Redoing phantom child objects

[Deja Letov]

I've been reading about the changes with the latest roll out the child phantom scripts that many of us were using to make child prims phantom on a build is no longer working. Sure enough, a lot of my furniture builds are now no longer phantom when they should be. I read the simply changing those prims that I had the script in to have a prim shape of "none" does the same thing however, I am not having that experience. Well actually let me rephrase that, the object is going prim but it is increasing the prim count by some pretty large numbers. Sometimes by 20-30 prims just for changing one single sculpt into a "none" shape. Is there some way to script these back to working without using the "none" option? It seems like SL just pretty much killed any hope of using sculpts in furniture builds for me with all these changes, unless people want to walk 10m around their couch in their house. :)

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The trick is to change everything in the build to convex hull first, and then change the stuff you want to phantom to none.  It's turning some prims to none and leaving the rest as prims that causes the issues.    You may need also to set to none objects with holes in them (so you can get through the hole) and also any particularly twisted and tortured prims.

[Jenni Darkwatch]

Clarification: Sculpts and "tortured" prims are largely to blame for your LI increase. Depending on the build complexity, I tend to just unlink the entire build, then examine the weights of every object and set it to convex hull, prim or none as needed.

For more complex objects that's obviously a lot of work and might be better done in some automated fashion. Drop scripts in that unlink, examine weights, adjust as needed with or without user intervention and re-link the build.

[Deja Letov]

Gah what is their brilliance behind this? Seems like they just made building a whole lot more complicated and resource intensive then it needed to be.

[Deja Letov]

Sounds like the easiest thing to do in case of furniture is just to make the entire build phantom. I think that's the cheesiest thing ever but if the LI is going to be so affected by it, it might be the best solution. I will definitely try the convex hull option as well to see if that does anything.

[Jenni Darkwatch]

Not really. New builds don't need hacks anymore. Neither do we now need two linksets in builds anymore - phantom and non-phantom. That's the problem with using hacks... they might go away someday. Use at your own risk ~shrugs~

[Innula Zenovka]

Further clarification.    The LI accounting system has been changed, precisely to accommodate the alterations to builds necessitated by breaking the old phantom child hacks.

Land Impact is calculated by taking the streaming cost, the server cost and the physics cost of the object and applying the highest of the three.   The streaming cost and server cost of legacy prims (i.e. not sculpties or mesh) are now  capped at 1 and sculpties are capped at 2, but frequently are considerably lower than the caps.   Their physics costs are uncapped.  Mesh items aren't affected by the changes.

Cut and tortured prims have a high physics cost,  which goes through the roof if you leave them as prims, as opposed to convex hull, but remains comparatively high even when they're convex hulls, so you may need to take them out of the physics equation completely by settting them to none.

The reasons this was brought in are explained by Maestro and Falcon Linden in their comments on PATHBUG-69

[Deja Letov]

So then the reason for example a vanity set I made was 40 prims is now close to almost 80 when i set them to none is because it is a sculpt, which would be 2 LI each? I guess what confuses me is you say "so you may need to take them out of the physics equation completely by settting them to none."  if I'm taking them out of the equation then why would the LI go up?

I guess I never considered it a "hack". It was an allowed piece of code, so I never considered it would go away.

[Deja Letov]

It would be nice if it continued to at least work for legacy items, and maybe only taking away the function on new builds. I can't even imagine how many people this affected.

[Deja Letov]

Actually I was reading the jira you posted and I'm confused. Falcon says that existing builds shouldn't be affected unless you unlink or link to them. Are you finding this to be true? The only reason I noticed this was because a couch in my store, which has not been changed in months, lost it's phantom ability, so that doesn't seem to be the case.

[Jenni Darkwatch]

It's supposed to still work for legacy builds, but it really didn't consistently do so. Vehicle builders especially found that out the very hard way though none of my vehicles broke.

[Deja Letov]

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Jenni Darkwatch wrote:

It's supposed to still work for legacy builds, but it really didn't consistently do so. Vehicle builders especially found that out the very hard way though none of my vehicles broke.

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ya that's what I'm seeing. One couch lost it but the one next to it, still retained it. I guess the best thing to do is going to be to run around and check everything and start going through each and every item and checking it. most likely anything that doesn't will either be completely marked as phantom or scrapped altogether since the LI is so high on them. I guess I'm just not seeing the advantage here to take a base vanity table that was around 40 prims and turning it into 80 by setting it to none. From what I've ready I figured "none" would be like it wasn't even there. But I guess not.

 

[Deja Letov]

Note to creators...keep your binding box small LOL

[Innula Zenovka]

Sorry, I can't have explained it very well.   

When you're using the mesh accounting system, each prim has three costs:  streaming cost, server cost and physics cost. Streaming and server costs as capped at 1 for conventional prims and 2 for sculpties, but physics cost is uncapped.   

The physics cost is frequently considerably higher if you set a prim -- particularly something like a tortured tube or torus -- to  prim under the new accounting system than if you set it to convex hull, but it's potentially going to be higher as a convex hull  than you might find acceptable.   In that case, setting that particular prim to none takes it out of the physics equation completely, so it's never going to cost more than 1 if it's a conventional prim or 2 if it's a sculpty.

From what you describe, though, I don't think that's necessarily the issue.   It may be that the streaming or server cost of all the sculpties in the build is 2, in which case you're completely correct -- setting them to none isn't going to do any good.  

In my (admittedly limited) experience of converting objects over to the new accounting system -- I've been going round my lands seeing which option is cheapest for each object -- having an LI of almost twice the prim count would, if everything is set to convex hull or none, be an unusual outcome but not impossible.   I can't, though, conceive of any circumstances in which setting something to none, rather than convex hull, could increase the LI of a build, provided all the other prims in the build are either convex hull or none, too.

 ETA:  You can't set the whole linkset to none -- the root prim can't be none.   If you try to, the whole operation fails.

[Jenni Darkwatch]

The end LI depends on one of two things... physics or display. Sculpts are, unfortunately, pretty nasty (just go to any land with a lot of large sculpted plants...). Here's an example of something built entirely out of 30 sculpted prims:

Weights: 15.0 server, 56.1 download, 30.0 physical

Setting that to "none" would not do me any good whatsoever, since the max weight will be the download weight. And that's 56.1, resulting in a LI of 56 of the entire linkset if I'd opt it in to mesh accounting.

My solution for such builds is at the moment to keep the sculpted prims separate. Not really an acceptable option but since the builds are only for myself, it's barely tolerable. I guess in a sense it's a lot like the old "one linkset for non-phantom and one linkset for phantom" stuff, just this time it's to prevent LI from going through the roof.

Edit: Innula was faster and her explanation is better.

[Deja Letov]

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Innula Zenovka wrote:

Sorry, I can't have explained it very well.   

When you're using the mesh accounting system, each prim has three costs:  streaming cost, server cost and physics cost. Streaming and server costs as capped at 1 for conventional prims and 2 for sculpties, but physics cost is uncapped.   

The physics cost is frequently considerably higher if you set a prim -- particularly something like a tortured tube or torus -- to  prim under the new accounting system than if you set it to convex hull, but it's potentially going to be higher as a convex hull  than you might find acceptable.   In that case, setting that particular prim to none takes it out of the physics equation completely, so it's never going to cost more than 1 if it's a conventional prim or 2 if it's a sculpty.

From what you describe, though, I don't think that's necessarily the issue.   It may be that the streaming or server cost of all the sculpties in the build is 2, in which case you're completely correct -- setting them to none isn't going to do any good.  

In my (admittedly limited) experience of converting objects over to the new accounting system -- I've been going round my lands seeing which option is cheapest for each object -- having an LI of almost twice the prim count would, if everything is set to convex hull or none, be an unusual outcome but not impossible.   I can't, though, conceive of any circumstances in which setting something to none, rather than convex hull, could increase the LI of a build, provided all the other prims in the build are either convex hull or none, too.

 ETA:  You can't set the whole linkset to none -- the root prim can't be none.   If you try to, the whole operation fails.

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Ya I noticed that. I wouldn't bother setting the whole thing to none, I would just check the "phantom" box and make the entire build phantom. Personally I hate that idea because who wants to walk through furniture? But honestly it seems like the easiest thing to do and doesn't increase the LI in any way no matter what the build is.

 

[Deja Letov]

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Jenni Darkwatch wrote:

The end LI depends on one of two things... physics or display. Sculpts are, unfortunately, pretty nasty (just go to any land with a lot of large sculpted plants...). Here's an example of something built entirely out of 30 sculpted prims:

Weights: 15.0 server, 56.1 download, 30.0 physical

Setting that to "none" would not do me any good whatsoever, since the max weight will be the download weight. And that's 56.1, resulting in a LI of 56 of the entire linkset if I'd opt it in to mesh accounting.

My solution for such builds is at the moment to keep the sculpted prims separate. Not really an acceptable option but since the builds are only for myself, it's barely tolerable. I guess in a sense it's a lot like the old "one linkset for non-phantom and one linkset for phantom" stuff, just this time it's to prevent LI from going through the roof.

Edit: Innula was faster and her explanation is better.

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Forgive me if this is a silly question, but where can I view those numbers for the 3 weights?

 

[Jenni Darkwatch]

In the build floater, there's a "More Info" link in the same section where the land impact is listed:

Alternatively, I made a HUD that I use to inspect things without actually having to go through the build menu... wear HUD, go into mouselook, click on stuff. If you want it I'll send it to you.

[Deja Letov]

Very cool, thanks. That might help me diagnose exactly where theincreased LI is coming from. Thanks for all your  help everyone!

[Mac Shoreman]

I changed to following scripts that works (still).

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Phantom_Child

 

My little Shack of 53 prims did not become 63 land impact as with the "none" solution. and works perfect in SL Viewer, MG-Viewer, Catznip, Firestorm, Phoenix, Hippo and a bunch of other tried ones.

Adding a disclaimer to my items after this disaster.

PS. Funny thing. I took prim after prim off from the cottage and left the "non" in the linkset and taking away "prims" hade no efect on land impact. Still showed 63 prims counted in land impact and taking off item from sim and adding but still show that the "none" costed me 63 no mather what prim I took of the object.