Importing from 3D Programs - 1st Post!

Hey, I'm not too savvy on 3D design programs like 3D Studio MAX and Maya, but for those that are, how about making some format translations into Second Life? I don't know what the technical specifics of that are, but I think we'd get a lot better looking things modeled by people who've had experience in those programs, as opposed to the built-in builder. And I'm sure we're going to get a lot of people proficient in 3D programs come release time. Think about it.

That is a good idea but....as you probably know, professional programs tend to pump out a TON of polygons. So, if this were to be done, to limit rendering in game, there should probably be some polygon limit of some sort.

This has been discussed a lot, for my part, i would rather not see imported models incorperated into the game for several reasons. First of all, as Sparkly pointed out, there needs to be a polygon limit. this limit will be relaxed as our computers and internet connections get faster, but the in-world build option will proably account for that.

Second, it will create a gap between users. The build tools in SL are designed to be accsesable to users who have little or no knowledge of 3D modeling, while at the same time being robust enough for more advanced users to create decent models. If a outside modler was allowed, new users would be intmidated by the fact that no matter how proficient they are with the in game build tool, the could not compete with the pre-fab buildings. We have already seen evidence of new users who fell that there is "no way" they can make objects as well as established users, when in reality, the vetrans don't have any more prior experience. If we want the experience to be pleasurable for everyone, there needs to be a standard that all users, no matter their experience level, can use.

Finally, an out of game builder destroys much of the fun behind the game. I like to build, and I don't really plan my buildings - I just kinda make them up as I go along. I love it when folks stop by when I'm working to tell me what they think, or just to stop and chat. I feel that one of the strengths of this product is that it merges creative expression and social expression. it is amazing to just watch someone start to make something out of thin air, and realize what it is as they are building it, I think that we would lose that experience once people started to build outside the system.

my 2 cents

BBC

Alright here's my small input into this issue. Okay programs like 3d Studio Max, Maya, Lightwave, and the like can produce high ploy models that would kill the game...though in some situations it could save a lot of ploys as well, but then you get into the problem of custom UV settings. Every type of object in SL has its own way that a texture can wrap around it...with professional 3d programs this can be customized and thus further increasing load times in most cases...I think. And as BBC its fun to build in game ^_^ you get some of the best comments from people randomly passing by. Alright well I'm done here for now thats my 0.3453 cents, later.

I'd love to be able to import objects, could still have limits on polys. It makes for easy preperation for people who have limited time in world as well, due to my wifes and my schedules I can only come in 2 - 3 hours max. Plus you can texture objects before uploading to save cash. Simple objects would still have to be assembled so the online build part would still be there.

This has been discussed a number of times, and is answered somewhat vaguely in the Knowledge base so I'll attempt to answer it better here.

For this system, it is very difficult for us to build a converter or off-line editor. By that I mean, its really hard. And probably harder than that. It would require us to build a mini-system/executable program that would run locally on a machine, then go through the intricacies of registering the object once you tried to import it, along with the numberous other things that we do once new objects are created.

Rather than focus our programming staff on making yet another piece of software, we are dedicating our resources to improving Second Life. Once we have the time, and we are satisfied with the system to the point that we can spare some engineers, we will start working on an off-line import tool. As it stands, thats probably not going to be for a long while.

Make sense?

-Peter

What was used to get models into SL initially?

Somethings built in a modeler could have fewer polygons and possibly draw faster than an object made out of primitives. I agree that allowing people to upload models could have disasterous results. Even if we uploaded models to you guys and you oversaw the implementation, that would require a lot of time on your part.

Every solution that I could think of would take a lot of work and/or patience. I can't wait to get back in tonight. I want to build something on my little piece of land

oi how come nicoles and ciaran's register dates are 1969?!?!?! heh

time machines is my guess. They used time machines to go back to 1969 and logged on to the internet, and Peter let them into the beta, seeing as he was very young at the time, and didn't know better.

BBC

Well, the thing that really annoys me at the moment is 1) The game is so laggy, especially when you have to build things in-game. and 2) With the limited beta hours (4 to be exact), we have a miniscule amount of time to log on, build a little, and get off. Then we have to wait until the next evening, same time, to continue our work. My suggestion, unrelated to the 3D program importation, is that when you're doing building things, ESPECIALLY character alteration, that it open a different "window" where you can still talk to people, and it's still online, just without all the extra polygons to weigh you down. Afterwards, you would create the object in the world, and position it there.

Um, 6 hours. 4pm to 10pm. I get a lot of grief for this taking up a quarter of my life.

3Ds max and other high polygon modeling packages can export into VRML, which is a primitive modeling language, just like in SL. It has 4 simple shapes, cube, sphere, cone, and cylinder. I used to be a really good object designer in Cybertown (a community). You can have an extreamly complicated object like an animated pit droid, and it only takes up 26kb, inclduing the animation. It uses similar grid system to SL, all you gotta do is convert the code structure.
It also hs mroe complex structures such as revolutions, and indexed face set.
I use a program called Spazz3d for VRML modling, its the best program there is, and it incldues a gzipper, which compresses VRML files.

I just started modelling and i made really easy models in MS3d (milkshape3d) which is a modelling program for GAMES like half-life (stonage but good) and other games, and as it is for games its low-poly! there are some nifty tools that can reduce the poly's too tho! and the size of the models isnt that big... only the textures are! Well i see ya all later while im exploring! Ive attached a nice pic of a plane i modelled (cockpit sucks)

HOLY THREAD RESSURECTION BATMAN!

-Adam

oh wow, I was soooo young, and sooooooo cute!

WTH do you mean by those messages??? Thats just spam you know!

so's your post

take a chill pill

I still don't see why an offline SL would be so difficult.

My system resources are so large now I could easily (correct me please if wrong) hold my inventory on my PC and have a semi SL sim there too.

Maybe my SL sim could be something like 200m X 200m X 200m and consist of a single plane to represent ground.

With these 2 locally stored items I could build using my existing INV within MY sim and tweak etc but not call in any new textures etc.

I could then Save any objects or linked objects etc to my local INV and simply (?) have my INV SYNCHRONISE to the SL version upon logging ?

I can see many advantages from this kinda setup and although not actually importing would enable those who want to focus on building to do it offline. Hey then i could be building during lunch at work...on the way home in the car (who pays attention to traffic anyway ?)

and maximise my enjoyment of SL...

PS - Maybe I could add new textures offline too and then when relogging be charged for any new files that upload ??

PPS - Maybe my little SIM could attach to the grid and people could visit my SIM. I think this would be a great way to use some of the super powerful hardware we have at home these days.....

PPPS - maybe I could have an even smaller SIM on my mobile phone and...... Now I'm just going crazy ! ( well they do have SIM cards !!)

an offline ll building environment would be nice. it would give us a quiet place to work, yet insure that the resulting upload was completely constructed using ll technology so that it wouldn't need conversion, just uploading.

the uploading process could upload the textures automatically and charge our accounts accordingly. i'd assume that we'd pay a per prim/texture upload fee just as we do for textures now. hang on a minute. maybe i'll just build inworld after all.

The reason there isn't an offline building client is for the exact reasons Peter listed a year ago: There simply is no point in taking engineers off projects that are needed or that improve SL's online presence and putting them on other tasks.

As for directly importing 3D meshes from 3DS or Maya, the arguments against it still are no different. A prim in SL requires three vectors for scale, position and rotation, as well as a couple floats for top size and so on.

Compare this with the teapot, a familiar sight to anyone who's done much 3D work, or at least anyone who's done much old-school 3D work. While a fairly simple model, it uses 122 vectors to represent the vertices alone, to say nothing of the rest of the data. Plus, you'd need position, rotation and scale data anyway.

SL should have support for streamed 3D models as soon as we have the bandwidth to handle them. However, that's a long way off.

In the interim, I think it would be more prudent of us as residents to attempt to build up support for the addition of another two or three dozen "primitive" types, to give us greater freedom when building organic objects like the teapot or your airplane. Even things like a simple arch are difficult to create with mathematical precision right now.

Catherine I agree engineers need to prioritise there efforts to improving SL.

But who is to say such Offline Tools would not improve the SL experience. They may actually reduce lag times by reducing the number of prims and av's inworld while people are in "offline Build" mode.

All ideas should be looked at and evaluated for Usefulness, desireability and achievabilty... Not dismissed with "they are working on other things" - bit of a cop out.

Should I sit there sucking up Server resources as i experiment and build take down build again as i improve my work until ready to unleash it on SL at large.

My suggestion would not place additional vertices etc as it would simply be an offline SL as it is.

I believe opening SL to imported models means that sl'ers either learn how to use the Model Creation Program or be outdone by those who can...

I'd rather see it kept in house ... Just as I dont like the use of external Radio as a work around.. I believe any movement away from SL weakens it !

I use Max and am so delighted with the "alive" feel and power of SL... That's why I am here.

I certainly wouldn't mind an offline build tool myself, but I don't think LL will go for something that will discourage people from being online. They are all about that "social interaction" thing, which their research has told them is the primary reason for people to even be interested in things like SL to begin with.

1) Prims are easy to packetize and require very tiny amounts of data to describe.

Ever notice after teleporting somewhere, how fast the scene loads up? This speed would not be achievable with a mesh-based system anytime in the near future.

Prims are an elegant and efficient atomic unit to use in a very dynamic world, and are prefectly suited for use with today's computer power and network speeds.

2) My understanding is that the addition of new prim types is mostly dependent upon what's possible with Havok 2, since they would need to fit within that API for physics to work with them.

3) Offline editors sound good, but they would detract from some aspects of the SL world as well.

They would have their advantages, but IMO, the disadvantages would outweigh the advantages, at least for now.

LL is not a big enough company to invest research & development resources into a separate software package, or to morph the existing one to work offline.

One possible way to approach this problem for now is to write your own conversion tool for other prim-based 3d file formats that will dump a text output, which you can paste into a notecard and plug into a rezzer.

The Havok physics engine doesn't limit what shapes we can use. If it did, we wouldn't be able to do things like cut and hollow. Those change the mass and dimensions of an object, not just its appearence. The reason hollow, cut toroids are considered a particularly bad shape to use as bullets is because Havok doesn't care what shape it is, it'll still try to calculate physics for it.

This, incidentally, is related to the reason why the Lindens haven't implemented Havok 2.x yet. Unlike Havok 1, 2.x does not yet support concave objects. The Havok developers are apparently working to add this functionality to Havok so that Linden Lab and their other concave-object-loving clients can get their Havok 2 on.


Or you could wait until 1.3, and use XML-RPC to do it directly. Unfortunately, a lot of the things you can do with prims are going to be much harder to accomplish without a means by which LSL scripts can access things like shear and cut like you mention here.

It's completely silly that we don't have these functions yet. They can't possibly be difficult to implement -- we already have llGet and llSet rot/pos/scale/object name.

I'm some what of a 3DMax veteran, been using the program for over 5 years now, and I can tell you that most objects I've seen in the SL world can be created with far fewer polys.

The physics engine may have great difficulty working with objects created outside SL because from what I can tell Havock bases physics on the position arrows. Many Maxers I know don't know how to adjust the position arrows of objects and the Havok engine would need extra coding time to re-adjust these positions to the center of gravity.

Plus, Max and other 3d programs have boolean operations that create many many errors which would come through as extra polys and disjointed vertex. All this would probably play havock on...well, Havock.

A converter from .max to .llm wouldn't be to hard for a novice C++ writer to build. Amatuer converters are all over the net between various gaming engines and even between the 3d programs themselves. Even the UV mapping can be translated.

Max uses the same UV mapping that appears to be in SL. Planar maps, Spherical maps, and Cylindrical maps are the staple of Max. The only thing I can see that would be a problem would be by poly mapping since that takes up quite a few resources.

All in all it's probably not worth the effort to incorporate outworld objects into SL. It would also be a way to circumvent the object limitations per parcel which could lead to an even heavier polycount in sims than there currently is.

Still, if an outworld converter is ever created I'll be the first in line for the download.