From: Ephraim Kappler
Is the OP sure that there wasn't a good deal more doubling, tripling or even quadrupling of vertex points on the oblong sculpt around the edges, for instance? That would certainly help to hold the shape better. Also, LOD may be increased if the bounding box on a sculpt is considerably larger than the visible object so it would be worthwhile comparing that on both examples.
Yes, the builder (me) is sure. No doubling or tripling was done. The sculpts, with few exceptions, fill the bounding box completely so there is no resolution loss on the sculpt map, other than the usual limits of RGB values. I am careful with LOD so that things don't degrade too badly, but in my example image, I was attempting to create maximum degradation to see how bad things could in theory get. I only posted the solid view of the meshes, but I also looked at them in wire-frame view to see that the oblong sculpts meshes weren't being affected. That's what lead to my posting the question
From: Ephraim Kappler
As for increasing RenderVolumeLODFactor in Debug settings, I'm with Ceera and Immy: just don't do it. LOD helps optimise computer processing power, thereby increasing client performance, so there is good reason for not obliging residents to tamper with it.
Actually I wholeheartedly disagree. I include a notecard with my products indicating how to set the LOD for the client to get best viewing results. I believe that for a great many users, the default settings are too conservative. It's too bad the lindens don't have some better algorithms for choosing those values instead of just dumping in a blind (poor) value.
From: Ephraim Kappler
Accommodating LOD is a design consideration of sculpting. An object requiring increased LOD is simply bad design in the same way that an overly detailed yet virtually invisible high resolution texture on the face of a wrist watch will hog bandwidth for no good reason.
And I wholeheartedly agree with this point, hence my testing
Really, the issues aren't black and white, but are more in the middle. One of the things I've learned as that the default settings are too limited. The sculpt maps will degrade almost immediately so that even at normal distance viewing levels, the whole detail is missing. An example case, was a friend and I were examining a new shoe of mine, and she complained that it was messy looking. I had her send me a snapshot, and sure enough, LOD was kicking in. We were standing next to each other talking.
I work hard to make my sculpt maps LOD resistant, but there's only so much you can do with limited mesh resolution. And for some surfaces, like my shoes, you need that resolution to achieve a high quality result.
Regardless, there is still no answer from the powers-that-be on the intended state of affairs with regards to oblongs.
