AvaStar Update: 2.0 Alpha-4 & Project Bento

Gaia Clary announced another update of AvaStar 2 is out. This is not the production version. This is the Alpha version with Bento support. In the announcement Gaia explains the current problem people are debating. The video by Medhue shows and explains what is being talked about.

Gaia says this alpha version of AvaStar complies with the current proposed Bento model that includes rotation and translation. But, there are concerns about the Bento plan to allow rotation and translation. See the release announcement for a longer story or below the fold for the shorter version. This is an extensive document. If you are animating in SL, read the thing to understand what is coming.  Continue reading

Second Life Third Party Dev news

In week 26 the Third Party Developers’ meeting ran 47 minutes. As it is a holiday weekend in the USA many of the regular attenders were not there. But, we did get some good information and lots of dates, which is unusual. So, this gives us a good guide for what is coming and when.

Weekly Fitmesh Finds & I'm up for auction!

Weekly Fitmesh Finds & I’m up for auction!

Viewers

Second Life Inventory Message Viewer version 4.0.6.315555 – This RC viewer is almost certain to see a Tuesday promotion to the main viewer.  Continue reading

Second Life: Project Bento Update 2016 w22

May be the universe is trying to tell me something… I had a heck of a time getting to the UG meeting again this week. I was logging into ADITI early, only to find out the meeting had moved to AGNI. Logging into AGNI I got a message that my voice chat could not be connected to the voice server. O.O

After 30+ minutes of trying I finally got voice working. Still I have most of the meeting in this video. The first 30 minutes is a mix of video and stills none of which is in sync with the voice. Things come back together at about the 30 minute mark.

Fortunately Aki Shichiroji was recording voice. She was late getting to the altered meeting location and missed the first 10 minutes or so. So, maybe it’s not just me. Whatever, she gave me a copy and I used the first 20+ minutes or so that I missed. You can see Aki sitting on a dragon in the video.

The first 10 minutes or so of the meeting is missing. I am hoping Inara has it. I don’t see it posted yet.

I started noticing a viewer render problem at about the 32 minutes in (TM32). I wasn’t sure what was happening. Only Bento avatars with lots of bone displacement and weighting to the new bones are demonstrating the problem. So the horses and dragon are the prime examples in my video.

Talking to Whirly Fizzel clued me to BUG-10991[Bento] Mesh rigged to the new joints either partly disappears, collapses or melts when viewing that avatar as an imposter. So, if you need a work-around check the steps to reproduce the glitch and then do the opposite, which would basically be turn off avatar impostors.

Project Bento Update w22

They surprised me! Project Bento, server side, arrived at the main grid Tuesday. Torley Linden has posted about the Lab enabling the project on the main grid. See: Project Bento Testing Is Now Live on the Main Grid!

This is a testing release. You will need the Project Bento Viewer to upload animations and meshes, and to view them without distortion. Bento mesh weighted to the new bones looks horribly distorted in non-Bento viewers. Expect to see lots of questions in the forum about how to fix the problem.

Just send them to the Linden announcement… or here.

Bento Update?

I’ve consistently had problems getting to the Bento User Group Meetings. Today between arriving late because of RL work and ADITI acting up, I gave up trying to get there. Try again next week.

Ghost Horse - Project Bento May 2016

Ghost Horse – Project Bento May 2016

I couldn’t log into the Mesh Sandbox. I could log into Morris, the region where the Beta Server UG meets. But, the World Map wasn’t working, so no TP via the map. In my history was an entry for the sandbox. But, TP failed and failed and failed. After 20 minutes I gave up.  Continue reading