Ascent Viewer 1.4.2.9 Released

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Ascent Viewer
Ascent Viewer

A new release of this viewer comes out about once a week. The latest on the 13th. The download is about 44mb, so it is a larger than average viewer. The download is here: Download Ascent Viewer. The release notes are here: Ascent Viewer Release Notes.

The first couple of times I tried to start the viewer it crashed. Started opening then just vanished. I assume it was doing something with the cache that failed. Caches are problems for all the viewers. I have written lots of tips in other articles about problems that are solved by clearing the cache. Many can be prevented by creating separate caches for each viewer. So, I’m not surprised when a viewer crashes the first and second time it is started. 

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Information from Mesh Office Hours

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Second Life Mesh News

 

Second Life Mesh
Editing SL Mesh

 

Updated 2010-10-17

Everyone has questions about the new meshes now in open beta. Yesterday the Lindens in Nyx’s office hours had a meeting and answered many of the questions asked. I’ve separated out the answers from the chatter and added embellishment where I can. I have also fixed some spelling and punctuation… and probably added my share of mistakes.

You can find the transcript here: http://blogs.secondlife.com/thread/41151

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OSGrid 0.7 Update Available

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Today the download for upgrading to OSGrid version 0.7 is up as are the instructions and a warning NOT to go online with the upgrade. Wait until the server change over is complete Sunday. The upgrade will NOT connect until then. Attempting to connect with the upgrade will cause problems. Wait.

Instructions are here: Upgrade procedure for upgrading your simulators to OpenSimulator v0.7 on OSgrid

The download link is there.

There are settings in the new INI files for Meshes, LightShare, and I found one for Media On A Prim.

There is a handy feature to turn off avatar face lights, which the developers consider silly. Hmmmph!

OpenSim-OSGrid Mesh Coming

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Spore Creatures invade OSGrid
OpenSim Meshes - Image by jjacek

I think this article will also be of interest to SL folks. Because OpenSim is likely to become a free SL mesh builders’ sandbox. However, uploads on ADITI are free, so may be not.

I guess it depends on how one looks at mesh on OpenSim as to whether this is ‘coming’ or an old thing. RealXtend, a branch of OpenSim, has had mesh objects for some time. A module has been available for some time to allow OpenSim people to add messes to their SIM. What I suppose is coming is the ability for everyone to use and see the feature in OpenSim.

Most viewers have not supported mesh. There was no way to upload them, which pretty much stops their use. RealXtend has a special viewer. I have never gotten it to work on other grids, that is probably just me. With the Second Life Mesh Project Viewer out and the code being released Friday, that limitation is removed. Soon TPV’s (Third Party Viewers) will have support for uploading and editing mesh. 

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Second Life Beta Viewer 2-2-0-211499 Released

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The previous Beta Release was Second Life 2.2.0 (210127). The current download is 211499. It is available here: Second Life Beta Viewer Download = direct to download. For the paranoid, this is the download page: Download Second Life Viewer 2.

The main download remains Second Life 2.1.1 (208043).

The changes, release notes, for the new beta version are not up, yet. But, they will appear here: Release Notes/Second Life Release/2.2.0.

Second Life Mesh Viewer Download Up

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The mesh viewer just came up on the download page.

Second Life Mesh Project Viewer Download

9:22 AM – Got the viewer and made it into ADITI. Not many people there. Only 3 or 4 in each mesh area. But, others and I cannot tp into the regions. Long wait and then tp fails.

9:30 AM – Cannot tp into Mesh City locations or Mesh Sandboxes (1 to 35). Some of the sandboxes are empty, no people. Others have some people in them.

10:58 AM – …then I find out my Blender is broken. Remove all Blender installs, all Python installs. Install Python 2.7 and Blender Beta 2.54 (nice shinny interface) and that is working again.

Since there seems to be a tp problem, I typed in the destination at login, Mesh Sandbox 33. You can use any sandbox destination from 1 to 33. I made it to a sandbox. \o/

11:00 AM – Jack Linden posts Open Beta blog article: Mesh Import Open Beta Starts Today. There are a number of links to various mesh related wiki articles. (Second Life Wiki Main Mesh Page) There are links to videos. Lots of good stuff.

Code availability for TPV Developers is planed for the end of the week. They will link to it from the Project Snowstorm wiki pages. This means TPV’s can support it once meshes come to the main grid. It also lets OpenSim get started on compatible mesh support. OpenSim with a module add-on has had meshes for over a year.

11:28 AM – \o/ It works pretty well. It is certainly usable. There are some gotchas and small problems in the user interface. But, those will get fixed.

If you plan to try applying standard texturing, make sure to do an inventory load. If all your textures are not loaded, the texture selection list keeps bouncing to the top as more items are loaded into inventory. Very frustrating.

10:45 PM – 🙁 Blender 2.54 is having problems exporting meshes skinned to AV rigging. It seems Blender 2.49b handles it correctly. So, if you are making things that have to skin to the AV, use the earlier version of Blender.

Tutorial

Machinimatrix is making video tutorials using Blender 2.49 to make the meshes and shows importing them to SL. The first two of a series are up. See: The Meshes Trail (Part I and II)