Corner rounding on objects

An option on the primitives menu to round the edges of corners on objects - like cubes - pyramids - the objects with plane sides intesecting would be great. It would add alot more possible object shapes for construction. If thats not clear - example - On a long object , say a streched cube into a beam - be able to round off beam edges so it was a soft radius , rather than hard 90's

Would B nice,, we COULD do it manually with segmented object options & a simple set of subobject tools... which I've previously suggested

think about it, a cube has 6 sides, a cube with rounded corners has at least 22. ( default 6+8+8 for bevels ) Considering the current speed of the world do you want to start nearly quadding ( 4th iteration in the vein of doubling Is that a word? ) the number of polys in your neighbourhood?

Abso,, and here's why, my ninja...

first off, forget sides,, lets talk about polys, those are the bottom line when it comes to frame rate... and I imagine streaming data as well..

To make a roundy cube with prims you need 1 cube, 12 cylinders, and 8 spheres. Though I suppose I could drop the cylinder count down to 6 if I had more decimal places of accuracy with the scale settings,,, but I don't so we'll call it 12

it takes 12 polys to make a cube(2 polys per side, as polys are triangular)

small cylinders I think (in SL) are autodegraded to 5 sides(2 polys per side), and 2 end caps( at least 3 polys per cap), which comes out to at least 16 polys ( more if you float the center vertices[ vertice is where 2 or more lines meet, ya also gotta have 3 of these to make a poly] for begin & end cuts,, though I think that is auto degraded untill the cut parameters are changed)

The sphere is a little more difficult as I'm not sure if they are geodesics(sp?) or segmented (hard call as geos are more cost effective than Segs till you start adjusting the cut parameters, or build hemis) but lets pretend they ARE segs, & they auto degrade to 20 faces ( imagine the 5 sided cylinder with the ends pinched to where it looks like a sphere.

ok now the simple math
1 Cube 12p
12 Cylinders @ 16p/ea 72p
8 Spheres @ 20p/ea 160p

total polys 244


Now, for the sake of argument,, lets say we have the ability to make segmented objects & do subobject manipulations...

Make a cyinder with 5 segments, scale it up till you get 12 sides, enter some sort of subobject mode, make every 3rd side broader than the remaining sides, & configure them into a squareish shape when viewed down the Y axis, use the other sides to round the corners off ( ya really only need 2 sides per corner with the objects aready set up fo cylindrical smoothing) then grab the last 2 segments on either end of the cylinder and scale em down along the Y axis till the middle segments form the height of the cube, deselect those segments & reselect the outermost segment at each end, & scale those down on the Y till you have it squared up with the first transitionals of the side segment corners ( this is where a orthographic mode would be very handy) when that looks good, move the view so your looking down the Y axis again, & scale them on the X&Y till you get them looking right, release those segments & grab the end vertices, go back to the side view & scale those down on the Y axis til you get the object boundaries square, then switch back to the top view scale on the X&Y till you get the 5 & 6th surfaces of your cube looking right. this takes less time to model than with primitives as well.

BTW... 1 cylinder 12 sides, 5 segments = 144polys YOU SAVE 100 POLYS!!!

in my opinion,, saving 100 polys and a faster production time is very well worth it.

It apparently makes toast in addition to fetching your slippers and easing your creation of 'rounded' primitives.

I'm not sure I understand how SL does it's graphics, or how normal poly 3d graphics work, but here is my humble opinion.

I could be way off, but...
As best as I can figure, SL stores objects as primitives (the type and all parameters) and streams them to the client in that form. Then the client converts those primitives into polys and displays them. This minimizes the amount of data to be streamed. And on my computer that is what's important. I can run SL with all the "slower" graphics options turned on, and anti-aliasing, and there is no problem with the speed of rendering, it's all about the rate at which the data comes across the network. And to Linden Lab's credit, I think this is ingenious.

Now, assuming I'm correct (am I?)...
Taking that into account, doing a fillet (smooth edges) shouldn't cause that big a problem, since it would be a relatively small amount of data at the primitive level. And if that is to much to process on the client side (too many polys as Celerity seems to think), how about chamfer (ie, turn a square into an octagon, like a fillet, but with straight lines).

Personally I don't see a whole lot of use for this, but it is an interesting idea. I just wouldn't make it a high priority.

-Pat Murphy

A distinction was made in another thread between primitives & objects, prims being the basic building block types, & objects being a collection of, 2 or more primitives.

so Yes in a sense SL stores objects as prims, but there is no real conversion there,, they are a collection of prims. the nice thing about the streaming is it allows us to make environmental changes and upload our own bitmaps & sound files, & write scripts that will be streamed to other players as they encounter them, and elimnating the "monthly update" annoyance of other MMORPGs. the downside is that we work with primitives because they stream faster than complex meshes.. but if you want to make what I referr to as Pseudo complex meshes,, you still wind up choking the pipe with objects made from many prims,, it's simpler data, but it's still more, and your videocard still has to render the faces & calculate the deltas at the framerate (sorta a misnomer (sp?) as your system is rendering "on the fly" as opposed to flickin' pre rendered frames based on camera movement, object animation, lighting deltas, etc.

and yes from a modeling & expense aspect, it wouldn't be that big of a deal to have fillet (thx btw, that was the term for roundy cube I couldn't remember) & chamfer parameters in the construction tools.... Programatically, I can't say as I'm not a programmer.

And, yes, the only uses I can think of for chamfers & filets is making square cut gemstones & 6 sided dice... though I've had to make enough oil tanks ( back in the early to mid 90's, a week after you delete the pill shape cause you know you'll never need it again,, you need to make another oil storage facility mesh,, that or you lost the file, & for some reason, the back up tape that was at the bosse's home was comendeered for swingset garland by his 4 year old) to really appreciate the extended primitives toolset at least 2 of the modeling packages I'm familiar with, comes with.

C$.. don't forget, it also has the ability to summon cheap Thai hookers, and makes a wicked quad mocha breve.

ok, so I admit I used these a lot before I started with nurbs, But I just can't think of anything I'd use em for in game.

I wonder how hollow would work on a ...

Nurbs?? if ya don't mind my askin', what are you using those for? I was under the impression nurbs had been more or less waysided for surface patch & B spline. though most of that is been relative to contemporary gaming industry trends, so I donno about higher end video & film apps.

I love nurbs, they are great for industrial design and photo realistic modeling. I've had less success with animation, and games are out of the question, unless some one builds a video card that renders nurbs directly.

check it out, this is the #1 nurbs modeller:
Rhino 3d

-Pat Murphy