#SL Removing Scripts from Stuff

I have some older accessories in my inventory that have color changing or sizing scripts. They do not have a Remove or Delete Scripts feature. Some of the items have hundreds of scripts in them. Fortunately they are Modify-OK so I can remove the scripts. The challenge is how to get them out and not die from repetitive script deletion syndrome.

I found a way! Here is a handy tutorial for removing scripts from jewelry, shoes, hair, and whatever.

Script Library

You may know about the script library, if not you should. It provides scripts to solve all sorts of common problems. The best part is all the scripts are free for you to copy and use.

Visit the Second Life® Script Library to see what they have stashed away in there.

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#SL Blender Clothes Retopology

In my reading I came across an excellent video on how to simplify models. Masami Kuramoto posted the information in the SL Forum. Video Tutorial on Retopology in Blender. 14 minutes of excellent information.

If you are making Second Life clothes, you need to see this tutorial.

The first tip ralusek provides stumped me. He is not using a key/click display and he went fast enough I missed it even after rewinding three times. I couldn’t get it to work. It is just too handy not to figure out.

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Direct Delivery Launches

The Lindens have enabled Direct Delivery on the main grid today. There is also a nice new shiny blog post creatively titled: Direct Delivery Launches Today.

The post has links to Wiki pages with more information and a Torley Linden video, Yay! Torley! Titled: Direct Delivery Essentials.

I am one that believes in avoiding the rush and never being first… even if there is a virgin involved. First is dangerous and full of surprises.

UPDATE: Getting your Merchant’s Outbox working is trick. To get the Received Items folder visit the Market Place and get the Direct Delivery Bear. The Received Items folder will appear when it arrives. Actually buying anything that is Direct Delivery ready will cause your Received Items folder to appear.

Getting the opposite side of the coin working is more complex. Some are saying log in and out of SL and it will start working. (Me->Merchant Outbox…) But, that has not worked for many of us. The in-world commerce group is flooded with people asking, ‘WTF?’

Some are recommending logging out of and into the Market Place then logging out of and into of Second Life. A number of people are saying it works for them. I tried it and it worked for me. \o/

UPDATE: For those moving things to the new DD Market Place… when you make a folder to place an existing product into DD, the name must match the product name exactly to auto-associate. Otherwise, you must manually associate the new DD item with the existing Magic Box item.

Reducing Prim Count

Some time ago I saw a forum post about reducing prim count by changing from the old prim count accounting to the new Land Impact cost accounting. Many people think the Lab was screwing residents over with the new Land Impact system. They simply haven’t figured out how to use the new system to their advantage. It is possible to use the new system and reduce your prim costs.

Prim Saving Tutorial

Prim Size

When mesh objects and Land Impact were rolled out along with them was a change to the maximum prim size. The max size went from 10 meters to 64 meters. This allows one to replace over six prims with one prim. That is a possible 640% savings in prim costs or looked at another way, you get 640% more prim coverage in a region for the same price…

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Second Life PathFinding Tutorial

I’ve wanted to take time to play with the new Pathfinding feature now in alpha testing on the ADITI grid, also known as the Preview Grid. I took the time this weekend. I learned a few things. As you may imagine the documentation is incomplete at this stage. Not much point in writing lots of information that may change.

My First Pathfinding Bot

I’ll explain some of the problems I ran into with Pathfinding and then get into the script and how I fixed the problems. This is not a beginning tutorial for scripting. I am assuming you know about basic scripting with the Linden Scripting Language.

Simple

Writing Pathfinding scripts is way way simple compared to what was previously needed to create similar behavior. My first try was to create a follower. I have a Serge inspired character I made for OSGrid and decided to use that. My little bot is made from two prims and a sculpty. Because of the sculpties work I have to scale it to make it look right. That wacks the bounding box, which I was not over concerned with when I made it. Someday I’ll need to redo it in mesh.

The sculpty gave me my first challenge.  I needed to rebuild my bot here in SL. I rezzed the spheres I needed and put him together. Then wrote the script and tried him out. He promptly fell over on his side…  Continue reading

Blender Bad Habits

Hibit Spad posted a link in the SL Forum to an interesting Blender article, Blender Bad Habits. There are 10 bad habits that the author, Light, encourages people to unlearn. I have a few of those habits.

I think it is well worth the look.

I think the author is mostly on about those making video tutorials for Blender. I think the bad habits were taken from tutorials. I have to say there are WAY more horrible tutorials on YouTube than there are good ones. I came to the conclusion that on YouTube you REALLY need to know the author of a video tutorial. I can go nuts as someone rambles through a tutorial.

A not so bad a habit is the attribution given by Blender.org to Domino and Gaia. See: Blender 2.62: Collada I know who Domino and Gaia are. I haven’t heard of Juha, but congrats and thanks to all three.

A Second Life compatibility option was added for exporting armatures, along with a number of other fixes related to transformations and armatures.

State of the development

There has been much discussion about the state of the Collada integration, it’s not currently working very reliable yet, and this needs to be solved somehow. A new team now started working to improve Collada support to get it more useful for integration with external tools and game engines, improving the existing OpenCollada based I/O module. Members of the team are:

  • Domino Marama (development)
  • Juha Mäki-Kanto (development)
  • Gaia Clary (Organization, Documentation and all the rest)

Other developers interested in joining development are welcome. There’s a wiki page where we collect plans, application support info, test files, and a list of issues to solve.

Moving #SL Magic Boxes

Hopefully in the first quarter of 2012 the need for Magic Boxes will go away. Until then, we occasionally have to move them. That often creates problems with the items we have in the Market Place. But, it is possible to move them and avoid the problems.

Magic Box Move

To avoid problems you need to understand that everything rezzed in-world gets a UUID, a Universal Unique Identifier. I get confused trying to remember how an object’s UUID changes or does not change when we take it back into inventory and later rez it again. In general each time something is rezzed it seems to get a new UUID. Also, it gets confusing figuring out which things in the box have which UUID’s and how those match up with the items in the Market Place. Thinking that through is too much brain damage.

So, this is actually a tutorial on how to move objects and RETAIN their existing UUID. This process is not limited to just Magic Boxes.

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Second Life Prim Twisting Tutorial

Ener Hax at “i live in science land” posted about a tutorial on prim twisting. The tutorial was made by Ayumi Cassini and posted in 2009 on Ayumi’s blog as: The ultimate guide to prim twisting. It and the in-world Ivory Tower Library of Primitive are the best sources of information for building with prims.

A Single Twisted Prim - Amazing

In our early entry into Second Life’s age of enthusiasm for mesh building, prims are still the primary material for most building. Understanding what can be done with prims gives one insight into which is a better choice for any build.

Check out the tutorial. I’m impressed.