How New Virtual World "space" Enables High Detail in its Mesh-Based Avatar Enhancements

"space", the just-launched virtual world developed by Second Life/OpenSim pioneers, has some pretty impressive avatar enhancements of its own that lead developer Adam Zaius/Frisby recently shared with me:

"I've been working with a game artist on a demo outfit showing off what clothes designers can do with 'tessellation shaders'," Adam tells me, then shows me this pic here.

"So this is using a tessellation shader -- basically they exempt you from polycount limits. They 'remesh' the avatar every frame, based on how far the camera is from the item. So as you zoom in, the polycount increases. It's like a level of detail system on steroids."

But how does this compare to, say, Second Life mesh?

"Well it is a mesh still -- that's how you design it, you just then apply a tessellation shader to it, and tweak a few settings. So basically it's still a skinned mesh -- same as in games, other virtual worlds, etc. it just gets the ability to have 'unlimited subdivisions' as you zoom in -- kind of like applying a infinite 'mesh smooth' in 3ds max before uploading."

Click to get a close-up view:

"For organic and curvy surfaces it lets you make things very very smooth, with minimal performance cost," says Adam. "Basically by encouraging efficient design that still looks good, we can give the best of both worlds to users -- high performance, no-lag environments with tons of avatars, that still look good."

You might be skeptical about the no-lag part, but Adam showed me a demo to prove his point -- more on that in another post!

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Posted on Wednesday, December 07, 2016 at 03:01 PM in New World Gaming | Permalink

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Comments

[JohnC]

This is how to build a Virtual world, you start at the bottom and get all the basics right, then you slowly add in enhancements on top of that solid foundation. No matter what happens in SL or OS they cannot escape the very old and shaky foundations upon which they are built. SL just keeps piling on the, what I understand to be, tec debt as previously posted. Comparing Space to SL or OS at the moment is pointless, it obviously cannot compete traffic wise, with a platform that has been around so long. I just hope that the really creative people who are focused on more than just sales figures will soon see just how advanced Space is compared to SL and OS. There is also the advantage that you are working with a Unity hybrid which is something that could be useful far beyond the Space platform, unlike SL and OS which are dead end platforms.
Just in case it does not get posted here I think this shows the difference well. Even Sansar does not have a lighting demo to compare.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEj2op6OgEY
And for those who say, I don't like the Avatars, They are 100% better than the base avatars in SL and far easier to work with. It is just a matter of a few creative people adding new skins and clothes, or even new base meshes, and they will look easily as good as SL avatars.

[Stroker Serpentine]

Adam and his team have created a NextGen platform. I saw early iterations and they have made enormous strides. Knowing the talent behind this project, I am assured of it's success. Keep up the great work guys!

[vwfan]

I personally prefer having a virtual world that allows me to create online within the world in real-time with other users collaboratively and persistently. Unity is nice and all, but it feels no different than SL where much of the creation is done offline. Long live the spirit of true in-world creation that prims allowed.

[JohnC]

Even in SL where prim building reached incredible heights of ingenuity, slowly but surly it is being replaced by mesh, which means the building takes place off line in other software. Hi Fi and Sansar are the same. Prim building is impossibly heavy on the rendering software and was never meant for anything more than simple lego building, the fact that it is possible to build trillion polygon amazing objects does not mean it is in any way desirable. SL has suffered chronic lag for years due to this outdated form of building.

[vwfan]

@JohnC - Well, prims are fundamentally mesh objects to OpenGL. They just had these predefined parameters that were saved with them.

Anyways, I'm not saying that we should bring back prim-like tools in other worlds. What I'm getting at is the idea of purely building in-world - however that may be done.

Like, advanced mesh tools that allow you to create primitive shapes, but then be able to edit vertices, use modifiers, and various other things to get interesting shapes. When you're done building, you can then compress that build into something efficient while in-world. Much like rasterizing a Smart Object in Photoshop and similar to the concept of baking your build.

I'm not saying to build the entire 3D package into a virtual world. Just something much much more than what prim tools ever did. And, something that doesn't disconnect you so much from the actual world itself.

Side Note - At times, I wish I had advanced mesh tools in SL so I could fix designer items with errors that I ended up not purchasing after trying the demo.

[vwfan]

@JohnC - Just to clarify on the efficiency approach. The Smart Object that I refer to would allow for advanced editing. Now, yes, this data could be very inefficient with all of its "smart" info. But, what if the Smart Object allowed you to work in-world with the catch that it could NOT be seen by others. Only a simplified placeholder could be seen, or a previous published version. The only time it would be seen by others is when you publish that object. So, rather than publishing a whole build, like in Unity, you're publishing a Smart Object in real-time, in-world. The Smart Object is saved to your inventory and then linked to and replaced by the published object, which then you could "Edit Original" on. All real-time "smart" editing is handled client-side thus not overloading the network.