Project Bento User Group update 34 with audio

The following notes and audio were taken from the weekly Bento User Group meeting, held on Thursday, November 17th 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.

Bento Viewer

The Bento viewer RC updated on Tuesday, November 15th to version 5.0.0.321598. This build has fixes for the following (non-public) JIRA issues:

• SL-524 – Reset Skeleton does not restore collision volume joint positions
• MAINT-6913 – Problem with alpha on some Nvidia Mac systems when shadows are enabled
• MAINT-6915 – Reset Skeleton is not enough to remove all traces of a previous Bento avatar.

To handle the last point, the Lab has added a Reset Skeleton And Animations option to the right-click menu (shown on the right).

However, as the problem can occur intermittently, it is still not guaranteed the additional option will handle those situations where an avatar isn’t fully reset using Reset Skeleton. Wider testing will hopefully uncover any remaining corner cases where this is the case – Firestorm hope to have a build available for testing with these updates fairly soon.

The “Viagra Bug” and Further Viewer RC Updates / Viewer Release

It is likely there will be one further RC update before the viewer is promoted to the de facto release viewer, courtesy of a new bug which has cropped up recently which results in a *cough* “ever-growing groin bone”, aka the Viagra Bug”. This is related to the addition of the groin slider,

Providing nothing else of significance is found, it is hoped that the next RC will be the version of the viewer which will be the one that will get duly promoted to release status. Given week #47 is Thanksgiving, it would seem likely this won’t be before week #48 (week commencing Monday, November 28th). The only other caveat to this would be an unexpected and particularly nasty bug showing up.

Best Practices and “How To” Guidance

Bento is going to bring with it a lot of questions from both creators and consumers. To help advise / educate people, The Lab is considering putting together a series of video and / or a set of “best practices” pages on the wiki – with a lean more likely towards the latter.

The general idea would be to showcase the work of individual creators, including their own guidance and advice (e.g. advice they have perhaps previously supplied, and now buried in, the 130+ pages of the Bento forum thread), and links to any videos, advisory web pages, etc., they have created (such as this series on Bento horse avatars, by Teager), so that creators and consumers can be better informed of Bento’s capabilities and opportunities. These best practices pages could include a biography of the creator providing their time / ideas / tutorials, while official videos – if the Lab go that route – could also showcase their work, discuss Bento with them etc.

Bento creators interested in helping the Lab in developing ideas and information along these lines are asked to contract Troy Linden directly (troy-at-lindenlab.com).

Other Items

Future Considerations

Its been suggested that having a “reset all skeletons” option might be an option for the future, rather than having to right-click individually on avatars which may be deformed and then correct them in your view – particularly as the Reset Skeleton options might be buried in the pie menu for those still using it.

Such an option would “fix” multiple deformed avatars (which might be the case when teleporting into an area with a lot of avatars), but it also might cause avatars which were not deformed in a person’s view to deform, possibly with no means to fix without a relog on the part of the person seeing them deformed. However, it is an idea the Lab is willing to consider for the future, if submitted as a feature request.

Similarly, the option to have unweighted (but referenced) bones be removed from the max bone count in a mesh (e.g so volume bones no longer count towards the available allocation) is being looked at as a possible follow-on update to the project.

Next Bento Meeting

Due to Thanksgiving in the United States, followed by a possible internal meeting at the Lab the week after, the next Bento meeting – subject to confirmation on dates in the user group wiki page – may not be until Thursday, December 8th.

Post Release Bento User Group

Thought is being given to continuing the user group meetings once the viewer has reached release status, initially as Bento meetings, where people can come and seek information, and then possibly but broadening into a (avatar focused?) content creators’ meeting, if there is a demand.

Additional Bento 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)