Concerns over a wave of content creators arriving in virtual worlds with a bag of mesh objects created in programs like the (free) Blender or the (incredibly expensive) Maya seems to cause jitters amongst the current content creators who have created businesses within Second Life.
We discussed this a bit on today’s Metanomics (video and transcript will be up tomorrow) and I concluded by saying that while the ability to IMPORT objects (including content that exists elsewhere) might seem like the main shift in dynamic, I actually think it’s what Second Life will EXPORT that has the potentially deeper value for the economy.
With the launch of “mesh import” into Second Life seemingly imminent (so imminent that they jumped the gun on lifting the NDA for those testing the technology, before capping it – although what a difference 5 minutes can make to our knowledge of what’s going on) there are valid concerns for what this might do to the virtual goods economy.
A few of the likely implications:
Shifting Markets
- Not unlike the introduction of sculptys, (a variation of mesh objects created using external tools to form ‘sculpt-like’ prims), mesh will widen rather than replace the content creation tool kit. As this happens, new best practices and standards will emerge. With the advent of sculptys, to use a simple example, we saw the addition of collars, cuffs and ‘rolls’ to avatar clothing.
- This will lead to entire segments of the virtual goods economy change. I think of it like a store needing to changes its stock: the hot outfit of yesteryear doesn’t sell this year. For a while, it seemed like everyone in Second Life was wearing baggy pants with incredible sags and rolls in the legs. Or think of Nekos – they’re still everywhere, but with any new tool we’ll see new trends – and I expect all sorts of aliens, dragons, and other attachments and protrusions on tomorrow’s fashionable avatar.
- Speaking of attachments, I’ll leave speculation about the adult-oriented industry to others. But I’d expect a new line of, um, richly rendered experiences.
- In particular, I’d expect to see the building/prefab market overturned. While things like guns or chairs need to be combined with complex scripts to do anything more than look good, buildings don’t need that much additional effort to add an out-of-the-box security system, doors and a few others bells and whistles. The external content market (on sites like Renderosity, for example) includes a lot of castles, um, moats, and other environments. Especially during the initial wave following the introduction of mesh, I’d expect to see these kinds of things popping up all over the Grid. Worn or collapsing walls, facades with more extrusions and edging (and fewer prims) and other ‘built environments’ will probably be some of the first things people gravitate towards.
New Innovations
- But there are some things that aren’t so easily ‘importable’. One of the “leaks” about mesh is that it will also allow the creation of avatars in external programs that can then be imported. Right now, custom avatars are handled with non-flexible attachments and by making the ‘base’ avatar invisible. While it’s a lot of speculation, it sounds as if you’ll be able to model and animate avatars using external tools which opens up an even richer range of avatar types and expression.
- There is also an implication for clothing. Instead of clothing being primarily ‘painted’ on an avatar and then supplemented with prims and attachments, it sounds as thought we’ll see things like flowing cloaks, capes, dresses and other forms of dress. What’s interesting about this is that although it will require that Second Life fashion designers get used to a new set of tools, it seems to me that only those with a familiarity with Second Life itself will really be able to get it to “work”. I can’t help wondering whether some dress that you can buy that was made in 3DAZ will be easily adapted to an avatar in SL, which has a different ‘skeleton’ and joints, but I’m not entirely sure. Therefore fashion, always competitive, will still be the domain of people who understand how avatars move, are animated, and dress in the virtual world.
Painterly terrains (hey, I’m into DRD, what can I say)
- Terraforming and landscaping will also undergo an overhaul. Based on guesses and anecdotal comments, there will be no particular limit to mesh objects. There will be limits, but it sounds like those limits might be based on the number of polygons in your object which will apply to your prim usage (land limits). Based on this, you’d theoretically be able to create a full island replete with tunnels, mountain ranges, fields and furrows – and to then finely texture it. Currently, you are limited to four textures for your region’s “ground” which are then tiled and blended according to a sort of automated formula. Creating the “ground” for regions will become a big new business on its own assuming mesh is supported the way we’re told and assuming the collision system works well and we don’t have avatars sinking into the sand (like they did with sculptys for a long time).
- If this is true, the other major innovation is that mesh is actually opening the door to megaprims. Currently, there is a size limit to an individual prim in Second Life. Mesh will remove this limit (and smartly, I might add – by having to rez 4 cubes to make a 40 x 40 meter platform, you’re also adding 100s of unneeded polygons to a build and thus increasing lag and “rez time”).
Mirroring the World
At a much broader level than the ‘object economy’, however, are the types of uses that this opens up which were previously difficult or impossible. Architecture or prototyping are the most obvious examples. You’d no longer need to build something once as a “sketch” in Second Life and then twice when you go to build it in a professional program like Revit. This opens the possibility that architects, engineers, product designers and others can now take the work they’re doing in 3D and easily import it into a collaborative environment for walk-throughs, team reviews, and refinement before exporting it again.
This further opens the door to procedural modeling, simulation, or extrapolation of geographical data into 3D builds.
Consider this video:
Or this:
The possibilities for creating 3D objects based on LIDAR data and then importing those objects into Second Life could mean the start of mirror environments based on highly accurate real-world data.
The ability to then script these objects opens the door to virtual world environments that feed to real-world ones and back again.
Or consider the possibility of scanning real-world objects. In this case, a 3D object being scanned and converted to a mesh object:
New Competition?
The range of tools that will be available to build content for Second Life will widen. For someone developing at home, on their own, they rarely have a chance to walk through their creations with someone else. Poser and Blender are used pretty much as they sound – to pose. To create post cards. People are creating scenes and, sometimes, movies – but they’re not usually much more than static images.
Now, they’ll have somewhere to actually PUT the things they make, walk around them, and show them to their friends.
In fact, if someone was smart, they’d create a little business around a “view in 3D now” function. Click a button in Blender, it automatically imports it (through a bot) into Second Life on a parcel of land, and either charge a few bucks to view it for an hour or two or treat is as a temporary sandbox, but pick up new tenants who want nothing more (to start) than a place to view their creations.
If you want to get your land rentals business up and running, prep yourself for running banner ads on the major 3D design Web sites. Make it dead easy. “Click here to view your 3D creations in an immersive collaborative space with your friends”. Someone who can develop a 3D model can surely figure out how to navigate their SL avatar.
But what I think is MORE interesting isn’t the people who might come IN to Second Life, but the talents and community they’ll meet, and the cross-over of skills and ideas that happens as a result. The content creators in SL have talents that you just don’t NEED if you’re working in Sketch-Up: how to advertise, use the SL Marketplace, run a community, promote, hold events, create machimima, how to work with scripters and texture artists and multi-disciplinary teams, how to handle the unique challenges of groups or parcel media, and all sorts of other skills.
Someone in SL who will need to learn a new tool is working with one hand tied behind their back until they pick it up. Someone from outside of SL trying to make a go at the in-world economy will be working with, well, dozens of hands tied behind their backs.
My suspicion is that the TRUE skill sets of Second Life would become MORE valuable: community building, marketing, and understanding the many little tricks that are unique to the platform.
Exporting Value
But what happens when the architectural model in Second Life starts to send data OUT? What happens when the robust tools WITHIN Second Life become the source of even BETTER machinima, of entire movies built because we now have access to more tools for avatar creation, more realistic environments, and more richly detailed worlds?
As realities merge and send back both data and media – whether a “build” in Second Life influencing a physical world artefact (think Brooklyn is Watching on steroids), or a machinima, I suspect that the multi-disciplinary talents that are ONLY facilitated in a rich, collaborative world will start to have a larger voice in the larger digital landscape that includes augmented reality, 3D Web sites and other macro trends.
The “walls” that Philip speaks of aren’t just about walls to usage, they’re about building a bridge across that moat so that the deep lessons and talents, the new possibilities offered in richly immersive worlds help to shape the wider digital landscape as well. Content being created in Second Life won’t just inspire those inside it, but will contribute to a wider grammar of experiences that is the new language of our lives online.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Dusan Writer, Dusan Writer and Doubledown Tandino, WildWestGames. WildWestGames said: RT @Ravelong: via @DusanWriter Mesh In, Wisdom Out: How Second Life May Inform the Next Generation of 3D Content http://bit.ly/bns7OM [...]
I will w8 and see. I am looking forward for the next step. So would your advice be, …. hold off on “the multi-pack” of prim toed shoes?” LOL
“Content being created in Second Life won’t just inspire those inside it, but will contribute to a wider grammar of experiences that is the new language of our lives online.”
….. you know … Avatar as Literacy; http://angelaathomas.com/
Why I am here… curiouser and curiouser…
sorry I missed you today, Dusan.
And then on the 7th Day, Will we rest?
mesh import does look good. can’t wait to see how it turns out.
Thank you, very inspiring. I really need to start to learn how Blender works now:) I was thinking, with all those external tools becomming more and more important, like Blender, Gimp or Audacity and on the other hand the Lindens trying to make SL easier. Maybe it would be a good idea to make a very simple Viewer with almost no building tools and advanced options and then a Developer Viewer that can be user to create stuff and that might integrate open source software like the above mentioned. I mean you don´t create websites with your internet browser as well, so why put everything in one SL Viewer?
I’ll believe it when I see it. all this hype, and we don’t have a release date. This is HUGE and they are leaving us all hanging.
SOOOOO typical of you, Dusan, that you can’t understand what this means for the soul of Second Life, which you think you know — and don’t.
You think it’s maybe a bit of a fear factor for existing prim craftsmen and unseats them or forces them to learn a new trade.
But you’re forgetting COMPLETELY the vast ranks of amateurs (like me or my tenants) who like prims because they are a) inworld b) easy to access c) easy to learn to place d) easy to make and edit at a low-level amateur level.
None of those traits seem to be available for mesh which is a) outworld on third-party programs b) inaccessible inworld d) unable to be edited inworld by amateur owners e) unable to be made by ordinary people doing just a few mods or easy objects.
It takes all the fun out of the world for tens of thousands of people, and forces them to be come drones, consumers, passive spenders of money on other people’s eye candie.
Sooooo good luck with that.
Well, prims won’t go away, Prok, so the vast rank of amateurs will still have the ability to play around with them — and, of course, sell them as usual.
One might imagine that there will be little market for prim-based content, and thus, amateur designers will face an expected loss of revenues as pros start rolling out meshed-based content. I agree. However, it’s not much different from today: professionally made content is already far better-looking than amateur content, and cheap enough to be worth the price paid for it. The difference, of course, is that pro content will become even better-looking and amateur one will not improve over what we have now: so the rift will be wider.
But it doesn’t mean that amateurs will be left out, they will continue to be able to assemble prims together and have fun doing so — and even sell them, if they’re lucky.
Mesh import seems an inevitable but worthwhile next step for SL but, in the absence of any real copyright control (or now the people to implement what little there was) this is going to be a mess to begin with – based on LL history.
Couldn’t/shouldn’t we also get a ‘Convert to Mesh’ option within the client too? Would it be that hard to implement a simple feature which took (within sensible limitations) a linkset of prims and converted them into a mesh? It would go some way to bridge the widening gulf between hobby and pro-level content and keep existing SL builders in the loop.
I read somewhere that only 3% of SL residents are creators, 10% are tinkerers and the rest are pure consumers. Certainly I get funny looks from people when I tell them I made my own skin, clothes and hair. Also the other girls look prettier than me for that very reason: they have skins, hair and clothes made by professionals. Those who want to tinker around the edges will still do it and those who want to create will be fascinated by the new tools available.
Anyways, it’s not just the ability to build prims that makes SL so entertaining: it’s the fact that it’s full of people! Opensim already has mesh and it’s cool and all but what’s the point of creating a sim if nobody ever comes to visit?
There’s also all the cool items that are done by scripting and the whole immersive *experience* of SL. It’s not just about prims/mesh. There’s music, dancing, war games, pose balls, the whole *scene* of SL etc etc.
SL is amazing and mesh won’t change that, it’ll enhance it.
Those that will lose money because they have to relearn skills: too bad luddites, get real it’s not all about you.
Personally, I can’t wait for mesh. I want it now!
Some thoughts:
1) 4 LODs and a collision mesh will potentially put off a lot of 3D modelers who are doing CG models for animation and not videogames. It’s actually a fair bit of work to do it well.
2) 4 LODs and a collision mesh will potentially limit the number of ripped 3D models being uploaded; probably depends to some degree on the state of automated polygon reduction tools and if Linden Lab’s import checker prevents the same mesh from being used more than once in the 5-mesh pack.
3) Qarl’s JIRA(?) poll wasn’t whether or not to implement mesh import but to determine which – mesh import or additional prim tools – were developed first; which got priority. Recall that the consultant who created prims for Linden Lab was fully prepared to implement much more sophisticated prim tools. Linden Lab restrained him. Consequently, I suspect we will see more robust and sophisticated prim tools in the not-too-distant future. Personally, I’d like to seem them (and mesh import) limited to verified users (and maybe a separate, controlled-access grid), but I don’t expect it.
4) The ability to manipulate imported meshes is a very real possibility. After all, it’s already done with avatars (the Ruth mesh is still the baseline, last I recall). I see no reason why LL couldn’t incorporate a method for modifying imported meshes… and I suspect they will, at some point. It might even be a viewer-based feature, so it might come from a 3rd party.
5) Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, if Linden Lab doesn’t adequately protect content, Second Life won’t be on many professionals’ list of preferred applications. They’re probably better off selling content on a 3D content sales site than having it *cough* liberated by Cory Doctorow fanbois and Pirate Bay apologists. I think there are ways to do this, but based on LL’s sad enforcement history, I’m not hopeful they’ll care enough to do something which conflicts with their arguably socialist attitudes toward (other people’s) intellectual property. I hope I’m wrong.
I believe the people at RealXTend have come up with the best solution for IP. An IP “register” where you register your object and it can be cross referenced by a query to the inventories of the avatars in SL. Linden could provide a service whereby you make a request for a “sweep” and Linden provides a list of matches or partial matches for your object.
That’s more or less the only reasonable way to do it. Trying to make SL into a walled garden will kill it and push more people to alternatives.
@bodzette:
Linden Lab has never seemed to me especially interested in an object ID system which could be used to enforce IP rights. Suggestions for something like it pre-date RealXTend.
And in case there’s some confusion, I’m not suggesting SL be turned into a walled garden. Quite the opposite. My suggestion is to create a separate grid entirely which accessed SL. SL would, as a consequence, be made even more open; free to become the mythical “3D Internet” it was once intended to be.
When the Wells Fargo fiasco (apparently) pointed the Lab in the direction of architect’ing a “grid of grids” which would allow, among other things, firewall’ed enterprise servers which could connect to the main grid, the option for them to create a new, premium grid became a real possibility. That, aside from enterprise purposes, they’ve used this new architecture only to segregate adult content seems short-sighted, imo. LL could, I believe, create an entirely separate walled garden grid for those will to pay for it (just like SL used to be) and roll out new, premium features on it before they allowed it to migrate to the main grid.
There’s nothing wrong with walled gardens. The world if full of them: from national boundaries to fences around homes to the walls that provide dwellers with privacy. There are times when it’s arguably not appropriate, but there are also times when it is. I think Linden Lab could remove some walls to the main SL grid while erecting a few others around a new grid, and in the process achieve a more balanced offering.
If you want mesh, why don´t you call for adequate in-world tools? It is clueless to think that import alone will benefit anyone but a chosen few who have the time, money, skills and related profession for learning complex pro 3D applications (which are just a BIT more complex than any pro Pro-Photoshop user might imgine). The rsults are obvious: No one but the few chosen ones will be able to sell anything (Yes, Photoshop will become obsolete with mesh attachments – pre-mappe – so forget about the SL fashion industry, folks , look for a different hobby)on quality level. This will sweep Sl from tenthousands of users who earn their monthly fee by selling their stuff for a small margin. This will sweep the malls, and when the malls from these people, and when te malls are empty there will be no more fancy clubs, fancy playgrounds and all this. And, and , and… Have you ever looked at Active Worlds? Welcome to the SL future.
The only way to avoid this upcoming disaster is adding mesh creation to in-world tools, so that people will be able to create all that fancy stuff in-world. Everybody, not onlöy the few studios and geeks who run a mega-PC with the latest and greatest 3D-Apps. And in-world creation and trade is exactly what made SL a success so far – NOT import of pre-fabricated stuff. Without it SL will die very soon.
Nothing against mesh. It´s great. But reducing creation to some off-world geeks, cracks and studios is plain idiotic.
@Vivienne:
“If you want mesh, why don´t you call for adequate in-world tools?”
I, for one, *have* called for in-world mesh tools. Years ago.
I also called for *all* content to be built using in-world tools; to strip *all* import capability; mostly as a way to stem the overwhelming tide of trademark infringement we were seeing in 2005, which potentially threatened SL’s existence. I didn’t notice anyone joining me when I suggested this isolationist-tool approach on the old forum.
The people using cracked copies of Photoshop or 3D Studio Max, or illegally uploading textures stripped from the pak files of videogames – plenty of whom profited and are *still* profiting from this practice – apparently didn’t want *their* advantage taken away.
I argued at the time that the first thing was to incorporate a raster imaging/painting tool to replace Photoshop and Gimp; make the SL clothing business level: no unfair advantages to those with the money to buy PS, with the savvy to find/install a cracked PS, or with the luxury of having the time to figure out Gimp. Can’t have that, can we?
Then I suggested a vector art tool for more efficient graphics/signage (and shader scripting, too). And then, inworld audio tools, so that music would all be created inside SL instead of uploaded in too-short clips.
I didn’t get any support. And can’t say I’m surprised.
I’m still happy going this isolationist route: clear the grid of *all* imported content – images, audio, etc – or start a new “clean”, premium grid, and let the users learn new, in-world tools for creating *all* the content. No foreign tools!
Would those “users who earn their monthly fee by selling their stuff” – plenty of whom are using cracked software or who bought legitimate licenses using money earned from using cracked software (and, yes, I do know who some of them are) – want to give up what they’ve learned to use only in-world tools? I doubt it. They’d almost certainly scream, “Unfair!” … just as they screamed, “The corporations will take over the grid!” when I argued – and won (http://blog.rebang.com/?p=344) – the case for bringing outside business into SL.
Every change means the (virtual) sky is falling, I guess.
Personally, I wish Linden Lab had let Avi Bar-Zeev develop better prim tools. As people who know me will tell you, I prefer the more production CAD-like approach to the videogame/animation mesh approach.
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“The only way to avoid this upcoming disaster is adding mesh creation to in-world tools, so that people will be able to create all that fancy stuff in-world.”
In-world mesh tools won’t change a thing, as far as I’m concerned.
Blender 3D is now more powerful a tool than my old version of Maya. And it’s free.
Blender’s interface is also sufficiently unique that I will (am) having to learn an application essentially from scratch. I have no advantage except my general knowledge of 3D, but forgive me if I don’t give up a chunk of my gray matter to my socialist competitors.
Forgive me, also, if I don’t feel sorry for people who won’t make the time to hunt for tutorials and watch some of the many YouTube videos showing how to make things in Blender. To me, that’s just not wanting to learn bad enough.
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“The rsults are obvious: No one but the few chosen ones will be able to sell anything”
Typical: mesh import hasn’t even been implemented on the grid and naysayers are claiming the results are in.
The same argument was made when sculpty’s were introduced, when voice was announced, when telehubs were mostly eliminated, when corporations were allowed into SL, and … it’s always the end of the world.
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“Nothing against mesh. It´s great. But reducing creation to some off-world geeks, cracks and studios is plain idiotic.”
Given the current system which rewards “off-world geeks” using plenty of “cracks” and which has proven to be mostly impenetrable to outside “studios”, I think it’s idiotic to repeat the hand-wringing of the past.
http://khanneasuntzu.wordpress.com/2010/07/04/not-a-bubble-but-a-tsunami-the-coming-surge-of-virtual-reality/
As far as i know LL will charge BIG time for mesh uploads, which will additionally reduce eagerness for the average citizen to even THINK of learning an additional tool (if they learned the in-world tools). See, I know what i am talking about. On my wonderful desktop resides a legal copy of C4D, which is about 5900 dollars. I CAN build stuff which is wonderful. I do not need to learn Blender, which is not a standard application for 3D, or fool around with a crippled SketchUp, which does not even optimise meshes. Yes, 3D standard tools are powerful. But i do not even think of importing any mesh, converted to collada or whatever. Why not? Because it will be a waste of time to create some stuff professionally for an overflooded market, where every 3D crack on this planet will try to sell a perdonal library of objects she or he collected over years, cause they do not sell elsewhere. Just a waste of time. And do you honestly think that someone with SketchUp will be able to compete with the real pros? Dream on.
This is not just a “change”, it is a major shift towards a content creation based on RL professionalism, and that´s a contradiction of what made SL successful.
My advice to LL:
Charge BIG time for uploads, but….
Cripple the format as you did with sculpt maps
Restrict polygons drastically
Make mesh imports non transferable and not linkable
Add adequate in-world mesh creating tools or at lest a linkset to mesh converter.
“And do you honestly think that someone with SketchUp will be able to compete with the real pros? Dream on.”
ah vivienne. you dont get it…not only compete with you. but that sketch user will end up being your boss…. and dictating the creation and your adoption of the next 4900 dollar “tool” that a yonger version of you will be buying soon…;)
C4D is 4900 eh? so very mac..lol …. anyhow it was mass dumping of 3dmax via kinetix into the 16k alias/ softimage market of the early 200s that made the mac a dead end…or ask the few remaing electric image users;)
media creation/monetization is a complex ecosystem..the irony is all the techies at places like LL and most software tools companies– Adobe/Autodesk etc that see it as very simple FOR THEM.:)
Monopolize, then monetize…. the “customers” are mearly transient enablers for that machine/system.
any artifacts they need to create/monetize are secondary to the system.
too bad most “creatives” sold themselves out as having value as compared to machines/tech… proof?.. check out the finger pointing and punditry at raphs as PO tells the News/week whats “creative”:)
Professionalism has nothing to do with a “brand” of marketed “tool”. Neither does above average creative problem solving…. but the “illusion” that it does, has been the damage done within the larger system that many many designers have adopted for themselves.
cube3, do you think the adorable avatar or any of the other stuff shown off up there as being the future of SL contenet creation were made in SketchUp, Wings 3D or any other of these little but pretty crippled free tools? Do you really think that someone can learn something more complicated and more powerful as Blender within three or four months by try and error? Dream on.
you mistake “skill” with “success” in the larger world of business and media driven markets.
There is no future of SL content…. that ship’s sailed. But in its time it made many “temporary bosses” out of 3 month old prim pushers.:)
That cycle is now constanst in tech driven markets. Sadly that is what “creative design services” has become.
No, i agree to disagree. The IS a future in SL content creation, but the platform must improve the in-world experience. Only when the platform improves as an independant platform there will be a future of SL at all. There will be no future for SL as a whole if this will not happen and we will return to stone aged off-world tools and importing stone aged standards in SL. SL will only shine as long as it sticks to and improve it´s own standards.
lol on stoopid Prok! i think you have a better grasp on SL and its greater context in the real world. this is an outstanding post and meshes will advance SL and offer more hope of SL staying around, imo
i used to do Blender for a real job and loved it. you can get so lost in creating things. good blender artists will add value to SL and help SL escape it’s cartoony look that many outsiders think of it as
at the moment, i don’t see myself doing meshes and never used Blender to make sculpties, but that does not take away from what richness these brings
there will always be a market for prims and very good use cases for them – just like we still have horses today
btw, there is an opensource program called MakeHuman that creates people for use in blender (like an opensource Poser). this may be a very good way to create avatars (rigging an armature with “bones” takes a lot of work in Blender)