Second Life and Virtual Worlds
The trailer is an 8 minute video… a bit long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzMPLRpgK8k
You probably know Hair Faire is an event to benefit Wigs for Kids. You can visit in-world here (SLURL). The fair ends July 26th.
As usual the regions are full to capacity, about 40 people. Peak use in SL is about 2 to 3 PM PT. The minimum use time is about 2 to 3 AM PT.
Gaia Clary has a new version of AvaStar out. How binding works has changed. Seems lots of people didn’t get that an item had to be rotated and scaled before attempting to bind the item to the armature. Release Notes So, Gaia has adapted AvaStar to provide more help.
There are 5 new videos out. AvaStar Tutorials Play List. These provide tutorials for fitted mesh.
If you install the alpha version and find problems or want changes, file a ticket.
In Second Life we have way more standard size rigged mesh than fitted mesh. Every so often I find a standard size mesh something that fits me close enough I can tweak my shape and get a near perfect fit. The Iffyta AliKat’s Groovy Bikini, shown here, is one of those things.
One of the things missing from promotional material is the Draw-Render Weight of items. Including it would help people reduce lag. Like demos help us decide if we want to purchase. Anything over L$99 without a demo is a no purchase item, as far as I am concerned.
My avatar as shown has a Draw Weight in the SL Viewer of 85,478 (red) with the suit and 82,616 without. That means the suit adds 2,862. I think that is pretty good. You can also see the polygon count in the top is pretty good. In the bottoms it looks a bit high to me. But, for less than 3,000 points I won’t complain. My prim-flexi hair has a Draw Weight of 47,000±.
Indie Teepee is new to me. I find it is an annual music, arts and shopping festival, held from the 10th to the 24th of July. The event will feature music, live performances, a drive-in machinima screening, original mesh designers and art installations. Sounds interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okog1BQ65KM
But, in, I guess, a spin off there is a podcaster covering Second Life™ in a series named Indie Teepee. Oddly enough I ran into all this on Facebook while following up on the SLUniverse article asking designers to stop using Firestorm, which I still think is an odd way to go about fixing a lag issue in SL.
We still have a debate ongoing in Second Life™ over on SLUniverse in the discussion started by Adeon Writer, Dear Mesh Content Creators: Please stop making your content on Firestorm, continues. I provided my thoughts in Second Life LoD Problems – Is Firestorm to Blame. In that article you’ll see I think designer and consumer ignorance are to blame. I also see plenty of fascist rule makers out proposing their solutions.
I prefer freedom and free market solutions over rules.
One of the solutions proposed in:
BUG-6243 – Provide an informative warning when creating sculpts or mesh that may render improperly for others.
That places everything on the designer and provides no incentive for the designer to comply. I prefer something to provide information to everyone about what everything is doing to our render efficiency. That is why I filed:
This is one of my favorite events in Second Life™. With mesh hair it is possible to have a much lower Avatar Render Cost (ARC) or Draw Weight, which it is called depends on which viewer you are using. Whatever it is labeled in your viewer it costs you performance. So, I am replacing my high ARC sculpty do’s with new mesh do’s for that reason.
The fair opens July 11 and runs to July 18. This is the 10th university of this event, or so I am told.