Category Archives: Clothes Skins Etc

The Loki Avatars

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Body snatchers unit. New mesh bodies are here. Loki Eliot has made new mesh bodies. For now they are free. There are also clothes packs to go with the avatars. These are ‘packs’ not clothes. The point being is they are for designers wanting to make clothes for the Loki avatars.

Loki Avatars

Loki Avatars

These apparently are not Fitted Mesh avatars. Loki says he is still working to figure out Fitted Mesh. That is no easy task. I’ve been through it. There is a lot to learn. The SL Classic Avatar uses morphing for size changing. Plus the scaling of shapes coming out of SL via XML files and later uploaded into SL have scaling issues. (See: Exporting Second Life Shapes) Anyone trying to figure things out has to discover these hidden problems.

I gave up and bought AvaStar, being a Blender user. Maya users can now buy MayaStar. Most of the esoteric  SL problems are solved in those two tools.

See Exploring the future of my Avatars Shape – part 5 – Loki Avatars for more details.

Second Life’s Full Perm Fair

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I had never heard of it. But this is apparently the 6th fair. It’s an interesting event with a ton of Full Perm stuff for sale. I runs from March 1 to 22. You’ll find it in Old Europe Village. It is small but jam packed.

Full Perm Fair - March 2015

Full Perm Fair – March 2015

I am guessing the purpose of the fair is to provide source items for people good at texturing and weak at mesh modeling. Continue reading →

Slink Updates 2015 Week 10

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Slink hands and feet got a new update. This update changes how various appliers work with the hands and feet. This is the announcement:

-{ZOZ}- IMPORTANT UPDATE

Monday,02 Mar 2015 15:38:00 GMT

As some may know, Slink released a big update to their hands and feet. This also means that designers have also had an update. In order to use the NEW POLISH HUDS you must UPDATE YOUR HANDS AND FEET. If you have hands or feet older then this last weekend, be sure to go in and have them redelivered to you so the new polish appliers for slink hands and feet work. Yes old huds will work with the new hands. But new huds will not work with old hands. ~Zoz

Second Life Fitted Mesh Doesn’t Fit

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Yeah, we know… ‘Fitted’ does not necessarily mean it fits. But, Astrid Kaufmat has an interesting post in the forum about the problem. She is on about figuring out how to work with the SL avatar in 3DMax/Blender/Maya modeling programs without having to have a plugin. Well… good luck with that. I finally gave up, bought AvaStar, and started having fun.

She goes into great detail about the problem. But I’m pretty sure she hasn’t figured it out. She certainly seems to have missed the problem some of us have recognized. Explained here: Second Life Shape Export.

Astrid has been around since 2011. But, she seems to have missed the discussions on the ‘deformer’ and the problems with changing the system avatar. She goes on to recommend a new avatar for SL. I believe that is a losing battle.

Avatar Render Cost 2015-07

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Penny Patton writes about reducing her avatar’s render cost. (See: Draw Weight.) Kay Jiersen picked up on the article and wrote an article too. (See: Render weight best practices for Second Life.) Some time ago I wrote: Second Life Performance: Render Muting, which is about the same subject.

Penny Paton's Example of Dense High ARC Mesh

Penny Patton’s Example of Dense High ARC Mesh

Penny is pointing out there is a bit we can do to change our render cost with only a minimal change in appearance. Kay suspects few people are even aware of the Avatar Render Cost (ARC) feature in the viewer and have no clue they need to do anything. I agree with Kay. But, she goes on to recommend changes to Second Life, which is where I disagree.

Kay made field trips to various places in Second Life where she recorded the ARC values of avatars in the regions. Kay points out that only 81 of 190 (42.6%) avatars would render using a setting of 80,000 for Render Muting. That means 109 or 57.3% of the avatars would not render .

The horrible frame rates (FPS) I am getting have me looking at a new computer and a better video card. But, I actually have little hope that will help FPS in regions populated with 30+ avatars.

On an empirical basis Kay found that jewelry is a major culprit in high ARC.  Continue reading →

AvaStar

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Gaia says: You have to update your AvaStar to AvaStar-1.3-18 when you want to work with Blender 2.73 (RC).

There are some problems with 2.73. The Blender people are holding back its release while they make fixes. But, there is an RC version out.

AvaStar 1.3-18 is the recommended version for Blender 2.73. Any earlier AvaStar version is likely to produce problems with 2.73.

The Buzz

We may find preset shapes in AvaStar someday. It was been discussed with Gaia this week. So, we may eventually see child, tiny, giant, and other shapes.

I don’t expect Gaia to add the ‘Standard Sizes’ as presets into AvaStar. But third parties may make add-in shapes for Blender and/or AvaStar.  Continue reading →

Second Life Performance: Render Muting

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We have and are hearing lots of complaints about how some number of avatars lag our Second Life™ experience. If you open up the Viewer Stats (Ctrl-Shift-1) and look at server performance (Simulator: Time Dilation, Sim FPS, Physics FPS, and others), you often find the region server performing well; TD=0.999, Sim FPS=44-45, Physics=44=45. Even with lots of avatars in a region. So, it isn’t region/simulator lag that is the problem. Over the last year large steps in reducing simulator lag have been taken with CDN being the most recent. The lag is now in our viewer.

Render Auto Muting

Render Auto Muting

There is a value the viewer displays labeled Avatar Render Cost (ARC). In November 2011 I wrote about ARC and how to use it, as it had recently changed. (See: #SL ARC Replaced) Things have changed since then. We now find the value displayed in two different ways. Try: Top Menu->Advanced (press Ctrl-Alt-D if you do not have that menu item)->Performance Tools->Show Draw Weight for Avatars. This will display a colored text above avatars showing their ‘render cost’. This does clutter the screen, but makes it easy to see which avatar has what ARC.  Continue reading →

AvaStar Transfer Registration Ending

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If you have not yet registered your purchase on the Machinimatrix.org web site, it is time to do so. You need to register to be able to keep a permanent download link and to get your updates. At some point the transfer from the old download to the new registration process will stop working. Gaia is telling that ‘end’ will be SOON.

Also, Gaia has announced a support section of the site where users can provide assistance. See: Just Ask. You need to be registered to use this feature.