Braydon Randt has started an interesting thread in the SL forum where those working on the beta grid are encouraged to post images of their Mesh creations.
Allowing for the limitations that will (initially?) be inherent in Mesh objects (lack of resizing for one, I understand), there are clearly some potentially exciting times ahead. I cannot get my head around Mesh at all from a technical standpoint: submeshes, vertices, triangles, prim equivalency…it genuinely goes right over my head. But I have to say that even without the ability to resize, things like vehicles and houses could make a tremendous impact on the way SL looks, especially compared with the new graphics tools.
I also confess to being a little sad, as I cannot help but feel I’ll be waving bye-bye to my own modest house building business.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 
Hey no, a decent prim build will still be appealing, get that chin up.
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TY 🙂
Prims will have their uses inside Mesh shells, I understand….but *I’d* pay good money for a good Mesh “shell”. I simply cannot get my head around what needs to be done to create Meshes. Poor me! 🙂
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Meshes are easier than sculpts, that’s lesson one, lesson two, mesh will be ripped off left, right and centre, lesson three, your prim builds will be ok, trust me on this delectable Ms Pey, I am not speaking with a forked tongue.
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/me purrs, delighting in the attention *grins*
Meshes will be as vulnerable as everything else. Sculpties may be harder to understand….that still doesn’t change the fact that 10 minutes with Blender leaves me feeling I’ve not only been hit by a bus…but that it came back for seconds…
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Prims builds have one single huge advantage. You can modify them. Buying and tweaking for personal use is a huge huge market in SL and that applies to everything from clothing through to houses. even if that tweak is just a different texture, or shuffle the odd wall about.
Personally, I wont buy anything that isn’t mod for the simple reason I cant make it look the part. Everything I sell is also mod for that same reason.
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I agree…to a point. My houses are all mod, as I like to give buyers options and the ability to tweak or add their own colour / texture scheme.
However: it’s also why I qualified my statement. Let’s face it, it is probably fair to say the majority of people buying houses, furniture and vehicles *don’t* set out to massively modify them – or even tweak a wall or texture; they buy-and-rez. Ergo, the potential market for these things, even without in-world tools to mod them is potentially there.
Everyone likes new Shiny.
Also, I’m not saying prims will go away. The two will work together; the canny builder will supply a mesh shell to a build, with a prim interior which potentially *will* allow for the kind of nips and tucks that are made to houses, as long as the two aren’t linked, then tweaking the interior would cause any snapback on the Mesh…and as long as people are careful (as they would be with a prim house), they get the best of both worlds.
As to the rest – clothing, avatar forms, personal accessories, etc., – I *absolutely* agree with you. No-one really wants an off-the-shelf, use-as-is avatar (except possibly for specialised RP), and the concept of “one size fits all” for clothing in SL is as narrow as it is in real life. People are going to want tailored clothes that fit *them*, not the other way around; just as they are going to want individual avatars. As such, these items, which *are* commonly modified throughout SL, will find it hard to gain traction unless / until in-world sizing / modding comes to SL.
Mesh won’t revolutionise SL (or indeed save it). As you and I have said, anything that draws creativity *out* of SL is reducing the potential of the platform to keep users engaged and wanting to come back – but it will change quite a bit of what goes on here.
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