Caitinara Bar, the casual venue for music and relaxing at Holly Kai Park has been operating weekly series of DJ-led music events for the last couple of months, and has gained a small but loyal following – thank you to everyone who pops along!
We’re now very pleased to announce that starting on Friday, March 25th, Joy Canadeo will be joining the line-up with Smooth Fridays with DJ Joy, a two-hour session of music from 4:00 through 6:00pm SLT, to soothe away the cares of the week and help us glide into the weekend.
Caitlyn and I are looking forward to welcoming Joy to Caitinara, and very much hope you’ll be able to join us as well, every Friday from the 25th onwards, for Smooth Fridays with DJ Joy.
And There’s More…
Don’t forget: every Wednesday at the same time (4:00 til 6:00pm) we have Music with Anthony, bringing a blend of genres and themes to get us over the mid-week hump with Anthony Westburn. We’re particularly pleased to be able to announce that from Wednesday, April 6th, Music with Anthony will be presenting a monthly opportunity for people to have a little costume fun with out new Dress Up theme evenings.
We’ll be kicking these off on April 6th with The Spies Who Loved Me, a celebration of Bond, Bourne, Baur, Bristow (Sydney, that is), Black Widow, femme fatales and criminal mastermids with songs and hits from the movies and famous spy-ish TV shows. We’ll have full details of this new monthly series on the Holly Kai Park blog soon!
Caitinara Bar provides moorings for boats, access to the Holly Kai beach and, beyond, to Holly Kai Park and Art at the Park / Art at the Garden
Then on alternate Sundays, Kess Crystal presents Feel Good Sundays – music to get you into a positive, upbeat mood ready to face the week ahead. Kess will be back at the bar on April 3rd, and then on April 17th, with a mix of indie, pop, and more to keep us dancing and spirits high – so why not join us to round-out your weekend?
You can keep up with all of the activities at Caitinara Bar and at Holly Kai Park through the Holly Kai website and blog, which has all events listed in the Holly Kai Park calendar. So why not bookmark that as well?
The following notes and audio were taken from the weekly Bento User Group meeting, held on Thursday, March 24th at 13:00 SLT on Aditi. For details on each meeting and the location, 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 to Project Bento, grouped together by subject matter were relevant / possible, together with any additional discussion on potential future projects the Lab might be willing to examine for possible adoption in the future.
Bento Skeleton and Appearance Sliders
Recent efforts within the Bento project have been on trying to hook the appearance sliders up to the new skeleton so that they might be used to adjust various Bento bones. This involves a fair amount of work, as the sliders apply morphs to the basic avatar form, and for Bento enabled meshes they need to be able to operate with bone positions / rotations.
Gaia Clary and Matrice Laville have been working on this, and have identified a slider parameter which can be used to achieve just this, and have been specifically looking at using the facial sliders (given the face / head is one of the largest collections of new bones), as shown in the video below.
Click image to play video in a new browser tab
Skeleton and Viewer Status
The “downside” of this is that this requires further work on the Bento skeleton, includes the possible addition of further bones, which are currently under consideration. This means that there will at least one further update to the viewer, which will contain the updated slider capabilities and some updates / fixes for the skeleton.
It is hoped that this will surface in week #13 (week commencing Monday, March 28th); however, this is dependent upon final updates and getting the viewer through the Lab’s QA. Once it has been issued, the Lab is particularly keen to see the spine bones exercised within this viewer once released, as these have been causing some problems (see my last Bento update).
One potential addition to the skeleton is a set of teeth bones, as described by Cathy Foil in the meeting. Again, it’s not certain these will make the final selection, but the potential with them is interesting.
Obtaining the Latest Version of the Skeleton
Currently, the most direct way to obtain the latest version of the Bento Skeleton is via the latest version of the Bento viewer installed on your computer (e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\SecondLife\character) and using the Avatar_skeleton.XML and Avatar_lad.XML files – the latter of which contains the shape slider capabilities. The major reason the skeleton files haven’t been updated on the wiki is because the skeleton has been going through updates and changes, and Vir has been concerned about any version put on the wiki becoming out-of-date.
Shipping Bento to the Main (Agni) Grid
Troy Linden, the product lead for Bento indicated that current thinking among the product team at the Lab is that Bento will likely move to the main (Agni) grid some time in the second quarter of 2016. This doesn’t mean the project will necessarily be declared complete by then, but it does mean that the Lab expect to have all major skeleton and viewer work wrapped up, with the emphasis firmly shifting to more widespread testing, together with any required bug fixing.
Vir did caveat this with the point that there could be reasons – significant bugs, other work requiring release, etc., – which might cause this to slip, but the focus would appear to be firmly on moving Bento to Agni some time between April and June 2016.
Issues
Incorrect Display of Legacy Rigged Content
Elixabeth Jarvinen (Polysail) demonstrates the GOS shoe issue, which occurs with versions of the shoe both with and without the GOS feet
It is unclear how widespread this issue is, or what the precise cause is. Currently it has only been noted with GOS shoes / feet, and manifests in the Bento viewer in the left foot / shoe appearing incorrectly aligned to the left leg when worn, as shown in the image on the right – note the left shoe / foot appears partially rendered because it has “sunk” into the terrain. Details of the issue can be found in BUG-11617.
One suggestion put forward is that the issue is down to the very high poly count used in these shoes / feet; another that it might be due to the shoes feet being uploaded as individual mesh models, which might be creating issues.
However, why either of these cases should be so is unclear: the feet / shoes render correctly in non-Bento viewers, and there have been no intentional changes made to the rendering pipeline for Bento. A further suggestion is that it might be a result of attempting to rig to and animate an attachment point; it may even be related to an old issue of float issues in the LLVolumeOctree (BUG-2058 – see FIRE-8266 for a public version).
The issue has been accepted by the Lab as a bug, and will undergo further investigation on a number of fronts, including obtaining versions of the items seen to be exhibiting problems, testing the effect using other high poly count objects, etc.
Wing Mesh Upload Issues
There is also a possible issue with the mesh uploader failing to recognise the revised Bento wing bones as bones. This apparently manifests itself by a refusal to upload rigged wings weighted to the wing bones.
Next Meetings
The next Bento meeting will take place on Thursday, March 31st at 13:00 SLT. The meeting following that should be on Thursday, April 7th, but the time is TBC, so as to avoid it clashing with a Lab internal meeting.
Winter Wonderland snowball fight arena – a spring challenge from the Lab
Spring is sprung, the grass is ris, I wonder what that white stuff is? It’s snow a-plenty, and fun for all, And so the Lindens offer one more ball!
OK, so that’s not how the traditional spring verse goes, but it seems appropriate given the Lab have offered one more opportunity for fun and mayhem at Winter Wonderland, with a final friendly Lindens vs residents snowball fight for the 2015/2016 winter season.
In the blog post announcing the event, Xiola Linden says:
We have to take advantage of the snowball fight arena at the Winter Wonderlands region before the snow fully melts – and we want you to come have ice-hurling fun with us on Friday, March 25th, from 10 am – Noon SLT and 2 – 4 PM SLT. If you missed the last snowball fight now is your chance to come pelt some friends and Lindens with soft, fluffy balls of frozen fun. Grab your snow-launching weapons from the kiosks, get some practice in, and be sure to make the trek to the top of the ice castle to take in the amazing view.
So, if hurling snowballs via pistols, rifles and bazookas is your kind of fun (it is for Caitlyn and I!), then make a note on your calendars / in your diaries for Friday, March 25th at the times specified above!
Running through until Sunday, April 16th, is A Stand for Hope, in aid of Relay for Life of Second Life 2016. The event is in two parts: the Stand Up Best DJ on the Grid competition, and Hope: A 2016 Relay for Life Photography Exhibition.
Stand Up Best DJ Competition
Having kicked-off on March 12th, the Stand Up Best DJ competition is now reaching the final stages, which will take place over the weekend of Saturday and Sunday the 26th / 27th of March and the 2nd / 3rd of April respectively.
Each weekend for the last two weeks, seven DJs have been going head-to-head for they title of Best DJ on the Grid 2016 and a prize purse, providing the best in music and entertainment whilst raising money for RFL of SL in the process. The standings are determined by a combination of judges’ scores and total donations for RFL of SL raised; with two rounds still to go, you can see the overall standings here, and learn about the seven participating DJs.
The schedule for Best DJ can be found on the A Stand for Hope events calendar, and you can join in the fun, dancing and fund-raising at the Best DJ in SL street party venue in-world over the next two weekend, as noted above. Already over L$250,000 has been raised across the first two weekends of heats, so with our help, the competition could raise a cool L$500,000 (roughly US $2,000) for RFL of SL.
Hope: A Relay for Life Photo Exhibition
The Hope: A Relay for Life Photo Exhibition launches on Saturday, April 9th, and will run through until Saturday April 16th, inclusive. For the event, 25 Second Life photographers have paired with 25 cancer survivors and caregivers. The survivors and caregivers will share their story of dealing with the impact of cancer in their lives, with the photographers supplying a portrait of each of them.
The stories and portraits will be displayed in a special gallery from April 9th through 16th, and to help raise money for RFL of SL, a silent auction will be held during the exhibition period. In it, the photographers will be offering a portrait package / photo-shoot opportunity to their respective highest bidders. In addition, there will be the opportunity to bid on a spot in the autumn course with Visionaire Institute of Photography, and single portraits by special guest artists Skip Staheli, Magissa Denver, and Natzuka Miliandrovic.
Strawberryland, which opened on Wednesday, March 23rd, is the latest full region installation by Cica Ghost – and for those with a love of strawberries, it offers a feast for the eyes – a rolling field of them!
“I didn’t plan this,” Cica told me, as we discussed the build. “Every day in front of my building, I see a guy selling things [like strawberries].” And so,as the gardener nurtures their planets and fruits (or pseudo fruits), Cica tended to this thought and a few others, growing them into another delightful installation for us to explore and enjoy, full of treats of its own.
One thing the visitor will immediately notice is that this is no ordinary crop of strawberries; they are on a huge scale, as are most other things in the region (see the image below for a sense of size – not the figure standing near the tricycle). The latter take the form of stone-flagged terraces and large structures (one of which forms the landing point), connected by grassy trails.
Three of the terraces feature Cica’s familiar and delightful figures: on one, a woman pegs out her sheets to dry in a gusting wind, while on another two children stand with hands tightly gripping the strings of their balloons as the wind tries to snatch them away. Then, on the third, a man stands next to a wall, paintbrush in hand, splashes of colour on the wall – and his clothes and face – his expression suggesting he’d really rather be somewhere else. Between two of these scenes stands a woman feeding a gaggle of geese, the wind catching her hair as she does so.
Nor is this all that’s to be seen; the structures can be entered and explored, while giant children’s toys sit here and there, and everywhere places to sit can be found, be it on the huge leaves of strawberry plants or oversized picnic benches, or the toys and massive furnishings, while off to one side sits a little (comparatively speaking!) greenhouse in which a single strawberry plant grows.
With Cica’s signature characters and sense of whimsy, Strawberryland is a thoroughly enjoyable visit, delightful on the eye and bound to have you smiling.
“In We Are No One, artists, Jammie Hill and Joslyn Benson, seek to approach the eternal existential quest of the individuals … In the beginning, we only exist, ‘we are no one’ but material. We are nothing else but what we make of ourselves … We, human beings, create our own values and meanings for our lives, but this responsibility may bring a sense of anxiety, anguish and fear.”
Thus Daphne Arts curators SheldonBR and Angelika Corral state of their current guest artist exhibition. We Are No One is a series of evocative (and predominantly nude) images by (and of) artists Jammie Hill and Joslyn Benson which offer a rich mix of human emotion: the aforementioned anxiety, anguish and fear, together with comfort, fragility, longing …
While both artists have enjoyed an exhibit in the past, We Are No One presents a series of images exclusively produced for the DaphneArts exhibition, their collaborative approach to art resonating with Angelika and Sheldon, who also collaborate with ideas, themes and presentations, as evidenced by Shadows of a Dream, hosted by Dido Haas at Nitroglobus Hall, and which you can read about here.
“Sheldon and I like to say that our works are having a ‘conversation’,” Angelika notes of their work. Sheldon agrees, adding, “For this reason we asked Jammie and Joslyn to exhibit here at DaphneArts.” Angelika then concludes, “There is a connection between them in their work.”
And this is clearly evident in the pieces displayed on the ground and lower floor of the 3-storey gallery. Nude images they may be, but it is the emotional content which strikes the observer, rather than any statement of sensuality or nudity. The emotive resonance in the pieces continues through to the upper floor of the gallery, where Sheldon has a series of his RL drawings on display, and the complimentary approach to the subject matter is clearly in evidence between his work and that of Jamie and Joslyn.
We Are No Open is a powerful exhibition, and should be running through until at least mid-April, possibly a little longer. It marks the first in an ongoing series of such events at DaphneArts which will see Sheldon and Angelika inviting artist who they feel match their approach to art to display at the gallery – and potentially collaborate with them on joint exhibitions.
I know that on the strength of this exhibit, I’m looking forward to making return visits to DaphneArts, and reporting on future exhibitions held there.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 