Second Life Bits 2014-23 #2

Groups

Ciaran Laval has an article up that covers the history of Second Life™ groups and his suggestion that things change to break a pattern present in SL since it started. See: Second Life Group System Still Needs An Overhaul.

SL users always want more groups. We are limited to 42 now. Originally it was 10, before my time. I started with the 25 limit.

MOLiCHiNO - Fifty Linden Friday

MOLiCHiNO – Fifty Linden Friday

A major part of groups is chat. Adding more groups increases the server load exponentially. Chat lag and not being able to post to a group are common problems we all deal with now as we use groups. I have no idea how many times I have had to send an IM to someone in the group because I could not get a comment into a group chat, connection fail…

Ciaran is suggesting that we shift from the chat we have now to something web based. I suppose something more like IRC, but with more persistence. Continue reading

Scale for VR?

In Second Life™ we talk about scale. Some of us are big on getting people and things to RL scales in our virtual world (VW). I’m a fan and I’ve written several articles about building to scale. Now people interested in Virtual Reality (VR) are thinking about scale at entirely new levels. The site Road to VR has an article up about how the fashion industry may use VR to allow people to model RL clothes in VR prior to purchase.

Second Life Fashion

Second Life Fashion

Imagine you could specify your avatar based on your RL shape… that could be a good or bad thing. :/ But, the fashion industry is thinking of using the idea to allow us to try on clothes in VR and decide if we like the fit. I suppose if it fits then we can order it and an Amazon drone will deliver it. Well, it is a dream at the moment. But, an Australian company has a proof of concept demo out for the Oculus Rift.

The idea is also to get away from sizes. Ladies know that sizes from various designers vary, often varying as a way to attempt to flatter the female ego. ‘Oh, I can wear a size 2…’ Personally the miss sizing for psychological advertizing just annoys me.  Continue reading

New ‘Starter Avatars’…

New Avatar - Interesting Mesh Density

New Avatar – Interesting Mesh Density

OK everyone is posting about these.  If you haven’t already heard, you have to be hiding. They are far better than the Ruth and Roth avatars from earlier times.

They are interesting and noobies will look much better. However, noobies will still act like noobies . They won’t be all that hard to recognize.

However, Saturday when I was trying to play with the new avatars the SL system was acting up. The Choose an Avatar panel did not want to load. I kept getting an empty panel. I left the panel open and relogged, that got it working, or it may be just the relog did it. Or my region may have been having difficulties.

Once the panel was loaded then some avatars would not load. I would get what looked like an LOD4 version 0f the avatar only, very bizarre looking up close but ok from a distance. Switch to another one and later retry the one with loading problems, seemed to work.

When you wear one of these avatars a folder is created in the Clothing folder of your inventory. The ‘Lucy’ avatar is of course in the Lucy folder.

These avatars completely replace, well are worn over, your system avatar and a full body alpha mask hides the system avatar. They are complete mesh bodies and clothes. I am not sure why they made them No-Mod.  Continue reading

Second Life Appliers

Felicia Silversmith

Felicia Silversmith

Appliers are the scripts that allow you to wear clothes over mesh attachments. Those using Tangos and Phat Azz and similar attachments know about appliers.

The problem with appliers is many of the creators of mesh attachments are using their own applier, a custom script they developed. If you make system clothes via the clothing templates, you get a template from the mesh attachment maker and make textures for the attachment. It then looks like your clothes are fitting over the attachment.

The problem is everybody seems to be making their own scripts. The result is there are incompatibilities in how appliers work and how to make textures for the attachments. A big peoblem for designers is in knowing which face number is to be used for a texture. Is face #1 the breasts or butt?  Continue reading

Fabulously Free on Second Life Boobies

Hemi Violet

Hemi Violet

I am sort of pleasantly surprised by the answers to a question in the Fab Advice column. When the advisors were asked which are the best boobs and butts, only one had answers. The others have little experience with add on boobs and butts and theirs spend most of the time in inventory. See the full article here: Fab Advice #15.

Skyler refers us to Big Boobie Babes. This is a site that keeps up on the latest in Second Life™ boobs and butts with reviews and release news. They also have a blogroll of other sites covering boobs and butts.

Verotic Muscle Skins and Appliers

Verotic Muscle Skins and Appliers

 

I do see more and more clothes coming with appliers for the various add ons. I have my Slink hands and love all the nails I get. But, I haven’t gotten into implants… yet. I do like my smaller breasts. But, I do like the nicer shaped ones too. So, I have thought about … having some work done.

WARNING: NSFW… past the fold.  Continue reading

Second Life Avatar Shape

Loki Eliot has an article up titled: Exploring the future of my Avatars Shape.

The article is a good account of the problems and decisions we must handle when making full avatars and clothes. It is worth the time to read.

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We have many considerations related to where the Second Life Avatar is going and how we will work with it. The Lindens see things in terms different from those we see. The Lindens are dealing with programming issues and development costs. Since they seldom make clothes and seldom are involved in fashion the priorities are lopsided toward the technical. Lindens may not change appearance/clothes for years.

Of course the majority of SL users have no idea of the technical complications. But, they are into fashion and may change their appearance several times per week, if not per day. So, the majority of users have priorities lopsided toward the aesthetic side. Continue reading

Slink Visage Heads Released-Review

Slink released the new mesh heads as promised this past Saturday. I didn’t get to check them out until Monday night. They are interesting. But, they are not for me. I do think they are really nice. They show what our avatars could be.

Comparison

Comparison

There is some interesting slight-of-hand tech used in making animated mesh. Any animation or change of a mesh shape is done by making each mesh shape somewhat like drawing each frame of an animation. Then making the shape one wants to see now visible and all the other shapes invisible. When ready for another shape the currently visible one is made invisible and the newly desired shape made visible. This technique makes for really high polygon count items. I can’t tell if that is what is being done with Slink’s heads. But, it is the only way I know to change the shape of a mesh item.

The weights of the two heads are shown in image #1. Don’t pay much attention to the Land Impact or Physics. I did not bother to make a physics layer for my import of the SL Avatar head. So, those numbers are distorted.  Continue reading

Slink’s Visage Timing

There has been a bit of miscommunication… The release is today. Depending on where you live today is different than expected. The release is apparently midnight Friday. Or as many of us would say Saturday morning. :/

I didn’t catch that when researching and reading.

The Slink show room is packed today, Friday. The group is very chatty today also. People are looking forward to the release.