Second Life News 2014-28 #2

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Servers

Late yesterday Maestro Linden posted the Deploys post. The main channel is rolling this morning. The new package contains the changes in LSL that allow us to control Materials via script. See  llSetLinkPrimitiveParams and llGetLinkPrimitiveParams. Look for the new perimeters in those named; PRIM_NORMAL, PRIM_SPECULAR, and PRIM_ALPHA_MODE.

Forgotten City 2012
Forgotten City 2012

RC Channels

Blue Steel and Le Tigre will get a new maintenance package tomorrow, Wednesday. This package has fixes for :

  • Temp Attachments are sometimes not removed on the viewer when detached from a region change event.
  • BUG-6466 – Numbers expressed in scientific notation and include a plus sign in the exponent are not parsed as json numbers by LSL.

New in this release is a feature: L$ transactions from llTransferLindenDollars or llGiveMoney now include a “Description” field with the object’s name in the L$ transaction history section of the website.

The Magnum channel will continue to run the Experience Tools package. It will be updated with the changes going to the main channel. There may be some updates to the Experience Tools too, bu they don’t say what.

Viewers

The SL Viewers are unchanged from yesterday.

New Blender 2.71 Weight Painting Video

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Medhue, of Medhue Animations, has a tutorial video up on weight painting for Second Life using Blender 2.71. The information in general works for any modeling system. But, is specifically for Second Life and Blender w/AvaStar users. While the ideas are transferable to any system, the button presses are specific to AvaStar users. He does not get into Fitted mesh, but for a button press or two it is the same.

[youtube h4-h-cVCPP0]

There is a commercial in the middle if you watch on YouTube. Its short but it is a surprising burst of sound.

This tutorial is based on Medhue’s work flow, which is very much like the workflow pattern I use. The basic idea is to make one master weight garment or body and then use that for all future weighting. Medhue shows how to do that.

You can discuss the video with Medhue in the SL Forum here: Tutorial – Rigging & Weighting in Blender  2.71 with Avastar for Second Life. (I modified the title a bit…)

Second Life News 2014-28

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Viewers

Currently there is only 1 RC Viewer in the cue. Other viewers are in QA, but have not yet reached RC stage. The Snowstorm RC Viewer is said to be doing well. I’m not sure I agree, but it will likely be the RC Viewer that gets promoted.

Open Source 2014-28
Open Source 2014-28

Group Ban and Oculus are Project Viewers. I expect Group Ban to move to RC status soon. The Oculus Project Viewer is not going to change status any time soon. It has been waiting on the Oculus DK2, which has just started shipping. Once the Lab has DK2 in hand I expect to see some changes in the Oculus Viewer.

There is an Experience Tools Project Viewer. But, it has yet to appear on the RC & Project Viewers page. Experience Tools is still in closed beta. Oz says that he has seen lots of requests to participate in the Beta come in. The Lab is going through them. I know some people that are playing with the Experience Tools (ET) project viewer. It is out there. Oz is going to see if they will put a link on the Project Viewers page. 

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Second Life News 2014-27 #2

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Servers

There were mostly no roll outs this week. None on the main channel or Blue Steal and Le Tigre RC channels. But, the Magnum RC channel did get a roll.

Summerfest '14
Summerfest ’14

Next week the Blue Steal and Le Tigre package will roll to the main channel as they have not reported any problems. The Lindens chose not to roll that package this week to give users more time to test the new LSL functions for Materials. So, once this rolls we will have the LSL for Materials on all channels. 

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Designing Worlds

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Vivienne Daguerre mentioned that today Designing Worlds was having a show on the Future of Second Life or that is what I understood. I decided I had time to stop by and see what they had to say. But, they were recording a show. So, 5+ hours later it was done. Interesting experience.

Designing Worlds Pre-Show 2014-27
Designing Worlds Pre-Show 2014-27

The result will be two one hour shows. Originally planned for one show, but there was so much interesting stuff the one show grew into two. This is an excellent discussion.

If you haven’t been around for a recording at Designing Worlds, I’ll tell you it is way more fun than just watching the finished product. They were having fun, making mistakes, laughing, and joking. Most of which I suspect will get cut. But, then there were the microphone problems from JJ’s system that nearly deafened us all. Those need to be cut.

I’m not going to go over what is in the show. No spoiler. Watch it when it comes out. I will tell you there is no really new news regarding SL2. There is some new information on SL1. It is the depth of the discussion that makes this worth watching. it is amazing and the viewpoints are diverse. From this show I think you will get more insight into what is going on and what people are planning for than anything else I have seen.

I’ll post when the shows are posted.