![sl cache viewer mesh sl cache viewer mesh](https://docs.unity3d.com/uploads/Main/SL-CapsuleSetup.png)
In fact thats how i would describe wearing extreme poly mesh. I bought a demo shirt earlier this year and while i admired the great detail of the wrinkles in the clothe i was shocked to find it was over 200 land impact and pushed my Avatar Render Cost (ARC) so far into the red that i felt like a collapsing star.
![sl cache viewer mesh sl cache viewer mesh](https://www.shopakira.com/media/catalog/product/cache/a959eccd81542e3802347c10e1fd59ec/l/a/late-night-look-midi-rhinestone-mesh-dress_red_1_1.jpg)
What is worst is that some creators flat out ignore the reasoning behind material mapping and still import huge detailed mesh at terrifying poly counts. Unfortunately many users do not see the benefits because their computers don’t switch advanced lighting on. The gaming industry has known for decades the trick of using material mapping to give fake 3D details to mesh models and so it was very exciting to finally get the feature in Second Life. Every wrinkle on a piece of clothing, every marble relief on a wall carefully crafted by 1000’s of polygons. One of the reasons Materials Mapping was so welcomed was because creators had got to a stage where they were packing more detail onto a mesh than ever before. Its another case of sacrificing performance for land impact gain. They do in fact use a lot more resources than 1 prim, it’s just not telling you that because its on the old inaccurate prim calculation system. Ok so there are ‘some’ instances where sculpts rule, such as region surrounding landscapes but most cases creators use them because they register as a single prim. If you have the skills to make a sculpt, then you have the skills to make a mesh instead. To me their is NO excuse for any more sculpts to be made EVER. They lie about their massive resource eating, they look ugly, take for ever to load and spend most of their time as giant blobs. Some people like Sculpts but i personally hate them with a passion. This sacrifice of performance for land impact gain is a creators biggest sin.
![sl cache viewer mesh sl cache viewer mesh](https://zolucky.com/image_cache/resize/670x890/image/catalog/product/2021-11-21/06a7553a5f3faf216a4c12695bee0b3f.png)
The second is some creators purposely create stuff with REALLY low LOD import settings to save land impact then expect people to up their RenderVolumeLOD debug settings to see their creations properly. The first is that some have their RenderVolumeLOD set to 4.0 or above and build optimised creations at this setting not realising that any new person coming into Second Life will not see their creations as intended. There are two naughty things some creators do with RenderVolumeLOD. RenderVolumeLOD debug setting decides how far away from an object you should be before it starts to lower detail of an object.
![sl cache viewer mesh sl cache viewer mesh](https://64.media.tumblr.com/21175561afe89e583b167b6b4e980a83/8ab036284e5dea0f-c4/s540x810/a0806f11d6f9a0dc8eb9a3feb801001181c89d61.png)
The ability to set limitations for your creations is hard to do if you are unaware of how stuff works under the SL hood, and sometimes i see creators building in ways that they think is prim saving but in fact could be making performance worst.Ī few years ago Linden Lab started being more aggressive on the Level Of Detail settings. Because there are not limitations, you could create something that rivals stuff on a PS4, but that would only nuke performance on the Second Life Platform. When creating in Second Life i always try to balance what i want to achieve with the limitations i set myself on the Second Life platform.