Huge Prims - what are the tricks?

Megaprims *should* be phantom if you don't want to experience strange things. Another poster said to put up invisible barriers, and that's a great way to do it.

I hacked up my copy of Shapegen to use giant prims and it's *great*. I use giant prims in Lovelace (my sim) and in the Library in Caledon Victoria City and have been very happy at the diminished prim count.

In the skies above Lovelace, there's a large airship thing (yeah, with the tentacles) with an aft-to-stern gangway where it looks as though I somehow hollowed out a long, long prim. It's really three of them cut down to a single side and arranged in a U-channel. Still cheaper than the dozens of prims it would have taken otherwise.

I am happy to see that some progress is being done, and the topic isn't out of control. I am a proud owner of a mega prim sky island because it's a whole lot less primmy then it would usually be. It's very enjoyable, but if i want to make a giant dome up there, it would have to be made of many normal prims or make a phantom mega prim. Which would defeat the purpose of it being a dome.

I have recently discovered the 20x20x0.5 square prim and immediatly found it usefull.And I HAD planned on selling products employing them,until I heard from another builder they were 'illegal" so I came to the forums to find out...

What I had in mind wouldn't contain scripts,or even linked pieces,so I doubt that they would affect the enviorment in any way other than by existing. Being unable to affect their dimensions makes them less usefull,but what I have done with them so far has been great and saved a lot of prims in my builds. What I want to make and sell with them are Murals.

I have a next door neighbor with a huge,glowing billious yellow monstrocity of a sports bar,and I have wasted normal 10M prims making glorious sunsets to block out the eye sore as I can.Now I remade them all using the 20x20x0.5 ones and my prim use for the murals has dropped to 1/4th of what it had been. They are transparent on all sides save the one facing my build,and phantom to allow the curious to enter. I want to make lots moreof these and package them for selling,either as 3 by 2 or 4 by 2 grids for large parcels,or 2 prim versions for newbie homes who only have the 117 prims to build with.

So will Lindens descend upon me if I do this? And will the world collapse if I sell too many copies of that prim? Its a needed service,and I'll continue to do so with regular prims if the mega ones are forbidden me,but I would like to know...

the short answer is no.. the lindens will not descend upon you.

It's those ridiculous 1024x1024 prims.. that will have the lindens on your doorstep.

I'd highly suggest making your barriers as inobtrusive to your other neighbors as possible. Keep in mind that just because YOU don't want to see the club on your right side, the guy on the left may not like your choice of wall textures.

The 20x20x.5 is very probably the MOST stable of the megas.. since it requires NO dimpling to become a useable size when non-phantom... (and in your case.. phantom sounds fine anyways!) It still may make the camera focus oddly when you try to orbit the camera around it.. (depth of field issues) but you aren't going to spend a lot of time focussing on your wall once it's up.. and if it's transparent on the other sides, no one's gonna try and focus on "the sky" (cause you can't)

Just make sure that the wall isn't BIGGER than your land, or overhanging anyone else's land.


As for "SELLING" anything made with mega prims.. that's an issue you should take up with the creator.

That is too funny - I make and sell those multi-prim landscape screens too, and had the exact same question. It would be so much easier to do it with megaprims but I fear retribution.

I have a 40 sphere dimpled down to make a round flat platform for my shop's courtyard. The thickness and rounded edges actually make it look more like a patch of ground in the sky than any amount of texturing on a cylinder would have looked, which was a pleasant surprise. If turned so the just-slightly-pointy side is up, I can walk on it with no problems. If it's turned the other way, walking or standing will mean floating a few feet above the ground!

I'm looking forward to playing with the 20X20 prim.

It finally occured to me as to how I COULD use the 20x20x60 cylinder for building and live inside it without risking falling out because it was phantom. I built a 20 x 20 x 60 tower that is basically 6 stacked 20 x 20 x 10 rooms, and used just 15 prims to do it. It's perfectly livable-in. I haven't textured it yet, so at the moment it's a "glass tower" with plywood floors... but it wouldn't take too much work to turn it into an ultra-modern office building, or a wizard's tower, or what-have-you.

The basic procedure is this:

Rez one of the 20x20x60 cylinders. Make it phantom and hollow it out.

Put in flooring. Each 20x20 circular floor can be made from one very tortured tube prim. (And all the floors except the bottom floor can be set to have a hole in them big enough to walk/fly through. Or you could just have solid floors and use sit-target teleporters or something. This was proof-of-concept so I went with the hole-in-the-middle approach.)

Put in guard rails.

That last one is the real trick. I made the guard rails out of the same tortured prim tubes I used for the floors, but I tortured them more and turned them into thin, hollow hoops. I placed one per floor, but one meter higher than the floor level. This means you can't just accidentally walk out the side of your nice huge prim tower. I've arranged the thickness of the tower walls so the guard rail is completely inside the wall, embedded in it. This means that once the walls are textured, the guard rails will be out of sight. Or, if you want to go with a "glass tower" design like the current prototype, you can just apply a 100% transparent texture to the guard rails and make them invisible.

Edit: I should add that I made it possible to walk it at ground level by cutting the ground level guard rail to leave a gap, then put a short ramp to mark the entry spot (because once it's textured with a non-transparent stonework or whatever, it won't be obvious where the place is that you can actually walk through...)

I've attached a snapshot of the prototype tower, with me flying inside it (for size comparison and to verify that I actually AM free-moving inside it...)

Here is the SLURL:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Moran/60/105/54

I got hold of the 20x20x.5 and it seems to work fine (nothing has fallen through it yet) but now what I really need is a 15x15x 0.200 and a 15x15x 0.01

I can;t resize the 20x20 and I understand that is one of the drawbacks. I think someone did ask how these were made but there was no answer other than 'it's a hack' well, yeah..obviously. Sooo...can anyone tell me where I can have ones made that I need?

as it has been said over and over it is a hack that can't be reproduced anymore, so the huge prims we have are the ones that got made while the hack was working.

You could use the 32x32x40... (that "grass" one) and with some creative dimpling and cutting, make a 16x16 platform. Not sure how thin you can get it.

The last word I heard from the Lindens about the MegaPrim was at the last technical town hall meeting with Cory Linden where I asked what their stance was on Mega Prim..

Cory said; "policy is to return them if a nuisance"

later he said;
"oh, a follow up on megaprims: we are going to allow them on private estates as well."

You can read it in the following Blog Entry

http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/12/20/town-hall-with-cory-introductory-transcript/#more-628

Thank you.

I eventually textured it as a stone tower with iron-bound wooden door and so on. I then turned it into an auto-rezzer that will automatically build the tower for you, in 60m segements, anywhere from 1 segment up to as many as will fit vertically without going over the 768m upper limit. That way, I can erect the tower on demand when and where I want it, at any number of floors/levels (divisible by 6, of course), without having to have it sitting around all the time taking up prims.

The rezzer will also automatically remove the tower for you if you choose that option instead.

I'm thinking of releasing this on SLX as a freebie... but since it auto-rezzes one type of megaprim, I am a bit hesitant.

Thoughts?

Solomon, how do you turn a tube into a 20m disc?

It's a fairly well-known trick, and I believe there is an example pre-made that you can buy and look at on SLX for either no money or just L$1. But... since you asked...

Rez a tube object, then use these settings:

Size:
x: 0.20m
y: 10.0 m
z: 10.0 m

Twist:
Begin: 90
End: 90

Hole Size:
x: 1.00
y: 0.05

IIRC, that's all you need to change from the way the tube rezzes in the first place, in order to get the 20m disk.

I checked the slxchange link, and the megaprim set is not available for sale... any chance someone in world can pass me a set?

I just bought new mointain top land, and someone bought a bunch of "high slope" land around it, and raised everything sky high with megaprims, burying all th eneighbors nearby with 100m plus wall around them.

I have a 2048 plot, and will use them to just raise my land up, so his unsightly issue no longer affects me.

Damned shame when someone destroys a beautiful area like that.

If anyone can pass me a set, please IM me in world.

Linden Lab reserves the right to return megaprims if they think they are affecting region performance. The affects are so varied if your region is having ANY performance issues there is a chance it could be due to a megaprim. Lindens don't seem to have a whole lot of love for these things, so if someone is having performance problems in a region all they really need to do is look for someone nearby using megaprims. Then they email the in-world support Lindens *cough* [email]inworld@secondlife.com[/email] *cough* who come out and return the megaprims for them with a "have a nice day" and a "thank you very much".

As anybody who has seen my World Trade Center towers in Friedman can tell, I've done quite a bit of building with megaprims.

Firstly, the claims about stability, etc is all bogus: wives tales by people who don't know. As I own my estate, I have tested them all for script and collision lag in all conditions. Heres the rules:

a) don't make em flexi
b) don't make them physical
c) they don't have to remain phantom.

In order to have the hollow be useful space, you need to do the trick described earlier for domes, though you should do a bit more dimpling work for both 40 and 50 meter domes or larger. The reason for this is that what remains after dimpling/path cutting tends to cause a rectangular volume around the piece to be impenetrable by an avatar, so the smaller each piece is, the better. Yes this detracts a bit from the advantages of megaprims, but it does make for maximizing the useful volume inside while retaining the nice spherical shape that you can only get with a megaprim.

So, rather than dimpling each piece to .5 and 1.0, I recommend dimpling an upper segment to 0.75 and 1.00, then a lower segment to 0.5 and 0.75. Each section should be path cut to no more than 12.5% at a time, i.e. 0.00 to 0.125, 0.125 to 0.25, etc

This works for both 40 and 50 meter domes. You can see one example at the Venusian Tower in Magritte, which I built.

If you want to do larger domes, try doing more dimple and path cut. Any sphere is an interpolated geodesic with 12 sides around the circumference, so you should be able to path cut each section to 0.087 or 0.088 alternatively as a bare minimum, and dimpling to 12.5% segments should allow for an optimal dome shape. Note that the keystone position in the dome can retain zero path cut since its pretty near flat.

For other ideas on megaprim construction, come to my estate and look at the various buildings I've made from megaprims: the Lorrey Tower, Lorrey Trade Tower (both in Lorrey region), World Trade Center towers 1 and 2, as well as the World Stock Exchange/Hope Capital Centre (Friedman), The Black Sun Night Club (Hayek), Venusian Tower (Magritte).

We still get misinformed people visiting up here occasionally who still think megaprims are "illegal", of course they typically seem to think they are still on the mainland and are shocked to find the financial center of SL is in a private estate.....

This is just the sort of misinformed BS I was talking about. I've found significantly greater sim stability and load issues in sims which are highly loaded with regular prims bearing lots of high resolution textures. So if you have stability problems in your sim, look at who has all the highest resolution textures.

Second source of sim stability: people with lots of furniture or other objects with multiple pose balls in the same linkset: the more poseballs used in the same linkset, lag grows exponentially with each additional ball used. This applies to furniture, dance floors, vehicles, you name it.

Other things to look out for:
a) idiots leaving vehicles parked in their yard
b) camping chairs / dance pads
c) avatars: esp avs with lots of animated objects on them, huds, and other scripted attachments. Animations with equal priority ranks on separate objects cause significant lag due to the conflicts of the two animations fighting for precedence.

Yes, megaprims are sposed not to be made flexi or physical. Thats common sense. Additionally, don't use them as dance floors. When an avatar is using AOs, or prim shoes with animations, they become physical vehicles and cause collisions, causing collision lag. This happens when avs dance on normal prims too, tho not to as significant a degree.

That said, theres no reason you can't build with megaprims without any sim stability issues. Doubters can visit Friedman, which is mostly built with megaprims, including two full scale models of the world trade center towers. As estate owner, I have tested these for lag, and found zero script lag and minimal collision lag.

None of my megaprims have ever been returned by any linden.

As for Lindens having love for them, Philip Linden has visited us several times, and Socrates Linden was very impressed with our work when he came by the other day with Matthew Linden. Lucy has come by the office, Beast has been to the Black Sun, and other Lindens occasionally pop by.

Phillip and Pathfinder clearly stated official acceptance of megaprims at the december town hall meeting (logs are available for verification).

Whatever.

If they aren't used correctly they will cause problems and if they do, Lindens will return them. Just because it hasn't happened to you yet doesn't mean it won't.

Are these on privately owned regions? In that case they won't return them, but on the mainland they will.

Lindens love anything when it is innovative and used correctly. Guns and orbiters are cool too until the asshats get hold of them and start shooting everyone in sight.

If a few Lindens stroked your ego because your build is built correctly and is a great use of these things... well goodie goodie for you. I assure you they WILL and DO return them if they aren't. That's not BS. It's a fact.

It's also a fact the average person misuses them and just like everything else that gets misused in SL (like First Land and Live Help) I predict a time when you tp to your mainland build an find all your megaprims have gone poof.

Just a followup.. the lindens did nothing at all to the mainland giant prims levelling a mountaintop, and ruining the land surrounding it for land owners next door.. almost all those plots are for sale again now.. everyone is trying to move because they were buried.

And another nearby land owner decided to retaliate, with a HUGE ugly texture flashing "castle" build next door to the megaprim land levelling.

While they have some positive uses, here's a great reason why they should be banned: they ruined the land buying experience for about 30 people, in favor of one money making landlord, and another user then used them as ugly "offense" when LL did nothing about it.

Unfortunately if they didn't cross any parcel boundaries and there weren't any region issues at the moment they won't have any justification for returning them I'm guessing. It doesn't mean they don't want to. They just have to have a good reason. Unfortunately, "it's ruining everyone's view" isn't one that qualifies... whether with oversize prims or regular ones. But it's the easy misuse of these things along with this sort of inconsiderate use and abuse (and resulting distain for) that will result in their eventual demise I'm wagering/hoping.

One of the other factors besides potential physics problems is they play havoc with draw distances as your system tries to process prims that would normally be out of view. I know when I'm in areas where tons of people are using these things I get screen freezes when I move my view. I have plenty of RAM, a nice vid card and a fast processor. I've checked against high resolution textures and the lot. It only happens when viewing megaprims in the distance.

SL was never designed to work with prims this large. It's why there is a prim size limit in the first place. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.