Nalates' Things & Stuff

HyFy Better Avatars?

2014/08/082014/08/06 by Nalates Urriah

You’ve probably seen the blogosphere discussing the work going on at HyFy (High Fidelity – Philip Rosedale’s new VW). The video everyone is on about is below.

The talk is about making the avatars look better. One of the HyFy staff, Ozan, is talking about what is being done. (Reference) The avatar shown in the video is NOT a good looking avatar, my opinion. BUT… the lip sync’ing is awesome and that is the point of this exercise.

[youtube 96wdX9EfzlU]

Expect the avatars to get better with time. For now HyFy is doing the cutting edge stuff no one has done before, at least at this level. There are lots of people making pretty avatars. Expect that once the hard stuff is done they will clean up the skin and shape.

Second Life Xcite!

2014/08/062014/08/06 by Nalates Urriah

I think Xcite! genitals are considered the Cadillac of genitals… there are so many ways to think of that… When asked today of they were changing over to fitted mesh Javier Puff answered, “We generally don’t talk about products we haven’t shipped yet, but you will notice that we’ve been moving everything in our store to mesh over time. :)” So, I suppose that is a hint in the direction of a yes answer.

It should be interesting to see what they do to make nipples and butts work with the new mesh avatar bodies. The new mesh bodies do respond to Avatar Physics when made properly. This means Fitted Mesh nipples could bounce with the breast, something they currently don’t do. I take off the Avatar Physics layer when I add my Xcite! parts.

Second Life News Bits 2014-32

2014/08/042014/08/04 by Nalates Urriah

Viewers

The Group Ban Viewer has been promoted to the main viewer: 3.7.13 (292225). The release notes are here. So, if you own a group and have problem people, you can ban them and they will not be able to get back in.

Otherwise there are no changes to the Linden Lab viewer line up.

Warbug @ Landing Field - 2014 — Warbug @ Landing Field – 2014

Dolphin Viewer

A beta version of the Dolphin Viewer is out, 3.6.99.32369. There is no new information on what is in this viewer. I assume this is just a bug fixed version of the July release.

See: Finally! The first public beta of the new Dolphin Viewer 3!

Machinimatrix – AvaStar Ticket System

2014/08/04 by Nalates Urriah

The makers of Avatar and other SL/OS related products have started a instituted a trouble ticket system for support. No other support is offered or provided. The time being consumed by answering questions was too much. They had to do something.

So, you can get most questions answered in-world in the Blender-Avastar group. It is free to join and enough users are around to answer questions most of the time. Plus various other groups like Builders Brewery and others answer questions and provide classes.

On the Machinimatrix.org site questions will only ne answered if you file a trouble ticket. No more impromptu help. See: New Ticket System available.

Current version: avastar-1.1-RC-2_blender-2-70.

Second Life in the News

2014/08/032014/08/02 by Nalates Urriah

Business Insider has an article up on Second Life: Second Life Has Devolved Into A Post-Apocalyptic Virtual World, And The Weirdest Thing Is How Many People Still Use It. Karyne Levy wrote the article. He/She (?) quotes William Reed Seal-Foss a regular on the Metaverse Podcasts with a generally negative stand on Second Life.

[youtube jQuoUEerTVY]

While Karyne distorts what SL is and misses much of what is going on, the article is not that bad. It is just the typical ignorant writer writing without bothering to do more than a minimal amount of research on their article. A basic noobie thinking they know what SL is.

You can join BI and leave comments several have. Jo Yardley comments at length. She and others referred Karyne to Flickr’s SL Looking Good, which has some awesome pictures from within SL. Jo and a couple of others refer Karyne to Drax’s World Makers on YouTube. The play list there is getting impressive.

Deals in Second Life

2014/08/02 by Nalates Urriah

FabFree is talking about some great sales going on this month. Magika, a hair and clothes maker, is putting their old sculpty hair on sale as they close it out and move on to mesh hair. Single do’s go for L$35 and fat packs for L$100. So, the place is crowded.