why only primitives?

You’re counting on the same people that build towers of spinning particle spewing primitives to "get a clue"? You have to assume that random guy +1 is going to upload 1K vase models he finds on the internet, why wouldn't he? I mean it looks good doesn't it?, why should he care if the average user lags in his home filed with them he thinks it looks cool!. True people wont vist his areas but what about the people that have land around him? Once again your comparing apples to oranges, this isn't AW, if LL wanted to totally redo their render engine, AW is DX 8.1 SL is OpenGL, of course it runs smooth it has no shader usage, not all rendering engines are the same, and recode how objects work it might work but right now with the system as it is would not be able to handle it. Okay I do correct myself on the UT models, only 2.6 Megs on a 3405 polygonal model with 3 custom textures sets, when using the standard UT animation files.
Personally I also think in narrows the target audiance, well unless they make thier own modeling client, how many people can drop 1000-7000 just to build things in SL? True there are free modeling programs out thier that they could use, blender etc., but still that narrows how many people can do it, 3d modeling doesn't just click for everyone.

People around the offending modeller should speak up against him/her if the person is unwilling to reduce the object's complexity (or provide sufficient LOD models accordingly). Another option is to allow occlusion/clipping planes to be set up around the offender's area so as to prevent anything from rendering past them until they are crossed.

Community building takes some diplomacy, negotiation, and social skills; if offenders won't take steps to reduce their object complexities, Linden Labs can step in if enough people complain or something.



Nothing wrong with comparing fruit--especially if the differences are minor; it's all relative.



Actually, AW is both DirectX AND OpenGL.



How do YOU know? You're not an SL programmer. There's no reason both primitives and more complex (yet efficient) objects can't co-exist in SL--they do in AW just fine.



Again you're including textures and animations, which are NOT part of 3D objects (just the mesh).



Again, I'm not saying to REPLACE primitives modelling, but to simply ADD more compex modelling capabilities (or at least importing such models) for modellers who know what they're doing and have the desire to create as optimized and efficient models as possible.

I think u were referring to 3 VECTOR variables, correct? IE Position[x,y,z], Size[x,y,z] and Rotation[x,y,z] correct?

Eep I understand your frustration with working in SL's existing system. I would love to see LL put out some kind of SDK or open-source some of their code so someone could come up with a polygon --> prim --> polygon converter or something. And yeah, right on with what you said about community building... tough to get so many people from so many diverse backgrounds together to agree on ANYTHING, let along modeling guidelines etc!

PATIENCE Eep.... SL is still very young... if they build it they will come LOL

Peace & Happy Building!
Arti

On one part I should correct myself, early cube shape aside from size and position of it was handed by three other variables for the shape. It is like comparing fruit, the differences between DX and OpenGL are astronomical, one being DX costs money to license. Nope that size is just with textures not animations. I would accually love to see this feature but it just can't handel the way the SL engine works right now, if they revise it sure, joe bob is still going to make high poly models unless they restrict poly limits per objects...which would suck for those of us that know how to use that kind of freedom correctly.

If you allow professional grade imports from other programs, I am out of a virtual "job". No matter how good of a builder I am in SL, I can't compete against a 300,000 polygon, professionally designed prefab house that's drag and drop.

And where's the collaboration there? Not everyone has 3ds max. Everyone has SL's building tools.

I remember trying to have a collaboration in Activeworlds (some contest to develop a university campus)... it was comical and ridiculous. "Do you have Renderware?" "Well, no... do you have 3ds Max" "Well, no... do you have Milkshape?" And so on. Not to mention incompatible file sizes, the wrong scale for builds (one person builds at the centimeter level while another builds at a meter level... whoops!), and a host of other stupid issues. So yes, it would look "pretty", but you would kill collaboration, which is what SL is about. It's a social tool first, and a 3d modeller second.

Meanwhile in SL everyone can rez a cube in 3 seconds and be fitting all their stuff together in minutes, have a good time, and forget about nurbs and polygons and BSP trees and shader vertexes.

LF

Thanks lord I forgot about the whole world scale thing, thats a pain to deal with(IE 3dsm has perfect scale for ut2k4, maya on the other hand is tiny..very tiny). Yah I would love see incredible 200,000 poly mansions of splender and grace...but then the average person doesn't have access to such tools and can never make a linden with prims(in theory). An internal nurbs system would be cool simlar to doom 3, but I don't see it happening either.

I think the whole point to wanting to use meshes is so a house isn't 300,000 polygons, hehe.. At least id hope people would try to be efficient. Of course.. Just how prims take away available prims from the plot, polygons would too. Ill assume LL uses triangles only, so a cube has 12. That's about the lowest of all shapes. Torus and sphere would be highest. prolly in the hundreds. I think about 20-60 polygons per prim would be fair. So a 300,000 polygon house would take up 15,000-5000 prims.
(300k polygons is a lot of resources client side).

Physics wise I don't know how they would handle it. In games where there's lots of polygons they use BSP(binary space partitioning) to help with collisions and lots of polygons. maybe if they limited the polygons per object and max size to something like 10x10x10.

As far as being able to compete with ppl who use modelers, shrugs.. I'm for whatever improves the game. Of course they should keep existing prim system. And don't forget we already have to use poser to make animations. its not a requirement to have, and its not built into SL. You may not be able to make animations even if you had it, but that doesn't mean SL it better without it.

The cube as more then 12, the SL prim holds all faces for every shape it can be and runs off morph targets. Maybe 300,000 is a bit extreme but still theres a point, a modeler can make things look the same as a prim builder and it would work better(in theory).
PS-Physics I'd guess they'd use the same primative bounding boxes that the havok engine supports.

Eep,

Can you upload screenshots of active worlds that uses your ideas well?

Also, don't forget the physics issues .. does AW handle physics well?

Have you witnessed this? where did you hear this from?
Now im going to have to find a way to look in wireframe, lol..
That would be so wastefull and honkey.

ps. if thats true then poly modeling looks even better, lol

From what I saw it doesn't have physics at all, AW that is. Earlier threads discussed the number of polys already, how they figured it out, fantastic question, I'd love to see an SL wireframe view it would be awesome best I get is light maps.
PS-but it doesn't since you would still lag, data only travels so fast down the internet pipe, faster fps if you don't move but HUGE load times.

So I checked and indeed SL cubes use 12 polygons. of course hollow would use more, ect.. I can provide screenshots if needed
(SL uses backface culling so you can only see 6 at a time, but its 12)

To look in wireframe use 3D-Analyzer.
Tommti Systems
http://www.tommti-systems.com

On the bottem theres a wireframe checkbox, and in game/app file selection choose the newview.exe in your Second Life folder.. (usually c:\program files\second life)

And a question for lindens, who so many polygons for the moon!? lol..

Eep Quirk == Eep^2? If so, send me an IM.

-Adam

Okay Crazy you get a cookie for that progam that was awesome, but now take that cube..hallow..twist it etc, now is it 12 triangles? as far as I know they just layer them on top of each till the morph targets are used.
PS-I'm curious too...why so many for the moon?

Um, again (for the upteenth time--I wish you would learn to read--and write better), I am referring to JUST the model WITHOUT textures, animations, sounds, etc. U2K4 models are NOT megabytes large.



The poly limits could be set by the region/sim owner, optionally, and even on a per-user basis. Regardless, again, the high-poly abuser will get the hint quite quickly that too many polygons will grind SL to a halt--as it will any 3D renderer.

Then you'd learn to model better in order to remain competitive, eh? Granted, even if the importable model format was, say, 3DS, there are many programs that can convert to that format so you could learn on a wide variety of modellers.



Not everyone needs 3DSMax, but serious modellers will use a modeller (or just a text editor if the model format has an ASCII equivalent, like RWX is). SL could even have a better integrated modeller like I suggest for Active Worlds.



Check out Cubed which I collaborated in building with 2 other people in AW. Yes, like any design project, it takes communication to establish scale, theme, etc--but that is the nature of design itself.

Oh and you don't need RenderWare in order to model for it--at least in pre-3.x versions: http://tnlc.com/rw/ for more info.



Again, I am not saying to REPLACE SL's current prim modelling with ONLY a vert-poly method; on the contrary: I am suggesting ADDTIONAL, more DETAILED modelling capabilities. Prim modelling is fine for beginners but SL really needs to support more efficient modelling for those who can and choose to model in such a way.

Fixing SL's floating point prim placement problems should be a high priority too--this happens with AW too and is QUITE annoying!

Let me know when you'll be available and I'll set up my version of Hole world in Active Worlds, which uses most of my objects which I've optimized over the years. It's not running (my version anyway) all the time due to my object password being stolen (from AW's crappy security). http://tnlc.com/eep/sites.html to see some of my objects (Hole world), but you need to see what ISN'T shown (covered polys under streets, poles, etc) to really understand (and hopefully appreciate) what I am referring to.

No...most of the prim tweaks create or remove polygons depending on the tweak. Most add polys though since more curves/bends = more polys. Again, 3D rendering is 3D rendering: the end result is still polygons.

The only physics AW has is on avatars: friction, gravity, bouyancy, momentum, etc. Granted, AW physics is quite primitive compared to SL's.

Yep; it's me. Who are you?

This could be the problem. SL has to calculate physics for all objects in the SIM. If you run into something, it doesn't just throw a bounding block around the object and say "oh you collided with this", it actually figures out where things are.

If it's dealing with objects that are not composed of primitives, it may have a very difficult time with a lot of the physics that's going on.

There's no reason the bounding boxes can't be used for more complex objects. Havok can handle it; many games with complex objects use Havok...

I believe the main issue is not if havoc can or cannot handle, it's an issue of compression / info streaming / processing power both on the server and the client.

Don't get me wrong, now.... I do believe in pushing the limits and always getting a step farther. But gotta understand the underlying reasoning behind somethings before suggesting improvements.

Wow so much to comment on alright first, even so they are still large compared to a few bytes we currently use on prims, the problem still remains that LL doesn't have the bandwidth and most users don't either to load a good 600 megs of content when they move into a new sim, textures alone can be a pain because people can't decide one size, some of them aren't uniformly scaled or are run at 1024x1024 which is fine if you have a beefy vid card about the little cards of the average user suffer through those and still try to load without good LOD.
Yes havok should be able to handle it, heck if this poly system worked, prim vehicle makers would be out of a job too, there is no way they could compete in the level of detail and structure that someone with only 1000 polys could do, and in theory, the poly vehicle would run smoother since it calcuates few boxes for it's physical state.
LL would have to put in a lot of work, even to just add this to the current engine, for a unified scale they would most likely have to just make thier own client rather then deal with making converters for the major formats.
Personally I don't think a high poly abuser would get the hint unless it was given to them, there are a lot of griefers out there and they would abuse it as much as they would anything else.

You assume too much, Kensuke (incorrectly, I might add). I suggest you go to Active Worlds to see how more complex objects are streamed (quite fine and fast, actually). 600MB? Not even close. SL sims are 65538m² (256x256m) while average AW worlds are 360,000m² (600x600m), which is smaller than the world I've helped build (Hole) is and, guess what? It's not even close to being 600MB yet has over 10,300 objects total, ~2500 unique objects (averaging 1K zipped, largest is a mere 74K and is a very complex skeleton). Total size for the objects (which you can't seem to focus on since objects are what this thread is about) is (are you ready?) a mere 1.74MB. Oh...my...freakin...god. Do you think your connection can handle the bandwidth??

And just to grind the point into your thick-headed skull even further, Hole's 86 avatars are 800K, 1359 textures (+ masks) @ 10.4MB (most averaging 128x128 but I have some as large as 512x512), 337 animations @ 1.1MB, and 262 sounds @ 6.45MB for a grand total of <gasp> ~18.7MB.

Again, textures, sounds, animations, etc are separate issues I am not including in this discussion since they can affect SL and AW similarly.



Prim modellers could still model as they do now if they wanted to. Prim models would more likely be much cheaper ($L) than "poly" (for lack of a better term) models, depending on the amount of work involved in modelling it most likely, but that shouldn't deter prim modellers from modelling regardless (especially if they find more complex 3D modellers difficult to use/learn).



<shrug> Then it's their problem when their computers grind to a halt and no one visits their areas. You should like a broken record...come up with original replies or stop mindlessly replying just to be defensive.