Materials Use in Second Life

Oz Linden tells he came across some numbers on Materials use in Second Life.  Quoting:

Over half of regions and around 10% of avatars now have at least one thing with Materials properties. I’m not sure how that [avatar] number was derived… I’m guessing worn, but I don’t really know.

6 thoughts on “Materials Use in Second Life

  1. Well materials is a fair bit easier to experiment with than sculpties or mesh.
    Anyone can find a sample normal map and try applying it. I’ve played around a good bit with Materials and the one disappointing fact is that most folk don’t have the advanced lighting model enabled. cLOUD

    • We have been asking for the stats on that. Oz tells us that there is a small team that works on pulling stats out of the new stats system. They are catching up on creating the reports previously needed and available in the old system. Oz says eventually they’ll get to the a report on ALM use. Its a resource and priority thing.

  2. I wonder how many of the regions are simply using a version of the old bump mapping on objects – I do on ‘granite’ rocks that I want to have a rougher surface.

    • I think they are detecting the items that actually use the new mapping textures. I don’t know if they track use of the old bump map settings.

    • I’ve been wondering whether bump mapping “counts.” I use it fairly often because it happens to work extremely will with many of my textures, using brightness. People have commended me on my “materials” so I end up explaining that it’s just bump mapping. Most don’t know even know what that is. I intend to keep using it where I can. Why upload two textures when one will do?

      • I haven’t been working much with Materials. It is something I’ll get to.

        Whether the old style bump mapping ‘counts’ can be decerned by the Land Impact cost. When the system sees Materials it then uses the new Land Impact costing system. I suppose I could try a torus with a bump map and see what happens to the LI. Then add Material to see how it changes.

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