Rounded Corners - Wouldn't it be lovely ?

I'm just "thinking out loud here" and I know we don't have them, and perhaps there's a very good technical reason why we can't/

(but perhaps we could if they really wanted to)

Would it nor be lovely, if in addition to all the standard prim shapes we had "Rounded Corners" options.

So you could take a 1 prim wooden box, and adust the roundness of the corners to break the sharp edge by an adjustable amount.

Even if it was only an option on cubes/rectangles/oblongs.

I can dream

I was looking into the client code and they were half-way into implementing it, not sure why they stopped. It might have been because the code was getting too complicated. It would just need someone submitting working code in a JIRA patch.

Also, rounded corners is better known as 'Bevel'.

I stand corrected Bevels

It would allow much nicer smoother flowing shapes without having to throw prims away cutting cylinders away in various forms to smooth sharp corners out.

And you could make much nicer furniture or of a few prims without having to use sculpties.

Perhaps one day.

When I was at Linden Lab for SL Views two or three years ago, I talked to a couple of their people about rounded corners. Their chief hesitation at that time was in figuring out the best way to wrap textures around a beveled surface. I got the impression they didn't want to do anything that would be too difficult for the community at large to work with. I have no idea if this was before or after the code Piggie mentioned was put in, but it was way before sculpties, so we users hadn't yet demonstrated that, yes, we can indeed do more than slap flat textures onto flat cubes.

That said, one thing to keep in mind is the way in which LL operates. There are exceptions, but for the most part, they allow their people to work on whatever they want. If someone decides to implement rounded corners, we get rounded corners. If no one feels like tackling it, then we don't. I'm just guessing here, but I suspect that when sculpties were put in to the mix, there was no longer a motivation to keep improving prims. The goal is full mesh support, which will change everything. Sculpties are sort of an in-between. Prims are, well, primitive. I'd like to see prims improved as much as anyone, but at the same time, I can certainly understand if they've got bigger fish to fry.

I strongly agree with the OP.

IMHO, sculpties are a terrible compromise - many lower end machines can barely render them. A PILE of them are on the grid to do mattresses, seat cushions, and other beveled shapes - and what could be harder than texturing a sculptie? Someone who knows how to phrase it technically *falls on knees before Chosen* should do a Jira, and then we should get the folks over at SLU to talk to Qarl about it.

(Qarl has been known to post there and some folks there have spent time adoring him).
.

I look forward to full-mesh support myself, Chosen. Unfortunately, though, that day may come with a big downside. One of the greatest things about SL is that an average, barely-skilled resident can build things without special tools or years of professional training in digital art. Prims are WAY clunky compared to the beautiful things you can make with Maya or other high-end tools, but they are surprisingly versatile and FREE. Prims and the SL editing tools help to separate SL from other virtual worlds and games, where things are created only by a few talented people. I would hate to have full-mesh support result in LL losing interest in (and support for) gifted amateurs. I fear that if people get the impression that "good" items can only be built by professionals, we will have stumbled into a much poorer two-tier society.

I'm not worried about meshes spawning a two-tiered society. There's ALWAYS been a huge gap between those who are very good at creating high quality content, and those who are not, and there always will be. Adding other forms of content, be they meshes or anything else, won't change that.

An amateur can just as easily dabble in a simple poly modeling program like Wings as he or she can with SL's built-in tools. It's very likely, in fact, that some amateurs who found themselves unable to experience much success with prims could end up having tremendous success with meshes (and vice versa, of course). The more options are available to people, the better off everyone is, always.

The same kinds of concerns were voiced when animations were added, when sculpties came along, heck, even when the first skins hit the market. Technology evolves, and being an artist is hard. Some people keep up with the times, and keep their skills sharp. Others don't. Those are your two tiers. Again, they've always existed, and always will.

The perception that "good content can only be built by professionals" already exists. With no disrespect intended to anyone, the fact is most content in SL is quite bad. If you want something good, and you don't know how to create it yourself, you already have to get it from a pro. Again, meshes won't change that.


If I have to think of a downside to meshes, what does concern me is that IP theft will likely go through the roof once they arrive. What keeps a lot of amateur SL builders interested in building, whether they directly realize it or not, is the fact that it's not possible to rip a model out of a game or grab one from Turbo Squid, and bring it in-world. If you want a sandcastle to move into, you're forced to build it yourself, or buy it from someone else who has. But once it becomes possible to pull Stormwind Keep out of World of Warcraft into SL to use as your home, or bring in an army of Resident Evil zombies to wander aimlessly across the grid, all bets will be off.

Heck, the very model LL used for their own demonstration of mesh support was itself an example of unauthorized IP usage. I don't know for a fact, but I think it's safe to assume Marvel didn't give anyone at LL permission to create a video featuring The Hulk. There's arguably nothing wrong with that particular instance, of course, since it was just for internal usage, not for distribution to the public. But it's hard not to notice the irony. The public at large will very likely do exactly what LL did, and just pull models from everywhere they can, just because they look cool, with little if any regard for who actually owns them.

If you want proof, think about the amount of IP theft that already happens in SL. The primary example is texture theft. It's rampant. Mesh theft will just take it to the next level.

It's not anything that keeps me up at night, of course. The solution, as always, is just to do a better job, create even more compelling content, and provide better service to your clients, than the thieves ever could. But it would be naive to think theft won't get worse once it becomes possible for ANYONE to bring ANYTHING in-world with relative ease. It is a concern I've had for some time.

I don't know about the other examples, they were before my time, but the addition of sculpties absolutely has had the predicted effect of increasing the gap between professionals who already have high end graphics tools and amateurs. Sculpties, in fact, provide a perfect "cautionary tale" of the dangers of pushing content creation away from the in-world editing tools. Not just because you can't create sculpties without those tools, but you can't *modify* them either. I have customized dozens of prim-based avatars, making them different and distinct from other people's, but sculpties just defeat me.

I can't agree with that. For every person who (unfairly and unfortunately) concludes that sculpties are beyond their grasp, there's someone else who becomes an outstanding content creator specifically because of sculpties. I don't want to name names, but I could list at least half a dozen people (some amateurs and some pros) I know well who were mediocre, or in some cases terrible, with prims, but have become very good with sculpties.

Whether or not someone already has high end graphics tools is completely immaterial. Anyone can get such tools and learn them at any time. Let's keep it in perspective, shall we?

Here's something worth keeping in mind. SL's built-in tools are somewhat unique, which means no one knows how to use them before they join. Some people take to them right away, some don't. The exact same can be said of ANY other 3D modeling program in existence. I, for example, am a Maya user who has trouble making heads or tails of Blender, who doesn't enjoy using Max, and who has no clue how to use Lightwave. Another rather outspoken member of this forum is a Lightwave user who doesn't know the first thing about Maya. Yet another is Max user who doesn't appear to know much beyond the confines of that program. The only thing of relevance that we all have in common as 3D artists is we all use our various tools of choice in conjunction with SL. That was true before sculpties came along, and it's just as true now.

Think about how many people who never touched Blender before in their lives routinely post on this forum to thank Gaia for everything they've gotten out of her video tutorials. I recently sat in on a couple of Xenius Revere's Maya classes at Xeniversity, and I watched first hand as about half a dozen students who had never ever before encountered Maya learned to create sculpties in a matter of hours.

The fact is anyone who wants to can learn. With all due respect, Argent, to suggest otherwise is pretty insulting to your fellow man.



Again, I simply can't agree. It's always been the case that textures, sounds, and animations require external tools for creation and modification. Why should the line be drawn at geometry?




I'm sorry that you personally haven't (yet) been able to experience success with sculpties. From talking to you, I know for a fact you're more than intelligent enough to do it, should you ever wish to apply yourself fully to the task. Just like anything else, it's not something everyone can just intuit instantly on their own, of course, but it is absolutely something anyone can do, given proper instruction and ample practice.

I'm 100% confident I could have you making sculpties in an hour or two if we were to get together, assuming I know how to use whatever 3D modeling program you were to choose. I'm sure the same could be said of any other instructor.

As for modifying other people's sculpts, that of course is something you can only do if you have access to the sculpt maps and textures. Some creators will provide these things, some won't. It's just like permissions on anything else. Some objects are moddable, and some aren't. If the majority of sculpties are not moddable, that's not a flaw of sculpties themselves. It's a conscious choice by the people who are making them. If you want to change that, simply start making sculpties yourself, and share your maps and textures freely. Encourage others to do the same.

You're quite right, Chosen. The vast bulk of stuff that people create in SL is pretty bad. That's one side effect of giving residents a simple set of tools and free building blocks to play with. We live in a world that's the visual equivalent of a blog -- everyone thinks s/he's a writer, simply because s/he can hit the keys in a word processor. There are two ways to look at that reality, though. From the perspective of a well-trained graphic artist, SL has a lot of eyesores and could be greatly improved if professionals did more of the building/dressmaking/landscaping ..... From another perspective, though, easy amateur creativity leads the average resident to a greater sense of ownership in SL. It's the "Look what I made in art class, Mom!" effect.

Argent expressed my concern in a different way. Scuplties have already started to widen the gap between amateurs and professional in a way that some previous enhancements have not. Not only does it require a quantum leap in technical know-how to create them, but sculpties offer the end user few options for customization. If I buy a pair of prim shoes that have mod pemissions, I can remove a bow that I don't like or can lower the heel, open the toe, restyle an ankle strap ..... The basic design of a sculpty shoe, however, is hidden in a smaller number of prims, each of which is controlled by a UV map that I can't mess with, even if the creator has given me mod permission. I can stretch or shrink them, and I can change their color, but that's about it. If you're not into shoes, think of some other prim object .... a table, a house, a wood stove .... the point is the same. Sculpties have already limited some of an amateur's options for tinkering, and thus for personalizing a small corner of SL.

I don't mean to make a huge deal out of this, because any advance in technology involves some tradeoffs. Sculpties and full-mesh objects are MUCH cooler than simple prim objects in many ways. I don't want to sound like a Luddite. As I step back to look at the social implications of bringing them into SL, though, I do feel a sense of impending loss. When I was much younger, teenage boys used to take cars apart in their driveways and do unspeakable things to make them louder, faster, and more attractive to teenage girls. They don't do that much any more because cars have become modularized and computer-controlled in ways that discourage amateur tinkering. I'd hate to see the same thing happen to SL.

No, it's not. high end graphic tools are expensive. The typical cost for such a program is higher than the cost of a computer capable of running Second Life. This is a huge barrier to entry.

[stuff about the difficulty of learning the tools skipped, I'm talking about the cost]

The free tools are either too limited to do a good job, or insanely difficult to learn. Yes, I'm talking about Blender here. And yes, blender is a user interface nightmare, in a fundamentally different way than anything else I've used. It's a special case, completely out of scope compared to *anything* else. It's nice that some people take to Blender well, but the people who don't can't just switch to Maya or 3dMax without an unacceptable outlay.

Downloading sculpts to modify them violates the ToS. Modifying prims doesn't. Retexturing sculpts without the mesh is massively more complex than retexturing prims.

Or are you suggesting routinely violating the ToS by bypassing the IP access controls in SL is OK?

I have. I sell sculpted stuff. I've created sculpted objects algorithmically, writing the bitmaps from my own code. I can hack it. That doesn't mean I can't recognize the barrier to entry that sculpties have created.

Most objects are moddable. Not "some", "most". On the other hand, sculpted products, even the moddable ones, are extremely limited in teh customization you can do. It's not just "the majority are not moddable", that doesn't describe the reality of the situation. Apart from a handful of people who sell generic sculpt maps for common objects for "builder prices", pretty much NO objects that are sold include the sculpt maps. And for good reason: giving out the sculpt maps means you no longer have any protection from the SL permissions system.

Sculpts have taken building and modding out of the hands of the average SL user. You may be correct that in theory that might have been avoidable, in practice I can't it.

Yes, Blender has a tough interface, but it's hardly the only free or inexpensive program capable of creating sculpties. Wings is free. Sculptypaint is donationware. AC3D and Hexagon are cheap. Are these programs as full featured as Blender? No. But they certainly cover the bases for sculpties, and are relatively easy to learn.

Even Blender is now not all that difficult to get into, thanks again to Gaia's videos. I've changed my opinion on it immensely over the past year or so since Gaia started producing her tutorials. I no longer think it's a bad interface. It's just been very badly taught for a very long time. The bulk of the available material on it was written with an engineering mindset, rather than an artistic mindset. Machinamatrix has changed that for the better.



If the creator provides you the sculpt map with full perms, then there's no violation at all. Buying a sculpty that doesn't come with the map is more or less equivalent to buying a no-mod prim.

There's actually an extra degree of control in place, which is great. If the creator wants a sculpty to be fully moddable, he or she can provide the map. If the creator just wants it to be resizable, but not reshapable, then he or she can grant mod permission without providing the map.

If a particular creator is not the map-providing type, do business with someone else, if that's important to you. Some people won't buy non-moddable prims. If you don't want to buy non-remappable sculpties, that's your prerogative.



No, it's really not. Throw on a test pattern to see what part of the canvas goes where, and you've got all the information you need. This is no more difficult than modifying the texture of a complex multi-prim object that has a single texture spread across it. I make such objects all the time, and I can promise you, modifying those textures would actually be harder in most cases than modifying a typical texture on a sculpty.

All it boils down to is having the patience and dedication to learn what to do.




Of course I'm not. No need to be snippy.




See, there's an example where you're able to do something I can't. I haven neither the knowledge nor the patience to create geometry straight from code. I need to be able to dig my hands in and create visually. The algorithms aren't part of my natural thought process.

It's absolutely wonderful that you've found a way to make sculpties work for you within your given area of expertise. But if you're coming at it only from that perspective, I'd say it's no wonder you perceive such a gigantic barrier. Most people in the world could not create sculpties the way you're doing it, just as you might not (yet) be able to create them the way I do.

But the truth of the matter is the only actual barrier is comfort zone. If there were a built-in sculpty-making tool in the viewer, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. There's no way it would be any easier to use than any of the third party programs currently in existence, but regardless, everyone in SL would be making sculpties to some degree, and that would be that.

But since such an in-world tool does not exist, and since some people just can't seem to get past feeling that it's somehow unfair that third party tools are required to create certain kinds of content, we are where we are. To those people, I'll state once again that I could take anyone, absolutely anyone, and teach them to be competent at making sculpties within a few hours, provided they've got even the feeblest artistic bone in their body. It's really not difficult.

Would I recommend proceeding that way? No. I always recommend learning more traditional art forms first, before going for oddball things like sculpties. I've stated that in this forum many a time. But really, if sculpties are someone's only goal, there's nothing preventing anyone from learning to make them right away. They'll almost certainly develop some bad habits as a result that might hinder them later, should they ever want to expand to other things, and they'll definitely trip over a few things that would otherwise be second nature had they not skipped over all the traditional learning material, but those are separate issues from the ease or difficulty of learning sculpties themselves. Anyone who wants to can learn to make sculpties, period.



I'll admit I don't do any shopping in SL. I just make whatever I need. And I don't really sell to the general public much. So I'm no doubt out of touch on what might be the most common combinations of permissions. Maybe most for-sale objects are indeed moddable, maybe not. I don't know, and beyond mild curiosity, I don't really care. I don't see it as relevant to the points I've been trying to make here.



Again, if the creator provides the buyer with the map, then a sculpty is fully moddable. If not, then it can be partially moddable. Aren't more options better than less?



Right. Giving out the maps would indeed amount to full permissions. But texture artists sell full perms items all day long, and their businesses thrive. Surely sculpty artists could do the same if they wanted to. If they don't, then once again, that's not a failing of sculpties in any way. Take it up with the individuals selling them.



If that's your firm conclusion, then once again, my friend, I'll invite you to agree to disagree with me, and leave it at that.

I totally agree with everything in this paragraph. Well put.




Here's where I start to disagree. As I stated earlier, I know plenty of amateurs who didn't manage to develop a knack for prims, but who have done very well with sculpties. I can say the same of many professionals as well.

The only gap is between those who are willing to learn, and those who aren't.



Sorry to cut you off mid sentence, but again, I have to disagree. There is a different kind of knowledge necessary, yes, but it's not necessarily a more complicated knowledge. Think about how many experienced 3D artists come into SL and then fall flat on their faces when confronted with the prim system. It happens all the time.

Prims are no easier to learn than traditional 3D modeling, and they're certainly no easier than sculpties. The only advantage prims have is that the tools to make them are built into the viewer, so it doesn't feel like doing anything 'extra' for the newbie to start working with them.

Again, if there were a built-in sculpty maker in the viewer, we would not be having this discussion. Every SL user would try their hand at them if the tools were right in front of their face.

As I alluded to earlier, when animations were added to the system, there were lots of discussions about how unfair it was that experienced animators would instantly be able to make superior avatars to everyone else. All of a sudden lions and tigers and bears were possible, oh my. But now it's four years later, and no one thinks anything of it. Anyone who wants to animate learns Poser or DAZ|Studio, and that's that.

When the first realistic skins hit the grid, there were all kinds of panicky screams about how unfair it was that experienced texture artists could now create avatars that looked so much better than those made by amateurs. But that turned out to be no big deal either. There are more good skin makers in SL now than any of us could count in a lifetime, and a great many of them had no experience to speak of prior to SL.

The point is don't mistake emotional inertia for intellectual obstacles. Again, anyone who wants to make sculpties can learn how, just as anyone who has wanted to make animations, skins, and yes, even prims, has had to. There's no special "quantum leap", as you put it, required for sculpties. It's no different from learning any other aspect of SL.



Again, I would submit that there are MORE options for sculpties, not less. If a creator wants people to have full perms on a sculpty, he or she can provide the sculpt map. If he or she wants people to have resizing but not reshaping abilities, then he or she can withhold the sculpt map, and grant mod permission.

Is this a perfect setup? No, absolutely not. The permissions system has always been riddled with flaws. But again, options are better than no options.




Understood.




I feel it, too. But that's the way of the world. Progress must progress, as they say. We can't let nostalgia for old ways prevent us from embracing the new, lest we perish ourselves along with them. Dare I quote Anne Rice? Remember what Armand said to Louis in their first meeting? "You'd be surprised how few have the stamina for immortality. The world changes; we do not. Therein lies the irony that eventually destroys us all." In other words, if you want to survive for the long term, embrace change. It's the only way.

Every significant advance in SL (and in RL) has led to the loss of SOMETHING. Sure, we can't tinker under the hoods of cars as much as we used to, but we also have better fuel efficiency, and hundreds of safety features we didn't have back then. Between making my car louder to impress some floozy who's just gonna turn around and be more impressed by the next guy with the next louder engine, I'd rather have the efficiency and the safety. I know, imperfect analogy, but I think you get my point. Respectfully lament for what's lost with change, but don't lose sight of the betterment that change brings.

I know it's going to upset "those who can" either due to their profession or just due to them being "clever in this field"

But I fully put my name behind the fact that I think it's sad (and moves more away from the original beauty of the SL world) that there is going to be a ever widening gap between "normal" people which just have basic skills and the SL client, and the others with the skills and talent and 3rd party tools to make much better items

I know the people who CAN make the excellent items using their (often) expensive 3rd party tools and skills generally disagree with this. And I can understand why.

I suppose it's becasue there are many many chances in the computer/design world for the top people to expolit their talents, But is SL the place for it?

Don't get me wrong, I love quality in all things.

It's just a shame when the tools needed to produce a resonably high quality and possibly the skills needed to operate those tools may grow beyond the abilities of many.

You may have an incredibly artistic and able mind when it comes to design and the ability to see something you wish to built, but perhaps you don't have the PC skills to use the outside tools other can.

I suppose it's that, the general population and their prims is what made SL what it is today.

My friend who has been on SL for about a year now, won't make anything anymore, they can't make items of the quality that they now see for sale (sculpties) and they know their prim tools can't compete, hence have given up basically which is sad, and not what's meant to happen.

I don't see why we can't have mesh tools in world. It would be easy enough to do.
Heck it's easy enough to visualise isn't it?

On the tools pallette, have a CREATE NEW MESH option, and you see a large blob in from of you (probably a variety of basic blobs) with a wire mesh of lines, and a small ball at each intersection. You can then pull and push the blobs and grid around before selecting to freeze the mesh and then apply textures.

I'm sure something like this could be done and easy for anyone to at least have a grasp of.

Yes, again, I know the pros ans lucky skilled people will say, well let them learn 2rd party tools then, but not everyone has the ability and it's going to be so sad if more and more "general population" people get left behind and just give up as my friend has.

I need to follow that posting up with a few things........

I love progress and always want things to get better.

I love the fact that in SL the world was greated by the masses and their brains were able to let loose and create the weird and wonderful (and inventive) things we can all see out there.

I'm from the UK, hence we generally favor the underdog.

Myself personally will always favour the underdog who is struggling, over the pro who is lucky to have all the tools (perhaps works in grpahics design) and can churn out excellent work in the blink of an eye.

I just want to make it clear, I don't have any DOWN of progress or quality. I just dearly wish that the tools to make such items (or almost as good items) were easily availiable and understandable (as much as possible) to the widest audience, so keep SL what it was and generally still is.

Having a SL in 10 years time, which looks 10 times better, but it's all build by pro's and talented people will look nicer, but will be a sadder place.

Perhaps Linden could produce 2 pieces of software?

the SL viewer and the SL builder.

A cut down (only the tools you need, is a easy to use way) 3D package for mech building and texturing.

I'd be well happy with that.

Piggie, I think you just made my point for me. If the tools are in the viewer, people just learn them, and that's the end of it. But somehow if they're in a third party app, they must be "too hard". It's an emotional thing, which makes absolutely no rational sense.

As I just said a few minutes ago, the prim system is just as hard to learn as any third party modeling program. But most SL users don't know any different, so they just adopt it, and form their habits and paradigms around it. In doing so, they set themselves up to a certain degree to struggle with other 3D applications, not because those programs are inherently any harder to learn, but just because they happen to operate differently from what they're now used to. It's all about perception.

The exact opposite also happens, and the results are just as severe. Almost every single experienced 3D artist I've ever encountered who has tried their hand at the SL prims system has ended up banging their head against the wall. The habits and paradigms they'd established from their years of experience don't quite apply. So these established professional experts end up having no more success as new users in SL than entrenched 'amateur' SL users have in Maya or Max or Blender.

It's not about being a pro or an amateur, or about being "luckily skilled" or not. It's about open mindedness and determination. Nothing else matters.

Heck, when I started, I was convinced the prim system was ridiculous because there was absolutely no way to make a circle larger than 10 meters. It was months before I figured out you could build a large circle out of a bunch of smaller arcs. It also took me weeks to figure out Select Texture. And it was a good two years before I figured out how to use the three ruler modes properly.

So don't assume we "pros" just automatically know everything. We struggle to learn just like everyone else. The ONLY difference between us, and people like your unfortunate friend you mentioned, is we don't give up. When something new becomes available, we say "How can I..." rather than "Why can't I..." That's it.

I can assure you, I was not born with silver copies of Photoshop and Maya in my mouth. I worked hard to learn what I now know how to do. Look, I know you didn't mean it this way, but to refer to people like me as somehow lucky because we're just naturally talented is an insult to everything we've ever achieved.

That never happens. EVER. For anything but generic pillows and stars and flowers and things like that sold as "builders kits". No complete product ever comes with a full perm sculpt map. And for good reason, because it ties "mod" to "full perm", and thus *reduces* the options practically available to the creator. In theory it increases them. In practice it reduces them.


Not an option, ever.

And yes, the screwed up permissions problems that make texture artists have to sell their stuff full perm is a problem too. But it's one they live with because they have to. People who sell objects don't have to, so they don't, and expecting them too...

Of course not, because then sculpties would be peers of regular prims, equally moddable, equally editable, equally creatable. The lack of in-world editing for sculpts is precisely the problem.

It absolutely would be, simply because it would be in-world and something you could work with starting with existing sculpts you had normal permissions on. Because you would be seeing them in context in SL with other objects you have in SL as you were working on them.

You can make and mod things using prims in minutes, without personal instruction. It didn't take me "a few hours" to start making stuff in SL. If it takes "a few hours" of direct instruction to get there, in your opinion, that's a huge barrier.

Anyone can make prim stuff without realizing they have to want to. I've talked to people doing amazing things modding stuff they bought, but they don't make stuff because "they're not a builder". Being able to get there without having to "be a builder" is critical to what makes SL worth being part of.

But it's absolutely relevant to the points I'm making, because starting with stuff you have and modding it is one of the best ways to learn.

I can't truly disagree with most of your points, Chosen. I, too, think that most people can probably manage to master scuplty-building if they set their minds to it. The "quantum leap," in my mind, is more a matter of adding yet another layer of complexity for the average user to master. To repeat my analogy to working on cars, making modern engines and transmissions more complicated has certainly been a deterrent to casual tinkering. Every new tool and type of materials is yet another thing for the amateur to learn or be left in the dust. There comes a point when amateurs are forced out of the arena and we all have to deal with professional mechanics for anything more difficult than an oil change.



Yeah, I know, but that doesn't mean I can't have regrets about the things that are lost as we progress. Maybe it's an age thing. Even as I embrace change, I worry about the tendency for growing complexity to make the world too hard for mere mortals to understand. The more we concede our ignorance to the few people who can understand each new layer of complexity, the more distance there is between us. It's not sculpties or full-mesh modelling I regret -- I look forward to learning how to do that stuff myself -- it's the inevitable Balkanization of our community that comes with them.

Of course, you are right.

I did not mean to insult anyone, or suggest that mummy and daddy bought them Photoshop, 3DStudio Max and sent them on an expenses paid learning course.

I know, appreciate and understand people work very hard.

I just need to push the point that perhaps the vast majority just don't have the time ans natural skills to learn this kinda stuff.

Hey, Enough people gave up trying to program an old fashined video recorder, let alone learn Blender!

My mum can't even play a DVD in a DVD player bless her.

Not everyone is talented in the same field. She knows all about gardening and flowers and I know nothing about the subject.

I think a major part of the problem has started (sculpties and I suppose will get worse the Meshes) is the LL have introduced a new building block (if we can call a sculptie a block) but not given anyone the tools to make them.

We end up with loads of different people all trying to use all manner of different 3D CAD packages and only using (wild guess) 5% or 10% of the tools in each package as anything else won't work with a SL sculptie.

That's the real mess.

Is they had commisioned someone to create a new (or alter an old) package and call it "SL BUILDER" where you could use ALL the tools in this package which was built and st up to make sculpties, then we#d see a heck of a lot more people making sculpties, and happy to try them.

Heck, you go on the Wiki and look at Sculptie packages and just the list alone is enough to blow you away.

So, I'm going to stick to my guns here and say that LL needs (or rather IMHO should) produce some BUILDER software for it's residents, that has all the tools needed to create in world *non prim objects".

I feel then it would answer the problems, we can all move onwards and make SL a nicer world, without leaving too many people behind.

Dunno what you think about that.

That's unfortunate. As I said, I never shop in SL, so I don't know what is and isn't available. I make whatever I need for myself, and when it's for work, my clientele is not the mass market.



Well "have to" is a relative term. If there's a market for it, people will do it.




Lack of in-world editing is a problem in the eyes of some, sure. But that doesn't speak to the points you were making about this alleged huge barrier to learning. It's no more challenging to learn a third party app than to learn SL itself.




Simply being in-world doesn't make it easier, just more direct. Scripting is in-world, and there are plenty of us who are no better at that than we are at any other type of programming.

I'll agree that having objects in context from start to finish could potentially speed things up a little. But again, it doesn't make it conceptually any more or less difficult. When I'm creating sculpties for a particular scene in SL, the first thing I always do is replicate the regular prims in Maya first. Being able to work directly in-world would simply save me the step of building things twice. It wouldn't change anything else. I'd still need to push and pull vertices around in exactly the same way.




Ah, memory distortion is such a beautiful thing, isn't it. Unless you're a savant of godly proportions, Argent, you spent your first few hours in SL wandering around, bumping into things, and putting boxes on your head, just like everyone else. It might take you just a few clicks now to start building whatever you want to make, since you know how to do it at this point, but I'll bet any amount of money you'd care to name that when you started, that wasn't exactly the case.

Also, let's make sure we're comparing apples to apples here. If you'd never ever used SL or anything like it before in your life, and you asked me how to build stuff in it, my answer would be exactly the same. Give me a few hours, and I'll teach you what you need to know.

When I said it would take a few hours to show someone how to make sculpties, that was assuming they don't already know how to use their program of choice. If they do, then sure, it's just a matter of learning a few key principles behind sculpties. If they don't, then it's gonna take a little time to explain the interface of whatever progam they want to go with, just like it would take time to explain SL's interface to anyone who's new to that.




That's simply absurd. No one just pushes the Build button by accident, creates the next Ivory Tower, and then goes "Hey, that was cool. Maybe I should figure out how I did that." Last I checked, the 10,000 monkeys were on 10,000 typewriters, not on 10,000 SL computers.




Modding can be a good way to learn, sure. But it's not the only way. I would submit that examining the wireframe of any in-world sculpty, and then creating a similar wireframe on your own is just as effective, if not more.

/me likes Piggie.

I know you didn't mean to insult, and I did get your point. I just tend to disagree with comments that imply, "He can do that because he's more talented than I." Sometimes that's true, of course, but in most cases, it's no, he can do that because he was more determined to learn how than you.




Absolutely true, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that. Going back to what I mentioned earlier, most people making content in SL are not very good at it. Why? Because they haven't invested the time and effort required to get better at it. And that's fine. Not everyone can or should do that.

But what's important to recognize is that that's equally true with prims and sculpties alike. It just happens that prims are right in front of people, so they discover them right away. Sculpties are something people have to go looking for. If there were in-world sculpty tools, 90% of SL would be making bad sculpties too. (Not that that would be a bad thing, or a good thing, of course.)




That's where I strongly disagree. The viewer can't and shouldn't be expected to do everything. As I've said a few times now, textures, animations, and sounds are the domain of third party apps, and no one has a problem with that. Why should advanced geometry be any different?

The analogy I often use when this subject comes up is that the viewer is just like a browser. If you want to make simple content for the Web, like the kind we're creating on this forum just by having this discussion, then a browser is all you need. But if you want to make more advanced content, then you need more powerful, more dedicated programs like Dreamweaver, Flash, etc. By the same token, if you want to make simple content for SL, like a plywood house made out of cubes, then the viewer is all you need. But if you want to make more advanced content like custom textures for the walls, a creeking sound for the front door, and a sculpted couch to go in the living room, then you need dedicated programs for those purposes. The viewer can't be a one-stop-shop, any more than a browser could.



How is it a "mess" to have unused tools in any set? It certainly doesn't hurt anything to have a tool just sit there. Here's another analogy I've used before. The first time I went swimming in the ocean, I was maybe four feet tall, and scared out of my mind. One of the adults said to me, "Yes, it's 2 miles deep, but you're only gonna use the top ten feet. The rest doesn't matter." Suddenly, I felt a whole lot better, and it was no big deal.

So sure, a program like Maya, Max, or Blender is going to have hundreds, possibly even thousands, of tools that are not directly applicable to sculpties. But who cares, as long as all the tools you DO need for the task at hand are there? The unused stuff has no ability to get in the way.

I'll let you in on a little secret, by the way. No one, absolutely no one, from the highest paid professional expert to the most ignorant amateur, uses all the tools in Maya. The most prolific user you could find is going to use maybe 10-15% of what's in there. It's a platform, not just a program. It's meant to be used by teams of hundreds, on CGI films and other progjects, each member of which has a narrow specialty.

Want an example? I just watched Bolt last night for the first time last night. I couldn't help noticing that some of the lighting in that movie looked really good, some of the best I've seen yet in animation. So during the closing credits, I made sure to take a look at who was on the lighting team. It was HUGE. I didn't count, but it was easily 20-30 people, if not more. That's 20-30 people whose sole job was to do nothing but put lights in scenes. The character animators, effects animators, modelers, riggers, texture artists, effects artists, etc., all made up teams of impressive size as well. Again, those are people who each do one very specific thing. I don't know what software was used to make that movie (probably Maya was in there at least to some degree; it usually is), but I'm pretty sure that whatever it was, no one person utilized more than just one little corner of it. And there was no mess involved.

A dedicated sculpty artist might used 1-2% of the tools in Maya, instead of the 10-15% an extremely well rounded pro might use. Compared to the whole of what's available in the platform, there's not a ton of difference between the two.



Back before sculpties existed, one of the most common complaints about SL was that it couldn't interact with popular modeling software. Now that it can, you're complaining that there's actually too much choice instead of not enough. I guess it's really true that there's no pleasing everyone.




I used to think that way too, but I've since learned to totally disagree with that sentiment. The viewer is already way too complicated. It needs to get far simpler, not more complex.

Consider the fact that 90% of all people who join SL quit after the first 20 minutes, never to return. Most common reason given? "It was too complicated."

When I was first exposed to that information, it was a real eye-opener for me. Prior to that, I'd been asking LL to put all kinds of things in the viewer, including in-world texturing tools, in-world animation, sound editing, etc. I really thought that if every conceivable thing should be creatable by the viewer. But then that 90% statistic hit me square across the face, and I realized, "Uh, yeah, keep it simple, stupid."

It's a hard concept for people like you and me to grasp, I think. Most of us on this forum are the tinkering type. We like to make things, take things apart, see how things work. But most of the world isn't like us in that respect. Most people just want to use things, do things, have things, and not worry about where they came from or what it might have taken to create them. The Internet didn't become mainstream until the advent of browsers that were simple enough for everyone to understand. SL won't become mainstream until its viewer follows that same pattern.

LL is well aware of this, so if you want to know why there are no in-world tools for creating 90% of what the viewer is capable of displaying, that's why. If it were up to me, I'd strip ALL content creation tools from the main viewer, and make the "builder's viewer" an entirely separate thing.

Keep in mind, even though SL is 5 or 6 years old now, we who are active in it are still early adopters. When the masses arrive, they won't be here for the same reasons we are. We need to recognize that, embrace it, and do everything we can to prepare for it, if we ever want this thing to truly take off.

I'd just like to say it's time I said something.
There that was easy.

What? Furthering the topic? Do you think I should?
Er
I have no idea, but can imagine, what a mesh is (I get you with a 3d polygon though)
I know what a sculpt is but can't do them well <-- NB: buut I CAN do them, for free
I'm pretty good with prims actually.

I don't think anyone is arguing against increasing what is possible in SL - improve or die, and all that - but I also agree that there is a world of difference, abstraction if you will, between "a cube", "64x64 points defining a cuboid" and (I'm guessing) "1024 polygons arranged as a cube"

For two reasons I think we should welcome the introduction of higher-end functionality; i) high-end residents want them, ii) many potential residents (some of those LL hypothetical 'millions' that don't want adult content?) think SL looks 'lame'
Ultimately, I think there's no point in arguing against their introduction because at the end of the day SL is a technology-test platform. We, the residents, are lab-rats to see how windlight, voice, skype-stuff (whatever it's called), etc. actually work in practice.

So the real debate should be - how can we help people to find and learn the level that's suitable for them? Above all else SL's unique selling point is that it let's you create. So create! Teach others to create! (Hunt down the copybotters in RL then, er, I got carried away and contravened a few laws here so deleted this bit).

If professional mechanics had just as difficult a time working on older cars as amateurs have working on newer ones, then I'd agree with your analogy. But that's not the case. And as I've said a few times now, professional 3D artists do tend to struggle just as much when confronted with SL's building system as established SL builders do when confronted with more traditional 3D modeling apps. It's not about things getting more or less complicated. The complexity of both systems is equal. It's about being or not being open minded enough, willing enough, and dedicated enough, to learn both.




I don't think fragmentation is inevitable, at least not in the way you mean. There will always be people who are set in their ways, sure, and there will always be those unfortunate souls who blame external forces for their own lack of drive, like the person Piggie mentioned earlier. But there will also always be those who are willing to do what it takes to stay ahead of the game. I'd rather be one of the latter. The quitters can complain all they like; that's what they're good at. But the rest of us don't need to be affected by them, and we certainly shouldn't entertain thoughts of joining them.

Not to qubible, since I think you and I are fundamentally in agreement on most of these points, but is is indeed about complexity. We're not talking about two separate systems -- in-world primitives and sculpties -- but about one system that has another one added on top of it. My point is that the average SL user who does any building uses the native toolbox and, until recently, has been able to manage with that alone. The choice today is between continuing with that approach and doing that PLUS learning how to create sculpties and, somewhere down the road, full-mesh objects. It's hard to argue that 1+1 isn't more complicated than 1 by itself. My argument is not about whether sculpties are more or less difficult to learn, but simply that they are yet another thing to learn. There is a point beyond which the average user, I suspect, will say it's simply too much work. At that point, our community is at risk of fragmenting into those who create and those who stand back and throw up their hands.

I agree wholeheartedly, especially if you are talking about the folks who populate this forum. I knew many faculty colleagues during my career who fell behind the pace of change and chose defeat instead of rising to the challenge of retooling. It's a choice I could never understand, personally. In this discussion, though, my attention hasn't been on people like that but on the rank amateur who has the time and energy to manage the basic skill set but is intimidated by the prospect of having to go well beyond it in order to meet what his/her neighbors consider a minimal standard of quality. The larger the interia barrier, the more we will find that those amateurs are unwilling to take even the first step.