Blender

Second Life News 2014-23 – Group Ban

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We have some actual news today!

Group Ban

This new feature is now running in the main grid in RC channel: Le Tigre. Many people have been looking forward to this feature coming out. If all goes well we could see it move to the entire grid next week.

Art for Games Tutorials
Art for Games Tutorials

Any group owner or manager with proper permissions can use the feature.  You need to visit a region in the Le Tigre channel to use the feature. Also you need to be using the Group Ban Project Viewer. Unfortunately the viewer is not showing on the RC/Project Viewers page. But, you can get the viewer here: Download: Windows, Mac, Linux.

You can find details on using the project feature here: Group Ban FAQ.

Be warned, the bans made in Le Tigre may not stick, meaning a banned person may be able to re-join from regions outside the Le Tigre channel. So, while the ban is server side older regions don’t know to check for a ban before allowing a join. But, the person will be in the ban list.

Once the project goes grid wide you may have to re-ban or eject the banned people one last time.

The server side code is at RC level, meaning it is working as planned and is expected to be the finished product. The viewer is just reaching ‘project viewer’ status, which we might consider the old beta version status.

Expect some changes to the viewer before it rolls out as the main viewer. When the server side code goes grid wide one can then use the Group Ban Viewer and ban people. Since the ban is enforced server-side and all the servers will then be running it, it won’t matter which viewer a banned person uses, they won’t be able to get in the group.

This should make life in group chat much better.

Servers

There was no roll to the main channel this morning. There was maintenance to the servers and logins were down for a time this morning. 

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Second Life Bits 2014-21 #3

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Blender – Baking Normals

I came across a simple to the point video tutorial on baking normal maps in Blender 2.6, which is enough like 2.7 it doesn’t matter. He manages to crash Blender before the end. But, the important part is complete by then.

[youtube bck1eU4e8xo]

SVVR

We are seeing more videos of the SVVR conference. The sound in the current batch is awful. Rumor is some professional grade videos are coming. I am waiting.

Second Life Down Time

The Thursday down time is being postponed. See: Scheduled Maintenance. Presumably the problem from Tuesday that stalled the main channel’s rollout and pushed the RC channel rollouts to Thursday are the cause of the postponement. 

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AvaStar Updates 2014-21

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We are now on an Alpha version of AvaStar. Gaia has cleaned up the download page.  The featured download is currently version: avastar-1-1-alpha_Blender_2-70.

But, there are now new test versions. The latest being: avastar-1.1-alpha-23_blender-2-70.

The change log as been updated too. It is now named: changelog-1-1-alpha-23.txt. How the logs are used may have changed. We will see with time. For now the changes in alpha-23 are:

  • 2014-05-19 18:41:16 +0100 Avoid blender crash when removing shape sliders while in edit mode
  • 2014-05-19 10:39:00 +0100 Added option to enable adaptive slider attachment and iteration count
  • 2014-05-18 23:31:46 +0100 Fix: for slider attachments for non default shapes
  • 2014-05-17 18:26:27 +0100 avoid exception in Armature Info Poll when no active Object selected
  • 2014-05-16 07:16:30 +0100 Added checkmarks to the Freeze operator ‘Join Parts’ and ‘Remove Doubles’
  • 2014-05-12 15:47:40 +0100 Added Armature Info panel to show number of animated Bones
  • 2014-05-12 15:44:39 +0100 Added generic message display operator to be used in various locations
  • 2014-05-12 15:40:21 +0100 Improved error message for when too many bones are animated

AvaStar 1.1-Alpha Released

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An Alpha version of AvaStar is out. The usual software release order is; Proof of Concept, Alpha, Beta, RC, Final. As an RC version had been released (reference), I took the following Test Versions to be RC releases too. But, apparently not. Bad assumption on my part. Whatever we call this release, it is the next step in the progression.

This Alpha release has all the TEST version changes up to Test Version 1076. The official release name is now:  avastar-1-1-alpha_Blender_2-70.

I am running Blender 2.70a. So, I can’t tell if this version works with previous Blender versions. What I do know is that newer video tutorials will most likely be showing the Blender 2.70+ user interface. So, it is probably a good idea to update your Blender to the latest version: Blender 2.70a.

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AvaStar Update 2014-19

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There have been the typical flow of update RC’s coming out for AvaStar. This morning we are up to version avastar-1-1-1071_blender-2-65.

Starting with version 1062 we can use older AvaStar models in these versions. I haven’t tested or seen an explanation of what this means, exactly. But, I think it means we can open older files and work on models without having to re-parent to the newer AvaStar rig. I’ll have to try that.

Some bugs and error notices have been fixed too.

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