Mesh

AvaStar and Slink March 2018

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AvaStar is at version 2.3-1 released 17 January 2018 according to announcements in the Blender-AvaStar group. In the products page where I download the file, it is labeled 2.3-2. The release is called a bug fix. It has 10 bug fixes and 4 improvements. See the changelog here. Notice the Dev Kit manager…

Blender is currently at version 2.79a. The Blender download is here. The Portable version is the version I use so I can have multiple versions installed. I’ll explain why later.

Blender Download March 2018

Today I see Slink released an update to their Dev Kit for AvaStar. I find the email got to me yesterday 3/19. It tells me, “The bodies in these kits have been reworked from the ground up, for better geometry, more accurate weighting and better fit!” (Emphasis is theirs.)

Also, Slink Development now has a Discord Server for developers. The link is in the email. Siddean is available 9 to 5 Eastern Australian Time… Australia has 13 time zones… O.O  so… divide by 13 then 24 and multiply by… and turn the world around once… and that gives us 4pm to 12AM SLT/PT. Technically, they are 17 to 18 hours ahead of California, depending on Daylight Saving Time. If it is Monday here it is likely Tuesday there.

If it weren’t for the International Date Line they would be 5 to 6 hours behind California. 

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Integrated Animation Overriders … A what?

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Mesh Body Addicts posted about Vista Animations (VA) new Bento Head animations. The post content is actually within in a video (vlog), Vista Diana & Lia.

The explanation she gives of the existing onion-skin animations used before Bento is not wrong, but most of the techies will disagree with it. If you are not into the tech, it is good enough to get you by. Besides, Animesh and Bakes-On are coming and likely to change much of this anyway.

The word in the video is there is a Bento Full Body AO coming. As it is now I have an AO for my body, the stands, sits, walks, etc. I have another for my new mesh head. And another for my hands. I am assuming VA is combining body, hands, and head into one AO. Jump to time mark 18:00± to get an idea of what the coming AO will look like in operation.

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Second Life Content Creators’ Meeting 2018 w10

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Getting video of these meetings is a PITA. Medhue (1:27 PM) and I (1:08 PM) both were late getting to the meeting. Medhue’s audio has reverb… which generally comes from room echo… the combination of the sound source (talker) and reflected sound from walls reaching the mic at slightly different times. There are no echoes or room reverb in Second Life™. So, the computer’s speaker output has to be fed back via an open mic or duel channels in the recording app. Neither appears to be the case for Medhue…

I got there a bit earlier. I recorded the meeting, so the source is on my computer. I can edit it and clean up the audio. So, this week I’ll use my video. It takes some time to clean up the video and audio. Plus, Thursday is a busy day for me, RL. So, mine comes out later, like Saturday or Sunday.

The first thing you are likely to notice in the video is Vir Linden’s voice is messed up. In Medhue’s video, Vir Linden’s voice is also messed up but in a different way. So, the problem is in the connections or our computers. I have yet to figure out what’s up with mine.

I’ve cleaned the audio up a bit. But, there is only so much repair work one can do. 

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What’s in My Head…

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I’ve been looking for a mesh head for a long time. When it comes to my avatar’s appearance I get picky. My first skin was free and came from a strip club. I then spent months finding the just right skin. I finally decided on a Nomine WL Mocha skin by Munchflower Zaius, an artist that gave up creating because of copyboting (still in Marketplace). It was my first ever big purchase. Paid for from dancing-stripping, camping, and money trees in 2008.

Classic to Bento – Distant

I tend to spend months playing with demos and talking with people when I buy my first body anything. So, feet then hands, then body and now head. Also, I had hoped Slink would come out with a Bento head. But…

I like my classic head. So, I wanted a head that would allow me to have a very similar face. That was harder than I thought. I went through a lot of heads and spent days making shapes. I decided I would never get the look I wanted with some popular heads.

I decided on GA.EG’s Jennifer head. Very quickly I got near the shape/look I wanted. Plus, an included skin matched my favorite YS&YS’ Viola skin. That greatly simplified the addition. I had been planning on having to buy a new skin. My YS&YS to too old to have appliers for Omega and does not have any head applier. Still, I may get a skin with an applier for this new head.

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Second Life Bits 2018 w07

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Dance – Crap Mariner has an article about dance in the One Billion Rising event. You’ll find it on Inara’s blog: Who Puts the Dance into One Billion Rising? Long, interesting.

Happy Valentine
Happy Valentine

Restarts – When the simulators are restarted it usually takes just a few hours. Some are experiencing way long times for restarts. Caleb Linden is looking into it. If you have specific information on a long restart, email it to Caleb or file a JIRA Bug Report and mention Caleb’s name.

Interesting – There is a huge 220 page, and growing, thread in the SL Forum, How does your avatar look today? A resident by the name of Nostoll started the thread in May 2017. With about 26 posts per page that is almost 6,000 posts residents have made.

A variety of avatars are portrayed with varying quality. I suppose we could consider the images a representation of a cross-section of SL users. If that were accurate then we could draw conclusions from what see, like hardware in use and graphics settings, whether or not ALM is in use…

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