Drax apparently went to Rust and was so impressed he had to make a short video.
I think it is pretty neat.
[youtube 1X7OBGSxaJM]
Materials Land Impact
There are rumors that the new Materials System will push objects that use the new materials into the Land Impact Accounting system. Some have found that when playing with Materials the Land Impact can escalate radically on physics cost. When using Alpha Masking the new materials can drive the Land Impact WAY UP. Plus a single prim, even phantom, can cost 500+ Physics LI. The image below shows a flattened sphere that costs 560 LI.
Andrew said some things that suggest items using Materials are planned to use the Land Impact Cost Accounting system. So, I would guess part of the reason we have this Alpha version viewer is to find problems they have missed. The Land Impact one is a big one.
Site Update 2013-15
I’ve updated some of the software that runs this site. The big differences are in the spam blockers for comments. Let me know if something has changed or stopped working. Thanks.
More Second Life Materials System
In Late January I posted about the Materials System and gave an example of what the Build Panel might look like. See: Second Life Materials System 2013-4.
As it turns out this example is pretty accurate. Back in August 2012 I was explaining what Normal and Specular Maps do. See: Second Life Materials System Announced.
Second Life Materials Project Viewer Review
This week we got to see the first public Project Viewer for the Materials System. I’ve added a link in the left column. It is a dynamic link so it should always point to the latest version.
The current version is: Second Life 3.5.1 (273518) Project Materials.
Download size is just under 30mb.
It installs to its own directory and has its own settings files. It does however, share chat logs and the cache. I suggest you change the cache to use a location other than the main viewer’s cache. You can go into Preferences->Advanced->Cache Location and change it. Then restart the viewer.
Materials Project Viewer Out – Breaking
A wiki page went up Today (4/8) : Release Notes – Second Life Project Materials – 3.5.1.
Warning: DO NOT use this viewer to edit objects you want to keep. This version of the Project Viewer is an Alpha version. It may BREAK anything you edit with it.
You have been warned.
All of the main grid is Materials enabled. The ADITI preview grid’s recently updated regions are Materials Enabled. Older regions are not. There is no easy way to tell for sure.
The code repository is named: viewer-development-materials. This code is NOT ready to be merged to other viewer projects. Oz Linden says they have yet to stabilize the code. That means depending on the problems they find there may or may not be significant changes and re-writes.
The viewer can be downloaded from the Alternative Viewers Page.
More information to come.