Clothes Skins Etc

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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

Second Life Bits 2014-36

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Miscellaneous

Daniel Voyager has a post up listing the Second Life™ events happening in September. See: Second Life events happening during September 2014. Of course you realize these are only a few of the events that will happen this month.

Norder Ney in HeavenScent - 2014
Norder Ney in HeavenScent – 2014

Fabulously Free has a post listing the top 10 hunts going on today. See: Today’s Top 10 Hunts. Some of the hunts listed run all month.

One of the hunt information sites is HuntSL.com. The site lists hunts in progress and is updated often. 

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