There is another criterion for inclusion on Kitely Starter Avatar world, much discussed by the Kitely Starter Avatar team, and that is the
Avatar Complexity, or AC number. While curating the collection, I avoided items that would raise our AC number too much. Usually that's hair and shoes, and there were also some lovely Linda Kellie mesh dresses that didn't make it. LOD upload settings are crucial. I'm hoping to eventually find those dae or blend files so I can re-upload them.
If you haven't considered Avatar Complexity before, here is some information. Sim owners who don't want visitors to crash are interested in this,
especially educators who have students with older or less powerful computers.
Avatar Rendering Complexity, "AC", is a number score for the data needed to render, or "rez" each avatar on a sim.
If our AC is too high, some people may not see us, except as a blank silhouette, called a JellyDoll or "jelly".
If our AC is too high we risk slowing or crashing our own viewer as well as other viewers logged into the sim.
SUGGESTIONS:
aim for AC scores below 100K. I try to keep mine between 20K-40K. I want to be seen!
check the changes in AC score while looking at demos, before buying avatar components
ctl-shift-r to see the wireframe - anything that's too dense will look black instead of showing the triangles that make up everything we see inworld.
VIEWER SETTINGS (depends on your viewer, this is for FS)
We can see our AC by clicking, in the menu bar:
Avatar > Avatar Health > Avatar Complexity.
We may also see a small notice in the upper right of the screen when we change what our avatar is wearing.
We can also set Preferences > Advanced > Show Advanced Menu
then in the main menu:
Advanced Menu > Performance Tools > Show Draw Weight for Avatars.
Avatars will be rendered as a jelly if they exceed the avatar complexity threshold set by the Maximum Avatar Complexity slider in the Advanced Graphics Preferences window.
Preferences (ctl-p) > Graphics > Advanced
Lowering the Maximum Avatar Complexity slider greatly reduces the amount of data your computer must process, which will improve its performance when there are high AC avatars in the sim. Setting the slider to zero = infinity, no limit.
Your own avatar is always rendered fully, even if you are over your own maximum complexity threshold.
If there are specific avatars we want fully rendered even if they are over the limit, we can right click them and select Always Render Fully. This has to be reset each time we log in.
The viewer calculates the AC number from avatar basic components plus clothing and attachments, depending on camera position (Level of Detail, or LOD). Scripts don't affect the avatar complexity number nor viewer performance; they do affect sim performance.
AVATAR COMPLEXITY CALCULATION
This is an edited version of the Second Life Wiki, which is not clear on all points. I tested it in a spreadsheet with one of my mesh avatars and got close, but not exactly, to the AC number displayed in my viewer.
1000 points for the base avatar
shape, skin, eyes, hair/browshaper
Baked on Mesh: -200 points for each texture marked invisible
+ Base cost for the triangle count of prims, sculpties and mesh prims:
weighted average of the number of triangles times 5.
Triangle count is weighted by the count of triangles at each Level of Detail (LOD) and the area each LOD is visible from, giving the average number of triangles visible within the visible range of the object. This means: camera distance affects the AC number, along with the LOD upload settings for each mesh attachment.
Multipliers per prim, sculpt or mesh attachment
Texture settings per face:
glow x 1.5
bump x 1.25
shiny x 1.6
alpha x 4.0
Prim settings
flexi x 5
invisiprims x 1.2
rigged mesh x 1.2
animated textures x 4.0
This explanation needs more detail - per face?, number of animated textures on a face?
Additions per prim
particles: + 100 points per prim
note: maybe true for calculating the AC, but viewer load varies a lot depending on particle script settings.
Additions per face
light emitting prims: + 500 points per prim
media-enabled faces: + 1500 points per face
for each unique texture, including sculpt maps, normal maps and specular maps:
+ 256 + 16 * (res X/128 + res Y/128)
note: so a normal map or specular map is calculated into this formula, plus the bump or shiny multiplier? Good question. It seems to be.
references:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Avatar_ ... Complexity
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Rendering_weight
https://community.secondlife.com/knowle ... xity-r770/
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Wireframe