Category: Second Life

2020 Content Creation User Group week #4 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
RioSisco Studio Pictures, December 2019 – blog post

The following notes are taken from my audio recording of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, January 23rd 2020 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

Environment Enhancement Project

Project Summary

A set of environmental enhancements (e.g. the sky, sun, moon, clouds, and water settings) to be set region or parcel level, with support for up to 7 days per cycle and sky environments set by altitude. It uses a new set of inventory assets (Sky, Water, Day), and includes the ability to use custom Sun, Moon and cloud textures. The assets can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others, and can additionally be used in experiences.

Resources

Current Status

  • EEP is now viewed as a priority for release by the Lab.
  • Work is continuing on the final bug fixes on the graphics side.
  • Release is anticipated by LL to be within the next month or so.
  • Those who use windlights for photography or within their regions are strongly urged to test the EEP RC viewer (last updated on January 9th, 2020, at the time of writing this summary).

Project Muscadine

Project Summary

Currently: offering the means to change an Animesh size parameters via LSL.

Current Status

  • Now officially on hold pending other projects / work (notably major projects such as:
    • The cloud migration project.
    • Transitioning the viewer build tools to Visual Studio 2017 and to a recent version of Xcode (OS X)
    • Completing the migration of viewer repositories from Mercurial to Github.
  • The status of the project will be reviewed as other work progresses, but it is unlikely there will be any further work on Muscadine in Q1 2020 (through until the end of March).

ARCTan

Project Summary

An attempt to re-evaluate object and avatar rendering costs to make them more reflective of the actual impact of rendering both. The overall aim is to try to correct some inherent negative incentives for creating optimised content (e.g. with regards to generating LOD models with mesh), and to update the calculations to reflect current resource constraints, rather than basing them on outdated constraints (e.g. graphics systems, network capabilities, etc).

Current Status

As of January 2020 ARCTan has effectively been split:

  • Immediate viewer-side changes, primarily focused on revising the Avatar Rendering Cost (ARC) calculations.
    • This work will also involve providing additional viewer UI so that people can better visibility and control to seeing complexity. For example:
      • Which attachments are taking the most rendering resources / rendering time.
      • Available options for improving local performance.
    • The aim is to provide users with information they can understand and make use of to assist in their local performance (e.g. “these red figures on your avatar attachment mean it is impacting YOUR system’s performance and slowing YOU down”, rather than jut pointing the finger elsewhere).
    • It is hoped that providing this information may also encourage creators produce better, more efficient avatar-related content.
  • Work on providing a UI for in-world object rendering costs (LOD models, etc.) which might affect Land Impact has been deferred to a later tranche of project work.
  • The belief is that “good” avatar ARC values can likely be used as a computational base for these rendering calculations.

In Brief

LOD product: LL is considering taking future look at how level of detail is managed by Second Life.

  • GLOD is now 15+ years old and there are potentially better ways to handle things.
  • Automation of some LOD options might be seen as possible.
  • It is recognised that avatar LODs are not the most efficient (e.g. 2X bounding box LODs), but how they might be better managed is seen as a complex issue (e.g. avoiding situations where the viewer uses one LOD for an avatar’s body and another for the avatar’s head, so the head looks deformed compared to the body, or vice-versa).

Content Tools: interest was also expressed in hearing about the preferred tools used by creators and what creators might like to see by way of better support for said tools / file formats related to said tools and in general. The question was not asked with any specific project in mind, but simply to gain a broader understanding of what content creators use, etc.

The tools mentioned by creators at the meeting include:

  • Clothing: Marvelous Designer, Blender, Maya, Substance Painter, 3D Coat.
  • Other tools mentioned: Topogun, Zbrush.

PBR was also mentioned, although this would require a large-scale overall of SL’s rendering engine.

Requests were also made for:

  • Better handling of sub-meshes during the upload process (e.g. consistent linking between different uploads of the same multi-part mesh).
  • Ability for mesh instance recognition (e.g. if a specific sub-mesh is repeatedly used in a build, then it should be uploaded only one and instanced across the build) – or at least the viewer to be able t instance sub-mesh elements when rendering.

 

Bryn’s Standby Sketches in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Standby Sketches

I recently reviewed Bryn Oh’s Daughter of Gears / Rabbicorn trilogy (see A Daughter of Gears and a Rabbicorn in Second Life), and while it may be only a brief two article break before returning to Bryn’s work again, there is a reason for this. It comes in the form of an exhibition of Bryn’s 2D and 3D art currently open at the Surreal Art Gallery, curated by JulietteSurrealDreaming.

The Standby Sketches offers a unique insight into Bryn’s creative process, specifically in reference to the three parts of the The Standby Trilogy.

Often when planning a new virtual artwork I still step back to the traditional art, from where I began, to sketch ideas and help myself understand what I want to convey in my artwork. This exhibit shows some of the various bits taken from my sketchbooks, the pen and ink drawing, the oil paintings, and even the bronze sculpture that materialise during the creative process.

– Bryn Oh, describing The Standby Sketches

The Standby Sketches

Spread over two level of the gallery (accessed via the teleport point in the foyer area), the exhibition presents a series of sketches showing the evolution of The Daughter of Gears, mesh models from various scenes from the trilogy (including some that do not appear to have been used in the final installations), and drawings that appear to show the evolution of the rabbicorn as well asstory scene ideas.

This is a small display, but one that is fascinating nonetheless, providing insight into Bryn’s creative process. While it might have been enhanced with some additional textual information to accompany the sketches and sets of images, one cannot find fault with none appearing; for one thing, Bryn tends to keep busy with preparing art, whether intended for SL or elsewhere. For another, these pieces on offer speak eloquently in and of themselves, particularly for those who have visited the trilogy whilst it is at Immersiva, while the sketches and drawings are more than capable of standing up in their own right as works of art.

With individual pieces available for sale, and an opportunity to obtain limited edition bronze pieces cast of The Daughter of Gears and the Rabbicorn, The Standby Sketches will be open through the rest of January and February. Given the pairing of the exhibition with the Standby Trilogy, I’d recommend a visit to this ahead of The Standby Sketches so that the fullest appreciation of both can be gained.

The Standby Sketches

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Taking wing with Made in SL

Posted on by Inara Pey
Marianne McCann gets a little Top Gun as she discusses aviation in Made in SL

The latest Made in SL video launched on Thursday, January 23rd, with a look at the aviation scene in Second Life, and featuring Second Life long-term resident, aviation enthusiast and SL historian, Marianne McCann providing the commentary.

Second Life aviation is a genuinely broad and layered subject to try to cover in under three minutes, but thanks to Marianne’s expertise in the subject, Aviation Made in Second Life packs a huge amount into its brief running time. We get a brief peek at SL history, with names like Garth FairChang and the legendary Cubey Terra rightly popping up, (Cubey actually got me into SL skydiving, which is kind-of related to flying 🙂 ), as well as touching on the range of aviation communities and flying-related role-play in SL by touching on the Passengers of SL group (a good way to get flying with the many airlines and charter flight operations that offer point-to-point services in SL) and a look at the work of the Second Life Coast Guard (SLCG) role-play group that combines airborne and marine vehicles and role-play in places like Blake Sea and its surroundings (I’d personally note that the Get The Freight Out community also encompasses flying – see: An inside look at Get the Freight Out in Second Life).

Also given the short time frame of the film, coupled with the breadth of aircraft content available in SL, Marianne wisely focuses on just a couple of options for getting into the air at the controls, pointing to Sherwood aviation – an ideal for those who wish to have a high degree of simulated realism in their flying – and to Arduenn Schwartzman’s Warbugs, which have been design purely for fun and to allow single-region air combat (I actually wrote about Warbugs back in 2012 in Bitten by the (War)bug, but I confess I’ve not flown my own Warbug “seriously” for about 3-4 years).

Flying in SL takes many forms and includes many different aircraft and aircraft styles. I don’t really have any good examples of “unusual” flying machines, but the Piaggio Orion autogyro is both fun (and challenging at times!)

However, given the range of aircraft is so vast, getting to grips with what to buy can be difficult. Hence, Marianne points to some of the more popular or bigger airports, many of which have vendors offering demo versions of aircraft. In this, places like Hollywood Airport and Hona Lee Field can be particularly helpful, as they sit on the edges of the wide open skies of Blake Sea, where having to compete with skyboxes occupying the same piece of sky as you is removed. Many aircraft makers also have their own airfields where demos are offered, so when parsing the Marketplace for ideas, allows be sure to click any link to an in-world location and go see what demos might be available and give them a go.

As a keen aviator in SL myself, I’d probably also add to Marianne’s thoughts by saying those seeking to ease themselves into SL flying and want to have fun without worrying too much about things like instrument flying via Mouselook or having to learn the correct start-up sequences and so on, might want to try the likes of DSA (available at Hollywood Airport, noted above) for fixed-wing light aircraft flying (I’ve covered several of the DSA aircraft in these pages, and as I noted back in A look at my most-used SL vehicles (thus far!), one of them remains one of my preferred aircraft today; while for rotary flight, the likes of Spijkers Aviation & Marine (just across the channel to the west of Honah Lee Field) offer a range of helos that are pretty easy to master and are a good way to get started.

Airports like Hollywood Airport and airfields can be found throughout the Second Life continents and along the interconnecting waterways and places like Blake Sea and its surrounding private estates

Of course there are some drawbacks to flying (like any other form of SL travel), such as region crossings. However, and like everything else, the best way of dealing with these is by practice and gaining familiarity with the grid’s behaviour. Certainly, fear of region crossings should be a reason to put you off.

All told, a great promotional / introductory video.

Waterfalls of Dreams in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Waterfalls of Dreams, January 2020 – click any image for full size

Waterfalls of Dreams recently popped up in the Editor’s Picks section of the Destination Guide, and has prompted a lot of interest from visitors as a result – including from Caitlyn and I. A homestead region designed by Jeramy McMahon, it is around two years old and offers something of a neo-classical look that those of us who have been in Second Life a fair while might find particularly reminiscent.

A place intended for romance throughout and with a fantasy  / fae lean, a good proportion of the region utilises prim builds – the docks, the raised dance floors and walkways overlooking the region from the east, the various pavilions and floating islands. In turn, these use shine on surfaces rather than materials and textures. All of these, together with the use of sculpties, give the region a sense of “old school” Second Life history.

Waterfalls of Dreams, January 2020

Which is not to say mesh is not present within the region, just that its use has been minimised. This is a conscious decision on Jeramy’s part to “reduce lag”. How well this works is perhaps debatable  – lag itself is a highly subjective subject, given the volume of non-SL influences that can affect it; but it is an interesting approach to take. I will say I found my own experience in three visits to the region no better nor worse, performance-wise, than when visiting many other regions, prim or mesh in nature.

However, for me, what makes a visit to Waterfalls of Dreams attractive is that sense it being a place built upon that historic style and approach to design; one that has in some ways passed. It offers a deep sense of nostalgia and a sense of history, all the way through to the use of pose balls within some of the seating.

Waterfalls of Dreams, January 2020

The landing point is located down at the harbour, which itself offers something of a faint echo of the prim docks in Nautilus – although those docks are more Greco-Roman in feel. A teleport board here offers the way up to the elevated dance floors, while a Teagle horse rezzer sits close by for those who fancy a ride around the region’s lowlands, or a balloon ride located on the far side of the piers presents the opportunity for an aerial view of the region.

Paths wind around the lowlands, leading to various points of interest – pavilions offering places to sit and  / or cuddle, statues to admire, and rivers of flowers to roam amongst. The waterfalls of the region’s title tumble from the cliffs behind the high dance floors to feed the waterways that also wind through the region. Their presence is augmented by falls tumbling from the more distant mountains of the sim surround (although issues of alpha blending can leave these bleeding through the sculpts of the region’s trees, requiring a considered use of edit linked and derender when taking photos under certain lighting).

Waterfalls of Dreams, January 2020

The dance floors are watched over by two huge angel-like figures standing to the north and south of the high walkways. The dance areas are themselves split between two levels, a large blocky tower sitting to the east behind them forming a bath house that in turn holds aloft a large crouched angel under a domed roof. However, this is not the tallest structure in the region; that honour goes to a great tower rising to the north-west. Reached via teleport board from the dance floors, it offers places to sit and to pass the time with a loved one or for the adventurous, the chance to fly around the region da Vinci’s glider via the rezzer.

A flair for the exotic is also offered within the region through the use of elements by Elicio Ember and Noke Yuitza. There presence is few, which makes coming across them all the more effective; Elicio’s rune stones in particular give a certain air of mystery and suggestion of fae that is well in keeping with the overall tone of the region and its statues whilst also offering an otherworldly aspect to the setting that adds to its depth.

Waterfalls of Dreams, January 2020

An unusual and engaging location with opportunities for dance, rest and photography.

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A Daughter of Gears and a Rabbicorn in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Bryn Oh: Standby

Currently open – for a while longer at least – within her home region of Immersiva, is Bryn Oh’s three-part tale of a mechanical girl and a rabbicorn (part rabbit, part unicorn, all mechanical). It’s a complex, multi-faceted story rich in detail and themes that requires time – and not a little patience – to be witnessed and followed in full.

The three parts of the story stand as individual installations that should be visited in order. One sits at the ground level of the region, the remaining two up in the sky. They commence with The Daughter of Gears, and then progress through The Rabbicorn Story and conclude with Standby. Within them, they enfold matters of love, lost, fear, life, death, longing, companionship, human nature, feature of technology / progress, and sacrifice, as well as demonstrating how all of Bryn’s pieces share a relationship with one another, being set within the same universe – or perhaps “Ohverse” might be a better term.

Bryn Oh: The Daughter of Gears

The three installations between them also have a long history, as Bryn points out in discussing their origins.

Daughter of Gears story was originally created years ago when I was commissioned by a company called Rezzable to make something for an existing region called Black Swan … The second and third parts were hosted by IBM when they were actively within Second Life.

Originally when the stories were created in prims they each were close to 20,000 prims for a grand total of around 60k. Far more than a sim can hold. But yay! for mesh which has allowed me to reduce the footprint down to 19683.

Bryn, commenting on The Daughter of Gears and The Rabbicorn Story

Bryn Oh: Standby

Bryn covers the unfolding story at length through her blog, so I’ll restrict myself to just outlining things here. All three installations are framed around a series of three poems, the stanzas of which are spread through each of the installations and presented in such a way we can only visit them in the correct order.

For The Daughters of Gears, this involves climbing a high tower to uncover a story that might be said to have, as a seed, within Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus – although the two are very different in content. Here, a mother faces the death of her one daughter by building a mechanical body into which she can transfer her child’s soul. Unfortunately, the locals, scared by what she has done and regarding her work as an abomination, come to her high tower to put a stop to things. Ultimately, they fail – but at the cost of the mother’s life, leaving the Daughter of Gears alone.

Bryn Oh: The Rabbicorn Story

The story is told by climbing the tower itself – individual stanzas set on different levels. Now, to be honest, climbing the tower isn’t easy – to the extent that some might find it frustrating  – it is easy to mis-step / jump and find yourself back at the bottom of the tower (and I’d recommend using Mouselook in places, as the camera angles can be tight); however the scenes the climb reveal are more than worth the effort.

In The Rabbicorn Story, we follow the tale of a mechanical rabbicorn, it’s relationship with the boy form whom it is built, and what happens when others come to covet the uniqueness of a mechanical intelligence and how it might be used – for good or ill. The initial part of the story might be said to have a seed in a modern-day “classic”, this one Peter. Paul and Mary’s Puff The Magic Dragon (notably the lyrics dealing with dragons (or in this case Rabbicorns) living forever, but no so little boys). Forced on the run from, but tracked by, the scientists that covet it, the Rabbicorn eventually finds its way to the tower of The Daughter of Gears, and in the third part of the tale, Standby, we follow the attempts by the two of them to find a new home together, little realising they are being tracked.

Bryn Oh: The Rabbicorn Story

These latter two parts of the tale are navigated by teleport rather than climbing – although for obvious reasons, a section of The Daughter of Gears’ tower does appear. There is also something of a Transhumanist / The Matrix-like reference in The Rabbicorn Story, as revealed in Bryn’s notes on the installation: the merging of human consciousness with machines to make the latter operable.

It is also within The Rabbicorn Story and Standby that we particularly see how this tale is interwoven with other aspects of Bryn’s universe. This is most clearly seen by the the Rabbicorn being created within the same facility as featured in 26 Tines, while in searching for a place to live, The Daughter of Gears and the Rabbicorn come across Lady Carmagnolle, still standing alone on her broken stage (you can read more about Lady Carmagnolle and 26 Tines in A Lady and 26 Tines in Second Life).

 

Bryn oh: The Daughter of Gears and the Rabbicorn

Richly visual, deeply set in terms of themes and interpretation, these three installations offer an expressive visit in which it is possible to become thoroughly enmeshed within the unfolding tale. The outcome may not be what might be entirely expected – but again, it follows a tradition within storytelling and myth building.

Standby also has a link with another exhibition of Bryn’s art in Second Life, and I’ll be offering a few notes on that in an upcoming piece.

SLurl and Links

2020 Simulator User Group week #4 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Souls of Dreams, November 2019 – blog post

Simulator Deployments

  • There were no deployments to the main SLS channel on Tuesday, January 21st, although there are reports some regions were restarted.
  • An RC deployment is planned for Wednesday, January 22nd, but no details were available at the time of writing.

Simulator Issues

  • Some region holders are still reporting script runtime issues. There may be some work in the RC deployment to help with these issues, but again, this wasn’t clear at the SUG meeting, due to the lack of release notes.
  • There is some work to help manage scripted attachments and vehicles during region crossings, but no specifics given.
  • There have been reports of object_rez() events randomly failing. It’s not clear how widespread the issue is, but it is a known issue with the Lab, but a reliable reproduction of the problem has yet to be reported / found.

SL Viewer

There have been no viewer updates to marks the start of the week, leaving the official pipelines as follows:

  • Current Release version 6.3.5.533275, formerly the Wassail RC viewer, dated December 4, promoted December 12. – No change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.