Hamlet has a great example in his article: Project Materials Beta Viewer Brings The Spectacular World of Specularity (and More) to Second Life. The video I have here I found in Hamlet’s article. It was made by Damien Fate and runs about 1 minute.
[youtube 7mFgccXdESo]
This will allow creative types to make some wonderful silk looking clothes. I’m thinking silk Cheongsams.
There are rumors that the new Materials System will push objects that use the new materials into the Land Impact Accounting system. Some have found that when playing with Materials the Land Impact can escalate radically on physics cost. When using Alpha Masking the new materials can drive the Land Impact WAY UP. Plus a single prim, even phantom, can cost 500+ Physics LI. The image below shows a flattened sphere that costs 560 LI.
Server-Scripting Meeting – 560LI Flattened Sphere w?Materials
Andrew said some things that suggest items using Materials are planned to use the Land Impact Cost Accounting system. So, I would guess part of the reason we have this Alpha version viewer is to find problems they have missed. The Land Impact one is a big one.
In Late January I posted about the Materials System and gave an example of what the Build Panel might look like. See: Second Life Materials System 2013-4.
An Early Look at Materials
As it turns out this example is pretty accurate. Back in August 2012 I was explaining what Normal and Specular Maps do. See: Second Life Materials System Announced. Continue reading
This week we got to see the first public Project Viewer for the Materials System. I’ve added a link in the left column. It is a dynamic link so it should always point to the latest version.
The current version is: Second Life 3.5.1 (273518) Project Materials.
Basic Diffuse Texture
Download size is just under 30mb.
It installs to its own directory and has its own settings files. It does however, share chat logs and the cache. I suggest you change the cache to use a location other than the main viewer’s cache. You can go into Preferences->Advanced->Cache Location and change it. Then restart the viewer.
A wiki page went up Today (4/8) : Release Notes – Second Life Project Materials – 3.5.1.
Warning: DO NOT use this viewer to edit objects you want to keep. This version of the Project Viewer is an Alpha version. It may BREAK anything you edit with it.
You have been warned.
All of the main grid is Materials enabled. The ADITI preview grid’s recently updated regions are Materials Enabled. Older regions are not. There is no easy way to tell for sure.
The code repository is named: viewer-development-materials. This code is NOT ready to be merged to other viewer projects. Oz Linden says they have yet to stabilize the code. That means depending on the problems they find there may or may not be significant changes and re-writes.
The viewer can be downloaded from the Alternative Viewers Page.
More information to come.
The Materials System Project is steadily progressing. We do not have an ETA, yet. We do have a bit of a place marker in that we are told projects are moving in the order of; Chat HUD User Interface, Server Side Appearance, and then Materials. So, we know it will arrive soon, but is still a ways off. If we want Materials to work the way we want, we need to be able to provide feedback during the coming Beta Phase of the development process.
[youtube W07H7xeUnGE]
To be able to give feedback we need to understand how to make and use of Normal and Specular Maps (or textures – interchangeable words in this case). So now is probably a good time to start learning the basics to allow us to participate in the beta testing without looking too ignorant. Continue reading
Materials are coming to Second Life™. Part of the feature is Normal Maps. So, if you want to take advantage of the new feature you are going to need to learn how to make Normal Maps. There is a new tutorial that teaches one how to use the free GIMP image editor to make them.
Indigo Mertel Plurked the link. If you’re Plurking, friend Indigo. The video is 23 minutes long.
[youtube 8Jdo3ZmtPWk]
vscorpianc made the tutorial. Vscorpianc has 277 videos on YouTube. It is a nice collection of GIMP and Blender tutorials.
She does an excellent job and speaks very well. None of the umm… errr… uuhh… or false starts and redo’s.
Last we were hearing is that being able to change Normal and Specular Maps via script was not going to be possible. We have some clarification on that.
When the Materials System is first released it will not be possible to change the Normal and Specular Maps via script. The reason is that feature is just not going to be added in phase-one of the rollout. There is no other technical or mystical reason than the work to add the ability is just not being done. It is a time availability thing.
Changing the normal map requires the server to update everyone that can see the object being updated. All those that do not have the new map will have to download it. So, there is a load placed on servers and viewers for each map change. The same is currently true of texture changes, which are scriptable now. So, if people request the ability to change Normal and Specular Maps via script, it may be added at some point. Don’t bother requesting it now, unless you have a really good user case. I suspect the Lindens are waiting to see if scripting for the maps is really needed.