I usually use Medhue’s video from his live stream of the Content Creators’ meeting and refer people to it. But, this week Medhue’s stream has no audio. Fortunately, I made it to the meeting this week and made a video.
But… all is not wonderful. Vir Linden’s mic was not working well. Examining the sound waves in Audition I see Vir’s voice is severely clipped. This happens when an input overdrives the system. You hear it when you turn the volume up too high on a radio with cheap speakers.
To some extent, this can be fixed in post-production. But, I’m a novice to intermediate audio person. I’ve never had to clean up an audio track this badly clipped before. I helped it. But, it ain’t great.
The time marks below are for my video. Following is my summary based on what I understood.
00:30 – Alexa Linden talked about the 360 Snapshot Project Viewer at the Content Creators’ UG Meeting (2/22). My take on the viewer is here: The Newly Revised 360-Snapshot RC Viewer is Out.
00:30 – Alexa Linden talked about the 360 Snapshot Project Viewer at the Content Creators’ UG Meeting (2/22). May take on the viewer is here: The Newly Revised 360-Snapshot RC Viewer is Out.
The Rest of the Story…
Something I didn’t mention in my 360-Snapshot information, be sure to spin in a complete circle to make everything around you rez. In my 360-image in the article, I didn’t. Oops. Stuff in the room is missing.
Also, I forget that many are interested in using the 360-Snapshot tool for providing images to their Places Pages. The Lab hasn’t gotten that part of the 360-Snapshot tool built yet. But, they are planning to get there.
02:00 Anchor Linden is working on the Bakes-On project. The Lindens hope to have a Project viewer out in ‘the not too distant future’. The links in chat are to the Official Alternate Viewers page.
04:20 Vir Linden tells us Anchor has been working on the Project viewer for Bakes-on and it is coming along well.
In chat, Beq Janus points out that while Anchor is expecting to have it out by end of March, we (users) have no idea how it is going to work.
I’ll point out that Bakes-On has the potential to make a more radical change in Second Life™ than Animesh… well… it may be a tossup as to which has the most impact. I think Bakes-On certainly has the potential for more user pain.
05:00 Vir comments on there currently being no definition (plan?) for how a secondary alpha channel would work.
5:45 Discussion starts regarding what LSL scripting functions are needed for Bakes-On control. Consider. You have a mesh clothing item or body. How do you tell the bake engine which texture is skin, tattoo, underclothes, and clothes?
Vir says they plan to allow a way to specify which face gets a baked texture or a user-specified texture. But, this gets complicated when we consider that most mesh attachments, body or clothes, are No-Mod.
08:00 Racism comes up. I believe this type of conversation is a product of the conditioning Americans are being subjected to. One person is objecting to a BDSM display by another. That is OK. But, the claim is the other person is being racist. It doesn’t matter why they choose to do something or what they say their reason was. That the objector sees it one way makes it that way and their target is at fault for what the objector is thinking and feeling. A lack of emotional responsibility and empathy.
That the objection was made openly puts it in the realm of ‘shaming’, which is basically bullying one into conforming to the bully’s way of thinking. I am continually amazed that so few recognize shaming as a fascist behavior.
10:15 There is no ETA on animesh. There is currently an issue they are dealing with where bounding boxes are getting corrupted causing the wrong LoD to display. Vir explains it as a PITA, not in those words.
Vir plans to resolve the issue before releasing another Project Viewer update.
14:10 Nothing new on Land Impact. Vir will get back to Animesh LI once he has Bounding and LoD working correctly.
16:50 Vir reviews where we are on Land Impact and the basic plan… again. It is two phases, one immediate for setting animesh values. A later second phase for grid wide LI. They plan to be VERY careful not to force prim returns on regions at or near their prim limits.
18:41 At this point some complained about Vir’s mic not working so well. I thought about putting in some unaltered audio. It is pretty bad. But, the point is to hear what he says not how bad it was.
19:21 Request to get body makes involved in Bakes-On. Vir discusses where they are at and Alexa chimes in. Vir says there is plenty of time for user input. He wants to get a Project Viewer for Bakes-On out so body makers can test it. 20:20 People the Linens should be trying to engage in Bakes-On. The mesh body survey from Mesh Body Addicts is offered as a list of who the Lindens should contact. Several of them were in the meeting.
24:00 In chat the problem of not having a ‘mesh and brands’ compatibility descriptor in the marketplace listing useful for search is brought up. Have you tried searching for things compatible with Belleza or Slink? What a pain…
24:15 Rider Linden materializes in a burst of particles… Discussion about EEP starts, Enhanced Environment Project… you know, the one where everything in SL turns green…
Rider has done a good part of the work needed to put EEP items in inventory. Once that work is complete he’ll set up some Aditi regions that use the new code and put out an EEP Project Viewer. Yay! This should be way fun.
He says in the next couple of weeks… of course, that timeline precludes any surprises.
There will be no LSL functions in the initial Project Viewer stage release. But, eventually.
Be warned. EEP will break get sun direction. This is a function I use in some of my stuff. Nothing I have for sale, but, I’ve thought about it. So, now for certain, I’ll be waiting. Discussion on how sun direction will change, and the Linden sun going away. We will be able to make working sundials. So, not a loss but a change.
However, this looks like a case where the Lab is willing to back some small amount of legacy content to move ahead.
26:30 Rider explains how sun direction will be calculated in EEP. Until I can play with it, I won’t try to explain the calc’s. 3D math gets me confused. So, I have to test to make sure I got it.
Rider hopes to have sun direction back in LSL by the time EEP goes live.
A reason the function had to break is the current function approximates the position of the sun based on a 4-hour day and the seconds from server midnight. With variable day lengths, we need a new function.
31:15 Also, since there is a variable day length Rider is planning to add a function to provide information on the environment settings. Like prim parameters.
We are getting God Rays… sunlight beams that show in the air. NEAT! We have beams now, only if we use the Black Dragon viewer.
32:15 Environment parameters are to be read-only. But… if an agent (Lab jargon for avatar) is part of an experience you will be able to change his viewer’s EEP settings. This is BIG.
35:10 Water with reflective droplets? Not this release…
36:40 Rider says he is striving to keep Windlight appearances as close to what we have now as possible. So, the change won’t break the settings people are using. But, he says there will be aspects of WL that change. So, a region could retain all its Windlight settings and after EEP add God Rays. Also, distance fog is changing. But, if a region is not using fog, they will not see a change.
39:00 Will we be able to use Bakes-On with HUD’s? They are asking about using HUD’s to control the texture on No-Mod bodies, for instance, that use Bakes-On.
There is a lot happening in chat during this 3-minute segment.
The idea that mesh body HUD’s will go away and skin/clothing items like system skin and clothing will take over for attachments. I seriously doubt it. I would likely keep my onion skin Slink body in that case. Unless the Slink people find a way to offer the same control as I have now. But, I can’t see HUD’s for bodies going away. Bakes-On does not include materials.
Some think because a HUD was never needed for the classic avatar one won’t be needed for the mesh body avatars… Wow!
42:35 Vir points out that Bakes-On is only giving you control for compositing diffuse textures. Materials features are not part of this Bakes-On release.
In chat, notice there are those that think no one wears Applier clothes anymore. zOMG. I have an applier something in every outfit…
Even Medhue thinks few people use normal maps. I’m playing making yoga pants that use them…
49:47 Change classic avatar to use a mesh skin… not happening. Requires too many infrastructure changes and legacy breaks.
53:45 Next meeting in 2-weeks. Next week is first Thursday of the month, the Linden office meeting. So, now meeting then.
54:14 Animesh polygon cap? How many polygons do we get for animesh? There will be a polygon limit. Not yet decided what limit.
END