Linden Lab Mesh Update

Linden Lab has just posted an update for their mesh program in Second Life, "Next Steps for Mesh Import". Please do feel free to discuss in Comments.

Comments

[Hitomi Tiponi]

Hamlet - may I suggest that if all you feel able to do is just point to links to LL's blog posts that you don't bother at all - we can all read their posts and comment on their web-site.

What we did look to you for was informed comment on impact, how it affected Second Life and it's relationship to other activities in the VW community that we may not be aware of. If you now feel unable to do that because of your relationship with Avatar Reality I would rather you just stuck to what you do feel able to comment on.

[Hamlet Au]

I'm hardly the only person reading this blog with interesting things to say about this Linden news, Hitomi!

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

Alas, there will be a lot of uninteresting things as well. Expect a lot of predictions of doom for current SL content makers (do the predictors think said folks are incapable of learning to create meshes?) and rampant mesh piracy, and complaints about meshes being created outside of SL, as opposed to pushing prims around in world. (As someone noted, they don't seem to complain about textures being created elsewhere and imported. I'd love to see in-world creation tools--heck, I'd love to be able to paint objects directly in world--but is it realistic to expect LL, especially after the wave of layoffs, to do so? For that matter, is it sane to totally ignore all the work that people have put into 3D graphics creation tools?)

[Nat Merit]

If anyone can give us some hard facts about the technical limitations and implementation details of mesh support in the closed beta, I'll be very happy.

I think speculation of how this will affect the SL economy etc have already been debated to death the last couple of times mesh came up...

I'm sure Hamlet or some other enterprising blogger is already on the case of collating all this information, so I'll be waiting for those details before looking for informed discussion.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I'm one of those people that harp on the value of integrated toolsets for content creation. It seems to me to be a basic issue of access and fairness.

I can use PhotoShop like an extension of my own body -- but I can't use PhotoShop legally because I can't afford it, and I can use it illegally because it makes my ethical sense hurt. So my creative efforts are GIMPed.

Do I expect all virtual worlds like Second Life and Blue Mars to ship with a full integrated suite of profession-grade content creation tools? In a word, yes, I do.

Do I think that's a realistic expectation? I think it's a very challenging one, but I don't think it's insurmountable.

If an end-user can come up with a functional in-world sculptie creation tool using the irritating, proprietary Linden Scripting Language, then a professional developer ought to have the chops to integrate something faster and better into the client.

And yes, 2D painting tools are definitely part of that equation.

If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you tell him he has to buy a fishing-pole fabrication kit from a third-party vendor, he'll shoot you in the head and take the damn fish.

[Annyka Bekkers]

"Do I expect all virtual worlds like Second Life and Blue Mars to ship with a full integrated suite of profession-grade content creation tools? In a word, yes, I do."

That's just absurd. Linden Lab is having a hard enough time just making a usable viewer and keeping the world running at all. On top of this effort, they should divert resources to create their own in-world versions of Photoshop and Maya from scratch? Even if they were so inclined to reinvent these wheels, do you really think LL could create something better than the already existing alternatives?

Why is it even the Lab's responsibility to provide you with all the free tools you want? They provide the world and the freedom to create whatever you want in it. What more do you expect?

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Oh, I've been dressed-down in triplicate before :)

But I honestly don't feel this is an absurd expectation. The gates to expressing yourself creatively in virtual space should be talent and drive. Period. I don't see integrated tools as taking something away; I see it as removing barriers that should never have been there.

Every human being is capable of some form of artistic expression. The more that a user-generated virtual world can do to enable and facilitate expression of the creative impulse, the richer and more diverse that world will be.

Whether they build it themselves or work out some seamless integration with an app like SketchUp, it behooves developers to make the tools available from the interface.

I think Linden Lab gets it; that's why we have prim building tools. That strikes me as a basis that should be logically and incrementally expanded to incorporate other forms of creation (including texturing).

Giving us the tools to make the world isn't a distraction. It's the entire point.

[Nat Merit]

If you haven't seen it yet, Gianna Borgnine has provided the hard facts from the closed beta I was hoping for:

http://changingworldsbuildingdreams.com/the-status-of-mesh-support-in-second-life/

[Gianna Borgnine]

I was going to post a link, but Nat beat me to it.. thanks Nat! :)

[Nat Merit]

Thanks again for the excellent informative blog post Gianna!

[John Lopez]

I agree that tool-chains matter and being forced to use GIMP and Blender will make some less effective. But I remain unconvinced that anything Linden Lab produced would be *better* than GIMP and Blender.

The magic of Second Life (for me) was the in world editing. But I wouldn't be crushed if an "edit texture" command shelled out to the editor of my choice. Likewise, if the "edit mesh" command shelled out to Maya (for those who can afford it) and Blender for those working with what is free, it would allow for a best of both worlds tool-chain.

But would still lack the interactivity of building with prims and so I understand the desire to have the mesh ability for *everyone* to edit mesh and textures in world. Even the best import/export routines are tedious and error prone.

[bodzette Coignet]

What I find interesting is the opinion that the current set of content creators have a God Given Right to make money and the rest don't.

What is so special about the current skill-set in SL that it *deserves* to make money more than a different skill set?

Back in the Real World, Microsoft didn't stop to consider the real world careers of VB programmers who were left out to dry by the de-facto industry standard adoption of C#.

No, instead all the millions of VB developers were forced to learn C# or do something else.

The current crop of SL prim makers can stop their whining and get on with it.

Bunch of babies.