#SL Content Creation Week 15

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I was curious if the Lindens knew how many people use features like AO (ambient occlusion in this case) and Sun/Moon shadows. So, I asked them. Seems they do not track that information. There assumption is that people will be using shadows and AO.

Content/Mesh Creation UG

The consensus of those at the meeting, some top content creators, is that baking shadows into textures for use in SL is probably a poor idea.

With ambient occlusion the consensus is to include AO in the bake. It seems several have the opinion that the viewer’s AO is weak enough that it needs help.

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Second Life Adult Content News Week 15

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The Adult Content User Group has pretty much evolved into a joke and is poorly attended. It supposedly meets the 3rd Monday of the month now.

Dream Promenade

However, activity in regard to Adult Content is alive and well, pretty much growing into resident driven private groups. But, the Lab is still involved to some extent in some areas. The Adult Hub is a cooperative effort between a private group and the Lindens.

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#SL Blender Clothes Retopology

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In my reading I came across an excellent video on how to simplify models. Masami Kuramoto posted the information in the SL Forum. Video Tutorial on Retopology in Blender. 14 minutes of excellent information.

[youtube icqPZnD_3lA]

If you are making Second Life clothes, you need to see this tutorial.

The first tip ralusek provides stumped me. He is not using a key/click display and he went fast enough I missed it even after rewinding three times. I couldn’t get it to work. It is just too handy not to figure out.

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PathFinding Update Week 14

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There is stuff happening in Pathfinding. This past week has seen several changes roll out. A new Project Viewer and another version of the Pathfinding server code made it to the Pathfinding regions in ADITI, the preview grid.

New Pathfinding Stuff

In the PATHTEST1,2,3, and 4 sandboxes in ADITI one can see how Pathfinding works without having to program and build their own characters. You can visit and click the big box shown in the image above. You can get all characters for the different Pathfinding behaviors; Evade, Pursue, Patrol, Wander, etc.

Region owners can sign up to be a beta tester in AGNI. Contact Lorca Linden to volunteer.

Map Bug

You may notice that the Pathfinding regions’ World Map tiles are messed up. It’s only a cosmetic problem. The Lindens already have a fix in QA.

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#Second Life News Update II Week 14

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There is some meaty news out.

The blog post and charts on grid stability are still in progress. Oskar Linden seems excited that the grid did as well as it did for the past four weeks. May be we will see the post and charts next week. I was expecting them this week.

Beta Server Meeting

Maestro Linden gave us a bit more on the Network Stability fixes that rolled out Tuesday. Some of the throttles and fixes were to prevent some griefer DoS type attacks. That’s about all we are going to get on that.

Hemiptera Cleansing

Next week this server maintenance package should make it to a release channel. The package is currently running in Sandbox Island, ADITI.

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Second Life Pathfinding Week 14

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Pathfinding is advancing. More testing is needed. As we play with it we are finding problems. Those are being fixed. Since we are easily finding problems we need more testers to extend the context and hardware variety.

llGetClosestNavPoint()

This call will fail and drag the region’s Time Dilation down if there is no Navmesh within 20m. That isn’t intentional. Expect it to be fixed.

Neat Avatars

Navmesh

The 3.3.1 (251341) Project Viewer does not have working Navmesh tools. Some of them work. The Show Navmesh part doesn’t work for me. The download link for 3.3.2 (252475) fails. So, I am stalled playing with the ‘Tools’ feature of Pathfinding.

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