2022 Puppetry Project weeks #36 and #38 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Puppetry demonstration via Linden Lab – see below.  Demos video with the LL comment “We have some basic things working with a webcam and Second Life but there’s more to do before it’s as animated as we want.”

The following notes have been taken from chat logs and audio recordings of the September 8th and September 22nd Puppetry Project meetings held at the Castelet Puppetry Theatre on Aditi. These meetings are:

  • Generally held on alternate weeks to the Content Creation User Group (CCUG), on same day / time (Thursdays at 13:00 SLT).
  • A mixed Voice / text chat format – attendees are not obligated to use voice when asking questions, but will need to listen to voice to hear the entire meeting.

Notes in these summaries are not intended to be a full transcript of every meeting.

Project Summary

  • Previously referred to as “avatar expressiveness”,
  • Puppetry is intended to provide a means by which avatars can mimic physical world actions by their owners (e.g. head, hand, arm movements) through tools such as a webcam and using technologies like inverse kinematics (IK) and the  LLSD Event API Plug-in (LEAP) system.
    • Note that facial expressions and finger movements are not currently enabled.
    • Most movement is in the 2D plain (e.g., hand movements from side-to-side but not forward / back), due to limitations with things like depth of field tracking through a webcam, which has yet to be addressed.
  • The back-end support for the capability is only available on Aditi (the Beta grid) and within the following regions: Bunraku, Marionette, and Castelet.
  • Puppetry requires the use of a dedicated viewer, the Project Puppetry viewer, available through the official Second Life Alternate Viewers page.
  • No other special needs beyond the project viewer are required to “see” Puppetry animations. However, to use the capability to animate your own avatar and broadcast the results, requires additional work – refer to the links below.
  • There is now a Puppetry Discord channel – those wishing to join it should contact members of LL’s puppetry team, e.g. Aura Linden, Simon Linden, Rider Linden, Leviathan Linden (not a full list of names at this time – my apologies to those involved whom I have missed).

Further Information

Bugs, Feature Requests and Code Submissions

  • For those experimenting with Puppetry, Jiras (bug reports / fixes or feature requests) should be filed with “[Puppetry]” at the start of the Jira title.
  • Those wishing to submit code (plug-ins or other) or who wish to offer a specific feature that might be used with Puppetry should:

Summary of September 8th Meeting

Note: timing issues on my part meant I was unable to attend the first third of this meeting.

  • It is acknowledged that the current Puppetry viewer (viewer branch DRTVWR-558) is somewhat crashy and subject to some looping issues.
  • One aspect of Puppetry that should be highlighted is the ability for it to work alongside / in concert with existing SL animations – so you can be running a dance animation and still wave to a friend using puppeteering without the two animations clashing.
  • It is acknowledged that to ensure some reasonable smoothness of movement and to prevent things like movement conflicts between joints, there will need to be a more formalised animation constraints system. The current plan is to make this configurable via XML.
  • It is also acknowledged that tracking in general needs to be tightened within the plug-in code.
  • Puppetry does not currently interact with the Havok physics system (puppetry is largely viewer-side; physics – with the exception of some special use sub-libraries – is largely simulator-side).
  • The protocols which are used server-side to support Puppetry are not set in stone at this point; cases which require additional messaging, etc. can be discussed with the Puppetry team members from the simulator / server side of LL (e.g. Rider and Simon Linden).
  • Direct avatar interactions (e.g. shaking / holding hands, swinging a tennis racket to strike a ball, etc.): the IK system could help enable this, but it would also require a lot more work on the avatar / world mapping system to be fully possible, and this work has yet to be tackled (if it is to be tackled as a part of this initial Puppetry work).
  • The project is, at this point, fairly open as to where it might go: these initial project meetings are geared towards developers who may be interested in contributing and pushing elements of the project forward (e.g. support for full body tracking, etc.). Obviously, at some point, constraints will be placed on what is to be initially delivered.

Plugins (Pros and Cons)

  • Requests were made for the Puppetry system to support OpenXR (as well as LEAP). It was indicated that OpenXR would be considered as a default if a suitable plug-in were to be developed and contributed to Linden Lab for proper vetting and formal inclusion in the viewer.
  • The fact that the Puppetry project is using plug-ins raised concerns over system security. Plug-ins are executable, and so if accepted to run, a malicious plug-in could do considerable harm to a person’s system.
    • LL is aware of this, and is actively trying to minimise risk as far as possible.
    • However, safety also lay with users – do not download viewers from unofficial sites / sites that cannot be trusted; do not accept and run plug-ins that are passed around through forums, etc.
  • The benefits of using plug-ins was summarised as:
    • Speed of internal development / testing: there is no need to run a complete viewer build process simply because a couple on lines of code have been changed in testing; only the plug-in needs to be updated.
    • Extensibility: plugs-ins allow for more flexible support of additional creation tools or to add support for additional data formats (e.g. as with OpenXR) / hardware / programming languages (e.g. Python, C++, etc.).
    • Performance: using plug-ins allows the required additional processing such as webcam capture, processing and translation to be handed-off the separate processing threads within a computer from the viewer, thus preventing the latter losing performance by having to do the processing itself.
    • User assurance: removing things like the webcam controls to a plug-in that is not run by default as a de facto part of the viewer’s processing will (hopefully) remove fears about webcams somehow being used to “spy” on users.

Summary of September 22nd Meeting

  • It is hoped an updated version of the Puppetry Project Viewer will be available via the Alternate Viewers page in week #39 (commencing Monday, September 26th). This includes fixes and updates to the motion logic that should make avatar motion more predictable.
  • In terms of device support for puppeteering, any device that can be recognised as a joystick should be supportable within the Puppetry viewer (utilising the existing Joystick support options through Preferences) – although some refinement to the controls may be required via LL.
  • LSL support for puppeteering: nothing has been defined at present, but there are some ideas as to what might be needed / nice to have. It has been suggested LSL support is a subject for discussion at the next meeting.
  • Simon Linden has pushed a couple of capabilities:
    • A simple poser contained in a side branch of the LEAP repository. This reads a basic JSON file with bone positions (rotations)  for all 133 bones in the avatar skeleton and sends it as LEAP data to the viewer for animating the avatar. Thisfile can be live-edited, and is desgined to help those working with puppeteering  to experiment with it in an easy format – it will not be an end feature for the project.
    • Added a further branch to the Puppetry viewer repository called DRTVWR-558 Data Packing. This converts the data going from the viewer to the server onwards to a more efficient format, allowing the full animation data set to be contained in  a single packet for transmission.
      • However, this format is incompatible with the existing data format used within viewers built via DRTVWR-558; so as viewers are built using the newer code, this will not be able to show puppeteering using the older format, and vice-versa.
      • Those involved in experimenting with Puppetry should therefore switch to the viewer using the updated data format, once this is made available through the Alternate Viewer page, as it will be replacing the current data format going forward.
  • Leviathan Linden has suggested that if LL can transmit all bone data in compressed format, then they may not need to send IK targets and have the viewer manage the IK for all avatars in a scene, but rather have the viewer run the IK for a user’s avatar and then stream the avatar’s entire state, reducing the load on the viewer.

Pelvis Movement / Full Body Tracking / OpenXR Support

  • There was initial discussion about supporting local joint offsets and particularly off-setting the avatar pelvis to allow for subtle movements without actually moving the avatar.
    • This is somewhat similar to scripted animations, such as stands with an AO system – the avatar appears to step forward / back / walk in circle, but it is not physically moving as far as the simulator is concerned – the motions are the result of the avatar pelvis being offset from it’s actual position as seen by the simulator, and the animations running based on that offset.
    • There was some initial confusion over this and physically moving the avatar, as such, it was suggested this be referred to as “pelvis movement, rather than “offsetting joints / bones”.
  • Part of the reason for this discussion is because several non-Linden developers have been experimenting with partial and full-body tracking via OpenXR, and have found that not being able to move the pelvis within Puppetry can lead to issues of floating, etc., when an avatar kneels or crouches (as seen within existing SL animations) – the result of the legs being pulled up towards the pelvis, rather than the pelvis being moved towards the ground.
  • In addition this work has noted:
    • If Second Life were to return the “full” appearance data for an avatar (i.e. after allmesh transforms, slider data,, baked appearance information, etc.) has been applied, rather than the “raw” skeletal appearance, better calculations could be made around the pelvis height from the floor.
    • The approach works equally well with partially body tracking via a Rift S headset, and fully body tracking using alve headsets and Kinect devices.
    • However, it currently uses Blender as a conduit for translating movement within an OpenXR rig to the Second Life puppeteering rig, and would benefit enormously from a dedicated OpenXR plug-in, and the developers are willing to provide data data gathered from the work they’ve thus far completed to help facilitate this.
    • Separately to this, OPEN-363 “[Puppetry] [LEAP]: Add native OpenXR plugin” has been raised, but is (at the time of writing) awaiting review.
  • The above formed a nucleus of the discussion for much of the meeting with the ability to move the avatar pelvis now being seen as more of a priority requirement, with Leviathan Linden indicating they will try to look specifically at this between now and the next meeting.

Date of Next Meeting

Art and a walk in Southern Corsica in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Corsica Tourist Centre and Tea Garde – start of the CSC Art Trail

A while back, and via Owl Dragonash, I received an invitation to explore (and possibly participate in) the Art Trail at Corsica South Coasters. While I have not directly participated, I did finally manage to get my bum and feet over to Corsica and take a walk along the Art Trail – and enjoyed doing so.

As the name suggests, the Art Trail is an open-air walk along the southern coast of Corsica, winding its way between the Corsica Tourist Centre and Tea Garden and Port Emyniad, with the former noted at the starting point; although there is no reason why trail-walkers can start from the Port and follow the signs backwards – there is no order into how the path is followed and the order in which the art is viewed.

CSC Art Trail, Corsica – just follow the signs!

It’s a route that takes in a number of sights along the south coast of Corsica, including gallery spaces at Port Emynaid and Ceakay Ballyhoo’s gallery (Ceakay is one of those – along with Owl, Catori Mistalker and Bijoux Barr – responsible for the trail) and others, as well as the trail itself marked both by trailside signs and mounted art from participating artists, either just for exhibition purposes or for sale.

The walk takes about 5-6 minutes when going directly from point-to-point. However, such is the nature of the walk, coupled with the opportunities to witness the art on display both along the trail and within the many studio galleries, and well as catching other points of interest along the way.  Doing so can draw a walk out into a very pleasant stroll, with the route itself home to a number of teleport station that provide access to additional points of interest within Corsica.

CSC Art Trail – Isle Biedermann and MJ Biedermann (MarjorieBrickard)

The Art Trail is intended to be an “eternal” art display (although pieces and galleries might naturally change over time), and artists from across Second Life are invited to participate along the trail-side art frames. Artists wishing to have work displayed along the walk can do so by:

  • Select one piece of their art as both a texture an a framed / on canvas piece of part – both to be set to Full permissions.
  • Send the art and texture in a folder to Ceakay Ballyhoo, together with the following:
    • If the art is to be sold – the permissions to be set against the art if it is to be sold & the price at which it is to be offered.
    • A copy of your biography as an artist and / or information on the art you would like to share.
  • Ceakay will then set the art up on one of the available art frames along the trail.
The galleries at Port Emyniad

Any question about the Art Trail should be directed to one of Ceakay Ballyhoo, Bijoux Barr (bijouxbarr) or Catori Mistalker.

SLurl Details

The romance of Cap Thunderbird in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Cap Thunderbird, September 2022 – click any image for full size

Occupying a Full private region utilising the LI bonus, Cap Thunderbird is held by Buzz Thunderbird (BuzzFlashMcQueen) and offered as a public setting for all who wish to visit. It is a location of two distinct halves, separated by a high curtain of cliffs cutting almost completely across the region from west to east, but each half nevertheless equally accessible to the other, and both fully open to visitors to appreciate and explore.

The main landing point sits within the southern half of the region, which has been designed by Buzz as a wedding venue and parklands. Whlist the wedding setting offers plenty to see, it is northern part of the region on which I wish to focus. This can be reached by teleporting over the cliffs – there is no hard-and-fast landing point – or by crossing the bridge from the main landing point and then heading west, past the wedding pavilion before re-crossing the stream and following the path under the stone arches and around the western feet of the cliffs.

Cap Thunderbird, September 2022

This northern part of the region is presented as a romantic park with something of a water theme. It is rich in detail and – for me at least – somewhat mindful in part of places such as Yorkshire’s Fountains Abbey (even though there is no direct similarity), thanks to the large ruins sitting along the west side of the region. Built using elements from The Chapel Ruins from The Looking Glass (and a personal favourite of mine, having frequently adorned my island home).

Buzz’s build makes good use of elements from the Chapel, allowing an extensive structure to be put togethe without any sense of repetition. It sits before a body of water cutting into the landscape, the drowned pillar and walls of more ruins (also re-uses of the TLG Chapel Ruins) rising above the waves as if gasping for air.

Cap Thunderbird, September 2022

Nor is the abbey the only gathering of ruins; across the waters of the inlet and over the grasslands to the east sits a further ruin. Its thick walls suggest it may have once served a defensive purpose – although the wide window bays say otherwise, as do the buttresses that still support parts of its remaining walls, both speaking to this having also been a religious building. These ruins are abutted by the remnants of a water mill. Of wooden construction, it stands roofless but with wheel intact and steadfastly turning in opposition to the waters of the stream passing below.

Offering a step-by-step description of what to see / where to go isn’t really useful here, given teleports within the region are so open – but there are various points of interest that should be noted. The first is that the main landing point can furbish visitors with a teleport HUD.

Cap Thunderbird, September 2022 – wedding venue

Whilst somewhat on the large size, given its functionality, the latter allows visitors to hop to a number of points of interest in the region, including the Hidden Gardens and the Underwater setting, located beneath the waters of the inlet. A further location available via the HUD and also directly via a board at the region’s main landing point, is Desolation, a small diorama sitting in the sky.

Birds and waterfowl have clearly made this park their home and can be found throughout, whilst deer roam the grasslands. Across the landscape lie pools and lakes of flowers adding broad swathes of colour to the setting, some of them caught in the shimmering fall of beams of light.

Cap Thunderbird, September 2022

The latter fall from a sky which (together with some of the wildlife) betray this place as not being a part of England’s northern counties, but somewhere otherworldly. Cloud-like in form, this sky is cut by an arc of brilliant white, whilst beneath the cloudly backdrop hang sparking points of light, perhaps stars set againts the cloudy grey of a nebula, whilst as the time passes, so the arcs of Moons (or other planets) can at time be seen.

Those wishing to explore this land via other means than using their pedal extremities can do so using the teleport HUD already mentioned, or by using the little motorboat to putter around the waters, or partake of a flying bubble available from the rezzer hidden amongst the trees, or via a sedate ride in a hot air balloon. The latter two offer the means to hop up and over the cliffs separating the two sides of the region, thus offering an alternate means of exploring both.

Cap Thunderbird, September 2022

With multiple places to sit and relax, and finished with a suitable soundscape, Cap Thunderbird offers a relaxed and romantic setting with multiple opportunities for photography and – of course- an engaging wedding venue. My thanks (as ever!) to Shawn Shakespeare for the landmark!

SLurl Details

Serena Riviera is rated Moderate

2022 SUG meetings week #38 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Tourtour de Prouvenco, July 2022 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, September 20th, 2022 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording it.

Server Deployments

For the most up-to-date information, please refer to the deployment forum thread.

  • On Tuesday, September 20th, the simhosts on the Main SLS channel were updated with simulator release 574921,  comprising the fixes from release 574611 + BUG-232593 “Mesh physics shapes changing unexpectedly when rezzed on a 574611 sim”, introduced with that update.
  • On Wednesday, September 21st, the simhosts on the RC channels will be restarted without any deployment, leaving them on simulator release 574921.

Available Official Viewers

On Monday, September 19th, Maintenance P RC viewer updated to version 6.6.5.575055.

The rest of the current official viewers remain as:

  • Release viewer: version 6.6.4.575022 – hotfix for Crash at ~LLModalDialog() – promoted September 15.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance 3 RC viewer, version 6.6.4.574727, September 1.
  • Project viewers:
    • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.3.574545,  issued on August 30.
    • Love Me Render (LMR) 6 graphics improvements project viewer 6.6.2.573263, July 21.
    • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.5.4.571296, May 10.

In Brief

  • The next simulator maintenance release will have two new functions llGetObjectLinkKey (specified under llGetLinkKey) and llSHA256String. These should be available for testing on “a few regions” (no names specified) on Aditi by Thursday, September 23rd.
    • There are two further feature requests for an llHash function – BUG229023 and BUG-41440.
  • A further dicussion on region crossings, initially focused on BUG-230934.
  • The recent Mediaon a Prim (MOAP) exposures were raised at the meeting, together with the general prboem of MoAP vulnerabilities – but given media handling is viewer-centric, there was little to be said from the Lab’s side in terms of addressing problems (although the upcming tool chain upates for the viewer should at least allow LL to adopt more recent and better secured Chrome Embedded Framework (CEF) versions).

2022 viewer release summaries week #37

Posted on by Inara Pey
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation

Updates from the week through to Sunday, September 18th, 2022

This summary is generally 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.
  • Note that for purposes of length, TPV test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are generally not recorded in these summaries.

Official LL Viewers

  • Release viewer: version 6.6.4.575022 – hotfix for Crash at ~LLModalDialog() – promoted September 15 – NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts::
    • No updates.
  • Project viewers:
    • No updates.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

V1-style

  • Cool VL (maintained): 1.30.0.17 (Stable) and 1.301.0 (Linux – experimental branch) both updated September 17 – release notes.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

An Art Walk + 3 in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
UASL, September 2022: Roxksie Logan

It was back to the ever-evolving United Artists of Second Life (UASL), the community “for artists … by artists”, for me at the start of the week to catch-up on a couple of art exhibitions there, both of which opened this month: the Art Walk and the respective work of a trio of artists who are being exhibited together at the UASL’s Galerie Principale.

Presented by Michiel Bechir, Art Walk offers the work of Blip Mumfuzz, Elfwym, Georgie Iceghost, Harlow Isabelle Stoop, Jamison, Karly Kas, Mara Telling, Owl Dragonash, Susietea, and Violette Rembrandt (Myra Wildmist is listed on the invite note card, although I didn’t find any of here work along the walk), all of whom present four images apiece located in a open-air lawn sitting between the futuristic building of UASL’s galleries and supporting buildings.

UASL, September 2022: Art Walk

Ranging from landscape images captured within Second Life to animal studies from the physical world, to digital paintings, Art Walk is an easy-on-the-eyes exhibition that brings together a wealth of photographic, painting, and post-processing styles and techniques, with visitors able to wander around the lawn and viewer each artist’s quartets of images at their leisure, with bio givers alongside the works present the chance to learn more about each of the artists.

Occupying three of the floors within UASL’s Galerie Principale are a trio of exhibitions by BijouxBarr (ground floor), Nodome (second floor) and Roxksie Logan (third floor): three very different artists brought together in a trio of exhibits which are individually and collectively engaging to the eye.

UASl, September 2022: BijouxBarr

Within her section, Bijou presents a selection of art in two parts. To one side is a set of landscape paintings. Bright, their colours in places almost over-saturated, these are pieces that breathe life through their colour. Across the hall, are eight images of an altogether different nature – portraits, both human and animal, and fantasy pieces. Containing their own tonal quality that is completely distinct from the landscapes, these are marvellous walks through the imagination.

Nodome is an artist whose work I don’t think I’ve encountered before – more is the pity – as she has much to say, both through her art and in words. These are pieces ranging from the sexual (if not conventionally so), through the abstract to the expressionist. Each has a richness of narrative rippling through it.

UASL, September 2022: Nodome

Roxksie Logan is an artist whose work I’m very familiar with, and whom I’ve always enjoyed for her ability to offer images and installations that challenge perceptions and thinking. Here, on the third level of the gallery she presents the most captivating of digital images (as per the image at the top of this article). Rich in colour, enfolding elements of fantasy, cyberpunk, science-fiction, and with a look and tone that is fanciful, alien and familiar – all by the same measure, these are a tour de force of digital artistry at its finest.

Both Art Walk and the display at Galerie Principle sit as just two among the gathering of galleries and art spaces that being UASL to life. As such, when visiting, do take the time to explore and visit the other exhibitions awaiting discovery – or better yet, take the time to make several visits to explore UASL properly, if you’ve not previously done so.

SLurl Details

Note that Karpov is rated Moderate.