SL Mesh Demos Demonstrating More Triangles Doesn't Mean More Detail

Quick: Before pressing Play on the video above, which set of SL mesh shoes and shirts are more detailed, and which have more triangles? The answer, as they say, May Just Surprise You. 

This video demo via reader Nadeja, who posted them as a response to last week's post, "Does The SL Community Care Enough To Clamor For Well-Optimized Mesh?" It's a perfect way of refuting the commonly held assumption that with mesh, more triangles means more detail. Not at all, not at all.

"Adding triangles helps only to some extent, but then it becomes wasted resources," as Nadeja writes in Comments. "Optimization means to find the right trade between visual and resources, to get the best look at the smallest cost."

Look closer at this comparison of tops:

The top on the left, she notes, has "[l]ess than half of the triangles and it even has wrinkles. You optimize for the platform you have. You did that in the 90s and early '00s as well. Better shaders would allow more for sure, but that doesn't mean that you can't do a better job... The evidence with similar models shows otherwise."

But surely this doesn't apply to full mesh avatars, some skeptics may say.  Nadeja has you covered there too - watch below:

"Here we go: full dressed human avatar with less than 80K triangles and not bald at all. The head is modifiable, so I was able strip it down to reduce the triangle count. And I'm pretty sure it's possible to do even better."

By contrast, recall that many top SL mesh avatar bodies have triangles in the mid six figures. The recent Belleza 5.2 Bento mesh body has over 1.5 MILLION triangles. Which translates to horrendous lag and poor performance in the virtual world. It's why, in recent years, that Second Life has largely become a single player experience, since it's nigh impossible for more than one avatar to display in the same space without tremendous craptastic-ness obtaining. 

All of which demonstrates that achieving technical efficiency does not require sacrificing visual quality. And that the real question is whether the community knows enough -- and cares enough -- to want both. 

Comments

[Adeon Writer]

If we had custom shaders you wouldn’t need to brute force your detail with triangles OR hide it with triangles.

[maxwell graf]

If a frog had mesh wings with lots of triangles OR image-based alpha texture flexi wings, he would no longer bump his arse on the ground when he hops.

[Alicia]

And that the real question is whether the community knows enough -- and cares enough -- to want both.

Truer words have never been more spoken than this. The problem with the SL Community is that only a rare handful will care, while the vast majority only gives a damn about looking good on their end of the screen... and they know it.

[seph]

In an ideal SL, 10 years of onion layering for stacking textures and nuanced dissecting of the body for plentiful alpha cut options wouldn't have been necessary. It was though.

The body in that video is Ruth 2.0, and is entirely reliant on BOM. That means it works fine for that pants suit which might've either provided a BOM alpha layer perfect for it or an alpha layer for hiding everything but hands and feet is common enough to come across. That body will not work for a majority of clothing sold in SL though because BOM alpha layers are not commonly provided with clothing at all.

Great effort by Nadeja to record video and taking time to show what's possible, but that's about all that's possible without opening photoshop, PSD templates with UV overlays of the body and trial and error paint and upload masks for every outfit change or tweak. No one's going to prefer that or know how to do that over the Alpha tab of a popular body HUD.

[irihapeti]

is a bit like vehicle emissions really. Without emissions standards enforced by the State then is all wild west

Linden are working on a new ARC model. Am unsure how that is going

if it was my decision I would put a maximum cap on ARC that can be worn at the same time. SL users understand caps - Land Impact, attachment points, BOM layers, etc

people do grumble about caps. Like I do about attachment points, can never have enough. But we do understand why caps are necessary

[Maya]

A simple solution would be if LL limits avatars to 300k tris max. That's still pretty high but much better than the average 1-2 million tris avatar. Maitreya, Blueberry, Catwa and co will need to learn how to optimize thier crap or they will have to close shop and make space for people who know what they do. There also needs to be a limit for textures and an option to delete scripts from no mod content.
Yes, people will get angry that thier crap isn't usable anymore and some may leave, but it will reduce lag and open the doors to new players who can't afford a new computer in the 1k+ price range every few years. It's not even the first time that almost all of our inventory got obsolete.
LL should grow some balls and just do it!

[NiranV]

@Maya

I wouldn't necessarily put a hard cap on it, it might prevent you from lets say attaching hair or a body and modifying it to optimize it. Rather a soft cap, one that if reached means you automatically get derendered for everyone around you, get warnings every time you login, possibly can't teleport around anymore or get other "downgrades"... something along those lines.

Honestly i'd really like seeing a cap being implemented, in fact i could just do that in my Viewer but without everyone else following suit i'd be shooting my own foot. A temporary, testwise implementation that will slowly be ramped up to be enforced at some point. Just out of curiousity i'd like to see which avatars would and which wouldn't make the cut.

[Maya]

@NiranV
You could still rezz your hair and bodies in a sanbox, that's how I unlink unnecessary parts from the RuthToo body(lower body when hidden by clothing for example) and my Logo Head. No rezz sandboxes can be used as a workaround for no rezz scripts. Sadly most mesh content is no mod, so there isn't much to optimize anyway.
In theory I like the idea of being automatically derendered, but as far as I can grasp the techy stuff that would happen on the viewer side? There probably will be a third party viewer with an option to render those avatars...
People will find workarounds, especially the teleport is easy to cheat. Just detach everything and reattach. Stores will give out notecards for those workarounds and nothing changes.

[Maya]

I meant no script sandbox, not no rezz. lol