A thought about Building

Having a background in 3D, I'm always aware of the number of Prims I use, trying to keep it low. I try to do as much with textures as possible, wishing I could use my own Bump Mapping as well.

After all, every Prim you have to view takes up just wee bit more bandwidth.

So how many builders here take this stuff into consideration? Just Curious!

Well, I always aim for low prim use, myself. I am also a texture designer, so I can do a lot with creative textures that others might think they must do with excess prims.

I start off with the rough out of the build first, then apply a generic 'base' texture and group them together. So the walls, metals, roof are in their own group and are textured the same. Then I look at the scene and identify places that need changes to the textures.

For example, if I decide to place a rainwater downspout next to the wall, I start adding a bit of shadow in the texture where the downspout is and maybe some clips on the wall then replace the 'base' texture. Following that, I adjust the prim downspout to match the texture along with the 'fake' clips. This is an iterative process, and the end result might have something like 10% single use textures, 30% slightly reused textures and 60% generic textures within the same family of textures.

There is a balance between using prims to represent the scene, or using faked textures. Sometimes if the scene is too repetitive, like floor tiles for example. I add a few prims to represent tiles that have lifted off the floor. It helps add some believability. Basically, budgeting it based on a supply of memory (textures) and CPU/GPU speed (prims).
But the idea is to push the viewers equipment to its limit without her/him noticing too much lag.

This kind of thinking definitely ought to be more widespread. For bonus points, think about the number and size of the textures you use as well. They require far more bandwidth and memory than prims. There are almost no cases where a texture larger than 256x256 is absolutely necessary, and often 32x32 will do the job. Consider packing multiple textures into one file and using offsets to apply them. End of lecture.

To conserve your land's and sim's prim allowance, use textures. To conserve your and your neighbor's bandwidth and memory, use prims.

But far be it from me to suggest the artistic advantages of a well textured build don't outweigh any performance issues.

Ah! Yes! That also should be considered.

Totally forgot about that part.

I've also seen alot of Cel Shaded stuff which is just a larger copy of the object, shaded black inside and transparent outside. Looks neat!! but also doubles the # of prims.

Hopefully who ever teaches this stuff to newcomers clues them in on all of this.

I always take all of these thigns into consideration, it's practically the whole fun of the game of building to see what you can do but still keep the resource usage low. Any fool can build with unlimited prim numbers, shapes, texture resources etc.

In fact I think about it so much I even "see" that way when I walk around SL now.

Just last night I went to a new sim that will open in a few weeks to check out store spaces. Beautiful work, but the very first thought that went through my head was "wow, high prims here, could save over a hundred on that building alone, and fifty on the one behind it with the right textures."

Excellent point something I planned to bring up untill I saw you did. Its a proven fact that large and excessive texture use will cause more lag than prims.

I know i have a reputation for using too many prims and too simple of textures and that is just my style i guess. However I still think people over texture builds and use textures where prims really should be used. Its never a bad thing to mind prims but in many cases i think people let prim efficiency get in the way of their designs. One thing I really cant tollerate is alpha texture windows. It's something I will never understand. It ends up making the walls look paper thin like the house will just blow over with even the slightest breaze. Im probably just a prim snob, But i like things to look solid.

I would definatly agree that good building is a combination of textures and prims, but you have to find a nice balance, and i think trying to substitue one with the other just doesnt work in my book. 2D textures can not substitute most 3D detail in my opinion.

theres much more to it though than just the actual prim or texture. What is the purpose, the functionality (if any), resell value, market gauge, etc.

take Vendors for example some being a simple one texture box while others are an elaborate build which generates a preview image in prims to a copy of the product of temp on rez getting a more definitive display to the user, for as close to hands on.

atleast that's where I'm coming from. research and study is still vital, not always just a 'right way of doing things'.

I suppose the question here is focused specifically on the approach to building, and assuming that whatever due diligence has been carried out regarding the intent and design itself.

Not counting scripted items like vendor stalls, etc, most buildings we have inworld have no real purpose and serve merely as visual cues and backdrops for events to happen. The impact is almost always just psychological, because these events can happen regardless of whats around the avatar. The only exception being inworld games that uses the 3d environment as the user interface.

"Any fool can build with unlimited prim numbers, shapes, texture resources etc. "


Thats me to a T!

Heh, just remembered my favorite lag inducing objects- Excessively spiked clothing!! I have a friend who wears this stuff & I try not to even look at him in a busy area cuz he makes the FPS drop like a rock! Every spike on his outfit is a prim, so 8 shoulder/arm pads, each with 15+ spikes? Yeeaaaaa, Lag lag lag & more lag. 'Course some of the other stuff that I noticed are the Prim Chains.

I might try building him the shoulder pads using alpha textured spikes , with one long prim running down the pads & the texture just tiled and lined up, see which ones are laggy-est.

OR- maybe I'm just too frickin' nice & like to make sure everyone has a smooth running experience?

Adding custom bumpmaps would probably increase bandwidth, not reduce it (the bump maps would have to be streamed as well).

I have a love for low prim objects; to the point i will torture prims.

There is a simple solution to that. Spend one more prim per window location, and put a hollowed prim 'windowsill' inside the wall, aligned with the alpha textured window, and textured to look like the edge of the window frame. It gives you a very solid looking wall when you look through the window, and uses only two prims instead of 5 for the same wall and window. The only glitch then is that the 'window panes' are always on the edge of the windowsill that is closest to the viewer.

I do this on all my builds that use alpha-mapped windows. No paper-thin walls from me!

I just keep adding until:

1) My client can't keep up from the object updates. (Can't take copies, so I stop.)

2) The sim melts.

3) I run into the 15,000 prim barrier.

Thats about it.

Bump maps are really small files though, hardly a blip on the download.

For instance my Radio uses a single 64x64 texture for the basic colour/texture of the plastic shell.

By using the standard "woodgrain" bumpmap found right in the UI (and presumably present in everyones cache already), I can make knobs for the front that look "knurled" (sp?) because of the ridges from the bumpmap.

Even if they have to download the bump map, I am pretty sure it's a 32x32 two-bit file.

Wait a minute... Have I missed something? How do you apply bump maps in SL?

I use them all the time in 3D apps, but didn't know they were an option in SL.

Pull down menu on the texture dialogue.

Cant remember how to make new ones show up in the list right now though.

*blinks*

I never noticed that! Thanks!

Now if they will just re-open the grid, so I can play with it...

*Taps footpaw impatiently on the ground as she waits...*

The pre-existing bump maps aren't much of an issue because there are only a few of them, and they're just small tilable patterns. If you want to look at them as textures, the UUID's are all listed in your viewerart.ini file in your SecondLife\app_settings folder.

Custom bump maps, however, would be an entirely different animal. In order for bumps to be REALLY useful, they need to be more than just simple small tiles. Sure, you can give a doorknob a nice woodgrain knurly appearance with just a tiny pattern, but that principle doesn't apply if you want to do something like, say, an Egyptian relief carving on a tomb wall, an embossed emblem on a metal shield, a beveled piece of text on a sign, etc. For situations like that, which is what most of us 3D modelers are talking about when we say we want custom bump map ability, the bump map shoud be the same size as the texture it is to bump. That would mean adding 33% to the amount of possible texture data for every surface in the world (a grayscale map is 33% the pixel memory of a comparably sized RGB image). Add in the other types of maps we'd like to have, like specularity, incandescence, transparency (alphas already do this, but it would be better to use seperate maps instead or even in addition), etc, and you're talking about at least doubling the texture data, and in turn of course doubling the amount of bandwidth required to transmit it. That's a big increase. Even if it ends up just limited to bumps without the rest of the wish list, 33% is still pretty big when you consider how long textures take to load as it is.

When and if they ever impliment the material shader system they promised last year, I'm sure it will include some of this functionality. It would be a pretty lame shader system if it were entirely procedural with no maps. It would still be a huge improvement over what we have though either way, so who knows what they've got in mind.

Thank you for clarifying that, Chosen. Now I don't feel so clueless. I had been thinking of full texture-sized custom bump maps, like I can do in Poser or DAZ|Studio renders. Sure would like that, but guess I'll have to keep waiting...

[shamelessselfpromotion]
This is not a good pic, but here's an example of the standard woodgrain bumpmap on a snailshell.
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A picture of it here:

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