Vivienne Daguerre

I have no idea how you rigged an avatar that small, but it looks great and it is too cute! I shall have to kill it I think.... Mwahahahaha....

Yes! SL food is 0 calories!! I must make cake, pastries, cookies.... mmmmm....

Here are my latest, a silver coffee service and ceramic tea set. Each is linked together and comes in at a PE of 2! I am very happy with that. The cream pitchers have a material for contents, so you can select the face and turn transparent to 100% to make them empty.

Blender and ZBrush together are awesome!! I wish ZBrush would make a GoZ for Blender! I love that every update to ZBrush since I bought it has been free. I feel like I have got my money's worth out of ZBrush several times over. I still need Blender though, for UV mapping, and I like it best for making my low poly mesh to start out with. I usually export that mesh, smoothed in collada to take into SL. I then export it as an .obj and take it into ZBrush to subdivide it, add detail, texture, bake in lighting and material, and then export the baking and texture (which I do separately for greater control) into Photoshop to play with. It is a pipeline I am familiar and comfortable with. I think this is how ZBrush was intended to be used. It was never meant to be a stand alone program, but to work with other programs.

Love the cats!

I think that was understood. The complaint was that the vehicles have to be physical and scripted, which makes them dynamic, and higher PE. The higher PE does not matter for function, so long as the physics is below 32, but the prim count is still important because you have to rez the vehicle out on land. You will not be able to rez out a high PE vehicle or drive it just anywhere. There have to be prims available on the land to do so.

What a creative idea Nacy! I love it. I see a potential opportunity here, but one that I am not organized enough to pursue. Someone into marketing might want to consider it. You would have to contact the companies with the idea, and probably most will say no. If you knock on enough doors, you may find an interested company. I would not offer free product placement. I would ask to be paid! Second Life is small, so the price would have to be very modest. The place where the product would be placed would have to be very high traffic, or it would have to be placed in a lot of places. I am thinking you would not be asking permission to sell their product in SL. You would be asking them to pay you to create it and give it away in world for free. You could give them final approval over the 3D model before putting it out there so they could be assured of quality. Maybe the time is not yet right for such an idea. The day will come.

I get it. I understand that the Lindens are trying to correct an error. The error was that there was no accounting for scripts or limits set on them. They are trying to correct that, at least in part, by adding a cost for scripts to mesh. I just don't think that applying a script penalty to mesh only is the answer. I don't think mesh will be used a lot for clothing, and I am not sure if it will be for hair. The biggest script offenders are things worn on the avatar, scripted to resize, change colour or textures, or with radars and animations. Penalizing mesh will not fix that. It will only encourage people to use sculpties for things that will be scripted, and for mesh that is going to be worn, it will not matter so the avatar attachment script problem will not be affected at all. I think that the script issue should be separated from mesh totally. It needs to be looked at as a separate issue, and not have a bandaid solution piggybacked in on mesh that will not work very well or get the job done. I suggest that they look at script limits for parcels and regions, similar to prim limits. They should perhaps look at limiting events per second. Once you go beyond a certain number of events per second, scripts stop running. As a sim owner, i can control what scripts are out on my land. I have tools to see how many scripts an avatar is running, and I think there are tools in place that I could stop someone wearing an excessive number of scripts from entering. The above would apply scripting limits reasonably and fairly and put pressure on people to demand attachments with fewer scripts from content creators. It will punish vain avatars for wearing attachments with an excessive number of scripts. I get it and I understand the problem. Penalizing mesh for scripts is not the answer and it will not solve the problem.

I received notice last evening that my sims, which are mesh enabled, were about to be restarted for maintenance. After they came back up, a two prim glass of milk was suddenly 1 prim, as were several other mesh items that had been counting as 2 prims. My 3 prim coffee service was down to 2 prims, and my 16 prim cooking hearth was down to 14 prims!! I am not sure what other changes came in. Of these things, the cooking hearth has scripts, but the other things I mentioned do not have scripts. Thank you to the mesh team!!

Great work! I am not coming to visit you soon....

If we have to learn calculus to understand PE, it is definitely not fast, easy, nor fun.

Pretty cool Medhue! And that is encouraging and good to know. I still don't think scripts should have any influence on PE. I understand that the Lindens made a mistake with scripts in not building in any kind of controls over them. They may wish to find a way to encourage more efficient scripting and reduction of unnecesary scripts through deletion or setting scripts to not running. Trying to fix the problem by discouraging the use of scripts in mesh is just piling another mistake on top of an old one. The biggest offenders with scripts are avatar attachments. They should focus on limiting or throttling avatar attachment scripts and providing tools to enable land owners to find poorly written scripts that gobble up sim resources and create lag. They should enable an owner of an object, or the land owner, or perhaps both, to disable a script and stop it from running, even if the object is no mod. There are far better and simpler solutions to the script problem.

Well Drongle, that looks simple! NOT!!

I had posted this elsewhere, but it fits well here and I do not want it to be missed. I have some sculpted animals that are animated by script for hunting. I had thought about waiting for mesh to make them, but I am glad I did not now. My animals average somewhere around 20 sculpted prims, and each piece has a script in them. If I had tired to do that with mesh, each piece would be a minimum PE of 2, plus at least 1 prim for script, making the animal 60 PE instead of 20. With the penalties applied to mesh, my animals are better done in sculpties. I plan to make other animals for other types of hunting systems, such as Northern Forest, African Safari, etc. and they will be made as sculpties unless two things happen: 1) it becomes possible to make 1 prim meshes; and 2) the script penalty is removed. With ten to twelve spawn points and animals roaming a sim at any given time, the prim count becomes very important to sim owners, costing about 200 to 240 prims for the sculpted animals, or 600 to 720 prims for mesh animals. It is not a difficult decision to make.

I have some sculpted animals that are animated by script for hunting. I had thought about waiting for mesh to make them, but I am glad I did not now. My animals average somewhere around 20 sculpted prims, and each piece has a script in them. If I had tired to do that with mesh, each piece would be a minimum PE of 2, plus at least 1 prim for script, making the animal 60 PE instead of 20. With the penalties applied to mesh, my animals are better done in sculpties. I plan to make other animals for other types of hunting systems, such as Northern Forest, African Safari, etc. and they will be made as sculpties unless two things happen: 1) it becomes possible to make 1 prim meshes; and 2) the script penalty is removed. With ten to twelve spawn points and animals roaming a sim at any given time, the prim count becomes very important to sim owners, costing about 200 to 240 prims for the sculpted animals, or 600 to 720 prims for mesh animals. It is not a difficult decision to make.

They are looking pretty good. Are you going to script the wolves? If you do, please let me know how that affects their PE.

Absolutely beautiful work! I love the fans.

I agree, doubling PE cost for one script, regardless of its complexity or efficiency, is definitely wrong and has to go. If the Lindens wish to find a way to regulate script usage, they should find another way that addresses all scripts, including those worn by avatars. In my opinion scripts in things worn by avatars are the biggest offenders and cause of lag generated by scripts. LL, we love mesh, but you cannot try to correct all past errors on its back.

I own two sims, and when mesh hits the grid, I will be using it on my sims. I will also be selling mesh products. If people don't want to be able to see everything in SL, that is their choice. I will not cater to them on my sims or with my products. They are welcome to stay away if they don't like that. I think you will see a lot of people take that same stand.

I was thinking more about your post, Madeleine. If you are making things intended to stand on their own in world, like a chair or a lamp, and it is not likely to be linked, then I think you would do best to make it as a sculpt if you can make it nicely as one prim. If it will be 2 prims at least, then consider mesh, for you can get better detail where you want and need it and make it look nicer. If you are making things designed to be linked into mesh builds, like window frames, arches, pillars, corner brickwork, etc. then make it in low poly mesh. Once linked to other mesh, these things can count for less than one prim. You will have to include warnings though that linking your mesh parts to non-mesh can increase the prim count of the non-mesh parts substantially. The customer will need to be educated. I do see mesh windows and mesh parts being made for buildings to be problematic, because I think people will want to build using the new larger sized regular prims and link sculpted or mesh parts to it. As it is, those building with regular prims should only link sculpty windows and parts to it, and those building with mesh should only link mesh parts. However, I have linked mesh and sculpty and regular prims together in a small townhouse and still got a lower prim count that I did for the same building without the mesh walls. The problem would come in if you then link in a spiralling staircase made from a cut and twisted torus. This could easily happen for people commonly make spiral staircases this way. I have not tried this, but I think then your PE could explode.

I have developed a strategy to minimize PE for medium sized objects (furniture and avatar sized items).. While modeling, keep it as low poly as I can without it distorting or looking blocky. Retain great detail or the same as high at medium lod. Go for lowest possible shape retention at low lod. I don't even care about shape at lowest, I want a number under 20 triangles at this level (unless it is an avatar attachment, and then I want the shape to be retained). Make sure you make a physics shape. I almost invariably use a simple mesh cube that approximately covers the mesh. Once uploaded, link it into the linkset if it is something that will be linked. Set the root prim of the linkset to prim or convex, and then set the child prims physics type to "none." (This way only the physics of the root prim matter. I also plan to put out signs around my store and include a notecard with my products explaining LOD briefly, and providing a recommendation to increase LOD switching settings (and instructions how). Here is the sign I made, and if you want to use it, please feel free to.

Thanks Charlar! It is reassuring to know that you are following this forum and that our concerns are being heard and considered. I appreciate the feedback. As a side note on the comparisons to other "games," Second Life really cannot be compared. In other online games, you download the content or have it on disk, which gets installed on your computer. The content is not continuously having to be streamed over the internet. What makes Second Life unique is its user generated content. There is a lot of unique content that cannot be stored on your computer, and it must be continuously streamed to users.

I understand that it will be 150L base price for a mesh upload, plus extra depending on complexity of model. It was set to this in the beta test on Aditi, and it seemed to me at first that it was 150L plus 1L per PE, but it then appeared to be less than 1L per PE for some things.

Thanks Nyx! I appreciate the reply, and it is good to know that our feedback is being seen. Your point is well taken. It is almost like you need a basic viewer, and advanced viewer, and perhaps a builder's viewer that goes beyond the advanced. Or perhaps a basic, intermediate and advanced viewer, something simple for the new user, something for the power user, and something for the builders and creators.

Love the airship!