Judith Flow
I woke up way too early this morning… browsing through the forum I came across a post by Judith Flow about working with petite animations, which I am clueless about. Judith has a process for correcting animations so they work well with petite avatars.
Check it out: How to: make your animations Petite Mesh Avatar Compatible
Thanks Judith.
I would appreciate comments on how well this works from those that have been working with Petite avatars and animating them.
Baker Linden got us some new information this week in the Server-Scripting UG on the fix for Large Group Editing Problems.
For the last two months he has been trying to solve the problem of getting large data sets to transfer reliably via the current API (application programming interface) running over UDP (an Internet protocol – think of it as a spoken language), which is the protocol all viewers use now to get group member lists. It is when that UDP transfer fails that people have problems with group member lists failing to load. Those failures also create some simulator side issues that degrade performance.
Large Groups – Image by: KittyKat3756 – Flickr
The practical limit for use with UDP is a member list of about 10,000 members. Any group larger will not reliably download. On some connections even the smaller 10k list will have problems. Sometimes larger lists will download. Sometimes they won’t. Baker has optimized the SQL query that pulls the list and eliminated as many timing problems as possible. I get the impression that several SQL tricks were tried, like breaking up queries and batching group of members for transfer were tried. But, in the end it simply is not going to work. So, the new API is going to use HTTP for the transfer. Eventually the UDP service tube for group member lists will be eliminated.
Just after I got my article out on Bandwidth and SVC-8124 I heard that there will be no promotions from the release channels to the main channel. This means the fix for SVC-8124 will NOT roll to the main channel next week.
There is a problem with permissions. See: SVC-8177 – There is different behavior between the RC channels and the main channel involving permissions, objects loose modify permissions. This is going to prevent any roll to the main channel.
The Bandwidth problem will continue for another week. I’ll have to see how they handle the fixes to the release channels next week to know how this is going to work. But… the Lindens tried several fixes, I think for 8177, and they failed. I think the result is they are rolling back the release channels to unwind the 8177 fixes and get a main channel version with a 8124 fix running on the main trunk code. With any luck they can get the 8124 code in and they will make it through the RC QA.
With the release of the Havok 2012.1 update and Pathfinding came an increase in bandwidth used. In the articles #SL News Week 33 and #SL News Update Week 33 I mention the problem. See JIRA: SVC-8124 – Excessive “ParcelOverlay reliable” messages sent by regions since last rolling restart (2012-08-08). Votes=124 – Watches=90 – 8/24. Resident interest in the JIRA shows it obviously not a big issue, unless you have a bandwidth capped/metered Internet service.
Networx Bandwidth Monitor
The fix for SVC-8124 was added to all 3 release channels to increase the probability that it can roll to the main grid next Tuesday.
I asked Oskar Linden if the Lab has seen an increase in bandwidth used since the PF release and 8124. He says not that he has heard. I suppose that means either it is a small enough problem, for the Lab, that they aren’t talking about it in house or Oskar has had his head down working and not noticed it.
Drongle McMahon has been posting this information around. Seems there is a problem when importing mesh into Second Life.
In case anyone else gtets into a mess with this …
Th name of an imported mesh in SL is taken from the “name” attribute of the <geometry> tag defining the mesh. Im Blender 2.49b, the exporter took this attribute from the Blender object name. Unfortunately, in Blender 2.63 it is taken instead from the data block. This means that renaming your objects so that they have reasonable names sfter import is no longer effective. Instead you have to rename the data blocks. You can do that in Outline view or in the property editor for object data (the inverted triangle of vertices).
If you use the same datablock for multiple objects, the exporter uses instancing, with the geometry appearing only once in the collada file, referenced in multiple nodes of the scene, each with their own transformations. Unfortunately, the uploader does not use instancing (although it does reads it properly from the collada). Instead, it ulpoads separate meshes. Since only one of these can use the dtablock name, the others appear to be renamed to “Object”.
Gaia Clary points out in a follow up post that the problem is being fixed in Blender 2.64. See her post.
This issue has been “fixed” by adding a new select option.In fact i believe that the SL Importer takes the Object name from the wrong place. It should use the information provided in the visual scene description. But well…
The new option will be available in Blender 2.64.
This article is about fixing a known problem in Second Life. The fix is simple enough. The cause is a bit odd. It has to do with ‘wearing’ and outfit folder and a selection problem, a sneaky gotcha.
Avatar wearing 90,000 Inventory Items' Rescue Operation Stopped for the Night - Image by Jon Diez Supat
The Firestorm-Phoenix wiki has a page on the problem: wearing_entire_inventory.
A number of people updating to SL Viewer 3.2.8 are getting pink prims. See the image below.
Image by Blaise Glendevon
There are two fixes. Neither are that great, but they will get you by until the Lab brings out a fix. The fix is thanks to the Firestorm/Phoenix Team, as far as I can tell. See: FIRE-4945 – Pink/Fushia textures when basic shaders enabled on ATI 3000-4000-5000 series cards.