Mesh

Be prepared this will be a loooooooooot of text, however in my opinion interesting to read, because it concerns MESH, a new way of creating, which will create a storm in Second Life that surely will affect many creators/designers/shop owners as well as fashionistas. 


Now before I go on I have to mention I am no techie and merely will be quoting my friend 10, co-owner of M&M Creations (see my blog entry Craftsmanship). When talking to her this week about their shop, sculpties and the SL Creative business in general she mentioned MESH and the way this new method of creating items will change Second Life. I asked her to explain in a way also non-technical people would understand. Coz what I understood of it, MESH will affect us all! 

10 (picture by Fabio)

There we go, 10 her explanation about MESH:


"I'm not responsible for all statements below, due to lag of information, we, ordinary residents, have to deal with during this full year of mesh-in-beta developments and lag of information by LL itself.

Given links will prove the premature being of Meshes in SL.
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/What_is_mesh%3F

• There are prims, sculpted prims and mesh-prims, well known as the avatars as we all are inworld. yes, an avatar is called a mesh, A 1 non-linked object that can move, you can bump into and walk over, 1 that has flexible clothes and can be textured with a UV-Map or called Template.
• Till this summer the avatars are the only existing Meshes in SL, but that will change on short terms, scheduled at the end of August by the implementation of meshes in SL.
• A mesh is a 3D object that can not be created or build in SL itself like ordinary prim builds as we're all used to. Meshes are also jacket, shirt, pants, socks, skirt layers, in other words all clothes layers that are glued to the avi and move with it (i.e items that cannot be 'detached'). 
• Like Sculpted prims they need to be created outside SL with 3D-software programs. Unlike sculpties, meshes can move with the avatar's body if they are 'rigged' (= attached to) properly to the bone structure of an avatar. So 'flexible clothes' will be possible, because they are made out of meshes instead of sculpties, which can not be made flexible or attached to a bone-structure of avatars.
• Mesh objects/3D-objects can be of any kind, a complete house or castle, avatars in any shape you can think of, trees, you name it. You can walk through them, on top of them etc, what can not be done by sculpted objects. (Sculpted prims are impossible to walk on or through if not made phantom guided by invisible helping prims, can not be made flexible, even if attached.)

• Mesh objects can be downloaded from the internet and soon be uploaded in SL gridwide. This will cause lots of copyright infrignements. Real life 3D designers will feel the effect of ignorant SL-residents who upload these mesh-3D-objects they've found on the internet, without paying any respect to license-agreements etcetera!!!
• Meshes can only be textured by using the UV-maps or Templates made available by the designer of the meshes and are not easy (impossible) to texture without any knowledge of graphic programs. 
• Till now (end of June 2011) meshes imported to SL (in beta) for the use of an avatars attachment (clothes and accesoires) cannot be resized and have to be sold in a few default sizes as Small, Medium, Large and Extra Large. An extra big bum will be impossible to use with a mesh-skirt worn!!
• The forout spoken advantage of meshes primcount is unsure and still a big mystery (time of writing end of June 2011) while LL has tried to bring the implementation of meshes as being a prim count advantage. As a sculpted prim object, the shape can be 2 prims, imported as mesh-prim it can be 4, 6, 8 or 2 prims as well, not less! So no advantage till now. If a mesh-object is resized as a huge prim, it will be multiplied in prim count and still the prim count calculation isn't sure!!

• Upload existing meshes not specifically build for SL means the following; LOD factor (Level Of Detail) needs to be adapted for the use in SL. The creator of the mesh needs to have adapted his mesh for the use in SL, this means the creator has to create 3 or 4 different meshes to establish 1 good mesh object inworld. From every distance such good meshes will be loaded properly by SL itself. If not, the object will look terrible from a small distance even if the standard LOD-factor is set to 4 or higher in your viewer's preferences. This is NOT known by the average user of meshes, creators of meshes, or people who upload good looking meshes not specifically made for the use in SL. Only the 'happy' few are aware of this fact and it takes a lot of time and skills to create meshes with the good LOD-factors for the use in SL.
• Because well-made mesh objects will look far more better then sculpted prims or default prim builds, the economy of SL will problaby crash (see statement above!) and due to this, the shopping experience so far will vanish from this virtual world made by its residents. A small group of skilled 3D-designers will conquer the world and start a monopoly in every kind of shopping range you can think of. Small businesses will disappear, as well as the challenge to start (prim)building and one cannot speak of a free world anymore.
• The problem is and will be the coming months, that even in the Beta grid, nothing is sure, no conclusions can be drawn and it is all 'wishfull thinking' for LL, skilled designers, business owners and residents who hope for good improvements...
• All stated above is written by me (10 Goosson) mesh-noob herself, involved by an avarage 3D designer who is trying to involve himself into mesh-for-SL-use for 2 years. That the SL-mesh-forum is filled with questions, frustrations and unanswered questions will be confirmed if you visit all SL-mesh information sites available. It is all very technical, but even for the designers themselves no clairity is given or available.
  
• Of course the first year of meshing running gridwide, there will be made a lot of improvements and updates by LL to improve SL's performances, scripts will be written to overrule the bugs or other problems with meshes and residents are very creative!!"

Signed 10 Goosson

***************

Phew, that is a long story indeed with still many questions to be answered. 

Thanks 10 for your time and patience to clearify MESH.

Surfing the web I found a few more interesting blog entries:

Of course one by Gwyneth LLewelyn: 'Meshed Drama' 

and one by Tateru Nino about SL mesh upload to be separately controlled

So if you wanna read some more ;-)

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