[Opensim-dev] Mesh to primitive converter

[Mircea Kitsune]

I hope this list is a good place to discuss this, I have thought of this feature as an addon for Opensim possibly something that could be in the core at one point. I'm not sure if what I have in mind is possible as I see it or not, but I think this feature would allow awesome graphics and revolutionary styles of buildings in SL (excluding realXtend which has direct mesh support). What if a 'mesh to primitive' converter could be created which would allow a user to import a mesh in-world in the forum of many primitives arranged next to one another to simulate that exact shape?

Lets say I model something in a 3D modeling application and export it as a .ase model. I would place the model file in Opensim's bin folder then from the console write something like "importmodel mymodel.ase". Opensim would read the model, see how it's made and create primitives to respect that shape as close as possible (a box prim for every face). For instance, if my mesh was a 5 side cylinder and I'd attempt to use this tool, Opensim would generate 5 tapered boxes arranged like this.

No converter could probably be smart enough to use primitives like cylinders, spheres or any other types in places it could use them in, so every mesh would be represented from boxes tapered and positioned accordingly... basically a box primitive would represent each face. The converter could also place the clear texture on the hidden faces on the insides of the object and automatically link everything into a linkset. Also the UV mapping of every specific face of the model could be set as the texture mapping on every box, so one could just upload the texture after 'importing' the model and place it on the object.

I don't know how that could be done but the idea seemed too interesting to keep for myself. Sculpt prims could not reach such a level of detail nor contain any holes in the model so this would allow realXtend-like meshes in the normal Opensim / SL (of course under a reasonable number of polys otherwise the converter could use thousands of boxes). What do you think?

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