Category: SL User Group Meetings

2018 SL UG updates 48/3: TPV Developer meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Black Bayou Lake; Inara Pey, October 2018, on FlickrBlack Bayou Lake – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, November 30th, 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.

SL Viewer

[0:46-3:50] No overall changes since the start of the week and the EEP viewer update. This leaves the official viewer pipelines as follows:

  • Current Release version 6.0.0.520636, dated October 18th, promoted November 14th. Formerly the Animesh RC viewer – NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.0.1.521759, November 20th.
    • Spotykach Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.0.1.521757, November 15th.
    • Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer, version 5.2.0.520057, September 28th.
    • BugSplat RC viewer, version 5.1.9.519462, September 10. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17th, 2017 and promoted to release status 29th November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

It is hoped there will be two viewer releases prior to the end-of-year no change window coming into force, with the likelihood that there will be at least one. The viewers potentially in the running for promotion are: the Bugsplat RC and / or the current Maintenance RC, and / or possibly the Bakes on Mesh viewer, even though this is currently still at project viewer status.

[13:35-15:10] It is also hoped that EEP will reach Release Candidate status before the end of 2018, but it will not be ready for promotion as a release viewer until 2019. This will also require the server-side support to be deployed to at least the primary RC server channels, if not grid-wide, something the Lab hopes to do “as expeditiously as we can”.

Also: see my previous CCUG summary for updates on EEP and Bakes on Mesh.

No Change Window

[3:54-4:25] The 2018/2019 no change window comes into effect from close o business on Friday, December 21st, 2018, and will run through until at least January 2nd, 2019.

Firestorm Bridge Issue  – Server Release 18.11.01.521329 / 18.11.01.521593

[4:35-8:45] Since the deployment of server release 18#18.11.01.521329, there has been an issue with the Firestorm viewer LSL Bridge being set so that the scripts are not running. The issue also reproduces on server release 18#18.11.01.521593 (currently grid-wide), and on the limited EEP release, 18#18.11.13.521670. See BUG-225839 for more.

Part of the problem here is that the Bridge itself is something of a hack, both in the way it operates, and in the way it is created. Currently the focus is on working to create the Bridge in a cleaner, more efficient way (such as avoiding the need for code to be compiled twice). Longer-term, LL and Firestorm hope to review the Bridge functionality, with LL hopefully being able to provide server messaging, etc., to allow as many Bridge functions as possible to be performed without the need for LSL hacks.

It is hoped that the solutions developed between LL and Firestorm will ultimately resolve the need for the Bridge functionality, which will help reduce simulator script utilisation (as every active Firestorm Bridge is eating into script resources). In the meantime, work on this will not delay progressing the upcoming Firestorm Animesh release.

Complexity Calculations, Project ARCTan and Firestorm Animesh

[10:21-15:45] As noted in my CCUG meeting notes, Vir Linden is making adjustments to the avatar complexity calculations associated with Animesh attachments, which should appear in the next LL Maintenance RC viewer.

  • Most of this code has already been picked-up by Firestorm and incorporated into their upcoming Animesh release.
  • Further changes to limit the rate of prim parameter changes on worn objects are being considered by the Lab, and are likely to be introduced as a part of project ARCTan, which is re-evaluating all rendering costs associated with avatars and in-world objects.
  • ARCTan will be resuming in 2019, so any further updates on this front should not interfere with any Firestorm release plans.
  • It is also hoped that any further LL viewer releases will not disrupt any Firestorm Animesh release once it is ready to go. Depending on which viewer(s) Linden Lab promote before the end of 2018.
  • While it is anticipated EEP will reach RC status before the end of 2018, it does not appear that this will impact the Animesh release, but it will have major implications for Firestorm in general (e.g. OpenSim support).

[18:06-18:20] The current plan from Firestorm is – and assuming no significant blockers arise – to have a release out prior to the no change window coming into effect, which Firestorm prefer to respect.

MP4 (H.264) Video Playback

[19:52-23:26] There has been an ongoing issue with regards to MP4 encoded video playback in Second Life being “broken”. In fact, due to assorted (and complicated) patent / licensing requirements, support of MP4 (specifically H.264 encoded video, together with similar formats), was deliberately removed from the official SL viewer.

The issue had been under legal review within the Lab, and it had been hoped an official announcement would be forthcoming after the change to the official viewer was made. However, it matter has again been referred to the legal team at the Lab for further consideration.

It’s not clear how long it will be before the Lab’s legal team determine whether or not MP4 support can be returned to the viewer, nor how long it make take to re-introduce the viewer-side support, should the go-ahead be given. The latter is described as a “non-trivial” task, but also one the viewer team would be willing to undertake if legal provide the necessary OK.

In the meantime, to try to explain the situation to their users, who have been impacted since the 5.1.7 release in July 2018, Firestorm has issued a blog post on the matter: Why Is My TV Not Working. I refer readers to that blog post for further details – especially the explanation relating to why accepting “patches” to “fix” the issue may not be advisable.

In-Viewer Animation Creation

[19:12-19:50] and [23:25-27:12] This is a project based on contributions from NiranV Dean (Black Dragon viewer), this is now an official LL viewer project. It had recently been stalled due to other work, but resources are again being allocated to it.

This work will likely include some major UI changes, and has caused some discussion on possible (albeit hard to implement) means to directly manipulate bones without resorting to sliders. However, the initial aim is to hopefully provide a means by which simple animations can be created from within the viewer (remembering that most animators / animation content creators will likely continue to use their preferred tools for doing so), rather than trying to provide some complex toolset within the viewer.

In Brief

  • [9:27-10:20] December TPVD meetings: due to other commitments, December will likely only have one TPVD meeting, on Friday, December 21st, 2018.
  • [27:47-32:08] Linden Realms: There is a brief discussion on open-sourcing the Linden Realms code, first mentioned at the CCUG meeting. See my blog post here for more.
  • [32:13-33:10] and [34:02-34:28] Further work on Pathfinding to come? Oz Linden indicated that he’d like to see Pathfinding improved / made easier to use, but it has until now been something that has tended to fall just below the line of things to do that get resources allocated. Might this change in 2019? Animesh might be one related tool that might benefit from a better / improved Pathfinding implementation.
    • Those that have spent time delving into Pathfinding and can provide a considered write-up on shortcomings and / or improvements are asked to do so (presumably via Jira), in order to help the Lab to define a list of things to be addressed / considered.
  • [33:15-33:49] Premium on Aditi: support for Premium accounts will be coming to Aditi (the Beta gird) “real soon now”, although precisely when is still TBD.
  • [34:29-40:05] Premium Account Lock-Out: a discussion on the lock-out on “delinquent” Premium accounts (those that fall behind in payments): in LL’s view, there should be a fairly long grace period before any lock-out applies; some users have found this not to be the case.
    • The reason Premium accounts are not “simply” downgraded to Basic until payment is made rather than locking the account, is that there is no way to block access to any land the account holds and which may be due tier.
    • If anyone has an example of an immediate Premium account lock-out (or experiences one), they are asked to contact the Lab with the specifics.
    • There has been a fear amount Basic users that they may lose their inventory should they become delinquent in payments – however, it s no longer the Lab’s policy to delete accounts after 90 days of delinquency (or at all).
  • The final 16 minutes of the meeting covers a range of general discussion points ranging from direct AO support through the viewer (without script intervention), how the viewer was open-sourced, issues over the current viewer contribution agreement methodology, forum threads, etc.  – please refer to the video below for that section of the meeting

2018 SL UG updates 48/2: Content Creation Summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
The EEP sky over Hippotropolis,designed by Whirly Fizzle. Credit: Whirly Fizzle

The following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on Thursday, November 29th, 2018 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are usually available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

Animesh

Avatar Rendering Cost Calculations Adjustment

An upcoming change that should be appearing at some point in a Maintenance RC viewer will see the avatar  rendering cost calculations adjusted in respect to Animesh.

The updates for the calculations were made more frequent in the Animesh viewer (now the release viewer), with the intention of now accurately handling the rendering load with Animesh objects attached to an avatar.

However, there are some types of attachment that make frequent updates to prim properties, and when these are combined with the Animesh-related complexity calculations, it can trigger unintended side-effects (such as repeatedly showing the complexity alert dialogue (e.g “You may not be visible to X %age of avatars”).

The  update will throttle the number updates to try to prevent the alert being displayed with every single change, no matter how small, to the complexity cost (significant changes will still generate the alert). It is also hoped the update will address the issue of the complexity alert dialogue being triggered simply by using CTRL-ALT-T.

Silas Merlin has provided a free, Full Permissions Animesh creation that can be used as an example of making / converting rigged mash for Animesh use

Possible Rate limits?

Even with the above change, there is still concerns over code that frequently changes prim parameters, because of the additional load it places on the graphics pipeline in calculating / handling the updates. The engineering team is therefore discussing potential rate limits being imposed on such updates in the future – however, this is not something that will be implemented in the short-term, but is something that will be considered over time, most likely as a part of the ARCTan projects as a whole.

Firestorm Animesh Support

A limited beta test version of Firestorm should be available very soon. Depending on how well this performs in testing, a public beta should follow, paving the way for a release in the near future. This update will primarily focus on Animesh integration, but will include some other updates and feature improvements, including significant improvements to the mesh uploader by Beq Janus – as she demonstrates in the video below.

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 viewer and 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 Bake Service, nor are they recognised as system wearables. Adding materials support may be considered in the future.

Resources

Current Status

At the time of writing, a new version of the Bakes on Mesh project viewer was about to undergo QA testing with the Lab, as is expected to appear either on Friday, November 30th, or in the early part of week #49.

This is currently being considered as the “feature complete” version of the viewer, and Oz Linden requested that creators wishing to leverage BoM to please put it to the test to see if there are any serious bugs / issues that need to be addressed.

Depending on the level of feedback gained, and the type of feedback (positive / negative)  it is possible the viewer could quickly progress to release candidate (RC) status and perhaps even to release. However, without feedback, the Lab will not be able to fully assess its suitable for RC, etc., promotion.

For testing, note that the back-end support for BoM (which has recently received a “significant” performance update) is now grid-wide on Agni (the Main grid).

Environmental Enhancement Project (EEP)

Project Summary

A set of environmental enhancements allowing the environment (sky, sun, moon, clouds, 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 which include the ability to use custom Sun, Moon and cloud textures. These can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others, and can additionally be used in experiences.

The project also includes a new set of render shaders to support atmospheric effects such as rainbows, crepuscular rays (“God rays”), better horizon haze and fogging (but will not include rain / snow).

Resources

Current Status

Rider continues work on the last of the SL functions for EEP support: llSetAgentEnvironment. This allows the environment parameters as applied to individual agents (avatars) within an experience (so if part of the experience requires the environment to be foggy at a certain point, avatars in the experience will have their view become foggy – but visitors who have not allowed the experience to control their avatar (e.g. because they are just observing) will not be similarly affected).

This should be the last of the server-side updates for EEP, allowing Rider to re-focus his attention on the viewer, including updating the experience dialogue to inform users their environment may be modified (where applicable). It’ also hoped that when ready, the next update to the viewer will have more / the rest of the EEP shader updates included.

SL Permissions System

Sansar uses a “supply chain” permissions system. In short, this allows creators to offer goods that can be purchased by others, modified and resold at a higher price, with the original creator receiving a “commission” on each sale, based on the original item’s sale price.

This has generated some interest among content creators engaged in both Second Life and Sansar in seeing a similar system introduced here – or perhaps in extending the Full Permissions option to additionally limit the further resale of unmodified Full Permission items.

However, any changes to the permissions system can have significant impact, and as such, are not something the Lab is liable to approach lightly or tackle in the short-term (or, as Vir Linden puts it, tends to have Lab engineers hiding under the furniture at the thought of changes! 🙂 ).

In Brief

  • A reminder that if there are specific improvements people wish to see with Second Life, feature request Jira are the best way to bring them to the attention of the Lab.
  • Vir Linden is currently working on a set of under-the-hood inventory improvements. After this, he will likely work on various “low hanging fruit” fixes within the viewer, etc.
  • The texture caching project is currently gated by the work on the rendering side of EEP, however, TPVs are advised not to make any significant changes to how they handle texture caching because of the Lab’s own project.
  • The code for Linden Realms is to be open-sourced – read here for more.
  • The next CCUG meeting will be on Thursday, December 13th, 2018.

2018 SL UG updates 48/1: Simulator User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey

Nowhere Else; Inara Pey, October 2018, on FlickrNowhere Else – blog post

Server Deployments

As anticipated following US Thanksgiving, there are no planned deployments for week #48, but a new RC deployment is expected in week #49 (commencing Monday, December 3rd, 2018).

SL Viewers

The EEP viewer updated on Tuesday, November 27th, 2018 to version 6.0.0.521947.

  • Current Release version 6.0.0.520636, dated October 18, promoted November 14. Formerly the Animesh RC viewer – NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.0.1.521759, November 20.
    • Spotykach Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.0.1.521757, November 15.
    • Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer, version 5.2.0.520057, September 28.
    • BugSplat RC viewer, version 5.1.9.519462, September 10. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

EEP Updates

As well as the viewer update, the Snack channel received a simulator update for EEP. Rider is working on the last of the SL functions for EEP support: llSetAgentEnvironment. This will require viewer-side support, which Rider describes as possibly being “tricky”.

In Brief

  • BUG-216320 “Error when retrieving grid statistics page via llHTTPRequest”: this has been partially fixed for requests using HTTP. There are still issues when using HTTPS.
  • BUG-7084 “Prim properties visually revert to an earlier state since Interesting”: unfortunately, no progress on this.
  • Firestorm – Animesh when? This is a frequent question with the Firestorm support groups. There had been a couple a blockers, which are in the process of being resolved, and the hope is the latest development cycle will be completed soon, allowing further user testing to take place.

2018 SL UG updates 47/1: Simulator User Group and News

Posted on by Inara Pey
Winter Wonderland

Server Deployment Plans

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest news and updates.

  • On Tuesday, November 20th, the SLS (Main) channel was updated with server release 18#18.11.09.521593, previously deployed to the RC channels and comprising internal fixes.
  • There are no planned deployments to the RC channels.

Due to the Fact the Lab is closed from Thursday onwards, it is unlikely there will be any deployments in week #48 (commencing Monday, November 26th).

SL Viewer

The Love Me Render RC viewer updated to version 6.0.1.521759 on November 20th, bringing it to parity with the Animesh release viewer.

Currently, the rest of the viewers in the official pipeline remain unchanged. Given this is US Thanksgiving week, the remaining viewers due an update for parity with the current release viewer may not be issued until week #48.

  • Current Release version 6.0.0.520636, dated October 18, promoted November 14. Formerly the Animesh RC viewer – NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Spotykach Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.0.1.521757, November 15.
    • Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer, version 5.2.0.520057, September 28.
    • BugSplat RC viewer, version 5.1.9.519462, September 10. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

EEP

The next EEP function to see light of day should be llReplaceAgentEnvironment, that should allow an experience to override any environment setting currently being used by an avatar within that experience.

General News

Thanksgiving – Support Closed

Concierge Phone Support, Billing Phone Support, and Live Chat Support will be closed on Thursday and Friday, November 22nd & 23rd in observance of the US Thanksgiving holiday. Ticket submission will remain available, and support services will resume Saturday, November 24th, at 06:00 PST / SLT.

Winter Wonderland and 5 Weeks of Gifts

Winter Wonderland, the five-region activities area designed by Linden Lab and the LDPW, has reopened for the holiday season,, and the Lab is using it as the first swap on a gift hunt, which itself features the return of the Swaginator.  Find out more via Grab Your Winter Swaginator & Collect Exclusive New Gifts!

 

2018 SL UG updates 46/2: TPV Developer meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
The EEP sky over the Linden Hippotropolis region, designed by Whirly Fizzle. Credit: Whirly Fizzle

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, November 16th, 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.

This was again a short meeting.

SL Viewer

Video: 1:10-3:37.

  • The Spotykach Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 6.0.1.521757 on November 15th.
  • The Environmental Enhancement Project (EEP) viewer updated to version 6.0.0.521803 on November 16th.

These updates bring both viewers up to parity with the newly promoted Animesh release viewer. The remainder of the viewer pipeline remains as:

  • Current Release version 6.0.0.520636, dated October 18th, promoted November 14th. Formerly the Animesh RC viewer – NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 5.1.10.521635, November 13th.
    • Estate Access Management (EAM) RC viewer, version 5.2.0.520057, September 28th.
    • BugSplat RC viewer, version 5.1.9.519462, September 10th. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17th, 2017 and promoted to release status 29th November 2017 – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

Bakes On Mesh

The back-end support is now grid-wide, meaning that Bakes on Mesh can be tested by anyone using the project viewer, which itself will be updated, both to bring it into parity with the new release viewer and with further BoM fixes.

BugSplat Update

[11:55-14:40] There are Four things to note with Bugsplat:

  • As noted above, it will see the Lab switch to using the BugSplat system for crash reporting, rather than their  own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
  • The Breakpad support code will remain in place with a build time option, so that TPVs wishing to continue to use it can do so.
  • The current parent process that handles viewer launch and also updates, will be removed. This means there will be some internal differences to how the viewer updater works, and one of the two executables for the viewer will vanish.
    • On windows, if the viewer is installed using an account that does not have admin privileges, the viewer installer will install as a local instance in the user’s local applications folder.
  • It will also resolve the viewer having 2 dock icons on MacOS.

In Brief

Group Notifications

[3:34-4:40] A resource has been assigned to look into the unreliable delivery of group notices. It appears the reason some notices are being received when people log-in to Second Life is because they are not actually being recorded in the database that manages the delivery of things like off-line notices. Investigations are therefore focused on backtracking through the various systems to work out where things are breaking down.

EEP On Legacy Viewers

[5:04-6:24] It’s been noted that when seen of non-EEP viewers, applied EEP skies appear odd – stars persistently overlay the sky and fail to render correctly, for example.

This is because the simulator end of EEP tries to take the environment and tries to approximate it for delivery to non-EEP viewers using the “old” environment settings system for delivery to those viewers – something that works at best imperfectly. The Lab has not determined how much effort will be put into making EEP fully backwards compatible with the older environment rendering system, as the issues should only exist through a transitional period as the viewer-side EEP code reaches all maintained viewers.

The same sky seen at the top of this article, but through a non-EEP viewer, demonstrating how an EEP environment is translated for rendering on a non-EEP viewer

Duplicate Calling Cards

[21:35-24:00] This was an issue some time ago that saw people’s calling cards duplicated – sometimes multiple times. The core issue was largely corrected, so people with duplicates could generally delete them and not see further duplications. However, duplicates could sometimes still be created as a result of inventory issues a logging-in, and sometimes clearing duplicates requires a request to support to run and inventory transform.

Thanksgiving USA

Week #47 (commencing Monday, November 19th, 2018) is Thanksgiving week in the United States. This means there will be limited updates and releases during the week, and the Lab will be closed on Thursday and Friday, except for essential support.

2018 SL UG updates 46/2: content Creation Summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Animesh is live!

The following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on Thursday, November 15th, 2018 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are usually available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

Animesh

Animesh is now officially released. Blog posts:

This means that the Animesh code will now be merged with all current RC and project viewers in the coming days /  weeks. Firestorm support for Animesh will be coming soon, as is the other case for TPVs that have not already started making releases with Animesh support.

Resources

To help people get started with Animesh, there is already a range of available resources, including:

Discussion

  • Concern has been raised about the 2 Animesh attachment option for Premium members impacting performance at major events given the lack of “public” testing of the ability (which had always stated as being one Animesh attachment per avatar across the board).
    • Interestingly, when the one Animesh attachment per avatar was first set, it was seen as too limiting, with some wanting as many as five per avatar.
  • The tri count cap remains unchanged at 100K per Animesh.

Environmental Enhancement Project (EEP)

Project Summary

A set of environmental enhancements allowing the environment (sky, sun, moon, clouds, 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 which include the ability to use custom Sun, Moon and cloud textures. These can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others, and can additionally be used in experiences.

The project also includes a new set of render shaders to support atmospheric effects such as rainbows, crepuscular rays (“God rays”), better horizon haze and fogging (but will not include rain / snow).

Resources

Current Status

  • There are a couple of blockers that have come up on the next viewer update, and which are currently being worked on, and should hopefully be cleared by the end of the week.
  • The first scripted functionality for EEP is now available: llGetEnvironment. This:
    • Returns a list containing the current environment values for the parcel and region as a list of attributes.
    • Takes a list of attributes to retrieve in parameters and returns them in the order requested.
  • llGetTimeOfDay has also been revised in line with EEP.
  • Graham Linden is continuing to work on the rendering side, including crepuscular rays. He is however, also engaged in other work related to viewer rendering (such as project ARCTan).
    • As a part of Graham’s work, there is a further update to the EEP sky settings that will allow the atmospheric settings to be altered

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 viewer and 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 Bake Service, nor are they recognised as system wearables. Adding materials support may be considered in the future.

Resources

Current Status

  • The required Bake Service update (which in part allows the support of 1024×1024 textures) was deployed in week #46.
  • Anchor Linden is now working on updates to the viewer, which is considered to be the only blocker to Bakes on Mesh going live.
  • Additional channels have been added to the Bake Service already which include the left arm and left leg. A request following this update was to allow upper and lower body skin textures to these channels – this will not be a part of the initial Bakes on Mesh release.
  • It has yet to be tested, but as Animesh objects do not have the necessary shape support for the Bake Service to use, it is thought BoM will not work (or at least not work as anticipated) with Animesh attachments on an avatar.

Normal and Specular Maps Support Experiment

As noted in the project summary above, Bakes on Mesh will not by default support normal and specular maps when released.

However, in week #45, Cathy Foil suggested it might be possible to allow Bakes on Mesh to indirectly support normal and specular maps using a combination of three additional bake channels within the Bake Service and a scripted “applier” option, similar to current skin and clothing applier mechanisms.

Since that time, she’s been carrying out tests using the existing three Aux Bake Service channels, added to the system as a part of Bakes on Mesh. While the approach appears to work with normal maps, there are a number of questions relating to alpha blending, deriving specularity (normal maps use the alpha channels for specular power in the SL materials setup), etc. These would require more in-depth testing through a suitable viewer, and as such, this isn’t seen as a viable approach at this point in time.

New Projects

No decisions have been made as to what user-visible projects will come next.

  • There is an infrastructure related project for inventory, but this shouldn’t have user-visible impact.
  • Project ARCTan (avatar and object complexity calculation improvements) has been on hold, awaiting resources, which are now becoming available.
  • There are a mix of options in the pot for Animesh and BoM follow-ups, but any follow-on work hasn’t been officially defined.
  • There are a number of other potential projects the Lab isn’t ready to announce as moving forward just yet.

Next Meeting

The next CCUG meeting will be on Thursday, November 29th, 2018.