Nalates Urriah

Changing Windlight & HDR in the Second Life Viewer

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In the Designing Worlds how (previous post) Honour McMillan explains a problem solution for photographers using the SL Viewer. The idea is we often just want to just tweak a region’s settings. In Firestorm that is easy. You just do it. In the SL Viewer it doesn’t work. The settings are grayed out until you select a preset, which changes everything. The region’s settings are effectively hidden. But, there is a work-around. (Lindens: don’t break this!)

HDR vs No Adjustment
HDR vs No Adjustment

Honour explains in the Designing Worlds video:

  • Open the environment Sky Preset editor and select any preset. World->Environmental Editor->Sky Presets->Edit Presets…->select any preset.
  • Next open the Water Preset editor, select any water preset, X it out or cancel.

You’ll see the region switch back from the Sky Lighting Preset you selected to the region’s settings when you cancel the Water editor. Now your Sky Presets editor is using the region’s settings and settings in the editor are still enabled. Good work-around.

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Second Life Photography Tips

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Prim Perfect has done a couple of shows with Strawberry Singh, Honour McMillan and Wildstar Beaumont that are about SL Photography. The first is here: Designing Worlds looks at Second Life Photography with Strawberry Singh, Honour McMillan and Wildstar Beaumont. (Video is here: Part 1)

Designing Worlds Logo
Designing Worlds Logo

The second is here: Second Life Photography Part 2 – After you’ve taken your picture: A Designing Worlds exploration with Strawberry Singh, Honour McMillan and Wildstar Beaumont. (Video is in post)

If you are looking to improve your photographic work check out these two shows/videos. The first is about taking images and the second about processing them.

One of the things Strawberry points out is that over the last year she has started showing people she is photographing a screen shot of their self before starting. She has found it is the only way to know if everything they are wearing has rez’d. Too many times she had to redo shoots because something was not rendering. This is a more recent problem and over the last month seems worse.

Honour gets into more tech and details about what she is doing. I cover that in a separate article. It will publish about noon today. I haven’t figured out how to link to an unpublished post… and have it work once posted. I’ll add a link here later… sorry.

New For Second Life Designers: MayaStar

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Cathy Foil sent me a note about a new tool, well updated one, for Second Life designers: MayaStar. This is the equivalent of AvaStar for Maya users. Awesome… not so much for me, I’m a Blender user. But, I suspect Maya users will be thrilled.

Cathy wrote me that she wanted to create something like AvaStar for Maya users. She’s apparently talked to Gaia about the use of the name MayaStar. My take from Cathy is that Gaia is somewhat flattered. Whatever, Mayastar is similar to Avastar in more than just name.

Kathy says she has figured out All the technical issues with collision bones. That may be reaching a bit, but she has made videos explaining what she learned.

Kathy is planning to remake her videos, because they’re out of date with her current Mayastar. Gaia had the same problems keeping her videos up-to-date with Avastar’s fast updates. 

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Net Neutrality 2015-09

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We still do not have the words  from the 332 pages of FCC rules that will be implemented in the name of Net Neutrality. What we do know is that a channel of free communication is being placed under ancient FCC Title II rules that already restrict what can be said on radio and TV. More and more people are waking up to another governmental power grab creating a government monopoly that will increase the cost of Internet service and cell phone plans. (Reference)

This was Wikipedia's Plea in 2012 - It has new meaning today - By: Wonderlane - Flickr
This was Wikipedia’s Plea in 2012 – It has new meaning today – By: Wonderlane – Flickr

Just as Americans for the first time are facing more of the actual cost of ACA (Obama-care) this tax season, 4+ years after its passage and the whole thing with 21 new taxes has yet to be fully implemented, in the next year we will start… and the keyword here is ‘start’, to see similar slow moving effects of the Net Neutrality change. 

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Is it Cold?

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In the USA we are having ridiculously cold weather across the eastern two-thirds of the country, north to south. On the west coast side I have the windows open and the fan on. But, only on local stations are you hearing about how extensive and record breaking the cold is. Drudge Report has more of the ‘collected’ headlines today and those stories lead to more stories:

Accuweather

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Second Life Needs… What?

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Shug Maitland wrote What Does Second Life Need? I like that she thinks. Now she has me thinking.

Shug Maitland Feb 2015
Shug Maitland Feb 2015

A recent article of Inara’s got Shug thinking. All signs are that SL1, our current Second Life, and what I call SL2, the new virtual world Linden Lab is building, will run simultaneously. Shug’s question is can SL1 compete with SL2? Good question.

I’ve heard and read lots of opinions. But, few include why they hold their opinion.

Shug and many of the rest of us agree we need a better avatar, Avatar 2.0. The starter avatars we have now are probably the direction the Lab will go with SL2. The skeleton, skin, and animation will likely all get better.

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