New Mesh Deformer Project Viewer

I see a new project viewer has been released for the Mesh Deformer as of August 31. Version: Second Life 3.4.1 (264215) Aug 31 2012 07:02:04 (Project Viewer – Deformer).

You can download the Mesh Deformer Project Viewer here. CYGWIN = Windows version for XP, Vista, and Win7. Darwin is for Macs, and you can probably figure out Linux is for Linux.

New Mesh Upload Panel

The viewer has the new limited grid selector. So, it is not usable on OpenSim grids. It also only lists the main and preview grids, which is all the residents can use anyway.

The only mesh related change I see is in the model upload panel. We now have an option titled: Deform to avatar shape. When selected you can select between the Male and Female shape. I suppose this could be setting the framework for other shapes. That was the point under discussion when the project went silent.

I still do not see an update on Karl’s blog.

Oz Linden only announced the viewer release in the JIRA: STORM-1716. I have yet to find any release notes.

Hope Dreier has added a video to the JIRA. There are still some problems with the avatar poking through. But, we really don’t know what this version of the deformer is supposed to be doing or changing.

Tight Skirt Not Working So Well

I am still having problems with close fitting clothes having poke through problems. I have made versions of a skirt using different distances from the avatar model. With a space of 1cm (Blender-SL units as 1 Blender unit = 1m in SL) the skirt usually remains outside the avatar when deformed. As I go under 0.5cm and toward 0.1cm I start to have problems with the skirt deforming to the inside of avatar.

I remember Karl discussing the problem somewhere. I don’t know if anything has been done about it or if there even is anything that can be done about it. I was hoping all offsets would have to be 0 or positive, toward the outside. But, there may be a reason that is not a good idea.

Deforming with Hip Size Change

I am guessing alpha layers are going to be an important part of mesh clothing design forever.

Summary

We have a new version of the Mesh Deformer Project Viewer, Yay. We have no idea what has or has not changed in this release, Boo. It may just be the 0.3 version of the Deformer with a viewer change to allow selecting the male or female shape. I hope this is a version 0.4 of the Deformer (meaning the part doing the deforming), but I can’t really see any difference. I’ll be playing with it more after the holiday.

11 thoughts on “New Mesh Deformer Project Viewer

  1. The new deformer code is also in the Cool VL Viewer v1.26.4.28 and v1.26.5.7 that have been posted last Saturday.

    The main change (beside the male/female deformer flag) is that the normals are also taken into account for determining the nearest vertex when deforming the cloth item to match the shape, supposedly leading to more accurate/better fitting deformations.

    Note that the new deformer flag is handled differently (instead of a simple boolean in the mesh data to mark a deformable mesh, there is now a LLSD containing a version number (currently 1) and an optional flag (1 for a male shape referenced mesh, 0 or no flag for female shape referenced meshes). This makes deformable meshes uploaded with former versions incompatible with the new code (the old meshes are not deformed in LL’s deformer project viewer). To work around this problem, I added a few lines for backward compatibility in the Cool VL Viewer (when a mesh with a boolean is loaded, the new LLSD data is added, with female as the reference shape, since this was the shape old deformer code versions used).

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  3. I uploaded a simple waist wrap build I did. When first worn it fits correctly and close to avatar as rigged, but after 15 seconds it pops out as if it’s a larger size. Tried changing shapes, fat/thickness (it deforms nicely) but never fits like it did when first worn. When detaching then re-attaching it fits for 15 seconds but pops back out.

    • I think what you are seeing is the Deformer catching up… or may be it is a bug. I suggest posting about this in the SL Forum’s Mesh section and asking for help/opinions. Include pictures.(See Torley’s Intro to New Fourm about 5 minutes in).

      I am guessing there is a problem with the basic avatar you modeled the item for. If you don’t understand that sentence, check out my article: http://blog.nalates.net/2012/05/20/second-life-mesh-clothes-blender-2-6-setup-2012-tutorial/

      • I concur with your opinion that it relates to the avatar model that was used initially to fit/size the mesh wearable object. I re-fit the waist wrap object to the default avatar shape in blender and uploaded it the same way. When first worn it is too small, but after the same 15 second period it then expands the the shape of the avatar inworld fitting it as intended. Still, it does not explain the fact that “Shaders” graphic option still interferes with the worn object size as I then proceeded to uncheck the “Shaders” box and watched the object shrink in size just as it did when fitted in blender to a Standardized shape medium avatar but this time INTO the avatars body ( the model I am using day to day is approximately a medium size). I then tried this procedure on a Nvidia machine and got the same results as my ATI machine so it is viewer/ base model related apparently. I will include this notation in next video and post also to other relevent sites. Thank you for replying and hopefully this can be ironed out as Deformation is the way to go instead of multiple sizes in creation phase.

        • I do believe the Deformer will eliminate most of the need for sizes. But, there will be some special cases.

          It does seem that it is taking the Deformer some time to decide how to deform the mesh and kick in. That is going to confuse people. I’ll have to do some testing to see if I can reproduce the problem.

          Have you filed a JIRA showing the problem? If so, can I have the number?

          • I generated bug # 157 and attached (I think) 2 snapshots of this problem. However it looks like (for the life of me can’t imagine why) that bug tickets are now not available for view to others.

            • All users of the JIRA are members of the JIRA-USERS group. That group is now heavily restricted. So, they can only see their own items. See JIRA Change in this blog.

              …or are you being sarcastic or ironic? It is hard to tell in plain text.

              There are a number of people that have been added to other groups and can see the bugs. These are typically people that have been working with the Lindens without drama. So, posting JIRA links is still a handy thing to do.

              BUG-157 – Interaction between graphic shader setting and deformation enabled mesh – https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-157

  4. I found the problem. It seems that a graphic setting (Shaders) conflicts somehow with the shape/size of worn mesh. See the video I did showing the issue : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjpNEqTA9Cg&feature=plcp

    • Well it seems like the new viewer release 265139 has fixed the shader interaction with deform mesh. World peace is achieved, hunger ended and lost sock in laundry no longer a problem.

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