Day: June 21, 2018

A return to La Clef des Champs

Posted on by Inara Pey

La Clef des Champs; Inara Pey, June 2018, on FlickrLa Clef des Champs – click any image for full size

It is a little over a month since I wrote about La Clef des Champs (literally, “the key fields”), a setting which at that time took up a homestead region, which had opened in April 2018 (see here for more).

Since then, there has been something of a change for La Clef des Champs, as Miro Collas  pointed out to me via Twitter recently, it having been moved and downsized to a quarter region parcel within a Full region (and given the changes between my two recent visits, it may still be in the process of being built-out). So, has anything been lost with the move? Overall, I’d say “no”.

La Clef des Champs; Inara Pey, June 2018, on FlickrLa Clef des Champs

As with the original, a visit starts up on a hill overlooking open waters on two sides, and which is topped by a modest café with indoor and outdoor seating. From here, across the grass, a gated track leads the way down the hillside and inland. This runs past a small field and barn to where a fork points the way towards a new feature for the landscape: a large greenhouse sitting on a rugged shoulder of land occupying the inland corner of the parcel. Offering a second commanding view over the parcel, the greenhouse is presented as a summer-house style hideaway with music available from a grand piano and a gramophone, and space to sit or work as one desires.

Beyond the fork for the greenhouse, the track turns back seaward and curves past a brick-built barn to arrive at the Tuscan style house that was also present in the Homestead build. This looks out over the water to the east where the windmill still sits just offshore –  albeit on a slightly smaller island -,  and to the north, where a second small island sits, home to a lighthouse.

La Clef des Champs; Inara Pey, June 2018, on FlickrLa Clef des Champs

An old warehouse completes the set of buildings to be found here. This is the place where  – again as with the original design – more adult pursuits can be shared, if desired.

The use of just a quarter region parcel means that this iteration of La Clef des Champs does, for those who visited the original, feel smaller. However, I would suggest it has, lost little of the ambience it enjoyed when occupying a full-sized region space. for those who have not previously visited La Clef des Champs will still find this smaller version a pleasing excursion, with plenty of opportunities still for photography.

La Clef des Champs; Inara Pey, June 2018, on FlickrLa Clef des Champs

SLurl Details

Lab blogs Animesh RC deployment

Posted on by Inara Pey
Animesh will make it a lot easier to have animals roaming in Second Life (as well as other things) compared to current methods of achieving the same results

On Wednesday, June 20th,2018, The Lab completed an initial deployment of Animesh to the Blue Steel release candidate server channel.

For those not up-to-speed with Animesh, the goal of this project is to provide a means of animating rigged mesh objects using the avatar skeleton, in whole or in part, to provide things like independently moveable pets / creatures, and animated scenery features via scripted animation. It involves both viewer and server-side changes.

As noted in the official announcement, Animesh has been in development for some time, with the Lab working closely with the content creator community to develop Animesh, with weekly (more-or-less) meetings being held as a part of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meetings.

It is important to note that with this deployment, Animesh is still very much in development, and there may well be further changes before it is fully released.

Animesh Halloween boogie, October 2017. Courtesy of Alexa Linden

Those wishing to try Animesh need to note the following:

  • The server-side support for Animesh is currently only available on the BlueSteel RC regions.
    • Server support for Animesh involves adding a new message and some new LSL functions – see below.
    • If you try to run Animesh objects on a non-Animesh region, you will encounter problems: a) content won’t look right because the server won’t be sending you the appropriate messages; and b) you’ll get script errors because the region doesn’t like the new LSL calls.
  • The Animesh project viewer is required to see Animesh creations correctly. At the time of writing this was at version 5.1.6.516525, dated June 18th, 2018.
    • Animesh content will not render correctly in viewers without the necessary Animesh code.

As Animesh is still in development, and given the caveats noted above, content creators are asked not to start offering any products that are no-mod or such on the marketplace or in-world. Products should wait until at least the Animesh viewer has reached release candidate status – or even has been formally released.

Similarly, TPVs are – as usual when it comes the the Lab’s project viewers – encouraged not to adopt the Animesh viewer code for release purposes until it reaches release candidate status.

Animesh Resources

You can find further information on Animesh via the following resources.

Furthermore, I provide regular updates on the Animesh project via my Content Creation User Group updates, so you can keep up with Animesh development through these.