advanced building

Even though one of the percs of Second life is that you don't need any outside applications to build things, would it be possible to use a proffessional 3d modeling program (3ds max, lightwave 3d, maya) to import objects into second life? No offense to the linden team or anything, but these applications are more specialized and advanced, so you could create more intricate things. Don't get me wrong or anything, the things created by second life are extremely beautiful, but a number of advantages could be offered by using these professional programs for those who are able to use them.

Oh dear, here we go again, for the 100th time
SL does not support meshes. SL is streamed - it's based on a thin client architecture using an RPCish model. Everything happens on the server, the client sends commands and receives updates. The network is thus on the critical path, and so bandwidth must be conserved.
This is achieved through the primitive system. Primitives are parametric models, customizable through a number of small integers. The stuff you see on the object panel fully describes a primitive, taking up far less bandwidth than all the individual triangles would.
Also, anything you build in SL must supply Havok with a collision model, or else you would go through it.
Your avatar is also a parametric model. You customize it with the 50 or so sliders that define transformations relative to the default avatar "Ruth". Its collision model is a bunch of bounding spheres for various body parts.
While its certainly possible to calculate collisions between meshes on a triangle level, this would be far too resource intensive. Using regular shapes that are easy to define mathematically makes it easier on the physics engine.

Unfortunately, you've cited the primary disadvantage to allowing the importation of external models: complexity. Of course, many people don't think there would be any performance issues with such a feature, whereas many others do believe that performance would be degraded. If you care to read these arguments, a search will probably reveal a dozen threads where the subject has been extensively debated. Regardless of the debate on the matter, it will definitely be a while before the Lindens implement model importation, if they do ever decide to do so.

Of course, there are alternatives. One of the members of SL (Edit: Looked up his name. It's Jeffrey Gomez) has concocted a way of importing .OBJ files into SL, using triangular prims for every polygon of the model. There are also many advanced techniques which can be learned to make better use of SL prims. Though you may think a shape is too complex to make in SL, someone may have previously discovered an interesting combination of properties to achieve that shape. Of course, there are also many shapes which are impossible to reproduce without using many prims. For now, your only choice is to simplify the model which you are trying to build, or to use a ton of prims to produce the desired model using advanced SL building techniques, or using model importers..

Thank you. That answers my question very well.

There should be a pool using L$ as to when this question will be asked again... I'll take March 27th.

actually i felt the same way about importing models and because i use lightwave 3d.
its not hard to learn to build with prims. but i think prims are wasteful there is lots
of hidden polys where model importation you could remove those.
the problem with importing is not every one will make low-poly models.
so its better to build with prims, you can build anything with them. you just need
to be more creative texturing them in parts.
-LW

Hate to pop everyone's bubble, but it is possible, albeit very prim heavy.

Check the link:
/54/09/32283/1.html

every problem has a solution even when there seems none to be found SL is highly adaptable but unstable in the same. putting it in game requires a little work Like it or not prims use points and planes to determine the shape if you could wire mesh the world you see that. Saying that its not possible is not agood enough answer currently the physices engine may not suppor this feature but since this is a controaled envronment where the engine is sujected to growth the ONLY real issue is coding to accomplish this task.

Only reason you cant do some thing is because it hasnt been coded to do it but mabey in the next year they will put it in.

Any suggestions of how to work around the Havok deep think issue regarding concave objects? Heck even 3dsMax7 with Havok Reactor v.2 has issues with this. Let's make the best of what we have. If u wanna see what's possible, look me up in game and check my profile for a TP , there I have some models that show off some advanced techniques, not saying I'm top shelf though, I'm sure some people would stomp me using this modeler.