Vivienne Daguerre

One must remember that there are different uses for 3D skills. You may be making illustrations or static 2D art. You could be making characters and backgrounds for animation for movies or machinima. In these two cases, polygon count does not matter as much but they do increase render time. You may be making assets for gaming, and in that case polygon count matters a lot. Good texturing skills matter for all three of these uses. Making things for Second Life is like making assets for gaming. I have seen all kinds of things from WOW on the beta grid, and they are very low poly with highly detailed textures on them. The skills you use for Second Life are transferrable to other areas in my opinion. I have considered putting some of my mesh things up for sale on Turbosquid or Renderosity. I can provide them in .obj and .dae format, but not the formats used by Maya or Automax, but they can import the .obj and the .dae. I plan to look into that.

Thanks for the explanation folks!

What do you mean by billboard like mesh?

I was not being sarcastic Vivienne. I truly found the link to the webpage showing SL performance on the top graphic cards to be interesting and helpful.

That was a helpful post and reference Vivienne.

The first thing I want to say is that I love your trees and plants Lilith. I am a customer and a fan, and there are many Heart products on my sims. I am glad you are looking at mesh. I think it is too early to pronounce mesh dead. It has not yet been released to the main grid, and the Lindens continue to tinker and bang under the hood, making adjustments and testing. We as creators are continuing to figure things out and we are learning how to optimize mesh for the best product at the lowest Prim Equivalency. We learn from each other, and I am grateful to everyone who has been so helpful in this forum. I watched Gaia's latest tutorial video, and did not realize how important the lowest LOD number was for smaller sized items. I tried reuploading a couple of things, and was able to achieve lower prim count with what I learned from her. Don't give up and don't count mesh out just yet. I am greatly encouraged.

Yes, I own two private island estates that i would love to rebuild using mesh over time.

Yeah, yeah, we get you Vivienne. You rule and we drool. We and Linden Lab staff are all morons who should bow down and worship your brilliance. Are you done now? Why waste your bright light on us? We get your message. I think there are people elsewhere who have not seen the light.

Ann, if they tried to read all the non-SL forums, then all their time would be spent doing that and they would not get much work done on mesh. I have spoken pretty frankly and not all my comments have been exactly cheering. Some have been quite critical. I have not been retaliated against in any way. I read those other forums from time to time, but not all the time. Anonymity on the net causes some people to behave very badly, in ways that they would not normally if their identity were known and they were accountable for their words and actions. Some of the criticisms in these other places are abusive with name calling and outrageous comments being made which make little sense. If you believed everything said there, you would think that Linden Lab was this huge, evil corporation who existed only to lure in the unsuspecting and make them unhappy. It might make for a good Austin Power sequel starring Rod Humble as Dr. Evil, but I don't think it bears any resemblence to reality. If I were to give advice to the Lindens, it would be to NOT read these other non-SL forums. They need to be able to focus on the job and get the work done to bring mesh to the main grid. If they were to read these forums, they would probably just come away feeling down. They are human. The slanders, jibes, insults, and accusations take a toll. That would affect their general well being and ability to do their job in a negative way. Once upon a time, back in early 2004 when I first came to SL, the Lindens were very visible in the world and very accessible. I can remember many times when people would run into a problem with griefers, ghosted prims and such that they would simply search in world on the name "Linden" and get a list of the Lindens online. They would then scroll through the list and choose one to IM. The Linden or in some cases Lindens would teleport in, talk to you, and deal with the problem. Sometimes you would just bump into one or two and they would spend some time chatting with you. I kid you not. This used to happen. As Second Life grew and numbers increased, they were unable to keep up with demand in this way. The badly behaving minority (at least I hope it is a minority) also took their toll upon the Lindens. If you had to face every day raves and rants such as, "You are all idiots. You don't know what you are doing. You suck. You don't care. You are malicious and evil." it might take a toll on you too and make your day a little less bright. Ann, please tell your friends that there is a place they can say what they want to say and they will be heard. Please encourage them to do so in an adult way without accusations, insults, name calling and general tantrum tactics. They may not get an answer or the answer they want, but they will be heard.

Are these former mesh supporters whom you claim are not being listened to here and talking? They can't be heard if they are not saying anything. No-one here is a mind reader. Corporations as large machines are uncaring, but the successful ones do listen and try to meet the needs and wants of their customers. They would not stay in business long if they did not. Linden Lab is very profitable and successful, so I assume they are doing that well enough. The people in the corporations forge bonds and do care. They spend 8 hours a day at work, or more, and they do get invested and they do care. I used to work for federal government, and you know all the bad things said about that. I cared.

Quoting Ann O'Toole: "Not sure LL thought everything all the way through but that is what happens when you don't talk to the actual clever users during development." Actually Ann, they are talking to clever users before releasing mesh. That is what the beta testing is all about, and I would at least hope I and others here are a little clever at least! I feel that they are listening and discussing our input. They may not always be able to tell us everything going on at Linden Lab or all of the whys and wherefores behind their decisions due to corporate policy and restrictions, but I am sure they do listen to us. I also think they are as open as they can be with us at the mesh meetings and talk to us as frankly and openly as they can. I think they do consider their actions carefully. They are not idiots or fools bumbling about. To understand the technical problems and coding to make mesh work at all, I think they would have to be pretty bright and on the ball. We may not always understand their reasoning, but I am confident that there is sound reasoning behind their decisions, even if I do not like a particular decision. The only reason I bother posting my concerns is because I know the Lindens are reading this forum, paying attention and listening, and I post with the hope of being heard and perhaps even having an impact. Linden Lab is staffed by human beings, and therefore is imperfect. But all in all, I think they do pretty well.

I am not sure why this came to me as a private message. Perhaps it is because my store name is Black Rose. If you have ever purchased anything from me and did not receive it, just let me know.

You are right. We should not have to find work arounds. All of these things make Second Life harder to learn for newcomers. It will just be yet another thing that new people will have to learn that won't make much sense. This is not making Second Life easier or more accessible to anyone.

In a way, this breaks legacy content. Consider all those who have invested considerable time and effort into making sculpted building parts--arches, pillars, windows, corner brick, crenallated castle parts, etc. This penalization for linking them into mesh buildings by making them count according to their actual resource cost "breaks" them as content. If you make sculpties count as anything but one prim, linked or not, legacy content is broken. The same thing goes for prims. If ever a prim counts as more than one prim, linked or not, then legacy content is broken.

Here is some more silliness that people are not going to understand when mesh hits the main grid; if you link mixed tool objects (prims, sculpts and meshes) the prim count will not be the sum of the parts, and can explode to insane numbers. We have heard Runitai's explanations and it does not make a lot of sense to us. It won't make any sense at all to people who were never in beta, and they will just see it this way; The Lindens decided they don't want you to link mesh with sculpts and prims. People will work around it by not linking. They can pick it up as a coalesced object and package it for sale that way, or use rez faux, rez foo, builder's buddy or some similar tool to make it easier for customers to place. With buildings we already do that, because you cannot link doors and shutters that move with the rest of the building (unless you are using some specific prim animation tools). It is not a big leap for people to not link mesh. There will be no change in what is out in the world. People will just be peeved that the Lindens have made it less convenient for them. Below is a townhouse that I have 7 copies of on my sim as free housing for role play residents. On the main grid each townhouse is 149 prims. I brought it into the test grid and replaced the shell with a mesh, which dropped it down to below 90 prims at first. I was pleased with that. With the new accounting system, it is back to 133 prims, which makes it not worth the effort. However, if I unlink the mesh part, the townhouse is only 86 prims. I will simply leave them unlinked in world. What does this accomplish for Runitai? How does this reduce anything except convenience? One townhouse is linked except for moving parts (doors and shutters) and consists of mixed tools--mesh, sculpt and prim. It comes in at 133 prims in the current accounting system. The other townhouse is made of all the same mesh, sculpt and prim parts, but the mesh is not linked. It comes in at 86 prims. People will not change what they are setting out, just how they are doing it. I will use the new townhouse when mesh hits the main grid, simply leaving the mesh part unlinked. I cannot see what will be accomplished by the inability to link mixed tools without prim costs exploding other than annoying us. These townhouses can be seen on Mesh Sandbox 29.

Well done

Enjoy the journey and have fun!

Another piece of crucial advice: Provide prominent warnings to your customers to not attempt to link modifiable mixed tool objects. If they are unaware of the bizarre and senseless accounting system, they may think "Oh, the maker should have linked these. Don't know why he didn't." If they link them, the prim count may explode (especially if there is a torus in the mix) and carefully placed objects may be returned to them from their parcels. You should include this warning on the vendor graphic, on the SLX website, perhaps on separate signs placed in your store, and on a notecard included with the item.Linden Lab may wish to put a feature in the viewer that was in some third party viewers to "Return to last coordinates" so things from lost and found can be placed easily back at their original locations. If not, they should have extra staff on hand to handle sim roll back requests and deal with complaints. Unfortunately, we as content creators have to be prepared to deal with angry customer backlash on this one too.

Another piece of advice I would give would be this: Do not link mixed builds of prims, sculpts and mesh. This will in many or most cases (not sure at this point) result in an increased prim cost. Instead, pick them up and sell them as coalesced objects. Make sure they are copiable for your customer will likely mess things up if they have to take the item back into inventory to rez it later somewhere else. Or, you can package these items with rez faux, rez foo, builder's buddy or other like scripts to make it easier for the customer to rez them in world and move them about.This is going to be a big annoyance to people, not being able to link parts into objects without the prim count exploding. People will work around it this way, so it does not mean you will see less of the high cost things in world. However, Linden Lab should prepare for an angry backlash on this one and brace themselves to deal with complaints about the inconvenience of not being able to link mixed tool objects. Once they do finalize their accounting, and I fear that this may be it, we should start an advice to builders thread so we are prepared to answer questions that will inevitably come to us as beta testers of mesh. Once it is all finalized, ready to go to the main grid, I will write a blog with a review of mesh and recommendations for its use. As things stand right now, I would have to say it is good for a very limited range of use. All in all, it is a disappointment. I hope someone at Linden Lab spots the potential for a Public Relations mess and steps in to fix this.

The sculpted barrel and sculpted sink sculpt maps are 128 x 128 each. The 3 parts of the sculpted wooden frame are 16 x 256 each. I realize I could take that down and should, and I will before taking it to the main grid. However, there is no penalty for not doing so and not all sculpty makers are even aware that they should. You will see sculpt maps of this size, and larger, commonly on the main grid.

On the positive side, those who feared mesh may put them out of business can rest easy. We are seeing that there is no advantage in terms of prim count in building with mesh as compared to building with sculpties and regular prims. With increased prim size, I think most builders will be able to reduce the prim count of their buildings to a point where mesh cannot hope to compete. Mesh will be of limited value in terms of rigged mesh. Rigged mesh will adjust with the skeleton, but not with morphs. You can compensate for that by using alpha layers to make parts that may stick out disappear if the clothing covers most of the body. If the clothing bares a lot of skin, then the morphs (muscularity, breast size, butt size, etc.) are going to be a problem and rigged mesh would not be the best choice for that kind of clothing. People may continue to prefer the movement of flex prim skirts as compared to rigged mesh skirts. Rigged mesh will not be good for everything. Non-rigged mesh attachments will work very well, such as shoes, boots, and belts. Mesh will not work well for small objects such as jewelry. Sculpties and nano prims will continue to be the tools of choice for jewelers. I think mesh may enable vehicle makers to make higher prim and more detailed vehicles with the physic hull options. However, the vehicles will be higher prim and that may be a serious drawback in some cases.

Not only is the sculpty barrel lower prim than my low poly mesh one, it is much better quality in terms of resolution. My poor low poly mesh barrel looks terrible beside the sculpted one, and costs double the prims of the sculpted one. To make a mesh barrel of equivalent quality, it would cost even more in prim count. If you add a script, the count goes up again. Here is the advice I would give to others asking me about mesh if it hits the main grid as is: If what you want to make can be done in sculpty or mesh, do it in sculpty. The prim count will be lower and the quality will be higher than what you can do in the same number of prims with mesh. If you need to make a one prim object, do it with a sculpty. Meshes can never be lower than 2 prims. If you plan to script the object, make it with sculpties. If it is to be worn as rigged mesh or as a non-rigged attachment, go with mesh because prim count does not matter. If it is all square with no rounded parts, and you can make it very low poly, then it might have a reasonable prim count in mesh, depending on size. I cannot give advice regaring large buildings or vehicles because I have not played with them much. I brought in a townhouse I made with regular prims and sculpties and was able to reduce it from 149 prims down to about 90 prims replacing the walls with mesh. However, with the new accounting, it is now 133 prims, so it was not really worth the effort to replace parts of it with mesh.

Here is the render information from the two linksets so you can more accurately compare them to see that the accounting makes no sense. Sculpted Linkset 7.168 Ktris, 5 objects, 0.0/0.0 kb, streaming cost 13.1 counts as 5 prims Mesh Linkset 1.364 Ktris, 15.1/36.7 kb, streaming cost 10.2 counts as 8 prims Sculpt Barrel .512 Ktris, 0.0/0.0 kb, streaming cost 1.6 counts as 1 prim Mesh Barrel .256 Ktris, 3.2/9.3 kb, streaming cost 2.0 counts as 2 prims

My point is not to argue that sculpties are better than mesh. Indeed, I prefer mesh. It is easier to work with, texture, and less draining on resources. My argument here is that the accounting system which determines prim equivalency is out of whack. Some of those on the mesh team believe that prims, scripts, and sculpties were not made to count for prims based on the demands they place on resources. They are trying to balance things out by increasing the prim equivalency cost of mesh. Our argument is that they have gone too far, making mesh less attractive to use than regular prims and sculpties. If the hope of Linden Lab was that mesh would reduce lag and demands on resources, they will fail with the accounting system as is, because people will continue to use sculpties over mesh for most things. As the accounting system stands at this moment, mesh will likely be used mostly for rigged clothing and attachments, since prims worn by an avatar do not count against sim prim limits. My very low poly mesh barrel is so low poly that it is ugly, yet it counts alone as 2 prims, while the resource greedy sculpty barrel looks much better and counts as only one prim. There is no incentive to use low poly mesh over sculpties. Even linked into the sink and frame, the sculpty barrel does not make the sink cost more than it did with the mesh barrel. Mesh is nerfed.

I think they behave the same when it comes to physics. One nice thing about the prim oven tool is that its bounding box hugs the sculpty pretty tight. I can stand on each of them just the same. I can't tell about sitting, because there is an animation that makes your avatar wash dishes that rez in the sink (it even gives you a sculpted wash cloth to "wear"). Please have a look and see what you think. They can be found on Mesh HQ1 a nd also on Mesh Sandbox 29.