Slink Mesh Bodies Are Well-Optimized for Second Life Avatars -- Here's How

Slink, a popular virtual world brand for avatar enhancements, produces what's basically the Tesla for mesh bodies in Second Life -- not just sleek and stylish, but energy efficient and good for the environment. This is because their creator, Siddean Munro, painstakingly optimizes them to have the least number of triangles without hurting visual quality.

This is an important update to a much-discussed New World Notes post from 2018, where I included Slink among the list of mesh bodies found to be poorly optimized, a key source to virtual world pollution -- i.e., lag and non-displaying avatars. Ms. Munro disputes Slink's inclusion in that post, so I will update it accordingly. And since then, in any case, she has updated her mesh bodies to be more efficient.

"I do work hard to make sure all my meshes are as optimal as they can be, use as few textures and scripts. as possible and that they are also laid out and written efficiently," she tells me. 

As evidence, she offers this image below:

"78k triangles on the full Redux (Bakes on Mesh) body bundle including 5 sets of feet, hands and toenails. The body alone (no hands and feet) is 15234."

Which is quite decent for SL! This despite the fact that she's working on top Linden Lab's default avatar, which is a hurdle to begin with:

"The classic avatar must by design multiply the body count by four because of the required applier layers," as she puts it, "but I am trying to get as many of my customers into Bakes on Mesh as I can, since that body is much more optimized.

"Even the most complex of my applier bodies, with all the layers, and wearing hands and all five (deluxe) feet come nowhere near this number! It skirts under 20k complexity. But as I said I am trying to get people out of the old applier bodies and into the new BOM bodies to try and reduce my impact."

I did say "decent for SL", because relative to avatars in AAA games, her full mesh body is still a touch on the high side, triangle-wise. However, Siddean says she is focused on optimizing them even further.

She's even taken to advising other SL creators on optimization:

"Because I've been providing a content creators kit for the last few years, I have asked people to send me examples of their work... And I have a lot of creators in my Discord channel who I try to guide into making better meshes as well building from as low poly as they are able and only adding where necessary so it's something I think about a lot."

Read more about it on Siddean's blog. And on a personal note, my profuse apologies to her for mentioning in social media that Slink is among the list of notoriously non-optimized mesh bodies. She deserves credit for creating content that aims to keep the virtual world a community that can come together -- and not so poorly optimized, it's only usable as a solo activity.

Comments

[Nodoka Hanamura]

As much as I am a fan of Hourglass, and applaud Siddean for trying to actually improve SL (to the point I'd probably suggest her for Lindenhood so she can proceed to take a atomic nuke to the big three major bodies along with the cult that seems to blindly follow TMP like cattle by creating a next-gen avatar body for SL that could probably take the deformer approach that TMP (I'll admit) was wise in doing to avoid compatibility with the big three. (Think about naming them L-Type, H-Type and F-Type, for instance, to avoid copyright.)

As someone who has loathed exclusivity for years, to the point I've made dark as hell jokes (think Always Sunny in Philidelphia) about my reactions to Maitreya Exclusivity and other detrimental actions to the userbase.

And before people whine that I'm entitled or whatever else, forward your complaints to /dev/null because I stopped giving a fuck long ago.

[Alicia]

As someone who wore Slink Physique exclusively, before I decided to leave SL, I can literally say that Siddean always strives to make her bodies more efficient. The second she brought out the Redux versions, I immediately swapped to that as I was, and still am, a firm believer in keeping my overall complexity down as the Redux BOM body (Basically, my complexity with the Redux BOM body was cut roughly in half or by nearly 2/3rds as I never peaked over 35k. I believe my lowest was around 28-30k). Even when the body/hands/feet were all separate, my complexity barely peaked over 60k (with clothing/hair/accessories).

Oh yeah, another known tidbit... I never cared if the clothing was made for Maitreya as all I had to do was make my own alpha layers.

[asd]

Let's send Maitreya's designers to an optimisation workshop, maybe they'll learn something finally? :)

[NiranV]

The body being 15k triangles is pretty good. That's really good optimized, although the hands and feets weighting in at 63k alone is quite heavy, there's still some work to do there, i'd start by not bundling hands and feet together and rather making them a "pick-one" scenario where you attach/detach only the one you like. That alone would save a tremendous amount of triangles. Further she could make use of Bento to offer the "styles" of feet as animation override, given that the styles are things like normal, standing on tip toes etc. Anything else would fall under the pick-one scenario anyway.

To summarize this, there's still a bit to go but this is definitely the right way to go and other creators like Maitreya should definitely have a look at this example how to do it.

[Alicia]

Ummm... NiranV?

Slink was the first to come out with the feet, and then around 2016, she came out with the Kitten Heel and Ballet Pointe feet. Again, Slink was the first to come out with these items. Then around 2018-2019, I believe she was the first to come out with the Petite Chest Enhancement. It wasn't until 2019 that she came out with Redux as BOM was coming out, that basically made the body/hands/feet all part of the body (ala all one piece/seamless), which gives it the same cost as Maitreya.

Now, going back to the feet, all one needs to do is use the HUD and set the feet to whatever shoe they wish to wear.

Going further, when Slink releases something revolutionary, there's hardly a sound; but when Maitreya releases similar items after the fact, then you hear the stampede. Bare in mind that both the Slink Physique and the Maitreya bodies are nearly 100% identical and go off the default LL female body. Only Slink managed to keep it as optimal as possible, and still is by not adding extra or unnecessary scripts to the best kept secret in SL.

[Sean Gorham]

Disclaimer: I'm not an SL content creator, unless you count pictures. I don't make meshes. My take is based only on my experience using mesh SL products.

The issue with multi-style feet (and multi-style hair, which is also a thing these days) is one of convenience versus performance. The problem with multiple styles of feet/hair/whatever in one attachment is the added rendering complexity. We're actually wearing multiple copies of the same attachment simultaneously just for the sake of being able to click on a hud to change the attachment's appearance at a whim.

Just because part of an attachment isn't visible doesn't mean it's not affecting your viewer's performance - and the performance of any other viewer that renders it. Separate attachments for each style is a lot easier on everybody's lag experience, and I think that was the point Niran was trying to make in their comment.

[Pulsar]

SLink Redux is also the most BOM-friendly body among the popular ones.
The multi-pose feet adds lot of triangles. Sean Gorham is right: they are several copies of them, a a pair of feet per pose.
Slink, however, also sells the single parts separately since the first versions.
The high-heel foot is 7k triangles, so adding a pair of feet only adds 14k triangles.
https://i.ibb.co/84JfYTm/slink-feet-tris.jpg

[Pulsar]

This multi-style hair has 458k triangles. And it's not even the worse around.
You can see the multiple copies.
https://i.ibb.co/8gwPbnb/stealthic-sultry-tris.jpg
To be fair, other hair of the same brand have fewer triangles, but they could be even fewer if the creator also included the single styles in the box or made the hair with the modify permission enabled, so you could separate them yourself if you wish.
Now that Firestorms allows the inspector tool for the attached items too, it's a good idea to check the demos with it, before to buy.

[Lilaskyheart Resident]

I think what Slink is doing is very honorable and every body creator should be striving to do the same! However, I do think that there are some hurdles that keep the body from taking back the market.

1. As others have mentioned, the exclusivity of many clothing items to other bodies seriously limits body choices. Of course, this is not Slink's direct issue.

2. There are a few points of the mesh (namely wrists) that I, along with others, find to be less aesthetically pleasing than other large name brands.

3. This is perhaps the biggest reason I have not switched to the body fulltime: The new Redux does not include the capabilities of an alpha hud like we've been accustomed to with applier based bodies. While I'm sure this has to do with making the body more optimized, it SERIOUSLY limits the compatibility between the bodies and clothing that has been made recently that has no system alpha layers with it. Sure, one can make their own alpha layers, but for many SL users (myself included) that is too hard/complicated/time-consuming to make for all garments in one's inventory.

I absolutely applaud the work being done and I will wait with bated breath for new updates and news on their bodies, but I do not see myself and many others switching full time until these few issues are fully addressed.

[Lysana McMillan]

Lila - The Redux body having an alpha HUD would be a significant rollback in its quality and technology as well as a potential jack-up to its ARC (not to mention its script load). Also, you don't have to make layers for everything in your inventory. First, SLink provides a lot of alphas by the simple click of a button on the Redux HUD. Second, there are even more at the store for free. Thirdly, there are several large packages of alpha layers on Marketplace for free or very cheap.

As for how complicated it is to make an alpha, I suspect you've never tried. Siddean has a video on how to do it. It is not that hard. And it's rare you'd need to, since all of the alphas I mention above cover easily 90% of all anyone would need alpha layers for. I'm a total clothes horse. I've made eight alphas so far, and two were for making items not made for Physique Original to work on said body. The rest I achieved with what I picked up from SLink and Marketplace.

If you need a HUD to make you feel better about a body, you're clinging to older ways. But SLink does have its Classic body, which lets you use appliers and an alpha HUD if you must. The hybrid approach Onyx LaShelle produced would fail if not for her support structure. Which is having its own issues.

I think maybe some of the self-styled fashionistas need to update their knowledge and reality-check their assumptions. Siddean Munro has been one of SL's top designers for well over a decade. The only mesh body older than hers was hounded off the grid with DMCA filings. And she created the mesh body part market. Insisting she conform to half-arsed methods used by her followers is ridiculous.

[Pulsar]

The lack of alpha layers is a problem indeed. Adding alpha layers in the shopping bag used the be the norm, that's how it should work. Who was in SL years ago and kept the old mesh clothes can compensate better. At least someone is doing that again now. That's responsibility of who sell clothes, but of course if buyers appreciate it, there would be more incentive. But not only. Who actually creates mesh clothes (not template users) has more creative freedom with alpha layers: you don't have to follow the limited set of alpha cuts that each body has, but you are free to literally paint your alpha map as you want.
BOM has become popular for skins, tattos, makeups etc though, and that already makes the onion mesh layer (again multiple copies of a body) less relevant.

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[Luciérnaga Second Life]

Numbers taken in Firestorm Viewer. System head and nothing else.

*System Classic Body:
2k complexity
1 rank
VisTris 0.00
EstMaxTris 0.00
1 m2

*Ariadna Mesh Body, from Kalhene:
13700 complexity
1 rank
VisTris 63.75k
EstMaxTris 53.56k
22 m2

*LucyBody
7102 complexity
1 rank
VisTris 182.16k
EstMaxTris 167.39k
236 m2

*eBody
11k Complexity
1 rank
VisTris 93.75k
EstMaxTris 84.17k
168 m2

*Maitreya
6900 Complexity, with add-on: 8900 Complexity
1 rank
VisTris 176.30k, with add-on: 216.94k
EstMaxTris 152.02k, with add-on: 182.63k
62 m2, with add-on: 72 m2

*Slink Hourglass
19600 Complexity
1 rank
VisTris 319.57k
EstMaxTris 291.18k
175 m2

Anybody can measure these numbers like I did.