[sldev] SL 2.0?

[Zha Ewry]

I think the reason you see so much pushback on the idea of a full mesh
editor inside the second life client is the sheer complexity of such
tools. Building a set of complete mesh editing tools which shared
frequent updates via the region would be a serious challenge. That
said,I think that there are a number of basic operations one would
want to be able to do to Meshed objects. Simple resizes are the
obvious ones. I'd say texturing, but in general, mesh faces are harder
to discretely texture. It will be very interesting to see if people
have good answers to that.

At the same time, there is huge power in building things in world out
of small composable building blocks. I'm hopeful that Meshes in Second
Life will end up being used more for components, and less for complete
large chunks. I'm thinking trees, castle walls, Chairs, and such, and
less complete buildings, landscapes and so on. This is even more
cogent, when it comes to managing large amounts of hosted content. The
bigger the mesh chunks, the more one simply has to wait for the whole
mesh to arrive and be added to the client's scenegraph model before
you can render it. This also hints at some interesting issues for
various loads. Prims as load markers has been a somewhat broken model
for a while. All prims are not equally expensive to render, nor do
they take up the same simulator resources. One hopes that meshes
arrive with some thought about how to manage the resources they
consume. It would be really painful if the model encouraged large,
bulky meshes, just to game the measurement system.

~ Zha



On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 11:16 AM, Mary Blackwell
<arseovrteakettl at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I wish LL would approach someone like Blizz or Cryptic and talk about
> porting to SL for bases and guildhalls in some way.  Of course I don't
> mean you could use the same avvies, but to make some sort of official
> connection and allow the degree of customizability we have in SL.
>
> Otherwise, even if Blizz implemented player customized forts, they'd be instanced and "cookie cutter" just as they are in EQ2 and City of Heros/City of VIllains.
>
> Getting access to the millions playing Wow and other mmos is not a bad idea.
>
>
> Just
> my hobbyhorse.  If these things stay around for long, it is ineivtable
> this will happen.  Might as well be the ones who get rich off it.
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Lawson English <lenglish5 at cox.net>
> To: "Frisby, Adam" <adam at deepthink.com.au>
> Cc: "sldev at lists.secondlife.com" <sldev at lists.secondlife.com>
> Sent: Mon, January 11, 2010 10:05:01 AM
> Subject: Re: [sldev] SL 2.0?
>
> Frisby, Adam wrote:
>> It's worth pointing out that outside tools are a lot better.
>>
>> If you add inworld texturing facilities - you are unlikely to get much better than MSPaint. Proper texturing requires proper tools (ie, Adobe Photoshop) - likewise mesh editing requires decent tools to be effective. Inworld mesh editing is really a unnessecary feature; sure you can do it - but it's cart before the horse if you don't add mesh support at all first.
>>
>
> There can be many levels of editing tool. The fact that id has gone to
> the expense to provide their professional level artists with relatively
> high-end in-world tools (even if they aren't as good as the "out-world"
> tools) suggests that they have found that there is a need for such tools
> to make things look "right."
>
> The fact that SL also involves collaboration/immersion as one of its
> main attractions makes it even more important.
>
>
> Even in MMORPG games, such tools might be of value. If WoW had the
> option to build a fort (perhaps using prefab boulders/bricks), as part
> of the game play in preparation for some PVP encounter or a quest, I'm
> pretty sure that you would find many people wanting to use them.
>
>
> Lawson
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