Porky Gorky

Yes I am loving the freedom that mesh brings, have been struggling with getting my models fully optimized for SL but learning more tricks every day and feel like I am finally getting there. I took most of last year off from creation so missed the open beta and a lot of other info. Just playing catch up now. It's all groovy. :smileyvery-happy:

TatianaDokuchic Varriale wrote: I was actually glad that all my doors are stand alone since that means I can optimize the other linksets that don't contain scripts using Convex Hull. Oh yes, I hadn't thought of it that way. I guess keeping windows and anything else that has a script in as separate linksets is the way to go. I will have to test out the script weight question when I am next inworld. If adding more than one script doesn't increase the LI it would be worth linking the doors to the windows, tp's and anything else scripted so you have a minimal number of linksets containing scripts. With the bonus of being able to convert standard prims types to convex hull we should avoid linking any sculpts into a convex hull linkset. When creating a hybrid mesh/sculpt/standard prim build I think segregating the different types of "prims" into their own linksets is the way to go, all the while trying to isolate any prims with scripts in so they can be grouped together.

Bloody Apez, thieving bunch of low life scum sucking arse clowns. I should have just got the word "sucker" tattooed on my forehead. I got ripped of when with Ginko did a bunk, and then walked right into the same thing 5 years later with Apez. I'm not bitter :matte-motes-evil:

Something I have been thinking allot about this past week is how I am going to handle documenting and explaining to customers the LI changes that occur when you package a mesh item in an auto aligner such as Rez Faux. When I package up a build in Rez Faux I need to put a positioning script in the root of every linkset. This is obviously going to increase the LI for every linkset. All the linkset's then go in the anchor prim. When the end user rezzes the build it will come out of the anchor with the higher LI as the linksets still contain all the positioning scripts. Once the end user positions the build and clicks the 'save' button in the dialogue menu, then all the positioning scripts will be automatically deleted, thus lowering the LI. So there will be 2 LI figures customers need to take into account, The "out of the box" LI and "final LI" once the position has been saved. Where posible I will do away with auto aligners and just try and link the mesh parts together, but I like making big builds so not allways possible. Being able to make our own physics shapes is helping as I was forever using phantom linkets on sculpts which obviously can't be linked into the rest of build. I need to think about doors too. MIne are all unlinked as i've allways used auto aligners, I don't know how to link doors to a build and make them open and close properly but I am sure it can be done. Does anyone know exactly how scripts increase LI? Does a large script cost more than a small script? Does the quality of the scripting have any bearing? Or is it just a set weight per script?

Oh, I really don't think it's a good idea to let the Lindens anwhere near google with their track record of search engines. They will likely break the whole interwebz.

Thanks very much again Maeve. I visited the build and read your tutorial on how to create the floor, all very informative. I am definitely going to incorporate the idea of modular interiors when designing builds. I still can't see how I could effectively create a 100% mesh exterior for a build of that size without pushing the LI through the roof . As someone in the thread mentioned, splitting the whole exterior into modules would result in them appearing at different LOD's as you moved around the outside. I definitely think there would be room for using standard prims here for the main flat surface of the walls then use mesh for everything else like doors windows and any other smaller features. Definitely lots of experimentation to be done I think. It's great. I feel excited about building content here again. After nearly 7 years of building in SL it had become routine and restrictive. Sculpts offered a certain level of liberation but I always felt I had one hand tied behind my back throughout the design process. I was also worried that the prefab market would be flooded with 3D models "acquired" from the internet, but clearly you can't just upload any old house model into SL and expect to sell it competitively. Those models are going to need to be pulled apart and optimized which is allot of work and in my experience content thieves don't like doing the work bit. I am pleased about that too :smileyhappy:

Maeve Balfour wrote: I hope this helps - have fun! :matte-motes-smile: Your post was incredibly helpful, thank you. WIth Drongles technical explanation of how LOD scales (with pretty shiny graphs to boot) and your advice on how best to take advantage of this scaling, I now have a completely new plan on how to break down and import buildings into SL. I normally like to use allot of large open spaces in my builds, especially the modern ones which sometimes need to feel light and spacious. I now realise that the house models I have right now are not suitable for SL without allot of adaptation as they were built for animation and far too 'heavy' for SL. I think for SL I am going to need to plan interiors allot more intelligently and try and guide the camera as an AV moves around the building, so as to not expose the camera to anything that is too far away. I have a question about this part of your post. Maeve Balfour wrote: IF occluded by the outside structure, you can be REALLY savage on their subsequent LOD2-3-4 meshes - simple flat triangles (one for each material) are often all that are needed I understand that you need to have the same number of materials on all 4 LOD's, but when you say "simple flat triangles" do you just mean you need to create an object that has enough faces to accommodate the number of materials/textures used? If so, does this need to be about the same size as the main mesh or can it be tiny and hidden as the intention is it wont ever be seen at lower LOD's? Thanks again for taking time to post your advice and I would love to be a nosy parker and have a look at your mesh builds some time if you are not apposed to visitors. :smileytongue:

Thanks Drongle, appreciate the detailed explanation. I shall bookmark this now for future reference. :smileyhappy:

Thanks Charlar and Med. I need to take a step back i think. I've been trying to get a big house into SL that I built for a non SL project and have been alarmed at LI costs. Over this past week I've been learning lots about LOD's and opimising my models but i've clearly been overlooking simple things like the physics. I stupidly asusmed that as I know how to 3d Model I could just import into SL with minimum effort. More the fool me :smileyhappy: I shall now stop and do lots more testing as each new thing I learn seem to help bring my LI's down. Then i'll start on small items and work my way up to large. Out of interest do you think it would be better to upload large models in smaller parts? i.e. a building that has say a 30m x 20m footprint, should i bring that in as a single mesh or maybe 6 meshes each 10m x 10m. I'm interested purely from an LI point of view here. Thanks.

Oh. yeah that makes perfect sense :smileyhappy: I assumed it was uploading with no physics as the drop down menu on the physics tab said "choose one". Although why I assumed it had no physics is a mystery as I am stood next to the bloody things and couldn't walk through them. OK we'll put this down to a blonde moment and say no more about it. ETD this sudden realization is really going to help me get my prim counts down lol. I shall start making my own custom physics boxes.

I've not really played with physics yet but noticed some oddness when uploading some mesh last night so did a little test and am really confused now. So I have imported the same .dae file twice. The first time I didnt change anything in the uploader settings, I let the LOD tab auto calculate the levels then imported. That is the plant on the left. The LI is 20 Then I uploaded the .dae again. Again I let the uploader LOD tab calculate itself, but this time I went into the physics tab and on Step one: level of detail I selected 'lowest'. Then imported. This is the plant on the right. The LI is 6 So the only difference between the two uploads was the right hand one had physics LOD set to lowest and that reduced the LI by 14! I don't understand, If anything I was expecting the LI to go up when I added physics. Now I am completely confused. BTW I repeated the exact same test with the same results so wasn't a random fluke. Someone please explain to me why adding low level physics reduces the LI by over two thirds? Cheers.

Faye Feldragonne wrote: Does anyone know why *Skyboxes* get listed on Market Place under *Building Componants?* Just curious because it's a lot of them, not just someone who liisted wrong. Hope everyone is having a good start to their weekend. As far as I know, prefab buildings have always been listed under building components. So I would guess you can thank Apotheus SIlverman for that who opened SL exchange in 2004. When LL purchased the site in 2009 they left that category structure in place. The first time I ever listed a prefab must have been Dec 2004 and I remember being baffled at the time by the building component category. Still am to this day.

You might want to check the stability of your internet connection, I remember having a similar issue when uploading to Blue Mars a few years ago, Turned out I had bad packet loss on both upload and download due to old antiquated cable running from my house to the main cable line. A friend of mine had the same problem a few weeks back when trying to stream live a BF3 game. His cable company just upgraded the cable and his connection is perfect now. There are websites and free tools out there that can test your connection stability over a sustained period. One thought is, if you are using a wireless connection then try eliminating that and plugging in. If you are already using a wired connection then maybe try uploading on a different connecting altogether and see if that helps.

Madeliefste Oh wrote: Unfortunely he has chosen just to have a few around. BOOO! He's so selfish! Maybe if he spent less time helping people on the forum and spent more time perfecting human cloning & shrinking we could really get this project off the ground. :smileyhappy:

Pamela Galli wrote: This is good news. I have been heavily promoting mesh (which Nacy and I made in collaboration) to my customer group since Phoenix was mesh enabled. I see some mesh promotion in the trending feeds. :-) Have you released any 100% mesh prefab buildings yet Pam?

Good question and answers, I noticed the exact same thing, I've always zoomed right in to check the alignment of 2 prims, especially ones that have been cut as I learned long ago that you can't trust the numbers and everything needs to be perfect. I just assumed I had borked up my viewer settings as I've not been able to zoom in as far for quite a while now. I think Chosen Few should render up a few hundreds mini copies of himself so we can all carry one around in our pockets, It would make life so much easier. Would be more useful than Google. Porky "how on earth am I going to network my washing machine to my router?" Chosen "Well, you simply have to ....(insert ridiculously concise technical explanation here)...." Porky "Gee Chosen, thanks, your amazing!!!!!" Chosen "Yes. Yes I am" :smileywink:

Medhue Simoni wrote: The only person that thinks this is a mesh vs sculpty thing, is you. I'm gonna use whatever is the best to use. Having said that, I will likely never make another sculpty. Why waste my time? Besides getting more prim savings with mesh, I can use mesh in any world, and any program, and it is the exact same. I could even sell it on IMVU, BM, Unity, and Dazstudio. There are probably more, and all the SL related worlds. Toy is not the only person who thinks this is a "mesh vs sculptly" thing. When creating content for commercial gain in SL the number one factor for allot of merchants is prim count. Im now at a point where I have designed a large 100% mesh build in Max, it will fit snuggly on a 4096sqm plot. Once I import it in with "acceptable" LOD levels, the LI is outrageous when compared to a build of that size made with standard prims/sculpts. After spending weeks trying to optimize the model in Max to lower the LI, I am at the point now where I'm breaking the mesh model down into smaller segments, removing lots of parts with the intention of replacing them with sculpt and standard prims once the build is put together inworld. After months of trial and error I have to agree with Toy, large scale mesh cannot compete commercially with sculpts and prims. Im sure the 100% mesh version of my build would sell to a few people, even taking into account the huge LI. However I need to justify spending 50 + hours on designing a prefab and I justify that by creating content that will appeal to as many people as possible and will sell over and over again. Prim count/LI has to be a major consideration with any products I release as that is a major factor that drives consumer spending. From a creation and artistic point of view Mesh is a godsend to SL and will be fantastic if LL manage to balance the cost of it correctly. However, my continued existence within SL is driven purely by profit, and in its current form, Mesh is only commercially viable for clothing, Av's and smallish objects IMO. I would consider any large 100% mesh build that I released right now to be niche product and would not expect it to sell as well as a hybrid mesh/sculpt/standard prim equivalent as it just cannot compete on prim count or LI or PE or whatever they are calling it this week.

stickam wrote: everyone complains about my outfit.... I've been here 8 years and I still look like a noob so I wouldn't worry. Just shove a paper bag on your head and get a freebie outfit from the marketplace. You'll be fine. Welcome to SL :smileyhappy:

Lucinda Bulloch wrote: It seems that is the way all is going, will be worst when people dont need land for the xstreet boxes and all is in our inventorys, they must know this. I don't think Direct Delivery will make any noticable difference, it only takes a couple of prims to host boxes. I doubt people are keeping land in-world right now just to host their MB's, if they want to close up shop they will just rent MB hosting space or borrow a couple of prims from a friend for now. I can't see the abonment of land increasing when they make DD mandatory. However the existing problems of yet another useless inworld search engine, Global financial crisis and a buggy laggy platform that has barely ever been promoted to the outside world will continue to drive in-world business to the marketplace and cost LL in tier. No idea if that is the reason that Duggy is giving up his sim, but whatever the reason I am sad to see him go, I've visited a few times and like your style. Duggy Style.....:smileyhappy: Best of luck to you.

Chosen Few wrote: Porky Gorky wrote: I don't hit the enter key after tabbing You never used to have to do that, just tabbing would copy the numbers across. For what it's worth, I'm actually glad they made that change. It helps prevent accidental edits. It also brings SL's behavior more into alignment with how tabbing and entry work in a lot of other programs. While it makes deliberate take edits one keystroke longer, which might seem less efficient if you're used to the old way, it does actually make more logical sense this way. Logically, simply tabbing from field to field shouldn't change any of the data in the fields, even if multiple objects are selected. The Tab key is just for moving the cursor. Entering data is what the Enter key is for. The tab key only serves as an entry tool, if it's pressed after new text has been entered into a field. Yes, I agree, I often used to make editorial mistakes by being a bit TAB happy. TAB ENTER makes much more sense. I really cannot believe that I have missed this for all these years. Seriously, I have spent thousands of hours building in SL, I even worked full time in SL, building custom regions between 2007 and 2010 and in all that time it didn't occur to me to try TAB ENTER. It beggers belief !

I spend 95% of my time in-world building, I find TPV's to be much more efficient for a variety reasons, free temp texture uploads (which have saved me thousands of L$) and more precise prim sizing and positioning to name just a couple.

Alicia Sautereau wrote: I think this might be an issue with the viewer your using I`m used to building like that aswell and just tested it to be 200% sure and it works (select all identical faces -> select pre-aligned face tabs+enter) That last word in your post is the winner. I don't hit the enter key after tabbing You never used to have to do that, just tabbing would copy the numbers across. Oh well, it's only been 5 or 6 years that this problem has been bugging me. Thanks for solving it :matte-motes-big-grin: This reminds me of when I first started building and selling prefabs in 2004. I was in business for over 6 months before I suddenly realised that you could edit the properties on a select face of a prim . This was like a revelation to me. I seem to be a master of missing the bleeding obvious! Thanks very much.

Fair enough, I guess I shall remain annoyed. I have a completely unrelated question that I am going to bung in this thread to save starting another. I've been meaning to ask this question for years. I select a prim, then shift select a second prim, then click on the texture tab. This displays the texture properties for the 2nd prim selected. In the the old days you used to be able to highlight the first number in the repeats field then just click tab repeatedly, cycling through all the fields on the texture tab. This would then apply all the properties from the 2nd prim to the first prim selected (repeats, rotation, offsets etc). This was a very quick way of copying the texture properties from one prim to another. Nowadays I need to copy and paste the data from each field individually on the texture tab, or type the numbers in manually. It's annoying! So is this a client side problem, am I just missing something or using the wrong viewer? Or did LL just break this function somewhere along the line? Cheers.

Greetings. Here is an issue that has been bothering me lately When using shift ctrl on a prim it brings up the bounding boxes (dunno if that's the technical name) that can be dragged to change the size of the prim. Here is a pic of this being done on a prim that has the dimensions 0.5m x 0.5m x 0.1 Here is a pic of this being done on a prim that has the dimensions 0.5m x 30m x 0.1 As you can see the bounding boxes in the second image are huge compared to the first. If I zoom in on a prim like the one in the 2nd image and press shift ctrl I find it tricky to grab the green box on the Y axis especially if I am looking at the prim from a side on 2d perspective. With enough camera tilting I can grab it in the end but doing so annoys me and disrupts my workflow. So what can I do to reduce the size of these bounding boxes on prims such as the one in the 2nd image? Thanks.

Rene Erlanger wrote: You mean there are bigger w@nkers at the controls then before? :matte-motes-nerdy: This really did make me do a LOL. Well done. :matte-motes-big-grin-wink: