Non destructive attachment grouping for no-mod objects
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Cynos3D Resident
Non destructive attachment grouping that would serve to link multiple items into a single (container) object to save on attachment points. As many i often run into the hard 38 attachment limit, not so much due to my HUDS or because of heavy, complex attachments but because a LOT of products are no-mod these days and cannot be linked together to save on attachment slots, this adds up quickly when trying to put together an outfit where you need to wear HUD's or items that often need to be worn altogether to work to their full effect such as with heads and bodies where you need the Head / Ears / Eyes / Gums, Bodies / Hands / Feet parts. This is especially problematic with some of the newer modular head body part kits i've seen recently.
This solution could allow end users to link multiple items into a (grouping object) to fully realize their creative vision without compromising the content creator's personal choice of product permissions.
A simple analogy of this would be "outfit folders" but as a new object type, similar to the way PBR material container objects work.
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Spidey Linden
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Hello, and thank you for your feature request.
Incoming suggestions are reviewed in the order they are received by a team of Lindens with diverse areas of expertise. We consider a number of factors: Is this change possible? Will it increase lag? Will it break existing content? Is it likely that the number of residents using this feature will justify the time to develop it? This wiki page further describes the reasoning we use: Feature Requests
This particular suggestion, unfortunately, cannot be tackled at this time. However, we regularly review previously deferred suggestions when circumstances change or resources become available.
We are grateful for the time you took to submit this feature request. We hope that you are not discouraged from submitting others in the future. Many excellent ideas to improve Second Life come from you, our residents. We can’t do it alone.
Thank you for your continued commitment to Second Life.
Kuuko Shan
I understand what you really want and it's something that many people would like. But the solution asked for it's something unnecessary. Being able to link no mod items to take less space as attachments point would mean a huge change on how attachments actually works and a huge risk on the limits already set.
It would be infinitely easier to simply ask for more attachments points instead.
Asking for an official solution to bypass limits that are there for a reason won't get you anywhere. If we were able to wear groups of objects as a single attachment point, what would be the purpose of having a limit to start when you could simply group everything into a single slot?
A better solution could be to limit the objects we wear based on real complexity like vertex and texture number or even memory used. In that way we would have a virtually infinite amount of attachments points. You would be able to wear more than 38 items as long as they are optimized enough to not fill the whole per avatar limit.
Cynos3D Resident
Kuuko Shan I don't think you understand my proposal, it is a stopgap solution that can be re-purposed into a QOL feature later until LL can overhaul the system to properly solve the problem. What i am asking for is a means of doing so that does not require linking everything to a root prim as would traditionally be done in this case.
We can ALREADY circumvent the attachment limits by "grouping" multiple dense rigged meshes filled with scripts onto the same attachment point, it is a very common practice only limited by the lack of ability to do so with No-Mod objects which further complicates the issue. The numeric attachment limit is arbitrary and opaque at best, it's not helping anyone by playing favorites with one permission over an other at this point.
Of course what i WANT is an attachment limit based on a tangible and reasonable polygon, texture density and script avatar performance budgets instead of an arbitrary numerical value that does little else than hamper the user's ability to create and does nothing to incentivize good modeling / texturing / scripting practices from content creators.
There is also the impact of sim crossings to consider when simply asking for more attachments, this may not actually be something feasible in the long run at all hence why i suggested a proper way of agglomerating attachments in a way that would be easier for sim crossings to handle.
Kuuko Shan
Cynos3D Resident well, a limit based on something like vertex and texture memory it's exactly what I suggested so I feel like I understand perfectly what you want.
The main issue of your suggestion it's how it works. There are some things in SL that can't be changed so easily and one of them it's suddenly being able to attach groups of objects because this does not exists in SL terms and it won't exist. There is still a limit on linking objects since you can't go beyond certain number.
The reason why I suggested to increase the number of attachments points instead of allowing groups to be worn it's because I know that's perfectly doable while your idea will be completely discarded. It's not because your idea it's bad or anything, it's because things that requires extreme changes to how SL servers understands everything are not prone to happen. So if you want to be able to attach more things, more attachments points it's the actual solution. Being able to attach, for example, a folder it's not extremely imposible but we would simply be changing how worn things appears in the viewer and not actually increasing the limit (AKA, you would be able to wear a folder but it won't count as a single item).
This kind of suggestions has been already debated in the official discord and, believe me, there are way higher chances if you just go for the simplest thing to implement, like doubling the attachment points limit or at least increase them enough.
But even then, even if increasing the limit of attachments it's completely withing LL hands, something else is wether they may actually consider this or not. At least for now. Performance wise, attachments are the biggest hit. Definitely doubling them can only make everything worse and this is something that you and me both knows. But a more elaborated system could definitely fix this. A system where something else is taken into account at time of wearing stuff so you don't need a number to limit how many you wear. Like mentioned before, vertex complexity and specially memory used would be crucial on creating a good limit. This is how other platforms already work.
Bleuhazenfurfle Resident
_May_ not even need a new object type. Does anyone ever actually wear coalesced objects? If they're not a regular thing, then they could all just go to their standard attachment points. Though, if it works at all, no doubt some people DO use that method already… But either way, the mechanism is already half there.
The problem, though, is I rather suspect it'll be viewed as an attempt to bypass the attachment limit. Still, would be useful even if each component object still counted as an attachment. (Just as long as excess parts don't go "missing" in no-copy situations.)
Cynos3D Resident
Bleuhazenfurfle Resident You can already do this with modifiable objects, rigged or otherwise, it is extremely common with furry avatars due to the number of things needed to fully realize the avatar from head to toe. The problem is that conventional linking often breaks items that rely on link order to work and of course cannot be used at all with no-mod items which is always where i personally run into issues.
Bleuhazenfurfle Resident
Cynos3D Resident: I know, I've done that a bit on my own avatar, and my partner does it a LOT — virtually all of their avatar is custom, and mod, and they tend to only buy mod gear for that reason. (Oh, and we are furry. 😛)
In general, I agree with the idea, and hope it happens.
Zandrae Nova
Bleuhazenfurfle Resident I do not know what you mean by, "coalesced objects," if you mean objects I've linked together, yes. If I have two mod unrigged objects that go on the same slot, I link them. If I have two mod rigged objects from the same set / creator (Like a shirt and pants) I link them. If I have a rigged and unrigged object from the same object set, I link them. But I wind up with a lot of items that are rigged and no mod that I can't manage.
Blau Rascon
Bleuhazenfurfle Resident Coalesced objects aren't wearable, last time I checked, but if they could be made to be wearable, it would be helpful in this case