Cube Republic

This would be good for lower LODs where folk can't really make out much detail. 2nd LOD is usually easy because it's just dissolving loops which is easy if a neat flow has been kept.

Maybe this was the case in 1975, but now DJing can be more like music production. Also it is an art form, keeping people dancing, producing beats on the fly. When you play a musical instrument, you're taking some notation and playing someone elses music, is this hammering a nail into the wall?

I use a combination of the following maps in photoshop to compile my materials. Base colour Ambient occlusion set to multiply - usually 80-100% Concavity also set to multiply - around 40% Convexity set to screen - around 20% - this requires a light touch This is flattened (to avoid seams) exported out and sometimes I then take it to bitmap to material and have a tinker in there with the roughness controls. I then export the roughness map and use that to modulate the gloss via the normal maps alpha channel. I never bake on lights, Why some folk think this looks good is beyond me. Take any of those objects into a scene where the light isn't the same, and they just look odd and out of place and make the avatar appear full bright. It's so 2012, plus it's a lag fest as often the smallest build contain multiple baked 1024 textures. Edit: I bake most of my maps from high poly mesh made in zbrush or blender Edit 2: I use knald for baking, this is well worth the 100 bucks and never lets me down, but there's also 'handplane' which is free

Old prim build

I use shotpacker add-on

Doesn't unity handle it this way Animats?

I've been tempted, it looks very good. Have you got the free watermarked version?

I saw a 16k tri flower the other day which was no bigger than .125 meters tall. Also grass completely made from tri-polys, which was weird because from just a meter the tips went into sub-pixel broken black lines that looked terrible. Of course these fine works of mesh came with instructions on how to turn your graphics up to 8 in the debug menu. The attitude of the seller, given that they consider themselves a professional is that linden lab is somehow silly for wanting LOD and optimized mesh. Can you imagine a large installation of this kind of mesh, a field of poly grass would grind most machines into the ground.

Take a look at some of my plants in-world. I create a bounding box with triangles crushed down to single lines, then keep the models inside these frames so the meshes don't go funky as they LOD because I often use a billboard for this.

I hope you don't think I'm being an enormous pain in the ass saying this, but your model would benefit from some supporting loops at the junctions of the cross beams, etc. If using blender, Just select the loop and hit ctrl B to bevel, then adjust from the T panel. The shading will be a lot more defined this way.

I think those paths were the ones from the SL15B birthday sims.

It's my belief that they treat the world this way because they need to be able to cater to the lowest common denominator. A lot of people make content as a hobby and perhaps don't have a background in creating video game assets. They wish for their builds to look good for them and don't consider the wider implications of texture bandwidth . While I'm not condoning inefficient building practices, it is what it is.

The bounding boxes don't match

You need to make sure normals are set to openGL in substance painter. I don't believe this is the default. You can get some good results in second life using the alpha channels in the normal and specular map to enhance the look of your models. I've had some nice results using the concavity in the alpha channel of the normal map.

If you wish to get super efficient, and some elements of your builds are symmetrical, you can mirror 2 or 4 ways. Think of a table top, an arch or other symmetrical objects. Often this gives a crisper result because you can effectively double the texel density without adding more textures. It's good to add a bleed edge around your islands if this method is used to avoid seams as the texture mip-maps.

It means that you have no LOD meshes present and your mesh is composed of multiple materials. As far as I know , under certain conditions the uploader won't generate any LODs using fewer triangles because it wants to keep all the materials present for each LOD . I only know this because occasionally I upload test meshes without LODs and encounter this behavior. The only way to get lower land impact is to create the LOD meshes yourself rather than letting the uploader make them for you. You will need to make sure each LOD contains all the materials in the exact same order or the it will most likely fail. You could look at this Youtube LOD tutorial for second life for starters.

Bit of tape over the monitor

A) You don't make models with an engine. Rather an engine is a run-time environment to display meshes in and make games etc. If you don't want to spend money, blender 3D is free. B) You can texture your model any number of ways. You can paint directly on the model in blender for example. Or you can paint textures in photoshop. Likewise textures can be baked in your 3D package of choice. The list is endless. C) Depends on the 3D package. Again, blender and a proprietary system called 'Avastar' are often use for second life. D) second life official or 32bit Firestorm if you wish to include physics calculations. 64bit Firestorm will not do this and lead to all sorts of funky li if you wish to use physics. Side note - join groups in second life 'blender avastar' comes to mind.

It's a godsend for me as I make landscaping items which really take a hit when enlarged. It's not that I use a gazillion triangles, plus I make custom LOD, it's just the way it works.

yes, the amount owed will be taken from your us$ balance first

You're correct, cash your lindens out to your account and leave the US$ balance there without transfering to paypal.

Thanks for another oppotunity to ask questions. Will there be, or are there any plans to introduce animated mesh into second life? From my limited technical knowledge I'm pretty sure this may well save bandwidth. A use example might be a pet that has animated limbs rather than multiple meshes that use alpha swap for faux movement. Surely a single mesh containing animation data would be lighter on bandwidth than streaming multipe objects?

Hi Ebbe, A few questions regarding Sansar. With next year not being long away, when will we see the first open beta sign ups for the new platform, and when will we see some more screenies. I've read from you that there will be 'KMs of land'. Could you expand on this please, as given the scale Second Life runs at, 8 regions would be KMs of land. Part of the magic of Second Life is how it evolved oragnically and communities such as Blake Sea happened. Regions can be added expodentially, allowing the community to get larger with time. Will this be possible in Sansar? Finally with machinima being a popular past time in Second Life, are there any plans to incorporate machinima features or tools into Sansar interface. Thank you for your time, Cube Republic.

When will we expect to see the first screen shots of sansar? I've heard there's a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge? Also I'd love to see something like an interactive changing window, so clothing can be tried on in real time, much like the avatar customisation GUIs in other softwares. For example, one could scroll through tops, trousers, shoes etc. Mechants could follow a naming convention and supply small thumbnail images to populate the interface.

handy thanks