realized I could delete the faces underneath because... mattress lol

i recommend checking out How LODs impact the entire game, a consumers story. ... and the other parts. i'm sure you can get that lower with properly managed LODs, and this is a primer in how it should be done much more than how a lot of people do it

also get familiar with the More Info tab, and Download vs. Physics on LI- More Info will tell you where your cost is coming from, Download is from mesh, Physics is physics shape and should rarely be higher. i have files of boxes and pyramids i use to upload in the physics tab (unless i _need_ something more complicated) to bypass that entirely.

(feel free to hit me up on more explainy explanations for things. everyone develops their own particular workflow, but good habits early can give you a better foundation)

thanks so much!! i'll definitely check that out. I

I'm realizing that a big problem is that the tutorials I've been following- though SUPER informative and helpful with blender and 3D modeling- are not meant for specifically SL use. like I was following one to make a pillow and OOPS so many polys wtf lol

like I think if your ENTIRE THING is bright orange when selected... u got some problems hahaha

yeah, that's part of it. decimate can remove some of that (fast&easy but shitty topography, which is acceptable sometimes), or doing high models with detail and baking from that to a lower (which you can do with completely separate models or sometimes just a render not applied subdivide can be an easy cheat). dense stuff isn't great for SL, aside from LI

it'll lag unnecessarily. but LODs are one of the big secrets to managing LI in practice- the uploader does a really bad job of it by default, and partly because of that a lot of people drop it to 0 on most of the lowers (lower LI, crap models once you're back far enough). contraption does a fair bit of texture&normals detailing with planned out lower LODs

(you can see LODs with build now, btw, there's a pulldown menu in the Build tab with size- select the mesh and check out what the lower LODs look like and firestorm also tells you the distances at which they will go down to what at LL default, FS default, and your settings)

that's super useful, I didn't realize that! and yeah, I'm thinking I'll try to make less detailed versions since I learned the magic of baking textures (which is a VERY cool thing indeed)

f4ncyf3a5t: well baked textures, especially with normals as well, can make a very low poly object look super slick!

I'll have to figure out how to decrease my polys in blender! right now I'm trying to delete faces on a mattress that will be mostly covered, but I used subdivision surface modifiers to make it mattress-shaped so I can't just subdivide and delete the faces that won't be visible because that changes the shape of the object??? idk I'm stuck lol

apply your subdivision modifier first? also, there's a "decimate" modifier that's the easy (and messy) way to decrease polys. SOMETIMES it's acceptable, sometimes it's a huge awful mess, kinda depends on the object

oooh. wow I didn't realize I actually had to apply the modifier, woops haha

the tutorial I was following went pretty fast so I could very easily have missed that part hahaha

modifiers are nice to work with nondestructively not applying, but eventually you usually get to the point you should apply them, and possibly fix your UV a little! you can apply modifiers in export, but i usually apply them all in blender before export, so i can make sure i don't want to fix any part.