Category: SL Tech

Catznip R11: jelly dolls, Bento, oh my!

Posted on by Inara Pey

catznip logoOn Sunday, December 1tth, Catznip R11 arrived, bringing with it a lot of Lab love and Kitty goodness. With the last update having been back towards the start of 2016, there are quite a few updates and features from Linden Lab, and well as some niceness from the Catznip team themselves.

In particular, this release picks up on the Lab’s Avatar Complexity capability and graphics presets, and also include Bento avatar skeleton support, as well as a raft of Lab changes such as HTTP co-routines, CEF, LibVLC, voice improvements, bug fixes, and more.

This is not intended to be a comprehensive review of Catznip R11; rather, the hope is to provide an overview of the more major updates and changes. Information on all changes can be found in the release notes (when available – link to be added).

Updates Via the Lab

Avatar Complexity, aka Jelly Dolls

There are probably very few in SL who have not heard of Avatar Complexity, be it by that name or its more popular nickname, Jelly Dolls. However, for those who need a quick re-cap and run through, here’s the deal.

As avatars can often be the biggest single rendering load on our computers (and why you can experience a lot of lag in a crowded place) Avatar Complexity is a means by which you can set a “complexity limit” within your viewer. Any avatar (including their attachments) exceeding this limit will be rendered as a solid colour – a “Jelly Doll” – thus putting a lot less load on your computer. It comes with a handful of notable points:

  • Avatar complexity only applies to other avatars in your view; your own avatar will always be rendered fully to you
  • You can also override the setting for individual avatars around you and select how they render in your view
  • You can adjust the limit at any time according to your needs at that time
  • You can use graphic presets (see below) to save different avatar complexity settings for different circumstances (e.g. a very low limit for crowded places, a much higher limit for home use, etc.).

When first installed, a viewer with Avatar Complexity will set a default limit for you based on your current viewer graphics settings. Hence why you might see a lot of solid colour avatars around you when logging-on for the first time with Catznip R11. These default limits are:

  • Low: 35,000
  • Low-Mid: 100,000
  • Mid: 200,000
  • Mid-High: 250,000
  • High: 300,000
  • High-Ultra / Ultra: 350,000

Avatar complexity is controlled via the Avatar Maximum Complexity  slider, which can be found in three locations:

  • In the Preferences > Graphics tab: Avatar Maximum Complexity
  • In the Advanced Graphics Preferences floater (see Revised Graphics Preferences, below, for more on this): Avatar Maximum Complexity
  • The Quick Appearance panel of the new Catznip Quick Preferences floater (see below for more on this): Complexity Limit
The Avatar Complexity slider in Preferences > Graphics
The Avatar Complexity slider in Preferences > Graphics

In all three cases, moving the Maximum Complexity slider to the right increases your threshold, allowing more avatars around you to be fully rendered, while moving it to the left decreases your threshold, increasing the number of avatars liable to be rendered as solid colours. Changes made in one slider will be reflected in the others.

Note that you can set the Maximum Complexity slider to No Limit (all the way to the right). However, this isn’t recommended because it leaves your viewer vulnerable to any graphics crashers some inconsiderates still occasionally try to use. It is far better to set your viewer to a high limit (e.g. 350,000) if you don’t want to be bothered by seeing Jelly Dolls.

To help you understand how complex your own avatar is, every time you change your appearance, a small notice with your new complexity value will appear in the upper right of your viewer window for a few seconds. Your own complexity value is also displayed at the top of the My Appearance floater (Me > Appearance or right-click your avatar and select My Appearance from the menu), and on the Quick Appearance panel of Quick Preferences (“Complexity”), while the Quick Wearing panel will provide a breakdown of the complexity of all your worn attachments (see Catznip Quick Preferences, below for more on Quick Preferences).e

You can find your own maximum complexity via the avatar context menu > Edit Appearance, and a breakdown of your avatar cost via Quick Preferences >Quick Appearance
You can find your own maximum complexity via the avatar context menu > Edit Appearance, and a breakdown of your avatar cost via Quick Preferences > Quick Appearance

You can also display avatar complexity information on yourself and all avatars around you by going to the Advanced menu (CTRL-ALT-D if not visible) > Performance Tools > Avatar Complexity Information (previously Show Render Weight for Avatars). This displays three items of information over the heads of all avatars Including yours):

  • The render complexity for each avatar
  • A ranking of the avatar’s distance from your camera (1=closest)
  • The attachment surface area for an avatar, expressed in square metres.

Other points of note:

  • Setting an individual avatar's rendering in your view
    Setting an individual avatar’s rendering in your view

    The complexity value of your avatar is transmitted to each simulator as you travel around Second Life. In return, you’ll get a brief notice in the upper right of your screen telling you the approximate percentage of avatars around you who are not fully rendering you because of your avatar complexity.

  • If you always wish to fully render certain other avatars, no matter what your Maximum Complexity setting, you can right-click on those individuals and select “Render Fully” from the context menu.
  • Conversely, if there are avatars around you whom you’d rather render as grey imposters, right-click on them and select “Do Not Render” from the context menu.
  • Note that in both cases above, these per-avatar settings do not persist between log-ins. If you re-log, any avatars you have set via these options will revert to being displayed in accordance with your Avatar Complexity setting
  • You can also revert any avatar exceeding your Maximum Complexity setting by right-clicking on them and selecting Render Normally from the context menu. They will become a Jelly Doll once more.

Finally, Avatar Complexity does not replace Avatar Imposters, but rather is intended to work alongside of it, offering another means to reduce avatar rendering load on your computer.

HUD Complexity Warning

If you attach a HUD which makes heavy / excessive use of large textures and which, as a result, can impact your system’s performance, the viewer will display a warning to indicate the problem and which names the HUD. It will naturally fade after a set time has passed.

The new HUD complexity warning
The new HUD complexity warning

Graphics Presets

Graphics Presets allows you to easily save and restore different sets of graphics settings within the viewer, which can then be used according to need. So you might have one with all the performance-hitting options enabled for when you’re taking photos, and another with many of them turned off, as they’re not really needed (e.g. for shopping or clubbing, etc.), for example. You can then swap back and forth between them as needed via a drop-down options list and without any need to relog.

There is no limit to the number of presets you can create, and any you no longer require can be easily deleted.

The Graphic Presets buttons on Preferences > Graphics
The Graphic Presets buttons on Preferences > Graphics

Continue reading “Catznip R11: jelly dolls, Bento, oh my!” →

2016 SL project updates 49/2: Bento and web and bits

Posted on by Inara Pey
lw-3b_001
Luane’s Magical World, Morning Glow – blog post

Server Deployment – Recap

  • On Tuesday, December 6th, the Main (SLS) channel was updated with the same server maintenance package deployed to the three RC channels, comprising internal simulator changes.
  • On Wednesday, December 7th, the three RC channels will received the same new server maintenance package, which includes the following feature requests:
    • BUG-6377 – llGetObjectDetails(id,[OBJECT_ATTACHED_SLOTS_AVAILABLE]) – Returns a value that is number of attachment slots allowed by the server minus the number of attachments worn by avatar. Returns 0 if avatar is not in the same region or if UUID is not an agent.
    • BUG-40871 – llGetEnv() constant “region_object_bonus” – returns the object bonus set for a region.

Bento Update

The major news is that Bento was officially pronounced “live” on Monday, December 5th with the promotion of the Bento viewer code to de facto release status – see the official blog post or my covering article. Currently  – and as far as I’m aware – Black Dragon has a release out supporting Bento, Cool VL viewer has had Bento updates in the experimental branch for some time, and both Firestorm and Catznip will be issuing updates with Bento support very soon.

The announcement was followed with some further releases of Bento capable content on the Marketplace, and more will doubtless follow as Bento reaches more viewers and Avastar is fully updated (see below).

Troy Linden, the product lead for the project, passed on congrats and thanks to all who have been involved in the project, and Vir Linden’s role in getting things rolling and taking responsibility for getting things to work in the viewer.

One issue that wasn’t fixed prior to release was that of facial deformations occurring at altitude, which was noticed very early in the project.

Cathy Foil demonstrates the mesh deformation which becomes more pronounced with altitude (starting at around 1,000m and getting progressively worse through 4,000m)
Cathy Foil demonstrates the mesh deformation which becomes more pronounced with altitude (starting at around 1,000m and getting progressively worse through 4,000m)

As this particular problem appears to be part of a broader issue of floating point calculation errors and it can be overcome by using hardware skinning,  it wasn’t seen as a significant enough issue to warrant holding back Bento.  Should you encounter it, try using hardware, rather than software skinning on your system.

Future Follow-Ons for Bento

As Bento was being developed, a number of ideas for follow-on projects were put forward. Two of these include:

  • “unwearing” the default avatar while allowing baked textures & reducing the complexity of avatar bodies(see BUG-10980). Vir has previously indicated an interest in pursuing this idea (and the feature request has been accepted by the Lab).
  • Splitting the avatar shape into different elements (e,g, head and body), seen as making it easier for users who are uncertain about customising their form using the sliders, or who have a No Mod shape associated with their head or body to be able to mix and match more easily.

No final decision has been made on what might follow Bento or when, but given Vir’s feedback on splitting the avatar shape into separate elements would require a fairly extensive re-working of how avatar appearance is handled (up to and including changes to the baking service), it would seem unlikely this would be adopted,

Avastar and MayaStar

Avastar is still in the process of being updated to give expected support for Bento, and a new version is anticipated in the near future – users should keep an eye on the Avastar website for news. Cathy Foil believes that MayaStar is fully up-to-date, and while there have been reports of problems, these appear to be user error rather than bugs in the software, so she is considering further tutorial videos.

Future Meetings

Bento meetings will continue for a while (allowing for upcoming holidays). They may still be broadened into more of a content creation style meeting if there is sufficient interest. This is still TBD. The next meeting will take place on Thursday, December 15th at the Hippotropolis Camp Fire Circle, as usual, commencing at 13:00 SLT.

Web Properties Update

On Monday, December 5th, Grumpity Linden issued a further blog post on recent SL web property updates, which also included a minor update (contents unspecified to the lindenlab.com properties.   In terms of Second Life, the updates can be summarised as:

  • Maps:
    • slurl.com was officially retired on November 22nd, everything is now maps.secondlife.com – slurl.com/secondlife/ are redirected.
    • Viewing a specific location on maps.secondlife.com no longer throws a 404 error in the console.
    • Maps no longer  disappear at peak use times.
  • A large infrastructure update was made to secondlife.com along with security fixes and several minor bug fixes.
  • The Marketplace had an Events infrastructure stabilization to fix a few listing bugs.
  • A minor Security fix was released.

The update also referenced the new Grid Status page service.

2016 SL project updates 49/1: server, viewer, issues

Posted on by Inara Pey

La Digue du Braek, Muppets Island; Inara Pey, December 2016, on Flickr La Digue du Braek, Muppets Island – blog post

Server Deployments

On Tuesday, December 6th, the Main (SLS) channel was updated with the same server maintenance package deployed to the three RC channels, comprising internal simulator changes.

On Wednesday, December 7th, the three RC channels will received the same new server maintenance package, which includes the following feature requests:

  • BUG-6377 – llGetObjectDetails(id,[OBJECT_ATTACHED_SLOTS_AVAILABLE]) – Returns a value that is number of attachment slots allowed by the server minus the number of attachments worn by avatar. Returns 0 if avatar is not in the same region or if UUID is not an agent.
  • BUG-40871 – llGetEnv() constant “region_object_bonus” – returns the object bonus set for a region.

SL Viewer

On Monday, December 5th, the Project Bento viewer, version 5.0.0.321958, was promoted to de facto release status. See the official blog post here and my post here.

This leaves the current viewer pipelines looking as follows:

  • RC viewers:
    • Maintenance RC viewer, version 4.1.3.321792, dated November 30th – some 42 fixes and improvements
  • Project viewers:
    • 360-degree snapshot viewer, version 4.1.3.321712 dated November 23rd – ability to take 360-degree panoramic images – hands-on review
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, dated May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

Other Items

Mesh and Texture Rezzing

People have been noticing increased delays in object mesh and texture rezzing, with fingers being pointed at the Lab’s CDN supplier(s).  Raised at the Simulator User Group meeting, it prompted Simon Linden to comment it could be a CDN issue, and re request was passed for the Lab to have a poke around at things.

Duplicated No Copy Items

Raised a couple of weeks ago, this is an issue where region crashes are being exploited to create duplicates of No Copy items (i.e. the duplication is happening server-side, rather than the objects simply being copied using a viewer, making them indistinguishable from the original), with the duplicated item – mostly obtained through gachas – then being put up for sale on the Marketplace.

The Lab is continuing to look at the problem, but as yet, no answer / solution has been identified.

Project Bento live in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Bento: extending the avatar skeleton - now officially live on the grid!
Bento: extending the avatar skeleton – now officially live on the grid!

On Monday, December 5th, Linden Lab announced that Project Bento is now “live” on the main grid following the promotion of the Bento Release Candidate viewer to de facto release status.

Project Bento is – as I’m sure everyone is only too aware – the project to enhance the avatar skeleton for use in mesh models, human and non-human (please note the new bones cannot be used with the system avatar).

It’s a project I’ve covered extensively in this blog, having been a part of both the closed and open beta phases of the work. However, just in case you have missed it. Bento adds a range of new bones the Second Life avatar skeleton, all of which can be rigged and weighted in mesh avatar models, and many can be used for a wide variety of purposes: limbs, wings, ears, tails and more. In particular, Bento adds over 30 bones to the avatar’s hands and avatar’s face, allowing mesh creators to design hands with movable fingers and faces which can be far more expressive. The Lab’s promotional video released as Bento entered a main grid beta phase is embedded below.

As many of the bones are tied to the Second Life appearance sliders, it also means that – subject to caveats from individual creators – avatar meshes can be customised easier by users. So, for example, avatar heads can be tweaked to give a more personal look when compared to the “off-the-shelf” version of the same head.

For non-human avatars, Bento brings a host of new possibilities and easier ways of doing things. Animal and humanoid avatars can be made which are more life-like, make better use of resources and offer fascinating new opportunities for wearable avatars, pets and more.

A GIF of Medhue Simoni's elephant avatar enjoying a little bit of the Bee Gees. Medue is one of the creators / animators who has been at the forefront of Bento development - check his video for more on the elephant and his You Tube channel for Bento information in general
A GIF of Medhue Simoni’s elephant avatar enjoying a little bit of the Bee Gees via Staying’ Alive. Medue is one of the creators / animators who has been at the forefront of Bento development – check his video for more on the elephant and his You Tube channel for Bento information in general. Credit: Medhue Simoni, via Linden Lab.

To aid in Bento content creation, the project has heavily engaged the talents of Cathy Foil and the Machninimatix team to ensure that MayaStar, Cathy’s SL plug-in for Maya, and Avastar, the Blender add-on from Gaia and Matrice are fully Bento compliant – and all three have been instrumental in moving Bento forward.

There are a couple of additional options which are included in the viewer called Reset Skeleton and Reset Skeleton And Animations, and can be found on the right-click avatar context menu. They have been included because sometimes, when changing between one mesh avatar and another, the basic SL avatar can become deformed, resulting in it looking squished, stretched, caught between two looks, or something else.

The problem is generally the result of race conditions when the avatar’s appearance is being updated, and both of these buttons are intended to correct the problem  – the option to reset animations as well is intended to fix deformations which may be due to animations also kicking-in incorrectly / at the wrong time.

The reset skeleton options (right-click context menu in the official viewer) should "fix other avatars which appear distorted in your view after changing their form (left menu) or your own avatar if the same happens to you (right menu) - note both options only affect your view of the avatar in question
The reset skeleton options (right-click context menu in the official viewer) should “fix other avatars which appear distorted in your view after changing their form (left menu) or your own avatar if the same happens to you (right menu) – note both options only affect your view of the avatar in question. Obviously, the location of these options may vary as TPV release Bento ready viewers

An important thing to not with both these option is they only fix the avatar in question (your own or someone else in your view. They do not affect how other people are seeing the same avatar.

As stated above, content creators have been engaged in the project, and so some Bento content is already available in-world and via the SL Marketplace – and doubtless more will be appearing in time. However, you do need a Bento capable viewer to render Bento content correctly. Hopefully, it will not be long before TPVs also release Bento capable updates as well (some already have Bento updates available as experimental versions, or undergoing closed user group testing).

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a list of additional Bento and related resources and information.

Additional Bento Links

2016 viewer release summaries: week 48

Posted on by Inara Pey

Updates for the week ending Sunday, December 3rd

This summary is published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:

  • It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog
  • By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.

Official LL Viewers

  • Current Release version: 4.1.2.321518, dated November 10, promoted November 15 – formerly the Maintenance RC viewer download page, release notes.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • Project Bento  RC (avatar skeleton extensions), updated to version 5.0.0.321958 on December 1 – primarily as a further fix for a rendering bug related to bad skin weights in some mesh avatars. (download and release notes)
    • Maintenance RC viewer, version 4.1.3.321792 released on November 30– some 42 fixes and improvements (download and release notes)
  • Project viewers:
    • No updates.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V4-style

V1-style

  • Cool VL viewer Stable branch updated to version 1.26.18.35 and the Experimental branch updated to version 1.26.19.37, both on December 3rd (release notes).

Mobile / Other Clients

  • Radegast updated to version 2.20 on November 30th –  featuring a new voice installer linking to most recent SL Voice repository. Note that as there is currently no access to the Radegast website, this update is not listed there (blog post, download link, source code link).

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

2016 SL project updates 48/2: TPVD meeting; SVC-7532 roll-back for guns

Posted on by Inara Pey

Rosemoor, Jadeite; Inara Pey, December 2016, on Flickr Rosemoor, Jadeite – blog post

The majority of the notes in this update are taken from the abbreviated TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, December 2nd. The video of that meeting is embedded at the end of this update. My thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.

Server Deployments – Recap

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for any updates.

  • There was no deployment of a server maintenance package to the Main (SLS) channel on Tuesday, November 29th, leaving it running on the same build as week #47 – 16#16.11.02.321369. However, the channel did undergo a rolling restart in order to update all private regions on it to the new land impact allowances – see my expanded report for more.
  • On Wednesday, November 30th, all three RC channels received a new server maintenance package, comprising internal simulator changes. This deployment also saw all private regions on the three RC channels updated with the new land impact allowances.

No Change Window

[01:51] The Christmas and New Year 2016/17 No Change window has been confirmed as running from Friday, December 16th 2016 through to Monday, January 2nd, 2017. There will be no planned server deployments or major viewer releases during this time frame.

SL Viewer

Project Bento RC

[00:23] On Thursday, December 1st, the Bento RC viewer updated to version 5.0.0.321958, which primarily includes a further fix for a rendering bug related to bad skin weights in some mesh avatars, which hadn’t been entirely fixed with the last update.

Unless something completely unexpected crops up in the next few days, and providing the RC performs well, this viewer could be promoted to release status early in week #49 (week commencing Monday, December 5th). Should this happen, it is likely that Firestorm will issue their own Bento update roughly a week later.

Maintenance RC

[09:46] A new Maintenance RC arrived in the release channel on Tuesday, November 30th. Version 4.1.3.321792 includes some 42 fixes and improvements including the following:

Abuse Reporting:

  • When you’re trying to file an abuse report and you crash – the floater will stay open and all information we were able to save will persist.
  • There is a new toolbar button: “Report Abuse”

Appearance:

  • Appearance floater will now remember your last selected tab across logins. You like your Outfit Gallery? Enjoy! You don’t like it? Enjoy something you prefer …

Pay floater:

  • You can now add an optional payment message when you send money, and it accepts UTF8 (via Ansariel Hiller).

360 Snapshot Project Viewer

[29:07] Issues have emerged with the latest version of the 360 snapshot project viewer (4.1.3.321712, dated November 23rd) and the back-end web viewer, with people reporting:

  • Images captured using the latest version of the viewer will not load into older versions of the web viewer (pages remain suck on the gear cogs).
  • Images captured using any version of the viewer will not load into the latest version of the web viewer (which also uses a different folder hierarchy for the location of ZIP files).
  • The Lab indicates that some of these issues can be corrected by adjusting the image resolution in the snapshot floater to take pictures at a lower resolution.

[13:27] Right now, effort is being directed towards the 64-bit viewer’s media handling, it is therefore unlikely further work will be carried out on the snapshots viewer until 2017.

64-bit Viewer

[10:35] The Lab has successfully built 64-bit versions of the viewer that launch, but is “wrestling” with assorted issues in the new build pipeline. Discussions on the build process are largely taking place on the open-source development e-mail list, but the related wiki information will be updated to reflect the updates, and the use of a new configuration repository for setting all the correct build switches, etc., once the Lab is more confident with the build process. The target for a project viewer remains Real Soon NowTM.

[12:50] The 64-bit viewer will also include the changes to the viewer update process and how the process is managed. These will appear in the 64-bit version after the initial release has been made.

Viewer Release Notes

[10:09] A relatively new feature introduced to the official viewer, and which is now finding its way into version 4.x TPVs is that when opening a newly installed version of the viewer for the first time, the release notes are displayed in a  pop-up, to help encourage users read about what has changed.

Voice Updates

[12:40] There are still bugs to be addressed in the next set of SL Voice updates, and the Lab wants to have these addressed before the updates are released at a project viewer.

SVC-7532 Roll-Back

[14:03] After all the investigations into the recent llTakeControl issues, include the “Horizons gun issue“, which was recently fixed, the Lab has looked more closely at the overall issue of weapons breakage in general, which was introduced as a result of SVC-7532. The conclusion drawn is that the “fix” for the issue should not have been implemented, and the issue as reported in that JIRA should have been marked as “expected behaviour”.

As a result, the Lab will be reverting the change. This means that TPVs should not need to offer a menu / preference toggle to allow users to switch between behaviour modes when using weapons depending upon how the weapon  has been scripted.  However, this does mean that touching things in Mouselook may not work if you are under the control of an attachment using llTakeControl.

The change to revert SVC-7532 will most likely go into an update yo the new Maintenance RC viewer.

Other Items

Proprietary Licensing

[18:30] There is an issue with proprietary licensing, apparently related to music and MP3 decoding and issues around it successor, AAC, and possible patent infringement. The discussion has been going on elsewhere, and I’m currently not au fait with the problems.

Community Gateways

[22:34] The updated registration API for new users, which features the latest avatars, etc., was made available to those in the Community Gateway programme in August / September (London City was one of the first in the programme to implement the updated API). Firestorm is dealing with some issues in updating their own landing pages to point to the new API.

Last 2016 TPV Developer Meeting

This was apparently the last TPV Developer meeting for 2016 – although one has been appearing on the calendar for December 16th.