Alongside the release of the Beta of “Viewer 3.0“, Linden Lab have confirmed that the following main grid regions are now all mesh-enabled:
All regions assigned to the Secondlife RC Mesh channel (presumably those sim that have, to date, been a part of the Mesh/Live Volunteer programme
All regions on the Magnum RC channel.
So, if you’re on the Magnum RC channel, want to play with mesh but haven’t been able to – now you can, subject to meeting the upload requirements (having Payment Information On File and completing the upload status tutorial/questionnaire) and possibly the OK from your sim owner.
The “Viewer 3.0.0” Beta candidate with mesh support can be downloaded here.
Charlie Linden reports there are currently 100 mesh-enabled sims on the main Grid – but LL wants to treble that number. In an e-mail posted to the the opensource dev group by Oz Linden, Charlie states:
We’re at about 100 regions right now – but we want to be at 300+ by the end of the week.
Now we want to accelerate the process, and to do that, we need more volunteers. If you have a region, or know a resident who has one, the mesh team would love for you to volunteer it to run mesh.
Those interested in joining the initial roll-out should go to the Mesh/Live Volunteers wiki page to find out more – including risks and limitations (programme is only open to private sim owners, Mainland sims cannot participate, for example).
For those wishing to see what mesh is like for themselves, there are a series of mesh-enabled sandboxes located around Mesh Sandbox 0 (Surl). However:
Alternatively you can visit Morbidette, a private sim that is mesh-enabled, but does not require you join the Volunteer Group – you will, however still need a mesh-enabled Viewer.
With thanks to Opensource Obscure for the info on the call for additional volunteers & info on Morbidette.
But what exactly does it all mean for those of us who have only a passing interest in such things? What will be the impact on the consumers among us rather than the content creators? What are we going to be seeing, what do we need to be aware of?
There are a lot of very basic questions such as these that are being asked – some of which are, in fairness, addressed in the SL mesh wiki pages (albeit with a lot of techspeak) – so I thought I’d try to put together a very simple outline of some of the key aspects to it all.
Note that this is not in any way a technical discourse on mesh and its pros and cons or how to create and upload mesh objects – articles penned by others far more competent than I are available in a number of blogs. Nor is it meant to be an exhaustive overview of mesh. It is simply a primer on the subject from the point-of-view of the consumer rather than the creator, and a look at what some of the fuss (good and bad) is about.
What is mesh?
A mesh – or rather a polygon mesh – is a means of generating 3D computer graphics. Polygon meshes come in a variety of forms, and can be created using a range of software applications. Second Life actually already uses meshes to some degree: avatars, for example are basic mesh objects. “Mesh” within Second life therefore really refers to the ability for users to create polygon mesh objects using suitable 3D rendering tools and then import them into Second Life for general use.
Why have mesh?
Second Life has often been critiqued for it’s somewhat primitive look: the in-world tools and shapes can be very limiting when it comes to trying to replicate more organic, natural, and real-world shapes. The use of mesh should allow content creators and Second Life users to import far more realistic-looking objects and items, overcoming this perceived limitation.
Multi-face rigged avatar mesh textured in SL (with thanks to LL)
Three types of mesh can be imported into Second Life:
A simple mesh is a mesh with a single face. It can have a single colour and texture
A multi-face mesh is a mesh that can have multiple colours and textures
A rigged mesh is a mesh that conforms to your joints and motions. This means that you can wear a rigged model that changes the length and orientation of your avatar’s limbs and animates accordingly.
Note: it is possible for a mesh object to be a combination of these types; it can, for example be a multi-face rigged mesh, like “Seymour” in the image above. Meshes can also be textured prior to upload, as a part of the creation process, or once in-world.
Mesh objects for use in SL can be created in any 3D modelling tool that support the use of Collada 1.4 .DAE files for export. Such tools include high-end applications such as Autodesk Maya ($3,000+) through to the free tools like Blender and Google’s Sketchup. Linden Lab maintain a list of suitable applications on their wiki pages.
Common terms associated with mesh
Those familiar with building in SL may find it easier to consider mesh in the following ways:
Mesh – A collection of triangles with a single transformation matrix, roughly analogous to a “Prim” in SL (although not necessarily the equivalent of a prim – see PE, below).
Submesh – A subset of a mesh, equivalent to a face/side on a normal prim.
Model – A mesh or collection of meshes, equivalent to a coalesced (or linked) prim object.
PE – Prim Equivalence (now Land Impact)
Prim Equivalence (or to give it the official title: Prim Equivalent Weight) – abbreviated to PE, is one of the most important concepts for the “casual” mesh user / consumer, as well as a vital consideration for mesh creators. It has also been the subject of much controversy even before mesh has been launched on the Main grid. So with these points in mind, excuse me if I go on about it at some length.
Basically, PE is a means of trying to ensure that mesh objects and traditional prim objects receive fair shares of Viewer and server resources. Perhaps the easiest way to understand PE is to think of it as the number of prims that would be required to achieve the same level of detail, were they to be used instead of the mesh object.
PE itself is arrived at by taking the highest result from three performance weighting calculations made at the time a mesh is uploaded to Second Life. These are:
The server weight – (also referred to as the simulation weight in the wiki) the impact an object has on the server-side resources needed to manage it.
The streaming weight – essentially the bandwidth required for an object to be downloaded to your Viewer and rendered. Basically, the more complex the object = the higher the streaming weight
The physics weight – possibly the hardest to grasp, refer to the complexity of an object’s physics model. (This is also where Viewer developers have issues with coding their Viewers to enable mesh uploads, as I’ve reported on previously, as the code used by LL to calculate the physics weight utilises the Havok physics engine, which is not open-source. Therefore TPV developers need to find a means of calculating the physics weight either by using a suitable open-source physics engine, or by obtaining a Havok license.)
These weightings are calculated based on the complexity of the mesh itself and how well it has been defined and optimised during the creation process; they can also (in the case of the streaming and physics weights) be adjusted during the upload process. Get everything right, and a mesh object should have a manageable PE value. Get anything wrong, and one can end up with a horribly-massive PE count.
And even when it is done right, it is possible for an object to still end up with a PE count in the high hundreds, or for a mesh object to come off less favourably than it’s prim / sculptie equivalent (take a mesh tree with a PE of 9 or 10; are you more likely to buy that, or a sculptie tree that is just 1 or 2 prims, even if it is of a potentially lower visual quality?).
The PE for a mesh object can be seen using the Build menu of any mesh-capable Viewer, as shown below.
(model originally created for mesh upload testing by Jennifur Vultee)
Linden Lab have issued a further mesh update, detailing the Mesh Upload status page is now available on Main grid user dashboards.
As I reported a week ago, the new status page can be located by logging-in to your dashboard at www.secondlife.com. When your dashboard is displayed, click on ACCOUNT in the menu at the top left and then Mesh Upload Status.
Back at the start of June, we learned that the ability to upload Mesh to SL is to be gated. You can currently take a peek at how this works by going to your Beta (aditi) Gridstatus page.
Click on the right-pointing arrow next to Account to display your account options, then click on MESH UPLOAD STATUS (located between SCRIPTED AGENT STATUS and CHANGE PASSWORD, as circled below).
Mesh Upload Status page
To qualify for Mesh uploads, you must provide payment information to Linden Lab, and complete a Mesh Intellectual Property Right tutorial / questionnaire, which comprises a series of multiple-choice questions, as shown below.
Questionnaire
The questionnaire is not mind-bogglingly difficult – and it shouldn’t be, the idea is to make people aware of what will not be tolerated and can lead to their ability to upload meshes being revoked; not to try and catch them out before they even get started. As such, it is possible to go back a step should you get any question wrong and then take the question again.
Completing the questionnaire results in you being informed that you are now cleared to upload meshes, and provides a link to some additional information related to trademarks and copyright under US law. I was actually surprised that there are (currently, at least) no links to Linden Lab’s own policies around mesh and IP.
You won’t currently see the option if you are using your main Grid dashboard page (at https://secondlife.com/my/).
It is possible what completing the questionnaire at this point in time may only apply to the Beta grid – you might have to complete the questionnaire again once the link is available from main Grid dashboard pages.
“In order to prevent usage of intellectual property with the mesh upload tool, prior to uploading a mesh with a Mesh enabled viewer, 2 checks will occur before the user will be allowed to upload. The first check will be to verify payment information is on file and the second is a chance to educate the user with a short tutorial. After the user completes the tutorial, they will be enabled to upload content.
“A flag will be added to the CSR tool which will allow supoort [sic] to enable and if approriate disable the ability to upload mesh. The viewer will use the user’s enable mesh flag to activate the upload mesh capability. If it is disabled, a message will appear and a link to the secondlife.com link for the tutorial. The scope of this testing is to confirm expected results for this setting on Mesh and non Mesh viewers as well as test the tutorial and ensure it enables mesh ability accordingly.”
Once the criteria of having PIOF and going through the tutorial have been met, people will essentially be “licensed” to upload mesh creations. However, like any license, the ability to upload mesh can be revoked:
“If Lab determines user is in violation of IP mesh upload terms, user can be indefinitely flagged as not mesh enabled regardless of how many times they continue to complete the tutorial.”
Clearly this is intended to help deal with matters relating to IP and copyright violations, DMCA claims and suchlike, all vital to protect the authors of mesh files and content in the event of theft. Let’s face it, the whole issue of IP and copyrights are convoluted when it comes to mesh; therefore caution is required.
Take a look at the picture on the left. It’s a mesh model of Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous Kaufman house, “Fallingwater”. It’s available on a website for $75.00USD. It can apparently be purchased legally.
But who actually owns the copyright? The website? The creator? Or the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation?
The question is important because the FLW Foundation is jealously guarding anything and everything it considers to be its intellectual property. Just last year, after cooperating with it, they issued cease and desist letters against the Frank Lloyd Wright Museum in Second Life, forcing it to close its doors. As such, who is to say that even a product like this, brought in good faith, will not land someone wishing to upload it to SL up in a world of hurt? And the FLW Foundation isn’t alone in guarding its property.
Right now, mesh is the elephant in the room; hard to ignore, but not the easiest thing to deal with. The risk of copyright violations, claims of illegal usage, the potential involvement of legal teams from major organisations is a risk; just a glance at all the Star Wars, Star TreK, DC Comics and other meshes available off the web has to give rise to the question, “Yes, but how much of it is actually licensed? Ergo, Linden Lab need to take steps to protect themselves against major upsets and openly discouraging people from knowingly uploading content they shouldn’t be bringing in-world – and making the accounts they use to upload said content personally linked to those using them is certainly one way of going about it.
But it also means that those creators who would stick to only uploading their own creations but who have preferred not to / been unable to give PIOF are going to find themselves ostracised, and this could well result in the new requirement being subject to upset and consternation.
Gating uploads also has a secondary potential benefit: mesh is both an unknown quantity and a complex subject. While it has been under extensive testing on the beta grid, its still not entirely clear as to what impact it might have on the main grid – and there is a risk that poorly-developed meshes could do more harm than good when it comes to sim performance. Ergo, providing a means of blocking ill-developed models from being imported until such time as the creator can improve their technique and keep within whatever parameters are required without having to block their account in its entirety would also seem to be a wise step to take.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 