A way to export objects locally, PLEASE read!

Bump!

Here's a few older threads about the same thing:
Apr 2004: /13/45/12635/1.html
Jan 2004: /13/ff/8382/1.html
Dec 2003: /13/22/7827/1.html


Here's the simple facts. It is possible to look at a clump of prims and write down on a piece of paper the numbers in the boxes for each prim, and from this information duplicate an object of any complexity with exactness.

The game should be able to take any object with modify rights and do this for you, creating an XML file of the prims, using either a UUID or simply the texture name for textures.

For those worrying about stolen IP, you are misinformed. You need modify rights to view an object's information, and if you can view its information you can duplicate it. This is why you can't see nomodify scripts, because it's as simple as copying it to clipboard and back to a new script. The same applies to prims, but there is no way to copy the numbers without a lot of manhours on your part.

In the right click menu of a folder (such as your inventory folder) there should be an "Import object" option, where you select an .xml file of whatever objects, be they groups of prims, scripts or notecards.

In the right click menu of an object there should be an "Export to XML" option.

This should not cost anything, because it does not involve storing anything, only retrieving, and would be done client side.


My dragon wings probably took 8 hours to make, unfolded they are 100 prims total of very precisely placed and edited cylinders, and the folded versions are another 92 prims total. I don't feel like going through 192 primitives and recording dozens of text boxes to notepad just to back up my wings, when this should be built in to the SL viewer program.

To address another concern that keeps coming up in this thread and others about nomodify objects:

Exporting sounds and textures for which you are listed as the owner with modify rights would be a useful feature indeed, but that is for another thread. The search-forums box is at the bottom of the forum.

Exporting nomodify sounds, textures, and primitives will never be possible until the inevitable cache interpreter program is written. It is impossible to hackproof the cache, only possible to obfuscate it, just like DRM. And no I'm not working on a cache browser, but I'm sure someone is.

Scripts are not cached, since the client has no business with scripts other than editing them, the sim is what runs them, so those hoping to crack open their cool no-mod attachments are out of luck

The object export feature is already there, every object gets exported to the client upon viewing. Alas it is in Linden Lab Client Format and so is essentiallly opaque.

So the emit code is there, all that would be needed is a prettifier. However, as that would require coding in SL for no increase in subscriber fees nor is it very "sexy" I doubt it will ever happen. If only all prim parameters were available to LSL, some Omega would have written "object dump" already.

Or, given the last year of requests with no response at all, I think this sits somewhere on the LL priority list below "write decent documentation". Especially with all the asset server overload (and subsequent "pilfering" of common obects in people's inventories) you'd think they'd be really keen on off-loadable objects.

The gods move in mysterious ways.

"The object export feature is already there, every object gets exported to the client upon viewing. Alas it is in Linden Lab Client Format and so is essentiallly opaque."

That's downloading, it's not exporting anything, at least not in the normal computer use of the word 'format and spit something out as a file'

The export should be to xml files. You should be able to export an object if you have full mod-copy-trans rights to every part of that object.

We can write the converters to squirt those into Maya/Lightwave etc.

Note that if we had llGetPrimitiveParams, we could write the exporter ourselves in LSL.

Azelda

We do have it. Its new in 1.5

Really? Heh! Ok, well I guess we no longer need this thread then?

Azelda

Yeah, I had one working prior to llGetPrimParams, but this makes my job a lot easier. Just have to work in some improvements now.

I think some kind of local backup that can easily be restored inside SL is a pretty good idea, but backup for use in a 3rd party 3d app? Why? If you have Maya, Max, Xsi, or whatever, why on earth would you want to import objects made in SL with simple primitives? Why not just rebuild it with the far more advanced/efficient/and all around better modeling and texturing tools at your disposal in the other app?

As a 3ds Max owner and user I would never use this feature. In SL, having to create things out of simple shapes and find ways to cheat them into some kind of complexity is a great deal of the fun and challenge. Something complex in SL would be an embarassment of inneficiency in Max or Maya. I could see using something you built in SL as a portfolio piece for the purpose of showing off an ability to create complexity with simple tools. That same thing actually done in Maya would be the last thing in the world you'd want in your portfolio.

Plus, the percentage of the user base who has access to Max, Maya, or other 3d apps who would make use of such a feature is so tiny that it would be a poor use of LL's resources to try and implement something like this. As someone else mentioned, some sort of ascii export that people could use to write their own translators and importers for their 3d app of choice would be sufficient.

If that doesn't happen you already have an export tool. It's called snapshot to disk. Document your build and then redo it in a manner suited to the tool you're using.

edit: Oh, and another thing... LL backs up the grid constantly. Anything on my local drive is far more at risk of being lost to negligence or hardware failure than something stored on LL's servers

some great ideas here in this thread guys!

I personally wouldn't mind even just knowing that all my user data was stored safely somewhere (like burned annually to a CD or something when you renew, then sent to you as proof of your IP rights or something), even if I couldn't look at it offline or edit it in any way. Everyone wants an offline viewer/builder, so there would definitely be a market for this as well

Arti

A script that can do this would be nice, but scripts in LL are not like plugins for FireFox. This needs to be a feature within the SL viewer.

*bumped*

has anyone done this? grabbed the prim data and used it outside of SL - in any fashion?

Not yet, though I've considered writing a .py script for Blender to do just this. It's tagged as the culmination of my scripting project in the Library forum - though it'll be a while before I have the free time needed to devote to such a task.

i'm going to have to take a peek at this...

I had to say no. I don't feel a need for Linden Lab to build such exporting into SL.

Instead, I'd rather they improve LSL to the point at which we can write our own importers and exporters.

There are less than 50 people working on Second Life at Linden Lab, but there are 20,000+ of us. If they spend their time making the basic tools, WE can do the work to add such features to SL. And we can do it in many different ways, and to everyone's satisfaction.

But LSL, as always, is the sticking point.

In the 1.5 preview grid, I once forgot where I was a built a new car. Then I realized that I had no way to get it back home, and it was a complex mess of twisted and contorted prims too! So I wrote a script that I could drop in each piece and it spat out a couple lines of text and erased itself. Did that in each an every part of the car, saved the chat log, then came back to the main grid and wrote a matching importer function.

Worked like a charm. Though it was not a QUICK thing since I had to install the script by hand in each an every prim. (A car, so less than 31 of them.) So this is doable, it just needs to be improved.

Fix this up and add in extrernal communicaiton, and you could have an automatic backup of your objects.

(Scripting) Power to the People!