Second Life Content Creation UG 2018 w26

There is some interesting news out this week. The Lindens are getting more definite about some release dates.

This is the last meeting for a couple of weeks. Next meeting is July 19. The 4th of July is a US holiday and the next week is the company wide meeting, so no meeting those weeks.

Some of the discussion this week gets a bit heated.

Index

I had some problems with sound. I think I caught most of the problems in post. The audio track has been dynamically compressed to lift the whispers and tone down the shouts.

Some sections have been time compressed, meaning the video can be running 2 to 5 times faster than RL. That can make it hard to read chat. Just stop the video to read. I suggest you not worry too much about chat. The Lindens are pretty good about repeating a question in voice before answering it. Continue reading

Second Life: Animesh RC Nearing – CC UG Meeting 2018 w24

Last week there was no Content Creators’ UG Meeting. This week there was. The meeting is held in the region Animesh4, ADITI. We have some hot news on Animesh. See 03:00 TM.

The word is we might, possibly, could, maybe see Animesh roll to the RC channels of Agni next week (#25). The word from the Beta Server UG is it is on the schedule for next week… Be excited, but don’t hold your breath.

The video…

I have time compressed parts of the video where there is no voice. So, you may have to pause the video to keep up the local chat.

Index

00:00 Video start… pre-meeting

03:00 – Vir announcing Animesh possibly to AGNI next week, week #25. At 08:15 Vir says release is dependent on getting an updated project viewer out before the server roll.

There are some bugs/problems that will still be running around next week. (03:45) The Encroachment Problem is being worked on. We will see the Linden solution in the next update of the Animesh viewer. Continue reading

The Great Bakes-On-Mesh Debate

Well, we are getting an upgrade to the Server-Side-Avatar-Baking service. That is fact. What the service does is old news. The blogosphere was covering it in 2012. By August 2013 it was considered a success. (Ref)

So, what is the service, aka SSA or SSB? Prior to 2012 the classic avatar skin, tattoos, underwear, shirt, and jacket were composited into a single texture in your viewer and used to render your avatar. This is like the process we use in Photoshop, GIMP, and other image editors when we bake a set of layers into a single JPG or PNG image.

...Wait

…Wait

A significant part of the viewer’s render process was the baking effort. Once I was dressed and my clothes baked into an image safely cached on my computer, I was good. BUT… whenever I saw a new avatar, my viewer had to collect all their textures; skin, tat, bra, and top and bake their clothes into a texture to put on the avatar and render it. Everyone was doing that.

With 6 possible zones (ie., hair, head, upper, lower, eyes, skirt) to bake and 3 of them having 5 layers we were downloading a bunch of textures just for the classic body. So, something like 15 or 20 textures per avatar. In a region with 40 avatars… that is like 40×20=800 textures… if they were 1024 textures that could be as much as 3+GB of texture, admittedly in extreme cases. Plus, our viewer had to composite them before the avatar could be rendered. Each viewer was doing this and the region was coordinating the downloads. Continue reading

Second Life News 2018 w14

Servers

The main channel updated to version #18.03.27.513831. The new version has only Internal Fixes.

The RC’s Blue Steel and Le Tigre will update to version #18.03.29.513939 on the usual Wednesday cycle. Also, only Internal Fixes.

Magnum will continue to run #18.03.27.513831.

Sunrise at Isle of May

Sunrise at Isle of May

From the Server and Scripting UG we hear about more region crossing work. Simon Linden is doing some work on crossings. BUG-214653After half-unsit at failed region crossing on vehicle due to network lag, “Unsit” button will not work.

Crossing regions at speed… fast cars, planes, boats, and motorcycles, have a big problem. I was recently testing an Apolon helicopter. Great fun. But, region crossings are an annoyance. Continue reading

Second Life Content Creators’ Meeting 2018 w10

Getting video of these meetings is a PITA. Medhue (1:27 PM) and I (1:08 PM) both were late getting to the meeting. Medhue’s audio has reverb… which generally comes from room echo… the combination of the sound source (talker) and reflected sound from walls reaching the mic at slightly different times. There are no echoes or room reverb in Second Life™. So, the computer’s speaker output has to be fed back via an open mic or duel channels in the recording app. Neither appears to be the case for Medhue…

I got there a bit earlier. I recorded the meeting, so the source is on my computer. I can edit it and clean up the audio. So, this week I’ll use my video. It takes some time to clean up the video and audio. Plus, Thursday is a busy day for me, RL. So, mine comes out later, like Saturday or Sunday.

The first thing you are likely to notice in the video is Vir Linden’s voice is messed up. In Medhue’s video, Vir Linden’s voice is also messed up but in a different way. So, the problem is in the connections or our computers. I have yet to figure out what’s up with mine.

I’ve cleaned the audio up a bit. But, there is only so much repair work one can do.  Continue reading