Second Life – Content Creation UG Meeting 2017 w26

I missed the first 10 minutes of the meeting as RL was intruding. There are Two interesting parts. Toward the end of the meeting a discussion of copybot issues starts. That section and an hour long post-meeting is in another video. When I get it uploaded, I’ll link to it from this article.

I’ve used bold text to highlight subjects in the outline summary of the meeting. You may remember, I use these videos to learn about video editing for RL work. Premiere, in general, or maybe just on my computer, is broken. So, I cannot currently use titles or text from within Premiere. So, this video is mostly about audio for me. In that area, because I used Firestorm (FS) I had to learn more about audio cleanup. Maybe if I knew more about FS, it would be less of a problem.

Medhue caught the entire hour-long meeting on video (HERE). My video picks up about 10 minutes in (1:10 PM SLT). Medhue skipped streaming the post-meeting. He was there for most of it. Inara has not posted her summary of the meeting. So, I don’t know if she’ll touch on it or dive in. I’ll dive in.

In the 10-minutes prior to my video starting, Vir Linden was following up on a question about whether animating attachment points is (will be) allowed and whether meshes can weight/rig to attachment points. The Linden viewer currently blocks animations and meshes that do. The servers, however, will allow it. So, for now things are a bit inconsistent.

The inconsistency will be corrected. This won’t change SL content. So, nothing will break. It will just change what can be uploaded. While some consideration is being given to what is to be done, whether attachment point rigging is allowed is apparently not on the table.

Prior to Firestorm 5.0.1 the FS Viewer could upload mesh rigged to attachment points. This was becoming common practice prior to Bento before tail and wing bones were available. (How commonly is debatable.) The upload ability was available via a debug setting in FS. The exact status of the ‘fix’ is unclear. While you might find a way to get mesh rigged to attachment points uploaded, that ability most likely will eventually go away.

Just as I arrive Vir is talking about the question of attachment points for Animesh*.

TM 00:00 – Will Animesh allow attachment points? Vir Linden’s answer in the video isn’t as clear as I would like. The answer is no. They do not plan to allow attachments to Animesh.

A use case for this attaching to attachment points is creating a steam engine, chu-chu. Think of the drive shafts coming from the steam pistons that rotate the wheels.

It does sound like we could put fitted mesh clothes on an Animesh mannequins and the clothes would work and animate. How well other features of attached mesh may work is a question… but I’m unsure what Vir was thinking about. I suppose there could be some odd “SL linkset” issues.

04:15 – The link to the Bento avatar in the SL Wiki is broken.

05:30 – In chat Beq Janus alerts us she has written a design outline for hires proxy mesh rigging with a way to protect the IP of creators. The draft will soon be on Beq’s Google Docs. Email her to get a URL. BeqJanus a t phoenixviewer d o t c o m.

06:45 – Still working on mesh baking, the upsize from 512 to 1024. The next step is to do some performance analysis.

07:30 – Alex Ivy is doing well. This is the 64-bit Linden viewer. It is still in Project Viewer status as of late today (6/29). But, expect a promotion to RC status soon.

If you don’t know, the 64-bit viewers crash WAY less often. …I am questioning whether that is true for Firestorm 5.0.7. Between what is happening to me and what I see people saying in FS Support, there are problems. BUT… lots of complaints are normal just after release. Also, it seems the grid has been pretty flaky the last few days. So, it is too early to blame the viewer.

08:15 – Is there going to be LSL Reverse Kinematics? No… long answer in the video. Vir explains how the server and viewer work to animate an avatar and why scripts, which run in the server, cannot know where the avatar joints are to calculate where they should be. The viewer would have to constantly send the hundreds of bone positions to the servers, which in turn would have to distribute all that information to others in the region. At an event, the data load would be humongous.

Kinematics is about pulling the avatar’s finger and hand and arm following along. It’s an animation thing. Very handy. But, I can’t imagine using scripts to do that sort of thing.

10:00 – Proposed change to UI in mesh upload. It has to do with LoD models. Someone is trying to get people to make better LoD’s.

Discussion of the idea. Lots of opinions, little hard tech.

Since people are not making LoD’s and just using the hi-polygon model for all LoD levels, it is likely the Land Impact and Avatar Complexity costs will be changed to reflect the cost of not using good LoD models.

This is a key skill for those wanting to make low Land Impact and Avatar Complexity items.

19:45 – Discussing problem first-time users have getting into ADITI. If you don’t know, first-time users of ADITI have to file a trouble ticket to gain access to ADITI, login fails.

I didn’t know that changing passwords breaks you access to ADITI. Run through your old passwords until you find one that works.

22:10 – Back to talking about LoD’s and the upload UI.

24:15 – Getting a larger preview window for the mesh upload panel.

27:33 – Question about Copybot’ing. Discussion hops between Copybots and LoD before shifting to copybot issues.

A consideration was how to determine if LoD’s were good or lame. Basically, how could the decision be automated? You can Google for how to make good LoD models. But, how does one teach a computer to decide?

One suggestion was to compare the volumes of the LoD models. A couch would be some number of cubic meters. A two triangle LoD would have almost no volume. The idea is a low poly LoD that preserves the shape of an item would about the same volume as the hi-poly model.

I think what matters is the Lindens are looking for a way to encourage the creation of better content. That usually means there will be a higher cost for poorly made content.

Copybot

The meeting becomes a philosophical discussion about copybot’ing. I trimmed that hour-long discussion off this video and put it in its own video. I’ll have it up later.

If you are wondering about the state and extent of copybot theft in SL, it will be an interesting video.

Technical Notes

I originally used the Linden Viewer to capture these meetings as it was easier to control ‘voice’. I’ve made a couple of earlier attempts at using FS.

The Linden Viewer has individual voice level controls in the Nearby People panel. This week I learned FS also has individual level controls. Look in the top menu, COMM->Nearby Voice. Thank you, FS Support people. I think FS, AvaStar, and Builders have the best support groups…

But, I ran into some problems with FS voice. I ran into a serious problem with Medhue’s voice. While recording the meeting I could hear him just fine. I tweaked his level in the hope of saving myself some editing work later. But, that was a disaster, at least quality-wise.

I did learn a lot and now have more experimenting to do with FS. I used Tutvid’s YouTube videos to learn the basics of audio cleanup and enhancement. See: Premiere Pro CC: How to Make Audio Sound Better and How to Get Amazing Audio in Premiere Pro 2017 (New Audio Effects) Advanced Multiband Compressor!

 

*Animesh – the new animated mesh objects.

2 thoughts on “Second Life – Content Creation UG Meeting 2017 w26

  1. If it gives you any incite into the audio issue, I’ll say that when I’m recording the meeting, in order to hear everyone else better in the video, I use push to talk in my Nvidia shadowplay recorder. So, I must first toggle my SL voice on, and then press and hold the Nvidia shortcut to actually talk in the meeting.

    • NVIDIA Shadow creates problems with my SpaceNavigator. I have Gear VR software installed and I’ve been hacking to get SL VR on gear. So, it is sort of a mess.

      But, thanks for saying.

Leave a Reply to Medhue Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *