This is a tutorial from CG Cookie that has a load of handy tips for setting up Blender.
http://cgcookie.com/blender/2014/09/09/customizing-startup-file-blender/
Second Life News 2014-45
Servers
There is a roll going to the main channel this morning. The Deploy thread in the forum describes it as ‘minor improvements’. Not much to go on.
RC Channels
There is no package ready for the RC Channels. Caleb Linden says there will be no roll of the RC Channels.
Problems
I am seeing more people complaining about texture loading and render stalling and things remaining gray or blurry. It is still a small number of people, which means the Lindens are not going to turn their attention to the problem. They are watching for problems from Pipeline and CDN changes. So, that may reveal the problem.
If you are consistently running into the problem, file a JIRA. To helpful the Lindens needs lots of detail and a way to reproduce the problem. If this is a timing issue, the Lindens may not be able to reproduce it from within the Lab, they are sitting on the servers and miss out on some of the problems we see.
AvaStar Tutorials and Second Life
Gaia Clary of Machinimatrix, the AvaStar makers, has been providing the Second Life™ community free tutorial videos showing how to use Blender/AvaStar for making animations and mesh clothing. The challenge is in having the time to make them and keep them updated. Blender changes quickly and such videos go out of date a Blender moves forward.
AvaStar itself has needed to change as Second Life has changed. Plus this past year AvaStar has changed as it developed and improved its tools to provide a better user interface and more efficient work flow. Also, the design community and Linden Lab changing to fitted mesh avatar bodies is changing how we make fitted mesh clothes.
Second Life being 11+ years old now also requires designers learn how to deal with the peculiarities of 3D modeling for a 3D world that, with amazing success, has maintained legacy compatibility.
Second Life Bits 2014-45
Flickr
I am finding lots of people that make amazing images using Second Life. Blanche Foxclaw is one of the people that is posting images I like.
Nebraska Oddfish has posted an image of her ‘average experience… a small number of people are complaining about this problem.
Fab Free Help Wanted
Fabulously Free is looking to add bloggers to their family of writers to help with their blog. See: Want To Join Our Blogging Team? The requirements, guide lines, and applications questions are all on the page.
Jingweidu Technology Co., Ltd
Jingweidu Technology Co., Ltd is taking pre orders for their Oculus Rift knock-off. Hypergrid Business has an article on it. See: Chinese Oculus alternative hits the market. (US$327± depending on the day’s exchange rate.)
Capital Exchange & Second Life
I see that SL Capital Exchange is suspending trading in Linden dollars. Today I see they announced:
On July 16, 2014, I filled out the first form for the Skill Gaming Application for Capital Exchange Stock Market Simulation Game. From that point until today, there have been numerous correspondences between me, my law firm, and Linden Lab. As of today we still do not have an official determination, positive or negative, on our application.
I was hoping that because much of the delay has been on the part of Linden Lab, that we would be allowed to operate past the November 1, 2014 deadline set forth in a recent post by Linden Lab. Unfortunately I was informed by Rowan Linden that we cannot. So therefore effective immediately, I am suspending all trading at Capital Exchange until our application is approved or denied by Linden Lab.
….
See the full article for more details and information: Capital Exchange Suspends Activity Until Further Notice.
Second Life Performance Boost
Market Place
Yesterday about lunch time the Lindens posted a blog article titled Performance, Performance, Performance. The surprising part, at least to me, is the performance improvements made to the Market Place. I’ve been covering the coming change to Viewer Managed Market Place. But, I don’t recall hearing about Market Place (MP) performance improvements.
Whatever, the Lindens say they are seeing a 70% faster response time and pages load 30% faster.
Group Chat
I’ve been sort of covering the improvements to group chat. News in this area is almost always after the fact. The Lindens have realized that whenever they say anything about changing something they get complaints about how the change is the cause of whatever problem users are having. So, they think they get better feedback on some things if they change and listen before saying anything.
This last week we have been running on new code in the chat servers. The metrics say things are MUCH better. I know I haven’t got a ‘cannot connect’ error when trying to comment in group chat this past week. But, I have also been busy and not in world much either.