Now the holidays are past and the ‘No Change’ windows have ended. The cycle of roll outs is resuming. Unfortunately we started out with a crash in Week 1. That roll failed because of a hardware problem. Seems just before the roll out to the release channels was to start a switch (as in network switch) failed and took out a rack of severs.
When servers disappear from the network and the lights are still on it takes some time to figure out what happened. Getting the servers back up took priority over the roll out. So, the release channels ran the main channel’s version for another week as the roll out was postponed to Week 2.
The roll will be attempted again tomorrow, Tuesday.
A new release of Milkshake came out January 5. This one has Qarl’s Mesh Deformer. I suspect this feature is based on Exodus’ work so I think it would have a enable/disable feature. I can’t find the control to enable or disable it.
Somewhere in the updates process the logo changed from a cupcake to a cow with I think daisies for a hat.
The viewer is now using newer code. This viewer is basing its update on the Catznip Viewer updates. There are imports of ‘graphics tools’ from Exodus.
The Snapshot and AO panels have been updated. However, the post to Feed feature is not yet working.
I think I’ve posted one image to my Feed. However the Post to Feed is a way around the L$10 upload fee. Need to share a quick snapshot of something with a friend? Save it to your Feed. This is a great work around for newbies that have no Lindens. Unfortunately they have no way to learn about it.
More and more Third Party Viewers (TPV) have built in Animation Overriders (AO). A huge problem for those of us that use multiple viewers is the problem of each viewer having unique AO folders. There is no standard AO folder. Milkshake names their AO folder Milkshake, Phoenix’s is named Phoenix, Firestorm’s is Firestorm…
New AO's
If you have walk’s and stand’s that are no copy, you were screwed. You were forced to have different animation sets for each viewer, which sucks. This is the main reason I still use my ZHOA-II HUD. It is available in any viewer I choose to use. Plus I only need to set it up once.
AO Animation Configuration Tool
I also avoided using built-in AO’s because I have a couple of favorite animations that are no copy. Fortunately more and more animations are provided as copy-ok. The super cheap (L$10 mostly) animations in Kuso are copy \o/. Eventually I’ll find replacements for my no-copy fav’s. (I was new when I bought them.)
AO’s Change
I haven’t been keeping up on Viewer AO’s. When they first came out I played with them, ran into problems, and stopped using the built-ins. At some point things changed. While playing with the Milkshake Viewer I decided to try the built-in AO for one of my Alt’s.
New Milkshake Logo
Milkshake has a nice AO system. I like it and was surprised several times. I’m not sure who wrote the code or which viewer had the system first, that just doesn’t matter to me. Sorry programmers, no offense or diss intended.
The rumor that Collada will be dropped from Blender is circulating. See: SL Post: Blender dropping COLLADA support andBlender Lists. It is undecided whether the Blender development team will drop it or not. Everyone strive for No Panic Mode.
Don't Panic
It looks like Collada is the ideal format for use with SL. Several other pay big money modeling programs have Collada export. So, it is unlikely it is going to die out. I have a hard time believing the Blender Team will give up on it. But, those playing with the code say it is a bit of a mess and likely will be rewritten. That could mean we will see it removed and come back latter. But, even that seems unlikely to me… the ‘remove’ part that is.
It looks like Domino Marama is going to make a Python Collada exporter for Blender. For those of us that have purchased Primstar or Avastar it will be free. Or it may end up free to all. Only time will tell us what is finally decided.
I’ve heard someone at the Lab say they had some people working with Blender Org on Collada. So, may be they can or will LL chime in at Blender Org or otherwise help to keep Collada in Blender. We’ll ask but don’t expect a definitive answer. It is obviously in LL’s interest to have Collada export in Blender.
I found a post by Innula Zenovka on SLUniverse that says Qarl has donated his prim alignment tool code to Linden Lab. I wrote about the tool in October of 2010: Qarl Fizz Prim Alignment Tool. I included Qarl’s video about how the tool works and have copied it to this post too. The original development announcement can be found on Qarl’s blog as: setting things straight. Check out the JIRA links at the end.
[youtube 7UCeU8ItZGA]
You can see Qarl’s blog post about it here: thank you, back. Qarl links to Tateru’s article: How to send Qarl money. It seems someone sent Qarl some money. As a way of saying thanks to whoever that was, Qarl donated the code to the Lab.
There is a new version of the Cool Viewer out. I haven’t been keeping up with it because it uses the older V1 User Interface. But, I wanted to check it out. I’ve learned a few things that should be included in any review of Cool VL Viewer and may be about any V1 viewer. I’ve covered several points that affect all users regardless of viewer used, so you may want to skim this even if you are not interested in Cool VL. But, you are sure to learn some surprising things about Cool.
Get V1, V2, and V3 Right
In Second Life we have our own jargon when talking about SL. For instance the whole virtual world is mesh. Press Ctrl-Shift-R to see it. But, we call only some things mesh. We mean the new things we can make with ‘mesh’ models made in Blender and 3DS Max or Maya.
Cool VL Viewer 1.26.3 - Me Wearing Mesh Top
Our references to viewers and what code they are based on tends to be via shortened version numbers, thus; V1, V2, and V3. The problem now is that we no longer have viewers based purely on any one version of Linden Lab’s code.
Cool VL was based on Snow Globe code. Technically Snow Globe is version 1.5. However, that was a beginning point for Cool VL. It is no longer made from pure Snow Globe code. Code from the Lab’s version 2 and 3 are now part of Cool VL.
