Second Life

Things about SL

#SL Mesh Deformer Discussion

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There is some discussion going on in the JIRA thread STORM-1716. Everyone should be able to see the item. I am not sure who can and cannot comment on it. The comments over the last week or two are on the current Deformer, which I call 0.4.

Problem with Default Sit Pose

User Error

One of the Deformer problems Karl described as User Error. That term is going to mean different things to different people. I think Kitsune Shan best described the problem saying, “Anyway, I see why Qarl says that about “user error”. Most people here use Blender, they trend to just select the mesh and the skeleton, so the weights are copied, but NOT correctly applied. Handmade weights are always necessary if you want to do a good job. And the other factor is that people keep paying more attention in how the default mesh deforms than using a custom one. Tests can be done using a very high poly density mesh, so changes, spikes and vertex problems are more visible. Using the default avatar shape isn’t too bad as “test” but remember, no one will use the default mesh to make clothes.”

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Pathfinding Events Change

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About the 6th of September Maestro Linden updated the Pathfinding Events. See the Wiki page: Event path_update. I hadn’t looked at the page for some time. So, I had not noticed until now.

Events are triggers for scripts. They are sort of thing that says: this just happened. You then have a chance to have the script do something in response. The Pathfinding events now include these things:

  1. PU_SLOWDOWN_DISTANCE_REACHED
  2. PU_GOAL_REACHED
  3. PU_FAILURE_INVALID_START
  4. PU_FAILURE_INVALID_GOAL
  5. PU_FAILURE_UNREACHABLE
  6. PU_FAILURE_TARGET_GONE
  7. PU_FAILURE_NO_VALID_DESTINATION
  8. PU_EVADE_HIDDEN
  9. PU_EVADE_SPOTTED
  10. PU_FAILURE_NO_NAVMESH
  11. PU_FAILURE_DYNAMIC_PATHFINDING_DISABLED
  12. PU_FAILURE_PARCEL_UNREACHABLE
  13. PU_FAILURE_OTHER

The green items are new.

Being able to detect when a region has disabled Pathfinding allows the scripter to move the character out of the area and restart it. That will stop PF Characters from piling up at the borders of disabled regions.

When I looked at the page the links from these items had not been added yet. So, we don’t have detailed information on each event. For instance at what distance does PU_SLOWDOWN_DISTANCE_REACHED trigger? Can one set the distance?

Eventually the pages will get written and appear. Until then we’ll just have to go with the short descriptions provided on the path_update page.

 

#SL News 3 Week 38

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There were problems with the Tuesday roll out. Some noticed the problems and others of us didn’t. For those that ran into problems it was an annoyance. Things just weren’t working correctly.

Server Beta Meeting Sept 2012

Oskar Linden explained what happened:

Things were going great this week ‘til Tuesday then…

So, this is what happened. Our release system is a big machine. It’s operated by hand but it’s still a machine. [I’m visualizing a big Steampunk thing huffing and puffing with levers and stuff.] You put code in one end and it gets released at the other end

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MetaReality Week 38

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Another Metareality podcast is out, named: Less is More? This is my outline of the timeline, summary, and comments. It is not a transcript. At best I paraphrase and at worse miss the point entirely. So, if you react strongly to something, listen to the original audio.

[youtube r74hkI-JcHY]

0:00 – Introductions – Kimberly Winnington = Gianna Borgnine, Karl Stiefvater = Qarl Fizz, formerly Qarl Linden, and Bernhard Drax = Draxtor Despres.

The first part of the audio was recorded before the introductory videos or IGN article were out. At about 29:00 they see the video and article release pops up. They stop to watch it and then the conversation changes a bit. So, take that into account as you read.

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Mesh Deformer Test

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Darien Caldwell did a test of the newly released version of the Mesh Deformer. The test is shown in an 8 minute video posted on YouTube. You can discuss the test over on SLUniverse: SL Deformer Test, where I first saw the video.

[youtube 1wnBB7c5NfM]

In the video Darien has the avatar wearing a copy of the clothing templates so we can see the avatar’s polygons. He used a copy of the avatar as a rigged mesh attachment with a black texture for clothing. This makes it really easy to see the places where the two meshes match up and overlay each other.

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Pathfinding Update Week 38

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Yesterday late in the day Lorca Linden made a post about Pathfinding (PF) in the SL Forum. You can see it here: Pathfinding FAQ.

Pathfinding

Included in the information is the estimate that the Pathfinding Tools will be in the release viewer by the end of September. The release delay has been due to a viewer memory leak issue that has delayed all viewer releases. The leak is not in the PF code. But, the PF code is in the batch of updates with the leaky code. They are currently trying to separate the PF code from the other code and get the PF Tools released.

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