Good Article On Mesh

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I came across this in my reading: Mesh clothing and avatars in Second Life. This is a good article covering petites and other aspects of mesh. I think it is worth the read for anyone still confused about mesh, petites, and other aspects of mesh.

Hamet has just run an article on Mesh Avatar Faces: Leverocci’s Upcoming Mesh Heads in Second Life. Iris Ophelia wrote the article. While it would probably seem redundant to many at this point, she does not point out the limitation that mesh faces cannot be animated.

 in her article gets into the limits of mesh clothes, avatars, and such. Plus she adds a section on recovering from problems encountered when wearing mesh avatars. Eventually she gets to the Mesh Deformer too.

Snickers’ article is written for the fashionesta crowd and is easy to understand.

#SL Pyramid Warning Symbols

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Recently a number of us have been seeing a flock of organdy-yellow pyramids appear around us when trying on mesh. They look very much like the script warnings we see when a script fails. However, they are a little different in that they do not have the little piece of paper denoting a script within the icon.

These non-script inspired pyramids are caused by mesh failing to rez. It is unclear whether this is solely a viewer issue or a viewer and server issue. Whatever the case, the quick fix is a relog or teleport to another region.

One can also change the viewer settings to reduce the likelihood of being a roosting perch for a flock of pyramids. The setting can only be founds in the Debug Settings.

This is hard to test so I’m doing some speculation on whether or not the change is worth the effort.

MeshMaxConcurrentRequests – Number of threads to use for loading meshes. Default value 32. It is probably better to reduce this setting if you have a slower connection. Try increasing it if you hang out in places like TRUTH Hair. I know at least one person setting this at 256 and claiming it cured the problem. I’m not convinced.

I suggest leaving it at 32 unless you have a significant and persistent problem. If you do decide to change it, try 16 or 64.

I can’t find any other settings that limit mesh render. I seem to remember there were more. But, they have disappeared from recent viewers. So, there is little we can do to avoid the problem.

Second Life Advanced Modeling Blender 2.6 Tutorial 2012

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This is the second tutorial in a series. The previous tutorial is: Second Life Mesh Clothes Blender 2.6 Setup 2012 Tutorial. The next tutorial is still a work in progress.

The direction I’m going with tutorial is toward making clothes and weight painting. But, this tutorial will provide information for those building both objects and clothes. I am limiting this tutorial to just the modeling and the tools we need for making the model and the lower poly models we need for Second Life.

Second Life Modeling
#1 – Modeling in Second Life

This is not your standard tutorial. There are loads of modeling tutorials. Making avatar clothes is a special type of 3D modeling. There are a number of tricks to be learned, especially for making Second Life® clothes. I’m going to focus on the things I had a hard time figuring out how to do.

I’ll lay this tutorial out with indexing so you can quickly find the various tricks. I need that because I tend forget a step here and there and need to look it up.

Index

Page 1 – First Decision – Which shape to use.
Page 1 – Deformer – What it does.
Page 2 – Modeling – Start the modeling tools.
Page 2 – C-Select – A better select tool.
Page 2 – Redoing Topology Trick – Snap with a good video.
Page 2 – Snap – Details on using snap.
Page 3 – Scaling – How to use Alt-S scaling.
Page 3 – Shrinkwrap – How to use shrinkwrap.
Page 4 – Triangles vs Ngons – Getting into Ngons and Bsurface.
Page 4 – Bsurface – How to use Bsurface.
Page 4 – Grease Pencil – Needed for Bsurface.
Page 5 – Reducing Poly Count – Needed for LoD’s.
Page 5 – Dissolve – Tools for reducing poly count.
Page 5 – Using Images – How to use pictures and images to guide your modeling.
Page 5 – How to Model – Some of the Second Life requirements.
Page 6 – How to Model – The outline.
Page 6 – Summary

I hate slow paced, rambling video tutorials. I’ve found some that are pretty good. I’ll include those where appropriate. After them I’ll add explanations. Sometimes they leave out the most basic but necessary steps. Even after a couple years of using Blender I’m going: how did they do that?

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Second Life News Week 24

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This week saw the first Scripting UG meetings in a few week. Kelly Linden has been working on other things and there is no new scripting news. But, Kelly did give us a few bits of information on this week’s server rolls.

QA Queue

The Lab has a testing process that software changes and fixes must pass through before reaching a Release Channel (RC). There are code reviewers, testers, and then ADITI tests. Eventually changes make it to an RC.

Currently there is a backlog of changes and fixes waiting to get into the QA process. Those that are in the process are waiting on RC’s to come available.

Expected Roll

Kelly says the Le Tigre RC code should roll to the main channel tomorrow, Tuesday. This is the infrastructure Multi-Threaded Region Crossing code (Phase I).

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Mesh Deformer News Week 24

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There is not much new going on here but there are some tidbits of news.

In the Content and Mesh Creators’ group we got the question: “Mesh Deformer: What is the current status of deformer testing and what is its priority level? I’ve heard that redoing the shape keys for the fat and muscle sliders is being considered as a fix for the distortions on more extreme shapes. Is this accurate? If so, is LL set on doing this themselves or would they accept a donation on that task? The timeline is fairly important to the design community, and we can’t imagine the workload you must be dealing with. Is there anything we can do to help this particular project along? Elie Spot 11:27, 11 June 2012 (PDT)”

Nyx Linden: “As for the deformer, Oz is the one working most closely with Qarl on that project, he would know best what the current status and holdups are.”

Elie Spot: “…as Qarl is pretty much done w/ the current version, it is only awaiting fixes to make it work for more extreme shapes. The deformer is pretty much sitting in LL’s camp right now.”

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Griefer Monday Postmortem

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Oskar Linden: “Let’s talk about Monday. So, as you all are more than well aware, some of the tools in the experience tools project on Magnum got abused over the weekend (week 22). Monday morning (week 23) was pretty much fire drills all day. I rolled out of bed and logged in and BAM, even before my coffee.

We do take active griefing vectors seriously. [We] determined a fix for the issue. We got it tested and deployed Monday afternoon. The griefing exploit was unintentional.

The exp tools project was removed from the [release channel] grid this week. It lost its slot on Magnum [RC]because of other security issues, those that were addressed in this meeting actually. I want to thank all of you for the feedback you gave to Huseby last week.”

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