Category: SL Tech

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting of Thursday, March 20th, 2025.Please note that this is not a full transcript, but a summary of key topics .

Table of Contents Meeting Purpose Official Viewer Status and Updates Viewer Status Upcoming Viewers Bakes on Mesh Improvements – PBR In Brief Next Meeting

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.
• Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they are conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.

Official Viewer Status and Updates

[Video: 02:07-8:00]

Viewer Status

• Default viewer: 7.1.12.13550888671, formerly the ForeverFPS, dated March 1, 2025, promoted March 5th – No change.
  • Numerous crash and performance fixes.
  • Water exclusion surfaces.
  • Water improvements.
• Second Life Release Candidate viewer 2025.03 version 7.1.13.13906285233, March 20th – NEW.
  • New UI element for water exclusion surfaces: Build / Edit floater → Texture Tab → Hide Water checkbox.
  • The maximum amount of Reflection Probes can now be adjusted to better accommodate low VRAM scenarios.
    • Values will be set automatically depending on your chosen graphics quality, OR
    • Use Preferences → Graphics →  Advanced Settings →  Max. Reflection Probes to manually set. Note that lowering the value on this slider can help within environments where a lot of manual Reflection Probes have been placed out.
  • An issue with being unable to see Sky Altitude values in the Region/Estate window has now been resolved.
  • Preferences → Graphics → Max. # of Non-Imposters has been renamed Max. # of Animated Avatars for clarity.
  • Bug and performance fixes and memory optimisations.

• Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha, version 7.1.12.13973830462, March 20th, 2025 – NEW.
  • Will only work on Aditi, within the following regions: [Luau Yardang], [Luau Tombolo], [Luau Mesa] and [Luau Tideland].
  • Blog post: Lab officially announces Luau Alpha testing.

Upcoming Viewers

• The hope is that the 2025.03 RC viewer will progress fairly rapidly through its pre-release iterations and be promoted to de facto viewer status “soon” – most likely early April.
  • Again, this viewer includes many fixes and and work originally scheduled for the 2024 “Maintenance B” RC, which had been held over due to the focus on the performance improvements work.
• The April release – 2025.04 – is provisionally targeting:
  • The glTF mesh uploader (based on the current .DAE mesh uploader and doing pretty much the same). Again, please note that this is not the full glTF scene importer which has been discussed at previous CCUG meetings; that work is being broken down into smaller, more easily managed projects.
  • Possibly some additional Materials features, although these are currently subject to shifting priorities.
• Geenz Linden reiterated the idea that the new viewer update process is intended to provide work on a major feature, and also include viewer quality of life improvements – notably requests / fixed file via the Feedback Portal.

Bakes on Mesh Improvements – PBR

[Video: 12:17-24:42]

• A bump of a feature request to provide the ability to make alphas for AUX BOM layers led Geenz to note that there are internal discussions on Bakes on Mesh and what additional things / features the Lab would like to tackle with regards to it (e.g. blend options, including the ability to blend materials attributes).
• However, nothing is as yet on the roadmap for implementation.
• This led to a general request on feedback as to what creators would like to see by way of BOM improvements. Responses included:
  • Full PBR Materials compositing / baking.
  • The mentioned materials blending + Photoshop-like blend modes + the ability to have blends (+ opacity) user-modifiable, even if the assets themselves are not.
  • Provide opacity sliders on the bakes slots, so as to allow things like the creation of a universal tattoo in 100% opacity black, then being able to ‘fade’ it without using more textures with separate opacity settings – see: Introducing Opacity Control for BOM Layers.
  • The ability to drag different BOM layers around when changing layer priorities, rather than having to use the current Up/Down buttons in the appearance floater.
• Additional requests should be filed via the Feedback Portal.
• A request for real-time in-viewer painting for alpha layers with a very basic editor was also requested as a part of the above, with Geenz indicating this would be unlikely any time soon.
• Providing full support for PBR materials within the Bake Service is being actively “thought about” at the Lab, but Geenz noted there are some caveats. For example:
  • There is both a compatibility issue and some degree of “convertibility” between supporting a mix of PBR materials and “legacy” (Blinn-Phong) materials within BOM.
    • The compatibility issue is that both are largely different in how they operate.
    • The “convertibility” aspect lies in the fact that the specularity channel within “legacy” materials was developed with what was at the time (2012) the glTF specularity workflow. This potentially opens the door towards mixing both.
  • However: there are multiple considerations when it comes to possibly supporting both Blinn-Phong and PBR materials in BOM – particularly when it comes to ensuring the end-user understands what is going on, what might happen when editing / combining layers, and the whole question of how the necessary guidelines / caveats / warnings can be meaningfully put before users without causing confusion.
  • These internal discussions are currently on-going.
• The idea of being able to modify blending when the assets themselves are No Mod was described as “an interesting one”, with Geenz suggesting it is something that should be posted as a request to the Feedback Portal to gain broader feedback from the user / creator community before any specific actions are taken, particularly given changes to the permissions system can lead to debate.
  • This led in part to an additional discussion on the idea of “opening” the permissions system in other areas – such as allowing users the ability to colour tint meshes that are otherwise No Mod, or add glow, if required).
• During the discussion Geenz noted that in general, PBR is unlikely to be getting displacement mapping “any time soon”.

In Brief

• [Video: 6:02-7:05 + later in the meeting] glTF mesh uploads:
  • The outline of this work can be found in Add Simple (llmesh) GLTF Model Import.
  • In short: it should be taken that whatever can be done within the existing .DAE uploader will remain so for uploading glTF mesh models at the first pass. Enhancements – including possibly forking the glTF  uploader into its own floater distinct from the .DAE uploader – will come later.
  • Given this, the ability to upload custom skeletons / rigs will not be supported. This does not necessarily mean that custom skeletons / rigs will “never” be supported – rather than it is a more significant project that requires further consideration before a decision can be made.
  • A request was made to be able to select maps / materials for upload in the glTF uploader, e.g. whether it should be a selectable list rather than a drop-down (for materials – which defaults to one or “bulk”) – this also has been included in the Feature Request.
• [Video: 8:29-11:59] Kyle Linden sought information on why those using vehicles – notably boats / aircraft disable sky rendering (via Advanced → Rendering Types) during normal game play (e.g. not for matters of terraforming, etc.).
  • The majority of feedback within the meeting suggested the core reason to be doing so gives a small FPS boost (and there have been reports filed that sunset / sunrise rendering can impact FPS).
  • Anecdotally, it was suggested that it can improve region crossings, although examples weren’t cited.
  • Some also stated they did it to stop the “frantic” cloud scrolling when moving between different regions with different EPP settings (why not just apply a preferred EEP setting to your avatar to avoid this?). This prompted Geenz Linden to remark that there have been some internal discussions about making the transitions between EEP setting less jarring.
• [Video: 26:23-27:53] some are reporting increased frequency of texture thrashing on PBR viewers over non-PBR viewers.
  • This is in part why LL has been adding further controls over texture use of VRAM.
  • Manually adjusting VRAM usage may not always resolve all issues of texture blurring (as there can be multiple reasons for it), and tweaking thing like the slider for adjusting the amount of VRAM available for texture loading can make things worse in certain conditions – so keep this in mind.
• [Video:37:02-38:26] A request was made via chat for the Feedback portal to have a means for people to view all the tickets they have filed. This was seen as something that the Canny developers would need to implement in general, rather than a capability LL could add to the system, and so should perhaps be requested on Canny itself!
• [Video: 38:51-41:08] It’s been reported that the eye-dropper for tinting PBR surfaces from the colour picker swatch is not working. This extended into comments that copying / pasting materials between surfaces can fail and planar face alignment not working. Fixes for issues such as copying PBR materials are within the 2025.03 RC viewer, together with a fix for PBR materials not always persisting when applied to a mesh face.
• The last 20 minutes are a general discussion on VR support (not yet, to much work in other areas to complete first); reflection probe fixes (such as better blending) to be looked at; anecdotal comparisons on frame rates being experienced at the meeting (anecdotal as no real indication of overall graphics settings being used, direction people had their camera point & the complexity of their field of view, etc.); general performance and performance tracking.
• [Video: 58:12-1:00:05] Part of the discussion on frame rates / performance it was noted that turning off the name tag display in the viewer Preferences → General → Name Tags options) can cause an increase in FPS – most likely due to the use of alpha layer in name tags pulling on performance.  This led to request for feedback on whether the default should be left at Name Tags On & left to a person’s individual choice to alter it; or perhaps change it to Show Briefly; or perhaps alter the behaviour so the name tag only renders when the mouse is hovered over an avatar (without necessarily having the hovertips enabled).

Next Meetings

• Subject to confirmation: Saturday CCUG, Saturday, March 29th, time TBA.
• 13:00 SLT, Thursday, April 3rd, 2025, at the Hippotropolis Campsite.