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.
New World Makers Episode 3: Eshi Otawara
Drax has a new video out this morning. When I look at it on YouTube it was 24 minutes old. The video runs 5 minutes. Eshi is a dress designer making dresses in Second Life™ that would be difficult to impossible to make in RL.
[youtube hNtup7U6A24]
Even if you watch the video here, please click over to YouTube and LIKE the video. As always get links to these video in as many places as you can, not to my site – which I like but, linking directly to Drax’s Facebook or YouTube. That helps get these videos better ranking in search engines.
Second Life News 2013-14 #2
The server updates seem to have gone pretty well. There are some good things and some bad things.
Region crossings are way better. A couple of sailors and pilots have commented in the Deploys thread about how much better things are.
[youtube t8IUxCMyElU]
With this rollout the problem of some items simply not rendering has gotten worse. If one clicks on them they show up. So, the server has told the viewer they are there. But, for some reason the viewer is not rendering them. It seems the problem is showing up in Linden and third party viewers.