2024 week #16: SL CCUG summary

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday,  April 18th, 2024.

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

• On Friday, April 19th, the Maintenance YZ RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history updated to version 7.1.6.8745209917.
• On Wednesday, April 17th, Maintenance X RC viewer (usability improvements) updated to version 7.1.6.8709279750.

The rest of the official viewers remain as:

• Release viewer: version7.1.5.8443591509, formerly the Maintenance-W RC (bug and crash fixes), version and issued March 29th, promoted April 9th –
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Materials Featurettes RC viewer, version 7.1.5.8472515256, April 3
• Project viewers:
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.

It is possible the glTF Maintenance-2 RC viewer might be promoted to de facto release status early in week ’13 (commencing Monday, March 25th, 2024).

Graphics / glTF

• Work continues on the GLTF Featurettes viewer + support.
  • The viewer is in RC with on-going bug fixes.
  • The simulator support is now on a Preflight channel on Agni (the Main grid), which includes the regions Rumpus Room 2048; Rumpus Room 2049; Rumpus Room 2050 and Rumpus Room 2051.
• 2K Textures:
  • Are not currently supported for upload onto the Main grid.
  • The fees for 2K textures have been set as follows:
    • Basic / Plus account: L$50 per texture.
    • Premium account: L$40 per texture.
    • Premium Plus: L$10 per texture.
  • 2K textures for Bakes on Mesh requires a substantial update to the Bake service (as is frequently mentioned at CCUG meetings), and currently this does not appear to be in the works.
• Mirrors:
  • Now leverage the Dynamic flag. When set, this tells the mirror to reflect everything in the rendering pipeline including avatars and particles). if the flag is not set, avatars are particles are not rendered, just the environment (e.g. for a reflective floor which reflects the room, but rendering the avatars would cause a massive performance hit).
  • Mirror probes can now be set using LSL.
  • The updated UX for Mirrors is still not done, and it is acknowledged that setting up a mirror is far from intuitive. A good 10+ minutes of the meeting was devoted to “how to make a mirror” – rather proving the point!
• Work has started on prototyping glTF scene handling (as part of the overall glTF scene import work). Initial work is to enable the showing of a scene locally within the viewer using a debug setting. More on this as the option becomes available in a viewer. But in short:
  • Once imported, glTF scenes will be an inventory asset type.
  • Each scene with by associated with an in-world object (e.g. a prim), which becomes its “handle”.

In Brief

• Custom skeletons: this is an ongoing debate within LL. glTF allows for custom skeletons and animations. Second Life has a defined avatar skeleton and recognised animation formats for use against it.
  • As such, there is a disparity between SL and glTF, as in theory, adherence to the glTF specification means recognising the use of custom skeletons with their own animations – which would then be incompatible with the existing SL format(s), and lead to potential confusion  / clashes between established avatar types using the SL skeleton and custom skeletons.
  • Thus, some navigation is required to determine if / how custom skeletons might be handled without confusing the existing consumer market in SL in terms of what accessories work with which type of avatar.
• Emissive strength is seen as “feeble” by some, so a request was made for a numeric box in which a desired emissive strength might be entered. As the glTF specification allows for this, it is something that could be added to a future viewer iteration (but not necessarily would be – Feature Request?).
• Much of the meeting was about what extensions LL might consider, how things like emissive maps and lighting might be handled in the future, IOR, transmission and the potential to add iridescence – some of which are being worked on (IOR and transmission) and will be reported on in summaries as they come along, others are seen as possibly / maybe.

Next Meeting

• 13:00 SLT, Thursday, May 2nd, 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.