Philip Rosedale confirmed at the recent Second Life Community Convention that the ability to import mesh objects (a standard format for 3D objects) into Second Life is a go, and will be rolled out in public Beta by the end of the year – bets are on a late September launch. In discussions with Philip Rosedale, I started to sense that there may be a wider expectation (by him at least) of where mesh imports could take us.
But to give a glimpse of what mesh “looks like”, here’s a little preview of what’s possible:
I’ve written at length about mesh (and have probably been writing about it since I started blogging). Most recently I wrote that some of the strategic value of mesh imports rely not on the ability to IMPORT, but rather the ability to EXPORT value:
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.
See, my theory goes something like this:
- In a world where everyone can build a model in Google Sketch-Up or, with patience, learn to build in Blender or another 3D development tool, there are still very few ways that you can actually interact with what you create in the presence of other people without highly specialized skills (building, say, a little Unity3D application).
- The ability to create content in Second Life is what defines it. While Philip might be talking about experiences as the key focus for attracting new users and sustaining the platform, there wouldn’t be any experiences at all if it wasn’t for the ability to rez a prim.
- So, with the ability to import mesh models, people will finally have a way to walk around, invite friends, and interact with their creations.
- But the tools of Second Life also allow data to flow in and out of the world. This opens up the possibility that you could import, for example, a mirror version of a physical location and then stream data out from the virtual replica to the actual space. This has all kinds of implications for augmented reality, mash-ups with mobile applications and other innovations.
- Prim-based content is not easy to link to other variations of the same objects. Let’s say you design a new pair of shoes. And let’s say you’d love to display a 3D version of those shoes on a Web site (using Papervision, Unity3D or WebGL) – it’s incredibly difficult to export the prims (which I assume, of course, you fully own and have created), optimize the resulting mesh, and then republish as an OBJ file.
- By creating an easier flow of 3D objects, I can see a time soon when you take a brief tour of a 3D build in Unity3D (with no other avatars present), view a virtual mall on a Web site with the product in 3D, and then log-in to Second Life where you interact with other avatars and can help to shape the environment.
Heritage Key is doing something similar on OpenSim.
It’s the Economy, Stupid
But there’s a challenge.
Because as much as I’m delighted by the idea of mesh, the efficiencies it will create, and the quality of content that will be the end result, I’m also highly anxious about the in-world experience and economy.
One thing to note is that mesh actually falls under the oversight of the Linden in charge of “products” – things which generate revenue for Linden Lab. This has me wondering whether the import costs for mesh, as a revenue stream to the Lab, also create a ‘trip wire’ of sorts to at least balance out the cost/value equation between mesh-based and prim-based objects.
There’s a very valid concern that the introduction of mesh will result in a flood of new content yanked from 3D repositories and that this content, because of its quality and efficiency (mesh helps to reduce lag because it reduces the number of vertices needed for a wide range of ‘builds’).
In Philip’s view, mesh will result in a “stack”, and his reasoning goes like this:
- Mesh will become a COMPONENT to “in-world” content. You can’t create a mesh object AND script it – so, let’s say you build a house in mesh, you still need to write a script for the doors and lights and you still need to add furniture and the rest of it to customize it to your tastes.
- In Philip’s view, it’s more likely that we’ll see a market for mesh sub-components, much as we see a huge market for things like sculpty pillars or staircases. The joy of creating in-world, in other words, will not be supplanted by a flood of fully-built objects, but rather new objects will be created that combine mesh, prims and scripts.
Based on my conversations with Philip, I’m of the opinion that he believes mesh will not supplant the prim-based economy, but simply add another “stack” of value on top of what already exists.
Time, of course, will tell whether that’s true.
Editable Mesh and Paintable Faces
But on one thing Philip and I agree – mesh needs to be editable.
How this happens seems like it will be a product of open source development as compared to a product feature developed by the Lab, and frankly that’s fine with me. There are already excellent examples of tools you can use to edit sculptys in world developed by Residents. Because the ability to edit mesh is something that’s a viewer-side capability than a server-side one, I don’t expect it to take long before we see the first edit tools for mesh in Second Life.
The ability to edit mesh in world would have a few benefits:
- First, it would help preserve the very unique and valuable experience of building IN-WORLD, in a collaborative environment where the results of your edits can be seen IMMEDIATELY rather than through a laborious process of tweaking, uploading and re-uploading.
- Second, this opens up the possibility that you can create a system where the edits you make in-world could be preserved in an external 3D file. With Unity3D, for example, you can link a 3DS file to a Unity file – any changes you make in 3DS are reflected in Unity. I can’t help thinking that it should be possible to edit something in-world and have that automatically update the same object as it appears in 3DS, Blender, or Sketch-Up.
But where I thought Philip had a really interesting concept was in his idea that mesh (and prims) could become paintable. Have a look at how this works in ZBrush:
Now, imagine being able to do this directly on an object INSIDE of Second Life.
Philip seems to suggest that not only is this possible (with some work) but desirable. And I can see why (although I can also see all kinds of issues around griefing and, well, grafitti but we’ll deal with that bridge when we come to it).
If we can get to a time when not only are mesh editable in world but you can paint on them as well (as in the video above), the concept of collaborative building takes on, well, a whole new dimension.
So while our initial concept of mesh is the importing of external libraries (and the chaos that could cause on the internal economy), there may just be enough in where this could take us that we see a renaissance of creativity on the platform that gave imagination its home.
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StarbaseC3 has used web based 3d, and SL based 3D together since 2006. It used other Avatar driven 3d MU world software that died over the decades of the same disease SL has, since 1996.
I dont know of any way to convert Sl prim data to another usable form. IS there a tool? All XML ive removed cannot be read by any 3d format tool i have seen.
BTW- im many ways truespace-now dead- bought ahd buried by Microsoft- offered what you speak of..
but with out a true business /economic model to its existance, other than NEAT CODE that sounds like Philips talking…. it all goes nowhere eventually…
or it allows for the 4 year myths that cults like SL are allowed to profit from.
this has nothing to do with rennasainces of creativity… and besides..one really should do some history on the whole “rennasaince thing”…
a few artists/technologits got paid by the church or armied up king… those who challenged the church/or king got jailed/killed…. 99% of everyone else was a servant farmer…lol
just like SL…? imagination its home…lol
i though that was the mac in 1989.:)
ive had mesh based models ready to go since 2003..lol by the time Ll needs them to prophetelize on, theyll be no one left to afford anything in the walled town.
sad….as others said, if only the platform could have been developed for humans sustanance… not the machines.
Now, THAT would be a tool I would be interested in.
“- By creating an easier flow of 3D objects, I can see a time soon when you take a brief tour of a 3D build in Unity3D (with no other avatars present), view a virtual mall on a Web site with the product in 3D, and then log-in to Second Life where you interact with other avatars and can help to shape the environment”
ah ->
Multiuser server solutions for Unity3D
http://www.smartfoxserver.com/products/pro.php (Client/server free 20 person license, linux/java tcp/udp
http://photon.exitgames.com/Photon Client/Server C++/C# win server/C#
udp/tcp Good freebie use license
http://www.badumna.com./ Interesting p2p model, used by some virtual
worlds already
http://mondocloud.com/ New alpha of a cloud based solution…
Komuso Tokugawa.sonicviz
Bringing the Boogie to the Bitstream
“I dont know of any way to convert Sl prim data to another usable form. IS there a tool? All XML ive removed cannot be read by any 3d format tool i have seen.”
http://liferain.com/downloads/primcomposer/
anyhow, I think for sure the first thing we’ll see is a rush to bring in mesh stuff from the likes of turbosquid, which will be disastrous, because much of it isn’t textured, or if it is, has too many textures for the likely format that’ll be implemented, as well as most of it being so massively high poly it’ll be both expensive to bring in, and “expensive” to render.
that rush will be followed by a much more refined rush of actual game content pros bringing their skill sets in to make some amazing products / items / whatever. These things will be amazingly optimized, beautifully crafted, highly polished textures, but also almost completely inflexible. You get what you buy and nothing more.
The part that will come after that will probably be the more component related stuff, like the various furniture packs where you get 30 pieces that can make up couches, chairs, beds, whatever. I think this is where meshes are going to breathe the most life into SL. Hopefully these kinds of things will come with a way to download original meshes so people can get their feet wet in 3d modelers to fine tune / customize / texture / etc., while we all “wait” for philip to push forward some kind of more dynamic in world editor.
In casual discussion I tend to be pretty critical of Philip and his return. There are some things that trouble me, his past behavior… tending to promise the sky and deliver…well… almost nothing. As well as being baffled by changes made since his return, such as an almost utter collapse of the search function, announced changes to SLX that don’t seem too favorable, and the firing of Qarl (who brought us sculpties and was working hard on meshes).
Getting that all off my chest, I will say, I still have glimmers of hope / optimism, mainly because I know the potential. Reading other streams of thought from this blog, terms like emotional bandwidth comes up… that’s something I am intimately familiar with, having almost entirely burned out that port on more than one occasion… and will likely do again and again till I run out of bandwidth. This is where that hopetimism comes from. I DO hope philip has changed, I DO hope he follows through, and I DO hope I can find a broader range of things to rant about (a hope that many who listen to me share)after all these wishes come true.
The ability to paint prims or meshes in world would be a great thing. Imagine what RL would be like if you couldn’t paint anything directly, but had to paint a square piece of paper, sticky on one side, so that when you later stretched it in bizarre ways to stick it on the object you really wanted to paint in the first place, it would look right. Would anyone paint anything?
Favoring mesh import instead of delivering mesh creation tools in-world is the most stupid and most disasterous conception LL ever caame up with.
Import will kill SL.
@Vivienne I dont agree with you. Some people are much more efficient making stuff in programs they already know. I for example have alot of meshes i already made and have, and id love to use them in SL.
im excited about the possibilities this has for the SL combat scene. Mesh will give us the ability to build items like guns,planes and tanks ect…. in one or 2 prims as opposed to 34-120 prims. We have individuals now averageing 100 prims each….. Very exciting stuff that will cut down on lag greatly which is SL’s biggest detuerent. Or construct a whole sim in under 1,000 prims, very promising stuff! I wouldnt mind an inworld build option but hey, get what you get right