Mesh/Archive/2013-06-30

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Agenda

  1. One contributing factor to lag is textures. We already know that making an object with numerous 1024x1024 textures is a daft practice when it comes to building, even though it's appallingly widespread. The thing is, what we do know is that Second Life only supports bitmap textures (.tga, .png, .jpg format). These are formats that don't scale well. Put a texture on any prim's face with one repeat only, make that prim really big (retaining only one repeat of the texture on the face concerned) and watch it lose resolution and definition. Therefore, the temptation to use exceedingly high-resolution textures is strong. But really, for wood, metal, marble etc textures, do we need to rely exclusively on bitmap textures? Wouldn't it be a good move to provide support for procedural textures as well? These are only a couple of KB, they're really what texture makers use in order to finally make the resulting .jpg, .png or .tga files and they're infinitely scalable. Mona Eberhardt 11:28, 1 July 2013 (PDT)
  2. note about FS 4.4.1 release - important information. (I'll cover it) TankMaster Finesmith 12:04, 1 July 2013 (PDT)
  3. Latching on to the best practices discussion, is there a way to encourage better awareness of polycounts over and above LI as a means of promoting more efficient content? As it stands, render info exists, but you have to know where to look. It seems like LI is too often an ineffective way of defining the costs to the viewer, especially given the difference in LI just due to scaling alone. Aki Shichiroji 12:22, 1 July 2013 (PDT)

Meeting Notes

Transcript for Monday July 1, 2013

[12:02] Nyx Linden Greetings all
[12:02] Mona (mona.eberhardt) /me waves. Hello Nyx!
[12:02] Petra Topaz (petr.topaz) Hello Nyx
[12:02] Aki Shichiroji Sorry, looked away for a bit. Yes, I am a sugar glider today :)
[12:02] Nyx Linden Agenda is as always here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Content_Creation/Mesh_Import_User_Group
[12:02] Aki Shichiroji Hi Nyx :)
[12:02] Nyx Linden please add your topics!
[12:03] Nyx Linden how is everyone doing today?
[12:03] Petra Topaz (petr.topaz) I am good ty
[12:03] DrFran Babcock happy Canada Day if anyone is Canadien
[12:03] Petra Topaz (petr.topaz) smiles
[12:03] Mona (mona.eberhardt) Still on this planet, I guess.
[12:03] Yuzuru (yuzuru.jewell) Thank you, Aki. Japanese name of it is fukuro momonga.
[12:03] Aki Shichiroji Chillin', looking forward to fireworks later!
[12:04] Aki Shichiroji Yuzuru: Cool, thanks!
[12:04] Nyx Linden Happy Canada day!
[12:04] Nyx Linden happy fireworks day for the Americans in the audience.
[12:04] DrFran Babcock yaay
[12:04] Nal (nalates.urriah) Thx
[12:04] Petra Topaz (petr.topaz) I like the blue text
[12:04] Nyx Linden Happy start of July for everyone else :)
[12:05] Nyx Linden let's get started
[12:05] Nyx Linden first topic: "One contributing factor to lag is textures. We already know that making an object with numerous 1024x1024 textures is a daft practice when it comes to building, even though it's appallingly widespread. The thing is, what we do know is that Second Life only supports bitmap textures (.tga, .png, .jpg format). These are formats that don't scale well. Put a texture on any prim's face with one repeat only, make that prim really big (retaining only one repeat of the texture on the face concerned) and watch it lose resolution and definition. Therefore, the temptation to use exceedingly high-resolution textures is strong. But really, for wood, metal, marble etc textures, do we need to rely exclusively on bitmap textures? Wouldn't it be a good move to provide support for procedural textures as well? These are only a couple of KB, they're really what texture makers use in order to finally make the resulting .jpg, .png or .tga files and they're infinitely scalable. Mona Eberhardt 11:28, 1 July 2013 (PDT)"
[12:05] Nyx Linden technically we only support one format in-world
[12:05] Nyx Linden we just offer conversion on upload for a number of bitmap formats
[12:06] Phoenix-Firestorm Viewer Rocks (tankmaster.finesmith) LL only supports jpeg2000 internally
[12:06] Phoenix-Firestorm Viewer Rocks (tankmaster.finesmith) with lossful compression, i might add
[12:07] Mona (mona.eberhardt) So this means we'll have to make do with bitmap textures and all that's associated with them. :/
[12:08] Nyx Linden it means changing that would be a large project that would have to deal with all the places we assume textures are a particular format.
[12:09] Nal (nalates.urriah) So, procedural textures are not on any To Do list?
[12:10] Drongle McMahon So normalmaps are lssy too, of course .... that might explain a lot.
[12:10] Drongle McMahon *lossy
[12:10] Mona (mona.eberhardt) Nyx, do normal maps count against LI?
[12:10] Nyx Linden I don't know everyone's todo list, so I can't really speak to that.
[12:10] Nal (nalates.urriah) ok
[12:11] Nyx Linden If you use material properties on an object, your object will be opted in to the new LI calculations.
[12:11] Drongle McMahon If they're on prims, they convert to mesh-style LI accounting.
[12:11] Whirly Fizzle Im not sure what sizes of image upload are lossy or lossless. There is LosslessJ2CUpload " Use lossless compression for small image uploads". What does that apply to?
[12:11] Drongle McMahon (snap)
[12:12] Drongle McMahon I think the maximum for lossless is 128x128 ... it was meant for sculpties.
[12:12] Whirly Fizzle ahhhh makes sense
[12:12] Nyx Linden I believe lossless existed before sculpties, but its been a while since I've poked into that area of code
[12:13] Mona (mona.eberhardt) Nyx, can we expect the good building practices to become more prominent? Perhaps featured on the official blog or something? Because I've seen far too many small objects being chock-full of 1024x1024 textures that are completely unnecessary and really clog entire sims down.
[12:14] Aki Shichiroji +1
[12:14] Mona (mona.eberhardt) And when I'm talking small objects, I mean stuff like trinkets - rings, necklaces, that sort of thing.
[12:14] DrFran Babcock /me notices for, no real reason, that most folks are wearing black or grey today.
[12:14] Nyx Linden I can ask about getting a blog post to increase awareness of the good building practices page
[12:14] Nyx Linden we're mourning the impending loss of temporary texture uploads, clearly.
[12:15] DrFran Babcock ㋡
[12:15] Whirly Fizzle lol
[12:15] Mona (mona.eberhardt) Yes, that was unfortunate.
[12:15] Whirly Fizzle 10 days! :P
[12:15] Phoenix-Firestorm Viewer Rocks (tankmaster.finesmith) 9
[12:15] CreekLad (apisofssit) hi
[12:16] Nal (nalates.urriah) When SSA enables across the grid we will find out how many people have been reading the forums and blogs.
[12:16] Motor Loon Black is my party wear... but then again... every day is a party °͜°
[12:16] Phoenix-Firestorm Viewer Rocks (tankmaster.finesmith) lol yeah
[12:16] Aki Shichiroji or heck, even the MOTD
[12:16] Nyx Linden I'm not certain that the creators who are over-using high-res textures will necessarily read the blog, but the increased exposure to the good building practices couldn't hurt
[12:16] Mona (mona.eberhardt) What Nal said.
[12:16] Whirly Fizzle Noy enough nal, you can bet on that
[12:16] Whirly Fizzle *Not
[12:16] DrFran Babcock I have heard much talk of SSA, everywhere, so maybe it won't be so bad.
[12:17] Mona (mona.eberhardt) /me braces herself for tons of "BAWWWWW Y CANT I SEE PPL NORMALY" whining.
[12:17] Nal (nalates.urriah) If it isn't some stricking image on the login page, I suspect the majority of users never notice a thing.
[12:17] Mona (mona.eberhardt) tonnes*
[12:17] Aki Shichiroji Ultimately, it would be nice to have the education out there for those who will use it
[12:17] Nal (nalates.urriah) striking ^
[12:17] Aki Shichiroji those who choose not to make use of it or to ignore best practices... well. they should do it by choice, rather than ignorance.
[12:18] Nyx Linden I'll suggest highlighting it on a blog
[12:18] Drongle McMahon The only thing that would work is to include textures in LI, and use it for avatars too.
[12:18] Mona (mona.eberhardt) Yes. As a matter of fact, even on the SL feeds front page, rather than featuring randomly-chosen drivel ("sample posts" or whatever they're called), such announcements would be far more useful.
[12:18] Mona (mona.eberhardt) And by drivel I mean the feeds posts.
[12:19] Mona (mona.eberhardt) <--- Not a fan of all that gossip.
[12:20] Nyx Linden next topic: "note about FS 4.4.1 release - important information. (I'll cover it) TankMaster Finesmith 12:04, 1 July 2013 (PDT)"
[12:20] Phoenix-Firestorm Viewer Rocks (tankmaster.finesmith) oh hi
[12:20] Motor Loon morning tank °͜°
[12:20] Mona (mona.eberhardt) hey Tank.
[12:21] Phoenix-Firestorm Viewer Rocks (tankmaster.finesmith) so we got a report this morning from Oz, apparently our last release is sending stats to often, overwhelming the stats server... so we need to put out a release again with the proper stat report interval
[12:21] Phoenix-Firestorm Viewer Rocks (tankmaster.finesmith) were working on that now, and you can expect us to block 4.4.1 as a result once the new build is avalible
[12:22] Tiberious Neruda o.o
[12:22] Motor Loon damn... I JUST installed it before the meeting °͜°
[12:22] Phoenix-Firestorm Viewer Rocks (tankmaster.finesmith) theres to much data on the stats server to process basicly
[12:22] Tiberious Neruda oh the hell with THAT. I'm not doing yet another clean install for an error like that
[12:22] Phoenix-Firestorm Viewer Rocks (tankmaster.finesmith) no clean install is nessicary
[12:22] Tiberious Neruda good
[12:22] Mona (mona.eberhardt) Thank goodness.
[12:23] Nyx Linden brb
[12:23] Motor Loon lol
[12:23] Phoenix-Firestorm Viewer Rocks (tankmaster.finesmith) just a format of c: :P
[12:23] Tiberious Neruda tired of clean install after clean install, screwing up my settings, having to hunt down all the little crap I missed...
[12:23] Phoenix-Firestorm Viewer Rocks (tankmaster.finesmith) tib, have you tried the settings backup feature?
[12:23] Tiberious Neruda yeah
[12:23] Nyx Linden back
[12:24] Phoenix-Firestorm Viewer Rocks (tankmaster.finesmith) ok
[12:24] Exotix (inara.pey) It's a nice option. Like the 4.4.1 additions ☻
[12:24] Mona (mona.eberhardt) Speaking of the settings backup, Tank, I've filed a JIRA about it.
[12:24] Tiberious Neruda but if I miss something and catch it later
[12:24] Motor Loon works here... aside from many a few little tiny things, like positions of inventory windows and such
[12:24] Phoenix-Firestorm Viewer Rocks (tankmaster.finesmith) thats basically all for me
[12:24] Phoenix-Firestorm Viewer Rocks (tankmaster.finesmith) some things arent backed up intentonally
[12:24] Phoenix-Firestorm Viewer Rocks (tankmaster.finesmith) though if you think something should be backed up that isnt, feel free to file a jira
[12:24] Tiberious Neruda oh look, have to fix the setting all over again
[12:25] Tiberious Neruda the LL viewer doesn't make you cleaan install all the time
[12:25] Nyx Linden many thanks to the firestorm team, our server-hamsters were getting overloaded.
[12:25] Motor Loon hehe
[12:25] Motor Loon give 'em steroids
[12:25] Mona (mona.eberhardt) Actually, there's something that gets "re-enabled" when it shouldn't, because it wasn't selected in the first place.
[12:25] Whirly Fizzle It was errrrrr blind load testing Nyx
[12:25] Phoenix-Firestorm Viewer Rocks (tankmaster.finesmith) if this had been brought to out attention sooner, we would have fixed it sooner :P
[12:25] Whirly Fizzle @.@
[12:25] Drongle McMahon Get some guinea pigs
[12:26] Tiberious Neruda okay... here's one I'd like to see squashed... a way to turn off -just- the "slow frame" notification in the Ctrl-Shift-4 console
[12:26] Nyx Linden next topic: "Latching on to the best practices discussion, is there a way to encourage better awareness of polycounts over and above LI as a means of promoting more efficient content? As it stands, render info exists, but you have to know where to look. It seems like LI is too often an ineffective way of defining the costs to the viewer, especially given the difference in LI just due to scaling alone. Aki Shichiroji 12:22, 1 July 2013 (PDT)"
[12:28] Tiberious Neruda maybe colorcode the triangle counts like you do for render weight?
[12:28] Nyx Linden for meshes, LI should take into account polycount at each stage along with scale. There's a more relevant viewer-side metric of draw weight that is right alongside the other weights that go into LI
[12:28] Aki Shichiroji By that i don't mean to knock the LOD system, as that's a good way of decreasing costs. but too often one can find top level models that are thousands of polys, which could potentially be far less.
[12:29] Tiberious Neruda and worse, saving polygons at the top LOD is discouraged by the LI system
[12:29] Aki Shichiroji hm let me see if i still ahve the snapshot...
[12:29] Tiberious Neruda what one, Aki?
[12:29] Aki Shichiroji well
[12:30] Tiberious Neruda is it kinda like one I have where I snapped some shoes in wireframe mode and they're almost solid?
[12:30] Nyx Linden the LI system goes off default settings that takes into account how frequently people should see each LOD. Unfortunately, most viewers crank up the LOD factor due to sculpties, so it is not an accurate assessment
[12:30] Nal (nalates.urriah) Develop->Render Metadate->Render COmplexity used to provide the infromation users could use to evaluate mesh builds and items.
[12:30] Nal (nalates.urriah) That no longer works. Could we may be get that fixed?
[12:30] Aki Shichiroji i'm sure a lot of folks have seen mesh in heavy use at various events. in particular a few weeks back, i noticed folks using really high polycount top level models and basically just cranking the generation for all the lower LODs down to 1
[12:31] Tiberious Neruda essentially, gaming the LI system
[12:31] DrFran Babcock so, cranking up RenderVolumeLODFactor in debug settings is bad practice ??
[12:31] Aki Shichiroji Tiberious: exafctly.
[12:31] Aki Shichiroji *exactly
[12:31] Aki Shichiroji the common consumer doesn't know any better
[12:31] DrFran Babcock /me sobs
[12:31] Aki Shichiroji they see 'low LI! it must be good.'
[12:31] Tiberious Neruda I know I do it...
[12:31] Nyx Linden DrFran - it is for hardware that is geometry-bound
[12:31] DrFran Babcock ok
[12:31] Tiberious Neruda I'm shameless about it too
[12:32] Motor Loon wait now... some things needs to be seen up close - but has no use for long range detail at all
[12:32] Nyx Linden and for creators that want to see what the experience for such a user actually is
[12:32] Whirly Fizzle (re the FS emergency update, blog just psted: http://www.firestormviewer.org/emergency-4-4-2-update-coming/)
[12:32] Tiberious Neruda since the system punishes graceful LODs, I figure, the hell with it
[12:32] Aki Shichiroji not everyone has a video card that can handle the load.
[12:32] Drongle McMahon You can see the triangle and vertex counts using Develop->Show Info->Renedr Info
[12:32] Aki Shichiroji Drongle: yes, if you have the developer menu open
[12:33] Aki Shichiroji most responsible creators will have enabled that
[12:33] Tiberious Neruda I toss the high LOD in slots 1-3, crank it down to 0 for 4, and physics shape the lowest before that
[12:33] Aki Shichiroji i doubt the majority of consumers have though
[12:33] Tiberious Neruda keeps LI and upload costs manageable
[12:33] Nyx Linden people who have hardware that is shader-bound (generally: higher end hardware) won't see much performance hits from turning renderLODFactor up, and thus think everyone's experience is similar.
[12:33] DrFran Babcock well, I know it's not. Default for LL viewer is 1.25
[12:33] Tiberious Neruda I mean, if the system punishes people for trying, then WHY TRY?
[12:34] DrFran Babcock and for Firestorm it's close to the same.
[12:35] Tiberious Neruda so, I just think "screw it. I'm only ~2700 triangles anyway. If you see me, see me at highest LOD"
[12:35] Aki Shichiroji It's very frustrating.
[12:36] Motor Loon well, atleast you can see the difference between high quality and low quality products
[12:36] Nyx Linden Suggestions on how we can better advocate for these good building practices is always appreciated
[12:36] Tiberious Neruda so, Nyx, what can be done to encourage people to, well, even MAKE LOD meshes at all?
[12:37] Tiberious Neruda it's got to come from the system, Nyx
[12:37] Tiberious Neruda otherwise, people will just game the system
[12:37] Aki Shichiroji Motor: but then you get in to defining what is high quality and low quality, in the context of SL as a 10 year old platform. Evolving, yes, but still limited by the fact that content is being uploaded by the public and as a result usually not very optimized
[12:37] Aki Shichiroji Personally I'd like to at least see a polycount in the advanced info thing
[12:37] Aki Shichiroji if not right next to the LI
[12:37] Tiberious Neruda expose the triangle count?
[12:38] Aki Shichiroji yes
[12:38] Aki Shichiroji it's info we can find already, but it's not easilly accessible
[12:38] Motor Loon triangle count info easily spotted on rightclick / edit would be good
[12:38] Nyx Linden render weight might be an even more useful measure
[12:38] Nyx Linden we've done a lot of testing, and polycount isn't the only creator of load
[12:38] Motor Loon most regular users will never figure out how to get to the special info's
[12:38] Mona (mona.eberhardt) There's a caveat with render weight... We might end up having the same drama we had with ARC.
[12:39] Drongle McMahon Trouble with render weight is that it doesn't tell you which acpect is to blame in any particular case.
[12:39] Mona (mona.eberhardt) Yup.
[12:39] Nyx Linden fair enough
[12:39] Tiberious Neruda but, my question is, what can be done with the system to encourage people to lower polygon counts?
[12:39] Nal (nalates.urriah) What was Render Complexity based on?
[12:39] Nyx Linden unfortunately there isn't a ton of extra space left in the build floater
[12:40] Drongle McMahon If you could break it down and colour code ...
[12:40] Nyx Linden color coding is...difficult to get a useful scale on
[12:40] Drongle McMahon It can be in More Info
[12:40] Mona (mona.eberhardt) Nyx, when we click on an avatar, we get the "Textures" option (at least in some TPVs). Couldn't we perhaps be given similar information about objects (i.e. what textures they use and what their resolution is)?
[12:40] Nyx Linden http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Rendering_weight
[12:41] Tiberious Neruda ....you mean some kind of 'texture weight' info?
[12:41] Mona (mona.eberhardt) Maybe. Or at least what resolution each texture in the object is.
[12:41] Tiberious Neruda but how would that handle someone using, say, a single 1024x1024 for their entire object?
[12:41] Whirly Fizzle If you edit on an object and use CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+T you see the res of the textures.
[12:41] Aki Shichiroji i wish that colour coded viewer ended up making it to the mainstream... from back in beta.
[12:42] Drongle McMahon I mean color coding just to show relative contributions of textures/geometry whatever
[12:42] Mona (mona.eberhardt) Tiberious, I think that showing the texture itself in a thumbnail could cover that.
[12:42] Nyx Linden Tiberious - could list it out by unique texture ID in theory
[12:42] Aki Shichiroji at the very least, texture info displays which faces a single texture is applied to
[12:42] Mona (mona.eberhardt) But, in the case of objects like many accessories made by, for instance, Neurolab, where each sculpted component has its own 1024x1024 texture...
[12:42] Aki Shichiroji so you can tell when it's a difference between one large texture and several
[12:43] Tiberious Neruda ugh
[12:43] Mona (mona.eberhardt) What Aki says.
[12:43] Nyx Linden /me twitches
[12:43] Aki Shichiroji however, it doesn't really help if there are several parts to the object
[12:44] Nyx Linden alright, any other topics for today?
[12:45] Nyx Linden Sorry to cut it short, but I'm working from NyxHouse today, and there are dogs waiting (im)patiently to be let outside.
[12:46] Nyx Linden Unfortunately I won't be able to host a UG next week, but will resume on July 15th
[12:46] Motor Loon makes a note
[12:46] Phoenix-Firestorm Viewer Rocks (tankmaster.finesmith) vacation? :P
[12:46] Mona (mona.eberhardt) OK
[12:46] Nal (nalates.urriah) Holiday for you?
[12:46] Yuzuru (yuzuru.jewell) Thank you, Nyx.
[12:46] Drongle McMahon Make someone else do it?
[12:47] Aki Shichiroji Thanks Nyx - see you in a couple weeks.
[12:47] Mona (mona.eberhardt) See you then, Nyx. Thank you!
[12:47] Phoenix-Firestorm Viewer Rocks (tankmaster.finesmith) yeah, prep or vir can do it! :P
[12:47] Nal (nalates.urriah) Thx Nyx
[12:47] Nyx Linden Take care all!
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