Day: July 3, 2026

2026 week #27: SL CCUG meeting summary: “updating SL Mesh”

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hippotropolis Campsite: venue for CCUG meetings
The following notes were taken from:

  • My chat log and audio recording  of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting of Thursday, July 2nd, 2026.
  • Please note that this is not a full transcript of either meeting but a summary of key topics.
Table of Contents

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 generally held on alternate Thursdays at Hippotropolis and is held in a mix of Voice and text chat.
  • Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.

Official Viewer Status

Viewer Notes

  • Viewer 26.3.0 is undergoing some fine tuning as it passes through QA, and the hope is this work will complete in the next week or two, allowing it to surface as a beta / RC viewer.
  • The Lua editor viewer should be next in line to progress towards release behind 26.3.
  • The Graphics Care Package (GCP – including Index of Refraction, PBR specular, significantly improved Screen Space Reflections, HDR EEP settings, etc.) viewer is liable to be some time after the Lua viewer.
    • A request was made for displacement maps, but these were referenced as being unlikely any time soon.

Discussion: “Updating SL Mesh”

As introduced by Geenz Linden:

Today I had a topic I’d like people to consider and see what people want here. If we were to do an update to SL Mesh, what would people like? Our current setup is quite old, and we’d need to adopt a new format internally to really push things forward with newer features and such. So today it’s not easy to extend due to viewer compatibility issues. But if we were to revisit this, say having a variant of glTF, that enables extensibility much more easily – what sort of features would people be interested in seeing?

– Geenz Linden

This obviously caused a wide range of feedback with comments including:

  • Increasing the number of available materials faces.
  • glTF mesh hierarchies with proper origins.
  • Implementing Universal Scene Description support.
    • This was seen as “interesting” and that adding SL-specific schema would be “easy”.
  • Allowing partial editing of glTF metadata via the viewer’s Build floater and scripts to allow building more complex scenes with multiple meshes, object hierarchies etc.
  • Basic in-world mesh building tools such as mesh panels, the ability to edit vertices (which would require care!) and / or manipulate vertices and faces.
    • Seen as difficult to implement due to the mechanics of assets in SL.
  • “Fleximesh” for clothing, hair, etc.
    • Seen as difficult to pull off, while a physbones (“physics bones”, basically a defined “chain” of bones with a beginning and end, with the viewer simulating them moving around and such. It’s a technique seen in low-cost games and has the advantage of being low-overhead for the viewer to simulate, if a little basic) approach might be preferable.
  • Better Blender support.
  • More bone control for avatars, notably custom skeletons / avatar rigs.
    • Seen as likely necessitating some sort of in-viewer set-up unless we were to adopt something like VRM and utilise something like the VRM Unity-based rig. This was seen as “not out of the question”.
    • These comments came with a warning that there are a lot of opportunities for depositing bullets in pedal extremities with custom skeletons (mainly around animation compatibility), but these could be navigated were things to move in this direction.
    • A caveat was also given that while there has been thinking about custom skeletons within LL, “It’s not s short path”.
  • The requests for custom skeletons / rigs raised a second question: how would people use them. Responses included:
    • Ropes, plants, chains, snakes, cows.
    • “Everything that needs to move for animation.”
    • Animals like birds or fish.
  • Blendshapes (see this request as well).
    • Geenz noted that some hardware acceleration added for skeletons, but further hardware acceleration would be necessary for something like blendshapes – and noted this also is not off the table.
  • Geenz further noted on the discussion:
The biggest thing that stops us from doing this is really just the whole we can’t touch the original format. It has to stay in amber. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a new internal format.
    • Exactly how this would work would be a case of TBD – presumably if / when any project has been scoped in terms of content and goals.

Geenz’s final comment on the discussion was:

I just want to close with although these are all good suggestions, I can’t guarantee when/if these will land. Chances are if we do a SLMesh 2, you’re getting feature parity first before we move on to adding shiny stuff to it. Whatever we do here will be iterative, rather than a big all in one release.

General Discussions

  • Kyle Linden indicated a possible change in direction for documentation:
    • The Second life Creation portal (/Getting Started with Scripting) could be refocused more towards helping those new to Second Life.
    • The Second Life Wiki might be re-opened for broader edit access and maintenance of information there (some of which is now badly out-of-date).
    • No further details were forthcoming.
  • As a part of the discussion on SL Mesh, requests were made for enhancements to the prim building capabilities (e.g. adding a bevel capability, more basic prim types, etc.). It was indicated that there are currently no plans to enhance or extend the prim system at present.
  • A hint was given that in terms of graphics API, it appears that LL is leaning back towards Vulkan as a solution, with the promise of more to talk about this in the future.

Next Meeting

Summer 2026 at Le Monde Perdu in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Le Monde Perdu, July 2026 – click any image for full size

It was back to Luane’s World for a summer visit for me – it’s nice to drop in at least twice a year to see what LuaneMeo has cooked up for her public region of Le Monde Perdu, although I admit it’s been a couple of years since my last summer visit!

For 2026, Luane, with the assistance of Gorba McMahon, presents visitors with an island wrapping a Mediterranean feel about it, the two major buildings sitting upon it hinting at places such as Tuscany and the South of France. The island sits with its back towards the residential regions of Luane’s World, its northern side marked by rocky walls sitting above a shingle and grass coastline.

Le Monde Perdu, July 2026

These modest cliffs mark the raise spine of the island, a flat top comprising a pair of flat plateaux of grass and trees on which the houses are located, one to the east and the other to the west, the land sloping down from them to the south to join the golden sands of a beach. The latter forms two south-pointing headlands which give the island an overall C-shape, an inlet cutting into it to form an almost heart-shaped bay, the entrance to which is marked by an offshore lighthouse.

The Landing Point is located on the flagstone terrace of the house to the east side of the island and which in part forms the rental office for the residential aspects of the estate as well as a little café with seating on the terrace outside.

Le Monde Perdu, July 2026

A small barn with fence meadow sits at the end of the elevated land sufficiently clear of the house so as not to crowd it, and a horse rezzer is available there for those who might not wish to walk around the island – the landscape does make for comfortable riding.

A path runs from the back of the house to a set of steps leading down to Luane’s usual bridge across the waters to the rest of the estate. This does contain public paths explorers are free to follow – but do please keep in mind the houses found along the paths are private residences  🙂 .

Le Monde Perdu, July 2026

A second path runs westwards from the house, crossing the grounds to reach a fence guarding against any risk of falling into the gorge cutting but the two plateaux from north to south, connecting the lowlands on either side. A gently humped bridge spans the gorge, allowing the path to continue onwards to the west, where it skirts around the second house.

Sitting in its own wall garden, the latter commands a view out over the beaches and the bay and is charmingly furnished. Across the track from it, the rest of the plateau offers a grassy retreat with the ruins of a cottage and places to sit. A little summer house sits in the lee of the plateau on its north side, just past the point where the sands of the beaches give way to the shingle of the north coast.

Le Monde Perdu, July 2026

These sands can be reached via steps descending the hill from a point just past the house with its walled garden. However, do not expect your passage past the house to go unnoticed – feline eyes keep a careful watch on all comings and goings! And keep an eye out for the rabbits ready to announce “You’ve got mail!” to whomever lives inside 🙂 .

The western arc of the beach provides the broadest expanse of sands, although this is somewhat broken up by a rising mound of gassy land and rock crowned with young trees and where a small pool house has been built on a shoulder of rock, and the (tide-formed?) cave beneath it turned into a cosy and no doubt cool hideaway.

Le Monde Perdu, July 2026

That the sea has worked on the island can be seen from around the foot of the hills and the back of the beaches, where the sand had been compacted by decades of water and then cut into stratified blocks which become quite tall on the eastern arc of the bay.

The headland to the east also has a rise of grassy land sitting within the cure of the beach, and this is home to a little hut sitting with its back towards the bay so that its small deck offers a view out across more open waters.

Le Monde Perdu, July 2026

The bay is obviously a popular place, with opportunities for sunbathing on the sands or splashing about on the water courtesy of floats and the like. A small wooden jetty offers and inflatable boat rezzer for a pootle on the water (mind any swimmers!), whilst a sign offers the same but using a kayak, and a handful of rowing boats scattered around the shallows of the island offer places to sit and relax as well.

The beach and boats are not the only places to sit outdoors, there are benches, seats, blankets, daybeds, gazebos, and swings all awaiting use to be found right across the island, each of them offering a view and /or a place to retreat.

Le Monde Perdu, July 2026

I’ve been covering Le Monde Perdu and Luane’s work for a decade now, and have always appreciated the sense of life she brings to her region designs through her sculpting of the landscape, the flora she puts out across it and her use of animals and wildlife. They are all perfectly blended to present a setting entirely natural in scope and content, never feeling forced or laboured in achieving its goal to encourage people to feel at home, relax, explore and perhaps have a little fun.

In short, Le Monde Perdu Summer 2026 continues the region’s reputation as an absolute delight.

Le Monde Perdu, July 2026

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