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Ann Otoole

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Blog Comments posted by Ann Otoole

    Next Steps for Mesh Import

    I can assure you there is going to be a heavy need for modelers that can take those rather nice castle models I have seen (200,000+ vertices/polys) and break them into parts to meet the limits for import into SL and then reconstruct them on role play simulators or private parcels. That is still less than most elaborate builds in SL in terms of ktris/fr. And it is backed up to disk. It isn't actually a "buy and sell" situation. It is a someone bought it, sent you the file, you took it apart, and gave them the parts back in SL. For non commercial purposes.

    Then there are architectural columns. A column is a column. It has one of several common style tops. Yes people will take a shortcut and say they made it. It will be literally impossible or financially not worth it to prove otherwise. And weapons. A broad sword is a broad sword. A glock pistol is a glock pistol. etc. etc.

    Honestly most people will be so enamored with the new shoes and boots that they are not going to care about anything else for a while.

    Next Steps for Mesh Import

    how about a linkset exporter and it gets converted to a reasonable facsimile in an object format and you polish it up in blender and texture using whatever 3D texturing tool floats your boat? gives the in world lego fun and gets to a mesh approximation.

    Still won't be as good as knowing what you arew doing in a real modeling tool. but people are in SL for fun aren't they?

    I took the advice others earlier and got into the free program for autodesk since I qualified. After a few months of studies i should be able to do better than I can now stumbling through the blender interface without a cane.

    Next Steps for Mesh Import

    Yea. I'm sure the lawyers of all the renderosity artists are going to love LL for this. Since LL knows what renderosity is and what all is there then it will be interesting to say the least.

    I.e.; all LL needs to do is not allow avatar meshes. At least until they have a review system in place to reject ripoffs before uploaded meshes can be used.

    Next Steps for Mesh Import

    
    

    Have you used in-world sculpty editors?  ...

    Yes. 2 different ones. Sculpt Studio is easy to use. The other one is easier but has severe texture issues so it is only good for basic metal items. I don't see anyone building autocad inside SL but for basic shapes with more detail? sure.

    As for tpv issues? it is a quagmire and I bet LL regrets their decisions now. Why should LL worry about a bunch of malcontent amateur crackers that sling insults and dung at every decision LL makes? Personally I think LL needs to do some better checking of these viewers. Actually LL needs to do some cleanup of what all libraries it's own viewer loads. I am curious as to what an SL viewer from anyone needs with the remote access dialer and remote procedure call libs. And SLv2 loads openjpeg.dll too. Whatever. I have no rooster in that cock fight. But I expect mesh to be a long drawn out process.

    Next Steps for Mesh Import

    how trivial is it to convert the code that gens a sculptie to a mesh? I'm pretty sure in world sculpt tools will be rebranded as mesh tools overnight and then enhanced to add more capabilities.

    But it still doesn't mean anything will happen overnight. Mesh is fairly moot until supported in all viewers. How long will that take? 2 years?

    Next Steps for Mesh Import

    Fine. Maybe it is time for the people that are being preyed upon to take it to the FTC. Ask me if I care if the geek castle comes tumbling down.

     

    Oh, and btw, you kind of admitted there was clandestine financial incentive and knowledge that there would be an unfair financial advantage there in your rant. Kind of proves the point.

    Next Steps for Mesh Import

    BTW there is, or should be, a lot of time before mesh hits general release. All of the third party viewers that plan to stay in business will have to support mesh fully before anyone will call it general release. Trying to sell mesh to 150,000 tpv users that can'e rez them is kind of dumb. So let's hope some training resources that are superior to home videos made by people with no background in training and forget to mention how their UI got the way it is will be identified soon. I.e.; the training will have to start at zero and go all the way through everything. Not just show a customized UI already set up and a few operations with a wink at the end when it says it is easy. Personally I have yet to see an SL related tutorial involving lightwave that makes any sense because they have altered their configuration and don't bother mentioning how or why.

    Next Steps for Mesh Import

    ...

    As to the other questions:

    • Why should scripting support be available? You know, they could make quite a bit of money if they charged developers for scripting support. Either that, or they would drive the rest of the developers out to InWorlds and other such.
    • Why should LL train creators now. When have they actually trained people who didn't work for them in the past?
    • Please, explain more fully that last remark about anti-trust. I am not a lawyer, so I do not really understand what a trust is, or how this could be construed as one. Please, could you be a bit more explicit?
    • Scripting support means in the same vein as sculpties. Supposedly it will be there. I don't like assumptions. LL needs to state what will be present at roll out and what will be considered for future enhancements that can currently be foreseen or considered.
    • LL would not be training. Just identifying and vetting valid training resources. I have never seen any valid training for Blender. Most of what my limited knowledge about this area of training is indicates you can drop $150K on a degree at Full Sail. Well no thanks. The local training services around here do a good job covering Microsoft and network security but I have never seen any local schools supporting this "3D Modeling using free software" type of training at all. And, it is specific, so we need all the details so we can choose the correct training. Then there will be people inventing training in or around SL and those people will have no credentials or any reason for anyone to be paying them for training whatsoever so it is going to be en era of carpet baggers taking advantage of people trying to learn. LL needs to step right to the plate and put a block squarely in the way of ripoff artists and state who and what is considered valid training *for LL's specific limited version of what LL calls "mesh"*.
    • Trusts as in rigging the economy in any form or fashion to place select persons at a competitive advantage. I.e.; all mesh beta participants would need to incur a 6 month or longer delay before they could engage in mesh related commerce while the rest of the residency gets up to speed. The excuse that LL supposedly announced this a year ago is invalid. It was hinted at and then downplayed and suggested it would never happen. Meanwhile the beta participants knew better and now have an unfair trade advantage. What LL does not want is a few thousand people filing complaints at ftc.gov causing the government to become involved and initiating regulation of this economy thus taking control out of LL's hands. Scoffers may scoff all they want. I don't care. There is enough tax revenue potential in and around SL during a lean tax revenue time period to warrant significant congressional interest. I do not want the government taking control of this economy and doing to it what they have done to everything else so LL needs to take the initiative and level the field before this much needed mesh capability is made generally available.

    Next Steps for Mesh Import

    Myth? Maybe for some who couldn't cut it or stupidly thought life in business was fair. Or maybe those poor sots that thought people would be different in SL.

    Fact is exactly nobody is going to pay attention to your polyanna calls. LL made their minds up and are proceeding. No matter what happens.

    And the fine print has not been revealed yout. mesh in SL might be so constrined and not flexi that it is nothing but glorified sculpts that look better when they eventually rez. Since so many refuse to use anything but 1.x viewers unlikely to ever render a mesh then your concerns may be overstated by a vast distance.

    Next Steps for Mesh Import

    Anshe has her own grid and is a direct competitor with Linden Lab. Something Linden Lab should comprehend the associated factors that are normally blatant and obvious to any capitalist in business.

    But that is a different topic.

    My opinion is there is no reason to be too upset over this mesh announcement since the fine print has not been revealed yet. I'm waiting for the prim count factors, if LL is going to slam avatar complexity to force obsolesce the existing SL economy, or what. LL has not shown the full mesh hand yet. Just one card.

    Next Steps for Mesh Import

    
    

    ...

    The sagging numbers began in March of this year.  Nothing special happened that year in the world economy.  Gas prices didn't soar.  Food prices didn't skyrocket.  McDonalds didn't close 1/3 of its businesses.  The only notable thing that happened was in SL, the current TOS with all its weasel words that dropped the word Own from SL completely was put into effect.  My thinking is that people watched and waited as more and more fun was sucked out of SL.  Finally, any chance at profit was sucked out as well, and that was the last straw for a lot of people.  And as friends and islands vanished, more and more people gave up and quit.  We are now well past the cusp of people staying in SL because their friends are here.  They aren't here anymore, so they are taking off and taking their money with them.

    ...

    Actually the Google Search Appliance was rolled out and economic catastrophe ensued. It took 2 months before LL admitted there was an issue. It has taken this long for the search team to correct major debilitating defects such as new parcels, parcels changed hands, and other parcels not being indexed. And much much more. Only time will tell if the SL search ever improves back to something that can fuel an economy instead of utterly destroying an economy as we witnessed. I.e.; if search is broken or rigged to ensure only sub par merchants are visible then the quality people quit. Period.

    Of course now search woes turn to the new marketplace and yet another LL "vision" of what search relevance means that all the customers vehemently disagree with. All but those few pegged to the top of the results even when they have no keywords, features, or enhancements, or any reason at all to be in the results.

    Kill or manipulate search and you kill the economy. Kill the economy and people stop paying to be here. People stop paying to be here and the grid contracts. The grid contracts and LL loses revenue. LL loses revenue and the layoffs commence. This cycle will not be corrected until LL casts off their existing belief system and comes to comprehend it is the customers that decide LL's and SL's fate.

    Next Steps for Mesh Import

    Given the info that is now coming out about costs to upload, time for rezzing, and lack of motility/flexi then I would say people are freaking out over nothing. Looks like all mesh will be is static components with a little more detail than sculpts but take a lot longer to rez. No good for hair or avatar accessories. Pretty useless for anything but some build parts and static avatars that cannot be modified. In other words a wash. Probably good for griefer avatars. Trolls and all. But not many people care about interesting anthromorphs. Only fur art style stuff. Might be ok for some of that. Except for the long rez time and cost to upload part.

    May as well wait until all the real info comes out about it before judging the SLocalypse has arrived.

    Next Steps for Mesh Import

    What happened in the shoe sector mattered not one iota even to the major houses that had textures ripped right off of catalog web sites. I seriously doubt much will happen. On turbo squid you also have to wonder about provenance. On renderosity they tend to care more and in their forums there has been a lot of ill will expressed towards second life because of the rampant IP ripping. The smart ones there will simply open a store here. The schadenfreude harvesting will be voluminous.

    I want to know what all else this is going to bring with it in terms of possible content destruction and new limits on creativity. The idea LL should support "computers made of wood" is preposterous. Can't afford a real computer? Go get a real job. Or stop smoking weed and cigs, drinking, and eating pizza and fast food for 2 months and save your money up and buy one. As it is we have to make videos of our stuff just to prove to people that yes the packages they are looking at really do look like that rezzed in world. Just not on their crappy old apple or tandy.

    What else is lurking in this new era of capabilities? Why isn't LL slamming people with mono compiled scripts and preventing them from teleporting if they have any mono compiles attached? LL needs to be working on existing problems instead of piling new stuff on to add to the problems. Oh wait just force windlight on. That will fix everything. and clear cache too.

    Next Steps for Mesh Import

    I replied to the question/request.

     

    Anyway it is a moot point to discuss mesh import until LL reveals the mysterious prim cost formula. Based on what I have read so far there will be little to no incentive to use mesh for much beyond making better sculpts.

    Case in point 1: A really detailed mesh avatar is likely to be a horrendous render cost and incur the wrath of ARC nazis across the grid. Where is the gain exactly?

    Case in point 2: That elaborate detailed fantastic one mesh building is fine. Except you can only fit one in a region. And nothing else.

    So LL needs to tell us what the vertice limits are and prevent the rumor mill from crunching it all up.

    Next Steps for Mesh Import

    AC3D supposedly just added COLLADA. 80 dollar program last time I looked. 2 week demo.

    I tested it with sculpts a ways back and it was minutes from install to uploading a golden "nugget" lol. So with a few hours you could make something with it if you have the hand skills to do it.

    Next Steps for Mesh Import

    
    

    ... Although, that's the thing I'm still waiting to see, is the vertice/prim ratio.  Not sure why LL keeps beating around the bush about it.

    Because that is what is going to wreak destruction of existing content so LL is going to try to slip it in the back quietly?

    Next Steps for Mesh Import

    ...

    I'd suggest LL LL should adapt an iStockphoto style approval process where meshes are manually approved as copyright-okay or not before upload & all meshes will have to be tracable to the real life ID of the creator.

    Some process like this is the only way to protect original content creator's rights.

    Who will provide oversight to ensure no illegal trusts are formed?

    What happens when a rip is approved and the real author shows up and gets rejected? First in wins is a new law?

    Next Steps for Mesh Import

    if they are staying where they are today then nobody will AR them because they can do as they please in their residences and in mature location, etc. It isn't banned. (Outside of G). And sporting exaggerated avatars that are clothed is not banned in G areas either.

    There will be a huge market for this stuff. And it will flood the blogs and that is what SL will become known for. Embrace it. Let the ... things... that suddenly started thinking they were competition to SL because they inherited a group of banned people become even more marginalized.

    If you want money then go where the money is. If LL doesn't want sex in SL then they can ban it and watch 90% of their business evaporate and go ahead and close.

    I'm just pointing out that, while some are heralding a new age of sketchup buildings inhabited by violin playing creatures with dangling and swinging proboscises, the dangling and swangin is actually going to be something else and will be exceedingly popular.

    If that is not what LL wants then LL needs to go back and rethink mesh.

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