Highly Detailed SL Mesh Bodies Don't Require Excessive Triangles - Look!

Pictured: A well-optimized body from Niramyth Productions

Some readers have complained about posts like this one last week pointing out how poorly optimized and resource heavy the leading SL mesh bodies are, basically saying, "We want a lot of avatar detail!" 

This, however, is a major misunderstanding: It's perfectly possible for a mesh body to be well-optimized and have high detail. By way of demonstration, take a look at the mesh body above, a picture sent over to me by Black Dragon developer NiranV. 

"It looks HIGHLY detailed and is super low poly with just roughly 24,000. Of course head, hands and feet add a bit more too but overall it seems to be around the 40,000 mark." By contrast, most of the popular SL mesh bodies have triangles in the mid to high six figures, and don't look any more detailed than this one.

"I mean just look at the details," NiranV goes on. What a difference good textures and a bit of normal mapping can do. That body looks right out of Unreal Engine and it doesn't use any shitty onion layers. But don't tell the Maitreya/Belleza fanboys, they will screech."

Maybe they will -- or maybe they will demand more from the owners of the Maitreya/Belleza brands.

Oddly enough, some readers (especially on Facebook) have claimed that calls for better optimized Second Life content are an attack on Second Life itself. They're really about calling for a better virtual world. As reader Tonia Thraw explains:

I don't think anyone is asking anyone to stop using these bodies but for the developers to take a moment to optimize the bodies. There's A LOT OF ROOM there for optimizing without losing a speck of detail or glamor. It is somewhat of a beginner mistake to not optimize the meshes, and the developers should be on top of that by now, is all.

Over-optimizing is a thing, too, that is what happens when you start losing detail in the object. Nobody is calling for over-optimization.

I'll still use my Maitreya, no doubt, but I would wish for an update. AT LEAST for visiting crowded sims, what magic would it do if the bodies there would be optimized...

A better world -- and body -- is possible. If only more people would learn to expect and demand more.

Comments

[Jorge Alberto Roca Ramos]

Is there any relation between NiranV and Niramyth store?

[Blaise Glendevon]

Is the Niramyth body still unable to take third-party appliers from skinmakers?

[Amanda Magick]

A lot of people don't want to argue or talk about this because it will make theirs heads explode and they don't want any kind of change. After all it took them such a long time to figure things out to get to the point they are at now. LOL. But seriously I do want speedy SL too.

[Susan Wilson]

Fantastic news! Now where can I buy one of these optimized bodies that will fit my Maitreya wardrobe? Maybe you should approach her, I understand she's working on an updated body now anyway.

[Dr Shloo]

This had always been a source of contempt for a long time. The problem with Second life as opposed to Open Grid is everything is done for you at a cost, however a lot of creators are taking lazy or semi-pro choices in mesh where it is horribly optimised. Every year the need for more expensive graphic cards to run SL smoothly increases every year, where the sheer number of mesh both well made and badly, seem to creep up and bottle necking the system of SL antiquated GPU bottleneck that is inbuilt in the viewer.

I don't just blame the creators, I blame Linden Labs for not having good enough limits in the first place, to prevent creators uploading badly optimized mesh and clogging an already struggling engine. You should not need a sub $400 card to run SL and even then thats trash a year or two down the line as it struggles to cope with Second Lifes never ending mesh waste product legacy

[Pulsar]

After about 5 years that I have Maitreya Lara, I purchased the SLink body with the new Redux version, and I'm having a blast. The "Redux" body looks the same compared to the old one (also in the box), but I can right click on it without the frame rate dropping to its knees (unlike the old SLink one and Lara). It's quicker to load in crowded places and it seems to work well for vehicles too. I only wish it was mod.
I can still use Maitreya or Vista hands on it (Vista's are mod, so you can turn them into BoM by yourself, removing the onion layers and set the BoM texture). Ditto the feet.
But I agree with Dr Shoo too!

[Elisha]

I like reading these articles/ads only to see how far in I have to go before NiranV or Black Dragon are mentioned. It's a game of mine.

Paragraph two today!

(I rarely read past that point.)

[Pulsar]

As for the Maitreya wardrobe, it isn't a big issue.
Maybe you would think that after 5 years on Lara it would be a pain to give up all the wardrobe, but that's not the case, because *drum rolls* so many outfits came with SLink sizes too. It was like that for years, so I have a ton. There are few exceptions, because more recently there is this trend to sell Maitreya exclusives or just two alternatives: Belleza Freya and SLink Hourglass, that personally I like less. The original SLink Physique is closer to Lara.
However, many outfits are still sold in multiple sizes.
So, not a big issue here.

What about appliers?
There are only a couple of cases in which applier could still be better than BoM, perhaps, but usually not. Instead, with Bakes on Mesh, you can wear multiple tattoos, scars, veins, stretch marks, and all you want at once, instead of being limited to a single tattoo onion layer.
Moreover, unlike appliers (and alpha cuts), you can save your tattoos and alpha transparencies with your outfit.
Even better, the baked texture loads as a single texture of course, so you and the people around you don't have to load multiple textures.
Less "lag"!
I have never been a big fan of appliers, for the reasons above. Anyway, various appliers I have have a classic version too at least, some don't. However I can use again my collection of classic tattoos and make-ups and they look even better on the mesh body.

What about applier clothing then?
Usually I wear fitted-mesh clothing rather than appliers, but sometimes I do.
Unlike SLink, Maitreya so far needs you to get an HUD to activate BoM, then it paints only the tattoo layer and shirts look body-painted, so you still need appliers for the onion layers there.
SLink Redux instead is ready to use. It has a smooth bottom, shirt etc options that makes it look less like body-painted.
If you want a more user-friendy experience with BoM, with tattoo, shirts and alphas, I suggest to try out the SLink demo at least.

Moreover it's fun how simple is to update the old classic outfits: just wear the body, done! Textures are automatically applied to the more detailed SLink Redux body. Alphas too, so even the classic mesh fits usually, with the redux version of Physique original. This body is close to the classic avatar sizes enough, so you don't even have to adjust the shape or rarely, So it's pretty much plug and play.
You may need a different shape if you use a mesh head that is very different in shape and sliders from the classic one, but that's another story (anyway I have made a shape for my mesh head to be used with the classic body already). Actually there is a couple of caveats with the old skins, but you can just wear a fixing "tattoo", like the free ones given by League.

So, in a way, I have more outfits, tattoos, make-up available than before now. And in case, I can still put Maitreya on as before.

I hope other creators will follow the example of SLink (even better if they make them mod) and will not just make the usual onion body (or head) with the addition of BoM. Let's see what Maitreya and others will deliver.

[Jackie Blue]

I'm glad NiranV brought up the Aesthetic male body. It is something that should be studied before it's relinquished to being part of SL's past. I think this product was just about perfect and it's creator was an example for every other creator to follow.

Aesthetic was generous with the community. The product was modifiable, and came with so many tools that it inspired it's own amateur creation community around it. It was exciting, liberating, and motivated a spirit of SL that was rapidly getting swallowed by the dumbed-down authoritarian philosophies of the competing products.

As NiranV has repeatedly pointed out, dumb won the day and the community is now damned with the wishes of those who can only fart out their demand for more of the worst we can give them.

Aesthetic "Enzo's" big problem was that it's design was so committed to being a perfect "Terminator", it couldn't be anything else. I waited and waited and waited for the once-promised next release of a more normal body, but it never happened. It's a crying shame for the men who are still stuck with the sloppy seconds of a mesh body selection that can't get the anatomy and proportion correct. Sorry guys, but men aren't built with leg-arms, coat hanger shoulders, hour glass torsos, and child-bearing hips like these creatures you are invested in.

One of the creators of the Signature Gianni mesh body dropped this package on marketplace: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Mesh-Avatars-Male-Mesh-Body-Set-1/17522248 and got crucified in the reviews. The complexity on these characters was insanely low and, contrary to the review opinions, I thought it was a superior concept. The mesh was spot on, standard clothes fit perfectly, and it was all accomplished with one simple and sensible 1024 UV map. It needed lots of development, but it's probably a lame bulb that will never bloom because because the ignorance of our normal is suffocating any incentive to evolve. I weep for this one.

I'm left with feeling that unless LL wants to evolve, avatars are going to continue to languish in this dead end we're in. The addicts will continue to cry for more dysfunction and the sane will surrender to extinction. I don't even see this as a complexity problem. It's about survival of SL and the willingness of it's remaining residents to want something more than a pile of their own feces to play in.

[vwfan]

Agree with Jackie and Shloo. I've pretty much stopped buying much into anything. It's a combination of rampant amateur/abusive creation, the Lab's stagnant progression and unwillingness for major evolution, and the loss of the open sandbox like spirit that was once SL for both in-world building and avatar customization without the "dumbed-down authoritarian philosophies of the competing products" as Jackie stated it well.

Make Second Life Great Again

[Jacques Mesrine]

@ Jackie Blue
There's no need to be a "Terminator" with the Aesthetic Niramyth when lowering down your shape in every aspect. Invest some time! Actually, mine is proportionally correct. Of course & clearly apparent, it's more athletic body compared to Slink, (new)TMP, Signature etc. but that's exactly why I've chosen to wear it permanently.
I wouldn't blame the less passionate Terminator-Peeps, additionally wearing the out-of-the box Enzo head, which aesthetically sucks in my view. These belong to a different branch of SL'er, comparable to the 2007 born and still duck-walking standard types. Anyway, live and let live.

[sirhc desantis]

Happy to optimise ( shit have for years ) as long as I don't have to look like that steroid rage freakoid in the lead picture.
(confession skipped most of the comments as that pic is so grotesque)

[Blaise Glendevon]

I don't mind the Niramyth 'look' as much as I do the grey skin tones. Even the skin tones designed for men of color look grey.

[TDGunner]

So I think we have anew obsession in this blog. First off, that is one ugly body. If that is what optimized looks like, then I want no part in optimized bodies. Can you imagine what a female body would look like? Roid rage at the clubs. Second, if Niramyth is related in any way to NiranV then you have been had. Third, GET OFF THIS TOPIC! We are sick of this topic and this guy NranV.

[Phillip Beeswing]

Yes the mesh may be lower triangles, but you are talking about nearly 4 times as many texture loading at once. That can cause more lag. I have the kit for making Tattoos for this Niramyth body and there are 12 textures to it. The skin for the body alone is 10 textures (one for each hand and God knows how many for the head.) You complain about optimization, SL's default skin is more optimized since it requires 1/4 of the textures for the body.

[Phillip Beeswing]

And they use onion layers for tatoo/body hair. The included clothing layers use the same system template as every other body.

[Anonymous]

Oh yeah NiranV, the same dude who tells creators that they should "die a painful death" for making unoptimized models.

[Luther Weymann]

@ Jackie Blue and @Jacques Mesrine
There is almost nothing about my Aesthetic body and head, either my Enzo or Smith that people think is Aesthetic. I'm lean, custom skinned, custom faced, heavily tweaked and professionally dressed. I get IM's from men wearing the Aesthetic body asking me what body and head I am wearing. It just takes some market shopping, a lot of tweaking and thinking about it and you can end up completely unique.

[NiranV]

Amazing how some people here are completely oblivious to the utter truth.

@Jorge

No. I'm a furry i have nothing to do with human avatars at all, infact i hate human avatars. Me saying that this is a decently optimized body comes close to a cataclysmic world ending event. It's "the stars align" rare.

@Elisha

Why are you even wasting your time commenting here if you are so completely ignorant to any news be it good or bad. I'm trying to wake people up so we all can have a possibly better running Second Life, i don't understand why you would want to sabotage it like that, you are sabotaging SL, you are sabotaging yourself.

@TDGunner

Are you mentally challenged? Is your brain capacity really so low that you can't take this picture as template, example and use it to understand that other bodies can be optimized without looking bad? Just because this body looks like a fucking terminator body (and yes i don't like terminator bodies either) doesn't mean it can't look normal, it's just a goddamn fucking example, infact a normal shape body could be even more optimized because it doesn't need all these super abs. Some people really shouldn't be allowed to be on the internet, you are one of those.

----

@Phillip

A normal high quality texture usage woul be 3 diffuse (lower body, upper body, extras (head, neck, eyes, tongue, hands possibly) + 3 specular and 3 normal maps, using 1024x1024 (4mb texture memory) for all of them would mean we'd end up with around 36mb texture memory, that is extremely low and absolutely fine. Yes it could be less since we're not counting clothes yet but its a decently low start, the specular map could possibly be reduced to 512x512 without any quality loss, this alone would save us easily 9mb total. Also note that textures are easier to handle for the Viewer than millions of polygons that need transformation, deform, shadow calculation and so on, i'd rather take a bit texture usage than half a million polygons more.

[Elix]

Imagine being a selfish prick and trying promote the million vertex mesh that not optimized at all and making the region lagging, maybe it's not wrong if i just hide others avatar for making my viewer laggy. I still blaming lindeb lab for not limiting the amount of vertex you can upload on.

[Dr Shloo]

@ Jackie

Spot on comment, the point made on "remaining residents to want something more than a pile of their own feces to play in." is what is happening now. There are some really creative people being lost in the void over what is limited thinking fashionista endorsed social products, purchased by the brainwashed vain. Only to end up as SLBarbie, standing on their platforms all day or haunting photograph sims and taking high rez photos of themselves.
The SL Fashionistas have always been the worst offenders in catering to self beauty first and screw all around you attitude, from ultra-bright facelights to resource hogging polygon shoes ,we had it all.

But to boil it down, those "influencers" have as much interest in the technical aspects of what they blog, as one who would happily endorse a shoe made in some god forsaken country utilising child labor. They don't think and no intentions of thinking. It is basic infrastructure, you clog up the grid then people can't enjoy it, people leave and you lose money.

The BOM craze is nice on paper, but it will not work unless the Lab do something constructive to negate the damage of these resource heavy items and force those creators amend their high polygon monstrosities, ideally as free updates to more environmentally friendly versions. This is because running a BOM body will be akin to sitting in a tiny electric car in a traffic jam, surrounded by smog inducing trucks in the middle of Chernobyl during the accident.

[TDGunner]

@NiranV seems you are unhinged, Nir. Such a potty mouth: shame. But carry on with your crusade. Don Quixote went cuckoo on his quest too. Maybe you'll be famous too someday.

Oh and are you in anyway shape or form related to Niranyth?