Project Bento User Group update 31 with audio

The following notes and audio were taken from the weekly Bento User Group meeting, held on Thursday, October 20th at 13:00 SLT at the the Hippotropolis Campfire Circle. and chaired by Vir Linden. For details on the meeting agenda, please refer to the Bento User Group wiki page.

Note that this update is not intended to offer a full transcript of the meeting, nor does it present the discussion points in chronological order. Rather, it represents the core points of discussion, grouped together by subject matter were relevant / possible, whilst maintaining the overall context of the meeting.

Bento Viewer Status

The 4th iteration of the Bento RC viewer appeared on Thursday, October 20th, ahead of the meeting. Version 5.0.0.320815 is primarily an update to keep the viewer on a par with the release viewer code (VLC Media plug-in for Windows), although it does include a rendering bug fix.

The fix including in the new RC version is for some existing Haste Coy assets, which were  reported on BUG-40672 (the deformed werewolf issue noted in my previous Bento update).

There has been no decision on what to do about the werewolf deformation issue itself (the result of a change in viewer behaviour – see my previous update, linked to above). It’s not clear how widespread this issue is – at the moment it appears to be somewhat limited. The problem here is whether the viewer behaviour is maintained for Bento or rolled back to how it was, it will mean some content will have to be re-worked and re-uploaded. Thus, a deciding factor for the Lab in determining what to do will be discovering exactly how much existing content is actually impacted.

The focus is now on bug fixing with the viewer. There is no date being considered for promoting Bento to release status; as previously indications, this will depend on bugs and fixes, the viewer’s crash rate, and the relative priority it has when compared with other viewers in the release channel (there being only one at the time from writing).

Reported Issues

Scale Locking Bug

A bug was reported just prior to the previous Bento meeting about an issue with the new scale locking capability. This allows creators to disable shape sliders from having any influence over joint positions when uploading their models. However, it had been reported as working intermittently,  Vir has developed a fix for this issue, but it will not be available until the next RC update for the viewer.

Skin Weight Viewer Crash

BUG-40725 reports that checking the Skin Weights option when previewing joint positions will crash the viewer (Bento RC 5.0.0.320160). This has yet to be investigated.  This is actually one of two places where skin weights can be checked, the other being in the upload option, so the preview doesn’t have to be used. However, the Lab will be looking into the issue.

Feet Resizing

There was some confusion as to whether feet on models could be resized or not using the sliders. It appears that they can, providing the model is rigged to the L_FOOT and R_FOOT collision volumes for the feet.

MayaStar

Cathy Foil reports that MayaStar has been updated completely to Bento. Those using it should rez their update Checker to get the latest version. Report are that it handles sliders really well. This represents the culmination of several long months of work for Cathy in updating her product to be fully Bento compliant – congratulations to her!

Additional Links

• Project Bento testing page (wiki)
• Avatar body size (wiki)
• Bento Skeleton Guide (wiki)
• Project Bento user group page
• Project Bento discussion forum
• Project Bento coverage in this blog (including weekly user group meeting updates)