[opensource-dev] Unity 3D as possible base / 2.x Codebase plugin capable?

[Dale Mahalko]

An in-world prim-to-mesh converter would both be incredibly powerful
and yet also easy to use. Heck, it could be practically transparent to
the end-user.

Make prims, arrange, and link them
* Prims are merged automagically into a mesh
* Embedded and overlapping internal surfaces are removed
* The original prims disappear from world
* The mesh is now the stand-in for the prims

Unlink the mesh
* The mesh disappears and is discarded.
* Prims are reloaded back into the world for editing as individual objects

This could shed massive amounts of hidden vertexes from linked prim
sculptures, prim vehicles, houses, roads, etc, and significantly
improve frame-rates, all while being mostly transparent to the end
user... perhaps little more than a checkbox option in the editor :
"Make linked prims into a mesh?"


Though I would hope for a way to separately link together prims to
make the physics collision surface for a high-prim object. That way a
beautiful vase with curved handles can have a simple cylinder
collision surface to go with it, and take load off the physics engine.
This could be anti-griefed by making sure that the collision surface
always has fewer vertexes than the visible mesh it is joined to.

- Dale Mahalko / Scalar Tardis


On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 2:08 AM, Celierra Darling <Celierra at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't see why mesh editing needs to be considered "basic"?  I would
> consider building through prims to be the most basic, to learn how
> objects/prims/links work and what features are available and what texturing
> is and the such.