Prim Counts, Limits, Scripts, and Lag

heyas;

okay, i know when you buy/own land, you get a prim-count allotment for it. and i also heard that any prims an avatar is wearing don't get counted in your prim allotment. (whether vehicles flying over your land do or not, wasn't clear.)

what i basically want to know is, what is considered "high res" and "low res" for stuff. (ie: how many prims are in it.)

for example: i want to build animals and pets. most of the animals ive seen around are really crude, where a few more prims would make it a bit smoother, a bit more detailed. is this because landowners don't want to "spend" a lot of their prim count on animals? is it animals in particular, or is it on anything?

like...

what is a high/low prim count for a piece of furniture?
a room? a house?
a deocrative element like a fountain?
outdoor structures (gazebos, etc)?
animals?
vehicles?
an avatar head?
avatar limbs?
avatar decorations?


and do these things contribute to lag? i see a lot of people running around with a huge amount of floppy bits sticking off them, or big mechacentipede bodies, and the like. now, i have a nice cat furry avatar with a prim head, limbs, tail, and a decent scattering of 'hair' prims, plus those prim wings which must have a couple dozen spheres each, at least. and i NEVER wear that when i am building or taking a class.
if figure, the more prims i have on me, the more lag there is. no?

also, if i go to land: about... and look under the "objects" tab... i get a parcel object count and an object 'free space.' does this have ANYthing to do with me? like, if there's only room for 12 more prims, and i try to spawn my fifty-dozen-odd cat avatar, does that mean only the first 12 pieces of my attachments will load? or what?


related to that are scripts. again, back to the animals i've seen, almost NONE of them animate. or they have a real simple rotation thing going on. aside from the fact that it's a real ***** to try to animate prims, is there a reason for that? like, if i build a 25 prim bunny and have scripts so it can hop around and forage and animate, is nobody going to want this thing because the scripts are going to lag stuff? and/or because 25 prims seems mondo huge for a little animal?


if the land prim count doesn't count stuff "on" avatars... does this mean i can load up my avatar with a few hundred prims and not care? (like many people seem to. ::cough::)

oh, and flex. i read somewhere that flex prims can lag people. so i was worried about making a puppy furry avatar with two flex ears, and four or five flex plumes on his tail. uh... then i see people walking around with like 20 flex prim fur bits on THEIR tail and another dozen or so on their hair, and twenty on their cape and/or dress.... so can someone also give me some flex hi/lo parameters?


thank you! this will help make me a better builder!

Bloodsong, in answer to your 'will my 40 prim object rezz the first 12 prims if only 12 left on plot?' .. no. A 13 prim object even will simply say 'can't rezz, parcel full'
Your other questions .. well, prims, scripts, and objects but flexes in particular all add to lag. However, if your product is desirable enough, customers will sacrifice perfomance for aesthetics and go for your pets.
There are, I've seen some small dragons and the like wander round parcels and on Svarga you can buy a bird house that rezzes a bird to fly round your parcel and back.
Happy building

Hi Bloodsong.

As bilbo said it's the quality of the build that counts for many, even if it means a few extras, if it's worth it they will buy it and be happy in their purchase.

The main reason I wanted to post a reply was to say well done. Well done for thinking about how this all works to make SL what it is , good and bad, and thank you for focussing on the impact on others as it seems to me you have. It is very refreshing to see someone put so much thought into their building habits. Especially from one so new to SL.

Personally I think you need to find a comprimise between the prim count of an object and getting it to look how you want it to look. For example with houses there are lots of low prim houses about but the majority look terrible, so in some instances using more prims can actually help sell your objects rather than just being obsessed with keeping the prim count to a minimum. I've found from experience that as long as you dont go silly with the amount of prims you use, most people would rather have a better looking object that contains more prims than a crap looking object that is 'low prim'. Learning how to use your tools and learning exactly what shapes you can get out of your prims offers a good foundation to quality building as well. When I started out, I built what I wanted to build using however many prims I wanted. I would then go back and work to remove prims and utilise textures to achieve my desired results without comprimising my original design. Doing this helped me build more 'prim efficiently' as I became more experienced.

There are no easy, simple answers to your questions, as the value of a build varies greatly in the eyes of the buyer, and depends a lot on the quality of the work.

As I understand it, most "pets" that move freely on their own in anything other than a fixed circular path are using some variation of a vehicle script to cause them to move. That limits you to 32 prims or so, for all practical purposes. So creative use of textures on such free-roaming animals is critical to success. Prims alone won't do it, unless all you want is an unmoving statue. A scripted animal that follows an avatar around, or that moves on its own, DOES count against parcel prim counts, in most cases. So if a parcel is full, I can't rez my pet dog. If a decorative cardinal that I want to have fly in circles around my home takes 27 prims, that counts as any other prims placed on my land would.

Low-prim furniture is an art form in itself. Making something like a 1-prim bookcase, and texturing it so it looks like surely it must be at least 5 prims, is a skill well worth seeking. In general, anything made with as few prims as possible is 'low prim'. Say 1 to 10 prims for a single furniture item, depending on complexity. Virtually any buyer can appreciate having furniture that doesn't eat their prim allocation. Higher-prim versions can certainly add more form and detail. I have some beds that are just 4 prims. I have others that are over 40 prims. When you start doing things like drawer pulls and desk legs as seperate prims, you're getting into 'high-prim' furnishings. They sell for higher prices, but you'll sell to a smaller market - those with prim count to spare.

I've made a low-prim house with as few as 9 prims, and it even had a window and a peaked roof and a scripted door. I'd consider any house that uses less than half the prims allowed on a 512 M2 lot to be a "low prim" starter home, so anything under 50 to 60 prims, for a starter house. For larger structures, consider how much you save with creative building techniques, versus simple construction. A 20M x 20M two story tavern with 5 rooms upstairs, 6 rooms downstairs, 6 fireplaces, 2 decks, and over a dozen functioning, scripted doors, all at less than 200 prims, is certainly low-prim building. (Yes, I've built that.) The same structure could easily take twice as many prims if not using prim-saving building techniques.

Decorative elements like fountains and gazebos are entirely up to the buyer, as to what is 'acceptable'. I'd offer both simplified, low-prim versions, and complex, very beautiful versions, and see what sells best.

Animals and vehicles are, as I said before, limited to 32 prims for the physical vehicle. That said, there are some tricks that can get around that. I have a pirate ship that is a functioning vehicle, and which uses something like 257 prims! 27 are the actual vehicle, and the rest is a 'prim attachment' that the pilot of the ship actually 'wears' while the ship is in use. Not sure if there is any way to do a similar cheat on an animal, however. Most vehicles try to stay under 32 prims.

I have one fox avatar head that is way up around the 255 prim linking limit. Just for the head. That is because it shows and hides prims to change facial expressions and ear positions. Most, however, are closer to 20 to 30 prims, even on really nice avatars. Prim count on avatar parts is a trade off of beauty for performance. That fox avatar is beautiful, but I can't wear it in a high-lag environment. I can't move, if I do.

Prim count for anything that is worn on an avatar does not affect parcel prim count, but it DOES impact lag in the sim, for the wearer and for those that can see them. This is especially true if the prim parts contain lots of twisted and tortured torii, like some very curly prim hairstyles. Scripts in attachments also contribute to sim lag. If I put on my most prim-heavy furry avatar, and my most curly prim hair, and a handful of jewelry items with bling scripts, and walked into a busy club, it would noticably increase lag.

In general, a good builder in SL, regardless of what they are making, should strive to create their work with as few prims and as few scripts as possible. Less is definitely more, for a Builder in SL.

heyas;

thanks everybody for the insightful answers. i will try to remain prim-count conscious, but also not sacrifice my artistic vision. and we'll see how that goes.


okay, bilbo... i understand that a 40-prim somethingorother won't rez if i throw it on the ground if the parcel only has 13 free prim slots. but i meant, things on an avatar. like if i throw on my furry cat avatar with its 40 prims on the head/legs/tail etc. will THOSE fail to rez? im just trying to figure out why sometimes i seem to lose a hand or foot or something.


can anybody confirm the actual count of the vehicle prim limit? when first i heard there was a limit, the guy said 28, i think. then the next guy said 30. now ceera's saying 32. it just keeps going up every time i hear it. ;) not to say anybody doesn't know what they're talking about... but like a good reporter, i should confirm the info from more than one source, hm? :)

ps: do i even want to ask why a vehicle has this particular limit?

Ace Albion makes amazing homes - both low prim and mid-prim as it were. Simply stunning. So, I definitely don't agree with this

Yes, sorry for that Bloodsong, just picked the part of your post I thought I could answer

Prims you directly wear, such as part of a furry avatar, will rez just fine on your body, regardless of prim count or the build/no-build status of the parcel. If you drop your 20-prim head off your avatar and onto a parcel that has less than 20 prims free, the head will get auto-returned to you.

I'm looking for a link to a definitive answer on vehicle prim limits, but it's based on the limits for physical items in SL, imposed by the physics engine that SL uses. The top limit (32) is for how many things you can link and still make that item physical. For a vehicle that you can ride in, each avatar that can sit on the vehicle and move with it counts as one prim toward that limit. So my boat that seats 5 can have 27 prims in the physical part, plus the 5 slots reserved for the 5 passengers, for a total of 32. A 'vehicle' that is completely without an actual pilot, such as an animal that moves on scripted or voice control or that follows you around, does not need to reserve space for passengers, and could use the full 32 prims. That, at least, is my understanding of the limits on vehicles.