Toysoldier Thor

Sep 28, 2010 3:34 PM Shockwave Yareach says in response to Brenna Meredith: @Brenna: The estates for the 13 - 15 year olds will be far removed from the mainland. That is true. However, the 16 and 17 year olds will be allowed on PG land on the mainland. And if that was all it was, I wouldn't be the slightest bit concerned. However, go to PG sometime and cam across the border to a Mature sim. You can see into the M sim regardless of the fact you are in PG. You can see into the M sim regardless of the fact that you are or are not a 16 year old. And people have private homes and public businesses in Mature that are well within camming range of hot and horny teens who cannot leave PG, but can still see out of it -- homes and businesses with adult gear and installed in an adult grid and pointedly spelled out as permissible in Mature sims. So we have underaged kids (legally they are kids -- if you don't like the definition, talk to your legislature) who can see inside people's homes in Mature. And if they see me lounging au natural in my hot tub, it's legally no different than if I emailed them pics of my privates -- erotic imagery was transmitted to them by electronic means. And if their parents catch the teen playing as a peeping tom, who gets in legal hot water? I do. I don't even have to know the kid's name or even know they are watching; it's my butt that goes to the butt raping place in RL and get to enjoy all the other fun fun experiences a sex deviant charge brings, like losing my house and home and family. All because I committed the heinous act of lounging in my hot tub as permitted in the TOS. I'll even add more fuel to the fire. How about all the businesses that sell naked skins or "other" stuff that are in camming distance of PG land? It's child's play to cam to a store and click BUY when you aren't even in the store. If you don't believe me, try it yourself. So here you have a store owner who the law says is "supplying prurient materials" and "contributing to the deliquency of a minor" because the vendors in the store supply erotic material to whoever ponies up the L to buy them. And the first these business owners will know about it will be when the police come knocking on their doors at 3am. Now... add the FBI to the happy fun experience which the 16 year olds being allowed into mainland will cause -- guess what level of felony it is when you supply racy imagery to a child across state lines? Oh, that's a Federal rap? Yep, you guessed it in one. So you will be potentially facing your county atty general, your state atty general, and the atty general for whatever region of the country you are in... all because little Timmy peeped over that Maginot Line you call the PG/Mature border and got caught by mommy and daddy and call the cops. Although I am happy that the Teen grid is closing as it was festering with stolen content from the adult grid and now hopefully some of these teens will have to actually buy real legit content all over again in the Adult grid (unless LL is carrying over all these teen accounts with their inventory and much of black market), i have to agree with those posters here and the countless fellow Adult residents of the main grid that I have chatted with about this LL move in that we are very uncomfortable with non-adults roaming around the main grid. Sorry for hurting the feelings of the Teens (16 or 17) that feel this means we adults dont want you. That is not the case. the real case is that the mani grid (even the PG sims) are loaded with several Adult residents that - well lets be honest - are not PG and are very likely gonna prey upon some of the under-aged new residents. Forget about restricting the teens to PG sims... that is the least of your problems. Its the minds of some of the less than savory adults in the grid (as much as LL and some of you adult residents want to believe that all SL adult residents are pure of mind and will respect RL cultural laws and morality rules). Of course there will clearly be the fact that Teens will surely see adult content even if they are on PG land and what they can purchase that is not PG even though the merchant followed ALL RULES on hiding human private parts. Once its bought - its in their inventory and they see and experience it all. Sorry... but as much as I like the teen grid shutting down... I think LL has not thought this strategy through and is only doing this to reduce costs. My prediction.... this idea will bite LL in the butt as I see its only time before somehow legal authorities will be stepping in and knocking on LL's door.

Sep 27, 2010 6:20 PM Imago Aeon says: I'm just going to say that having mesh would be great, but I do hope that LL is ready for all the DMCA's this is going to bring. I as a real 3d model creator am a little worried about people just exporting models as collada and then importing them in to SL. So, people will be downloading everything and importing all that they can. There will also be more ripping and stealing. Which is going to be horrible. I would like mesh support which would make bringing good looking stuff in easier, but not everyone is going to make their own models. So, expect a lot of complaints and object disappearing, because of DMCA's being filed once real model creators hear about their stuff being imported in to SL. Don't say it won't happen... Because it will. There was a few people who were importing Poser clothing in to SL awhile back and there was a big brew-ha-ha over it until someone told the original creator she could file a DMCA against the person... People seem to think that if they buy something they have all the rights in the world to do whatever they want with it... TOS be damned in their eyes. Oh, well... I won't say it'll ruin SL, and I for one will be happy to see sculpts on their way out the door. But on the downside... I don't want to see any models I or my friends created coming in to SL without permission. Ohh Imago, I dont think the vast majority of us are naive to think that 3D meshes will not be converted on mass to Collada and imported into SL and sold as their own. There are a few here that have rose colored glasses on and somehow believe the world is all fair and generally no one would have the nerve to do that. These would be the same ppl that do not see all the solen content in Xstreet and now SLM and that is sold inworld. They do not see all the fine art images, paintings that are sold within SL in galleries and clearly violating copyright. They do not believe that there are customers/residents in SL that buy full perm sculpty maps from us scuplty makers and re-sell them or give them away to other residents. They believe that the existence of CopyBots is a myth. My prediction is that because of substantially increased complexity of meshes for creators to make and bring into SL, and because of massive improvement on the content detail that can now be created within SL... the demand for high detailed mesh shapes will quickly become very high and of course the price premium to buy these mesh objects will reflect this high demand. This is great news for merchants / creators that can tap into this fast, but its also a major factor to the problem you are predicting. Because high quality mesh shapes will be at such a high premium, they will be #1 targets for content theft from 3D mesh markets. It will be well worth the little risk for these theives to set up many non-premium accounts and inport/sell these stolen mesh shapes from creators like you. Sadly Imago, filing DCMAs against these illegal non premium accounts will be like pissing into the ocean. First, LL does not take content theft serious. A creator that has his/her theft stolen and can easily prove its stolen, has to move heaven and earth for LL to even get involved. Then by the time you finish filing the DCMA and get the LL gears moving, the violator likely has closed down and started selling your stolen meshes as another "ALT" account. So basically, the creators of 3D meshes will now be welcomed into SL's crowded group of stolen content along with the texture creators, fine art creators, sculpty map creators, script creators, etc etc etc. Your time has arrived in SL to be stolen along with all else that is stolen. WELCOME It would be cool if the COLLADA file format included a creator's indelible digital signature that clearly identifies the 3D mesh as an original creation of person X. Maybe that does exist. It wont stop theft, but it would be good to at least to have this ID that can not ever be removed from the mesh meta data and that it could be easily viewed by anyone that wants to ID it.

Sep 25, 2010 9:07 AM Maelstrom Janus says in response to Kitsune Shan: Give me a sec Im still gasping at the thought of paying 3500 to build............ is somebody going to show me something good done with cheap software...very cheap... no wonder theres no talk of Lindens providing in world mesh building tools !!!!! Mael... Its clear from the cost and power of 3D software that Jennifur uses, and clearly her professional/technical depth of experience in mesh model development that she is in a completely different league of creator than 99% of the rest of SL creators an builders within SL. I bow my head to her for the skills she possesses and it not hard to see with her "commercial" classed talents, that she has done $ well for herself AND this emerging MESH within SL is like a golden goose for her in new opportunities. BUT, like I said, for like 99% of the rest of us builders within SL, we are no where near as close to her talents, experience, and level of commitment to Mesh development and resale. I would like to see 5 other creators of SL here put up their hands that have purchase ANY out-of-world tool for $3000+ (i dont care if you paid for it new or used). I personally thought that I spent the wad when I bought Zbrush for $600 because I thought it would speed up and simplify sculpty creations for me in SL (which it surely did). Also, just listening to how Jennifur explained to you how she made the locomotive honestly made my head spin. And I have been using blender and zbrush now for over a year. She lost me on a lot of her terms. When she talks about how she creates Meshes.. she says it to us like this is all just simply childs play and we will grasp it in a short time as soon as we are allowed access to this mesh beta. WRONG! Sorry Jennifur, with the exception of a very small percentage of talented - commercial - artists and 3D modeling experts... this is not simple SL building techniques. Jennifur and Qui and a few others will be HUGE WINNERS in SL in selling some amazing meshes. But they are not the norm. It would be nice to know that the closed beta has members that were AVERAGE JOE scuplty makers like me or the vast majority of other sculpty makers. It likely would have exposed a lot more SL logistical issues for SL to deal with when releasing meshes into SL. So... I am hoping that tools like Blender and even my Zbrush (which now looks peanuts compared to the massive commercial power tools Jennifur has been using) will be good enough to create some average meshes that we can create and sell without making our heads explode with over complexity. PS.... Jennifur, this is not insult to you... its clear now that you are an amazingly talented professional mesh creator and artist. and sorry for my first slam at you this week with your suggetion on mesh size limits of 10x10x10 being an opportunity. Although it was clearly not a feasible solution you offered, I should not have slammed you. You do have to remember and think twice though when you are talking to the rest of us Sculpty Creators - most of us are not in your league and what you think is childs play - is rocket science to 90%+ of the rest of us.

Thanks Ash for bringing this up in the closed Beta to LL. Its good some of you were there to really look at the MESH solution and point out limitations when you saw them (as opposed to just making LL feel good by making excuses for limitations that were found in the proposed solution). You call it "rigged" or "non rigged". I never heard the term before, but I can see this limitation not being a big deal for a lot of scuplty makers that dont make meshes bigger than 10M (except for single specific purposed meshes like a statue). But even for those SL sculpty makers / mesh creators that dont need it for them, its pretty obvious that this would be a huge limitation for mesh creators/merchants whos items are frequently used in the mega size scale and who's customers are ALWAY changing the sizes of their sculpty shapes while building in order to get the right size for their design. I sure hope you are right and they are serious going to increase this STUPID 10x10x10 limit up to a more useable scale of 64x64x64. This should have been done years ago when LL blackballed Megas. This news you stated is bigger news then the MESHES!! I hope you are right Ash! Thanks for providing valuable input during the closed beta. PLEASE keep pushing this issue hard on behalf of all us landscape sculpty map makers. We need to be heard... and we all know that once this goes into OPEN BETA, LL rarely makes any big changes to their solution. To LL, Open Beta = Production. It will be too late by the time LL goes open beta. They will have locked in their solution by then. (look at how they are dealing with SLM right now) PS... where is this MESH OBJECTS sim on SL that we can go to and try some of our stuff out?

don't see how its a show stopper for you. As I said you can create a mesh larger than 10x10x10 meters. If anything it gives you more flexibility than being tied to random sized megaprims, let me explain. Ok so every fourth customer want a special size...no problem, pop into your 3D software, rescale it to their needs and import it for them...takes maybe two minutes or you could just upload a few sizes for them to pick from and do custom resizing for the added extra cost of the upload. So customer "Jane" like your volcano but its only 40x40x40 meters...they need it to be 63x60x45 meters...you have her dimentions...true custom dimentions so you aren't tied to whatever sizes megaprims come in. Take you practically no time to rescale it and upload..."Jane" is happy with the custom size and returns to you when they need more landscaping products. I'd think it could be a positive thing for you and your business rather than a negative. YOU ARE KIDDING ME RIGHT!?!?!? Dont tell me you think this is a solution and not a show stopper?? Jennifur, have you ever sold products in SL? Do you know how many landscape packs I sell a week? Do you have a clue the revolt I would have on my hand if my landscape customers were told "ohh here is a pack of 25 mountain/rocks and I have arbitrarily set them to 30x30x30 but if you dont like this dimension then IM me and I will custom make one to the size you want"? ROFL!!! That is the funniest thing I have heard on the blogs in a while. So now, I will be sitting in SL processing 20 to 30 custom shape size requests a day because my customers do not have the freedom to size their own shapes? Have you even done any building/landscaping Jennifur? Do you know how many different size mountains I will TRY when I landscape before I decide on the right size for the land or home or whatver? Sorry but that is the stupidist thing I ever heard. Are you paid to promote MESHes? If you were a closed beta tester and you think this is a way to deal with a mesh limitation, then you should not have been in the beta program. Sorry for sounding frustrated but your response was just so pro-mesh biased and silly that it bothers me who was in the closed beta. THIS IS A LIMITATION and a BIG ONE! I liked the idea I heard from another post that LL is finally starting to consider removing the 10x10x10 restriction. 64x64x64 is still too small for some landscapes but this would be a great huge first start. If LL did that as part of releasing MESHes then I would have much happier.

Meshes rez the size you created them so in the case of a lighthouse I uploaded it was the same size in SL as it was in 3DS Max, 100 meters tall or so, I don't remember exactly...create your meshes to the scale you want them in your 3D app. If you have a grid set the grid to display as one meter squares as a visual reference. If you try to resize them they behave like megaprims and snap to 10 meters but otherwise will retain their shape...just smaller. A mesh smaller than 10 meters can be scaled up to 10 meters like a normal prim. Well Jennifur, you just exposed the first major limitation of a MESH in SL. I am surprised that with all the CLOSED BETA testers LL recruited that no one brought this up. I guess LL didnt think of having any Landscape Sculpty Makers in the closed beta. The landscape sculpty packs I make as well as countless of my fellow competing landscape sculpty makers (i.e. makers of rocks, waterfalls rivers mountains hoodoos volcanos etc) must be scale adjustable by our customers... even in the prim dimensions beyond LL's long standing prim size limits of 10x10x10. In fact, this this more important for my sculpty maps to be size adjustable in the mega prim scales. So you are saying that unlike a scuplty map that can adjust any sized mega prim that is rezzed, a mesh that exceeds 10x10x10M is fixed at the size I make it in the 3D tool??? THIS IS A SHOW STOPPER FOR ME and all my fellow landscape sculpty makers. Do you know how many times I get asked by my customers "can I use your sculpty maps on mega prims?"? Almost every 4th customer asks me! For Landscape builders in SL, the 7000prim MEGA Pack is a main tool in our inventory. They rez the exact size mega they need to make their ground or mountain, then apply my sculpty landscape map onto it. Since LL has steadfastly refused to remove the 10x10x10 Prim size limitation from SL (who the hell knows why they keep this limit when megas continue to exist to this day), what you are saying is that I cannot MESHes to make landscape packs unless my customers only want to use 10x10x10 mesh objects? Look around you when you are on the many sims you visit. Do you know how many of those massive beautiful mountains, waterfalls, rivers, grounds, cliff formations are made of Builder Custom sized sculpty shapes? Md HooDoo Rock formations cant be 1 mega size that I arbitrarily select. MY customers will 100% assured want it a different size. So... unless LL drops the 10x10x10 limit, MESHES in SL have just hit their first big roadblock. Why did no close Beta participant bring this up? Where they all clothing and statue makers? Good representation of closed beta users. This sucks!

ZBRUSH Doesnt have Collada export. I am writing this posting a second time because the SL Blog is sooo soo hordily lagging that I can barely move and crash (on 3 different computers). 2 questions... - So it was said that I should creat my meshes now to the scale i want because that is how it rezzes in SL? So they cant scale in SL? Can they at least be made beyond the 10x10x10 scale (i.e. are they mega capable)? - Permissions? How is a Mesh protected in SL? MOD COPY TRANS? I hope i dont crash posting this a second time. If it does I refuse to post here anymore. Thanks Q I will look at this other site for technical questions. Not much is being answered here for us trying to catch up on what is going on with Mesh.

There's no collada exporter for Zbrush (or mudbox). I tried to respond to this response last night but SL's blog site is soooooo horrendously lagging that it was even crashing my one laptop. Even my dual quad core Desktop computer has lag on the SL blog site. Writing this one entry took my 5 minutes. So... my response was.... ZBRUSH does not have a Collada export contrary to what someone answered me yesterday. Nacy is right. So one of the larger tools in 3D does not support Collada. The SL Zbrush blog sites were talking about who will write a 3rd party Collada export for all of us SL users of Zbrush. The other question I wanted to ask is the permissions to protect these DAE files in SL (mod, copy, transfer) - is this like portecting a general prim? And finally... someone suggested that when I build or rebuild my current Sculpty landscape pack OBJ files in Zbrush, I should make sure that I build it to scale as that is how it will rez. WHA?? So an SL builder cannot scale a Mesh in SL like they can with other prims? Will Meshes in SL be like the fixed size Megas? And regrarding megas... can we now create Mesh objects / prims in SL that are "mega" - ie. they can exceed 10x10x10m? I will just read any responses but I can no longer post here. This blog site is simply soooo lagged! Thank Q for the link to tech info. I will look there.

now that we can ask tech questions to the secret closed beta society of mesh builder/importers... Will there be a bounding box around these new Mesh prims or when I make a rock or a waterfall or a cliff, avatars can interface right up to the actual surface of the mesh prim? If I am asking technical questions that have all already been answered in some LL released whitepaper or tech Wiki.... please point me to it so I can read up on all the details? Creating sculpties is my #1 source of revenue in SL... I am quite concerned that the closed beta merchants already have a major jump on us and some of them / you are direct competitors to me and you have had weeks / months to learn all the details and practice the new skills needed and actually start building packs that will get out the door the minute LL releases onto SL. This is what bothers me. LL has already damaged my SL revennue by the way they have screwed up the migration of Xstreet to SLM (which is where 90% of my revenue has been made). Now they have given the edge to an exclusive group of builders/merchants that will fly past me out the gate when Meshes are released. sighhhhhh

Thanks Daniel ! that tool looks very helpful. It seems I will have to be learning a lot more about meshes and all this cleaning and aligning and and and... I hope this tool fits in well with what LL will require to import a Mesh object into SL.

1.) Yes, it's a new type of primitive. It is editable in the same way as a sculpty, IE, stretch, position, and rotation only. 2.) It will be TPV's responsibility to backport mesh, although the Snowstorm project will no doubt assist in getting the code out. 3.) The ceiling cap is 65536 verts, although more verts will count as more prims towards land totals. 4.) Zbrush has Collada export. 5.) Other than saving your model as a .dae file, very little preparation for SL is needed unless you want a rigged model, just keep the vert count in check. One thing to note is you'll want to make 4 separate LOD versions of your mesh, with each lower LOD using at most half the verts of the previous one. All four .dae files will be uploaded in unison. The upload dialog has the ability to generate these lower LOD models for you, but you have more control of how your mesh will look from far away if you make them manually. This custom LOD, along with custom UV texture mapping, would be the two major improvements to converting existing sculpts to mesh. To point 1... I guess the rest of us will see how a "dae" file is added to this new form of prim (i.e. is the dae file a note, texture, object in our inventory that we are importing)? To point 2... So until all the TPV vendors update to work and see a mesh, the acceptance of MESH objects in SL will be limited. Remembering that LL's Viewers are not the majority of the viewer population now in SL. To point 3... What will be the verts/prim ratio for this new mesh prim? What does LL consider to be the equivalent of 1 prim on a sim? To point 5.... I noticed you first posted that there really isnt much to it for us Sculpty makers that have already created OBJ files that in turn were converted to dumb 32x32 UV maps. Then you changed your tune and started remembering that - ahhh its not that simple. You also didnt take into account that many of us Sculpty makers have created sculpty UV maps based on original Mesh objects being as limited as the UV map they were generating. Until the arrival of Mesh in SL, there was no value in creating a 65536 vert mesh in detail if it was only going to be dumbed down to a 32x32 SL UV map. Sooooo in additional to all the other points you remembered after saying "there is nothing much to do for us", there is the fact that many of us will have to rework our meshes with the much higher details so that we can get the better details back into our objects that we were initially not allowed to map. SO.... there is a lot of things for us SL Sculpty makers to learn and think about and re-do that you initial closed beta testers have already had insight on and have been able to prepare your meshes for SL. You lost me on creating 4 LOD version and creating 4 seperate DAE files? When will LL release a whitepaper that gives us uninformed sculpty makers detailed instructions on how to make meshes for SL? I dont even know yet what is being imported into SL and you are suggesting that for every shape we are importing 4 of these DAE files? Conclusion.... you closed beta uesrs are way ahead of us who know little what you are tallking about nor have seen any details of how to make a mesh for SL.

So I guess I missed all the details on the Mesh Imports since I just found this blog. 1) Will Mesh object in SL be a new type of prim (like a sculpty is) or something completely different in the builder's toolbox when building in SL? 2) Will a Mesh object only be visible to LL V2 viewers or to all TPV when it goes to Open Beta? Related, will the mesh tool/object builder gadget be only in the LL V2 viewer (if a new tool needs to be introduced into the viewer) or for all viewers? 3) What will the resolution of a single Mesh object be? How many points? 4) Will LL be releasing an OBJ to Callada conversion tool for those of us sculpty makers that use 3D tools that do not openly support Collada? i.e. I just migrated away from Blender to Zbrush and I believe Zbrush does not support Callada exports. 5) Where do we get all the details on the Mesh import to SL so that us Sculpty Makers that do not have the advantage of getting the inside scoop of what LL has planned (and have a leg up on the rest of us by building a whole library of mesh objects to put onto the market on day one while the rest of us struggle to catch up on the knowledge) can at least get prepared and start converting our sculpty map sourced 3D meshes to Collada?

Sep 2, 2010 3:19 PM Shadow Pidgeon says: The X factor?? Customer service/support! We have none at the moment. When the monthly cost of a sim is equal to a car payment, people should be able to have access to competent support. This applies not only to land issues but to client issues as well. In any other context, trying to pick one aspect of SL and focus on it would be a slap in the face to those of us who created it. Diversity in all areas is what made us grow. WELCOME KIM TO THE VIRTUAL WORLD of SecondLife. Remember that in the months and years to come as you look for and the market that magic "X" FACTOR. SL is not a "game' its a virtual world - complete with pretty much all the aspects of a real world and even more aspects than real world. I would agree with what Shdaow said that Customer Service would be an awesome X FACTOR for LL to actually start focusing on. Unfortunately I do not think that Kim is here to directly benefit the lives of existing Residents. Remember, Kim is the new VP of "MARKETING". Her job is to attract NEW ppl and business toward an existing running product/service. Us Residents of SL are already part of this product/service of LL. So, I suspect Kim is looking for an X FACTOR that is sexy and will create a buzz that can attract NEW customers/residents to SL. Great customer service is not "sexy" and wont draw in the crowds - which Kim is paid to accomplish. I wish Kim a lot of luck. You likely will not be directly impacting most of the lives of us existing residents except if you accomplish your goal and draw in a large ADDITIONAL population which will boost the virtual economy (i.e. more things to sell to more residents of SL). But please remember when you are looking for that X FACTOR - SL has a scope of interest and activities that mimics a real world. so dont focus on an X Factor that is of one activity. LL has a history of tunnel vision - focusing interest on the few things they understand or feel comfortable to market. That would be wrong for you to follow in LL's history of tunnel vision X-Factor. Wish you all the best and enjoy the experiences throughout SL!