Top-Selling Mesh Avatar Bodies Drastically Hurting Overall Second Life Performance, Says 3D Graphics Expert -- Calls for Boycott of Poorly Optimized Products

Update, 9/2020: The creator Slink bodies disputes they are as poorly optimized as reported below, and in any case, have become much more optimized since this story.

If you're using Second Life and you're lagging for no obvious reason, you might want to take a close look at the users around you. Chances are, the problem is literally skin deep. That's because some of the top-selling mesh bodies in Second Life -- Maitreya, Belleza and SLINK -- are extremely resource heavy, and tend to degrade performance of everyone around them, including the users wearing these bodies. NiranV, developer of the acclaimed, graphics-optimized Black Dragon SL viewer, tells me he's experienced this problem first hand.

"What I see and hear from them, both from friends, personal experience, and their customers when I have to help them with Viewer-related issues, I find more and more reasons every time to absolutely hate them. Those three are the worst ones anyway -- Belleza being at the top, followed by Maitreya and then SLINK."

The problem, he says, is these mesh bodies all have excessive amounts of polygons that the Second Life grid attempts to display to every user in the scene.

"Maitreya starts with 80,000-100,000 — only the base body. Belleza was something like 200,000+ last time I checked. Modern games use roughly 20-40k for an entire character. A few games use more, obviously, but 20-40k is standard today. So with 100-200k you can imagine how much more straining avatars are. And they are just bodies — [not counting]  clothes, no hair, nothing."

Even a single avatar wearing one of those bodies can hurt SL framerate performance by up to 5o%, and still more, as more avatars with these bodies enter the same space.

"SL is a complex system, not even super static tests always show the same results. So there's a +/- 10% here and there. But most scenes with single humans, wearing avatars built with either of these bodies, manages to half my framerate, if not make it completely unstable. I can see this behavior every day right in front of my parcel where human [avatars] travel to Firestorm's parcel. Just 1-2 of them are enough to drop me from 80-100 FPS down to 30-40 FPS on average… I’d say you generally see 30-50% reduction in your framerate for the first avatar, subsequently less for more."

Second Life is often faulted for poor graphics, but a key problem is Second Life struggling to display so many user-generated polygons at once:

"Entire scenes in SL consist of up to 20 million polygons. That's many times more than entire levels in modern games come up with. It’s absolutely insane. These bad practices of human mesh creators need to stop. Stop spamming 1024x1024 on everything. Stop spamming ‘subdivide’ on meshes and doubling/tripling/quadrupling their polygons when not necessary."

Other graphics experts have also told me the same thing about mesh bodies like Maitreya, Belleza, and SLINK. The real problem is these bodies are probably worn by hundreds of thousands of active SL users, and in NiranV's eyes, the community has done little to raise the issue:

"Everyone puts Maitreya and Belleza at the top of the list for being the very best and finest," as he puts it. "Every fucking blogger blogs about them, blogs in excitement how good it is, how good more polygons are—not understanding what it means. Everyone just smacks shit on their avatar expecting the viewer to magically do whatever is necessary to produce usable framerates. And yell at Linden when it doesn’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if professional coders were looking at SL from a technical standpoint and wondering how SL can even run still, how it manages to keep all this complex shit piled up and not break apart under the sheer load that everyone puts both the server and client every day, every second they use it."

It's the unlikeliest example of the tragedy of the commons: In a world where everyone is trying to show off their awesome avatar to others, avatar enhancements have become so resource heavy, no one can actually see them. It's probably why Second Life has largely become an offline, solo activity, with people shooting screenshots and video of their avatars posing alone -- because that's the only reliable way to get a decent performance.

But if the SL community has inadvertently caused this tragedy, Niran believes the community can also call for popular skin/mesh body brands to better optimize their products:

From NiranV's Flickr Hall of Shame

"The easiest way to force optimization -- besides Linden Lab doing it, but they won't as it would limit users and would be hard to create general-use rules for everything -- is by buying/not buying things or not. No automated program of this world could possibly take the place of quality control as humans themself do. And since Linden Lab can't do it, we have to do it."

The alternative is continued collective tragedy: "If one person doesn’t give a shit about his/her complexity, everyone around him/her will suffer for it. And if everyone does it, everyone including the first person suffers."

For each individual user, suggests NiranV, the best place to start might be to think about why they have a beautiful avatar in the first place:

"[L]et’s be honest, what is the ultimate goal of your avatar? Why do you design it? You do so to represent yourself. Your dreams, your wishes, maybe just an image of yourself. And you'd want it to be seen, that’s why you stuff so much goddamn money in it, don't you? But if your avatar is as bad as every single object combined in other games then everyone will immediately look for ways to NOT see you — ultimately defeating the point of your avatar."

I've contacted the owners of Maitreya, Belleza and SLINK for their replies to NiranV's critique, but have not yet received a reply. However, much of what NiranV is saying is evident simply by using Second Life's Avatar Complexity feature.

Update, 4:04pm: Updated this to emphasize poor optimization of mesh bodies, as opposed to skins. "While skins are often oversized too its far less bad and usually its the much lesser evil as there is definitely less to be bad about it," as NiranV puts it.

Comments

[Amanda]

So are there any examples of mesh human bodies that have a more acceptable complexity?

[just my 2 cents]

It's not only about mesh bodies but basically any mesh be it wearables or not that gets uploaded to SL.
There's shoes with 100k+ tris each, small accessoires, furniture and decoration items with around 200k...and the list goes on.

People (customers and creators) really need to learn and know about what causes the bad overall performance.. but the word spreads very slowly unfortunately.

And it's sad how so many creators don't care at all. It's their job and should be their main goal to make things better for their customers and not worse.

[Gattz]

I think it's also because in modern games they use more advanced material systems to be able to show what looks like high complexity over low poly models. While in SL, we don't have that as much and so creators are trying to make up for that in additional polys.

If LL could continue to improve the material system, I wonder if that may help.

[pavig]

Part of the problem is designers not knowing (or caring) what they're doing. Optimisation is tricky at the best of times and adds more time and complexity to a workflow.

The bigger problem though is SL was never designed with 3D developers as primary content contributors, so the tools for optimisation of models are lacking. As Gattz mentioned, a more robust materials system would offload much of the excess geometry problem (though likely at the expense of bandwidth requirements.)

[Silent Benefactor]

I think one thing that I can state, there is no average polygon count in the industry. There are a lot of games that top the 20-40k poly limit, that run beautifully at 60 fps. I think it all comes down to two factors, one your hardware, and two the engine which SL is running on. If you are playing SL on a Laptop, you are gonna have lots of problems, as most laptops don't have a separate GPU/CPU. They usually have an integrated one. So if you really want to play SL without problems, you are gonna need a good CPU and Separate GPU. For my second point, they are running on the Havok engine, that I can imagine has not been updated to the latest version. If they were to either update the engine to the latest iteration, or even create a brand new one, and do a major overhaul to infrastructure. I can imagine things would actually work better.

[Menion Azalee]

I am still a classic avi, and I know when my sl partner is online and I am at home. I can feel the lag the minute she lands. She is Matreya.

[Blaise Glendevon]

They can have my Maitreya body when they take it out of my cold, dead hands. I'm tired of LL pandering to people who play on rigs that would better serve as paperweights.

[Stephen Edens]

Once again, there is a fundamental disagreement over the goals and objectives of Second Life. It is not a game and there are many who see the venue and avatars as art. The Avatar Mesh products are terrific.

[Pulsar]

Niran is right. What to do then?
Bringing awareness is always a good thing; but don't count too much on people becoming aware, understanding and caring for others: there is always who doesn't and starts the race to the bottom.

The rendering cost plus jelly dolls was a good idea in the right direction: it doesn't impose anything, as users are free to decide for themselves, and at the same time it encourages some optimization. Indeed after the jelly dolls went official, there was some mesh body maker who sent an updated version. Now nearly every clothing and wearable item is made with that in mind.
However, the current implementation doesn't work so well and could be improved. The formula to calculate the rendering cost too. Moreover this formula is even worked around often. So now there are several wearable items (bodies, hair, clothing, etc) that are counted as low rendering cost, while actually they are pretty heavy.

Improving this, would encourage creators to optimize better their texture and polycount. The end user won't notice big differences in their look (most of those hires textures and polygons are just wasted), while SL would be more enjoyable for everyone, crowded areas included.

[Gingir]

I wouldn't mind seeing some of the bodies go to a lower polycount. However, I loathe sacrificing the beauty of the high poly bodies. We will all have to accept the idea that eventually LL will eventually have to address the aging platform that SL runs on. We cannot stagnate, LL needs to stay competitive. VR is becoming cheaper every day. There will eventually be an actual contender and they will probably have out of the gate a huge step up just from the tech standpoint. What will that mean for all of us? The ideal situation would be that LL finds a way to port over some of the newer creations, or gives the creators a means of doing so. Possibly giving registered accounts a small stipend to start them off in the economy to assuage all the folks who scream about how much money they've spent in SL that they don't want to lose if LL were unable to port over SL to a new platform.

Also, I doubt that many folks are going to stop shopping these brands because of just exactly what you wrote. People come to SL to live a fantasy, to live a second life, to be everything they wish they were in RL. They want the best looking avatars, they want all the THINGS. They don't care about the poly count. They don't care if other folks can see them or not because honestly, most folks who go to these big events derez everyone except for the few they actually want to see. The only person they really care about seeing their avi is themselves.

[ItsemeMario]

I am sorry but that is BS. You have to keep your computer updated no matter what. If you still are on a pc with 4 GB ram and a 250MB Videocard there is no way in hell that it is the bodies fault.

MODERN GAMES are not second life. Modern games like overwatch can work with 40k Models cause it is STYLIZED artstyle. Stylized reduces details to a minimum, this is why it is possible. Also BELLEZA has 3 chestparts, 4 arms and 3 legs plus 2 hands and 6 feet, of cause this needs polygons.

Those who complain should grab a new pc. And from the side of a designer who does their mesh, rigs and textures completely themselves - Nobody will change their bodies at this point anymore. Maitreya, HG and Freya are the ones established even this post will never change this fact.
Sorry to say this.

[NiranV]

@Amanda

Sadly i don't know any examples of better human bodies. Sadly this means that it is currently a "pick your poison" situation. I've only ever worn Furry avatars so far and we have had the luck to have creators who know what they are doing.

@just my 2 cents

Correct but mesh bodies are the worst as they define the minimum. All clothes you make for them are based off of their structure and poly density (most clothes, especially skintight are often just "copies" of the body that are widened a bit, this means you copy the already high polycount and use it for your clothes).

@Gattz

The Material system is fine as it is, sure it is not as advanced as that of newer games but it is perfectly fine and enough to add a lot more details to something without inflating its polycount, people just need to learn to use it properly.

Look at Orange Nova Avatars
http://orangenonsense.tumblr.com/

His last few avatars were absolutely amazing and made good use of the material system while keeping the polycount in the 20-30k's.

Also check out Beev Fallen's stuff here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bubblebob/46201943171

He does a really great job at tickling the last bit out of materials. His stuff looks absolutely gorgeous. I like visiting his place from time to time simply because its a very simple little house that looks many times better than any other house and runs much better than them too.

The only thing we still need is a way to add cubemaps for reflections.

@Silent Benefactor

Havok is the physics engine it runs on the server to calculate all physical interactions, updating it won't do anything for SL other than maybe fix physics bugs or improve performance of the server when lots of moving stuff is going around. I'm running a GTX 1060 and an AMD FX 6300 (Six Core with 3,8ghz) on SL, i'm not sure how much more hardware you can throw at SL besides an Intel (or Ryzen with more instructions per clock and hyperthreading to hack more performance into the two actually used cores). My framerates are incredibly bad around people if i don't limit them via jellydolls and even then i'm often only running at 20-30FPS due to the place itself and the rest of the avatars. That's with Deferred Rendering and Shadows and SSAO on at all times. SL is simply at its limits here. Only two things can help SL's performance still, optimization in content and splitting off more processes into more threads (Multithreading) and the latter is very hard to do on an already finished product especially as complex as SL and is also a highly risky thing, increasing the crash rate tenfold if not done absolutely perfectly. SL is very unstable, we've seen many issues just because a tiny single then in rendering or some other system went out of order (the texture pipeline for instance) causing a supermassive chain reaction and ending in completely corrupted textures and finally a crash. Multithreading can and will have similar effects when things start to be split and run in parallel rather than in order. Everything would need to be rewritten to allow running "out-of-order". Much easier would be optimizing content, it's a matter of following a few simple rules and doing a bit of extra work once. In all the time these creators have already put into their items, a bit more wouldn't have done a big difference and it would have been an investment for the future.

@Blaise Glendevon

I kinda understand you, yes, old hardware is annoying and i don't like them pandering to it either, it has halted SL's development in many regards over the years since LL always needs to make sure that it runs for everyone, this means you need to handle extra cases, add extra code, make changes, make cuts and ultimately not make the feature at all sometimes.

But as said above, i'm on the far end of the hardware ladder, there is not much above me and i'm absolutely struggling to maintain a decent framerate. You can't just toss better hardware at it and use it as excuse for worse optimization. Make a game that runs on no one' machine except those that were lucky enough to run an Intel 32 core with 128gb RAM and 4 GTX 1080TI because you spammed 20 million polygons on a small finger ring that's being hidden behind a wall and then tell everyone "your PC is just shit" is pretty ignorant. That pretty much sums up what these creators do. I had firsthand experience with them when i contacted the Maitreya creator. "Some PC's just can't handle our meshes" was her answer. Hell if right clicking with my hardware makes me drop into less than single digit framerates, what the hell are people supposed to do with slightly lower hardware and what about those with higher hardware? They don't have much more FPS either.

@Stephen

I highly disagree, they are not. They are a technical disaster and your argument is an excuse. I've seen LEA art installations with many times less polygons and still looking like art. More polygons doesn't mean better, game or not, it does not matter. This is a platform independent thing, you should never disregard performance. What's an image editing program worth if it runs at less than 1FPS and you get to see your changes every few seconds? It's useless. Same for SL, how can you even do the most basic things in SL if every letter you hit takes 2 seconds to appear in your chatbar. It is annoying and hard to use. This needs to stop. Many people could enjoy SL much more again if people knew what they were doing. Many friends and strangers i've asked who are just standing there in clubs or public places brought up the same answer, they are standing there, almost never moving because they literally can't, their framerate is so shit they would bump into anyone and anything in miles if they tried to move. They hardly even look around, they just stand there stare at the ground to at least be able to chat.

@Pulsar

I've already altered the complexity calculation several times and at least in my Viewer it does a much better job now both identifying heavy avatars and getting rid of them if you keep the complexity limit at a reasonable level. With it i can go to some pretty filled places and still get 20-30FPS where the default calculation would just seemingly randomly pick avatars, jellydoll them and still leave me with an unusable framerate.

@Gingir

Lowering polycounts does not mean you sacrifice beauty. These items have so many polygons too much that removing them would visually change nothing. Again look at the above mentioned Orange Nova Avatars, they have a lot of detail (especially the Snokra Snake) while having only a third of these bodies's polycount. For some of them you could easily add a bunch more polygons in critical areas without ever leaving the 20-40k polygon "greenzone".

Also, LL has always been competitive because there is nothing else like SL and those that tried simply failed. SL is too old, too filled with content or simply too advanced already to be rivaled, you'd have to create a copy of SL where everything is better and fill it with tremendous amounts of content to even have a chance of a success... and at the end people will just go back to SL anyway. SL will go on for a good amount of years still and as such we should care for it, improve it, not just sit there and yell at LL for not doing it. They are already doing a lot of things many things of which are a direct answer to our complaining about our issues we caused us ourselves.

I give LL a shitton of flak too when they break or fuck something up but it's not all bad and at some point you just have to accept that they are just trying to keep this self-destructive environment running with all means necessary. They are literally catching crumbling wall pieces and glue them back on while we sit inside and smack the walls with a sledgehammer.

@ItsemeMario

You're just ignorant. Your behavior is the very reason nothing has changed. I AM complaining, ME the one who made a very Viewer for high end hardware, the one with some decent "high-end" (if GTX1080 is HIGH-END, the 1060 is pretty much almost the max) hardware himself, I AM complaining that this is bad. Not some lowie laptop hardware dude.

I tell you a little secret. Those with crap hardware don't complain. They are used to it, they know they are sitting at the lower end of the spectrum, they know they should be lucky to even still be able to run shit, they have accepted the fact that they are "unsupported". It's not the low-end people complaining, it's those with decent hardware, those that would expect much better performance from their hardware as seen EVERYWHERE else.

Pull your goddamn head out of your ass and look up WHO is actually complaining before spewing your BS. You would have known that it wasn't just some rando-guy saying something.

[Imagin]

And yet, in Sansar, the base avatar uses plenty-o-polys.

[Clara Seller]

It's nice to see Niran hit a nerve... a hopeful one. It wouldn't take that much for the residents to actually revolutionize our avatars. I don't see this as giving up quality at all. If this is done well, we could gain a better looking avatar that was less of a drag on the system.

If one talented creator got on board, offered a generous development package, freed the product from modification chains, and offered both genders, there could be an exciting new wave of avatar that looked and performed better. Imagine what one blogger, like Strawberry Singh, could do to promote such a product. Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't think it would take that many people to totally bring down this horrible system that we have now.

The mesh avatar is kind of at a dead end already. If people are willing to spend 5000L on a new ugly recycled deformed mesh head, I think they would be willing to spend on a better product that could breath some desperately needed life back into a doomed venture.

[Clara Seller]

Maybe this avatar should be promoted as "green" avatar. One that preserves resources and promotes a better environment for everyone. I mean, how could this trendy market resist that? Nothing like having a product that is also a cause.

[Iggy]

Dumbass author living in the past. The biggest offenders are not bodies. Scripted furniture and nature is far more laggy that mesh avatars in general.

[Voodoo Radek]

I hope this issue will be alleviated with the update that allows to use system layers over mesh bodies instead of appliers. Designers will have to update their bodies in order to use the system, and my hope is that they will remove the extra mesh layers of tattoo, underwear and clothing since it will become an obsolete way to use appliers.

[Imp Trollop]

@NiranV
You can see the shear level if ignorance just from this comment section, the end users and content creators will never fix this themselves, I've been in SL creating content for nearly 13 years, this argument has been raging since day one between the informed and uninformed, not about mesh per-say, but always about unoptimized content. end users don't understand and don't care and never will all they care about is getting their shiny things, and most content creators (obviously not all) barely know enough to get the stuff they sell made, even the ones that do know better, don't care, they just care about money and know if there stuff "looks" good, it will sell better, and that lends itself to highpolly content, and they wont waste time optimising it (I do though lol, but im not clueless :P).

The only thing i can see reasonably fixing this is if a well optimized meshbody (head, feet, everything) were professionally developed and GIVEN away as some sort of consortium project/resource kit. Linden Labs are in the best position to do this, but quite frankly, they would botch it, we would end up with (too) low poly garbage that just didn't look good and lacking in features.

So basically we are just stuck with this like we have been since the start, and will be tell SL shuts down, any other notion is a pipedream.

@Iggy
You're a dumbass

[Aliasi Stonebender]

I'm quite amused by the "you need a better computer noob" style comments.

No. No, we do not. When you're using detail levels that are typically only used for pre-rendered stuff, not actual moving gameplay, YOU ARE USING TOO MUCH DETAIL. It's not a matter of power - people running a goddamned render farm couldn't cope with that shit in real time. People with bleeding-edge gaming PCs can't cope with it.

Better mesh bodies do exist - I'm pretty fond of the Violet Studios Fusion line, and while they're not going to work for the majority of would-be Barbies, Anthro.Anim's line are quite low-impact on the whole. And while not perfect, I'm pretty happy at stuff like the Kemono showing up because it, too, is lower-impact.

[Imp Trollop]

@Aliasi Stonebender
Yeah, its defiantly not a hardware issue, I have an i7, 1080ti, 32gb ram, and i slow to a crawl if i'm by 6+ high complexity mesh users and my settings are turned up. Hell it even gets low without my settings turned up. Combine an old engine that doesn't effectively utilize modern hardware with poorly optimised content, and its lagfest, and i don't see that changing anytime soon, if ever.

[Fred Beckhusen]

@NiranV, We now have the free Bento Ruth and Roth avatars. They have far fewer polys, and are very good looking, with body, nail and skin huds. Both are free and Open Source with extremely permissive AGPL licensing.

Avatars use only two LODS. For Ruth, these are:
Level of Detail Settings (LOD)
High - Triangles: 11444 Vertices: 8442
Medium - Triangles: 5563 Vertices: 4960

For more details, see https://github.com/ingen-lab/Ruth/wiki

Meme: https://mewe.com/group/5bbe0189a5f4e57c73569fb9
Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/103360253120662433219
Marketplace: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/212312/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search%5Bkeywords%5D=Ruth

[Tana Riprock]

I was laughed at by the Firestorm people for saying that in certain instances, many mesh bodies in one area could make a Titan gpu crawl-it absolutely can and the unoptimized mesh/content is precisely why.

For those of you who can absolutely afford top end hardware for SL good for you, but the problem is not people who own lesser hardware. Think about it, you are telling people they need a 500 cpu or a 1000 dollar gpu to run SL 'decently'. It is absolutely ABSURD.

MAYBE if LL would move to a modern version of OpenGL or Vulkan things could be better all around(especially with AMD gpus, because this is why they don't 'work well' with SL, they refuse to support the out of date opengl LL insists upon using) but no they stick to the old version for reasons. FIX THIS LL,CREATORS. The balls squarely in your respective courts.

[NiranV]

@Imagin

And have you tried Sansar? I didn't bother trying it but a friend who did with a top of the line Intel Six Core and two, TWO GTX 1080TI's hardly got 60 FPS and it was buggy as hell, shadows looked ugly water had ghosting artifacts and the new lighting didn't look that much better than what you can do in SL with the right tools. Sansar is a fail. It's a long road till Sansar is anything "good".

@Iggy

You are indeed an idiot. Half of what you said is complete bullshit. This discussion is about client-side performance. Scripts do not impact client-side performance at all, at least not directly. Scripts can spawn particles which in turn will tank performance yes but that's particles being bad not scripts. Laggy furniture scripts are laggy for the server and while you're kinda right, they are shit, they are a whole different topic for another day.

@Voodoo

I sure do hope that Bake-on-mesh will reduce the usage of onion layer skins. It would cut massively into polycounts down to 1/4 or 1/5 depending on the body used. That's a lot, not to mention it could improve texture memory usage as well which in turn will show a bit in performance too.

@Fred

I'll take a look at it the coming days, from what you say it sounds promising.

@Imp

It is sad that people do not care. Everyone is digging their own graves and then complain about it. Also LL doesn't want to do anything about it because it would be against what SL made SL. "Your world your imagination". Yea but if your world is a lagging pile of shit for no reason, you can keep it.

[Whitney]

Bake-on-mesh will be a huge game changer and unless the major bodies don't take advantage of it properly, it should help the grid tremendously.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

I feel for you, Niran, but some of the Fashionistas aren't going to take criticism from a "tekki furry" very well, even if you're criticizing the makers, not the wearers.

I remember the first time I right clicked on a mesh body and said to myself "damn that's a LOT of polygons there" and I've noticed a decrease in viewer performance as more and more people who hadn't started using mesh body parts...have done so.

But the horse has left the barn as they say, and aint no "Barbie" (including me) going to give up her mesh body parts. But the solution isn't buying new hardware after all the minimum system requirements for SL are a single core CPU, 1GB of RAM and a 6600 or better GPU.

I've got an old Phenom II x4 2.8GHz with 16GB of RAM and a GTX 1050TI. This is far far above the minimum or even recommended requirements.

It's like Niran said, LL's trying to keep the walls up but we're hitting the walls with sledgehammers at the same time. And like others I hope Bakes-on-mesh will help.

[Omega7]

I stopped reading after "Says 3D Graphics Expert" and "NiranV, developer of the acclaimed, graphics-optimized Black Dragon SL viewer"...

[FlameSoulis]

The thing is that on Second Life, I've had no issues lowering my complexity costs by reducing texture sizes and finding better clothing/hair that looked about the same but was made better. It's not complicated but then again, I have experience with that.

On High Fidelity, optimization falls under not just the number of polygons, but also download size as well, since most custom avatars are self-hosted, so bandwidth is a factor, in addition to the others (drawcalls, texture memory cost, etc.). This was brought up a few times as well regarding polycount on avatars, but the key difference between Hifi and SL at this time is the engine on Hifi is just better, so while there is a performance dip, it's hard to notice.

That being said, the community is heavily pushing for optimization as early as possible to avoid the catastrophe that is going on on SL.

[silverfox rainbow]

I often do experitments with different types of sl bodies just to see how they handle in laggy enviroments.
Some work ok others not so well
I have lagged to a crawl, if i face large groups with mesh bodies, blackscreening for up to 30 secs at events, firstorm temp derender works wonders sometimes.
I do use maitrya without the hands and feet , but for larger events usually s witch to a feral bento avatar, timber wilds or teegle, even tinies are great for events.
It just comes down to being creative.

[tankgirl]

Really, mesh body makers are not responding to being torn apart by ex-Linden developers? How dare they not stand still for the pitch and feathers this professional throws over them?

I would be much more impressed with that exceptionally rude arrogant silicon valley man if he laid the blame where it should be: with himself and the other Lindens that let this get completely out of hand. They should have made good mesh replacements for the standard avatars, not leave it to the SL market.

There is no comparison between furry bodies and a female human body. A furry body is like dressing up for Halloween, it doesn't matter how boxy it is. Maitreya's is beautiful, curved and sexy. She oozes sex. As another said above here: they will have to pry it from my cold dead pixel fingers.

[Kylie]

Lol if you saying stop stop for wearing mesh bodies but it add scripts with huds and AO and and mesh clothes, shoes or boots and hair can lag plus mesh items everywhere. Who else want to go back to classic avatars?? I don't want go back to classic avatar really! So it a future mesh stuff everyday on sl as well in sansar who knows what else next!

[NiranV]

@tankgirl

How is there no comparison between furry and human avatars? Quite some furry avatars have this "beautiful, curved and sexy" just as much as humans do, furry avatars come in many shapes and colors. Just because an animal person is unrealistic doesn't mean it is not comparable to humans. You're forgetting that furries are basically furred humans with animal features, they do need a "human" body just as much as you do and they want quality and good look just as much, but compared to humans they get it right off the bat and full free modding on top of that. In fact furries often need technically seen a higher base poly count due to their special bodily features, tails, big fluffy ears, body/face fluff, legs and feet, they all offer special attributes that make them need more polygons, things that humans don't need or in altered, much smaller shape. Making a raptor leg/foot, compared to a human leg/foot for instance. Yet they manage to keep poly counts low and the avatars still smooth.

Besides quite a few furries use Maitrya/Belleza etc too for their bodies and they have a noticeably bigger impact than anyone else in the room.

Examples of good furry avatars from my discord channel:
https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1949/30314025537_4f7e167307_b.jpg
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/314964472060051457/508293487691563018/Veera_Autumn_001.png
Mild NSFW:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/411291822434942976/482346292165476352/Veera_Abstract_006.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/411291822434942976/467350370604154890/Veera_Not_So_Bright_Beachside_001.png
NSFW:
https://gfycat.com/relievedheartyafricanmolesnake

This is an adequate level of detail. Sure looking close you can see that its not perfectly smooth but it doesn't hurt (besides, looking close you'll see it on any mesh body)

LL making better replacement meshes wouldn't have changed a thing. It's an open market and there will ALWAYS be someone who wants something different. They would have made these meshes regardless.

@everyone else

The reason rigged meshes are so important, much more than static meshes you attach or rez on land is because the Viewer has to do a lot of additional work on rigged meshes, a static mesh does not need to be transformed at all, while rigged meshes need to have a lot of extra calculations applied.

Imagine it like this:
You get a huge list, this list details every single vertice in a model, vertices are the dots of which three form a polygon (triangle), now with this list you start building a statue, just like building your IKEA wardrobe (and having a few screws and nails left over). You're like "phew finally done". Your statue looks nice and is fully built. That's a static mesh for you.

Now you get another list, this list contains information which of these vertices are rigged and how much and to which bone in the skeleton. You go through that list and color your statue according to that list. Blue for not at all, green over yellow to red for more rigging weight. You also write the bone name to each vertice. You think you're done but then suddenly your chef kicks your door in and tells you that you need to calculate the movement according to the rigging weight of each bone on this statue and the movement applied via an animation, he gives you a list of poses which if looked at in order look like an animation. You start going through the entire list of all vertices again, move and readjust every vertice, checking against the pose on the picture and the weight how much the vertice should be "moved" towards the desired pose, then check whether the vertice is weighted to another bone, if not you continue with the next vertice, you do this until you're done with the entire list... just to start over again and do it for the next pose. You continue doing this until you die of heart failure in high age.

That is essentially how this works, now imagine this list to be super small. Just ten entries. You'll be done very quick, if you're really good you might even be done in just a minute. What if this list contains 1000 entries? 10000 entries? 100000 entries? You'll take longer and longer to do everything mentioned above, everything slows down. A GPU obviously is extremely fast and can do this process in a matter of milliseconds many many times with many hundred thousands of polygons. But adding hundred thousand polygons here, another hundred thousand there, each one increases the time necessary to work through everything. That's why high poly avatars are ESPECIALLY bad.

Note that this above doesn't even account in post processing or any extras done with the models. Features like Motion Blur, Volumetric Lighting (based on shadows) and Shadows can (depending on their implementation) add a whole lot more time to this if they are based on the object geometry and need to sort through it in any way (not even going through all vertices but even with a simplified shape). Adding a few thousand polygons here and there can cause a lot down the line and you should take that into account which is why it is so incredibly important that rigged meshes (avatars) are optimized first and not just them but to an extend entire avatars too.

However rigged mesh bodies are the highest priority as everything you make for them is often based on it, they inherit their base complexity in most clothing parts. You automatically create higher poly clothes for higher poly bodies to match it, right?

[tankgirl]

Now show me a female human body that is as sexy as maitreya.

[Aliasi Stonebender]

@tankgirl

Sure. How about *lots of them*? Although it may depend on your tastes. I quite like the Nana fitness body from devsir, but that's for a specific fitness-model bodytype.

[tankgirl]

Just one would be fine. One without the horrible boxy thighs and ridiculous proportions NiranV showed until now. One that comes close to a real female body.

[NiranV]

@tankgirl

I showed one and just ONE single body, all of these shots were the same body and all of them except the gfy was even the very same avatar. None of them had extreme proportions in any way. Have you ever even seen extreme proportions? Have you even taken a look outside? Seen any of the human bodies? They have much extremer proportions, so many humans go by these stupid "sexy" standards (bee shape or "90 60 90" comes to mind). What i've shown was by far one of the most normal shapes you'll find in SL.

And "sexy" that's super subjective. I find these very sexy, on the other hand find most human shapes super unattractive. How about you show me a "sexy" human one that i can agree that it is sexy.

[Gingir Ghoststar]

@Fred Beckhusen @NiranV So I went to check out this ruth2 avatar. I think I may need some more explaining, please. So avatar complexity is our culprit right? I thought @Fred Beckhusen said the Ruth avatar was less complex than Maitreya. I was excited I went to go see it. maitreya bumps me up 7K. However. When I put on the Ruth2 avatar I go up 20K. It's a beautiful avatar and I love that it is free. It just about fits my maitreya clothing too which is very sexy to me. However. isn't the complexity issue what we're already upset about? Do you have any other human bodies that are comparable to the maitreya or belleza softer curves? I went to the stores you mentioned but those are not my cup of tea, one had incredibly ugly bodies with the nails looking like growths or very body builder look or very very "curvy extreme". I would happily switch to a lower poly body and possibly even create for it if you have a suggestion that I find agreeable.

[Gingir Ghoststar]

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/UUtopia%20Alcott/171/221/1396 is where I found the Ruth2 avatar

[Gingir Ghoststar]

Ohh okay nevermind, I see, the complexity is lower indeed on the Ruth2. Wireframe is your friend. I guess the complexity is not showing right. I should really attend some of these meetings and then I'd know these things.

[Sarali]

For those looking for better bodies than the Maitreya/Belleza type ones... As mentioned by others already the Ruth 2.0 is worth checking out. Psicorp's Avatar Core seems good and quite low poly as well. It is made by a furry designer but works just fine as a human. https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/PsiCorp-Avatar-Core-21-Female-Type-A/13988561

As a bonus it is super duper creator friendly, with rigging models and textures easily available on their website and all, instead of hidden away and needing a form and vetting process like some of the big name bodies.

I hear there's also one in the works by Asami Imako of Artificial Incarnations and all of their clothing is *incredibly* well made and low rendering weight, while still looking fantastic. They really know what they're doing as far as I can tell so I'm waiting with baited breath on that body.

I would also throw an honorable mention out to the Avatar 2.0 by Utilizator. It's a bit older now and caters a bit more to an anime market than the other bodies mentioned, but simply as an example of a low poly body there are things to be learned from it. It's not fully updated to use the latest tech and it's a bit *too* low poly on its feet in my opinion, but it's still a good case study. I absolutely recommend checking out the "Normie" head by the same maker though. It is updated and super well made: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/UTILIZATOR-Normie-Head/13071631

The mesh heads by Lightstar are also quite well done in that regard from what I recall: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/40878

But yeah, definitely check out the bodies mentioned if you care at all about the future of SL, and keep an eye out for Asami Imako's body when it comes out, as it should be really really great. The biggest problem really comes down to that there's not much clothing made for these bodies, but if more people use them and start asking for clothes for them, then more clothing will be made for them.

[Tankgirl]

NieanV, dude. I don’t know how to tell you this. You may have never seen a real women naked. But there are very few people that want to have sex with furry women with square bumby bodies.

Let’s put the weird dimensions aside: look at the butt an thighs: you clearly see ugly bumps and corners for where to little vertices are, on places that should be round and smooth. Like the thighs and butt.

Maitreya did that perfectly. It looks like a body one would want have or touch. That is why about 85 percent of female mesh bodies sold are maitreya.

I don’t mind you having a thing for furries, to each his own. But you have insulted the people that made the best selling mesh bodies in sl, you have insulted the creators that make clothes for those bodies and the customers that have bought those bodies and clothes. Instead of thanking them for all their creativity and money, and for paying your income, you tell them they are destroying sl. While they kept you and the rest of LL afloat.

Bottomline: if you want to have sex with boxy furries, that is ok. But boxy furries will never work for the rest of us. Your personal preference is not shared by the majority of SL. So give it a rest.

[Sarali]

Best selling does mean actually the best. It just means people that don't know better are buying it. Educating people is the key here, whether forced via things like complexity (hopefully with better calculations for it) being required on ads for all items, or simply strongly encouraged via efforts either from lots of customers, or key people in the industry like bloggers and creators.

Niran has outlined pretty well why those bodies are actually destroying SL and making it nigh unplayable, despite (or in fact partially because of) how well they sell to the uninformed or uncaring.

[sirhc desantis]

Bit late but another shout out for the Ruth/Roth project. Been fiddling with it for a while. Raw numbers from RC3 (this was the nov release)
Ruth too RC3
From dev kit blend file tris count
Head 1844
Upper 6530
Lower 4880
Hands 5908
Feet 4992

Lots of alpha cut and hud stuff in the package too, hands/feet bit high for my needs but its fully playable with - had some good results dressing them up via mp templates too. Also single use bodies (bits of stuff added as it were, simplified hands/upper/lower textured, system head + mp boots). Its on MP for gratis as well.
Yay for opensim :) Some assembly required...

[NiranV]

@Tankgirl

Are you trolling or just that retarded?

Boxy furries? Really? Just because you can see the vertice edges in some places doesn't make them bad. The avatars shown have stricken a good balance between details and optimization and you clearly have no idea what you're talking about nor what's actually good for anything.

Brands like Maitreya and Belleza sell well because they have a monopoly on the market and its nigh impossible to bring something new up nor do most people care enough to do so. Add the unwillingness of people to change, their ignorance as well as simply being uneducated on how everything affects Second Life.

Besides, i'm not working for Linden Labs and nothing of what happens in SL pays me my days. I'm working on my Viewer and in SL for free. I'm offering my Viewer for free, i'm offering help for free and i'm offering my very few select products and solutions for free. Unlike YOU i'm informed about things and unlike YOU i care about Second Life, i've spend a whopping 12 years in SL so far, 6 of which i dedicated to Viewer development for free. Neither LL pays me nor anything LL or the Market does. The only thing that pays me to some degree are the people that support me on Patreon.

And.

The Marketplace is but a tiny fraction of the money LL makes that keeps SL afloat. Almost all of what keeps SL afloat is land/region renting. Upload fee and Marketplace transaction fees are but peanuts and before you even think about it: No. If these brands didn't exist, SL would still be fine. We'd have different people with different brands. There will always be people doing something somewhere. If Einstein didn't find out all the things he did, someone else would have, who knows if someone thousands of years didn't already know what he did, just no one knew he did because he would have been declared crazy.

Here, i made you a few pictures to show you the visual and the actual difference of the same snake avatar vs Maitreya.

Snokra VS Maitreya
The visual difference is laughable. Wireframe however shows that Maitreya has roughly 5 times as many polygons in the same space.
Maitreya Complexity
Snokra Complexity
In case you don't believe me it's Maitreya.

And just to make sure you actually understand what loads of shit you talk.

Here's a TL:DR and ELI5 for you:

You are trying to argue that Human bodies are fine as they are because they need to be perfectly smooth, so smooth that you can basically zoom inside them and still see no edges, this at the cost of many times more work for the rendering engine.

I'm trying to show you that most Furry creators have long understood and figured out how to make mesh bodies that look decent and still be 5 times less work for the rendering engine than the Human equivalent.

You are trying to argue that Furry bodies are bad because they look blocky to you when the actual difference shown is so marginal that its not even worth mentioning, but here, let me mention how marginal the difference is. It would be a trivial act of adding a few more polygons at critical bodyparts of said furry body meshes making them perfectly smooth while still being almost 5 times (4 times at worst) less work for the renderer than those human mesh bodies. You seem to think that these furry mesh bodies are absolutely, unchangeable and the way they are delivered is fixed forever. If and ONLY if it was really necessary to get rid of these minimal problems of eventually visible edges you could just go to their website, download the goddamn FREE FULL PERM .blend file, actually do the fucking work of adding a few more polygons where necessary without spamming subdivide onto everything (thus adding unnecessary polygons everywhere) and then re-upload that body for you complete with rigging and everything.

But no, you rather come here, spew your uneducated bullshit and try to argue without any reason against optimization and i bet you are one of those people that get the loudest when it comes to SL's horrible performance. "Oh oh, SL is so shit its so slow, it needs a new rendering engine". I bet you say the same about every other engine out there because your brain is incapable of processing the thought that maybe, just maybe something else might be the root for the performance issue. You probably think the render engine is some magical device that can travel back in time and somehow magically can render everything no matter how much you throw at it. But hey, it's just the render engines fault. Surely its not the fault of those 20 million polygons, 3gb textures and incredibly badly designed objects in every scene.

[Sarali]

I understand you're angry Niran. And I agree with you on the technical side of things. You're absolutely right. And those comparison pictures are great and really help show the difference.

But being unnecessarily insulting isn't going to actually help people on the other side see that. It will put people into defensive mode and not open to being educated.

Totally understand the temptation, I do it myself sometimes and they are being super insulting to you so it feels appropriate to be so back at them, but it doesn't end up helping getting the very important points about rendering costs across.

Anyway, hopefully people can see past the insults to see that Niran *really* really has the right of it when it comes to how bodies in SL should be made if we're going to have a bright future ahead of us in Second Life. Or even a bright present.

[Gingir Ghoststar]

So I'm totally interested in the Ruth3 avatar, nabbed it from the MP link above. How do I go about getting Omega support? I've noticed the body fits some of my Maitreya and some of my Belleza things. It's gorgeous. My only complaint beyond no OMEGA support is that there is a slight line where the hands connect to the arms. That needs fixed. I'm going to grab the blender file and see what fun clothes I can make myself.

[Silverfox Rainbow]

trying out the PSIcorp body from Nirans link, as a repelement for my mitreya after seeing the render differances and sadly some people well not listen.

[Fauve Aeon]

It's not just a question of a well optimized human body, in many cases. It's one that people will make the most stuff for. Is Maitreya the best body? For me, yes, because the most stuff is made for it in styles I like and my skills aren't that of a skilled modder yet, though I'm learning more... the more I learn, the more I know I need to learn and it's time consuming even as a willing learner. :)
Is Maitreya my favorite, even among the human bodies? No. But I wear it for convenience because I've got places to go and stuff to do. I willingly abide by any venue's rules of complexity or scripts but I'm mostly comfy and make my home (read as: spend the most money) in a very strong sim where I can attend an event with 50+ avatars and no limits or nags about the scripts or complexity. I also have a decent computer and am always testing settings. It's a balance but I'm banking on the fact that other than retroactively properly assigning weight or complexity to legacy content, LL will not ever 'break' it. So I'm not willing to bang the drum asking them to change that, I think they would have already if they were going to.

My favorite mesh to wear is Cocodoll, and I have not checked the complexity of her dolls at all, proof that my preference will drive the purchases unless something changes, making it both more simple and more visible to put 'well optimized' higher.

The Snek that Niran showed relies heavily on textured and patterned skin, unfortunately not something most human avatars can rely on. I think the Snek levels of detail are quite enough and were there a human bento head and body on that level, !!!with a decent amount of stylish clothes and shoes to fit it!!!, and not more expensive than the current offerings, I'd consider it. Kemono or their Avatar 2.0 might be closest at this point but still not enough clothes fit either. I tested Ruth 2.0 and I'm considering her for Opensim where Fauve is still all Classic. It doesn't compete with the SL bodies yet, IMO.

Overall, from what I gleaned when Ebbe was asked, he said content creation is in the hands of the creators and it's up to us to make our spaces (and by extension, avatars) more/less laggy as we see fit and still others have free choice to visit our spaces (or render our avatars) and we to limit/allow them to be more/less laggy..

But as we have (many of us) experienced, the script count and complexity nags at venues or the articles and editorials that harangue rather than offer concrete solutions or urge people to spend more time learning to optimize ...well, they don't really compel so far do they? Otherwise we would listen and adopt some of the practices?

Many (I'd even say most) consumers aren't into modding, and don't have interest to learn, hard as it is to swallow.
It takes time to learn and a bit of skill to progress.

A carrot rather than a stick approach might work better. Lead by example but with a bigger, public, inclusive example.
An M rated, no lag club with great decor and the best music? Advertised as a state of the art mesh showcase and hangout? Yes please. Why not a shopping event there too, with the focus being 'for efficient mesh' with some guidelines? I'm not skilled enough to create and run this by myself but I'd actively contribute to helping make such a place/event happen as part of a working project team.

[NotTodaySatan]

For this to be an actual thing take off the hair and other meshes when looking at the bodies. Also compare with the complexities of the other viewers. Do up a complete comparison on video for us to have a look at since you are so passionate about this. Clothing, Hair and accessories are the main culprit of the high complexities. Not all know how to optimize their meshes so this is something that happens alot. There are many factors that contribute to lag so making a blanket statement on bodies is ignorant at best. Getting pissed off in the comments and being nasty to others shows that level of ignorance as well.

[Fauve Aeon]

Well, time for another long comment, @Hamlet, this feels like I'm camping in your house, do you have any snacks, tasty bevs and maybe some comfy poufs for us? Seems we moved in for the Holidays here! :D

I'd really appreciate a Hall of Fame in place of a Hall of Shame...
Why not lift up the people who doing well, those who are trying, learning to do better and being responsive?
Highlight the most efficient creators as the GOOD examples?
There was a thread with both on SLU but the archives aren't available quite yet but it was a good guide, not calling people out, just some honest high and low efficiency comparisons, listed by designer. No one got overly bent about it and the discussion remained civil but honest,

Also have these designers mentioned as 'more efficient' passed bloggers and vloggers like Strawberry Singh or NWN own Cassie Middles copies of these better solutions...with a detailed note clearly explaining the situation and asked for some equal attention paid to the ongoing topic of optimized content for consumer education?

I've heard you, @Niran and I read an learn so much from you, Penny Patton too. You both make a lot of good points an know so much...but you both have quite a few detractors based on largely unrelated topics/opinions, which is a shame but it is what it is. That affects your message and who is willing to listen, it can't be ignored. :(

Others also say that the 'big three ' body makers have not been very responsive to some critique and LL seems as though they will not enforce many limitations regarding the body issues...so now that people have had quite a lot to say about these .:dead horse:., how about re-assessing the way you can bring about the most positive change from here on...and move into new solution territory where you can try another tack?

More dialogue and comparisons would be good, yes, annotated 'bodies only' wireframe photos taken in a less chaotic lower poly space so we can see clearly what to look for and avoid if we are trying to learn to go lower, comparison charts with the numbers from various viewers as NotTodaySatan suggested and omg yes, the hair and accessories. maybe swallow the pill and acknowledge that many people, having made the investment, will stick to their bodies a while yet but many people DO change out heads, hair and accessories often, decor and housing too...and collectively establishing better practices in all those areas, targeting clothes, hair, shoes, jewelry, things people DO tend to replace more often might have a very significant impact despite the body situation.

There will always be those who will not care to even listen to these topics but some may become willing to take advice going forward if that advice is more calm, gentle, based on easy-to-illustrate facts and not scolding.
Same as most people are willing to keep their arc lower or de-script for an event or venue if told politely and in advance, right? Not publicly slapped at the event gate in public chat.

A little tact goes a long way. For many, SL is all about the social and NOT about the technical.
Historically, it's hardly ever been productive to point that out in order to compel by shaming.
It just makes people dig their SLink heels in.

I started buying my cocodolls before human mesh bodies were really much of a thing, my first aren't even rigged the same as the SL body...but I'm NOW very willing to look at so many of my future purchase items, judge their efficiency and make more educated purchases from here forward. Will I still wear SLink, Maitreya and cocodolls? Yes. But I'll also demo everything that's been brought up in these threads and make an attempt to learn to use more items that are more efficient more often too. Compromise.

Sunday at our ballet performance, there were some very dense meshes in the audience, and lots of scripts going...and even though the stage is on one sim, audience on an adjoining one, the lag felt like we were trying to dance while swimming in pudding. So that's a place this all hits home for me. And all the dancers wear Classic, vey few mesh body parts, and we descript and pre-cache our gestures and animations, running them all in warmup. It's really tough.

But you always get more bees with honey than with vinegar and salt.
So the tone of the topic can also determine if it is successful in sparking change or only dies under the feet of argument.
And often it's not noted who was wise or right in that outcome, but sometimes more who was kind and patient.

[uriesk]

Ctrl-F -> "layers" -> just one comment.

The 100.000+ polygon Maitreya and 200.000+ Belleza body have 3 layers. They are 3 bodies on top of each other like onions. Without layers, they would just have 1/3rd of those.
This means that with bake on mesh, it will eliminate the need of those and suddenly they would need way less polygons, for the exact same thing.

Before Bento was around, the heads made their facial expressions by putting 30 heads with different expressions on top of each other and making all parts transparent except the one that should show.
A pre-Bento CATWA head had 1 MILLION polygons. Now that those layers are not needed anymore for heads, they have about 40k to 100k.
They did the same with hands and feet.

The only reason why one pre-Bento mesh body didn't let the PC of every viewer burn was because layers that are totally transparent do not get rendered (but they of course are still causing additional load and traffic) and this applies to multi-layer mesh bodies today too.

Do not fool yourself into thinking that the polygon count is the only thing that matters, especially with mesh bodies, where at least 1/3rd of the polygons are hidden, this just doesn't apply.
There are other things that matter too... and average mesh products in SL are bad there too... LoD models in example or the number of meshes that an object consists of (every 8 alpha parts of a body belong to one mesh, the more alpha selection choices you have, the more lag will your body cause).

The best mesh body of the big once is SLink, it has the lowest polygon count of the big once (and it's achieving this with 4 layers, while Maitreya has 3), it has less alphas, but they are still logically choosen and you can things fit, and overall (but that's my personal opinion) even looks better.

You want to know the triangle count of the inner layer of the SLINK Physiques Male mesh body? It's 10.610.

[Bastilla Loon]

I made some measurements myself, and they don't match some of the other numbers I've seen. In particular, Slink really does better than Belleza, and PsiCorp is *no* better than Belleza, despite being called out above as an example of how to do it right. Ruth 2.0 wins hands down, though.

I did this by fixing my camera in a given direction and looking at the "KTris per Frame" in the rendering statistics that the client can give you (it's "Statistics Bar" under "Advanced" in Firestorm, at least). I looked at where I started, added the body, and then subtracted. In one case I did experiment with turning a clothing layer on and off, and that didn't make any difference to the count.

Here are the numbers I got in kTris:

Slink Physique (incl. Deluxe Feet, hands): 44 kTris
Slink Hourglass (incl. Delux Feet, hands): 35 kTris
Belleza Freya: 76 kTris
Altamura Sofia: 142 kTris (Base body: 108, clothing layer: 34)
PsiCorp Female A: 75 kTris
RuthToo: 27 kTris

(I don't own Maitreya, so I didn't check that one. You can't count on the demos having the same number of polys as the actual body.)

Heads can be big too. Here are some I checked out:

Lelukta Bianca: 82 kTris
AK Maia: 128 kTris
RruthToo: 3 kTris

The maker of Slink has said on her creators' discord that she tries to keep the number of triangles down. The numbers I've found seem to back that up. I'm not sure it's fair in the article to call out Slink as having a high poly count-- that body is at 1/2 of the Belleza body count. And, we should be paying attention to our Bento heads, as they have a lot of polys in them as well.

[NiranV]

@Bastilla

The KTris display is a bad way of figuring out how much polygons something (especially a single object type has) it is highly inaccurate and prone to randomness as the rendered amount of triangles can change at any time for any reason, do not use them please. There are several (and in Firestorm probably too) ways to get an accurate measurement of how much polygons a single selected object has. The Object info for instance should show this in both Black Dragon and Firestorm. Black Dragon also has a dedicated Advanced Complexity Window made to show these and i'm sure Belleza has much more than just 76k triangles when Maitreya alone has 100k+ for the body only (no head, no hands and no feet), considering that Belleza looks at least twice as dense in triangle count visually and has at least 4 invisible layers too.

[anonymous SL builder]

The biggest problem is you got creators graphics nuts that want SL to have a James Cameron AVATAR look and refuse to lower polys just to LOOK like a movie and they are up there bums, that they refuse to look "ugly".

[Alecia]

I just came across this blog, and was quite shocked. It seems more like a hate blog than anything, and full of inconsistencies and inaccuracies, and a misunderstanding of how SL works.

Optimisation has less to do with polygon count, and more to do with how those polygons are organised.

NiranV may well understand how to 'compile' a reasonable viewer, but your either misquoting NiranV or misunderstand your conversation, or NiranV does not understand this issue as well as you suggest. This would make it anecdotal, rather than technical.

Yes Granted there are some badly optimised mesh products out there. However, this is not a mesh problem. I can provide you examples of many prim based products that will lag your viewer and your region far more than any of the aforementioned avatars you are 'picking on'. So I'm guessing your not a creator - or should I say mesh creator, and if you are then you need to understand better these issues.

Bad creations pre-mesh have always been an issue. Prim count, texture count, script count etc. and just plane overloaded avatars. Before you begin picking on mesh creators, and mesh products, which if created correctly can actually contribute to reducing lag in a region, first check out your region script time. I see today most are overloaded and have little or no script time remaining.

Avatars are pretty well at the centre of the majority of residence experience, and they want to look nice, and that's a good thing, it retains accounts and creates commerce which insures the continuation of Secondlife. Secondlife is archaic enough from a games platform point of view, and mesh is/was a much needed update.

Since the inception of Mesh in SL, I have been able to reduce the "visual lag" and prim count on my region substantially.

If you would like to discuss this in better detail, You can contact me via the email I have provided you. And yes I am a mesh creator and I also create mesh avatar and attachments. So I understand well the issues you propose here as problematic.

There are simply good creators and bad creators, mesh is not the issue.

There are also sensible residence and excessive residence.

Mesh avatars are also phantom when worn, which means that the physics engine does not need to make calculations for them with respect the world they interact with, this is handled instead by the avatar 'cell'. If it were a vehicle or building, non phantom or physical, then they could well produce huge issues if improperly optimised. Avatars simply dont work this way.

E.g: Belleza land impact 73. Belleza complexity 8.374

Need I say more.

If you don't understand the issue, then you are ill equipped to comment in this way.

[Venompapa]

I only wish if it was easier to talk at the creators and users about this case but most of then either just have absolutely no idea (even from the creators side) and they just ignore all what you say or in other case they start barging about their 1080 GTX graphics card and how they have 140+ FPS at an empty sim...
Mesh creating should been drastically limited since the start then maybe raised the limit a bit if it was okay, sadly because of LL's stupid backward thinking we got this today.

I do hope at last the bake on mesh update will get a rid of the multilayer mesh avatars.

[Trumpton_Vixen]

There's a lot of talk about "bugs" in the complexity calculation and, as a furry, I've been accused of lagging sims when I have the lowest complexity in sight. But I did some testing.

1: LOD switching distances for rigged mesh are based on a problematic calculation which makes Low and Lowest LOD almost pointless. But we seem to be stuck with it. The latest item I made looks OK with just 49 polygons at Low LOD because the screen-pixels per polygon is a tiny number. Some creators just don't bother.

2: The SL Marketplace doesn't even try to tell us the complexity of clothing

3: Texture scaling, mipmapping, is based on screen pixels needed, and some of the huge 1024 bitmaps, applied to small objects, will never ever be seen at their full detail. But we have to download the full size image and generate the mipmaps.

4: The Linden Lab freebie outfits at SL16B were very poorly optimised. The Low and Lowest LOD models were way too complicated, and one pair of boots used five 1024 textures. A pair of shoes had a single 1024 texture for a part smaller than the palm of your hand.

I am not confident that Linden Lab knows what they're doing.

A well-optimised onionskin, as a separate clothing item, might still be useful. Easy to wear and remove just clothing. Isn't that how the classic avatar still works?

I'm not looking forward to the results of the baking system being able to use 1024 textures. It will be abused.

The outfit and mesh body I am wearing right now is 11,839 complexity. The maximum value allowed for the complexity limit is somewhere around 350,000: to see anything higher than that, you have to switch off the limiter, leaving you wide open to griefers.

[Tokyo Frank]

It's funny you see moan after moan about creators not optimizing their meshes for the virtual world, let's see you create a series of youtube videos on how best to optimize for a virtual world! All you so called experts stand on your high horse about this matter time and time again, arrogantly stating how much better you are, but do absolutely nothing to educate.

I'm personally relatively new to making meshes in Blender, I don't sale them, but none the less, I would love to know how better to optimize them for Second Life, but the information just isn't out there! Most youtube videos regarding modelling are generic in that they are covering modelling for rendering and not modelling for virtual worlds. Objects that require smooth curves always get a high poly count, yes you can decimate in Blender, but even after decimation, if you stop before the object breaks up, then you still lose relatively few triangles.

So moaners...where are the USEFUL links on how to optimize meshes for Second Life? How does one make clothing that looks real and not blocky, but has a low poly count? If you are experts, then at least one of you should be able to make a youtube video.

Finally, I seldom experience lag and yes I do have a decent computer, I'm either very fortunate or the client side equipment is far more involved than some of you are claiming. The minimum system requirements for Second Life need raising, they are not realistic for a highly graphical environment, this would stop people using rubbish equipment plaguing the virtual world with complaints that are largely their own fault. I can have two avatars logged in at once, using ultra settings and I can be surrounded by six other mesh avatars and not even get a blip of lag, so those of you claiming to have decent systems and still get lag just because of mesh avatars, may need to get your equipment looked at.

[Penny Patton]

Some of us have been sharing optimization tips for literally over a decade ( http://pennycow.blogspot.com ), but for what it's worth I do personally believe that telling people to boycott unoptimized content is the virtual equivalent to telling people to boycott plastic drinking straws to save the environment.

In fact I'd say it's even less effective than that because SL provides no real tools to help the average SL user to distinguish between well and poorly made content.

If we want to see better optimization in SL content, it has to start at the top. Linden Lab needs to step in and find ways to encourage creators to optimize their work. And it's going to take both the carrot and the stick to make that happen.

[Eloise]

I spend 70 hours a week, working as an Information Security Architect, doing my bit to protect over $1 trillion in assets.

Don't make me fix this shit in my free time. I really don't care enough.

For as long as LL is hands off, this will just be one more side issue that continues (I know of a store that has been defrauding customers for over 10 years, since the first complaint was made to LL. I even have the RL name of the owner, his home address and phone number in Germany). So don't tell me LL give a damn about the environment - unless it hurts their bottom line).

Now, if there was an alternative to Second Life.............I might just dump my 100K inventory and my homesteads and run off there.

[Head of the common sense church]

So let me be the first comment in 2020 for what it's worth. Been in SL for 15 yrs and have always said we had more enjoyment when it was all system avi's. We could all make clothes, go to a club and walk directly in and not have to wait 10 mins for your head hands and feet to arrive while getting hit on the side of your head from other peoples body parts. Doesn't this all sound a bit like global warming argument in that other world. Maybe I will start a Green Party in SL, BAN THE MESH IT"S KILLING THE ENVIRONMENT, we could have bonfires and burn our mesh bodies.
You cant turn back the clock. Progress is constant. LL know this and SL is well past it usable life while numbers have dropped by over 50% in just a few years, hence Sansar (great idea but the model is crap). How about forming inquisitors roaming SL armed with blow torches.

[Women In Sensible Shoes Brigade]

I know this is an old thread, but it's not just the bodies creating lag - it's the unlimited variety of ignorant imbeciles, morons, noobs and idiots who insist on walking around with every goddam hud in their inventory attached.

Scripts kill the fun for everyone.

I do have a Legacy body but only put it on when I have to blog something - the rest of the time I'm wearing a 2,500 complexity teensy weensy, almost invisible, can-hide-behind-blades-of-grass furry.

[Someone Who Is Mad At Bad SL Creators]

I love how things just keep getting worse lately, i'm looking at Lunar's fur made of like 8 - 10 layers and every single person in SL buying and taking pics with it. Gabriel making an even worse one made in full mesh, but then they go "SL is so laggy, Linden Lab should fix this!!1!".