Category Archives: Mesh

#SL Mesh Deformer Status II Week 48

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There is an issue for some with the Mesh Deformer and the time it needs to calculate the mesh for offsetting. Kitsune Shan has been working with the Deformer and voicing concern about the time needed for the Deformer to kick in.

Kitsune Shan

Kitsune is proposing that we do something like what is done with avatar baking. The viewer does the bake and sends a composite image to the servers for everyone else to use. Of course that is being changed to a server side process now, where a new service in servers at the Lab will do the bake and send out the composite image. Kitsune would like to see something similar to that for the Mesh Deformer.

White Rabbit points outthe difficulties with attempting to cache the deformation calculations. White Rabbit has done some testing and finds the CPU time for the Deformer calculation is consistently small. She speculates that the long calc times come from the thread being a low priority process.

White Rabbit

The chances that Deformer calc’s will be cached server side is, in my opinion, slim to none. We do not have any statistics on the type of hardware being used with Second Life™. We know there is new stuff, way old hardware, and everything in between. But, AFAIK, we have no information on how much of each.

We have been told that number of users staying with SL Viewer 1.23.x is only 2 or 3%. Third Party Viewers that do not use SSE2 CPU commands is small. Read the SSE2 thing as meaning viewers that support really old computers. Their user bases are so small they fit within the 2-3% too. So, I’ll speculate that the Lab is not going to put much effort into something as complex as caching deformation data. Continue reading →

#SL Mesh Deformer Update Week 48

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In my #SL News on the 15th I reported I think the Mesh Deformer Project is setting off to the side. I mention that from Oz Linden’s perspective interest in the Deformer has died out. That drew some reaction in several places. Since a couple of days after the article things have picked up. I doubt I did all that. But, people are getting the word out.

Blender 2.64a – Transform/Rotation

I’ve also gotten several questions that surprised me. Some are pointing out they are new to this issue… which while that surprises me it shouldn’t. This project started a year ago and we have had a lot of people come in and leave during that period. So, I’m going to try to update things get people together.

If you find people confused on what testing is in progress and what needs to be done, please refer them here.

Continue reading →

#SL Mesh Deformer Update

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Whirly Fizzle has been doing some poking at the Deformer. She He sees it as working very well with avatar physics. She He has made some new Collada files and uploaded them to test with the Deformer.

We still need more clothes to test with. The lack of test items is slowing the QA process for the Deformer. Apparently the testing clothes in the closet were uploaded with a previous version of the Deformer Project Viewer. So, they don’t deform. Oz Linden is going to clean the closet out. So, there will be just about nothing in it.

For weeks we have been trying to get people to provide test clothes. This is an old problem in Second Life. People like to complain about the Lab not getting things right, but when people are asked to help, they don’t. They will however be quick to rave and rant about what the Lab SHOULD have done.

The best we can do is send notices to our favorite mesh designers and ask them to help and more responsibly provide something ourselves.

#SL Mesh Uploader Change

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Runitai Linden has released a pre-QA version of a modified viewer. The mesh upload function has been changed to solve some problems. The primary problem being SH-3055 – Cannot upload any model (*.dae) file; “xxx failed to upload, see the log file for details.”

Runitai announced the release in a comment in the JIRA.

Download Second Life Test Viewer

REMEMBER: This is an untested build so it likely contains other unrelated bugs.

If you find problems with the viewer’s mesh upload, post the information in SH-3055. This should be a JIRA item open to all SL users.

Second Life Render Metadata

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You may have noticed the item in the Develop menu labeled Render Metadata. At this week’s Content and Mesh Creation user group meeting Zed Tremont asked about getting more information for items in this menu. Nyx Linden provided some insight into these items.

Second Life Viewer’s Render Metadata Menu

If you have not noticed the item look in the top menu try: Develop (Ctrl-Alt-Q – Advanced has to enabled in some viewers to see it Ctrl-Alt-D)-> Render Metadata.

These tools are more for developers than ‘for creators.’ But, creators can use some of them. Unfortunately most of the items are not explained in the Second Life™ Wiki. Nyx says, “…at the moment our documentation around this *is* the source code, most of these displays are mostly used by our graphics engineers, they’re not intended to be general-use displays (hence the lack of documentation).”

Continue reading →

Mesh Deformer Update Week 42

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Darien Caldwell is working on what I call the second phase of the Mesh Deformer. A bug in the Deformer has come up in that process. I suppose this is a minor bug… it is easy enough to work around. But, one does have to work around it and know about it. I talked with Darien in the Open Source user group meeting, which Oz Linden rescheduled then didn’t make it to. 😛

Thin shape – Height 53 Torso 50 – Click Enlarge

Darien has posted an explanation of the bug in STORM-1716, which anyone can see and most can post to. This is the comment: Continue reading →

Mesh Rendering Quirk

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Honor McMillian found a glitch in one of her photos. It has to do with how the viewer renders reflections of mesh objects. Bounce over to her site and see: Redefining Avatar in Second Life.

Render Problem with Mesh – Images by: Honor McMillan

Notice the ship’s reflection. One must include avatars in the reflection settings to get mesh items to show a reflection.

I would call that a bug.

Honor points out another problem she ran into while shooting pictures. That particular problem is the reason that photographers use viewers with the Derender feature. The feature allows you to right-click an object and select ‘Derender’. It then disappears from the scene. Unfortunately the SL Viewers do not have the feature. Firestorm does… if I remember correctly.

New #SL Mesh Import Information

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It seems Magus Freston has created a viewer patch for a problem with importing animations and weight painting rigged mesh data. He explains over on SLUniverse.

A limitation of the attachment points in the LL character is that many of them have names with spaces, like “Left Pec”. Collada 1.4 doesn’t handle bone names with spaces as space is used to delimit bone names. So the idea is to replace the spaces with an underscore for the collada file so you get “Left_Pec”, which of course SL doesn’t recognize. The patch just translates “Left_Pec” back to “Left Pec” at import time.

Links to the patch and instructions for testing the patch are included in the post.

Darien Caldwell compiled a test viewer for Magus. To which Magus responded:

With Darien’s help in compiling a patched viewer we’ve been able to confirm that the patch works

This means all bones including all attachment points can be weighted to mesh and animated.

The viewer can be downloaded here: Patch Test Viewer. There is no install program. So, if you are not into manual installs in Windows this is not for you.

If you want to be brave and try it, use the link in my left column to get a copy of the Developer viewer. Install that. Download the Test viewer. It comes in a ZIP file. Use whatever to unzip the file into its own folder. It does not automatically create a folder on being unzipped. I had to specify one.

To run the viewer, look in the folder you specified for the unzip. You will find a file named LindenDeveloper.exe. Double click it to start the viewer. The viewer will open and you are good to go.

If you find a bug or have a problem with imports because of bone names, let Magus know. He will want specific information, so provide the details. Use the thread at SLUniverse.