content export discussion thread

content export was briefly mentioned in phillip's address. I'd like to open it up for a bit more discussion. The easiest areas I think to address as follows :

1) textures and images, should be no brainer, if you uploaded it and somehow lost your local copy, you should be able to retrieve a backup from SL, same for snapshots you take inworld, you should be able to save them back to disk again.

CONS : being able to export other people's textures and reuploading as your own. The exported texture/image could be tied to its creator key at the time, so that if somebody tried to export your texture and tried to upload it again, if the uploader's key doesnt match the original creator's key, the upload will fail.

2) The #1 thing about building in SL is that I dont feel my time will be spent truly productively building in SL because if I build something nice I wont eb able to save the mesh for other things. This is kind of the holy grail of exporting I guess, being able to link up any object and export it in some kind of common file i.e 3DS, the system for identification would be as above. Of course this also opens the door to being able to possibly bring in external meshes too, something thats been talked about for awhile.

#2 would require a lot of work imo, although a real 3D programmer/geometry expert might have a better idea of the feasibility/time to effort scale for conversion

1. Why is it a no brainer? If you actually made the texture then it is your responsibility to have it right? Why should you be able to DL a texture from SL that you didn't make? I don't know that there is a way to prevent you from changing it and re-uploading it. SL is not going to be able to mark a texture with a UUID that will carry to your desktop. I don't think so anyway. SL is not our private server where we can just back up our files and junk and then DL that stuff when we need it again. It seems that would be a major cost to LL in the long run and its not really what they do. Just my opinion.

2. I think conversion between other 3-d proggy's would be a great idea and thats all I have to say about that one.

1) You can, if you've perms. "Save Texture As..." is you friend. Or at least it was when I checked yesterday.

2) It will happen, and it'll be SL user-driven at first. I suspect there are multiple efforts to that end atm...

Hawk, I've been looking for save textures as... Where did you find it?

File menu, IIRC.

It's a bit counter-intuitive. Open up the texture, and with it selected go to "File", and the appropriate option should be greenlighted on the menu.

I like the idea of exporting and importing objects. Considering how time-consuming the building system is, I woud love to be able to work on a project off-line, and upload the whole thing in a batch.

Of course, that whole L$10 charge per-file kinda blows it for me, but I guess it makes sense to have SOME way to prevent users from clogging up the servers with needless crud.

This also would open the door for user-hosted content, and the ability to back up all your user data if you choose to exit SL for a few months for whatever reason.

I saw a house yesterday that said "thanks for messing up my house, SL - AGAIN!" I remember thinking that if that user had had the ability to back up his house and his lot's contents to his PC, then he could have just re-uploaded everything.

That makes me question something about the L$10 upload charge: if I upload a texture, and it's not "quite" right, do I have to pay ANOTHER L$10 to upload the fixed texture? Do I get my L$10 if I delete the only copy of the uploaded texture? It seems a little unfair to force us to pay L$10 just to fix mistakes in our textures: When I'm doing 3D modelling, I often edit a texture hundreds of times before I get it "just right". Without some sort of "avatar preview" tool, it could cost me thousands of LindenDollars to build a single outfit of clothing!!!

Yes, Wraith, every time you upload a texture, you have to pay L$10. You don't get it back, even if you delete the file. This is what's known as a "money sink" -- it's a way for the Lindens to take L$ out of the economy.

Fortunately, there IS "some sort of avatar preview tool". When you select a texture to upload, you're greeted with the texture preview window. You can select the five different segments of the avatar mesh, predeformed into a generic "male" and "female" mesh. There isn't currently a way to preview two textures at once, however, so if you're making skins that require it, you WILL have to upload both to preview.

Thanks. I will check that out tonight.