January 2017 – Page 4 – Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld

Lumiya 3.4 goes Bento

Posted on January 22, 2017May 25, 2020 by Inara Pey

On Friday, January 20th Lumiya, the Android client developed by Alina Lyvette gained the latest in what has been a flurry of updates for the client, with the release of version 3.4. This sees Lumiya gain support for the Project Bento skeleton extensions and rendering of associated avatar meshes and accessories.

All of the Bento updates are under-the-hood; there are no UI changes, and no Reset Skeleton options as seen in Bento-supporting viewers. As Alina explained to me in discussing the release, Lumiya’s approach to rendering should generally result in Bento avatars and accessories rendering correctly in the 3D world view.

Medhue Simoni's Bento MEGAwolf, as worn by my alt and rendered in Lumiya's 3D view — *Medhue Simoni’s Bento MEGAWolf, as worn by my alt and rendered in Lumiya’s 3D view*

For the vast majority of times, this is indeed the case. You can select and wear a Bento avatar or Bento accessory such as a head and wear / unwear it without any problems.

However, as was noted during Bento’s development, when swapping between quadruped avatars, which can involve severe deformation of the avatar skeleton, and bipedal avatars, there can be times when your avatar doesn’t always resume its proper shape in the 3D world view, resulting in the avatar appearing deformed in your view (see below, right.

*Very occasionally, when swapping between avatars – say quadruped to biped, you might encounter your avatar appearing deformed in Lumiya. Simply exit and restart the 3D view*

These occurrences tend to be very intermittent / rare. As with their occurrence in a viewer, they might be the result of race conditions and / or missed appearance messages.

As Lumiya does not have any Reset Skeleton options, the problem can be fixed in one of two ways:

Tapping the actions menu icon (top right of the screen) and selecting Stop Avatar Animations. This will generate an appearance update, and should correct the problem
Exiting the 3D world view, and then enabling it again. This will again force an appearance update, and correct any deformation.

Note that in testing, these kinds of deformation issues didn’t extend to other avatars changing their form within viewing range of Lumiya 3.4, and they always rendered correctly following a change. However, should other avatars appear deformed in your 3D world view, try exiting and re-started the 3D view and see if they then render correctly.

Outside of this, Bento HUDs, where supplied can be added and used in the usual manner with Lumiya – attach the HUD, then select it via the on-screen HUD button.

*You should be able to use Bento mesh HUDs as you would any other HUD in Lumiya, via the HUD button & selection (lower left corner of the screen*

As well as the Bento update, Lumiya 3.4 includes a couple of bug fixes:

Avatars should no longer get stuck in the non-animated pose (“T” pose).
Avatars should no longer flash when loading rigged mesh attachments.

Feedback

Given the nature of things, the code may yet require further nips and tucks, but on the whole, and outside of the rare deformation issue mentioned above, I didn’t encounter significant issues – although my selection of Bento items is admittedly narrow, and my testing could not in any way be comprehensive. All told, another great update to SL’s most cost-effective and feature-rich mobile client / option.

Of rural wanders and elevated safaris in Second Life

Posted on January 21, 2017April 9, 2021 by Inara Pey

Devin – click any image for full size

Devin appeared in the Destination Guide Highlights on Friday, January 20th, promising “two sims” of space to explore. Designed by Roy Mildor, Ally Daysleeper and Alienmaus Allen, the description should perhaps read, “two region-wide levels”, but the fact remains that Devin presents Second Life users the opportunity to enjoy two very different environments within the same region.

The ground level presents a rugged, lush terrain, filled with the greenery of grass and trees, surrounded by tall mountains and cut and shaped by water. It could be just about anywhere in the world, edged with a sandy beach, watched over by ancient ruins and the beacon eye of a light house.

Devin

A house sits upon a hill to the north-east; a private residence, it is off-limits to visitors, although the rest of the land remains open to explore. A watery tongue cuts into the land below the house, crossed by two bridges to reach a long island running southwards. Here, horses graze amidst the long grass and an old barn has been converted for the care of motorcycles, a large deck built out over the water close by offering places to sit and cuddle.

A second island sits across the water to the west, stepping-stones offering a relative route to it. More rugged than the others, it rises to a narrow spine with more places to sit and / or cuddle, before dropping to the swathe of beach. North of this, across an old wooden board walk, sits the smallest of the islands, topped by the ruin of a cottage. From here, visitors can circle back to the open land beneath the house.

Devin

Throughout it all are places to sit, or chat or dance while the air is filled with the sounds of nature. This is peaceful haven, offering plenty of scope for photography and relaxation. When exploring, keep an eye out for the whimsy – like the raccoons by one of the seating areas.

The second landscape can be reached via the teleport signs planted in the ground at various points. Called simply “Devin 2”, it sits high in the sky, and where the ground level is rich in greens, browns and water, this second environment is perhaps more akin to the Sahel Zone of Africa. It is a place of rolling dunes, some of which are covered in a thin but tough mat of grass, and of scattered trees and a lone watering hole.

Devin

Overlooked on one side by an old shack and the other by an ancient stone tower, the watering hole is the venue of choice for the local wildlife. Elephants bathe, rhinos and giraffe drink, and zebra stand in the shade of trees growing lose by, attentively watched by a pair of jaguars. Across the water from them, a lioness eyes a small herd of Arabian gazelle, while a crocodile rests in the sun. Slightly further afield, a train of camels marches slowly in from the outlying dunes and sand hills.

Thus it is that Devin 2 presents a mini safari on a sim; a chance to photograph wildlife whilst escaping the rest of the world. A scattering of camp site and wooden building offer those visiting places to watch the animals, while a hot air balloon presents an ideal overhead perch from which to observe all the comings and goings. As with the ground level, everything here is open to exploration, except the camp site sitting over the dunes to the north-east. This is sitting over the private home at ground level, and is security protected.

Devin

Taken together, there are two charming places to visit, either individually or together. Each offers its own serenity and its own attractiveness.

SLurl Details

Devin (Devin, rated: Moderate)

Illogism at MetaLES in Second Life

Posted on January 20, 2017January 2, 2022 by Inara Pey

Now open at MetaLES, curated by Ux Hax and Romy Nayar, is Illogism (from the French Illogisme, or illogicality), an exhibition of 55 images by Chimkami. These are presented in large format within a bizarre environment visualised by Romy Nayar, designed to represent disproportionate, or diform, doll’s houses of enormous size, and which are themselves contained within a large doll’s house.

“At all heights, outside as inside the houses, “Chimkami notes in her introduction to the setting, “you can discover the photos in this universe freed from any constraint, exposed with [the] nonsensical. Each corner and nook will reveal photos and rest places. Will you have nerves to find them ? Walk, fly, use your camera, relax, laugh, observe, discuss, as you want. Only one thing matters: take pleasure in it!”

It is a curious, bewildering environment where gravity plays no part: a dance floor is located on a ceiling, objects occupy roof tops and floors, images hang from walls or occupy the clefts and cuts through objects. Houses stand and float or sit at the end of disembodied stairs and plank-like walks, their shapes twisted, squeezed or bent, the photos in them, on them and around them.

The best way to get around is to join the MetaLES group at the installation’s landing point. This will give you local rezzing rights, so you can grab a Walker from the neighbouring board, rez it, and then sit on it. This will allow you to freely explore the space – use the standard WASD keys of arrow keys for navigation – and will also allow your to walk up walls, cross ceilings and along the various twisted paths through the exhibition. Along the way, there are various points where you might also enjoy rides, take a seat, and so on.

The images themselves are an eclectic mix, focusing on avatar studies, but not exclusive human in nature. Some are stylised, others more direct, others lean towards monochrome, others in bright, bold colours. All are subject to individual interpretation and appreciation. Such is the size of things, that getting around to everything can take time.

Illogism is an interesting piece. Quirky, a little out of the ordinary, a space where we are presented as tiny explorers, and where everything is being close examined from “outside” – look out for the eyes staring through the windows of the enclosing doll’s house. It will remain open through until February 28th, 2017.

SLurl Details

Illogism (MetaLES, rated: Moderate)

SL project updates 2017-3/2: texture uploads, Content Creation UG

Posted on January 20, 2017September 27, 2024 by Inara Pey

An Uncertain Destiny – blog post

Server Deployments – Recap

The Main (SLS) channel was restarted on Tuesday, 17th January, but there was no associated code deployment
A new server maintenance package was deployed to the RC channels on Wednesday, January 18th, comprising a partial fix for (non-public) BUG-3286, “Can’t move object” fail notifications (fixes for regions/objects with longer names are pending) + internal server and logging enhancements

SL Viewer

No further updates to the current viewer pipeline list.

Texture Uploads and First Time Rendering

The Lab has been making some hardware (/communication?) changes to the texture upload / delivery mechanism (e.g. both the handling of texture uploads from the viewer to the asset system, and then from the asset system back out to the viewer via the CDN). When deployed to the main grid, these should see improvements in the uploading of new textures and their appearance on in-world objects, whether uploaded individually or in bulk (e.g. hopefully little / no grey panels in new texture upload previews when viewing them from inventory, and few / no grey object faces when uploading a texture and then immediately applying it to an object face).

Content Creation User Group

Summary of General Points

No further movement on the potential “Bento follow-up” project ideas (see my Content Creation UG notes for week #2).
The next Avastar release is in advanced testing, with a potential release around late February / March, but will include devkit support and a large number of bug fixes.
Appearance sliders:
- A question was asked whether the slider system could be updated to allow for easier scaling for smaller avatars utilising Bento (as not all Bento bones are linked to sliders). Vir noted this is unlikely, as it would require a change for the base slider scaling which could break existing avatars.
- However, Vir noted that suggestions to offer new sliders for sizing things like wings and tales have been discussed at the Lab, but nothing has as yet been decided.

Pain Points / Blockers to Bento Content

A general question thrown out by Simon Linden was whether people are experiencing particular “pain points” in producing Bento content: what they might be waiting for tools-wise or in any other way etc. this quickly spilled out into a much broader discussion on various tools and suggested tutorials. However, core points raised were:

Available time, learning to use external tools such as Blender,
Waiting on Avastar, plus tutorials, both generic and on using specific tools (e.g. Avastar and Mayastar) – which will hopefully come in time
Mention was made of making people more aware of SL-specific areas such as level of detail (LOD), managing physics, LI calculation rules, etc.

It was also noted that possibly having idea of having some for of sample content (e.g. wings, hands), which creators could use as an example / baseline for their own creations, together with a broader selection of documentation / tutorials / videos.

Simon pointed out that in terms of Lab developed tutorials and documentation, there are only limited resources. Many third-parties also produce tutorials (Mehdue Simoni, for example is waiting for the new Avastar to reach release before working on his video tutorials for it).

Others have also put together documentation, but are finding it hard to get that documentation seen heard above the broad range of misinformation on content creation which is in circulation. Vir has suggested that meaningful documentation and tutorials could be linked to through the SL wiki.

In terms of the wiki, there are a range of resources available for content creation / Bento:

Project Bento testing page (wiki)
Avatar body size (wiki)
Bento Skeleton Guide (wiki)
Second Life Good Practices (wiki) – for general guidance on mesh + LOD, mesh LI calculations, physics optimisation, etc.
Mesh Rendering Weight guidelines (wiki)
Mesh optimisation (Avastar)
Mesh / Maya Basic Introduction (wiki)

A dream within a dream: celebrating Poe in Second Life

Posted on January 19, 2017April 1, 2025 by Inara Pey

January 19th, 2017 marks the 208th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth. A literary critic, writer and poet, Poe is perhaps best remembered for his tales and poems of the macabre, although he is seen as the creator of detective fiction, and a leading figure of the Romantic movement in the United States.

Down through the decades, his work has been the inspiration for many in literature, art, radio, film and television. To mark his anniversary, DaphneArts Gallery curated by Angelika Corral and SheldonBR, is mounting a special exhibition entitled, appropriately enough, Edgar Allan Poe Tribute.

A mixed media event, the exhibition features images eight photographers: Edie Horngold, Kate Bergdorf, Mi, Nevereux, Noirran Marx, Jason (fitFanatic), Dr. Strangelove and Sunset Teas. These can be found in two halls of the DaphneArts Gallery 1 space, whilst accompanying them in the remaining two halls is an installation by Angelika and Sheldon. In the first of these rooms visitors can hear Angelika reciting A Dream Within A Dream and in the second stands a micro universe based on the story of the Fall of the house of Usher.

“Our main interest here is in the bizarre and surreal, and Poe has always been one of our favourites,” Sheldon told me, when I dropped in on him and Angelika as they were finalising set-up for the exhibition. “We have always wanted to do something inspired by his works, and decided that being part of the celebration of his 208th birthday would be a good chance to do it.”

DaphneArts: Edgar Allan Poe Tribute - Fall of the House of Usher display — DaphneArts: Edgar Allan Poe Tribute – Fall of the House of Usher display

“His dark, Gothic style is really inspiring,” Angelika added. “It seems our invited photographers like it as well, because their photos came out really strong.”

This is certainly true. Each of the images on display (some of which are seen in the top two images of this article) carries a resonance of Poe’s writing. Some of them do so directly, bearing clear motifs associated with his work, such as the presence of a raven. Others more subtle in their approach – such as with Berenice by Mi.

A Dream Within A Dream offers an immersive environment featuring visual elements and music, together with Angelika’s recital of the poem. In a dark room, dust motes swirl gently on an unfelt twist of air; gentle music and vocals slowly fill the space as Angelika reads this, one of Poe’s most famous poems, in which he laments our inability to prevent the passage of time and asking if can we really distinguish between reality and fantasy?

DaphneArts: Edgar Allan Poe Tribute - Sheldon and Angelika show me Dream Within A Dream — DaphneArts: Edgar Allan Poe Tribute – Sheldon and Angelika show me Dream Within A Dream

“Angelika and I have been working with this idea of 3D exhibitions,” Sheldon said, aftar we had listened to Angelika’s recital. “We like to explore all the possibilities that SL offers us, so we added our contribution to the exhibition in this way.”

It’s an approach that certainly works, the scripts geared to synchronize music and voice as the matching words appear floating in the darkness. What’s more, the poem is a fitting piece for this exhibition, staged as it is in the “unreal” world of bits, bytes, pixels and and packets. Alongside of of the recital space, the model of the House of Usher stands as tribute to another of Poe’s enduring works.

The official opening for Edgar Allan Poe Tribute will take place at 12:00 noon SLT on Thursday, January 19th. Thereafter, the exhibition will remain open for around two months.

SLurl Details

DaphneArts – Beautiful Bizarre (Rated Moderate)

Once Upon a Fairy Tale in Second Life

Posted on January 18, 2017April 9, 2021 by Inara Pey

Once Upon A Fairy Tale – click any image for full size

The last time I visited Cape Juniper, Danni Lyric’s home region which she uses to showcase her landscaping and design skills, was in September 2015. As such, it is a place which periodically changes, and I was drawn back to is after seeing the region featured in a recent Destination Guide highlights under the title Once Upon A Fiary Tale. And if you in any way enjoy fairy tales sweet or grim, or have a penchant for stories involving wizards, elves, dragons and more, it is most assuredly a place you will want to visit and savour.

Once again, Danni – with the assistance of Psy Carnell – has created a unique, eye-catching environment with a lot to explore, see and discover – far more than may first meet the eye. “This year, instead of observing the changing of seasons, [we’ve] decided to take a nostalgic turn,” Danni explains. “Once Upon A Fairy Tale is a whimsical fantasy land with scenery inspired by fairy and folk tales of our childhood. You’ll notice as you travel around the different areas that, while nothing is an exact match to any single tale, there are strong hints you will find recognisable.”

Once Upon A Fairy Tale

Visits start ordinarily enough on a path alongside a notice board. A light haze hovers in the air, and a sign post alongside the landing point gives the first hint of just how much there is to find within this realm of folk tales, stories and imaginings. Take the footpath in one direction, and you’ll be led down to a watery oasis where merfolk reside; take it in another and you’ll climb a short hill to where Cinderella’s magical coach awaits, steeds and carriage yet to hear the strike of the midnight hour. Take it in the third offered direction and you’ll be led inland past wolves and a waterfall and over a ridge to – well, I’ll let you find out for yourselves!

Perhaps the best way to appreciate the beauty and otherworldliness of Once Upon a Fairy Tale is to pump up your draw distance to about 300-310 metes, and carefully cam out, keeping your focus on the land before you. As you do, you’ll see that the paths and lush greenery of your arrival point are surrounded by a mix of pointed green crags, flat-topped tables of rock and islands floating serenely in the haze, each the home to a scene or setting. These form a ring around the centre of the region, linked back to it by bridges and walkways, whilst not all being connected one to another.

Once Upon A Fairy Tale

Nor does the magic end there. Cam a little further out, and you’ll see that the region and the waters lapping it have been designed so it appears all of the land is floating on a foundation of clouds, the encompassing sea of Linden Water converted into an unending expanse of sky. It’s an extraordinary sight, one given added depth by the waters which tumble from the edge of the land into the “clouds” below.

As Danni notes, this isn’t designed to be a single fairy tale or fantasy setting; it is both an interpretation and an amalgam of stories, such that each island or location might be considered an individual setting with its own tale. But at the same time, when exploring, you cannot escape the fact that the different locations naturally flow one to another, whichever route of exploration you take. As such, there is a feeling of story-like continuity whilst exploring.

Once Upon A Fairy Tale

Then, of course there are the various images and suggestions posed by the scenes one encounters along the way. These will naturally be very individual for each of us: is the wizard Gandalf or one of his brethren, or is he more akin to Dumbledore and wizards of his ilk? Are the dragons from the pages of J.R.R.T or G.R.R.M?

Nor are the scenes restricted to purely western influences; the oriental is represented atop a couple of the islands, complete with Buddha and cushion for those who want to meditate. Elsewhere can be found winged horses (Pegasii?), complete with smithy to look after them, industrious gnomes, fairies and more. Through it all, the attention to detail and the little touches bring this world to life, as do the characters populating it – the gnomes, dwarves, creatures and (especially) the wizard.

Once Upon A Fairy Tale

This is a magical region for children of all ages, and most certainly not one to be missed or avoided.

SLurl Details

Once Upon a Fairy Tale (Hollandise, Cape Juniper, rated: Moderate)

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Month: January 2017