Saving Prims

By Becky "Sha" Shamen

In December, 2015, this writer will celebrate six years in Second Life. For much of that time, I have been an active member of the Sunweaver Community. Being an active member entails more than just showing up for all the social events. A good citizen receives much from being a member and, in return, gives back his services to the rest of the community. They do this by helping those in need, showing a positive and joyful attitude and enhancing the local economy, by renting homes and shops on the community's sims.


Aside from location, key factors for renting are how much will it cost and how many prims will be allowed in the rented area. Regardless of how many prims are allowed, by the time your home starts feeling like your personal piece of heaven on earth, you'll be wishing for a few dozen more prims. Over the years, I have found a number of ways to save prims, while still decorating to get my home to be an extension of my personality. I'd like to share some of what has been learned, in this article.

A good way to personalize your home is to add pictures on the walls. Pictures of your friends, adventures you have been on, things you have built and classic paintings you love can say a lot about the resident, but, at one or two prims each, will quickly eat up your prim allowance. One of the first ways to reduce the number of prims is to make a texture that contains multiple pictures, frames and the transparent space between them included. Doing this, you can cover an entire wall with pictures, using only one prim.

Nice furniture also takes up prims. Fortunately, many shops offer low or one prim furniture, complete with animations. One of my favorite vendors is "Primpossible" and they have a number of great items for furniture and landscaping.

More recently, I have discovered other ways to save prims on displayed pictures. While researching an article, about the Lionheart Community, I walked around all the sims, to take in the atmosphere, chat with the locals and do a bit of shopping. While on the Ahadi sim, I found a shop, called "The Frame House". They have a large assortment of ornate picture frames. Each frame costs L$200 and is only 2 prims. You can edit the contents of the frames to contain dozens of your own pictures and it will then display them, like a slide show. I bought one, then, and have yet to find any limit to the number of pictures that can be added. When I returned to the Frame House, to research this article, I decided they would be a good way to display some of the countless avatars and costumes in my inventory, so I bought another frame. The Frame House also has two photo back drops, for singles or couples. Each has many background photos and poses. I go back often, just to take more pictures.

There is another slide show, that I have, which serves the same purpose while adding a social gathering place. It's called, "Victorian Magic Lantern Show" and is 7 prims. It has a fancy projection screen, 6 benches (seats 12) and a steam powered slide projector. The best part is, this slide show is FREE. You can find it at the Marketplace at the AleyMart merchant. They have 1328 items and they're all FREE. If you want to see their products in world, head on over to  Arcadia Asylum, on the Mieville Pond sim. Be prepared for an adventure there. Everything is unique and interesting. Every time I visit there, I come home with a dozen new toys.

"Sha"

Reader Submitted: A Few Notes on Mesh

10 Gooson sent Second Life Newser a few notes about her experience with Mesh, "I've tried to explain what meshes are, what is still unknown, the in's and out's for 'almost-noobs' to explain some more about meshes."

*Addition* 10's original article had been delayed, so she sent over an updated one which reflected her more recent experiences.

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

* 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! that has flexible (mesh)clothes and can be textured with a Template or officially called uv-Map.

* Till this summer the avatars are the only existing Meshes in SL, but that has changed forever! 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.

* 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' is 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 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 september 2011) meshes imported to SL for the use of avatar-attachement (clothes and accessories) can not 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!! So for mesh-clothes residents will need to resize their shape and not much residents will be willing to. Their biggest complaint about meshes so far!!!!

* 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, even less as just 1 mesh object having a Prim Equivalent of 1!! So the only advantage till now is the incredible Level of Details for every 1 prim Mesh Object and for each 1 prim Mesh Object 8 texture faces. (A default prim Box has 6 texture-faces)
If a mesh-object is resized as a huge prim, it will be multiplied in primcount and still the primcount calculation isn't sure. If you add a script, the prim count will go up!! To script and or animate a mesh object, it is best to delink the scripted(mesh) prim and add it separately and use it as unlinked (coalesced) object. What will be difficult for mesh-clothes (again) and for the average user of SecondLife.

* 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.

* The problem is and will be the coming months, is that, even in the Beta grid, nothing is sure, no conclusions can be drawn and it is all 'wishful thinking' for LL, skilled designers, business owners and residents who hope for good improvements...

*****Current experience:
Mesh-clothes are a huge disappointment for most creators and users! The resize-issue is an important part of the disappointment.

Big mesh-objects as rocks, caves, complete islands, trees etc have a prim-count problem. Even when the mesh is 'low-poly' (less tris as they call it) LL has decided to keep this stupid bug-like mistake and gives such bigger objects a primcount of a few hundred!!! or more. So the advantage of walking on or in such bigger builds without helping prims being 1 mesh object is gone and a huge disappointment for landscapers (ask Luna Bliss or Lilith Heart, Jubjub Forder). They look smashing but unable to use!!

So what's left?? Normal mesh-avatar-attatchements that don't need to move with the body of avatars, for example belts, helmets, armory, bags, etc etc. They behave the same as sculpted attachments, but again; much more room for details in the shapes themselves AND the multiplied texture-face-space meshes have compared to sculpties that have only 1 texture-face!!

For us, my hubby, it means we focus on furniture. Already awesome sculpted furniture, mesh furniture is 'fantastic', very very very good in quality and my experience; much more easy to texture because of the extended texture faces per mesh-part of a build!
I'll send you some of our own.

VIEWERS!!!!
Only the SL-viewer 3.0 and higher and the Phoenix-Beta viewer Firestorm V3 are supporting meshes. (last is extremely slow)
That means the 90% of SL-residents who use Phoenix or other third party viewers don't even see meshes as they are. Here some examples:



(pick taken with SL Viewer 1.23)





(pick taken with SL Viewer 3.0.3)

Well known is; Phoenix is working hard to support meshes, i assume (dangerous) that other viewers do the same.








The crow is a sculpted avatar, the cat is Sparky-me AND a mesh avatar!


*All stated above is written by mesh-noob herself, involved by an average 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, complaints, 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 clarity is given or available.





http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/What_is_mesh%3F
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Costs_and_fees

10

Scripts and Lag

I recently had a talk with EriX Oh of the Skybeam Estates. He wanted to discuss something many residents in Second Life don’t seem to be aware of: script lag.

Most residents are aware of the fact that more prims are around, the more lag there is, as each one takes a little bit of processing time. Scripts, however, also take time. So objects with scripts will create more lag than those without. EriX just shook his head at the mention of builders whom obsess with economizing their creations to have the fewest prims possible, yet stuff them full of redundant scripts.

“Many avatars with huge script-times/script-counts, they always tell me Linden Lab is the problem. I say to them they are the first problem. When I then ask the users to detach something or leave, they get angry. And even when I explain in detail, ... they still do not understand it.”

Of the subject on avatars and lag being written about more after the Avatar Rendering Cost (ARC) became available to view as an option, Erix commented, “That’s what many say, ‘Yes, but my ARC is low.’ That’s wrong. Scripts do not count in the ARC, and the ARC is only to detect local lag, not server lag. I must say my ARC may be high, but I’m not hogging the server (grin).”

As the manager of a sim, Erix had tools to help him see how much lag various objects created, sending me a couple pictures, “what you see here are all ‘ heavy loaded’ scripts .... - as this display is only limited to display ~100 scripts at one time. What you see here are times, how much time scripts need to execute.” By “heavy loaded,” he meant scripts particularly long and full of instructions, “and cause a lot of CPU load. The quantity of scripts does not matter if it lags or not, it’s the quality. What I look for often here ... generally speaking for an av, under 1 ms is okay, under 0.5 ms is perfect. When the sim has many scripts to execute, it all raises the times a bit. So on a full sim, I don’t care when I see avs under 1 ms.”

So when does script lag really begin? “Generally it’s a bit by bit feeling. You can’t say that avs over 1 ms are automatically ‘lagger: out!’ You need to think every av, even scriptless ones, cause CPU load on the sim. All objects with and without scripts cause lag. I look first at the sim itself. Are there many people? In a sandbox for instance, over 20 people around means it’s likely to lag. Who has objects with scripts? They cause lag. What I want to say, an avatar with more than 1 ms, is built wrong.”

Erix informed me that the fox avatar he uses most of the time is a modified copy of the original with redundant scripts removed, “removed over 300 scripts ... I’ll put on my original, and show you how ugly the times will be. You can potentially as one av lag a whole sim.” He then changed into his original av, which did seem a little slow to load. At first, the only difference seemed to be it’s use of invisiprims (EriX replaced them). Then he gave me a couple pictures of his sim statistics, and the difference was more obvious, :3.665 on an *idling* sim! Why that happened, if you look at me closely, you’ll see in *every* prim a script: Foxcolor. I counted them - 328 scripts!” These scripts were solely used for changing the color of his avatar fur. Since it was fully modifiable, after choosing a final color he removed all the scripts, “I also got rid of the original HUD, which I counted around 50 scripts.”

I mentioned some of my avatars had the option to change hair color. Erix answered, “Then they MAY have in every hair a script. May, because LL introduced a command in LSL to change child-prims from the root-prim on. So *one* script can change up to 255 child prims.” I changed to a "furry" skunk avatar with had a number of options which required some scripts, including changing hair color, as well as a radar, male AO, and flight feather. Erix looked at the statistics, “still under me (0.342), you’re 0.257. Nothing to worry about from my view.”

“A huge amount of scripts has other side effects. TPs often fail. And lagging, lagging, lagging. And because there's no quick, easy way to remove these scripts, I made a program, this: http://foxreports.lu/software_slavscrm.php . Note that those who use the program: I'm NOT responsible for ANY damage.”

“So girls, with many hairs, check the script-counts, and remove them if not needed.”

We talked a little more, and soon parted ways, me knowing a little more about scripts and lag, and how a sim administrator saw it.

Bixyl Shuftan