The 6/6 group meeting had one of the largest agenda lists I’ve seen, 23 items. So, there is lots I found interesting.

Recent Priorities

Nyx is working on a new upload pipeline for mesh. Runitai Linden has done some optimization on the render pipeline indexing textures to improve performance. Sandbox 20 and Mesh City 2 are being used to test the new pipeline. Anyone uploading mesh without the new viewer with the new pipeline will not be able to upload and rez sculpties and mesh and have them rez correctly in these regions. A flat disc is indicative of the problem.

Blender 2.57b

New Pipeline and Format

Once they have the new upload pipeline and mesh format stable they will publish the information. I suppose this means that third party viewers and OpenSim are somewhat on hold for their mesh support updates.

Bone Length and Rotation

Prep Linden tells us this is NOT going to make it into the initial release of Mesh. Hopes are the feature will be rolled out soon after the release. However, bone translation (which has something to do with rigged mesh) will be in the initial roll out.

Preview Grid

Once Mesh is rolled out on the main grid the entire Preview/Beta grid will have mesh enabled. At some point the current special mesh regions will probably be removed, leaving the basic ADITI regions, but with mesh enabled. This means it will still possible to upload and test a mesh for free.

Consistent Physics Shape

Some have noticed that the uploaded physics shape is not used in subsequent rez’s of a mesh. There are JIRA’s and fixes in place or progress for this issue. As you probably know, the physics shape has a major effect on lag and cost.

Rigged Mesh

A question about using mesh clothing came up. If one makes a shirt, does one have to include the skeleton for the entire avatar? The basic answer is YES. Technically the entire joint list must be included in the .DAE file uploaded to SL.

Fractional Prim Count

If you have played with simple mesh objects you have probably seen the fractional prim counts. A mesh cube for instance is much less costly than a prim cube. Runitai Linden explained that fractional values are tallied and then rounded up. This literally means a region can have more then 15,000 objects. Quoting Runitai:

We take the sum of fractional costs for the link set and then round up. You can definitely get more than 15000 objects (I put down 24000 spheres recently for testing) on the sim if you use the proper shapes, but we’ll soon be introducing a “streaming cost” equivalent for prims to counter-act the increased triangle cost. Some prims will cost more than 1 streaming cost, some will cost less than 1. “Streaming cost” is now a misnomer — its function now is to limit the number of visible triangles, so it’s more of a simplified render cost.

[…] existing costs won’t change. One prim is one prim until you introduce a physics shape type other than prim or a mesh to the link set.

Streaming Cost

The meaning of this term is changing. The use of it in figuring cost and prim equivalency is changing. A new streaming equivalency for mesh to prim is being added. How the Lindens are going to label this is unclear.

Build Tool Cost Display

This is the cost that is to be the accurate indicator of a mesh or prim/mesh linkset cost. Believe it over other indicators. This week the display in the build tool will change and we’ll see new terms and information. See CTC-611 JIRA.

Cost and Prim Equivalency

The equation in the wiki, showing how the costs and equivalency are calculated, has not been updated for several weeks. New values have been added to the algorithm and they have not made it into the Wiki. They probably won’t until the equation is stabilized. We should see something published in the next couple of weeks.

Too Many Vertices

Those of us playing with mesh have run into this error as we add LoD meshes. This may be a bug. Whatever the case the Lindens are looking at improving the error message so we can know what is going wrong.

Render Metadata

This is a feature in newer viewers, Me → Preferences → Developer → Render Metadata. Current viewers are blacking out the screen when the feature is activated. It is a known bug. See CTC-606

Dynamic Shadows

This is generally not considered a mesh related feature. However, the impromptu question was asked about the feature release. Dynamic or Sun/Moon shadows will be released in the next viewer release. They will not have to wait on mesh.

New Mesh Format

The technical format of how the Lab represents mesh has been changing over the last 2 or 3 weeks. This format change is going to break mesh across all grids trying to be compatible with SL. At the current time we do not have a viewer that uses the new format. Nyx is hoping to have a viewer with the new format out this week. The other Lindens are not so optimistic. Figure next week.

Who Gets Mesh First

Those regions in the Release Channels will get the first roll outs. Those that want to be included early in the mesh roll out should contact Oskar Linden. I suspect this means you will then be part of the Release Channel.

Summary

There are still issues with mesh. The format and upload pipeline are changing. Hopefully that all goes well and mesh remains on schedule.

As things are now, it appears that mesh changes on OpenSim will lag a bit behind SL. The movers and shakers there do NOT foresee any significant problems. I suspect most of the mesh problems have to do with upload and tier costs. There is the issue of physics and mesh physics shape generation. We’ll see how the OpenSim grids handle those issues.

I do expect the Mesh Wizard is not going to work on most OpenSim grids. I doubt the physics shape generator is going to work. Mesh will likely only upload via the Advanced Mesh Upload Tool.