zmod models imported to game?

hey im new to this whole second life thing and was wondering if zmod or 3ds models could be imported into the game some how? thanks for any info

All geometry in SL is built inworld. You can't import external models. The inworld tools work a bit differently then what you're probably used to from other applications, but once you get used to them, there's pretty much nothing you can't make. Complex objects just require a bit of problem solving thought sometimes.

Some residents have experimented with making importer scripts that can rebuild OBJ models inside SL. The most well known of these was made by Jeffrey Gomez. It's a pretty ingenius piece of scripting, but it's not exactly practical in most circumstances. Since everything in SL is made from prims, the importer ends up replacing every single polygon in you model with a cube. Needless to say, that adds up pretty quick. In almost all cases, the model will need to be rebuilt before you can put it anywhere, which means you're usually better off building it from scratch inworld to begin with. Search the scripting forum if you want to play with it though.

"All geometry in SL is built inworld. You can't import external models. "

This logic escapes me. I know what LL is shooting for but the tools are WAY too rough still to work quickly and efficiently.

I can make textures in Photoshop and import them, but I can't import external geometry?

grr....

Yes. In fact, wouldn't it be cool if SL had some MS Paint akin editor built-in and no way to import textures?

Seriously, the goal was to have a very efficient network transfer of geometry, which is something prims excel at. However, LL misunderestimated the ability of the common resident to put 1024x1024 textures on a 0.1m item, so whatever bandwidth was saved on geometry is more than compensated by texture downloads. In any case, it's too late now for a change.

heh...i'm pretty blown away by the texture usage here. 1024's thrown about willy-nilly for the smallest things. It's INSANITY!!!

aye

now wheres my particle emmiter with the 2048x2048 particles

(kidding please dont beat me)

All in good time. You're absolutely right that we SHOULD be able to import models, and LL has said on several occasions that they eventually want to add that capbility. The bottleneck right now is the internet. The prim system works well because every single client machine already knows how to create every possibe prim. The only info that needs to stream therefore is where to put them and what size to make them, which is an incredibly tiny amount of data. Were full mesh models allowed to be imported, all the info for how to build each one would need to be streamed to every single client. Multiply that by all the objects being viewed by every person inworld at any give time, and that's a huge amount of data.

One day we'll get there I'm sure, but right now it's just not feasable. As for the logic, I'd rather see it go the other way first. We can create models inworld, but we can't create textures inworld? Why not? I'd love to see some inworld painting tools. I'd probably never use them since I'm such a Phooshopaholic, but if SL is really supposed to be a platform, I believe the logic should be you can do anything with the inworld tools at least at a rudimentary level, and then if you want to do things that are more complicated, you can opt to use third party specialty programs like Photoshop. That philosophy should apply to textures, models, sounds, animations, everything.

I'd happily pay 100-200L$ for each model I could import.

sigh

You all have excellent timing:
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