Second Life

Things about SL

KirstenLee S20(44) Released Review

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Kirsten has released version (44) of the KL Viewer. There isn’t a lot I can say about the viewer. KirstenLee explained the changes in this viewer on her blog. I’m just downloading it.

This is a bloody bleeding edge viewer. You have been warned.

The big changes, to me, are in the render pipeline and image decompression. The render pipeline seems to be diverging from SL’s. You still get an image on your screen, so for most people the changes are too abstract. However, I think this is an exciting direction. Having features and different user interfaces is something users can see and feel. Having a new render pipeline could radically change the viewer’s performance. 

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Dolphin Viewer 1.5.40 Review Continued

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Install

This install was like a first time install as I had previously removed Dolphin Viewer because of problems I had. The viewer worked well on initial start up. Since the viewer now uses its own settings file all my settings were the defaults. That included the cache location using the SL default location. I changed the cache location before logging on and restarted the viewer.

Experience

Once logged in I went through setting my preferences, external web browser, my chat color, stack IM’s vertically, hide tp progress, build tool decimals (4), close chat on return, and uncheck arrow keys always move avatar… boring stuff. 

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Dolphin Viewer 1.5.40 Released Review

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Dolphin Viewer 1.5.40 Released

Dolphin Viewer has a new release out. This viewer is becoming popular. It has even come up a couple of times in the LL and TPV circles. The release notes published on the Dolphin Viewer blog are informative and easily read. See: Dolphin Viewer 1.5.40.3627.

Separate Settings

Phoenix began using a separate cache by default and separating out more of their files. I think Dolphin Viewer is the first to use separate settings files. As Lance says, this will stop cross talk between the settings Dolphin is using and changes made in an SLV. 

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Second Life Update

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I write about the changes in Second Life that interest me and/or that I think will be of general interest. Most of the recent changes have been boring bug fixes and tedious changes to the SLV2 user interface. Things like making this or that button transparent when the panel loses focus. Mostly stuff everyone wants done, but doesn’t really want to read about or at least, I don’t. But there are a bunch of those tedious changes, which I’m skipping, and few interesting ones I’ve touched on here.

Mesh

Throttling has been added to mesh to prevent using mesh animations. You may or may not know that sculpties are animated by changing the sculpty map a prim uses. It took no time at all for that idea to come those using meshes as a similar process  is used. However, there is a drastic difference in the load mesh animation throws on the viewer and server. Throttling mesh changes will prevent the use of mesh swapping for animation and lagging the region. 

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SLV 2.4.0 Beta 2 Released

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This was just recently (hours ago) announced on Twitter. They give a link to the download page, which doesn’t really say anything about Beta 2… duh. But, the beta link does lead to version 2.4.0(216393), which they are calling Beta 2. This appears to be the Dec 3rd release announced on the blog days ago. But, on December 3rd I blogged about the 2.4.0(215891) Beta release, which is Beta 1. You would never know there was a change by looking at the blog or download page. 

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Second Life Mesh Tutorial

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Second Life Mesh
Second Life Mesh

Those into sculpties will or should know the name Gaia Clary. Gaia makes sculpty tutorial videos and runs the Machinimatrix.org blog. Gaia also makes JASS, Just Another Sculpty Studio.

Gaia has a new, and to me surprising, tutorial up. This one includes how to export your avatar from Second Life and get it ready for other mesh work.

The tutorial is for those making mesh avatars and clothes. Plus it is a way to export your custom avatar for use in Blender or 3DSMax. It goes on to cover attaching the mesh to the avatar armature and weighting the mesh so it deforms correctly with joint movement. 

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