Leeza Catteneo

I wanted to give a little feedback =D I used all LOD slots Tho, I put the highest LOD item with ~5K tris in the first three spots and an automatic generated veeeery low thingy in the lowest LOD spot. I did that because the hand made LOD files were messed up by the viewer import =/ Maybe I should make a new UV set for each LOD level? I have to investigate this issue. But anyways. Doing it this way I have a beautiful item attached to my avatar and it looks good from all directions and distances. It changes to the lowest LOD in a distance were I can hardly recognize the shape of the attachment anyways. So thats great! But the coolest thing is that the item says it is made of 5 prims (which are the 5 objects I exported as seclection) but only 1 prim equivs if attached! And only 6 prim equivs if put on the sim ground. Yay =D And the streaming cost says 9.3 (inspected with the SLv3 beta) which shouldnt be too much?

Ann Otoole wrote: But PE is just the number related to linking. What you have to look out for is render cost. I don't think we have all the information on render cost and derendering avatars that exceed some unknown maximum limit. So go as low poly as you can. Maybe later we will get all the details on exactly what the deal is with derendering high render cost avatars. Keep in mind LL's idea of bad design began at 1500 ARC and that is pretty lame stuff. This is what is considered game ready low poly: http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/3dsmax-sea-creature-low-poly/387012 I.e.; some people think SL needs to be 1993 Doom v1 quality. We have to wait to see how badly SL is going to be nerfed. Thank you Ann! Phew, the technical stuff is something I don't feel familar with But I will have a look into that =) All this could be important not only for ones own Avatar being derendered or so but also if it comes to costumers and their very own needs and decision to whether buy an (attachment) object with high PE or not. Even before inspecting the render costs. I will have a look at both!

Maeve Balfour wrote: [...] It's the LOD factor and associated cost that pushes the PE factor up - being smallish items in the world view, the LODs drop away very quickly [...] Thanks for this insight view of your experiences, Maeve =) I experienced the same issue with the LODs dropping away very quickly on smallish items. My plan was to keep the Tris at least in the first 2 spots at a higher level and then drop down hard Now I read your experiences I guess that's the direction I should recon. And I will make some experiments with the physics shape as well. Maeve Balfour wrote: All in all... mesh as attachments has a lot of potential :matte-motes-smile: Yay for mesh =D I'm really excited. The control for texturing via UVs, the benefit from using actual building tools in the creation software and all =D But oh uh I was so shocked by having a 230PE without having a real "complicated" item =/ Haha. You all helped me a lot.

From what I can see I understand that it's clearly the "none" in LODs which made the huge PE value. Now I'm down to 21PE instead of 230PE. What a difference! And that's by quickly creating dirty reduced versions of the actual item. And I believe this is an acceptable PE for attachments =D Thanks a lot!

Ashasekayi Ra wrote: Edit: I just saw your post while I was typing. lol Yes, leaving all those LOD spots on none is a big no no. That means those 5000 triangles are left on for every LOD. That will make the PE sky rocket. Plus, you are forcing someone's viewer to render 5000 triangles they can't even really see from 256+ meters away. Whohoo xDD Ok! Well, that's my bad then, haha. Because I was too lazy for "just testing". Plus I thought keeping the LODs empty would save me PE. Although I wondered who would use LODs to "lower the quality if it works just perfect with just one LOD" anyways ... *runs and hides =D The scale is actually very low since it's a pair of sunglasses. It is made of 4 different Objects in Maya and exported as selection. No other stuffs involved, yet =D No prims, no scripts and textures are uploaded separately. Well, and I didnt use any physics shape either >.< I think I should do that! I guess.

Wow ok. So filling the LOD spots in the way you described would reduce the overall PE for the item? Will the PE differ depending from which distance I "inspect" the item or will the overall PE be lower in generell?

Ashasekayi Ra wrote: I'd say that a good maximum triangle count for a single attachment is 4000 triangles.  And, that is a lot. Most items wouldn't need near that much. Thank you =) The actual item (non rigged attachment) has a Tris Count of 5000 and a PE of 230. The "lo-fi" version with only 2900 Tris gets a PE of ~130 >.< And thats why I wondered because I have done some "Next Gen" modeling and never went over ~5000 Tris It would be no problem at all to keep the same item down to ~1600 Tris even. But of course it wouldnt look as smooth and clean as a ~5000 Tris item =D I wonder why my ~5000 Tris item has a way higher PE than your 4000 Tris items =) BTW: Everything tested was not rigged and uploaded only in the highest LOD spot. All other 3 spots where set to NONE and are empty.

Haha! Thanks for the answer =D I have an item already uploaded to SL made of 6 (64x64) sculpty prims. Now I uploaded the same maya scene as a mesh and went all the way up to 930 PE =D Of course it would never have the same PE if I'd remodel the same item from scratch and optmized for mesh. But does the amount of sculpty vertices affect servers and such exactly like vertices of mesh does? If so... then reducing the amout of vertices/polygons would be the real deal instead of watching PE, right? Ps: Is 256 a "magic" number regarding PE?

Thats a great rule =D

Thanks guY! And for accessories attached to the avatar? Like Shoes, Shirts, Hats, Hair and such? Stuff you would hardly put on the parcel ground but to the avatar attachment points?

Hey Drongle =D Thanks for the reply! I opened a thread for this topic: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/PE-Reasonable-PE-for-attachments-accessoires/td-p/1031097 Would you mind to copy your answer over to it because I think its really helpful? =D Leeza

Hello =) I read some threads about the PE (prim-equivalent) and wanted to ask the question what PE value would be acceptable by the vast SL community (means: by you) =D Remembering the discussion about rendering costs a while back I thought it would be interesting to think about the opinion regarding reasonable average and maximum PE values for avatar attachments/accessoires. My point is: If you sell meshed items with too much PE (in the opinion of too many people) it could affect the business negatively at some point. For example: I made a ~60PE item which looks ok but hardly better than a sculpted version would look like. It looks really awesome (including the "yay mesh" effect) with ~230PE, tho. But would that be too much? What would you consider an 'ok' PE value and where would you see the limit. Have a great time! Leeza

Mylar wrote: so you uploaded the actual sculpties as meshes? Sculpties use a lot of unnecessary faces. I have a 6 prim sculpty item that I was able to get to 3 PE with mesh (and it looks better than the sculpty one). Yes =) It was just for fun and I uploaded an item which is already in SL build of sculpted prims. It is 6 prims in SL now. The same and untouched maya scene exported as a dae file and uploaded as a mesh would be 960 PE =D Of course a mesh really doesnt need that much faces. But now I wonder what PE could be considered as a PE which would be acceptable by the SL community. I remember a time when the people were inspecting each others rendering costs My point is: If you sell meshed items with too much PE in the opinion of too many people it could affect the business negatively at some point. For example: I made a ~60PE item which looks hardly better than a sculpted version would look like. It looks really awesome with ~230PE, tho

I just test uploaded a simple item made of 6 sculpties which is 960 PE as mesh I think thats funny. Does mesh really challenge the servers or so that much harder than sculpty vertices do? What is a reasonable PE for accessoires anyways? It would depend on the item and modeling skillz and the way you achive your goal. But what would be like an average and a maximum PE which would be acceptable for the SL community? Any ideas? =D Leeza

Hello =) What I made is to bake out the shadows on a plane with a white material on it that does not reflect any lights. After that I put the baked texture in the alpha channel in photoshop, inverted it and saved it as a tga (32 bit) file. The black areas (grey to black areas) of the alpha channel will make the texture transparent.