Mesh and Mesh Viewers in Second Life

Since mesh appeared on the grid last year, it has taken SL by storm. Everyone is buzzing about mesh clothing, hair, mesh avatars, and of course, mesh viewers. Why? Mesh is a big deal. It is a revolutionary idea. Mesh is not only more realistic for photos or for viewing with our eyes, it's just more efficient in terms of viewer loading time and prim usage.

From Daniel Voyager's blog, I learned about the stats about how much of SL users use mesh capable viewers. The entry is here. According to what he found, it was 1% of the SL user base in July 2012 and by February 10th 2013 it was 97.1%. That is a major change from Viewer 2 or Viewer 1 non-mesh viewers to fully mesh-capable Viewer 3 viewers. Amazing! I remember how a lot of older residents were whining and moaning about how they'd have to update their systems like getting a new graphics card to keep up with the newer viewers. It seems that most have adapted because they are excited and curious to see mesh and to make mesh themselves. I have a lot of friends who have been in SL for over 2 years and most have bought mesh in the past or are using mesh now. While mesh isn't perfect, it has made many leaps and bounds and

I myself have been using Firestorm since it came out as a beta viewer. That was in 2011, I believe. And in September 2012, Jessica Lyon, the Phoenix project head developer, reported on the Phoenix blog that Firestorm earned the #1 spot in popularity and crash rate. Its success even topped the success of the Phoenix viewer which emerged after the Emerald viewer privacy leak scandal.

Below, you can see that I'm in a mesh enabled store. It is Wasabi Pills, the store that sells some of the best mesh hair on the grid. Also, I am wearing a mesh dress and mesh hair by Truth. Truth is an old, respected brand that has been making flexi, but has been releasing mesh hair for awhile now.

Mesh hair and a mesh outfit at Wasabi Pills

I thought I'd visit another place with mesh. It so happens that the Mon Tissu sim is the first sim that is completely mesh. The sim is called Mayfair. It is just so realistic. I am loving the textures.

In front of Mon Tissu, Mayfair

One thing you'll notice is that mesh loads so much faster than sculpts.

The one major drawback about mesh is that it doesn't fit to your shape, you have to modify your shape. But, there are creators who are learning about mesh and developing a new sort of mesh that doesn't require you to fix your shape. Like I had to modify my shape a little  to fit into that little black dress, but it was nothing major.

Just a little tidbit, Redgrave released some jeans last month or so....liquid mesh jeans. According to the notecard Dean Ashby wrote about how liquid mesh works, "Really simple! Liquid Mesh adjusts automatically to your body shape. That means no changes to your shape needed!
But we went even further. The mesh also follows certain body shape sliders. That means you can even resize our product with your shape which is not possible with any other mesh up to this point. You can try that by right-clicking your avatar, select "Edit my shape", choose the tab "Legs" and then for e.g. change the slider "Leg muscles". You can just try the demo for 1L. The jeans can be found behind the new releases in the Women section.

Liquid mesh jeans at Redgrave

Happy exploring and have fun!

~ Victoria Lenoirre