The minutes from Mesh Office Hours Meeting are out. This time they were placed on the blogrum as well as the Wiki. See Mesh Office Hours 10-25-2010 for the full transcript. I’ve covered the parts I think are interesting. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: October 2010
Browser Based Second Life
News is leaking out that Linden Lab will be running a closed beta on Skylight, a browser based viewer for Second Life. Only selected regions and people will be allowed into the test. I first saw the news on New World Notes (Linden Lab Testing Version of Second Life That Runs on a Web Browser).
I’ve since come across a first hand account with the details here: Beta Testing of Skylight Web Viewer for Second Life
Second Life Beta Viewer 2.3.0 Released
The new SL 2.3 Beta version viewer is out. You can read the official release information here.
Display Names
The big change is the addition of Display Names. There is a Torley video at the link above showing how to use Display Names.
While the viewer has the feature not all the regions have it turned on. The Lab is being cautious rolling it out. They made changes from user input. Griefing and impersonation being the leading concerns. Continue reading
Imprudence Experimental Release: 2010.10.23
A new Experimental Viewer is out. The big feature addition in this viewer is Qarl’s Alignment Tool. \o/ Yay!!! I have an alignment tool I can use in OSGrid. Hopefully it will make it to SL viewers. There we have Prim Docker (pay for tool) a way better (but not as easy to use) alignment tool, so alignment is already possible and the new tool is not so important in SL.
The Imprudence page has the release notes. Release 2010.10.23
Alignment Tool
Using the tool is easy and intuitive. Make yourself some prims of different sizes. This is about learning so irregular sizes will let you better see what is happening.
To use the tool notice the Align choice between Edit linked parts and Select faces to texture. Click it and the alignment tool is active. Select the prims you want to align. It is not necessary to link the prims.
It is easy to see how the tool works than describe it. Try it, you’ll love it. Mikey did.
Playing with Second Life Mesh
Mesh Pedestal
I built a model I plan to use in my OSGrid regions. I don’t want to do a tutorial on Second Life Mesh. Gaia at Machinimatrix.org does those so much better than I would. But, I do want to pass on what I have learned without getting too techy.
I can say that mesh is working pretty well. It certainly is much easier to texture mesh than it is sculpties. One can have custom UV Maps and that is a big step up.
I also took a quick look around the ADITI Mesh Enabled Regions. I have included some images I captured.
Those that have played in the more recent Myst games (see Myst Online for the free mMOG) will recognize the type of pedestal. The ‘linking’ (like a teleport) pedestal (grass background) is made in two pieces. Continue reading
SL/OS Viewers and Mesh
Viewers and Mesh
The opinions on Collada mesh coming to SL are mixed. Hamlet put a set of links in a recent blog post calling them ‘gems’. I find some are and some aren’t gems. But, digging through the chaff usually reveals nuggets of neat information. Here are the current tidbits.
Mesh DOA?
One line of thinking is that Linden Lab has again botched a new feature. Some people would be unhappy if the Lab sent them chocolate, cherry filled orgasms. When one starts from the premise that the Lab can do nothing right, it is hard to see what is being done right. These negative people are leading me to the conclusion that at an SL age of 3 or 4 one becomes an old curmudgeon.
Whatever the case, there are some interesting tidbits of information leaking out. Continue reading
Contacting Second Life/Linden Lab
How to Contact and Influence Linden Lab
Linden Lab Support
Things have changed, so some links here have been changed to newer support pages. (4/20/2011)
We now have some new phone numbers for the Lab (5/23/2011)
We now have a Linden.Lab profile we can contact. See Linden.Lab. 10m/11d/2011. (More info below)
I see lots of posts in the Second Life Forum that are directed at Linden Lab staff. I suppose those people think staff or someone in staff reads the forum and gets information to where it can do something. As best I can tell that does not happen. If you want your voice heard, here are some tips for getting that to happen. Continue reading
Qarl Fizz Prim Alignment Tool
Qarl Fizz, formerly Qarl Linden, has written viewer code to add an alignment feature to viewers. The code has been released for TPV Developers to use. He of course has a working viewer with the code in it. I’m so jealous…
In SL I use Prim Docker to align prims and textures. But, Prim Docker is not available in OpenSim, AFAIK, which is where I do the majority of my building.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UCeU8ItZGA]New World Notes broke the story today: Ex-Qarl Linden Creates an Alignment Tool for Second Life Building, Offers Code to Third Party Viewers – UPDATE: Qarl on Still Working in SL & What Else He’s Working On
Qarl blogged the news Wednesday: setting things straight. But, that is the first post on his blog in a couple of months.
See JIRA: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-360
And vote JIRA: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-23537
Update
2010-12-23 – Phoenix and Imprudence have added this feature to their viewers. I expect other TPV’s to add it also. I don’t see any effort on Linden Lab’s part to reach out to Qarl and Qarl is not signing the release LL needs to add the code to the main SL viewer. However, Esbee has designed an alignment tool for the SLV2’s. I have not seen anything recently to suggest when coding and implementation might start. So, for now this is a TPV feature only.
For now those in SL are stuck with using resident made tools. Of those the most professional one and one I like is Prim Docker, available in the Market Place. It does both prims and texture alignments.