The Content Creators Big Request List

First, I'd like to point out that I very much appreciate all the hard work LL has done. Implementing features and running a game like SL must be a daunting task. I do feel, at times, that some critical features, specifically for content creators, seem to be a bit slow to become live. We seem to receive a lot features in updates, but it would be really great if an update was focused solely on content tools.

This list has been compiled by speaking to other content creators, reading the SL forums and generally ideas/tools I'd like to see in game.


1) PRIMITIVES - OBJ Import:

There have been many discussions regarding this and there are supporters and opponents of the idea - both have excellent points. While I understand people fear 10K poly objects arriving in game, (essentially slowing downs SIMS), we are already there. People are using hundreds and hundreds of Prims to simulate simple objects like footwear, prim hair and jewelry. This overuse of Prims is a direct result of our inability to import low-poly models. If you think about it, OBJ import could actually improve performance as there would be no need to overuse so many Primitives to create, otherwise, simple objects. What's more, LL could specify the maximum number of polygons a user could import at a time (say 100 polys). They could go as far as setting up another pricing tier, based on polygon ownership, to prevent abuse. (For instance if you imported and maintain 10,000 polygons it would cost you $10/month, 20,000 polygons $20/month etc...).


2) PRIMITIVES - Make Prim UV Templates available:

I think making the UVs available to all the Primitives you can create in SL would be a help to some content creators. This would take a lot of guesswork and monotony out of shifting and sizing textures to fit Primitives. I'm not sure why these haven’t been released to the public yet...


3) CLOTHING - Make more clothing props available and fix skirt:

To date content users only have Hair Wig and Skirt to use. That being said, even the skirt does not behave correctly. I suggest SL fixes the skirt to fit Avatar morphs more accurately and add some more clothing props like a Prop Jacket, Collared Shirt etc.... This could be a great improvement for clothing makers.



4) TEXTURES - Generalized Texture Layer:

The Generalized Texture Layer has been discussed for months, acknowledged by LL, but still we wait. I think the design community would greatly appreciate if this much needed feature was implemented asap. Is there a reason for the hold-up on this feature, I thought it was going to appear in update 1.7? I do find it somewhat frustrating that new features are added while content design features are ignored. Clearly many users spend a great deal of time shopping and/or making their skins/clothing for users.

Here's one of the better examples I've seen as an idea for its layout: http://forums.secondlife.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=31711


5) AVATARS - New Avatar Shapes with better UV's:


The UVs on the current models are in utter need of an update. They are not laid out in an optimized way, making the task of creating skins and clothing a chore when laying out complex patterns. I recommend that LL creates 2 new shapes Female 2 and Male 2 with UVs properly laid out and relaxed. By creating 2 new shapes, content creators could keep all there existing designs and begin creating content for the new shapes (they could advertise that their skin/clothing uses Shape 2). I would be more than happy to create the UVs if LL doesn't have the time.


6) AVATARS - Better Feet (Tip Toes) for Footwear:

Feet have come up over and over again at Town Halls Meetings. While I understand creating a better shaped foot isn't a priority for LL I would like to point out that the footwear market is enormous on SL. People love buying shoes - it's a fact. This said, the process of creating Prim Footwear is daunting at best.

If SL allowed a new morph called Tip Toes (where the natural flat foot could be placed at an angle between 0-45 degrees) Footwear makers would no longer have to rely on INVS scripts to knockout an AV’s heels. What's more, this would take a lot of the guesswork out of placing Prims and allow content creators to make footwear more quickly.


7) OFFLINE AVATAR VIEWER - Clothing/Skin testing:

A small program that contained the female/male Avatars, clothing, lighting and camera options contained in a small SIM would be of enormous benefit to designers. Not every uses 3D paint programs and it can become very costly when uploading textures. This would also be useful for periods following major point upgrades were that days following usually have texture rezzing and uploading issues.






Thanks,



Storma

*stamp of approval*

- BIGGER PRIMS!

Especially the curved surfaces. Being limited to 5m radius is extremely frustrating.

- BEVEL / ROUNDING
A parameter to round the hard edges on cubic prims.

Just these two alone would keep me happy for a while

I wonder if bump mapping would be executable. It may speed up the system a great deal. That is how game companies are able to fit so much into one game, that years ago they would never have been able to without making people upgrade out in extreme.

Basicly say you have an animal. You would put a fur pattern of black, grey, and white. You would put that on your object or character. Then you can put a solid (or painted pattern) color over it.

You have a bumpiness aspect in the objects, but from my view it doesn't do anything.

This would cut down on prims a lot of people can figure out how to pull a bump map off a high poly model and low poly that model. They could make the low poly look high poly with the bump map.

But this may cause the programmers the need to add 2 bump map layers.

Its called depth map shading for a more technical term.

Add an additional texture layer to prims in general. Add a check box to enable disable lights and shadows on prims. Improvement on the finese and percision of cuts. Rounded edges on cylinders too. Guess rounded edges on anything currently with a hard edge.

Three from me, simple little things. I'm no content creator but I can appreciate the benefit of what this brings to consumers (and really, why a divide when someone can be both) too:

1. XYZ arrows that don't blend in with RGB. Oddly enough, the white ruler stands out when building with a black outline, but the arrows don't go well with primary colors.
   

1. Ability to choose our own textures for Bumpiness.
   

1. Translucent/transparent shiny (without a need for the invisiprim hack or special alpha'd textures). Just 'cuz!
   

Mmmm. New prim property: Shiny alpha behavior:

1. None
   
2. Mask with Alpha
   
3. Ignore Alpha
   

Where None means the shiny does as it does now, no shiney over an alpha texure.
Mask with Alpha means the shiny is modified by the same alpha mask as the texure. Great for around oddly shaped portals and other special effects.
Ignore Alpha means to apply shiny as if it were over a regular, opaque texture. Great for glass!

I can definitely get on board with the Avatar mesh/UV update (there are a few areas on the female av that have problems, and the male's face needs a bit of help)

I would also LOVE to see a Mesh type Prim. It's vital that any design tools stay in-world, but I wouldn't mind seeing an import/upload feature as well. I would like to see a lot support prims and meshes at the same time, with 1 prim being equal to some number of mesh faces... a safe number might be 10 faces (I would prefer quads or multi-vertex faces, none of this "triangle-only" stuff). A mesh should be able to be as big as necessary, as long as the lot it's on supports the number of faces it uses. Also, a mesh should support adjustable UV mapping.

I would also like to see some improvements in the texture and animation preview windows:

1. Make the preview window resizeble.
   
2. Include lighting in the texture preview window
   
3. preview textures on all the basic prim types, not just people. Maybe preview "on selected prim or avatar" in-place in the world.
   
4. enable texture and anim previewing even when the client is signed out. There should be no technical reason that this couldn't be done, since it's all client side anyway.
   

You can zoom textures like you can the camera.

Havok2, you sons of bitches!

Also, fix all of the rounding errors inherent in the building tools.

I was talking about the preview window... where you look at the texture applied to a body part before it's uploaded.

You can't make the window larger, and even though you can zoom it, it's still difficult to see the whole thing. And while I'm thinking about it, there's no way to preview two textures at once on the same avatar... which is why I would like to see the preview on an existing in-world object, rather than just a dedicated window.

You're talking about the lack of precision?

I don't think those are rounding errors. I think that the object parameters are stored as integers, and that the way the numbers are packed only gives us so much resolution.

Of course, if we could build mesh objects and use Bezier curves, most of those problems would be solved.

Yeah, what they said! Seriously though, I agree with a lot of what has been posted, I am all for some better building tools. I like what we have and it works but it is rather limiting.

Please... oh please.. fix... skirts... agh!



=\ I worry we'll never get Avatar upgrades. There'd just be way too big an uproar about old clothes/skins/etc being rendered useless. I can see it now... Third Life! Though as time goes on builders have gotten much better at skinning, which covers a good amount of flaws. =3

Hi, keep in mind if they came out with 2 new shapes (1 female, 1 male) with different UV's this would not affect current Avatars, clothing and skins. People could use the existing shapes for all current clothing. Shape 2 Avatars would simply use Shape 2 textures (based on a new UV layout).

New UV layout, and generic clothing layers so you can have things like a loose open jacket over a shirt, instead of having the jacket being a kind of texture on top of the shirt layer, and have your skirt or trenchcoat line up with your jacket instead of floating unattached...

Generalized clothing layers is incredibly important towards breaking the FALSE CLOTHING ANALOGUE.

Offline, we're constrained—a big-ass jacket is destined to that fate. But in SL, there is no practical reason why that should be.

I hope one day we'll be collectively diggin' through the SL Forums archives and come across this, and laugh at how things used to be.