Category: Content Creation User Group

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, August 20th 2020 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are are available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

SL Viewer

Currently, the official viewers remain unchanged from the start of the week:

• Current release viewer version 6.4.7.546539, dated August 11, promoted August 17, formerly the Arrack Maintenance RC viewer – NEW.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Mesh uploader RC viewer, version 6.4.5.544027, July 27.
  • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.4.5.544028, June 30.
• Project viewers:
  • Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.5.544079, June 30.
  • 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.

General Viewer Notes

• The Legacy Profiles viewer has been further prevented from making progress due to additional web-side changes that need to be made to enable privacy settings (who can see your feed posts) to work correctly.
• The Mesh Uploader has been integrated with further changes, and is currently being merged up to the current viewer release code base, after which it will go to QA. Providing it passes, it could be appearing as updated RC viewer in week #35. This viewer provides:
  • Additional information on meshes at upload, a-la those added to Firestorm (see: Firestorm 6.0.2: Animesh release, February 2019)
  • UI improvements to give better information on avatar rigging & related error messaging.
  • Improved error messaging overall.
  • It will also include various fixes (such as BUG-229032 “[Mesh Uploader] Use Joint Positions Option causes ‘Collapsed Joints/Bones’ for some Files”) that are currently being worked on.

Project Muscadine (Animesh Follow-On)

Project Summary

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

Current Status

• Still officially on hold.
• Will include shape sliders for Animesh – although it should be remembered body shapes and sliders are intended for humanoid avatars, not animals, etc.

Using the JIRA

Complaints were raised about the need to raise Jira bug reports for issues that are “raised in chat”. Simply put:

• Describing an issue (often loosely) in chat  – or Voice, which is often the medium for meetings – actually doesn’t mean the issue is captured and recorded. It also doesn’t necessarily mean the issue has been properly described, as those talking about it are not being encouraged to think about the issue in a structured manner or provide illustrations that can better help with understanding precisely where their problem lies.
• The Jira system provides a means by which:
  • Information can be captured in a structured manner.
  • It can be illustrated.
  • It can be updated with further observations, feedback from others, etc.
  • It can be referenced, searched and cross-referenced, potentially helping other users understand a problem they are encountering and allowing the Lab to better understand the overall impact of an issue.
  • At the end of the day, issues reported by Jira stand a better chance of being fixed at some point that those just chatted about (which likely have a 0% chance).
• Raising Jira reports – Bug or Feature Requests – isn’t actually hard. See:
  • SL Jira Tutorial part 1: bug reports.
  • SL Jira Tutorial part 2: feature requests.

ARCTan

Project Summary

An attempt to re-evaluate object and avatar rendering costs to make them more reflective of the actual impact of rendering either in the viewer. 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).

As of January 2020 ARCTan has effectively been split:

• Viewer-side changes, primarily focused on revising the Avatar Rendering Cost (ARC) calculations and providing additional viewer UI so that people can better visibility and control to seeing complexity.
• Work on providing in-world object rendering costs (LOD models, etc.) which might affect Land Impact will be handled as a later tranche of project work, after the avatar work.
• The belief is that “good” avatar ARC values can likely be used as a computational base for these rendering calculations.

Current Status

• It now appears that Vir’s work in updating Jelly Dolls will now appear in the ARCTan viewer, when that eventually emerges, but may also (and possibly sooner) appear in a Maintenance RC viewer.
• Overall, ARCTan has been held-up awaiting a fix for an Bake Service issue. Vir believes he now has that fix, and is waiting for it to be deployed to one of the Lab’s internal text grids so he can check to see if it works. Assuming it does work, the fix will be queued for deployment to the main grid and allow performance data gathering to resume.
• Discussions are to resume regarding better UI elements to support information on complexity, etc., that users can understand and use.

In Brief

• Animesh:
  • minimum default 15 Land Impact: it is apparently putting some creators off of trying to make Animesh items (notably breedables). It’s been suggested lowering this to 10 LI might help generate greater interest in Animesh creation. Right now, LL haven’t done enough analysis to determine how the figure might conceivably be changed, rather than just making an arbitrary adjustment.
  • Bakes on Mesh support: this has been discussed on a number of occasions. There are no plans to provide support for Animesh to use Bakes on Mesh in the foreseeable future, as it requires Animesh to be overhauled to have full inventory support, together with outfit support, and would also require a significant update to the Bake Service to recognise and support Animesh characters.
• Date of next meeting: probably Thursday, September 3rd, 2020.

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, July 2nd 2020 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are are available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

This meeting featured a lot of general chat on possible features and / or performance improvements that might (or “should”) be made to SL, comparisons in the pros and cons of incremental changes over “radical” changes (e.g. the former can be turned around more quickly, but can be finite in pact; the latter can dramatically change/ improve SL, but on a time frame that means that when they are delivered, they’re not what users are looking for / they don’t actually deliver what had been anticipated), etc.

SL Viewer

Currently, the official viewers remain unchanged from the start of the week:

• Current Release viewer version 6.4.3.543157, dated June 11, promoted June 23, formerly the CEF RC viewer – No Change.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Tools Update RC viewer, version 6.4.5.544474, July 7.
  • Arrack Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.4.5.544465, July 6.
  • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.4.5.544028, June 30.
• Project viewers:
  • Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.5.544079, June 30.
  • Mesh uploader project viewer, version 6.4.4.543141, June 11.
  • 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.

General Viewer Notes

• The Tools Update RC viewer is on track to be promoted to de facto release status, possibly on Friday, July 17th, or more likely week #29 (commencing Monday, July 20th).
• The Love Me Render viewer is still seeing additional EEP fixes added to it, as well as some other issues that are being looked into.
  • The upcoming version of the LMR viewer will include a fix for the EEP specularity issue (see BUG-228781 and BUG-228581).
  • BUG-229079 “[EEP] Density multiplier does not allow full range of settings to be saved/loaded”, requires adjustments to be made to both the viewer and the simulator code.
  • BUG-229031 “[EEP] Water has a large performance hit on EEP” has been accepted, an analysis has yet to be completed.

ARCTan

Project Summary

An attempt to re-evaluate object and avatar rendering costs to make them more reflective of the actual impact of rendering either in the viewer. 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).

As of January 2020 ARCTan has effectively been split:

• Viewer-side changes, primarily focused on revising the Avatar Rendering Cost (ARC) calculations and providing additional viewer UI so that people can better visibility and control to seeing complexity.
• Work on providing in-world object rendering costs (LOD models, etc.) which might affect Land Impact will be handled as a later tranche of project work, after the avatar work.
• The belief is that “good” avatar ARC values can likely be used as a computational base for these rendering calculations.

Current Status

• It’s still not clear in the Jelly Doll updates will appear in an ARCTan project viewer or within a project viewer of their own. These are more generic Jelly Dolls that improve their rendering.
• It might be preferable for the Jelly Doll updates to move to their own project viewer, as ARCTan is awaiting a Bake Service update, which is in turn held up due to the on-going cloud uplift work.
• There was a scare that the ARCTan updates might cause a performance hit – although this might be down to a system configuration issue and is still being investigated.

In Brief

• There is some background work going on to update the Second Life systems requirement page. Not so much because SL’s requirement have changed, but simply to bring them more in-line with modern systems.
• The data the Lab does gather on client systems indicate that a lot of users are based on laptops using on-board graphics and “a lot on older systems”.
• Next meeting: Thursday, August 20th, 2020.

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, July 2nd 2020 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are are available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

SL Viewer

• A Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.5.544079, was issued on Tuesday, June 30th.

The rest of the official viewers in the pipeline remain as follows:

• Current Release viewer version 6.4.3.543157, dated June 11, promoted June 23, formerly the CEF RC viewer.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.4.5.544028, June 30.
  • Tools Update RC viewer, version 6.4.5.544097, June 25 – this viewer is built using VS 2017 / a recent version of Xcode, and Boost.Fiber. It contains no user-facing changes.
  • Arrack Maintenance RC viewer, 6.4.5.544024, issued on June 24 – this viewer uses Viewer Manager 2.0.538279.
• Project viewers:
  • Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.5.544079, June 30.
  • Mesh uploader project viewer, version 6.4.4.543141, June 11.
  • 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.

General Viewer Notes

• The Love Me Render (LMR) RC viewer is still absorbing fixes for EEP and rendering issues. Version 6.4.5.544028, dated June 30th includes a fix for BUG-225784 “BUG-225446 regression – HUDs are again affected by environment setting”. This viewer will hopefully in time include a fix for specularity issues (see BUG-228781 and BUG-228581).
• It looks like the Legacy Profile viewer could be getting promoted to RC status very soon.

ARCTan

Project Summary

An attempt to re-evaluate object and avatar rendering costs to make them more reflective of the actual impact of rendering either in the viewer. 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).

As of January 2020 ARCTan has effectively been split:

• Viewer-side changes, primarily focused on revising the Avatar Rendering Cost (ARC) calculations and providing additional viewer UI so that people can better visibility and control to seeing complexity.
• Work on providing in-world object rendering costs (LOD models, etc.) which might affect Land Impact will be handled as a later tranche of project work, after the avatar work.
• The belief is that “good” avatar ARC values can likely be used as a computational base for these rendering calculations.

Current Status

• Vir’s updates to jelly dolls have hit a couple of issues whilst in QA, but should still get rolled into the ARCTan project once he’s had a chance to fix them.

In Brief

Pathfinding Navmesh

• A request was put forward to allow scripted access to rebaking a region’s navmesh (used with Pathfinding).
• A use case for this would be something likes a procedural game where elements of the scene may be placed via script in accordance with progress.
  • As alterations to a scene impact the navmesh, this can upset NPCs using it.
  • Currently, the only way to rebake is via manual intervention, which can be missed.
  • Offering a scripted means would ensure the navmesh is automatically updated when required.
• This type of scripted update has been requested in the past, and generally frowned upon due to the risk of potential abuse. However, risk could be mitigated by limited the scripting option to estate owners / managers, and using a throttle on the number of allowed requests.
• That said, multiple rebakes of the navmesh can themselves have a cumulative impact on simulator performance and resources (particularly on Homestead regions), such that a region restart is required to correct matters, which might in some cases be as disruptive, so this would likely need to be re-examined.
• Currently, there are no plans to work on Pathfinding in the short-to-medium term, however, it has been requested that the idea is written up as a feature request for review by the Lab.

Other Items

• There as been a request for the viewer to support Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) image format (see: BUG-229007). However, this would require an extensive overhaul of the graphics pipeline (which currently uses JPG2000) in order to ensure all texture handing had a code path for running SVG. So this is not a likely target for a project.
• There was a general discussion on the animation system and file formats (.ANIM and .BVH) including long-standing requests to overhaul the system and provide overrides for priority, speed, start / stop frame, etc., and more informed control of easing out/in to the animations. Currently, there is no work being planned for the system, however.
• A request has been made to allow for scripted interrogation on how people are using EEP. The specific use case would be a game or similar, where a specific environment has been set (e.g. fog / reduced visibility) and the system could query incoming systems to ensure the viewer is set to Use Shared Environment, and if not, advise the user they need to change their setting. Not clear if / how this will be addressed.
• Next meeting: Thursday, July 16th, 2020.

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, June 18th 2020 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are are available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

SL Viewer

• It had been planned that the next viewer to be promoted to de facto release status would be the Love Me Render (LMR) RC viewer. However:
  • LMR is being held over pending the inclusion of various EEP bug fixes, including a fix for the HUD issues (see BUG-225784) and a fix for the specularity problems (see BUG-228781 and BUG-228581).
  • This means the next viewer that will likely be promoted will be the CEF RC viewer, and this could be promoted in week #26 (commencing Monday, June 22nd).

Viewer Caching

• Work is continuing to try to improve viewer caching.
• First outcome of this work is liable to be a viewer that has improved VFS caching (the system used to cache information on in-world objects). This will be a complete replacement of the VFS cache with a new format that retains data better and is more performant.
• The next element of work after the VFS update is liable to be an overhaul of the viewer’s texture caching.

ARCTan

Project Summary

An attempt to re-evaluate object and avatar rendering costs to make them more reflective of the actual impact of rendering either in the viewer. 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).

As of January 2020 ARCTan has effectively been split:

• Viewer-side changes, primarily focused on revising the Avatar Rendering Cost (ARC) calculations and providing additional viewer UI so that people can better visibility and control to seeing complexity.
• Work on providing in-world object rendering costs (LOD models, etc.) which might affect Land Impact will be handled as a later tranche of project work, after the avatar work.
• The belief is that “good” avatar ARC values can likely be used as a computational base for these rendering calculations.

Current Status

• Vir now trying to roll the jelly doll updates into the rendering cost calculations and performance measurements.
• One thing the core work on ARCTan has been awaiting is a fix to the Bake Service for errors arising when calculating height offsets with complex mesh items, which can result in the avatar bake failing. The fix for this is in place, and the updated Bake Service should be exposed to a simulator RC for testing “fairly soon”. The change itself should have no visible impact other than to correct the rare instances where the issue occurred.

In brief

• There have been reports of avatar bakes taking longer to complete recently.However, it is not clear if this is an actual issue; LL have not noted any Bake Service processing issues, and also note that users may be noting a perceived “slowing” due to changes made a while ago to try to prevent avatars de-clouding fully nude (e.g. due to latency between the viewer and the CDN, or local caching issues, etc.).
• In terms of avatar rezzing, there is also work being put into reducing the instances of rigged mesh elements rezzing offset / incorrectly sized related to an avatar (e.g. clothing appearing off to one side and rotated to be on its side; gigantic heads rezzing, etc.).
• Next meeting: Thursday, July 2nd, 13:00 SLT.

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, June 4th 2020 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are are available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

Unfortunately, Vir was on a replacement computer for this meeting, and the audio quality was exceptionally bad in the early part of the meeting, making comprehension both in the meeting and when playing back my audio recording very difficult.

Terrain

• LL has long acknowledged that terrain texture quality in Second Life is not overly great by today’s graphics standards.
• There is no defined project to update terrain textures as yet, but Vir took the opportunity to take feedback on ideas for what might be included. Some of this comprised:
  • Better texture density for crisper textures.
  • Texture layering to allow for roads / paths, etc.
  • Support for higher resolution textures.
  • Splat maps for textures and for normal and specular support.
• Voxel support was requested, but this is seen as a much larger project than terrain texturing, we Linden Lab to go that route, and it is certainly not something on the cards for the foreseeable future.

Jelly Dolls / Avatar Rendering

• Vir continues to work on this and has (I believe) a viewer with some of his ideas included available for internal testing or review at the Lab.

Project Muscadine (Animesh Follow-On)

Project Summary

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

Current Status

• Still officially on hold.
• Attach points support has been requested and could be a “next step”.
• However, when work is resumed, the emphasis will be on fixing the identified bugs around the LSL parameter setting process

In brief

• EEP: LL are still looking to correct:
  • Specularity (shininess) issues – see BUG-228781 and BUG-228581. One of these issues is now fixed internally to the Lab, the other is “in progress”. When deployed, should see behaviour return to pretty much how it was pre-EEP, how where the fixes will fit in viewer updates is still TBD.
  • Issues with the environment settings for Mainland. This has proven harder to fix. It appears that the wrong environment settings were baked into the Mainland regions, and the most direct means of correcting this is by manually correcting them.
• The EEP issues – which arguably show things as they *should* appear, but which in doing so “break” content (hence trying to get the “fixes” in s that assets don’t have to be corrected & re-uploaded, etc.), sparked a discussion on how indicated changes to the rendering pipeline will be handled. Essentially these will be “opt in” for content created after any updates are deployed; old content will be “opt out”, to avoid breakage.
• Next meeting: Thursday, June 18th, 13:00 SLT.

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, May 21st 2020 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are are available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

SL Viewer

The CEF Special viewer has been withdrawn from downloads, pending the release of a more rounded CEF RC viewer containing broader support for more options for streaming into SL + more codecs.

The FMOD Studio RC viewer updated to version 6.4.3.542486 on May 19th.

The remainder of the current official viewer pipelines are as follows:

• Current Release viewer version 6.4.2.541639, dated May 11th, promoted May 19th, formerly the Camera Presets RC viewer – see my Camera Presets tutorial.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • FMOD Studio RC viewer, version 6.4.3.542486, May 21st.
  • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.4.3.542484, May 19th.
• Project viewers:
  • Mesh uploader project viewer, version 6.4.2.541645, issued May 15th.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9th, 2019.
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22nd, 2019.
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17th, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16th, 2019.

General Viewer Notes

• The exact streaming services that will be supported by the next CEF update have yet to be confirmed.
• The Love Me Render viewer is still being re-worked as a result of being “clobbered” by the EEP updates (presumably during the merge process). It is hoped this will be back on track soon.
• The first viewer to be built entirely using the new build process using a recent version of Xcode (OS X) or Visual Studio 2017 (Windows) is still waiting to see the light of day.

Graphics / ALM / Code paths

• The previous CCUG meeting raised the topic of possibly removing the ability to disable the viewer’s Advanced Lighting Model (ALM).
• Vir emphasised that the idea is just a point of discussion, and not indicative of any decision having been made.

Graphics support is a whole lot of different possible code paths, which means there are tons and tons of options, [so] you can slice it and dice it lots and lots of different ways which makes it into a maintenance and update nightmare. So the more we can streamline it and say stuff works in particular ways, makes it easier to keep it working and to fix things when they go wrong. So, we don’t have any immediate plans to change Advanced Lighting, it’s just something we raised to gauge what usage patterns there might be.

– Vir Linden

Jelly Dolls / Avatar Rendering

• Vir’s idea to render jelly dolled avatars as basic human form, sans attachments, is apparently proving more complicated a move than at first thought.
• He’s not entirely surprised by this, considering all that an avatar made include: animations, shape deformations, etc.
• Animations can particularly problematic when they are being used to deform the skeleton into a non-human form, and the system wants to render the avatar in a human form.
  • Allowing the animations to run means allowing them to deform the avatar shape.
  • Turning the animations off means leaving the avatar shape in a human form but stuck in the T-pose position.
• The solution to the above issue would appear to be setting a stand animation that runs locally (i.e. in any viewer that is set to render the avatar as a jelly doll). However, this can require additional adjustments to be rendered correctly in a viewer.
• Further local animations may be required to cover situation when a jellied avatar uses things like default sits, adding further complexity to the work.

In brief

• There has been at least one report of the EEP viewer causing periodic freezes as if the texture cache being purged. While EEP should not have altered how the texture cache works, and as no bug reports have been filed on the issue as yet, LL ask that those have similar issues regularly / semi-regularly report them.
• Some have noticed that EEP has altered how specularity is rendered where materials have been used. This is a known issue LL are investigating, as per BUG-228781 and BUG-228581.
• The idea of an inventory tagging system was raised (e.g. to easy inventory sorting / searching, etc). Sort form answer: while there are benefits for some form of limited tagging, there are no plans to implement anything in the foreseeable future.
• The question was asked on why Twitch allows VR Chat streaming but not Second Life. Short form answer: because that is what Twitch has decided (at least at present).
• Next meeting: Thursday, June 4th, 13:00 SLT.