New Prim Shapes

We could use some new shapes in the prim dept.

Post suggestions and your thoughts on the subject here

Rounded Box!

I second this!

Actually, I would love to have 2 things from prims:

- 20x20x20 max size (10 is just tooooo small, especially for a cylinder)

- the ability to narrow both the top *and* bottom of a prim

The 10m limit is due to overlap issues at sim edges. If they increase beyond 10m, there will be even more "weirdness" at sim borders.

I understand from a recent town hall meeting that more prim shapes are possible, but will not be considered until Havok2 is implemented, which they suggest will be around the 1.5 timeframe. At their development pace that probably means around October or November.

What's interesting is trying to think of new "prim" shapes is kind of like trying to think of new colors.

However, additional edits on existing prims would be nice =D

well theres specifically one shape which i do believe is currently impossible to create as-is without using a HUGE number of prims to 'fake' it

I've been building a 'rounded' type of deck/tree platform structure and all is basically good ultil i decided to create a semi-open 'pitched' roof over it. basically its 2m tall towards the center, narrowing to a point at the edge and it wraps gracefully around above the deck, matching it countour for countour excpt for one piece...

there is no way to make a 'pitched' rounded inner corner with any of the shapes we have now.. aka one that has a 2m tall rounded outer edge, and a square inner corner 'point'


im not sure exactly which shape could be 'added' to actually make this possible... but its currently just not doable in any means from the prims that we have

(think of it like a crooked heighted cylander with a from upper left to lower right diagnoally cut upper right to lower left and merged with a tapered 90 degree triangle... if that makes sense)

At one point I asked Cory Linden about larger prims, which would help tremendously, and she said the reason for the limit is the physics engine. Anything over 10m has difficulty with collision detection. Objects that are not physical still cause collisions with other objects, so it applies to all prims.

In doing some research, it does seem that we have the majority of basic prim shapes already. Some things I would like to see:

1) Some type of accordion stair prim - we waste so many prims on staircases.
2) 3d text with some level of style specification (font family, bold) - many systems that use geometric primitives offer 3d text.
3) Prim addition/subtraction - this would go a long way towards creating new shapes and lowering prim counts. Obviously not able to be supported in the current engine, but very cool nonetheless.
4) The ability to cut a prim and still enjoy 10X10X10 size for that prim.
5) More flexibility in hollowing, cutting, and more deformation options for prims.

It is fairly difficult to think of new shapes, as opposed of thinking of ways to improve the prims we have. I would love to know what prim shapes we are missing, other than the obvious polygons like octagons, hexagons, etc..

Cristiano

Don't forget the most desperately needed prim shape of all: cherub shaped prims.

Hi!

Instead of a new type of primative, I would prefer to see more edit options for the torus primative..

Think of a torus as being a small circle (a profile) that is swept around a larger circle (the path). We are currently allowed to cut the torus along it's path which can be used to create a torus that sweeps through 180 degrees say.

Now imagine if we could cut the profile of the torus as well as the path, this would let you create shapes that look like segments of a circle swept around a larger circle.

Some interesting shapes could be made from this option but now imagine being able to hollow out the torus, this would allow you to produce barrel and vase type shapes.

To illustrate here is a few examples

You mean like this (see attachment)?

Btw, these shapes are in Morris (Saturday) at around 50,80 if you want to take a look at the numbers to do this.

Ah what the heck, I'll type them in...

Left to right:

Torus #1 (flat):
Size: 0.5, 1.5, 1.5
Rotation: 0, 90, 0
Cut Begin & End: 0.00, 1.00
Hollow: 90
Twist: 0
Hole Size: 0.45
To Shear: 0.0
Adavanced Cut Begin & End: 0.30, 0.70

Torus #2 (tall core):
Size: 1.2, 3.0, 3.0
Rotation: 0, 90, 0
Cut Begin & End: 0.00, 1.00
Hollow: 85
Twist: 0
Hole Size: 0.45
Top Shear: 0.00
Advanced Cute Begin & End: 0.15, 0.35

Torus #3 (in the back, big half cut open hollowed):
Size: 0.6, 1.75, 1.75
Rotation: 0, 0, 0
Cut Begin & End: 0.50, 1.00
Hollow: 85
Twist: 0
Hole Size: 0.20
Top Shear: 0.00
Advancec Cut Begin & End: 0.50, 0.95

Torus #4 (shorter sideways "wheel" shape):
Size: 0.3, 0.6, 0.6
Rotation: 0, 90, 0
Cut Begin & End: 0.00, 1.00
Hollow: 85
Twist: 0
Hole Size: 0.20
Top Shear: 0
Advanced Cut Begin & End: 0.50, 0.95

Hehe. I've seen people do spiraly stuff with one prim... like a twisted cube. I think you can only get 360 degrees of rotation with one prim though, but you can stack another prim on top to continue the spiral =)

I agree with Cris on his ideas for prims, especially the staircases. You can't make them on vehicles unless the vehicle is like 1 prim total. I wanted a downstairs yacht but I just can't make the whole thing with 31 prims. Also I think that making 20x20 prims would be great but it would probably cause alot of lag. I think that we definately need some more prim shapes.

One last thing, I think there should be an option so you wouldn't have to lock the prims totally to save them from deleting. I think there should be a box you can check that gives you a message before you delete it without having to actually lock it and not be able to change it, just incase Im trying to hit page up to fly or something to see the top of an object and hit delete on accident.

I would like to see prim adjustments like what you have on a monitor, where you can make the the edges go in & out:
)( & ()
and left & right
(( & ))
have individual settings for these in x,y & z

greater range of twist.
degrees be floats and not integers in the interface
the ability to switch the mode of the rotation input, ie: degrees, radians, quaternion.
advanced cut/dimple shown for all shapes.
more decimal places for location and size, 3 is not enough (4 would be good; yes i'm that insane about placing prims).

an interface to enter rotation in quaternions would also help people understand what the heck they are.

I'm not sure I understand about the extending to 20m part. Is it really that different from 2 10m prims together? Maybe you just need to define "weirdness" for me lol. I agree that more advanced shape options would be better than new shapes. For instance an extra offset cut value or the ability to go to 2.00 end so the hole can appear in the center of the object.

I would like to see user defined shape settings in the edit bar, but I can store my favorite shapes in my inventory so It doesn't matter too much.

I have to add that it seems kinda funny for size of prims to have problems with physics. I mean, wouldn't it be easy to just pop up saying physics cannot be applied to peices larger than 10m and deny the builder? It does that when you try to link objects too far apart or put physics on an object that has more than 31 prims.


While we are on the subject of prims and building, I hear that people want Boolean operations on theyr prims, I think this is called constructive solid geometry... at least that's what it's called in the unreal engine. Would this be possible without a total revamp of the system. I know unreal requires a rebuild to geometry... might that be a limitation?

One form of "weirdness" is that objects overlaying a sim border are phantom to people who are in the other sim.

I think there are also physics issues, among other things. There was a discussion a while back about this and a Linden brought up several reasons why 10m is the limit and that it wasn't likely to change.

one of them i believe is that the bigger you let people create an object, the greater % of objects you see in world will be larger, but cut... aka instead of 4 'box' prims used as walls to create a house.. .people would use one prim, and cut/hollow it all out.

That sounds great on paper.. when you think wow i just saved three prims... the problem is that a hollow and/or cut prim takes dramatically more server time to perform physics on, and quite abit more out of client systems to render than the same 3-4 smaller but 'whole' prims would... and that would end up either lagging more sims badly.. or forcing everyone to have lower prim allotments, essentially removing the 'less prim' advantage to begin with