At this meeting there was not lots of new information. Mostly there was reaffirmation of what we already know. Also there is more confusion about the Mesh Deformer or Deformation Project, which some label parametric-clothes.

Mesh Deformation Project

In previous articles I’ve described the problem with mesh clothes. Later today (5PM SLT/PST) in The Model’s Workshop I will likely be answering questions about the problem. See Mesh Workshop article.

Hamlet wrote an article on the project’s delay. Karl’s Crowdsourced Second Life Mesh Fix Update: Linden Lab Working With Him, But Progress is Delayed. This delay is to be expected. The Lab has been researching available technology to provide the feature. The research of finding technology is complete and the lab is in the process of deciding which technology will best serve LL and SL. The complications are figuring out what works with what we have without breaking existing content. Also, the Lindens have an internal road map for future projects. They have to figure out what will work with the planned directions.

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I’m lagging getting this update posted. There have been other interesting things to do. Plus there is the mesh deformer news that ever so slowly trickled out. I splashed the update on the Deformer Project here in Mesh Deformer Update. Plus there is lots shaking in the background. Whatever, the latest on mesh follows.

Pumpkin Play Project - PE=2

CTS-694

CTS-694 – Missmatch of LOD meshes in multi object upload (linkset) yield viewer crash. This is supposedly fixed… sort of. I’m unclear.

A symptom of the problem is if you make a chair and table and export them as a single object. The Viewer’s uploader was mixing up the textures. It is… was a problem with how the viewer reads the Collada file and assigns the textures. If I understand correctly there is a fix so we can upload and fix textures after upload. I’m guessing a following fix will get the textures to match up with the model parts correctly.

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Maxwell Graf has just posted an update on the Mesh Deformer project site: Mesh Clothing Parametric Deformer Project.

Update on the mesh deformer project, 11/11/11:

Karl has begun working on the code and was contacted recently by LL in order to facilitate development of this feature. He will be working directly with LL from this point forward to supply them with code as the project moves forward, allowing them to check the feature with compatibility for the official LL releases as he progresses so that when it is done it can quickly and easily be included without weeks of additional testing. They contacted him directly to expedite the process and work together from the start of this, which means it will be working correctly and will make it a lot easier for TPV’s and other grids to implement once it is done!

This is great news and in addition to the comment Charlar made about further development with open source features is indicative of some serious new possibilities for development. Kudos to LL and Karl for being able to come to the table together for the good of the SL community. This is a best case scenario for this project, and indicates a strong willingness on LL’s part to adopt and implement this new feature that we have wanted since July.

Good meeting on mesh problems this week and the state of SL Viewers. For 3 or 4 months we have been having problems with the SL Viewers. Runitai Linden is working with many of the viewer’s OpenGL issues affecting us. These problems extend into third party viewers using the V3 render pipeline from the Lab. So, what can we expect?

Viewer Fixes Lagging Behind

Those of us that use project viewers and the development viewer know that many of the problems in the main SL Viewer and SL Beta Viewer have been solved. But, those fixes from the project and dev viewers are slow reaching the main viewer. Plus these viewers have had problems most residents would not want to put up with.

There are, what I consider, two primary hold ups delaying fixes moving to the main viewer. First is the chaos of rapid development. Multiple teams are tackling various aspects of the viewer. That makes for quicker fixes, but adds the problem of integrating and testing the fixes. More people and teams mean more work is done but communication problems increase. This means we see fixes in project viewers that take time to reach the development viewer which precedes the SL Beta Viewer which precedes the main viewer.

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I heard that the Mesh Deformer Project reached its goal today. A quicl look at the Indeigogo page shows that is true! Horay for Mawell and Karl.

Indeigogo Goal Reached

Monday was a busy day. Lots of mesh related things going on. The Content Creation/Mesh Import User Group is where most of the news breaks. This week we were supposed to find out where the Lab was in their research for how to handle mesh clothes and body shape issues. There is lots of information on the subject.

Mesh Import Group 2011/10/17

New Tree

Charlar Linden has changed from his deciduous look to an evergreen look, which is probably seasonal thing for well dressed trees…

Unconnected Vertices

An unconnected vertex is a vertex without an edge connection to any other polygons. They are somewhat like crumbs. They usually serve no purpose as there is no way to render them. So, the question was asked what the SL Collada Uploader does with them.

Prep Linden says they are not rendered. If one has unconnected vertices the uploader should alert the user to the problem. In general you don’t want extra vertices driving up your Land Impact costs. Prep asked we file a JIRA feature request. I am not sure who is filing it.

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