Cloud Party Block Building Contest

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New World Notes has a story on building with mesh building blocks in Cloud Party. See: Cloud Party Adds Mesh-Based, Collaborative Building Blocks Which Sound Super Superior to SL’s Prim-Based System. Win the contest and get US$50 of Cloud Party coin.

Originally I thought this was a feature that many have asked for in Second Life. The feature people ask for would allow those not interested in using Blender or 3DS to build with custom mesh in SL. They would be able to edit the individual vertices of an object. But, that is not exactly what they are getting in Cloud Party. The following video shows what is being added.

[youtube nkL0vv3CPnU]

While this does not allow users to tweak individual vertices, it does add an easy way to hook primitive shapes together. In SL we use Third Party Viewers (TPV) that have alignment tools to set cubes next to each other. In the SL Viewer we have to do math or use something like Prim Docker to fit cubes together. But, that process does not remove any of the hidden faces or vertices. My understanding is that in Cloud Party using blocks does omit the hidden parts.

The really neat feature in Cloud Party is that the new Block Tools work with mesh items made in Blender or another 3D modeling programs.

Things Failing to Rez Second Life

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For some months now there has been a problem of some prims not rendering. You can walk into them or on them. But, you cannot see them until you right click on them. With this current server release the problem seems to have gotten worse.

Inara Pey has an article up with more details: Missing” prims: collaboration confirms viewer issue.

She quotes Maestro Linden explaining how to troubleshoot. There are a couple of things in the explanation that will be handy for SL users to know.

Things Failing to Rez Correctly

If you run the main SL Viewer, Beta Viewer, and/or Dev Viewer, you may run into an additional problem where your cache corrupts. Mesh items can suddenly turn into Vertex Vomit, something sculpties first did. The object looks more like a porcupine than what it is supposed to.

I think I ran into this problem because of using so many viewers. I allowed all the SL Viewers to use the same cache. It looks like that was a mistake. I saw the problem when I changed to the new Mesh Deformer Project Viewer. I doubt that it caused the problem as there could be any number of things that might corrupt the cache. But for now I am making separate caches for the project and development viewers.

Land Impact Costs Tutorial

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I see this morning that Loki Eliot has a post up titled: The Secrets of Mesh Landimpact. If you are not into the techy details and math, this would be a good article to read to get an idea of how the new Land Impact Costs work with mesh objects.

It isn’t that Loki doesn’t get into the techy stuff. It is just he explains it in ways that are not all geeked out. Plus he provides illustrations to show what he is talking about.

Check it out.

 

 

SL10B 2013-14

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Prim Perfect has a their SL10B video up. Several people are interviewed to get information about the coming Second Life 10th Birthday party (SL10B).

Second Life 10th Brithday
SL10B Banner

See: Designing Worlds celebrates the launch of Second Life’s 10th Birthday Community Celebration!

The video runs 44 minutes. The theme is: Looking Forward, Looking Back.

They look back at  SL7B, SL8B and SL9B. They talk to Diana Renoir, Marianne McCann and Honour McMillan about plans for this year’s event.

All the Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter links to keep up on SL10B are there.

Direct Delivery 2013-14

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April 2nd is here and the Magic Boxes are being phased out. The Commerce Team put a new post up Tuesday. LINK

04-02-2013 10:37 AM

April 2, 2013 has arrived, and we have begun the first phase of Magic Box Shutdown. As of today, Merchants are no longer able to list unlimited-quantity items for L$10 or less using Magic Boxes. By noon PT tomorrow, April 3, 2013, any active, unlimited-quantity listings for L$10 or less using Magic Boxes will be unlisted. Note that the following will still be allowed:

  • Magic Box listings priced at L$11 or higher.
  • All Magic Box listings with limited quantity items, regardless of price.

Note that the second deadline is fast approaching. On April 16th, 2013:

  • Merchants will no longer be able to list unlimited-quantity items using Magic Boxes, regardless of price.
  • Any remaining active, unlimited-quantity listings using Magic Boxes will be unlisted, regardless of price.

For the time being, limited-quantity items can continue to use Magic Boxes and will not be affected. “Limited-quantity” refers to items that the Merchant does not have rights to copy (such as breedable animals that are “no copy” for the seller).

For more information on Direct Delivery and migrating to Direct Delivery, please see the Knowledge Base. If you have questions or problems, please contact customer support for help.

New AO Stuff 2013-14

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The new server side of the New Animation Overrider functions is scheduled to roll out to the Blue Steel and Le Tigre Release Wednesday. The only viewer that has added the AO functions, AFAIK, is Niran’s Beta 2.1.6 (2600).

The functions will only work if you are in a Blue Steel or Le Tigre channel region.

As far as I know Niran’s viewer does not have a built in AO. He only added the functions to the script editor. So, you get syntax highlighting. But, you can use the viewer to write test scripts. You just have to be in a Blue Steel or Le Tigre region.