Last week Charlar Linden posted an announcement that the Mesh Upload group would be expanding its focus. This week’s meeting was the first week with the expanded focus. At this point I’m not sure everyone has a clear idea what this means. There is much to consider.
Getting My Groove
First the past meetings have been about helping develop mesh. Users get a new tool, go play with it, and provide feedback. The Lindens consider the feedback, work out a fix or change, and restart the cycle. Now that process is changing. Effort on the Lab’s part is no longer toward developing mesh and mesh tools. It is toward stability and performance. Feedback is not as important as system stats provide a quantifiable measure of success or failure.
Now the shift to Content and Mesh creation changes the agenda and the process. I’m not sure the same people will be interested in the group with a new focus. However, they are content creators, so it seems reasonable that they would be. But, it is a significant change in how the group is thought of and works.
In this meeting we saw some of the change affecting the meeting. I’ll cover the meeting topics and then come back to this topic of change.
Pivot Points
Pivot points in mesh are a bit of a problem. There is a simple work around. (See: #SL Mesh Pivot Point) So for now, there is little need for the Lab to be working on adding the feature. Their focus holds on stability and performance.
SH-1912
SH-1912 – Shiny metal texture characteristics entirely lost when Lighting and Shadows turned on. This leads to the request people have made for a material system improvement. In this case materials have to do with bump/normal maps and reflections. We have limited bump maps in SL now. A texture system would expand on the feature. We see this coming up in a couple of groups.
Sahkolihaa Contepomi asked for a choice between using the old and new shiny. Charlar answered that the Lab would not be providing the choice. They prefer to work on a Materials System. Charlar is not sure where a materials system fits into the schedule. So, it is down the road a ways.
Meeting Time
Charlar brought up the meeting time a couple of weeks ago. So, far it has not changed. The Lindens are waiting to see what the content scope is going to be and probably the level of interest. So, no change.
SH-2783
SH-2783 – Physics shape in mesh upload window no longer has a yellow wireframe. The problem for some is in creating tutorials. They want to get things as finalized as possible and show the final version in tutorials they are creating.
Charlar answered, “We’re aware of it, but it’s not a high priority for us so I don’t expect it to be corrected in the near term. It’s in our backlog and will get worked on in due course.”
Individual priorities and group priorities are never the same…
Change
Back to the topic of meeting scope change.
Nyx Linden said, “I’m definitely up for expanding the scope further to be more general content creation discussion – from show and tell of recent content people have made, issues people are running into, and letting people connect with other creators and help work out issues.”
Charlar said, “Personally, I’d like to this widen to more general content creation questions and observations – and demo’s from residents!”
The group discussion about scope will continue in the forum. See Mesh UserGroup expanding.
The interest of many for now is the new tools from Linden Realms. AFAIK, the team working on those is a different team. Also, scripting comes up in many of the other groups. The content/mesh team is not going to be the best for answering scripting questions. Content creators are also interested in tools built into the viewer and how they are used.
We have loads of places in SL and tutorials on the web showing how those tools can be used. See: Second Life Prim Twisting Tutorial. So, turning the group into a Builder’s Brewery training center is going to be none productive. After all many of us know more about building than the group’s Lindens.
What was coming up in the last part of meeting is;
The idea of an script function to detect Age Verification came up. That should probably be handled ina scripting group.
The idea of a Mesh Preview Upload Came up. That is more of a viewer development topic and should be taken up there… oh, wait! We don’t have a working viewer group. (Working being the keyword. More to come on that in a future article.)
A question came up about making the mesh upload preview window bigger. Another viewer topic.
A question about getting a ground plain in the mesh preview window came up. Another viewer topic.
So, exactly what the focus will be gets confusing. As I pointed out in the meeting many of the questions being asked were about the viewer. Can we get this feature, what is next for the viewer… etc., etc.
Charlar is considering a new UG to handle the viewer questions and issues. But, there is a boat load of issues to be handled there, which I plan to blog about. But, for now put your ideas into the forum.