Question about sculpties in 2014

Hello, I was reading about scultpies on the Wiki page and came across this piece of information:



Does this mean that there will eventually be new restrictions on sculpties? I hope I've read it wrong because if anything I would have thought that as the years pass SL would gradually start to expand a bit on the technology aspect instead of introducing new restrictions.

Users can write to the Wiki, and that bit was probably not written by anyone at LL. The date is a typo, as is the word "assert".

Yes, the 1.20.14 refers to the viewer version number rather than a date I guess. They're currently on 1.23.5

Is that a date, or a version number?


edit: yeah, what Kelly said

My mistake - it's a version number. But "assert" is still a typo

I don't see what new restrictions are being mentioned here.

On the other hand, I wouldn't be investing a lot of time and effort into creating new sculpties, with meshes fast approaching. Sculpties will still work, and may even be preferable in a (very) few applications, but I think new sculpty development is pretty much capped (with the possible exception of flexi sculpts... although now that I think about the computations, I'm not sure why they'd bother with that instead of restricting flexing to meshes).

They're going to introduce meshes soon?

Ah, I guess I did misread it. I understand that some countries put their dates in a different order from ours so I didn't think it might be the version number for a viewer.

Oh, duh! My bad: I didn't catch the possible relevance of "2014" in the thread title.

About meshes, ummm.... I think I wasn't supposed to say anything.

(Oops. )

if i remember there is no point in making 128x128 sculpts as a sculpt only have 1024 vertices.

Right?

I think the size range may be to accommodate non square sculpt maps, but yeah, 1024 verts' or 2048 tris' however you like to look at it.

Actually, it's fine to talk about that, Qie. It was mentioned, discussed and previewed at SLCC09. So, it's not really a secret, just not widely known.

(and yay meshes!)

Just last week there was a thread that raised the issue whereby 128 x 128 maps are supposedly prioritised over 64 x64 sculpt maps for rendering. The implication is that even though 128 x 128 is unnecessarily large, it will load faster.

I can't recall the title of that thread or the OP's name and it seems to have been swallowed up in the netherworld of 2+ pages on 'Texturing Tips' but to summarise: Chosen Few doesn't use anything larger than 64 x 64, Domino Marama didn't suggest differently and although Gaia Clary ran a few experiments with rezzing on log in, her results were inconclusive.*

The bottom line is that there is nothing to be gained by using sculpt maps larger than 64 x 64. There's a big *maybe* that 128 x 128 sometimes loads faster but there will be no perceptible improvement in detail. SL doesn't need any extra information than it already gets from a 64 x 64 to render a sculpt map.

* Apologies in advance if I picked anyone up wrong but that seems accurate to the best of my recollection.

Mesh import to SL is coming according to LL. They released a demo video at SLCC 2009:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swh6gY_dEH0

The when and other particulars haven't been discussed, though. Whilst many sculpted items will withstand the test of time, in general I suspect that sculpties will be a thing of the past once mesh import is introduced. One thing I don't think mesh import will support is animation, though (I hope that I'm wrong, but it would seem unlikely at first). Sculpts can be animated via changing the sculptmap, so that might continue to be a use for them.

"fast"? source?

Seems right to me. OP question was "Is 128x128 still the recommended ..." and I said 'no' as the first reply. Later responses clarified the speed issue. A 32x32 sculpt map is still all you NEED because that's all a sculpt can cope with anyway.

As I understand it, the absolute bottom line is actually a 33 x 33 sculpt map. Unfortunately that's not possible because of the way OpenGL works so 64 x 64 is the next best alternative and of course that size will carry a surplus of information but there you have it. I'm pretty sure Chosen Few also made this point in the same post in that thorough manner which has made his/her name a word on these forums.

But thanks for the clarification, Indy: I do recall that the OP on other thread was concerned about the best choice between 128s and 64s.

I only posted my two cents worth here because the OP above seems to view the issue of sculpt map size as some kind of restriction whereas I don't see why folk should even consider using still larger maps. I've heard of builders who insist on 512s and even 1024s, which would go some way towards explaining why SL is littered with weirdly textured balloons.

The mesh demo was awesome, but the thing that really caught my eye was the lighting. Did anyone notice the time lapse thing at the end there where the sun and moon light was reflecting off of the building? When is that expected?