We still don’t have a cost for mesh upload or prim equivalency. But in Monday’s meeting mesh cost was still a big issue. Mesh making residents are upset that mesh costs too much. Did I mention that the Lindens haven’t set the cost yet? So, we don’t know what it is going to cost, but it’s too much. Sounds like politicians arguing.

Latest Mesh Cost Information

The equation for calculating simulation weight, streaming weight, and physics weight to get prim equivalence cost is pretty well set for the first release of mesh. However, the constants and multipliers aren’t. The upload cost is still in flux. The equations in the wiki are a mix of up-to-date and out-of-date. Jeremy Linden made a bunch of changes to the Mesh Pages in the wiki today.

See: Second Life Mesh/Uploading a model

See: Second Life Mesh/Decomposing a mesh for physics shape

See: Second Life Mesh/Uploading a multi-face mesh

See: Second Life Mesh/Uploading and wearing a rigged mesh

See: Second Life Mesh/Prim equivalence

More changes to the Wiki Pages are coming.

Even with the changes we still don’t have a final cost for mesh. From a business viewpoint I believe mesh is always going to be more costly than prims. They are going to take up server storage space, use bandwidth, and complicate physics calculations. Mesh will look better and bring professionals into the SL modeling world. So, it would seem the Lindens are planning on moving things up a notch and charging for it. SL is a business after all. The guess is mesh upload will cost between L$20 and L$150 per mesh as a minimum and vary by the complexity and size of the mesh.

Charlar Linden acknowledged that the Lindens are aware of mesh makers’ opinions and mesh cost is an ongoing topic of discussion with the Lab. Upload cost is also under discussion.

64 Meter Prims

There is concern that the new prim size limit will add cost to prim. The Lindens re-confirmed that is NOT the case. Scaling prims does not move a prim into the new cost algorithm.

Nyx Linden said, “The new PE calculations kick in if any prim in the object is 1) a mesh or 2) uses a non-default physics shape type. Changing size does not opt you in to the new calculations.”

Rigged Mesh

There are still problems uploading rigged mesh. Work is being done to fix it.

Rigged Mesh Deformations

Clothes makers have already found that making mesh clothes has some problems. Our avatars are deformed by a shape file, deformations. However, those deformation do not currently affect mesh clothes, rigged mesh. Having our shape affect the rigged meshes we ware is a future feature. It is NOT going to make it into the initial release of mesh.

Possibility of Lost Content

Having worked on the ADITI grid mesh makers are a bit concerned about a changes to mesh. After all we are seeing lots of changes break mesh in ADITI. When mesh is uploaded to AGNI (main grid), even in the Release Channels, we’ll be paying upload fees. The Lindens plan to have mesh SET before enabling it on AGNI, so that we won’t have to deal with changing mesh.

Is there a possibility that some future change will break mesh? It and everything else we can think of is possible. The Lindens work hard to avoid breaking existing/legacy items. So, it is unlikely we’ll see drastic changes after mesh reaches AGNI, even if it is only on the Release Channels.

The LoD Generator

A question was asked about what software the LoD (Level of Detail) generator was based on. The LoD generator is the part of the viewer that simplifies mesh in the Mesh Upload Wizard. It is based on an open source library called GLOD.

If you want the best look and cost for your meshes, use your own custom made LoD’s.

Purpose of Mesh

How are the Lindens planning on mesh being used? Charlar Linden answered the question this way, “Tough question to answer without falling into the trap of excluding something. Long term, just about everything. That said, this is the first release of mesh, so there will be some areas initially which will not work so well, and we’ll learn and adjust.”

Because of mesh costs many mesh makers are figuring that only small things can be economically used in SL. It is looking like that may be the case with the initial release. But, we don’t really know the costs yet.

Pivot Points

Pivot points are the point around which we rotate objects. In mesh modeling programs we can set the pivot point anywhere in the model. The uploader does not currently handle pivot points. So, modelers cannot control where the pivot point in a model is placed. Nor will that feature be in the initial release. It is in the planning for future releases.

Summary

Everyone is concerned about mesh cost and spending meeting time talking about cost and whether they will use mesh or not, lots of gnashing of teeth and hair pulling. So, we aren’t getting much new information on mesh.