEO can only fly around warbling how wonderful it is that other masters in his guild craftsmen make stuff, he hasn't figured out that most of his customers are consuming stuff, not making it, and he therefore hasn't structured the user experience accordingly. You quite possibly do have a very good point there. Retention is definitely an area where LL has had problems with for it's whole exsistence. You will have no disagreements from me here. My issue is with this divide that you keep bringing into the picture. While I admit, in any economy, you will have specialists. That's all we are. I'm pretty knowledgable about animations. I'm not a 3D modeling expert. Many people can run cycles around my modeling, and it only modestly interests me. Even within my own specialty, there are specialists. Making dance animations is a different animal than AO animations, especially couples dances. There are no 3D creators that are experts in every aspect of 3D creation. At best, a person can only have an overall knowledge and a specialty. Creators that are experts beyond that are like unicorns. The elitists you speak of, are only people who know a few grains more than others, and probably only in their specialty. Yes, if you want to look at each of us an say we make up a tiny percentage, you would be correct. And..... thank god we are all here. If we weren't these things we specialize in would not be here to enjoy. Why are we here tho? We are here because the market supports us, which means the people like and want what we produce. We add value to the whole economy. We are not the evil guidemasters that seek to drang every penny from a dying corpse. All we, and LL can do is work on the areas that we do understand. My role is to make animations that people will like. I'm trying to do my part, as others are doing their part. LL has many roles, and 1 of them is to give us the tools to help make SL look better and run better for every1. With my support of mesh, I'm trying to help LL in that goal. I mean really, I'm an animator, not a modeler, but I see the importance. Some areas that need work, like retention, these are difficult and complex problems. I too would love to see something, anything, that can put a dent into it. I can only hope that people that know more than I about it are working on it. I don't blame LL for the bad retention, as I feel it really is a difficult thing to address, without drastically changing everything else about SL.

Me, I just don't like inhibiting others. 1 of the biggest appeals that SL had to me, is/was a completely free market, where any1 could get involved. Maybe restricting uploads is the right move, but I'm not sure that's going to fly considering it's been open to all for this long now. In many ways, I see Phil's point about the Marketplace, and I don't see it as an overbearing hurdle to be a merchant. If LL accepted more payment options, for those that don't want to deal with banks, I'd feel much more comfortable about restrictions to uploads and the Marketplace. To me, banks are evil, and I never let them hold more than a couple hundred dollars of my money. If LL paid out, and accept gold and silver, or maybe even bitcoin, I'd love them.

Gavin Hird wrote: The unfortunate thing about mesh creation more or less happening in its entirety outside of SL is that it removes the bulk of the creative process out of SecondLife where newcomers earlier could watch the progress of, learn from and be inspired by the building process, they now more or less see a finished, polished product they have no idea of how was created. It is then easy to think this is not for me or I will never master it. It can be compared to most younger people don't have the skills to make RL clothes any more because it moved off to China, and they have become passive consumers of garments they only have a vague idea of how was created. It also skews the economy because builder tended to need more land for their creative process, off the shelf textures are largely replaced with custom uv-mapped textures and so on. Oh, I understand. 1 day, it would not surprise me at all to see LL built tools for almost all creation processes in SL, even animation. There is no reason they can not do both mesh and animation creation all inside SL. That would be super cool. I'm not sure I'd actually use those tools over 3ds Max, Blender, Poser, or Daz, but I'd love that others would have it to use. We aren't there yet tho, and as of now, it doesn't look like we are heading in that direction. Today tho, I help people learn 3ds Max, Daz, and other programs inside of Skype. Yeah, not as cool as SL, but some1 can watch me in the program, and I can see what they are doing in the program. Even to this day, when I'm standing 3000 meters in the air on a platform, talking to a fellow creator about something 3D, we'll still rez prims. We might even layout a whole design for a mesh build using prims. It only takes a few minutes. Most of my whole sim still uses prims. There is no reason to change most of them. I still show people how to build prims. I was thinking about making a prim building tutorial. To me mesh is just another tool. There was some people upset when sculpties came, but not like how people are acting about mesh. And mesh are a thousand times better than sculpties. I don't like the account system, and think it is overly complex. The accounting system alone is enough to scare off most. I hear ya about the textures and UV maps, but this had to change. I see similar things in animation. More and more, my animations won't work with these creature that have crazy bone lengths. It would be much easier for me if every1 used the exact same skeleton, but that is not reasonable. Off the shelf textures have their purpose. To use them on everything, would be outrageously inefficient, which is what we are dealing with now with some of the lag. This means that market has to change, just like my animation market is constantly changing. Maybe, instead of selling those textures to use inworld, those are now better sold to be used in Photoshop. Just a thought.

Perrie Juran wrote: Also Medhue mentions reduced lag because Mesh is more efficient. This may be true in some or many cases. But I do wonder. There is a thread (I couldn't find it right now) where one of the Mesh experts links about 50 prims to a mesh object and winds up with an impact of like 10. What I am wondering is if what he really did was find and exploit a loophole in the accounting system. The servers and the viewers still need to deal with all those prims. I do think that is a legitimate question. Maybe some one else knows offhand the thread. I'll try and dig it out later. A mesh can be fractions of a prim. When you links these meshes that are only fractions of a prim, you get that added bonus. Let me give an example. Lets imagine you made a dining room table with plates, silverware, and a cup for each seated spot. The plates, silverware and cup, if modeled efficiently, should each be .1 or .2 prims. Let's just say .2. Let's imagine the table is 2.8 prims. Separately, each item counts as 1 prim. 3 prims for each placement dishes X 4 is 12 prims plus the table, which brings us to 15 prims. If you link them all together, you will get that fractional bonus. So, each set of dishes now adds up to .6 X 4, which is 2.4. You link the table, and now you are at 5.2 prims, or 6 prims. Now imagine you link the chairs too, at 1.2 prims each. You end up with a whole dining room set for 10 prims. Let's recap, you are using 17 separate items, and it is only adding up to 10 prims. Of course, this is just an example I pulled out of my head, but that is basically how it works. @ Jo - Keep opening the mesh program from time to time. Eventually, things will start to click. Blender is free, and it is as good or better than 3ds Max, and Maya. Granted, it's difficult to wrap your head around. I'm not all that proficient in Blender, but I will be learning it more and more over the next couple of years. Why? Because I think it really is the future of 3D. I just can't get over the UI and controls differences. I'm too comfortable in 3ds Max, right now. @ Prok - I have grown up in 3d, right here inside SL. Just like many others. And, just like many others, I've made this all my profession. Many of us went from knowing nothing to now being contracted by gaming companies. For me, I knew this was possible, as animation basically works the same across all platforms. When mesh came, I was happy because I knew that builders in SL would now have the same opportunities that I have. When I goto other 3D creation forums and people ask what my background is, I proudly give my SL credentials. I do this because I know, even if they don't, that there are creators in SL that can blow away most of them. To me, SL is the platform for 3D creation, and brings a whole other side to being a creator. And that is that people can actually use what you create. Now, people might look at those of us that love 3D and want to learn everything about it as being elitist, or a separate class than prim builders, but I don't see it because I started from almost zero. I learned just like every1 else here in SL. To me, that is the beauty of it all. Some1 that knows nothing can come into SL, push some prims together, find their niche, and open a business. Yeah, the day mesh was released, any dream of living off pushing prims together faded. That's life tho. Things change. If you want to stay on the ride and keep enjoying, you must accept that change. I love to help people learn to build. With PRIMS! I watch as newbies are amazed that they build something, or even just editted 1 of my AOs. I watched as they start to realise the magic that is SL. It's all still there. I still use mostly prims. We are all 1, not separate. And the best part of all, most of us are willing to help others as much as we can. I just don't see the divide.

Hey Prok! Good to see you still around and kicking. I completely and totally agree with hearing the CEO speak at the birthday event. It was really 1 of the few events that I looked forward to every year. I would have even come to a convention, eventually, just to see the speeches and presentations live. Sadly, those will probably never happen again either. Of course, I have to defend the creativity and mesh parts, as I truely think they are misconceptions. There are over 3 million items for sale on the Marketplace. Now, I have no idea how LL came up with this 10% figure, but even if they are correct, that's a fricken super high number, not a low number. Think of it like this, if you have 10 friends in SL, 1 of them is likely a major supplier of something in SL. The bottom line is, almost every single person that sticks around in SL, has numerous creative moments. If you want to think of designing a room or putting together a garden as "amateur creativity of decoration", I guess that is your opinion, but I don't think of it like that, especially designing an RP sim. Heck, like I said earlier, even I buy items instead of making them. Why make something when some1 else already has. So, even I, the elitist, that knows all the programs, am reduced to a lowly consumer and decorator. Thank god, as I'd never want to make everything I wanted or needed. I have enough trouble keeping up with animation work. Making a mesh in 3ds Max, or any other mesh creation program, is almost exactly the same as making an item in SL. There is little to no difference, essentially. The same way that you would make a bicycle in SL, is how you would make a bicycle in 3ds Max, even down to holding shift and moving the item to create a copy of it. Creating a UV map for the mesh, that is different, and LL's convoluted Land Impact system makes mesh different in reguards to creation. It's not that complicated. It's actually pretty basic. It all just looks intimidating. Like I said earlier in this thread, making a mesh in 3ds Max is 1 small step up from making a prim object in SL. So many focus on mesh not being created in SL, which to me is kind of goofy to focus on, as everything, besides prims, is created outside of SL and brought in. I don't see the difference. I should probably mention the differences between a mesh created in a program, and the prims that are created in SL and reimported into SL as a mesh. Of course, I haven't ever used it, but I understand a little about the concept. You don't get all the benefits of an actual mesh, you'll be using more verticies than is required, and no benefit with texturing. An SL cube, for example, has many more verticies than a normal mesh cube. This is because it needs those extra verticies to be able to make that cube into the various shapes that we can in SL. I'm not against any1 using the tool to make meshes, but every1 should understand that it's not efficient just because it is a mesh. That goes for all mesh tho, as a creator can easily make a mesh that is much more inefficient than a prim build.

Perrie Juran wrote: I guess overall one of my concerns is that the new creation tools, because of the learning curve involved, that it may serve to discourage more people than to encourage them at this present time. 7 years ago, the only thing I knew about 3D gaming came from the Editor that came with Far Cry. I didn't know anything at all about animation. Then, I found SL. Doing animation for SL happens all outside of SL and is brought in. For this reason, importing meshes isn't much different to me. I learned how to make meshes because I heard LL talking about it, just like I learned how to make animations before that. All the information is online. SL is like a massive introduction into the basics of 3D creation. Every single 3D program has a set of primitive to start with, almost exactly like SL. This is why, in some areas, you won't see much difference between some prim and mesh objects, especially when sculpties are brought into the picture. What people don't see, is what is going on behind the scenes, and how much more efficient that mesh is over the prim version. With mesh, a creator has total control over everything. Just creating good UV maps for meshes helps to lower the resources needed to render it. The only reason that I understand all this is because of the Far Cry game and how everything was made in there. I edited lots of clothing in the game and it was crazy how efficiently made each texture map was. Most of the lag issues in SL are directly linked to inefficiencies in the creations that populate it. Some are ridiculously extreme too, because people can. I agree that their are some beautiful things that were made with prims and sculpties, but it doesn't help to reduce lag by saving those old things. Plus, new things will come. My point is tho, that mesh is necessary to cut down on the lag and resources every1 is using. Prims, by their very nature promote inefficiency. My other point is that everything happens in steps that are easy to learn step by step. Learning SL creation is 1 step, and it makes learning 3DS Max, Maya, or Blender easier. I first got a copy of 3DS Max a few years before I found SL. It was massively intimidating. I was clueless, no matter how many tutorials I did. It was all just too much new info. When I broke it out again after hearing LL suggest mesh was coming. Like magic, I was making meshes in no time at all. Ok, yeah, I'm more of an animator, but SL has now brought me into the whole 3D metaverse, and now I sell digital items in just about every 3D market possible, with more opportunities daily. It's hard to keep track now. SL is now a gateway to the professional 3D community. I really don't look at it like the pros are going to walk all over us. I look at it like the pros better watch out for their 3D competitors in SL. It wouldn't surprise me at all to someday see mesh creation tools in SL. That would make things really interesting. I'm not sure I would prefer that as a creator, over 3ds Max, but it would be fun to manipulate them inworld. How would the UV map be made tho? Hmmm.