Kwakkelde Kwak
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Posts posted by Kwakkelde Kwak
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In 3.1.0 and higher the LOD distance algorithm changed, that's why I rolled back up. I don't want to redo half my work later. The changes are here to stay, at least for now. So be careful with rolling back.
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Yes that's a decision for the creator...I always use my own settings, object detail high and RenderVolume at 2.000
i think most people will have it at this setting or higher, because most sculpts and even normal prims will look awful with lower settings.
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According to the streaming cost page the viewer will calculate with the radius as a base for LOD distances.... I am very curious how the radius of a box is measured... I'm having some terrible results with very narrow objects (especially trusses in my case where LOD medium is already shown as close as the objects length, but also columns) and good results with objects which are more cube like (cars or sitting avatars)
Does the viewer take an average of the x, y and z dimensions? or is there a more complicted formula used? faking the width of the truss by adding some data costs very few "land impact", but makes the LOD distances much much bigger.
The workaround does the trick for me, but it feels like cheating or fooling the system....
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I can second that mirror issue, ran into it myself once or twice....
The no faces I'm not sure of, but it looks like you are using SketchUp and I've seen a lot of issues with exporting from it on these forums.... If Drongles suggestion doesn't work, try exporting from blender instead. You're likely to get more feedback since so many people use it.
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I hope you have solved it by now, but if you haven't... missing faces can be the result of too many unique materials. SL can handle 8. That's it. It won't give you an error on upload or anything, it will simply skip all faces with the 9th and 10th etc material assigned.
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The parsing error can have a number of reasons, so I can't help you with that directly...
but SL logs the error so you can look it up. I'm using XP, so I can only tell you where to find it in that.... anyway...
C:\Documents and Settings\[uSERNAME]\Application Data\Second Life\logs
Force the error, then open the Secondlife.log file with wordpad or something and look at the very bottom.
EDIT btw, the folder is a system folder so hidden by default.
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okokokokokokok:)
It was very late last night Chosen....and as I said I wasn't sure what you were getting at...reading it this morning with a cup-o- coffee works a lot better... I think we're on the same page on this whole subject anyway...
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2000 faces is what one single sculpted prim uses.... so I wouldn't worry about the count, as long as all faces are put to good use.
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@ Chosen
I'm not quite sure what you're getting at....whether it's a common post where quoting me is useless or you are completely missing my point. I never said the percentages should be a guide in any way... and sculpts my first experience of LOD? erm...no not quite...
But if the OPer uses the percentages as seen in the pics...the primcount will probably be staggering compared to look of the higher LODs. So I merely gave an example, several actually. And in all of them the number of faces/verts falls off much quicker than in the OP. I also tried to explain every build requires a different approach. using one model as a base for all 4 LODs is not always a wise choice, sometimes it is... Sometimes it's wise to let SL do the calculating, sometimes it's not. Sometimes you don't need all 4 LODs, sometimes you do...etc....etc....
I think my main point was to watch out with the lower LODs or the prim cost will be higher than most customers/users will accept.
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If Ctrl-D is a modifier that subdivides every polygon into 2x2 polys..I would advice against it for "box builds". You might get far too many faces where they really aren't needed. A simple wall can be virtually the same in all LODs. For things like balloons or cars or whatever, with very curvy surfaces...that is the way to go I think. For a car I build LOD medium and enhance it with that modifier. My low LOD is far more boxy. Lowest is minimum.
But the advice of building low and enhancing I can completely agree with (In most cases:) ).
EDIT: Also, the number of faces you should end up with is HIGHLY depending on what you want, are you aiming at the lowest prim count? or the best looks? A combination?..And what's the size of the model? and what exactly IS the model? There really is no optimum here, too many variables including very subjective ones.
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There's a new "feature" where the physical shape needs to match the model shapes in material. This is at least the case for v3.1.0. If I recall correctly the physical shape needs to have at least one of the models materials. Ofcourse this is nonsense and I hope LL will change it back. Try another viewer, v3.0.0 should work with any physical box.
Hope it works, good luck.
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You can compare your LOD with sculpted prims, the low LODs are pretty messed up most of the time, because the wrong vertices/faces are surpressed (as has been said this is especially noticable on boxy builds). The number of vertices for the sculptLODs looks reasonable though....
sculpt:
LOD high 32x32x2 = 2048 faces
LOD medium 16x16x2 = 512 faces
LOD low 8x8x2 = 128 faces
LOD lowest 4x4x2 = 32 faces (?)
So this is 100%, 25%, 6,3%, 1,6%
Often I use 100%, 10%, 0%, 0%..depending on what I'm building. (the 10% is still pretty detailed in these cases, the 100% more or less insane))
In most cases it really pays off to make all your LODs yourself. Smooth and "blobby" meshes can often get away with the triangle limit. If you can spare one or two materials it can also pay off to make "old style" walls with partial alpha maps for windows, ofcourse more work, but one wall can then be 2 faces, where a wall with a hole is at least 8 (both per side). I wouldn't bother with the lower LODs for the interior..unless you have really big windows and can see through the building. From the inside you will never be far enough to see the lower ones. I also split most of my LOD building in two, where LOD high is either an upgrade of LOD medium, or LOD medium a downgrade from LOD high and the two lower LODs are far more simple, just an impression of the model with the same overall shape and color/texture. i just read 7.something meters is the limit for LOD lowest, my experience is anything bigger than 5 or so meters doesn't need the lowest LOD, so that sounds about right.
All in all I'd make sure LOD medium looks good, LOD high looks great....and most important of all, LOD low and lowest are as small as possible, these two really make the difference in prim weight.
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I'd like to add to that Betty....
Linden Lab didn't create this world, they made a platform and enough server space... The RESIDENTS made this world.
I'm not saying LL doesn't work hard or anythng like that, but the above is the simple truth of SL.
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I'm not screaming and acting like a chicken, head or no head.... Things I could upload without any problems before I can't upload now. Nothing changed, nothing at all...Oh, besides the viewer I was using....now maybe just maybe that is the thing to suspect then. I could sit in a corner and redo all my models, I have no doubt I could upload every single one of them with enough fiddling and trial and error... That wouldn't solve the problem though, a problem that clearly exsists. I'd say posting it on the forum is the first step then...and when a Linden asks me to write a JIRA....well, then I write a JIRA.
btw, there's a difference between sarcasm and screaming...maybe I wasn't clear enough, maybe you missed it..I dunno.
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@Arton
I've rolled back to V3.0 for now, for several reasons, but if that is the case, I'm happy some people give useful answers..thanks!
EDIT
installed 3.1.0 again to make sure I wasn't talking nonsense in the JIRA...I guess I need to get me some glasses, 100% right, it's in the extra window. No idea how I missed that.
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@Funk..yes with me it's also the physcal shape causing issues (and I usually use a box aswell, if not smaller). By the sound of things this isn't the only issue though.
I could try it with Texture IDs set for the box, but that's a lot of work for nothing, it doesn't make sense the physical shape needs texture IDs.
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And everyone who uses their creation has the right to let them know when things don't work...that's what this forum is for (among other things). All I can say is the latest viewer 3.1 isn't exactly a great improvement in my experience, plenty of issues with viewing and uploading, things that worked perfectly well in 3.0.
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Done..
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why why why?
in Mesh
Upload costs is a bogus argument, we're talking about cents...CENTS. (You can always use temp uploads in some viewers or the beta grid if you want to stick with LL anyway) Main reason I use mesh is because they simply allow more control by the builder over the object, in both looks and rendering cost. I'm not quite sure how a graphics card handles the tucked together vertices on a sculpt, but if all faces are rendered a sculpt is the worst thing in SL with 1024 faces. As I said, don't know the details at all, but I do know a sculpt heavy sim makes my fps drop to a point where it's unbearable. And there's nothing that shows for it. With meshes you can handle the object differently when building in- or outdoor items. Nobody needs to see your kitchen sink from 2 sims away, so you can kill most off the LODs. Also one thing I haven't really heard here is the texturing issue, on a mesh you can get away with a 512 texture in most cases, or even a repeated 256, and it will be sharp. A sculpt needs a 1024 in most cases to look anything near descent.
I love the way a sculpt works, with the RGB to XYZ, and I know my way around them. They just don't measure up to a mesh in a lot of cases though. LL needs to sort out the prim cost of the meshes though, it doesn't relate to the rendering cost at all it seems.
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How can you not look at it when it's in your face every time you open the edit window? We could see how many prims were in a linkset or in a selection before, now we see that aswell, only with different words..that's just dumb. Not to mention the fact that you can't see how many linked meshes are in a linkset anylonger, the edit window will only give you the amount of objects, one, and the number taken from the available prims, not the actual amount of objects linked. I'd like to be able to see how many objects are linked, we could see it until today. I like the addition of "remaining capacity" btw.
filed a JIRA about this
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grrrr...JIRA time! ..so many issues with this latest miracle, I'm back to V3.0 I think....
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yes, close and reopen is the only way to fix it...it's buggy this new one, to say the least. Filed a jira on the other issue with the LOD changes... very hard to make a sensible jira for that with all the variables.
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Grrr... anyone else having problems uploading with the new viewer? (Second Life 3.1.0 (243176) Oct 16 2011 12:16:07 (Second Life Release))
I have green checkmarks for everything, including "Ship it", but the "Calculate weights & fee" button is greyed out.
It happens when I set the physical shape to something with different Texture IDs than the model it seems. That never was a problem before.
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That image would be based on how I set the LODs...that won't do you any good.
I have modelled 2 of the 4 LODs, high and medium (or 1 and 2), LOD1 having beams, plates and rivets, LOD2 having beams and plates (and a single triangle for the rivet texture ID). LOD 3 and LOD 4 I didn't model, but I limited their polygon count to the minimum. So at 100 meters they would go more or less invisible, that seemed reasonable to me for an indoor item.
Hmm, The skipping LOD is my mistake, I only uploaded LOD1 and set the rest to minimum. This however doesn't erase my question about the LOD popping to a lower level at only 25 meters instead of over 100.
I can squeeze in the LOD2 (which I did build) and upload it. Then it looks more or less as it did before. But then it's 22 prims all of a sudden. Now this doesn't seem very fair. By sculpting I could make a model almost as nice...
So let's pull out the numbers....
My old mesh: LOD1 4000 faces, LOD2/3/4 4 faces.
My new mesh: LOD1 4000 faces, LOD2 400 faces, LOD3/4 4 faces. This is roughly the same as 4 sculpted prims. My model was 8 prim equivalent before and I understand that..at 24 meters it's fair to make it cost some more to reduce visual lag. Plus it textures a whole lot better than a sculpt and it rezzes faster. But 22 prims? 22? i think LL needs to recalculate this whole mess, properly.
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in Mesh
Posted
You do not have to use V3, V2 viewers are mesh enabled aswell, you just can't upload in those. (this includes Firestorm)