Category: SL Tech

Soul2Soul Med – blog post

The following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on  Thursday, May 31st, 2018 at 13:00 SLT.  These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, etc, are usually available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

Animesh

Project Summary

The goal of this project is to provide a means of animating rigged mesh objects using the avatar skeleton, in whole or in part, to provide things like independently moveable pets / creatures, and animated scenery features via scripted animation. It involves both viewer and server-side changes.

Resources

• Animesh User Guide
• Animesh test content
• Animesh LSL methods:
  • llStartObjectAnimation
  • llStopObjectAnimation
  • llGetObjectAnimationNames
• Animesh – Updated Limits and Cost Formulas
• Animesh feedback thread
• JIRA filter for Animesh

Current Status

Server-side support should now be largely “done”. There remains one issue awaiting resolution. Once this has been cleared, discussions will start on wider deployment of the code – potentially Aditi first, then to an RC channel on Agni (the Main grid). Still no release date due to ongoing work on the viewer.

Rigged Mesh Level of Detail / Bounding Box Issues

(BUG-214736) – Essentially, attachments on avatars swap their LOD models as if they were scaled to the overall avatar bounding box.

A new approach to resolving this is being attempted which involves removing non-rigged mesh asset sizes from the rigged mesh bounding box.This will not involve changes to avatar scaling / height calculations. If it works, it should result in better bounding boxes for avatars and rigged mesh attachments in general, not just for Animesh. Currently, it is awaiting some back-end updates.

Avatar Limits and Cost Calculations

These were revised several weeks ago – see the link to Vir’s update in the resources list above – and are unlikely to change. At the previous CCUG meeting, there was some discussion over the streaming cost calculation for the Medium LOD, but again, this will not be changing.

Vir reminded people that the ARC calculation for Animesh is now related to the streaming cost calculation (as per the current project viewer – version 5.1.4.515420 at the time of writing). It therefore shouldn’t be subject to quite the same kinds of issue related to scale-based distortions as previously. It may also go through further tweaks.

On a broader note, costs (streaming, impacts, etc.), are going to be looked at as a part of a separate (to Animesh) project – Project ARCTan – see below.

Broken Rotations Issues

These comprise:

• (BUG-139251), some static mesh objects are converted to Animesh, the visual mesh is rotated through 90 degrees when seen in the Animesh viewer, but the physics mesh isn’t, leaving it perpendicular to the model. This is possibly an orientation issue, with the viewer expecting the mesh to be aligned to +x=forward – which not all mesh modelling tools follow.
• When linking a series of objects into a single Animesh, then are visually located where the avatar skeleton supporting them is located, but the physics shapes remain in the original location of the objects prior to linking / converting.

No updates on these were available at the meeting.

Joint Offset Constraint

Setting (either deliberately or accidentally) a bad joint offset with something like the mPelvis bound can result in undesired results. To prevent this, a 5m joint offset constraint was introduced in the project viewer. This has / will be now backed out as it has been seen as overly restrictive. An alternative solution will be sought, and Vir hopes that having a fix for the bounding box issue (above) will help in this.

Animesh and Attachments

There has been confusion over Animesh and attachments. In brief:

• One one Animesh object can be attached to an avatar at a time.
• Animesh objects, while they have a skeleton, do not support avatar-style attachments. Instead, additional objects (e.g. a collar for an Animesh puppy) should be made a part of the Animesh linkset, and then driven by the Animesh skeleton / scripted animations within the Animesh (although objects in n Animesh linkset could be animated by their own scripts / animations if required).
• The above has been discussed at length in previous meetings, due to concerns as to how No Mod Animesh items could be made to work with different options (e.g. a puppy wearing different styles of collar).

Bakes On Mesh

Project Summary

Extending the current avatar baking service to allow wearable textures (skins, tattoos, clothing) to be applied directly to mesh bodies as well as system avatars. This involves server-side changes, including updating the baking service to support 1024×1024 textures, and may in time lead to a reduction in the complexity of mesh avatar bodies and heads.

This work does not include normal or specular map support, as these are not part of the existing baking service.

Resources

• Bakes on Mesh forum thread.
• Bakes on Mesh JIRA filter (courtesy of Whirly Fizzle).

Additional Bake Channels

Anchor Linden has been working to adding five further channels to the Bake Service (left arm, left foot + three additional “general purpose” channels to be defined and used as required by creators). All of these had been intended to be extensions to the tattoo layer. However, in testing, it was found that feeding a wearable layer with these new channels to a viewer without the necessary support to use the channels, the viewer gets “unhappy”.

To avoid this, this Lab has opted to create a new wearable type which will know about these new bake channels. It will sit above the tattoo layer and below the clothing layers.  This should allow those wishing to make use of the new channels to do so without risk of impacting older viewers, which will simply ignore any new wearable layer they’ve not previously encountered. The flip side is, this extends the amount of work required to introduce a new wearable to the inventory service, in additional to the simulator, appearance service and viewer changes already required were the tattoo layer to be used.

A name for the layer has yet to be determined – but “universal” is under consideration – although Rider Linden (with tongue firmly in cheek) suggested “Bob”.

Scripting Support for Bakes On Mesh

No decision on whether this will be addressed, or if it is to be addressed, whether it will be a part of the initial release.

Continue reading “2018 UG updates #22/2: CCUG meeting w/audio” →

La Clef des Champs – blog post

The following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on  Thursday, May 24th, 2018 at 13:00 SLT.  These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, etc, are usually available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

Animesh

Project Summary

The goal of this project is to provide a means of animating rigged mesh objects using the avatar skeleton, in whole or in part, to provide things like independently moveable pets / creatures, and animated scenery features via scripted animation. It involves both viewer and server-side changes.

Current Status

• Work is continuing on moving towards a main (Agni) grid deployment of the server-side code to support Animesh.
• Everything has been through QA, and there is a remaining issue with validating attachments. This is liable to require an additional fix.
• It is likely that the simulator code will initially be deployed grid-wide on the beta (Aditi) grid for a shakedown period, prior to starting its deployment to the main grid through the usual process of RC deployments ahead of a full deployment.
• There are still a number of issues that are TBD within the viewer:
  • Broken Rotations Issue: two potentially related problems.
    • In one (BUG-139251), when some static mesh objects are converted to Animesh, the visual mesh is rotated through 90 degrees when seen in the Animesh viewer, but the physics mesh isn’t, leaving it perpendicular to the model. This is possibly an orientation issue, with the viewer expecting the mesh to be aligned to +x=forward – which not all mesh modelling tools follow.
    • The second problem is that when linking a series of objects into a single Animesh, then are visually located where the avatar skeleton supporting them is located, but the physics shapes remain in the original location of the objects prior to linking / converting.
    • What is to be done about this still hasn’t been determined, although the Lab has been playing with playing the physics shape in the root of the object.
  • Rigged Mesh Level of Detail / Bounding Box Issues: (BUG-214736) – Essentially, attachments on avatars swap their LOD models as if they were scaled to the overall avatar bounding box. Graham linden has been working on some fixes for this which should improve accuracy and performance, but further work may be required. Once this has happened, there will be a further update to the project viewer.

Additional Animesh Discussions

• Animesh Complexity: there is a further update to come to the Animesh complexity values (Advanced menu > Performance Tools > Show Avatar Complexity – applies to both avatars and Animesh objects in the project viewer). This should fix some inconsistencies in the reported values.
• Animesh updated limits and cost formulas discussions:
  • Land Impact: streaming cost: some have questioned with some question with the 50% bounding on LODs could be more stringent. Vir’s view is that 50% is sufficient to allow for a broad range of capabilities among creators, and being more stringent could simply result in a greater addition to land impact, which could affect the use of Animesh. There is an argument that some models require 75% bounding between the high and medium models.
  • Triangle count limit: There have been requests for further changes to the triangle count limit (e.g. allowing land owners to somehow be able to change it). As the limit was raised to 100,000, it is unlikely to be changed again before Animesh is deployed, and the idea of land owners being able to adjust it is seen as potentially in inconsistencies in how Animesh works in different locations. If it is seen that there is a need to raise the tri count limit, it will be done globally.
  • Avatar attachments: due to performance concerns, the limit of only one Animesh attachment to an avatar at any given time is not going to be changed ahead of Animesh deployment, but might be revisited in the future.
• Animesh ignores SL scale settings:  this is a result of how rigged meshes are handled – scaling doesn’t matter for worn mesh items, as other mechanisms are available for avatar scaling (e.g. the shape sliders, etc.). As these mechanisms aren’t available for Animesh in the initial release (e.g. there is no actual body shape associated with Animesh objects, ergo, no sliders), scaling is dependent upon custom joint positions.
  • Including more capabilities, such as possibly associating a body shape with an Animesh object, is seen as being a follow-on project to come some time after the initial release.

Bakes On Mesh

Project Summary

Extending the current avatar baking service to allow wearable textures (skins, tattoos, clothing) to be applied directly to mesh bodies as well as system avatars. This involves server-side changes, including updating the baking service to support 1024×1024 textures, and may in time lead to a reduction in the complexity of mesh avatar bodies and heads.

This work does not include normal or specular map support, as these are not part of the existing baking service.

Resources

• Bakes on Mesh forum thread.
• Bakes on Mesh JIRA filter (courtesy of Whirly Fizzle).

Additional Bake Channels

Anchor Linden is continuing to work on adding five further channels to the Bake Service (left arm, left foot + three additional “general purpose” channels to be defined and used as required by creators) and the associated tattoo layer UI support to the viewer to allow them to be used.

This is a three-way set of updates, requiring changes to the appearance service, the simulator and the viewer. This, combined with concerns over maintaining backwards compatibility in the appearance service means that getting the work to a testable state is taking a little longer to achieve.

In the meantime, the changes to the appearance service seem to have caused a glitch which can make some avatars appear to be wear “black skirts” when seen on the Animesh test regions Aditi. This will hopefully be corrected soon.

In Brief

Transparency shadow casting from rigged items: there is an issue with rigged / static meshes using transparencies (blended or masked), which causes shadows cast by them to render incorrectly (shadow rendering conforms only to the geometry silhouette).

Graham Linden is now looking at the issue, however, the release of Animesh is not contingent on the basis of any fix, which will probably be part of the ongoing rendering updates Graham is working on.

Imposter Clipping: imposter avatars can appear “clipped”. This appears to be related to the problem of not having a good real-time bounding box associated with rigged meshes (which can result in some meshes appearing clipped as well). This is being looked at, and the hope is that if a better means of defining the bounding box for rigged meshes can be found, it will resolve the importer issue. However, the release of things like Animesh are again not contingent on a fix for this issue being implemented.