It’s pretty well established in these pages that I’m attracted to fractal art. So it was with some interest that I read about a new installation by Asmita Duranjaya entitled Fossil Fractals, currently on display at her InterstellART community region.
“This exhibition shows a new art technique meshing of fractal creations and making them relief-like 3D-art,” Asmita says of the exhibition. “The results look like fossils found on an exoplanet in the universe, being displayed for human eyes.”
On display are around (I think) 16 pieces – the display space is something of a maze, so finding them all requires a certain amount of walking along hallways and up and down steps and ramps! Each mesh piece is presented in a haut-relief format, and as Asmita notes, they are decidedly fossil-like in form – although the finishes on some suggest their origins might have been more mineral than organic.
The latter are quite exotic and alien is looks: crystaline structures rising from a flat base, demanding that one zoom and cam gently around them, the minerals and crystal fragments within them glittering gently. Others are more familiar in looks, displaying the spiral sweep found in ammonites. Some, from certain angles, look perhaps less like fossils and more relief maps of an alien world, as built up from 3D images taken from orbit. All of this makes the display an intriguing exhibit. If any of the pieces catch your eye, they are available to purchase.
As noted above, Fossil Fractals is displayed as a part of the InterstellART community, and when visiting it, you can also visit the surround (and overhead) galleries, some of which house permanent exhibits, others of which are supplied as studio space for artists. A teleport network is provided for getting around (and links to the ground level exhibition spaces), although the easiest way to get to the art studios (floating on islands overhead from Fossil Fractals) is to either fly or use a double-click TP. Those interested in joining the community should contact Asmita directly.
There was no deployment to the Main (SLS) channel on Tuesday, February 21st, again leaving it on release 17#17.01.27.323172. However, all regions on the channel were restarted in keeping with the Lab’s policy of restarting a channel every other week, regardless as to whether or not it has received a deployment update.
On Wednesday, February 22nd, all thee RC channels received a new server maintenance package containing “minor” changes. No release notes available.
RC Release E-mail Issue
One of the changes on the RC release is to increase privacy protection on e-mails – which is a good thing. However, it now means that the viewer is performing a check it doesn’t need to do, and as a result, sending snapshots to e-mail ((aka “postcards”) can fail or encounter problems.
There is a viewer-side fix for this in the works, but it has yet to clear LL’s QA, but will be appearing in a viewer once it has. It also means that all viewers which do not have the fix can encounter issues when trying to send snapshots to e-mails, and so will also have to include the fix as well.
SL Viewer
No further updates this week, leaving the various pipelines as:
Current Release version: 5.0.1.323027, dated January 25, promoted February 3 – formerly the Maintenance RC viewer.
RC viewers:
Maintenance RC viewer version 5.0.2.323567 dated February 14th – a range of improvements and features – overview here (initial release version number)
Love Me Render RC viewer version Version 5.0.2.323361, dated February 9th – rendering pipeline fixes and improvements
Project viewers:
Project Alex Ivy (LXIV), 64-bit project viewer version 5.1.0.501863 for Windows and Mac, dated January 10th
360-degree snapshot viewer, version 4.1.3.321712, dated November 23, 2016 – ability to take 360-degree panoramic images – hands-on review.
Obsolete platform viewer version 3.7.28.300847 dated May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.
E-mail Verification Update
The Lab is proceeding with e-mail verification, so again, if you haven’t already done so, please read my post here. There is still no timeline for when the switch-over will occur, and the Lab will provide a blog post as things come into force. Also, while they won’t immediately be affected, this will mean that eventually IMs to e-mail and then marketplace notifications for merchants will ease working for all unverified e-mail addresses.
Other Items
Links Not Clickable in Group Notices
This is quite an old issue (see BUG-10498), but is apparently occurring again. Speaking at the Server Beta User Group meeting, Mazidox Linden requested if anyone encounters it and can reproduce it, could they please raise a new bug report, stating how they encountered and reproduced the issue.
Today, the telephone – in the form of pocket-sized smartphones – is an essential part of most people’s every day life. Looking at one, it is hard to imagine how far the technology behind this means of long-distance communication has come since its birth in the 1870s.
Of course, we all know something of the history of the telephone, with names like Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Grey (if not poor Antonio Meucci) being familiar to many of us, if only as a result of our school days. But what is it’s real story? How did the early telephones work? what have been the various eras of the ‘phone?
Denzel Coy brilliantly and charmingly answers these questions in Second Life through his Telephone Museum. Within it, visitors can explore the telephone’s entire history, from its beginnings with the unfortunate Meucci, the unlucky Grey and the fortunate Bell, through the first box systems, to candlesticks and on to the rotary era – all the way up to the modern cellphone.
This is a fabulous environment for anyone interested in history or technology as well as the telephone. On displays are around 50 exquisitely crafted telephones from the last 140 years, made by a number of Second Life creators – Raya Jonson, Jin Zhu, Zaida Gearbox, Neotoy Story and Plato Novo, to name but a handful, as well as Denzel himself. Alongside of them are information boards complete with audio playback capabilities, allowing visitors to read or hear the information they contain, together with reproductions of adverts for telephones from the different eras, and more.
The displays are laid out around two levels, with the lower progressing from information on Meucci, Grey and Bell, through to the arrival of rotary dial telephones in the 1920s. These displays are all offered around a model of the very first telephone device from 1876. From here, visitors can progress to the mezzanine level, and the history of the telephone from the 1950s through to the present day, with a brief detour into the world of the military field telephone.
As well as the audio capabilities, the museum includes a number of interactive elements – including the display case of the aforementioned 1876 device being alarmed against theft! There is also a gacha station, where visitors can obtain a number of items, including some rare models of the ‘phones on display and the Telephone Museum Ultimate Guide. There is also a trivia competition on the main floor, where people can test the knowledge they’ve gained during their visit.
This is a superb exhibit to visit, perfectly presented in an environment designed by Denzel. Informative and educational, it is also entertaining and offers another look at just how exquisite mesh models can be in Second Life.
The gathering: people gather for the CCUG, including a Bento ridable dragon, a work-in-progress by Teager (l) and a Bento wearable dragon, also a WIP by Thornleaf (r)
The following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group meeting, held on Thursday February 23rd, 2017 at 1:00pm SLT at the the Hippotropolis Campfire Circle. The meeting is chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, etc, are available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.
Core Topics
HTTP asset fetching
Animating objects
Applying Baked Textures to Mesh Avatars
HTTP Fetching
As previously noted, the Lab is working on moving landmarks, gestures, animations, sounds and wearables (system layer clothing) from UDP delivery via the simulator to HTTP delivery via the CDN(s). This work is now progressing to the stage where initial testing is liable to be starting soon. It’s not clear if this is internal testing with the Lab, or whether it will involve wider (Aditi testing) as well. As things progress, expect the viewer-side changes to appear in a project viewer and then progress through the normal route of testing / update to RC and onwards towards release.
Potential Project: Animated Objects
As noted in my last Content Creation UG meeting notes, the Lab is taking a speculative look at using the current avatar skeleton to animate in-world objects to provide a means for users to more easily create animated objects (e.g. non-player characters – NPCS -, plants and trees responding to a breeze, providing mesh animals which do not rely on performance hitting alpha swapping, etc) – see feature request BUG-11368. for some of the ideas put forward which helped prompt the Lab’s interest.
It is important to note that this is still a speculative look at the potential; there is no confirmed project coming off the back of it, the Lab is currently seeking feedback on how people might use the capability, were it to be implemented. No in depth consideration has been given to how such a capability would be support on the back end, or what changes would be required to the viewer.
One of the many issues that would need to be worked through is just the simple matter of how an object might be animated to achieve something like walking, running or flying. These require the simulator to make certain assumptions when handling an avatar which are not a part of object handling. There’s also the question of how the skeleton would be applied to an object.
Having animated objects does give rise to concerns over potential resource / performance impacts. for example, someone having a dozen animated pets running around them as animated objects could potentially have the same resource / performance overheads as thirteen actual avatars in a region.
One possible offset to this (although obviously, the two aren’t equitable) is that mesh animals / objects which currently use a lot of alpha flipping to achieve different “states” of “animation” (such a the squirrel which can jump from the ground and swing on a nut holder and jump back down again, or the peek-a-boo baby bears, etc., all of which are popular in gardens and public regions) could be made a lot more efficient were they to be animated, as the resource / performance hitting alpha swapping could be abandoned.
It was suggested that rather than having the full skeleton available for animated objects, it might be possible to use a sub-set of bones, or even the pre-Bento skeleton. Agreeing that this might be done, Vir pointed out that using the full skeleton would perhaps offer the most flexible approach, and also allow the re-use of existing content, particularly given that things like custom skeletons (also mooted) would be too big a project to undertake.
A closer look at Teager’s WIP Bento ridable dragon with Teager aboard, which has yet to be textured
Applying Baked Textures to Mesh Avatars
Interest is increasing in this potential project, which would allow baked textures – skins and wearble clothing layers – to be applied directly to mesh avatars via the baking service. This also has yet to be officially adopted by the Lab as a project, but there is considerable interest internally in the idea.
As I’ve previously reported, there is considerable interest in this idea, as it could greatly reduce the complexity of mesh avatar bodies by removing the need for them to be “onion skinned” with multiple layers. However, as I noted in that report, a sticking point is that currently, the baking service is limited to a maximum texture resolution of 512×512, whereas mesh bodies and parts (heads, feet, hands) can use 1024×1024.
These is concern that if the baking service isn’t updated to also support 1024×1024 textures, it would not be used as skins and wearable using it would appear to be of lower resolution quality than can be achieved when using applier systems on mesh bodies. Vir expressed doubt as to whether the detail within 1024×1024 textures is really being seen unless people are zoomed right into other avatars, which for most of the time we’re going about our SL times and doing things, isn’t the case.
Troy Linden wears a Bento octopus “backpack”
This lead to a lengthy mixed text / voice discussion on texture resolution and extending the baking service to support mesh avatars (were it to go ahead), which essentially came down to two elements:
The technical aspects of whether or not we actually get to see the greater detail in 1024×1024 textures most of the time we’re in world and in re-working the baking service to supporting 1024×1204 across all wearable layers from skin up through to jacket.
The sociological aspect of whether or not people would actually use the baking service route with mesh avatars front , if the texture resolution were left at 512×512, because of the perceived loss of detail involved.
Various compromises were put forward to try to work around the additional impact of updating the baking service to support 1024×1024 textures. One of these was that body creators might provide two versions of their products if they wish: one utilising appliers and 1024×1024 textures as is the case now, and the other supporting the baking service and system layers at 512×512, then leave it to users to decide what they want to use / buy. Another was a suggestion that baking service support could be initially rolled out at 512×512 and then updated to 1024×1024 support if there was a demand.
None of the alternative suggestions were ideal (in the two above, for example, creators are left having to support two product ranges, which could discourage them; while the idea of leaving the baking service at 512×512 falls into the sociological aspect of non-use mentioned previously). Currently, Vir appears to be perhaps leaning more towards updating the baking service to 1024×1024 were the project to be adopted but, the overheads in doing so still need to be investigated and understood.
Other Items
.ANIM Exporter for Maya
Cathy Foil indicated that Aura Linden has almost finished working on the .ANIM exporter she’s being developing for Maya. The hope is that the work will be completed in the next week or so. She also indicated that, in keeping with Medhue Simoni’s advice from a few weeks ago (see .BVH Animations and Animation Playback), she was able to overcome some of the issues being experienced with fine-tuning .BVH animation playback, although there are still problems.
The .ANIM exporter will be available for anyone using Maya, and is not something dependent upon Mayastar.
Avastar 2.0 in RC
The upcoming fully Bento compliant version of Avastar is now available as a release candidate.
IK Constraints
Tapple Gao has been looking at IK (Inverse Kinematics) constraints within Second Life. These aren’t widely used within existing animations – although up to about eight constraints can be defined – largely because the documentation doesn’t appear to be too clear. Tapple hopes to improve this through investigation and then updating the SL wiki.
Next Meeting
The next content Creation meeting will be in two weeks, on Thursday, March 9th, at 13:00 SLT.
Hidden Faces, now open at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery curated by Dido Haas, is an exhibition of photography by Monique Beebe. While no stranger to Second Life – she has been involved in the platform for the last decade – Hidden Faces marks the first public exhibition of her photography.
On display are twelve self-studies by Monique (or Moni, as she signs herself), offered in the familiar large format at Nitroglobus, which reveal the reason behind the exhibition’s title: in not one of them does the artist fully reveal her face. The most we see in those where her face may be partially exposed is the curve of cheek, soft line of jaw, sweep of nose and flare of nostrils and most particularly, the fullness of lips.
These glimpses are tantalising, sensual, and in at least one case – Thinking (seen at the top of this article) – edged with pensiveness. They draw us into the pictures in a physical way, the desire to reach out and caress a cheek, cup and gently lift a chin, to see the eyes that remain hidden, is powerful to the point of mesmerizing.
Each of the poses offered is equally as sensual, with a couple probably NSFW. In many Moni is dressed in little more than her underwear or in sheer slips and tops; her poses nuanced, the dark backdrop to each piece further heightening its sensual feel. In two of those where her face isn’t visible at all, their sensual nature is carried in other ways: the lace ribbons tied around wrists, the drape of pearls down a naked back…
But there is more here has well. While Moni may be shy about revealing herself fully in the spotlight of an art exhibition, but because the images are so personal – both to her and in our reaction to them, they imbue a feeling of closeness with her without in any way casting us into the role of voyeur. Rather, the suggestion is that these are intimate moments being willingly shared with us, because we are trusted.
Hidden Faces is a beautiful portfolio of work specifically created for this exhibition by an artist who may well be new to the SL exhibition circuit, but whose work is fully deserving of being seen by a wider audience. As such, I hope we’ll be able to see more of her work displayed at galleries in-world in the future. In the meantime, Hidden Faces will remain open through until late March.
An artist’s impression of the sky from the outermost of the three TRAPPIST exoplanets in the star’s habitable zone (see the 360-video below). Credit: NASA
On Wednesday, February 22nd, US space agency NASA, working with a team of European astronomers, confirmed no fewer than seven extra-solar planets are orbiting a star some 39 light years away – with three of them within the so-called “Goldilocks zone” of habitability.
The star in question is TRAPPIST-1, named for the instruments used in its discovery, the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST), and more formally known as 2MASS J23062928-0502285. Regular readers of my Space Sunday column might remember that I referred to the system back in November 2016, whilst discussing the James Webb Space Telescope and the hunt of exoplanets. The NASA announcement, which coincides with the publication of a new paper by the TRAPPIST team, adds dramatic new information to the distant star system.
The first two of the planets orbiting the star were located in May 2016, after the TRAPPIST team had studied the results of a continuous series of observations of the star between September and December 2015 using the telescope, located at the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) La Silla Observatory in Chile.
Artist’s concept showing what each of the TRAPPIST-1 planets may look like, based on available data about their sizes, masses and orbital distances. Credit: NASA
What was intriguing about the two world was that not only were both within the so-called “Goldilocks zone” of their parent planet, where conditions might be “just right” for life to start, but both were roughly comparable to Earth in size, and therefore likely solid bodies, and spectral analysis suggested both have atmospheres.
A third planet, TRAPPIST-1d was also discovered the the same time, but it was behaving oddly. This prompted a further extended period of observation between September and October 2016, using both the ESO’s ground-based Very Large Telescope, and the Spitzer Space Telescope. This work revealed at “TRAPPIST-1d” was not one, but three worlds, again, all roughly in the Earth-sized category. Spitzer’s data additionally revealed two more planets of roughly the same size, taking the total to seven. Following this, Hubble turned its attention on the planets, looking for signs of hydrogen and helium – the chemical signatures that would indicate if any of them might be gas giants. It found none, further confirming they are likely rocky in nature.
The size, mass and density of these telluric worlds were obtained by measuring the periodic dips in TRAPPIST-1’s luminosity as a result of each of the planets passing in front of it. This allowed the international team studying the system to further assess whether each world was rocky, icy, or gaseous and determine which might be habitable.
Via: Space.com. Click for full size
TRAPPIST-1 is an ultra-cool red dwarf star only slightly larger than the planet Jupiter, and about 2,000 times dimmer than the sun.
Such stars, designated Class M, are the most frequent type of star in the Universe – making up an estimated 70% of stars in our galaxy alone. However, they do not radiate energy like our own sun, instead they are very volatile; all activity within them is entirely convective in nature, giving rise to massive stellar flares.
Given TRAPPIST-1 is so small, all of its planets orbit in very close proximity to it – closer than Mercury is to the Sun (the nearest orbits its parent star once every 1.5 terrestrial days, and the outermost, about once every 20 terrestrial days). This makes them very vulnerable to violent outbursts by the star, and could affect their surface conditions and their ability to retain an atmosphere.
This close proximity also means all of the planets are tidally locked – they always have the same side facing their sun. Thus they all are likely to have extremes of temperature, and those with an atmosphere are likely to have quite extreme weather as well. However – and conversely – it also means they could have the potential for liquid water to exist on their surfaces.
The innermost of the three planets in the habitable zone, TRAPPIST-1e, is very close in size to Earth, and receives about the same amount of light as Earth does, and may well have similar day time temperatures. The middle planet of the three, TRAPPIST-1f, meanwhile, might be a water rich world, also roughly the same size as Earth. It has a 9-day orbit, and receives about the same amount of light from its sun as Mars does from our own.
Another artist’s impression of how the TRAPPIST system might look from the surface of one of TRAPPIST-1f, the middle one of the three planets in the star’s habitable zone – assuming it has liquid water present. Credit: NASA
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 