The Lindens again pointed out that the system was designed to more accurately reflect the real costs of rendering mesh objects. The prims we have used for years cost one prim and have NO RELATIONSHIP to real render cost. You can see that if you rez a torus. Then attach it to a mesh object and watch what happens to the LI cost of the torus.

A torus is geometrically difficult to render. Twist one and the polygon count explodes. Attach a twisted torus and add some cuts and revolutions then attach it to a mesh. You will have a clear example of prim inflation.

There is no going back. The new costing system added for mesh is here to stay. I have no doubt that we will see it spring up in new places. In many ways of looking at the system it is not fair. But, it is not fair to try and force the Lab to pay for all of our new stuff. Plus allowing users to go wild with mesh would lag it to death. Too many poorly built mesh items throw a huge render load on the system. With these costs people have a motive to learn how to make efficient mesh objects.

Already people are finding things in the Market Place that have a LI of 400 and building similar items with a LI of 25 or so. Mesh is going to be for efficient creators/builders that learn the system.

Mesh Pivot Points

This is a topic that has been an issue for a time. Many of us would like to see editable pivot points for mesh. Editable in the sense that the viewer uses the pivot point we make in Blender, 3DS Max, Maya, or whatever.

Drongle McMahon asked about whether to create a new feature request in the JIRA since the feature requests for mesh have dropped out of the system. Now that the mesh project is complete the support accessories are being cleaned up and removed too. So, we’ll see the pivot point feature in a new JIRA item in the Viewer Project. I can’t find a JIRA item for it, yet either.

VWR-28179

VWR-28179 – Mesh upload hangs after ‘Calculate Weights and Fee’. UPLOAD FEE, LAND IMPACT etc remain at ‘TBD’.

Several people are running into this. There is a work around. Try again or change any of the options and retry, restart the viewer and retry, close the upload panel and reopen it, or try again tomorrow. One can also move to another region and retry. At the meeting Monday no one had any information on whether this solved the problem or not. But, it’s worth a try. Sometimes a region’s mesh uploader seems to hang and no meshes will upload.

The Lindens are looking into this. They suspect the server is flagging an error the viewer does not understand or the server is possibly just dropping it on the floor.

People should understand that with large mesh objects it may take considerable time to calculate the estimated costs. So, with large objects avoid jumping to the conclusion that the problem is this issue. Exercise some patience and give it some time.

The estimated cost is calculated on the server. I suppose if it wasn’t someone would program their viewer to spoof the cost. If the server is lagging the time to get the estimated cost will be longer.

Runitai is going to move the issue into the Shining project and see what he can do with it. It is an intermittent problem so there hasn’t been lots of attention from users to the JIRA. I suspect most people new to mesh have no idea whether it is a bug or some mistake they are making.

If you are running into this problem, note the time and things you do to get around or whether you can get around it and add that information to the JIRA.

One user is using xmllint to check the .dae files before attempting an upload. He says he is not having any problems. Xmllint is a Linux/Unix program AFAIK. However there are versions that run on Windows and Mac. (Download XMLLint Windows)

Mesh Stats

We have some new stats for mesh.

• Regions with Mesh – 26%
• Residents using mesh viewers – 70%
• Number of Sessions with mesh viewers- 63%
• Duration of sessions with mesh viewers- 66%

 

Duration of sessions… that confused me. It means that 66% of all time spent online now is with a mesh capable viewer.

Market Place Filters

Charlar is talking with those working on the Market Place. The hope is he can get them to include more filters to help people looking for mesh.

Blocking Non-Mesh Viewers

There are still people that want to force people into mesh capable viewers. One has to wonder if they have ever thought their politics through. Freedom is about letting people do what they want to do up until the point it infringes on someone else’s rights.

In any case the Lindens are not going block the older or newer non-mesh viewers.

Multi-Face Sculpties

I have heard that someone figured out how to create sculpties with more than one face. There is no way to manipulate the UV map so I’m not sure how useful that would be.

I hear that via XML-export, edit, and re-import one can put the sculptie-header on a prim to get one of these odd sculpties. I haven’t bothered to try it yet. I can’t see the advantage, but apparently some do.

There is the possibility that at some point the Lindens will block and remove this type of sculpty. On the other hand, if they create not problems, they may leave them alone. Whichever the case proves to be, using them now is risky.

Mesh Avatar Render Fail

Some users are seeing a mesh avatar render fail. The Lindens are aware of this problem for multi-screen users. Seems there is a viewer skin render problem when multiple monitors are used or one places the viewer on the secondary screen.

xNormal

This is a free open source program that some are using to bake textures for sculpties and mesh.

See the xNormal FAQ for more information on the program and its use.