Viewers for Mesh Import in OpenSim
May 11, 2011UPDATE 8-Sep-2011: Sadly Kirstens Viewer is no longer being developed (further information on their website).
Viewer Tests with OpenSim 0.7.1 and Diva r15402-b
The latest release of OpenSim 0.7.1 and Diva Distro r15402-b is currently keeping us busy.
The documentation for both is rather good – but since it’s a LOT of information to digest, we’re jotting down notes of our own experience as we work through it. Initial configuration was rather smooth. We chose to do a new install rather than over-write our existing set-up – for now.
Naturally, for us, media and 3D building improvements are our priorities, so Mesh and Media On A Prim were the first things tested. This put us bang up against the classic hurdles of which Viewers are going to behave reliably.
| Hippo 0.6.3 (LL 1.23.5) Apr 30 2010 22:08:16, Imprudence 1.4.0 (2011.04.02) and Phoenix 1.5.2 (2011.04.18), of course, won’t show mesh or media; media is merely a blank prim and mesh just shows prim shapes. |  |
| The SL Viewer 2 version 2.6.3 (2011.04.22) does support media on a prim, but there is no mesh support yet and we saw the same laggy mush with textures. |  |
| Mesh can be introduced into OpenSim 0.7.1 using the Second Life Mesh Project Viewer 2.4.0 (2010.11.23). This has no problems with mesh upload and viewing. However in OpenSim, unlike in SL, it imports 2 items – a mesh texture and an object – and I was only getting the mesh. This actually isn’t a problem as it’s just applied to a prim the same way a sculpt is. As a side note, Media has always been laggy when loading textures. This picture clearly shows the mushiness. |  |
| Using the Kokua Viewer 0.1.0 ( 2011.05.03), we were able to apply Media On A Prim [MOAP] just as we do in SL, but there was no mesh upload option and no mesh viewable. |  |
| The Phoenix Firestorm Viewer 2.4.2 (2011.03.21) gave a runtime error when trying to get into OpenSim on a PC. With the Mac version of Firestorm we got into OpenSim, and there was media but alas, no mesh. Firestorm is still a preview release version; we’ll be looking forward to seeing a full release in the near future. |  |
| In Kirsten’s Viewer S21(7)-RC4a (7) May 6 2011, both media and mesh work! Note: Importing mesh is a bit different in that it loads straight onto the ground rather than into inventory like LL’s Mesh Viewer. |  |
So – we went through a heck of a lot of faff just to get to where we could begin to explore the new features in OpenSim 0.7.1. Perhaps in posting this we can save others the headaches. Perhaps we’ve missed something… What Viewer are you using to test mesh in OpenSim?
While I agree that MESH is a great thing and needed …
All these v2 viewers seem to suffer from a basic flaw, the map does not work ….
Seems to me that that would be a priority …
No map, no travel … unless you have LM’s to every place you might want to go ..
But I did test out Kristen’s latest viewer and it is very very nice …
Watcher: Thanks for your comment. In this post, our focus is on the various viewers and their behaviour with respect to Mesh and Media on a Prim. We’ll be looking at other 0.7.1 newness as we continue to work with it.
We share your concern about the map; the OpenSim devs are aware of the issue – teleport attempts to regions whose coordinates are above 4096 are problematic (yes, the 4096 bug – this time affecting not only teleports, but the map itself). There may soon be a minor release of OpenSim to address that.
I have tried the three S2 option mention here, Second Life , Kristen or KaKua.
Thanks you for your work without reading your article I just went to same test yesterday and confirm your finding as to the effect on Mesh on SL2 viewers you are listing.
The additional note I have is concerning Avatar appearance. I found for my part that there is odds things happening to the avatar appearance when the Avatar is loaded in OSGrid or Opensim with S2 viewer. The stablity of the avatar clothing, skin or shape is not good. Reworking the avatar appearance lead to expected result. But when reloging to the OSGrid or the OpenSim Diva build with both Kirsten and Second Life 2 viewers the avatar appearance work was lost. The only one that was working properly for appearance as far as I test is KaKua.
Hoping this contribution is helpfull.
Additional note on cautious
It is strongly recommend that you don’t rely on any mesh data that you upload to OpenSimulator until the new mesh changes are implemented.
http://justincc.org/blog/2011/05/13/warning-dont-rely-on-meshes-uploaded-to-opensim-just-yet/
Hoping this additional note is usefull and to the point of this blog
Hi gimisa, thank you for your comments. Yes, we are well aware of the caution from Justin Clark-Casey about the coming changes in Mesh. While we are holding off on testing Mesh further, we are continuing to test other aspects of OpenSim version 7.1. We’re looking forward to when the Mesh changes are implemented in the near future.