Second Life – Content Creation UG 2017 w/23

Getting this video out was a problem. Adobe Premiere started crashing and refusing to show video in the Project Editor panel. Plus, the Hippotropolis region was crashing during the meeting. That made for an interesting meeting and made more work putting the video together.

There were lots of audio challenges in this video. I tried to clean up several places. Cathy Foil’s microphone is over driving the system. Vir Linden apparently talks into a fixed position mic. He tends to move toward and away from it when talking. Anyway, I did what I could with it.

Meeting Summary

Vir Linden starts the meeting talking about viewers. The AssetsHTTP viewer is still in QA, but expected to update the RC in week 24.

Work is continuing on animated objects. Vir has the server and a pre-project viewer working so one can see animated objects. Other viewers crash. So, that has to be handled.

02:15 – One of the problems is handling how the animated object’s skeleton is positioned in relation to the ground. As it is now avatar position is reported for the skeleton’s ‘root’, think pelvis, then the avatar height is figured out and the feet set on the ground.

Animated objects, being objects, have their position and size reported… size is reported not calculated. This may sound obscure. Think of it this way. There is a size calculation for avatars but, objects have size read from their parameters, no calculation.

There are link sets and there is a process that figures out the size and correctly renders them so the set correctly on the ground or a floor when rezzed. Prims in link sets are very predictable. Skeletons are very flexible… flexible in that bones can be moved around, not that they can touch their toes. Think of a 8-legged skeleton (spider) standing on one foot… Such objects while highly flexible design wise are seen by software has highly unpredictable.

For animated objects using the simple prim calcs would likely mean the pelvis (butt) would tend to rez at ground level. So, some method of getting animated objects to rez on top of the ground. Calculating down all the bones to find the lowest point would be slow and error prone.

07:40 – Vir reiterates the problem as placing a skeleton somewhere and wrapping the vertices around it.

08:30 – Collision detection – not yet being investigated…

12:09 – Vir is hoping existing mesh can be used as animated mesh. I’m not clear on what is existing mesh… mesh already uploaded to and in SL? Or mesh I have in Blender? I suppose the prior.

14:50 – Multiple Skeletons or Multiple mesh objects in a skeleton – Would it be possible to have a ‘link set’ of multiple skeletons? So, I think linking a number of skeletons was what was meant.

Vir answers it would be possible to have multiple mesh objects on a single skeleton. I didn’t think that answered the question asked. But, I do think we can infer there will be NO link sets of skeletons… no multiple skeletons.

17:25 – Vir expects animated mesh to have a similar impact on the system as avatars do.

19:45 – Vir points out that if the mesh’s bounding box is used for size, creators would have to pay attention to the ‘unrigged’ size of the mesh they import.

31:00 – Vir talking about infrastructure work being done to support mesh baking.

Bake Service will not support baking materials. It will bake diffuse layer only. You will be able to use materials.

The plan is to flag a face to use a backed texture.

36:00 – Vir explaining how baked mesh for objects will work.

37:30 – Start on alpha channel discussion.

44:00 – Supplemental Animations – In the cue but no work done yet.

Anchor Linden introduced. Newbie, two weeks. He is working on Baked Mesh.

47:30 – Discussing mesh LoD’s and rendering cost calculations.

54:00 – Cathy Foil announced she has a MayaStar update out (6/8). It does not yet have the .anim exporter. Plus, her Maya Voice Control program which comes in two versions, an inexpensive and an expensive version is out.

Summary

After the last crash, the Lindens turned off scripting in the region. Plus, someone got banned. No more crashes after that.

Anchor Linden is probably the hire that Oz Linden has mentioned. No… Anchor does not have a bear.

The current work is on animated objects and infrastructure work for baking.

 

2 thoughts on “Second Life – Content Creation UG 2017 w/23

  1. Is there something planned about custom alpha masks on mesh bodies? Will the new bake system handle that?

    Thank you

    • The alpha layer of diffuse textures will be handled. But, Alpha Layers to hide body parts isn’t part of the Bake Process. Materials are omitted from baking. There will be material layers, spec, normal. But, they won’t be composited by the bake engine. That will be up to the user… the one wearing the mesh.

      Baked textures will only be baked and applied to “FLAGGED” faces/materials.

      I am not at all sure the Lindens understand how we use mesh bodies and their clothing layers. As best I can tell they are thinking we use them like we used classic avatar clothes.

      Their hope is baked mesh will be a replacement for onion skinned mesh bodies. I doubt that will be a popular use. I suspect there will be very little use for this feature.

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