Day: March 9, 2024

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, March 7th, 2024.

My apologies for the lateness of this report appearing; right now I have a lot going on in the physical world, and the blog and SL are having to take a back seat through until early April, after which things should start to (hopefully) return to normal.

Meeting Purpose

• The CCUG meeting is for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current and upcoming LL projects, and encompasses requests or comments from the community, together with related viewer development work. This meeting is held on alternate Thursdays at Hippotropolis.
• In regards to meetings:
  • Dates and times are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.
  • Commence at 13:00 SLT on their respective dates.
  • Are conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.
  • Are open to all with an interest in content creation.
• The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript of the meeting.

Official Viewers Status

• The Maintenance-W RC (bug and crash fixes) updated to version 7.1.4.8113624779, on March 6th, 2024.
• The Maintenance Y RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history + Maint Z RC integration) updated to version 7.1.4.8114240508, March 6, 2024.

Both of the above are at parity with the Emoji release viewer. The rest of the current crop of official viewers remains:

• Release viewer: version 7.1.3.7878383867, the Emoji Viewer, issued February 15, promoted March 1st, 2024 – NEW.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
  • glTF PBR Materials Maintenance-2 RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7821226606, February 20, 2024.
  • Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.3.7721015131 , February 14, 2024.
• Project viewers:
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.

Graphics / glTF

• Work continues on the GLTF Featurettes viewer, and it is hoped the release on an official project viewer is now not far off. This viewer includes:
  • Geenz Linden’s work on Mirrors, including his latest updates to the capability.
  • Cosmic Linden’s work on applying glTF materials to terrain (currently going through UI bug fixing + this is going to possibly reduce the number of texture repeats in light of 2K textures).
  • Updates which will allow the glTF / PBR swatch boxes in the Build / Edit floater display previews of the materials being selected, rather than grey boxes.
  • The first series of additional glTF extensions – Index of Refraction.
  • Initial work on 2K textures support.
  • Local high dynamic range imaging (HDRI) preview. This will allow content creators to view content in-world under the same HRDI settings as they are using in their tool of choice as a sanity check as SL environments / EEP will render them differently, leading to potential confusion and a belief that the HDRI settings are “wrong”.
  • The nightly builds version of the Featurette viewer is available on Github, but is not suitable for use as a primary viewer, and the capabilities are not supported on the Main grid. As such, this viewer should only be used by those wishing to test the capabilities.
  • The Rumpus Room 2048 region (and neighbours) on Aditi provides back-end support for the Featurettes viewer.
• With reference to 2K textures, it was noted that while the viewer will have the ability to upload them, the actual ability to do so will be under the control of the simulator code; so just having the viewer-side update does not necessarily mean 2K textures can be uploaded grid-wide.
• glTF terrain texturing: the focus has been on bug fixing and improving usability.

In Brief

• Materials support for Bakes on Mesh: this has frequently been requested, and while it has a placeholder in the the Lab’s plans for possible implementation, it is is not currently scheduled to be worked on.
• It was reiterated that blend shapes will be part of the work to support glTF scene import.
  • glTF scene import will allow and entire glTF scene file (scripts, node hierarchy, etc.) to be imported to SL and essentially “hung off” of a single object in-world.
  • Exactly how this will work, what limitations it will have, etc., in order to avoid “breaking” SL or opening griefing vectors, etc., has yet to be decided.
  • Similarly, glTF scene support will have its own Land Impact calculations, which are currently still TBD within the Lab.
  • Currently, glTF is due to start-up as a major project after the glTF featurette viewer has reached release status.
• Splat Maps have been requested in the past with terrain painting. These are described as “in the early phase of consideration”, and if taken on, might be a “PBR Terrain Phase II” feature.
• The subject of separating head and body shapes was raised – this has been the subject of a feature request, which has been accepted (Tracked). As always, “accepted” does not necessarily equate to it being quickly implemented.
• Land Impact:
  • An update to the Land Impact is due to be deployed on the simulator side, in the Hearts and Flowers release (due to start deployment on March 13th, 2024).
  • This does not change the total Land Capacity (“prims”) for a region; but it does reduce the download weight calculated for meshes
  • This equates to a “15% discount” on mesh object Land Impact (all mesh with the exception of Animesh, not just mesh items downloaded after the update is deployed).
• Reference was made to the upcoming shift of object inventory messaging moving to HTTP.
  • This should result in the contents of objects rezzed in-world loading “many time faster” than is currently the case.
  • The update will be deployed to the simulator code first, and then be subject to a viewer-side update.
• With the switch to Github / Canny, LL is trying to be more transparent in terms of planning, projects, issues, etc., looking to have as much public as possible (except things like security issues, which need to be limited in who can view them for obvious reasons). However, while this will allow users to see more of what is in the works / being considered, it also means that projects and work can appear to sit apparently dormant for periods even longer than on Jira
• How (viewer) feature requests are prioritised (in short):
  • Those which are accepted and form small, relatively stand-alone requests will be directed towards “featurette viewers” of the kind like the glTF featurette viewer mentioned above. The hope is that this will allow devs to pick them up and work on theme in between larger projects or when larger projects are stalled for whatever reason, allowing more of this type of request to filter through the the viewer more readily.
    • In addition, if this works and a Canny Board of such requests can be built-up, it might allow LL to open it to open-source developers to pick items they’d like to work on and then contribute the code to LL.
  • Larger-scale feature requests (such as adding materials support to BOM) will be subject to more extensive investigation / evaluation and internal prioritisation against other large-scale / high-value work, by LL.

Next Meeting

• CCUG: 13:00 SLT, Thursday, March 21st, 2024, at the Hippotropolis Campsite.

† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a gathering of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.