Coders & 3D Content Creators Caught in Class Struggle?

Last week's post on the power of LSL scripters in Second Life provoked an interesting conversation, many of which suggest that a clash between art and science is the underlying issue. Desmond Shang characterizes it this way:

Yes, technical people have advantages. That's what they get for mastering any technical field that is extremely detailed, difficult, and generally in high demand... Real pay for coding C#, ranges from about a dollar per two minutes on the low end, to about a dollar per minute. Anyone charging less is basically coding because they feel like it, or in a 3rd world country.

Meanwhile, the back 2/3 of the high school math class decides STEM fields are 'too hard' and does something else. Sure, there are people who can be top shelf in other endeavors; the liberal arts for instance are truly a pillar of civilization. That said, there are just plain too many people trying to succeed that way. While being a waiter for their day job. Technocrats aren't specifically oppressing artists; in fact, they often have a few bucks to support the arts. Rather, it's all of society that doesn't financially value the incredible glut of liberal arts. And even less, the unskilled.

Which meets a strong objection from "Umfrair":

Have you ever modeled anything complex in Blender before? If you have, then you should know that making models and editing mocap or creating textures in photoshop can be highly technical. Why then should the work of scripters matter more than anyone else? Or are you all just happy for the fact that you can download models off turbosquid without having to work with someone else because you don't need them?

Also, no one here addressed the issue of people needing to give their stuff to a scripter full perm for them to script because they don't want to make their code accessible. I know one former partnership of an artist and a scripter who made airships together long ago before mesh. Art guy gives his partner the airship to script and togther they sell the product. Things go well until there is a falling out years later. In retaliation, the scripter gives away the product for free, killing the art guy's sales. There's got to be a better way for no mod scripts to get attached to objects without fully exposing the creator of the object.

Something needs to change here and fast.

Seems to be a partial solution is this: Some kind of intuitive, modular script builder (like this one, depicted above) should be baked into Second Life, and certainly into Project Sansar and other next gen platforms.

In the meantime, Desmond Shang offers some important advice:

[F]or those of you paying for code, make sure the contract includes the source code, and compile. it. yourself. Or get a trusted friend to do it. Common sense here... otherwise you are pretty much just asking to be back-doored. And if you want a service contract in the event a platform provider breaks something, then pay for one.

Sad to say, there's probably no safe away around real world contracts when real world money is involved.

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Comments

[Amy]

Artists have a huge amount of power too. They are just usually less savvy when it comes to leveraging it because they think artistically rather than in the logical way that scripters think.

Scripters are often DESPERATE to work with artists. Without artwork they can't sell their work.

It's a symbiotic relationship.

[Ezra]

No, there's no class struggle. Apply scope to the crises you suppose exist in Second Life. This one is just a disgruntled guy on Reddit. Hardly worthy of conflating into a grid-wide issue.

Cite dozens of examples of scripters and other content creators not being able to work well together and then you'd at least have a very small sample size out of the thousands of content creators that work well together on the daily.

[Adeon Writer]

If my art friend didn't make the models, I'd have nothing to script.

If he didn't have a scripter to make his models have features, they wouldn't sell.

We need each other.

[Cyberserenity]

I run 2worlds2go a content creation company. In a company there is no problem. The work made for the company is owned by the company. Artworks and scripts.

Problem solved.

[Shockwave Yareach]

I find it amusing that Umfrair says that creating models in blender and textures in Photoshop are the same as coding. Unless there is a hidden jungle habitat where Blender trees grow and drop copies of the software on the ground for villagers to pick up and sell on the net, those programs he uses had to be created by coders first. And writing something as complex as blender is magnitudes harder than anything in LSL.

It is like saying you being able to drive a car is no different than being skillful enough to make a car from nothing.

Getting back to the real issue though, if we script writers had the power and the income some of you think we have, then I would have a full island of my own again rather than the 8k parcel I rent today. Like everyone else in business, scripters expect compensation for their work. If you value the art you create with tools programmers gave you - for free in the case of blender - but you consider them as inferior to you and not worth the same respect you give other artists, then there is a serious problem all right. But the problem doesn't lie with the coder...

[Ugh]

I'll tell you what. Scripting is the only thing that stays the same since release. For modeling we have Blender, Maya, 3DSMax, and in worst case it's just some shitty website with models, Photoshop and Gimp for textures(plus texture libraries), Audacity for sounds, various plugins for easy animations with IK, and so on. But the scripting still the same old manual labor as it was back in 2003. So don't tell me about scripters living a wonderful life and making easy money.

[nameheregoesaname]

Full Perms vehicles scripts are for sale on the marketplace for far far less than $500. Unless he means 500L, which I don't think he did. I apologize if it wasn't a vehicle script they where talking about, I assume this was one of the redditer's was talking about his unfortunate adventure in partnering with someone.

I see a general vehicle builders script set, full perms, for 5000L. That is maybe $20, but this is a business and investment. That guy is putting coders out of work, right? Well, the thing is that if you can't even understand that scripts are simply adjusted and then dropped into a vehicle than you are not even aware of what anything is worth, so really exaggerated view of things. not an issue, you live and learn and in the old days there wasn't even wiki access for non-premium SLer's, so talk about class system. He doesn't care, just ranting and upset rather than having input worth listening to. Sad, he may have some valuable info but sort of a waste of time. Oh well, wasted more of my life reading this. :(

[Umfrair]

“I find it amusing that Umfrair says that creating models in blender and textures in Photoshop are the same as coding. Unless there is a hidden jungle habitat where Blender trees grow and drop copies of the software on the ground for villagers to pick up and sell on the net, those programs he uses had to be created by coders first. And writing something as complex as blender is magnitudes harder than anything in LSL.”

And I find your reading comprehension skills amusing. I never said creating content was the same as coding. Don’t compare production teams who work on a salary under a company name and in the same physical space to create a commercial product with real deadlines and expenditures to freelance LSL scripters in a transient environment like SL - totally different dynamic. Oh yeah, and who do you think makes those sensible GUIs for that software you’re using?

The REAL issue here is that other content creators are faced with a lopsided arrangement that scripters don’t have to deal with like competing with 3rd party models/sounds/textures (often from illicit/free resources) and the fact that when they work with the coder, they HAVE to supply the 3d mesh full perm to the scripter where the script is not being sold to the artist; this is far more the usual setup. How would you like it if you had to risk giving your code full perm by default to someone else every time? Heck, it’s already common practice for scripters to bypass the artist directly in favour of getting high quality assets from other sources online, check out the mesh vehicle market in SL some time for proof. When artists enjoy the same level of protection script writers do, then we can say they are at parity.

A contract you say? Hands up anyone who thinks one anonymous creator wants to supply his or her full personal details to another anonymous creator for a quick a job or casual arrangement. The fact that I don’t have to know who you are in rl to work with you is what makes SL special.

I really like Hamlet’s idea of Sansar having a modular scripting engine so anyone can create basic scripting behaviour like they can in other game engines without being a software engineer. Scripters can be hired to make extensions of it so there’s a niche for everyone.

“I'll tell you what. Scripting is the only thing that stays the same since release. For modeling we have Blender, Maya, 3DSMax, and in worst case it's just some shitty website with models, Photoshop and Gimp for textures(plus texture libraries), Audacity for sounds, various plugins for easy animations with IK, and so on. But the scripting still the same old manual labor as it was back in 2003. So don't tell me about scripters living a wonderful life and making easy money. “

LOL!

All those modelling apps work off the same principle but workflow might be slightly different for each program. More tools doesn’t mean it’s simpler, it actually makes things more complex. Just look at the outrage when LL said they were going with Maya for initial testing.

Also, that manual labour you talk about varies. If the project is object oriented that has an obvious hierarchy, then you can re-use a lot of your code without having to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. It’s hard from the start but gets easier because you can reuse many functions. Mesh making is pretty consistent workload depending on the project but less modular unless the object is of the same type with similar dimensions. Most of the time it isn’t.

Let’s compare requirements to do both coding and art:

Artists need a powerful computer with lots of RAM/HD/VRAM and sometimes extra equipment like stylus tablets and soon VR equipment if you’re testing for that environment. Animators need mobcap equipment. That’s thousands of dollars of hardware investment BEFORE software.

For writing code for SL, you can do it on a modest system. On as little as a sub notebook with notepad.exe at the bare minimum. You obviously can’t use SL on a regular basis with that but a sandbox on a beta grid could make testing bearable enough for that purpose.

Yeah, scripters have it pretty good in terms of setup I’d say.

[Ugh]

Umfrair - are you sure you're not missing anything? When you're all set up, you can make your models for years, all the same way. NO CHANGE. Because there's qute a low chance that LL be like "okay guys starting tomorrow we're inverting normals on all models. Because fuck you. Or because some manager is unhappy and being a bitch about everything works way too good." So artists are safe. Upload once, put on sale, and can go to some islands for a year, get back, and you're still in good shape.
But not for scripters. LL constantly changing stuff, altering physics engine, making new bugs from old ones, and so on. What was working a week ago, today can' even respond to clicks. And you can't even leave for a month unless you give no fuck about your work or customers. Speaking of whom, there's also a need of tech support. I doubt anyone coming to artists with questions like "your texture won't work", or "where do I click your dress to make it do this or that".

[Umfrair]

“Umfrair - are you sure you're not missing anything? When you're all set up, you can make your models for years, all the same way. NO CHANGE. Because there's qute a low chance that LL be like "okay guys starting tomorrow we're inverting normals on all models. Because fuck you. Or because some manager is unhappy and being a bitch about everything works way too good." So artists are safe. Upload once, put on sale, and can go to some islands for a year, get back, and you're still in good shape.
But not for scripters. LL constantly changing stuff, altering physics engine, making new bugs from old ones, and so on. What was working a week ago, today can' even respond to clicks.”

You're right! I did miss something.... a couple of them actually.

Mesh comes on the scene and for the most part we're happy at the early stages until LL decides to tinker around with the land impact calculations. Large mesh objects get hit with huge resource penalties while small objects consisting of many verticies have small LI. The result? Small mesh objects are kept low by killing all other LODs. This creates really bad habits that cause your stuff to explode into triangles 5 meters away.

Remember sculpties? You could swamp them out with other sculpties to create animated frames. The morons at Linden Lab decided to take this technique away from mesh because they thought it would be abused. What's the work around? Import models with the frames built in and alpha swap creating 5-10 times the download weight (while killing other LODs of course). Far worse than the original problem this limitation was suppose to fix!

And my favouite; rigging. Qarl Linden gets crowd funded to come up with an ingenious solution known as mesh deformer. It’s not perfect but all you had to do was upload your clothing and click two buttons for your mesh to scale with the sliders. But nope! Redpoly decides to crash the party with the liquid mesh proposal which LL readily adopt even though it is 100x times the work versus setting up for Qarl’s deformer because hey, LL doesn’t like Qarl and by giving him the finger and shelving the deformer project, LL screws the rest of us.

Don't even get me started on the mesh sim crossings issue that persisted for years.

Not to worry, artists are no strangers to the “bend over with no lube” treatment!

Also, you don’t think that when LL makes changes to LSL behaviour that the rest of us aren’t affected too? If your scripts stop working, then our products stop working. Think about it. From my viewpoint, this seems like good job security for you by creating a cycle of dependence. I’m the one who has to pay you to fix it after all.

“Speaking of whom, there's also a need of tech support. I doubt anyone coming to artists with questions like "your texture won't work", or "where do I click your dress to make it do this or that”.”

How about “I accidentally changed the texture on my mod/transfer object, can you plz send me your full perm texture so I can re-apply it?”.

Or, “Can you make a custom blue texture of that boot instead of the red it came with? I’ll pay you 50L? PLZZZZZ?”

Read the designer blogs and you’ll hear plenty of horror stories. Customer support is the least favourite job for everyone, no matter how you slice it.

There's one other thing neglected to mention. When I upload my work, I pay an upload fee. The price varies a lot by model size and complexity; that's without factoring in textures, audio and animations. That can add up to a lot over time.

How much do you pay to upload your script? Right. It's all FREE for you!

Sorry, but you're not suffering more for your profession than the rest of us.

[Desmond Shang]

>>"Have you ever modeled anything complex in Blender before? If you have, then you should know that making models and editing mocap or creating textures in photoshop can be highly technical. Why then should the work of scripters matter more than anyone else? Or are you all just happy for the fact that you can download models off turbosquid without having to work with someone else because you don't need them?"

I've modeled plenty, and mesh design is only modestly *technically* difficult. It's far less difficult than designing something real with autocad; there are no manufacturing issues, no tolerance concerns. Dealing with a weird user interface doesn't count for much; that's solvable in just about every case using a technique called RTFM. Decent mesh creation requires *artistic* ability. That's the differentiator. Same with photoshop; in fact, *especially* with photoshop. Perhaps aside from watching old Bob Ross shows on PBS, there is no step by step program to become a great artist. But anyone can look up how to apply a filter.

As for turbosquid, it's extremely rare to find anything on there that is useful; it's always too high poly or too cartoonish or isn't optimised well in a manner that's usually not worth fixing. The Unity asset store is better, but again, most people that know Unity can make their own stuff 95% of the time.

>>"Also, no one here addressed the issue of people needing to give their stuff to a scripter full perm for them to script because they don't want to make their code accessible."

This is simply a business issue. Pay the guy for full permission code, or he can pay you for your full permission art.

* * * * *

So a platform makes a bunch of weird choices when it comes to how they want to deliver content. If it's too cumbersome to make money as an artist on that platform, don't do something for money that isn't worth your time. Accept that it's a hobby, or become a top 10 content creator / business person the hard way, or move on. The writing was on the wall as far back as 2005: *very* few people get properly compensated for their time. We have all known this for over a decade.

What I see here, rather than code vs art, is a whole lot of business inexperience. Inherently most people seem to know that we can't all be astronauts and movie stars. But once online, all too often the laws of supply and demand are forgotten. Turn that on its head, do something in high demand and you'll do just fine.

[irihapeti]

Umfrair wrote: "ingenious solution known as mesh deformer. It’s not perfect but"

and that's the thing. Is not perfect. It can never be perfect. bc math. Not bc programmer don't have the skills to make a program to deform all things perfectly (algorithmically). Is bc is actual impossible for a program to do all things algorithmically. No matter how many ways the program does it. There is a bound which the program cannot go beyond

bc program cannot then programmer must decide what can be deformed and to what extent. Like set the bounds

google for Turing Halting Problem, Kolmogorov Complexity, P v NP, etc

+

modeller can get way more perfect (perfect as they want it to be for own use case) by hand modelling it

is the same with LODs yes. Modellers make their own. bc the program that does this automagically is bound. Is impossible for it to be not

so the bounds suit some models and not others. So modeller goes: I will make my own LODs using a method which is not bound by anything other than me

[irihapeti]

ps

is the same with your if only wish about programming generally

for sure can make life easier for making simple models animate and change

can do this already in most other tools. by setting Properties of the made object

LL have said that will be C# for Sansar. I am assume that they will expose lots of object properties in the Edit tool. Whay more than they do now

so that will be good for simple things like, door open/close, fire start/stop, wheel rotate, swing swings, etc

for more complex combination stuff like

start motor, play start sound, play strat anim, spin wheels, rev counter, tick speedo, etc

then going to always need a script (list of actions) to play when:

it starts, then when it takes off, then when it gets up to speed, holds cruising speed, decelerates and stop

+

for sure can make a World object designer that just has Properties that can set at design time that can do this

like a toy train for example that goes round and round. But get past that and yeah. You will need a list of actions (script)

LODs