Day: April 15, 2021

2021 CCUG meeting week #15 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Where Our Journey Begins, February 2021 – blog post

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, April 15th. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, with dates available via the SL Public Calendar, and the venue is the Hippotropolis camp fire.

SL Viewer

The current run of official viewers is as follows:

  • Release viewer: Custom Key Mappings RC viewer, version 6.4.17.557391, dated March 24, promoted March 27 – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • Maintenance RC viewer – Eau de Vie, version 6.4.18.557782, dated April 12.
    • Love Me Render (LMR) 5 project viewer, version 6.4.18.557797, dated April 7.
  • Project viewers:
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, dated November 22, 2019.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, dated July 16, 2019.

Graphics Work

LMR 5 may have a further update in the coming week and is now “close” to being ready for promotion as the de facto viewer. Love Me Render 6 (LMR 6) is in preparation with a further mix of fixes, including some that are EEP related (e.g. rendering the Moon with haze).

ARCTan

Summary: An attempt to re-evaluate avatar rendering costs and the cost of in-world scene rendering, with the current focus on avatar rendering cost / impact, with the in-world scene rendering to be tackled at some point in the future.

The UI updates for how avatar complexity information is presented to users now looks as if it will be presented as a project / RC viewer separately to any updates to to the ARC calculations.

In Brief

  • Feature request BUG-227670 “Official Viewer: New default of 32m DD on installation when low end GPU detected” – this was put forward to help those logging-in to Second Life for the first time and arriving at a gateways only to encounter loading delays.
    • While accepted, it has the problem that a 32m draw distance is less that the potential size of a linkset, and so may cause issues of its own (what should be drawn within the linkset if it extends beyond the viewer’s 32m cut-off?).
  • Creator  owner permissions issues: it appears that some are seeing various losses of permissions on items that have created / owned (e.g. a full permission object of their own becoming No Mod or No Copy after being rezzed in-world.
    • This is a long-term (12+ years – see VWR-16097 and SVC-6185 for example), hard-to-reproduce issue that some are reportedly seeing re-surface.
    • It can sometimes be down to a single linked item in a complex build randomly changing its permission, requiring a careful comb-through of the entire linkset.
    • It appears to happen more frequently to objects located within high traffic regions and where there can be a noticeable delay (e.g. between pulling an object from inventory and in-world, or taking it from a scene back into inventory), which may point to a simulator / viewer race condition.
    • An updated bug report of the issues being encountered has been requested.

Date of Next Meeting

Thursday, April 29th, 2021.

Arts for Life 2021 in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey

Raven Craig Art Centre: Art for Life 2021
Currently open through until April 24th at the Raven Craig Art Centre is a spacial exhibition of art – Artists for Life – offering visitors the opportunity to view and purchase art and photographs by artists across Second Life, and support Relay for Life of Second Life and the American Cancer Society in the process.

Participating arts in the event comprise: AriaRose, Jolie, Poppy, Mystic Audion, Michel Bechir, Mira Biedermann, Lyla Blaylock, Pink Clarity, Star Finesmith, Starr Ghost, Hermes Kondor, Looker Lumet, Shane Matthews, Mony Pedroia, Eve Petlyakov, Max Seagate, Elise Sirnah, and Marie de la Torres. The majority of the artists have provided at least one or two images for the event, all of which are offered for purchase at L$99 each.

The exhibition has been organised by Sethos Lionheart, owner of Wythburn Village, where Raven Craig is located, and Star Finesmith, the artistic director for both Wythburn Village and Raven Craig. The idea grew out of the successful Art Walk Wythburn in aid of Making Strides Against Breast Cancer (MSABC) in 2020 (see: Wythburn Art Walk in Second Life), as Star explains.

Raven Craig Art Centre: Art for Life 2021
The Art Walk was a more casual, informal event, with are … across the region. This year I wanted to make sure that the fund-raising is focused on the art. I spoke to some of the artists from last year about how they would feel about creating art that would only be available for sale at the event. I received a lot of positive feedback on the idea, and so decided to give it a go.

Star Finesmith on the origins of Arts for Life

Each of the halls of the gallery have been decorated in a manner that reflects the general themes of the art displayed within it, with the art itself incredibly diverse, making for a vibrant exhibition.

In addition to the pieces offered directly for sale, each, artist has also submitted a piece for the Arts for Life silence auction that will run through until midnight on April 24th, 2021. Auction items can be found in the gallery’s central ground-floor hall, with bids made via the origami box on the shelf under each piece. The winning bidders for each piece will be informed after the event closes, and will receive a Copy, No-Mod, No-Transfer version of the piece.

Raven Craig Art Centre: Art for Life 2021

Also available at the exhibition is a free copy of a commemorative book featuring images of the art on display together with information on the artists and the event as a whole. Visitors can obtain copies from the in-world version found at various locations within the gallery.

So do please take the time to visit the Raven Craig Art Centre between now and April 24th, and remember that all proceeds from purchases made go directly to RFL of SL and the American Cancer Society.

SLurl Details