Prim reduction trick

A murder of Bryns
The Long Now Orrey
I was going through my shop today applying a little trick associated with my older prim works.  The "trick" is simply to select your prim work in edit, then go to "features" and from there you will find a drop down box called "Physics shape type".  It will be on "prim" by default so move it over to "convex hull".  This will reduce the size of your build by half.  So for example, I had once made an elaborate Orrey for the movie My Avatar and Me and it came out to around 1200 prims.  At that size in my shop it really is just for the collector of my work, but after dropping down to 600 prims it is.... well still too big and just for collectors... but less big.  Now in comparison I have been working in mesh lately and discovered a few ways to reduce the size of a work.  At the top is what I guess you would call a self portrait of my avatar.  I recreated her for my new build.  She is pretty close to my av as you can see, and guess how many prims or PE it costs?  A mere 11.
        The difference with mesh though is that if i were to scale it up to the size of the Orrey she might end up costing more.  You see unlike prims or sculpts mesh works will change their PE depending on their scale.  So a giant Bryn could be several hundred PE or prims while a tiny Bryn could be just 1.  Anyway, back to the prim trick.  So when you first switch the selected prim to convex hull it sometimes shoots up to some ridiculous size.  I did it for the Rabbicorn and suddenly the prim count went to something like 900 prims from 100 or so.  If you are on a sim with no prim space left it will return the sculpture to your inventory which can be annoying.  So make sure you have some space left for prims on the sim then switch it to convex hull and when it goes a bit mental switch it from convex to "none".  Now it wont like that at all.  It will say something along the lines of wtf are you doing?  Just ignore that or even shake your fist at the computer then move it back to convex hull and it should chop the prim size in half or there abouts.

     Lastly I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.  I will be visiting my parents which means watching black and white movies, then I will be heading way up north to stay with a bunch of family in a cottage.  I can't decide if that sounds fun or terrifying.  Snowshoeing and cross country skiing yay! and well... being enclosed in a small space with family for three days...  gah!  Nah shouldn't be too bad, I have the fifth book for the Game of Thrones series so will sit by the fireplace with Baileys infused hot chocolate and read.  God that sounds boring but I am so looking forward to doing that.  And if you have not read the Game of Thrones do so!  It's so fun to read.. nobody is safe in those books.  You can think someone is an untouchable main character then poof they are suddenly killed.  Anyway, happy holidays.

Comments

Anita Witt said…
Thank you for that tip Bryn. I knew about the convex hull method, but not the value of persistence. Now I can drop even more crap on my sim :)
Corcosman said…
Thanks for the tip, Bryn. Reduced a prim heavy object by about a third.
Bryn Oh said…
Hehe good to hear it worked Anita and Corcosman keep switching back and forth from none to convex and maybe it will drop down to half.
Thank you for the tip, I too knew about the convex hull but not about keeping at it, I will indeed attempt the shaking fist technique, thanks.
Apmel said…
Happy Holidays Bryn!
Rebeca Bashly said…
That is good tip for regular prims, setting them to convex hull will cut prim count in half but if you set sculpties as convex hull it will double them up.
Happy Holidays:)

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