Has Mesh Marred the Creative Process in Second Life?

When I announced our plan to explore the latest in Second Life creativity, I mentioned wanting to see new or updated sims using mesh, introduced to SL a few years ago, and a thought occurred to me -- has mesh actually marred the overall creative energy of Second Life? I had this thought, in part, because it came up in my long discussions with AM Radio (Jeff Berg IRL) for my Polygon profile of him. AM was easily among Second Life's most renowned creators, and he said this about the appearance of mesh, versus his prim-based works in SL:

Every prim there was positioned manually, entered in using the number keys. Placement via the mouse was rare. It was exacting. I never felt anything was out of place. Yet prims have a certain quality to them, similar to brush strokes, shaping them just right can result in magic, the hand of the creator still evident on inspection. it's really a beautiful medium. The introduction of mesh in Second Life, for me, has many parallels to the recording industry, which went from tape to digital. Dave Grohl's documentary about Sound City is an excellent metaphor as it moves from tape to digital recording. That is to say, mesh gives far more freedom, but at some cost to the creative process. "You can't make a wheat field, you'll crash the sim." Often, the most inspiring creativity comes from overcoming what others define as limitations. Show me one piece in the MoMA that does not contain some energy of it's very own pioneering.

This seems generally right to me. This is not to say people who develop in mesh are less creative -- after all, 3D graphics studios have their own limitations too -- just that prims are more universal. They are essentially equivalent to building blocks or LEGO, toys we're all familiar with and able to use. (And in Second Life, you can also see the construction take place in real time.) And therefore, creativity around prims (as opposed to mesh models created offline) somehow seems both childlike and more impressive -- and when it really works, incredibly powerful:

Another example, of course, is Minecraft, where prim-based construction was even more, well, primitive. But look what wonders it can do:

Minecraft Interstate, originally featured on NWN here

That said, I'm totally open to seeing how recent examples of creativity, mesh-based or otherwise, have transformed Second Life. More on that soon.

AM Radio image via Ziki Questi

Please share this post:

Tweet

Comments

[Adeon Writer]

No.

mar. verb
impair the appearance of; disfigure.

Absolutely not. Did it change how things are created in Second Life? Yes.

Did it make it worse?

No. It made it a million times better. You can now make WHAT you want - not work around prim limitations to make something that is maybe roughly kind of what you wanted in a weird SL-like way.

Did Second Life make it so you no longer need to manually position every prim in-world?

Yes.

Did it /mar/ the creative process?

No, it did the opposite of that.

If you still want to build with prims though, you still can.

[Adeon Writer]

With an infinite supply of legos, you can make absolutely anything.

As long as it's made out of legos.

[Jo Yardley]

I've been meshing 1920s Berlin for a while now, changing every bit of it into mesh.
But I don't use 3d software, blender makes my brain cry.
I use inworld mesh gadgets, so I STILL build with prims but then turn it into mesh.
Anyone can do it and for 99% of what I build this technique is good enough.

[Sweet]

i absolutely love prim buildings and art ...for someone to take prims and shape them into something so amazing and realistic looking...i am kind of sad to see this being left behind so to speak...i love mesh and all it has to offer as well and there are some amazing mesh artists out there in SL...i wish we could keep a balance between them....i still keep and wear shoes by Sylfie Minogue...they are beautiful works of art to me...all her time and patience with tiny prims ...amazing stuff

[Polygon Exposed]

When browsing the Marketplace yesterday one thing about content did amaze me a lot. There is a massive amount of stolen mesh and ripped models being offered. It is rediculous what I did see yesterday. Someone with a large Marketplace store and in world store selling full perm meshes for 250 Linden each. And those meshes all look professional made 3D models completely textured and are offered full perm for 1 US$ each. The complete trashing of value of 3D models on Linden Lab their Marketplace is incredible to watch. I see models offered which companies most likely paid 4000 US$ or 5000 US$ for to a 3D graphics designer to fabricate. Now somebody with both a Marketplace store and in world store just sells all these stolen models for 1 US$ each. That amount will cover the time they did spend to rip that model and list it on the Marketplace but what kind of signal do you give to consumers by allowing this. Linden Lab their Marketplace looks more like a warez site than anything else because of mesh.

Linden Lab tries to avoid this issue by stating you need to be the copyright holder to file an abuse report and ask for removal. I see Nintendo models, Disney models all being sold for 1 or 2 US$, not just by one individual or a couple but it is more the general trend than anything else. A full mesh tiger model perfectly textured worth 400 US$ sold for 1 US$.

I do not understand how legit creators in Second Life are willing to compete with all these stolen models who trash any value their creations have.

The fact that Linden Lab does not police and never showed much interest to protect Original content in Second Life is another reason why Linden Lab is failing all the time.
Copybot should have brought serious concerns for Lindens and it is like Linden Lab was just lazy to enforce any action against this.

When you want to make some easy money just rip video game models and list them on the Marketplace for free and sell them for a couple of Dollars. When you get in trouble just use another alt and you are back in business again.

This will harm the reputation of Second Life a lot and it is time Linden Lab who plans to make money from content sales in the future starts showing some interest.

Outrage broke loose previous week when Torley Linden posted pictures of how cool this scene looked he found in world which was packed with stolen video game models. When people told Torley Linden it was not really on the up and up for a company rep to promote stolen mesh models he couldn't care less and told people if they objected to this type of content and were the Original creator they could file an abuse report with Linden Lab.

Mesh and the way Linden Lab handles mesh leads to destruction of in world value of goods. It harms the reputation of Second Life being used as a grey market for ripped mesh models.
It gives a wrong signal to consumers that everything is dirt cheap or has to be dirt cheap. It frightens legit creators and artists because why would they bother spending days to make a nice model when some dumb kid will upload the latest model from Tomb Raider made by a top senior graphic artist right next to them on the Marketplace.

Linden Lab FAILS at protecting creators and the origin of virtual goods. As long as they get their share they could not care what people sell on the Marketplace.

So to answer your question Hamlet

Prims were good. Mesh could have been good but Linden Lab did not implement this correct. Thanks to mesh some good stores and prim builders left or are leaving. In the past you used to know creators were legit. Now you can be sure 70% of them cannot be trusted. I suspect many think like that and are aware content is shady so because of that it has very little to no value, hence the 250 Linden mesh rigged avatar syndrome.

As usual ALTBERG FAIL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Gordon]

@Polygon
This is the same with software, digital music, and movies. All digitized data can and will be ripped by criminal people.

And if mega companies like Sony, Warner Bros. or Adobe Systems cannot find a reasonable protection against ripping, why do you expect a small company like Linden Lab is able to do this?

At least this is a topic of social behavior. As long as there are antisocial people who buy ripped content, as long you will find such stuff on the SL Marketplace, and on webservers of the Kingdom of Tonga (.to domain) and all over the peer-to-peer networks.

Linden Lab can try to mitigate such content in SL, but they will never prevent this.

[Cyberserenity]

I like building with prims. It isfun and cooperativ and people can come by and say high. When i do mesh it is just me and my computer. Uploading is not that much fun.

[Ezra]

No. If you're having issues finding "new or updated sims using mesh", first acknowledge how many thousands of private regions have been lost the entire mesh era of Second Life for non-mesh related reasons and how many tens a week are still disappearing.

The chances aren't on your side that you'll find very much "new or updated". You can do that Sim Deathwatch thing again though, plenty of content for that.

[val]

What a magical. poetic quote from AM, thanks for sharing.

I agree with Sweet to a large degree, when I see something amazing made with prims it still takes my breath away, but that is probably because I am old in SL and have built with prims and know how hard it is to achieve such mastery. Since I haven't/can't use more modern techniques, the virtuosity of the creators is more lost too me personally, which is my failing, not theirs.

There is still room for both, and people still work in both media in SL

[Issa Heckroth]

I hop around all over the gird and I do find cool new places from time to time but they are few and far between. As the user base is ever shrinking, new places find it really hard to gain any traction.

Some old places seem to swap out old prim stuff for mesh stuff as it becomes available. I have not seen any total overhauls anywhere, which is unsurprising as the number of people who can work in mesh is a lot lower and generally, mesh takes a long time to develop.

The PE/LU calculations stunt what it possible too. Its nearly impossible to make a decent mesh tree for under 40-50LI, for example. Most of the mesh trees I haveever seen look flat and spindly compared to prim ones.

[Issa Heckroth]

Oh, and while I am at it.....Does anyone else find the "Studio-Skyeification" of SL annoying?

Studio Skye (Alex Baeder) is a very popular mesh brand in SL and rightly so, the stuff is amazing. BUT.....I cant help but feel its a little TOO successful. Everywhere I go these days I see the same "Tree Tunnel" and cliffs and rocks that I see in EVERY. FRICKIN. SIM!

It makes everything much of a muchness. I commend Alex on his great work of course, but I cant help but feel it is destroying a lot of the quirky uniqueness of SL.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Mesh is a barrier to entry. The capability to convert prim builds to mesh and to edit mesh in-world needs to be built into the client with intuitive, user-friendly tools (and less user-friendly options underneath for creators who need more power and control). Third-party gadgets to accomplish this are all well and good, but there shouldn't be additional costs to make stuff -- that's just another barrier.

True, mesh isn't mandatory, but non-mesh items are increasingly unmarketable.

The decisive factor in the market should be design talent, not money or esoteric software mastery.

[Metacam Oh]

I think there definitely is something to this. With prims you could build collaboratively. But as Jo Yardley says you can still kind of do this with in world mesh gadgets and stuff. What they really needed to do was make locking prims together having options to convert to Mesh inside the Second Life with official tools etc.

[Skate Foss]

Re Issa Heckwroth on Studio Sky, first I must say, I too use Alex's creations on my sim. But, I feel using items from Studio Sky is like taking an addictive drug. His work is so amazing, BUT, each item I use I feel subtracts a bit of my own creativity from my sim. I started with a walkway, a stone wall, then a pond, a fence, then a forest...As beautiful as his work is, I feel I've given away some of sims creativity to someone else. I've kept the forest and pond, but now only use small items and incorporate them into larger areas as to keep my creativity my own.
Has mesh stifled creativity in SL? As a sim owner, the amount of prims saved and the higher LoD I feel is amazing, and I'm so grateful for it.
As an artist, yes, sadly I think mesh has hurt a lot of SL creators. Now we look down on prim work, "100 Prims!? That would less the 10 in mesh" Prims were the egalitarian media of Second Life, they allowed anyone to create. People who never would in their lives were suddenly clothing designers, architects and jewelers - I think we lost that.

[Issa Heckroth]

@Skate - Yes you hit the nail on the head. Obviously I dont want to put Alexes stuff down. Its popular for a reason, but its is in danger of becoming the "Ikea" of SL.

He offers seasonal texture packs, maybe he should take that concept a bit further so people can have more variation. That would certainly help.

Yes I also feel (even seen with my own eyes) the decline of the "small creator". A big part of weather SL 2.0 flies or flushes like a lead turd will come down to if you can create quality objects with the in-world tools.

Making it so that there is a powerful in-world mesh editor, but not a direct mesh upload function would stem the tide of rips too.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Not having yet read the comments above me. I missed that you'd posted this one last night or I would have commented.

Look at the recent blogs about what it takes to create something. My favorite part of the summation blog yesterday was where the house designer who used to build in prims and now builds in mesh talked about his process. It has changed - but its not gone away.

I would say the short answer is both yes, and no. Mesh has ruined creativity in SL. Mesh has also enabled creativity in SL. In other words - Mesh has transformed the process.

Both in the who and how.

Some designers like that house builder have thrived in both prim and mesh. Others have dropped out. Still more others have dropped in.

In many cases who could be a success has changed. People who sucked at prims might be masters of mesh, and vice versa.

I have NOT managed to make the transition into mesh building. But my experience of SL has greatly improved because of what those who did make the transition have made available to me.

Because I don't have the time to really devote to being a designer of content in SL - this is a win for me. As a consumer my experience has greatly improved.

There are many who however, have lost much. But... there are horse and buggy drivers who are no longer employable in those fields. There are people who had to transition out of manufacturing. And at the same time there people now working in computers, digital arts, multimedia, etc...

Times change, things progress.

It has been transformative - and this has benefited some and hurt others.

But for the end user - the benefits far outweigh the losses.

[Pussycat Catnap]

I'm not sure if I've ever seen anything from Studio Sky. So I wouldn't call that a ubiquitous takeover of SL. Not everyone's stuff is filled with the same designer.

That said thanks for the heads up. I'll be giving his work a look now. :)

[Cube Republic]

Issa, if you like trees, have a look at my new mesh oaks. They're quite high detail and are 20-26 LI at largish sizes and I don't think they look like sticks. If you can't tell, I'm quite proud of them. It's taken me many years of practice to make plants that are not just derivatives of images found on the web.

As for the Alex debate. I feel he's become popular because he's innovative.

[Iggy]

Even if you can build collaboratively with prims, the permissions system remains a mess for those educators remaining in SL. When a class ends or a student graduates, there is not a lot that can be done if a single prim were set with incorrect permissions.

Mesh is moot for many educators, because we'd be roasted alive in a course outside of 3D art or CS if we tried to get students without the 3D chops to learn an offline mesh tool. In the end, however, prims are still there for those still around with students.

[barnes]

i do think prims required you to be a little more creative in HOW you made things. The slightest nuance of placing prims was very intentional and often a little more artistic. Often you had to suggest things with prims rather than flawlessly create them. My favorite early SL quote was onetime I told Nylon Pinkney that she could easily align something better and improve it with a few more prims she was like "whatever, they get the idea" for some reason that has stuck with me, because she was right. Even if it wasn't perfect, it communicated the idea of what she intended people to see.

Now with mesh, any shape you can imagine is possible, and shapes that were possible with prims but were high land impact are now a lot more efficient. I feel like mesh has allowed us to be more creative with WHAT we make. No longer being limited by shape and prim restrictions, its truly more a blank canvas.

Creative process is far from marred, but its shifted a bit for sure.

[Estelle Pienaar]

@Poligon: I think it is no indication that a product costs 1$ that it is necessarily a copy. Designers in SL don't sell to one company but to hundreds and thousands of consumers. So it is possible to make the sums that you mention in total. It's awkward that you seem to think that a good item is sold only one time? You seem to have no clue about SL!

[Ciaran Laval]

You can recreate the feeling of building with prims and use Mesh at the same time by downloading Blender and exporting a mesh cube.

If you UV Map each face of the cube it will act in a similar manner to a prim cube in Second Life, there are one or two quirks when it comes to the copy selected feature but it's largely the prim experience.

The point to this little exercise is to get a starting block for getting your head around some of the basics of Mesh but in a fashion that still uses inworld building tools you're familiar with.

Then you can progress to funkier and more innovative builds and in the process, with practice, build more efficiently and create a better Second Life experience for all.

[Ziki Questi]

Thanks for the photo credit and link, but that particular image is actually by AM. :)
—ZQ

[Uccie Poultry]

Less creative? For some. I certainly can't create quality mesh so I've more or less stopped building. But creativity isn't dead. Check out Hitsu Ruby's Flickr account for proof. https://www.flickr.com/photos/88706547@N02

[Pussycat Catnap]

@Estelle: That said, it is not unheard of to see mesh items copied from other sources. Most often video games, but I have also seen items copied from Daz3D / Renderosity. Just the other day I passed by a shop in SL selling this outfit:

http://www.daz3d.com/hot-mess-outfit-for-genesis-2-female-s
- I only happened to recognize that one because I'd recently looked at Daz on a day it was being promoted (took me a moment just now to find it again, that site puts out stuff at an absurd pace - probably as a measure to keep ahead of content thieves).

I suspect that a number of the mesh bodies / butts that have been DCMA'd out of SL were originally stolen from Daz or Renderosity.

As for video games. I'm not a big gamer, and even I can tell 3D objects from games. They come into SL very stylized, and often poorly rigged if rigged at all because the thief is usually not skilled...
- And they tend to have elements about them that suggest they were meant to only be seen from certain angles, or animated in certain ways... Ie: they've been optimized for the original game's use...

Items from Daz / Renderosity are recognizable for having too many polygons... too high of a land impact... they're made for fine art... not real time animation. They will often have too much detail in places that shape dials and animation cannot effect... Because in the art program, you CAN adjust them there...
- View some things in wireframe and you'll see this...

[Pussycat Catnap]

@You can recreate the feeling of building with prims and use Mesh at the same time by downloading Blender and exporting a mesh cube.

- My one mesh import is exactly that. I imported a cube, sized it to the size of a default prim, textured it as default, and put a text-title above it saying "this is a mesh prim" then gave it to an old builder friend as an inside joke.

[Pussycat Catnap]

@Jo: "I use inworld mesh gadgets, so I STILL build with prims but then turn it into mesh."

Can you or anybody point me to some of those tools?

I've been wondering for the longest time what my SL Home would be like if I tried to remake it as a mesh object.

[zz bottom]

My soul mate makes amazing mesh builds with very low land impact by using just reg prims 1st and then using the mesh studio tool.
And when she needs some more detailed, blender, even if not as friendly as building in world (Some many smee to neglet, how easy SL is to build any, a perfect tool).

[Not Set]

I see Hamlet finally figured out how to see mesh. He must have given up on the old Alienware.

@Pussycat: Use Singularity and you can export to DAE or OBJ mesh from prims.

"You can't make a wheat field, you'll crash the sim." The wheat field was made with sculpties. Not prims. You certainly can make a nice wheat field with mesh with more detail and much better UV mapping so it is far less blurry.

[krasnirex]

The old prim vs mesh debate. It could be solved with a marriage of the two. Allow mesh creators to design custom prims with properties much like the regular prims.

For example, this could be done through the use of morph targets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morph_target_animation). That way we would design custom prims for everyone who prefers them and they would be better optimized than regular prims.

With regards to creativity, it is true that prims require constant workarounds to accomplish exact shapes and that in the end suggesting the shape adds to the concept of the final creation. Yet, the same can be said of mesh.

We can go back to the example of prims resembling Legos mentioned by previous posts. If we continue further with the example and correlate mesh to clay, then we can say that clay and mesh probably require as much problem solving as legos and prims to find the workarounds required by the task of turning plain mud into form.

It is no less true that prims have a very big homogenizing influence in everything made with them regardless of who the builder is. For the purpose of art creation, this not an inconvenient. However, for the purpose of product design, it can be undesirable.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

Can artists take advantage of a medium's limitations, or impose limits on themselves such as Shakespearean sonnet or sonata allegro form, and create art around those limits? Of course. Even the process itself can be turned into art with some time-lapse photography; all those who haven't already done so, watch Robbie Dingo's amazing "Watch the World" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV1YbWBSXS8). That doesn't mean those limits should be universally imposed--how many pointillists are there these days? For that matter, "what wonders [Minecraft] can do"--as long as you're confined to zooming by fast enough to hide its limitations.

Yes, in-world collaboration is a great thing--but does LL have the resources to create in-world 3D tools as capable as Blender, Maya, et al.? (Any more than it has the resources to create a really good scripting language with an efficient implementation. Javascript, like LSL, was a rush job, and it shows, but Javascript has the advantage of organizations like Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla working to make it run faster.) Curiously, nobody asks how having to use out-of-world third-party tools like Photoshop or GIMP to create textures mars the Second Life creative process, or argues that LL should create in-world paintbrushes and palettes.

This discussion seems awfully familiar.

[Gjo Bing]

i'm a 7 year member of SL. What I liked about prims was that the tool itself was simple enough for lots of us to learn, and like many simple tools could make shockingly beautiful and complex things. And I'm a renovator, unlinking things I buy and reusing the parts in my own creations. What I like least about mesh is that it limits how much I can do this, especially with buildings. Add another room, remove a wall, skylight? Easy in a prim build, impossible with mesh.

[AM Radio]

@Not Set " You certainly can make a nice wheat field with mesh with more detail and much better UV mapping so it is far less blurry."

Of course! We lost a little context in the quote. I created my first field before any mesh or sculpted prim options were available.

Mesh is excellent and the software used to create it can be incredible with stunning creative processes. Prims were utterly unique and had it's very own unique craftsmanship. In the very early days I don't think anyone expected them to be pushed as far as they were. Pushing Mesh to it's limits is an equally worthwhile endeavor, as is any artistic expression.

[Yano Heir]

It make one thing - profesionalized it.
Before Meshes EVERYONE was able to create content with ease. Prims are EASY. But Meshes? No.
To create simple things from prims you have to learn just how to place them and texture them - thing for one afternoon. Meshes are not that easy. So in effecr number of creators become hardly culled to those who are already 3d aritsts or have time and effort to learn hard 3d grapnics program.

[Kon Loom]

the fascination of SL was 'to be in a wold and to create in a world' (80% inworld 20% photoshop while online to tweek and re-upload)...
then sculpties came (30% inworld 70% 3d software/photoshop while offline)...
then mesh arrived (5% inworld 95% 3d software/photoshop while offline)

therefor SL lost it purpose (as a creative tool) completely. SL became just the last 5% of the process (which is for most the 'selling'). SL is not the start of the creative process anymore as it used to be (what can i do here?) it became the end where ideas from other 'worlds' are just imported (now as obj).

actually already since the arrival of sculpties the creative energy started to decline (since mesh it became obvious) as SL isn't the creation place anymore just the display place and therefore became disconnected from the creative process (the fantasy vanished and the recreation of the real world became all-embracing)

if LL (and i said that since years) wants to stay relevant in any form (especially as a creative outlet ((and therefor with a impact back on RL - which it had for a short moment)))...
they have to provide the tools that the whole (today with mesh) creation process can be done within SL. From the 3d-modelling to the texture baking (and editing) to the rigging etc etc.
LL has to implement full operational 3d tools (maybe even existing freeware like sketch-up) into the viewer that can compete with any external tool (and therefore become again what it was at the start).

only then the drain of creatives will stop and people like AM will start again to search for "what can i do with this, how can i push SL's limits"