Old returning creator seeking simple guidiance.

[brunotusker]

Hello everyone,

As the title explains I am a rather old creator who has returned under a new name. I highly doubt anyone even remembers my old one anyway. But regardless I am presently looking for guidance on mesh creations. Namely my question is aimed more at efficiency than anything else. 

 

So far I have created what I like to call low poly models. Textured them up and made them look all sorts of pretty. But so far I am unsure of what is considered a "efficient" to the SL-Viewer. Take my latest project which is this

RPG Themed Crystal Necklace Pendant

 

The model is 3 prims with a combined total of 1540 faces and only 772 vertices.

Here is a game screen of the objects weights

 

Since this intends to be a rather small object are these numbers going to be considered ok? I've done all I can to make sure it's as minimal as it can be. Also the next question comes to texture sizes. For testing purposes the model is currently using the full size 512x512 textures I made for all 3 meshes in the object. But when i plan to sell it they will be using 256x256 tetures. The most complex texture which is the crystal sits at 80kb of total diskspace for a good idea how much an impact the textures could have.

 

Also another thing I would like an opinion on is the differences of my models. The crystal is obviously textured. But originally I wanted the binding and the mount to be using SL's shiny and color materials only. But after closer examination adding ambient occlusion to the two seemed to have made them more lively and stand out better.

Here is a screen of the older model

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Freya Mokusei]

Please excuse me while I fix your links.

RPG Themed Crystal Necklace Pendant

Here is a game screen of the objects weights

Here is a screen of the older model...

Sorry, but I can't comment on the content of your post. Good luck!

[brunotusker]

Thank you, I have made the edits suggested to my OP. Was wondering why the links were breaking like that. Guess LL still doesn't like image embedding

[Freya Mokusei]

Cool! And you're right, image embedding is troublesome.

I just wanted to make sure people could see your work, unfortunately I'm no-good at mesh.

[Codex Alpha]

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brunotusker wrote:

 

 

So far I have created what I like to call low poly models. Textured them up and made them look all sorts of pretty. But so far I am unsure of what is considered a "efficient" to the SL-Viewer. Take my latest project which is this

RPG Themed Crystal Necklace Pendant

 

The model is 3 prims with a combined total of 1540 faces and only 772 vertices.

Here is a game screen of the objects weights

 

Since this intends to be a rather small object are these numbers going to be considered ok? I've done all I can to make sure it's as minimal as it can be. Also the next question comes to texture sizes. For texting purposes the model is currently using the full size 512x512 textures I made for all 3 meshes in the object. But when i plan to sell it they will be using 256x256 tetures. The most complex texture which is the crystal sits at 80kb of total diskspace for a good idea how much an impact the textures could have.

 

Also another thing I would like an opinion on is the differences of my models. The crystal is obviously textured. But originally I wanted the binding and the mount to be using SL's shiny and color materials only. But after closer examination adding ambient occlusion to the two seemed to have made them more lively and stand out better.

Here is a screen of the older model

 

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The efficiency of your model will be how much detail you can display from a high-poly model to the low-poly models required by SL and computer games.

This can come from learning or reviewing how to bake a high-detailed model, using it's resultant normal, AO and other maps to create textures for your low-poly model.

The efficiency in your model, as far as displaying it in Second Life will get down to how you make your LOD models, how each will break down as the viewer moves away from them, while still maintaining the visibility of it and keeping the silhouette of the model as long as possible. You will need to learn or review how to decimate your models into less vertices/faces to accomodate this.

You can get an idea about that by doing a trial upload of your original mesh up into the SL viewer, then view how many vertices it expects for the other models from LOD1 to LOD4 (lowest). You should make a mesh model for each of these LODs to optimize your mesh. You may find that your earrings will stay at 3Li (to maintain detail), or even fall lower after you upload the custom LODs in the viewer and assign the physics model as well.

As far as textures go, the size should match the size of the mesh for sure. Too many creators are slapping full size 1024px textures on rings and earrings and shoes and such, and lagging everyone else out with the burden. For earrings, pendants or small lanterns, noone's going to see the amazing texture anyway unless their face is right up against it, so most care should be spent holding up the shape of the mesh and basic colors at distance.

You can color and shine the binding and mounts in-game after the fact, as long as you have assigned a separate material to it of course (separate from your textured material). If you wanted AO on the bindings and such, you would unwrap those areas of course, bake out the AO map, then you could apply the black and white AO texture and change the color/shine in-game as well. You could use the AO baked texture as a base for your entire mesh, and texture in the parts you would like to, and leave the other area black and white. Then with the 2 separate 'materials' (faces in SL?), you could share the texture, but could change the color and gloss of your bindings inworld.

As far as size of textures are concerned, the smaller the better for optimization, but personally I can't seem to use them as anything I upload under 512px (at 256 or 128 for repeating textures) get overcompressed, blurred and unusable.

Hope this helps, just trying to glean what your needs are and help out somehow.

[brunotusker]

Aye everything you said was quite noted and exactly what I wanted to hear. Yes I to have in the past suffered at the hands of people using 1024x1024 textures....My computer was never happy about that. But anyway your message was very well put and I appreciate the assistance. I used to solely do my building using SL-Prims back in the old days. I never personally liked sculpties and thought of them as disgusting wastes of space in terms of poly counts. Sure they were nice for certain things. But when you enter a sim that is just hammered with them everywhere. Say good bye to your fps and sanity. I'll see about that decimation suggestion you made. I might just focus on keeping the crystal high detail but the frame, binding be low poly when people are not near.

[Nalates Urriah]

Efficient… I suggest you read through Penny Patton’s blog: http://pennycow.blogspot.com/

Efficient can mean different things to different people, of course. Land Impact is always a concern to those buying things to set on their property. Recently ACI (Avatar Complexity Index) has been added in a way that makes the cost obvious to users and provides a way for people to limit the impact on their system. It provides a ‘sort of’ cost to things avatars wear.

There is lag induced by things and clothes we render. Penny talks about the use of too-large-a-texture-for-the-task problems and the effect on lag and viewer performance. She also discusses the ‘inefficiencies’ caused by over-sized avatars. She is big on building to scale and makes a good case for her to-scale stance.

Visual impression… Not long ago we had a big debate about how viewers were treating LoD (Level of Detail – you probably knew). The Linden and Firestorm viewers use different ‘starting’ defaults. Various designers advise altering the viewer’s Debug Setting for RenderVolumeLODFactor from the default to the max (4). I believe most of those designers have no idea what purpose LOD serves.

The Linden Viewer uses 1.0 and Firestorm 1.0 but, that is only if you click the ‘Reset to Default’ button. Firestorm was installing with a setting of 2.0. I haven’t checked lately to see what it starts out with now. But, as many use the FS Viewer designers were not realizing how those on low end computers, or those of us going for higher frame rates, were seeing their stuff.

LOD use is still a problem in SL. Too few understand how to use it. The result is the Lindens managing SL see no way to ever get VR to work at a satisfactory level to avoid simulator sickness. So, no VR for SL. I consider that a serious effect of an ‘efficiency’ problem.

Since you were here the Lab has added an Advanced Lighting Model (ALM - 2013) and materials. A prim/mesh face can have 3 images per face. With an 8 face per object max that is 24 images. If all are 1024x1024 that could be 25MB of texturing. So, properly sized materials images are an efficiency consideration.

The Lab has changed over to HTTP protocol for most downloaded ‘things’. In 2017 they will add animations and sounds to the list of ‘things’ flowing through the HTTP pipeline. All the HTTP stuff flows through a CDN system and is therefore cached somewhere near the user. This somewhat weights concern from download speed to render speed.

 

[brunotusker]

I will look into this blog, It seems exactly what I needed to know. Thank you!

[Chic Aeon]

Just some additional thoughts.

 

If this is a pendant sized for jewelry there is no reason it should be 3 land impact.  You can JOIN (or link or whatever your 3D program says) the parts of the model together as one object. There can be up to eight materials defined for one object.  Better yet would be to add the pendant to the necklace and upload as one larger piece. Tiny items uploaded have a tendency to break down VERY quickly LOD wise. You might want to add an invisible prim for extra geometry to solve that issue. 

 

You will need to test the Avatar Complexity Number along the way to see how you are doing. I have thrown out all my older jewelry with high numbers. There is no reason for them now.  

 

BE VERY SURE to test your upload on various LOD settings. You really don't need to see jewelry from across the sim of course but it would be nice to see it when chatting with someone. 

 

Also in regards to using JUST colors and specular and normal maps, I suggest making textures for the metal. You can do that in Cycles Render in Blender (also in other 3D programs and not all that easy to learn at least in Blender) OR you can make an ambient map and add your metal texture to that in graphics software. It is really important to remember that not everyone uses ALM so some folks will not see the shine and built in texture that you might add with normal and specular maps (these also add upload texture costs which is one reason I learned how to use Cycles Render ).

 

Also, down the road (or maybe even now) you can work on getting all your material faces put onto one texture. You can do this within your 3D program or you can do it in your graphics software.   So MULTIPLE textures (crystal, metal, chain metal if different) all in one 512 texture -- that would work very well for your small object.

 

 

 

You crystal is very pretty by the way.  Just do a LOT of personal testing and see what works the best for you. It is all about balance and your "perfect" setting will likely be different than those of other designers.  There have been OH SO MANY long conversations about this.

 

The beta grid is your friend.    

[brunotusker]

Do you have any link regarding the multiple materials thing? If there is one thing I would love to do. It is exactly as you said with the being able to combine the models together as one.

[Codex Alpha]

Here is what we're talking about, you never specified what software you are using, but here are some tutorial examples of baking multiple textures/materials/images into one. Find tutorials specific to your software.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

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brunotusker wrote:

Do you have any link regarding the multiple materials thing? If there is one thing I would love to do. It is exactly as you said with the being able to combine the models together as one.

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If by "the multiple materials thing" you mean creating different "faces" on a mesh object in SL so you can have different settings for shiny, glow, etc. then it's as simple as applying different materials to different groups of polygons in whatever 3D app you happen to be using (for example in Maya it would be materials, in 3D Coat it would be UV Sets, etc) the terminology and step by step process may change from program to program but I think you'll find the basic principle is the same.  

It's worth doing a search of the forums on this subject as there are a lot of posts detailing what to do in various apps, and also some valuable information on things to avoid (for example mixing up the material order on corresponding LOD models can lead to all sorts of headaches).

[brunotusker]

Oh the viewer supports grouping? That actually makes things easier for me then. I use Wings3D for pretty much everything I do these days.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

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brunotusker wrote:

Oh the viewer supports grouping? That actually makes things easier for me then. I use Wings3D for pretty much everything I do these days.

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If "grouping" in Wings3D means adding more than one material to a single mesh model then sure, it supports that (as I said previously, terminology tends to change depending on the package being used which can make it difficult for people using different software to share tips and techniques since, for example, the term "Grouping"  may mean one thing in one app and something completely different in another).

A quick google search showed a few likely possible sources of information on the subject of creating multiple material mesh in Wings3D, including this thread from the Wings3D forums, Collada Mesh Export with Multiple Textures.  If you follow the link from the second post it takes you to another thread on the subject, as well as this handy youtube video which you may find helpful too. :smileywink:

Hope that helps a little, best of luck with your project!

[brunotusker]

Welp,

I tried it out and lets just say I am in heaven. I thank you all for the assistance. Being able to merge my objects will make this so much easier.

 

-edit-

I have no bloody clue as to how I butchered the reply subject like that.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

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brunotusker wrote:

 

I have no bloody clue as to how I butchered the reply subject like that.

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Beats me! I didn't even notice until after I'd replied :smileyembarrassed:

 Anyway, glad it helped, good luck with your pendant, it looks great so far!

[brunotusker]

Ello again people I return to my thread to show some updated progress on the pendant. Using suggestions shown to me here. I decided to make the object 2 prim instead of three and frankly I am very pleased by this. I made some tweaks and made the pendant less busy looking. I also even managed to learn how to do cycles texture baking. So now I can simulate metal textures.

 

 

All I have left to do is come up with a necklace design to go with this. But now comes my next question. If I were to say attach this to the neck of the avatar. Will it move with the head or stay level with the torso? It has been so long I actually forgot about this. The mesh now uses only around 522 tri and 1091 verts.

Here are the new weights of the model

 

In comparison to the older model this one is much more efficient. The older model was using like 3300 verts and 1500 tris. Totally unacceptable in my opinion! So hopefully I plan to get this out on the market soon.