Black Dragon Creator Praises Optimization of Slink Mesh Bodies -- And Challenges Creators Like Maitreya to Follow Slink's Example

Black Dragon viewer creator NiranV, who has been ranting about the utter environmental disaster that most SL mesh bodies are, has rare words of praise (along with some advice) for the Slink mesh bodies created by Siddean Munro:

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 responds by adding more background on Slink feet -- and problems Slink faces when trying to compete against market leader (and leader in poor optimization) Maitreya:

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.

I'm afraid this is one of those free rider problems which market competition can't solve, and Linden Lab should step in with some sticks and carrots. Meantime, one thing the market (i.e. you, dear SL shopper) can do is buy Slink.

Comments

[Zoe]

I really think NiranV should just create hios own human body rather than critisizing other creators work, put up or shut up NiranV! I think most of us are tired of hearing you moan cuz your viewer struggles with basic sl lol

[Kirsten]

Here's the thing: people like Niran, who care about performance, are a tiny minority in SL. Most people (and more importantly most L$-spending consumers) want their stuff to a) look as good as as possible and b) be as easy to use as possible (so no separate hand and feet attachments). That's why even though Siddean's had some great ideas over the years Slink has fallen so far behind in usage -- their stuff is clunky AF and despite Niran's assertion otherwise Physique does not look remotely as good as Lara.

Given all the content that's already out there I don't think there's much the Lab can realistically do to change any of this at this point. I'm sure they wish they set limits in the first place, like they did with Sansar, but imposing new limits now, when people are used to heads and bodies that look as good as they do, would lead to a massive uproar from both content creators and regular SL users and negatively affect LL's bottom line.

[Alicia]

Kirsten, the Slink Redux Bodies have had the hands and feet attached to the body since BOM was released, which makes it entirely one whole piece. Second, Siddean streamlined it specifically not to need alpha cuts anymore, thus, making her bodies true BOM bodies. In short, not only did she literally cut down on triangles, but also made, quite possibly, the most optimal bodies in SL.

Just because something looks good doesn't mean that it's optimal. Case in point, the Belleza, Maitreya and Legacy bodies.

Now, as to your last sentence, and I'll keep this in bold so that everyone understands this point. It was because of the fact that Linden Lab never set limits to mesh that created this issue in the first place. The users, ultimately, were the ones who kept pressuring creators to make it look good, so the creators obliged and kept creating high quality, yet massively high tris mesh that ended up turning Second Life into nothing more than a miniaturized version of NiranV's Black Dragon viewer.

[asd]

Slink, you deserve much more popularity amongst SLers than Maitreya, TMP (or whatever they call them now) snobbish creators. You really have put time, thought into your product and it shows! Thank you so much for that!

[Fionalein]

Slink might be good, but there sadly is not so much clothing for it...

Of course that's one of those dimensions of the problem this grumpy furry nudist is unaware about...

[Pulsar]

I agree with Alicia's comment here.

And since there is always someone who thinks only a minority cares for the performance, in fact almost everyone complains for the "lag", so, yeah, performances. But you think it's Linden Lab and not your 300 scripts, nor your million triangles multiplied by 20 avatars, on an old engine conceived about 20 years ago, that can't even take advantage of modern hardware. And that content would be terrible on modern games anyway.
The complexity formula needs improvement, but it killed no creator.
Some people is afraid to lose their pretty body parts, but in fact, when the jelly dolls were introduced, most creators just adapted, the best ones offered updates for their previous products. And you don't need a dozen of 1024x1024 textures per earring, as well as 100k triangles anyway: it's just wasted resources that improve nothing.

[NiranV]

@Zoe

If i could, i would. Trust me, i'm that kind of person who does something just for the sake of ruining their shit if their services are bad. When i heard about Poser HUDs being a thing i dropped everything to make the Poser happen immediately. I absolutely hate seeing people getting ripped off (i consider paying thousands of L$ for a HUD that poses you a rip off). As of right now i'm just a Viewer developer. My knowledge of atanomy and skills in Blender are far not enough to go beyond the occasional body edits i do for SL or other things. Making a human body (or any body for that matter) requires a good knowledge of both the program and body as well as some mediocre talented hands to get the job done. If i ever were to make a human body (which i highly doubt since i have little interest in human bodies to begin with) i'd make sure to fix all the issues i'm complaining about constantly. Starting with full mod permissions, freely accessible devkit (without having to sell your soul) and much lower price, much higher optimization and everything very lightly scripted (if at all).

@Kirsten

Looking good wasn't aimed at the body directly but rather at the overall package as a whole, i can't speak of the pricing as i don't know how much they cost but with the given information it was looking good.

@Fionalein

I'm grumpy because people like you make me. I run around mostly naked because there is little point in adding clothing on a dragon that has giant crystals protruding out of its head, neck, back and tail. I hate clipping and i hate outfits that simply don't fit the avatar even more, now try to add anything outside of piercings, arm/legwarmers and glasses to it that doesn't clip into the crystals. Regardless of whether i run around naked or not though is that popularity is an issue that is caused by users and partly by the creators. And clothing availability is based on popularity and availability of the devkit. If no one uses it, no one's gonna make stuff for it. If its hard or impossible to get the devkit for it, no one will make stuff for it. Bringing me back to the core issue, the user. If you don't use something, its not gonna get popular, if its not getting popular its not going to get clothing. So either you make your stuff compatible with a common system or you'll have to do a lot of advertisement and a really good reason for people to switch. Seeing as people see more polygons as undeniably better at all times, optimizing your content would mean people will scream at you because their precious polygons are gone which must mean it looks worse, even if you cant see the difference. A lot of the issues come from the mindset of customers. In a user-created world, issues almost always fall back to the users themselves, because everything is created by them.