Friday, August 26, 2011

Meshing Around in Second Life

The Black Mirror  (general)

Ah yes it's a typical day in the neighbourhood.  You know something is announced and then there's a scramble to see if the announcement applies to everybody.  I refer to the mesh rollout and the 64m prim limit that arrived this week on the grid.

I made my first 64m prim and was actually grinning like the idiot I am - it was cool.  No weirdly phantom-scripted object to achieve a back door result, just a plywood box and it was a thing of beauty.

I'm going to suggest that we refer to large "illegal" prims as megaprims.  The 64m limit is legal now and so let's not confuse things by referring to them as "mega".  I know that sounds pedantic but there are discussions going on in various quarters relevant to the size of builds and prims and this distinction should clarify things.   The only outstanding question now is "Who can make them?".

The answer would appear to be anybody using almost any viewer but 1.23 and Firestorm, although there's some workaround for both of them that I don't understand.  I assume Firestorm will allow it in the near future.


The Black Mirror  (general)

As for mesh, well we knew you'd have to have a viewer not based on 1.23 to see mesh objects as anything other than a distorted something.  Uccie has a photo of a top and what it looks like if you don't have a mesh capable viewer.  Once mesh cities appear it could be very depressing for you.

The Destination Guide has a few mesh locations highlighted.  Unfortunately one of them is for Claudia222 Jewel's build on Mesh Mallow - she was a little surprised because, although she has built mesh objects for that creation, today it's still a sculpty installation.  However, once informed of the presence of this site in the Guide she went off to talk to the landlord about switching some mesh in.  If you decide to visit note that you sit on the fly to teleport to the cave. To assure you that there really is a mesh version I want to point you to ColeMarie Soleil's video of Claudia's sandbox work.

There was bound to be a period of confusion and adjustment, complicated by the number of viewers and development timelines out there.  It'll all work out eventually and while it does I'll just keep my eye out for new stuff appearing inworld.

Claudia gave me this gorgeous mesh dragon, one prim and 5PE's.  This little guy gives me great hope for the wonderful things I'm expecting to see arrive on our grid.  It's a new day, scrambling and glitches not withstanding.  :)

Mesh Dragon by Claudia222 Jewell

3 comments:

Scarp Godenot said...

Claudia222 Jewell is so awesome as a builder. I am somewhat intimidated by how creative she is! haha

I love her stuff and seeing the piece listed above wil be truly worth a visit. She had by far the best thing at Second Life 8th Birthday exhibition in my opinion.

Honour McMillan said...

@Scarp I am constantly in awe of her - but knowing how apparently little time it took her to figure out how to create amazing stuff in mesh is giving me hives.

Opensource Obscure said...

I think I heard a Linden employee refer to "modern", "legal" prims over 10m as large prims.

I'd find "legal" confusing as a term, as laws aren't actually involved - if anything, it would be ToS...but again, this is less a policy issue than a technical limitation. You can't technically choose to infringe on the 64m limit when creating prims.