This week there was no Bento UG meeting. The Lindens are sequestered in their monthly meeting. No one showed up for an informal meeting. At least by 1:15… when I left.
You can see my videos of previous meetings here: Nalates YouTube Channel.
New VR Headset US$79
Google is releasing a $79 headset named Daydream. Road to VR has an article on the headset.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLLAA4ENIP4
The headset uses a phone, not included. But, the phone has to be Daydream Certified. I’m not sure exactly what that means and I didn’t dee anyone explaining it. The most they say in the way of an explanation is: the Daydream headset works exclusively with Android’s integrated VR support.
Blender 360 VR
There is an interesting tutorial out for Blender 2.78 showing how to make a 360 VR image.
Second Life: The New Facelight
Facelights were a basic part of a well-dressed avatar, back in 2008. Especially for a dark skinned girl that wanted her eyes to show in her pictures. But, when Linden Lab added the Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) feature facelights often produced a good imitation of a solar flare. (Earth has been dealing with a solar flare since Friday, 9/30 – Phone giving you problems?)
The video shows one of my new facelights. The first part shows it attached to my ‘Center’ attachment point. The later part of the video shows it attached to my ‘Spine’ attachment point.
Facelights are now BAD and we see few people wearing them. A few merchants still supply facelights with their skin or clothes products. Photographers mostly use ALM and Windlight to handle their lighting needs. Some high-end photographers use PROJECTOR lights. But, old style facelights are pretty much a thing of the past. We seldom need facelights these days. But, there are still occasions when we need to add extra light.
Second Life News 2016 w40
Servers
There is a roll to the main channel this morning. The package running on the RC channels advances to the main software for all servers this week.
This is the package with ‘minor fixes’ and BUG-40565 “Significant script performance degradation observed in server version 16.09.14.319788” fixed.
There is no new package rolling to the RC channels. So, all regions will be running the same package.
Blender 2.78 Released Today
A new Blender release is out: 2.78. You can download it here: Blender 2.78 download.
There are new features that will help Second Life users. The full list of features is here: Blender 2.78 Release Logs. Interesting ones for SL users are:
- Viewport Rendering – Improvements in texture display
- Cloth Physics – New Dynamic Base Mesh and Simulation Speed option
- Cycles Render Engine – Faster easier
- Modeling – New tools
- User Interface – Better snap, new eyedropper, and something about operators
There are more changes. For instance, Animation & Rigging improvements that may or may not help us. It is hard to say clearly because we are limited in what aspects SL actually supports. But, a number of improvements will provide better work flow and make some tasks easier. So, depending on how you work these may help you, probably.
I have not yet tried AvaStar 2 with Blender 2.78. No one in the Blender-AvaStar group spoke up when I asked. So, I’ll just have to try it.