Strawberry Singh has a meme called What’s Your Digits? It is about shape and mesh bodies. So, what can I add to that?
My Digits 4/2015
If your new to Second Life™ you may not know the viewer’s appearance editor reports the wrong height for avatars. You can check this yourself by rezzing a cube and stretching it to whatever height you think you are. Make it phantom and walk into it. Continue reading
If you have ever tried to make big things that require they be made in parts, you have probably run into this problem: the join points show. Look at the example in the lower right of the image (2 arrows). The desired result is to the left (single arrow).
Image by by Drongle McMahon – Arrows by me.
This is not a matter of getting the vertices to match. Even if they do match perfectly, you get shading errors in Second Life. This is a problem with vertex normals.
There is an ongoing thread about this problem in the SL Forum: Visible seam when connecting two smooth shaded pieces. A good explanation of how to achieve a smooth surface at the connection point with correct shading is given by Drongle McMahon here.
Coventina Dalgleish posted in the SL Forum: General Observations On Mesh Bodys – 4/6/15. Coventina came across a mesh body that has 2 million faces. OMG!
BA – angel daydreams by ~ Boudicca ~, on Flickr
The question asked is, don’t the Lindens have a limit on the size of mesh uploads? Well, yeah. They do. But a body is often 3 items, the hands 1 or 2 more items, the feet also 1 or 2 items, and the head another item. So, while it isn’t easy it is possible to get to 2 million faces without exceeding the Linden upload limits per mesh part, just make lots of parts with lots of materials. Continue reading
A week or two back I covered MayaStar®, the addon for Maya® users developing Second Life™ content. I suppose many are aware of the similar product AvaStar for Blender. These are different products made by different people. They are not competitors as they serve different audiences.
Even if you are a Blender/AvaStar user there is still a bit of information here that may help you in your design work. I’ve sot of added the work flow Cathy is building into MayaStar into my AvaStar work flow.
The video is 30 minutes long. Continue reading
You may have picked up from the SL Viewer news that a change is coming to the Lab’s mesh uploader. There are, I think, some nice changes coming.
WA D-Lab PICCOLI2 IN YOUR GARDEN by Willow, on Flickr
As it is now, when uploading mesh we often get an error and the error message is basically useless, no help. The Lindens are working to improve that. They hope to give us a better idea of what went wrong.
Also, we are currently limited to 8 faces per mesh. That means any single mesh object can only have 8 materials. That too is going to change. The Lindens are saying if there will be a new limit just that we can have more than 8.
There is also something changing about how the various LoD models and physics models will associate with our item based on file naming. I don’t get what they are doing here as I have yet to play with the RC/Project viewer that is out.
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
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
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 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
From Slink’s official announcement (quoting and paraphrasing):
Thu, Aug 28 2014 11:39:30 AM PDT
Physique 1.4 is now available at the Slink Mainstore. If you own this body, please visit the redelivery terminal to get the new version sent to you. If your purchase is not on the list, please contact Slink Resident for a redelivery!
Slink Free Dress
The new body has a few very nice new features, and resolves some of the issues experienced by users of the previous version.
Fixes:
- Resolved a small geometry issue that was causing “ants” (small gap) around the neck seam between the body and either the visage patch or the SL default head, on lower Antialialising settings.
- Resolved an issue with the weights on several vertices on the underwear layer that was causing it to clip through the clothing layer on the pelvis region.
- Resolved an issue that was causing the Visage neck patch to throw an error when the Neck Fitting buttons were pressed on the Alpha and Clothing Layers HUD.
