Second Life

Things about SL

Second Life Fitted Mesh Doesn’t Fit

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Yeah, we know… ‘Fitted’ does not necessarily mean it fits. But, Astrid Kaufmat has an interesting post in the forum about the problem. She is on about figuring out how to work with the SL avatar in 3DMax/Blender/Maya modeling programs without having to have a plugin. Well… good luck with that. I finally gave up, bought AvaStar, and started having fun.

She goes into great detail about the problem. But I’m pretty sure she hasn’t figured it out. She certainly seems to have missed the problem some of us have recognized. Explained here: Second Life Shape Export.

Astrid has been around since 2011. But, she seems to have missed the discussions on the ‘deformer’ and the problems with changing the system avatar. She goes on to recommend a new avatar for SL. I believe that is a losing battle.

Second Life Bits 2015 Week 09

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Freeze Frame Bug

It seems there is a bug in the SL Viewer. Yeah, I say that like there is only one… Well, you’ll see this one if you take a snapshot using Freeze-Frame and then close the camera panel before your release Freeze-Frame mode. The only fix at that point is to relog.

Slow Render @ Server-Scripting UG 2015-09
Slow Render @ Server-Scripting UG 2015-09

Once you relog, open the camera panel (Ctrl-Shift-S) and turn off Freeze-Frame. You don’t have to, but I would probably forget it is enabled and take another picture, close the panel, and have to relog again.

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Firestorm’s Tool Tip Tuesday 09

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It was Tuesday again. Seems to happen every week. This last Tuesday another FS Tip came out.

In this one Jessica is teaching us about the command line available in the Firestorm Viewer’s chat. This is one of the way neat things about the Firestorm Viewer. There are plenty of neat features. But, this command line thing is something power users will likely use several times per login secession.

These tip videos are getting about 9,000+ views after a couple of weeks. This is a very small percentage of the Firestorm users. Since Firestorm is used by more than half, closer to three-quarters, of the users of Second Life that means very few people know about TTT Videos. Pass around the link to the YouTube Channel.

Changing Windlight & HDR in the Second Life Viewer

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In the Designing Worlds how (previous post) Honour McMillan explains a problem solution for photographers using the SL Viewer. The idea is we often just want to just tweak a region’s settings. In Firestorm that is easy. You just do it. In the SL Viewer it doesn’t work. The settings are grayed out until you select a preset, which changes everything. The region’s settings are effectively hidden. But, there is a work-around. (Lindens: don’t break this!)

HDR vs No Adjustment
HDR vs No Adjustment

Honour explains in the Designing Worlds video:

  • Open the environment Sky Preset editor and select any preset. World->Environmental Editor->Sky Presets->Edit Presets…->select any preset.
  • Next open the Water Preset editor, select any water preset, X it out or cancel.

You’ll see the region switch back from the Sky Lighting Preset you selected to the region’s settings when you cancel the Water editor. Now your Sky Presets editor is using the region’s settings and settings in the editor are still enabled. Good work-around.

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Second Life Photography Tips

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Prim Perfect has done a couple of shows with Strawberry Singh, Honour McMillan and Wildstar Beaumont that are about SL Photography. The first is here: Designing Worlds looks at Second Life Photography with Strawberry Singh, Honour McMillan and Wildstar Beaumont. (Video is here: Part 1)

Designing Worlds Logo
Designing Worlds Logo

The second is here: Second Life Photography Part 2 – After you’ve taken your picture: A Designing Worlds exploration with Strawberry Singh, Honour McMillan and Wildstar Beaumont. (Video is in post)

If you are looking to improve your photographic work check out these two shows/videos. The first is about taking images and the second about processing them.

One of the things Strawberry points out is that over the last year she has started showing people she is photographing a screen shot of their self before starting. She has found it is the only way to know if everything they are wearing has rez’d. Too many times she had to redo shoots because something was not rendering. This is a more recent problem and over the last month seems worse.

Honour gets into more tech and details about what she is doing. I cover that in a separate article. It will publish about noon today. I haven’t figured out how to link to an unpublished post… and have it work once posted. I’ll add a link here later… sorry.

Second Life Needs… What?

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Shug Maitland wrote What Does Second Life Need? I like that she thinks. Now she has me thinking.

Shug Maitland Feb 2015
Shug Maitland Feb 2015

A recent article of Inara’s got Shug thinking. All signs are that SL1, our current Second Life, and what I call SL2, the new virtual world Linden Lab is building, will run simultaneously. Shug’s question is can SL1 compete with SL2? Good question.

I’ve heard and read lots of opinions. But, few include why they hold their opinion.

Shug and many of the rest of us agree we need a better avatar, Avatar 2.0. The starter avatars we have now are probably the direction the Lab will go with SL2. The skeleton, skin, and animation will likely all get better.

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