3DS/MDL/OBJ support

Yay! I've hacked the bug out, so I can think straight now.

So, Second Life isn't viable to big business at the moment as anything more than a prototyping tool. I've read several people (proper sources, not just peeps in the forum) that think a ubiquitous 3D environment for all games and such is likely, but we all know SL has a hell of a long way to go before it reaches that point. Most likely there'll be very little of the current code left if it does.

At the moment it's more of a 3D MySpace than anything else, and I think it might be usuable by businesses in the same way as MySpace (i.e. for promotional purposes) once the user base gets big enough. This is one point where meshes could be introduced - as well as video, music and print marketing there's a current trend toward downloadable content for traditional computer games at the moment, for instance it's possible you might be able to buy or preview a car in Second Life and then take it for a spin in Grand Turismo 13 or whatever (obviously while the mesh/texture data would be the same for both it would likely be served differently and from different location).

It's possible that meshes could be useful to LL before that point, but the number of people consuming without creating needs to increase a lot compared to the number of people creating (for whatever reason). Keeping SL stable, making it more usable and more friendly to game development (even if it's just people doing it in their spare time) could achieve this; large numbers of people are prepared to pay small amounts of money for entertainment at a quality achievable by individuals (as can be seen by the popularity of casual Flash-based game sites) but they're not going to jump through hoops for it or put up with the user experience that SL currently provides.

I have nothing to add. I like the way you put it and agree.

Thanks for responding though, it's always a bit worrying when a thread goes quiet after a brain sneeze.

I'll say up front that I don't know a heck of a whole lot about 3D modelling, but I have some issues with a couple of these points:


But, instead of wasting polygons on faces that aren't seen, because they're interior to the object, wouldn't you end up with a net savings on poly count for complex objects? I have this beautiful little fountain sculpture of 230-some-odd prims that I'm sure would have a much lower poly count if it were a mesh instead.


The original poster's idea of counting polys towards prim count would mitigate excessive poly count.


If we're talking a standard mesh format like 3DS, builders can take their pick of programs that generate meshes in said format. Maya's not the only tool out there. Find something they're more comfortable with. Or, build beautiful stuff with prims.


Are prims and meshes mutually exclusive? If a newbie like me, or non-newbie, is more comfortable with prims, then by all means let them use prims. There are a few objects created in-world that are stunning as they are, and would loose something if they were meshes.

The other points--LOD, physics, transforms--I can't comment on because, like I said, I don't know a whole lot.

I honestly was very surprised when I first started with SL that you couldn't upload meshes. I was even more surprised that you couldn't do simple boolean operations on prims (union, intersect, etc) with the in-world tools.

Hopefully the modeling tools in SL will advance before too much longer. I honestly believe that it will bring us some even more amazing user-created objects than is possible with what we have now.

so beeing able to import meshes is like banning cigarettes? we know its better but it will hurt the revenue so lets just say there are complications. builders who make $L now will surely have a look at applications like blender and if too complicated (?!) they will stick to the ingame builder. even a conversion script from meshes to prims like the one jeffrey gomez made is a godsend!

I don't know about this converter. Could you (or someone else who knows) points me in the right direction?
I may not be terebly versed in 3D Studio or Maya, but I can think of a few things I could model more easily in them.

I'd say so long as the 3d meshes can't have more polys than a regular prim (or is reduced in poly count to match when importing), then this would be great. Basically so long as they are subject to the same restrictions etc.

Thanks much.

LOD-
can be done while preserving uv information, there are real time methods used in maya 7(built in) as well as available as a plugin for earlier versions called Progressive Mesh http://www.pojar.net/ProgressiveMesh/)
The source code is available
It's released under the The GNU Lesser General Public License.
http://www.pojar.net/ProgressiveMesh/ProgressiveMesh_V0_6_7.zip
Full source code (To build the source code, you'll also need Michael Garland's QSlim source code and the boost libraries.)
http://graphics.cs.uiuc.edu/~garland/software/qslim.html
http://www.boost.org/

Theft -
People can steal textures from any source illegally, and the same goes for models. Perhaps a web-page publish database log should write some snap shots of your texture and or model (with a wetmark) to a page to allow for a content copyright method that dates your creation whenever a product is "finalized" or imported. If it is stolen from another source, anyone can look at the web-page and complain to the thief and enter a grief with that person and prove that they created it before or somewhere outside SL. This way SL can't be in anyway accountable(not that they could be anyway for that individuals theft - see Marvel vs NCSoft, where users were making Marvel characters with the open-ended tools available in-game and texture importing) SL should make sure that the amount of times something gets sold is kept tallied.

Physics -
If the Physics Engine Uses the Rigid Body Technique they could just use bounding box information or the simplied (lowest LOD) version for this purpose or stand-in-prims that could be associated with the shapes. Bounding Boxes would be most likely the most feasible and would require breaking your model down into smaller chunks, which is a good suggestion either way to keep the size and poly counts down(as fore-mentioned).

-Capitalism
Personally, If there was an engine that could allow many people to be online together in an environment, with the scripting particle and animation abilities that SL has only that would allow custom geometry and characters using any modelling program I would be in heaven, and would switch over to that program in a heartbeat. It would then be as though you were able to really make your own content for an open-ended game engine that all can play. The hassle of modelling with the prim engine, is really the biggest downfall in my opinion. It is way too slow of a process and limiting. I don't have the time to go about modelling in this archaic method. I could make so many cool things in very little time if only you would untie my hands. Limiting the amount of polys that can be imported will force people to get very good at efficient low res modeling. The idea of capitalism is that, people with better skills to make the best products should be allowed to make more money, not the people with the most time.

-Lag
I think it would be possible to limit the number of polys that are imported. I think the allowable amount to be imported should correspond with the prims. You have to own the land or be given permission by a land owner to upload meshes into a sim, and it needs to stay on that grid, if it is part of an environment, and takes away from the total poly/prim total that can be created on that land to keep the interaction clean. . If it is part of a character or for a vehicle then there should be a set amount each person can use, that they can take with them anywhere, and have ownership to.
You should limit the amount a character can wear or "rez" at any given time, and limit the number of people that can be on a grid(if this isn't already done) Lag can be controlled very specifically.

-Facial Animation/Shapes
I would really like to see facial morph shapes, or at least animatable facial textures, at least. So much of communication relies on the face, and we rely on our avatars to convey our emotions, not just our words. A very easy to use gui for making facial animation in SL is needed.

-Normal Mapping Support
If SL is going to spend that 3million$USon something. Consider putting it towards this. Ideally, an engine that supported real-time normal mapping would make for a huge jump in the amount of detail that could appear on lower res geometry. You could even have an option to automate this. Create a standalone program used oustide SL that can use a hires geometry and its simplified version and create a normal map, if packages like zbrush or maya aren't accessible. It's not that hard.