How would arbitrary meshes be animated/manipulated ?
~ Marv. Dahlia Trimble wrote:
One advantage sculpts have is they require little or no modifications to the SL asset storage/distribution model. I'm not sure how other mesh storage methods would fit into this model, but I suspect some modifications would be required.One problem I have with sculpties is the lack of precision for the vertex elements as a result of quantifying them to 8 bit integers to convert them to a color. Another is the need for square or rectangular arrays of vertices which makes some techniques of free form mesh modeling difficult or impossible as arbitrary polygons cannot be added or deleted.Still, I am impressed with the cleverness of sculpted prims and although I do share your desire for more flexible means of designing meshes for SL, I am grateful that sculpties exist and are being improved upon.On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Dale Mahalko <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:It occurred to me recently that LL's reasoning for not supporting raw 3D meshes as a prim type is basically invalid, what with how SL functions right now.The whole premise behind sculpted primitives was the idea thatwavelet/JPEG lossy compression could be used to store "organic" shapes that don't have a very definite shape or form. The lossy wavelet compression of the RGB map allows the data size to stay very small on the asset server, and that this could not work if applied to storing and rendering mesh data.However, that whole argument was thrown out the window afterpeople kept demanding precision in sculpted shapes, and some time ago someone at LL said "Okay, FINE, we will allow the option of lossless compression for RGB sculpt-map uploads" and support for this lossless uploading has been added into the viewer.So, uh, if lossless compression of sculpted primitives ispermitted, doesn't that mean that there could equally be support for lossless compressed 3D mesh uploads, like traditional 3D editors use?There apparently isn't really any reason to prevent mesh uploadsanymore, at least as long as the meshes are very small and simple, and the largest uploaded mesh byte size is equal to or smaller than the most randomized, incompressible compressed sculpt-map.Allowing use of small meshes would be more efficient for the 3Drenderer anyway. Since sculpts have a fixed number of triangles, if your model does not need the triangles for detail then they need to be "bunched up" into a pile to get them out of the way, possibly tucked inside the model so they don't show. But these unnecessary bunched up triangles are still being processed by the 3D renderer whether or not they are needed.LL's own sample sculpt maps demonstrate this problem, like withthe S-shaped sculpt that has a ton of prims scrunched up on it, and which could drop 50% or more of the triangle faces on it and still look good.So sculpted prims actually add to 3D scene rendering lag andcontribute to a lower framerate and poor performance because they do not and cannot "turn off" unneeded triangle faces, vs a mesh which just simply would not include any more detail triangles than the mesh actually requires.But there seems to be major LL heel-dragging against implementingactual 3D mesh support and making models a heck of a lot easier to build in external editors, vs the arcanary of sculpts that very few people understand or can use effectively to reduce prim usage.So, I am not expecting this post will change anything. But ohwell, I thought I would bring up this small detail for discussion. The sldev list has been pretty quiet lately anyway.. ;-)- Scalar Tardis / Dale Mahalko_______________________________________________ Policies and (un)subscribe information available here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SLDev Please read the policies before posting to keep unmoderated posting privileges ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Policies and (un)subscribe information available here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SLDev Please read the policies before posting to keep unmoderated posting privileges
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