2019 TPVD meeting week #40

Posted on by Inara Pey
Clifton Forge, August 2019 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on October 4th, 2019. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording and providing it. This was a relatively short meeting, with the majority of the meeting conducted in text and revolving around Bakes on Mesh. This being the case, points are summarised below without the usual time stamps.

SL Viewer News

There have been no further updates to the official SL pipelines since the updates at the start of the week, leaving them as follows:

  • Current Release version 6.3.1.530559, formerly the Umeshu Maintenance RC viewer, dated, September 5th – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17th. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.530473, September 11th.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16th.
  • 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.

Brief Notes

  • As noted in my recent CCUG summaries, the Lab have recruited two more graphics experts (Euclid Linden and one other), who will be working on EEP and rendering projects once they are up to speed.
  • The new Voice update viewer should be going to QA in week #41 (commencing Monday, October 7th). This was delayed as a result of a last minute issue preventing it going to QA and then being issued this week.

Bakes on Mesh (BoM)

There is reportedly some confusion about Bakes on Mesh, with some users believing it means that “have” to switch back to using system wearables. This is not the case; those who wish to continue to use applier-based wearables can do so. Similarly, those who prefer to use mesh clothing can continue to do so. Bakes on Mesh is simply a means to allow system wearables to be used on mesh bodies and heads.

It is also hoped by the Lab that BoM will allow mesh head and body makers simplify their products by removing the need for some of the “onion” layers. This should reduce the rendering complexity of bodies and heads, making them less resource intensive to render.

For more detailed information on Bakes on Mesh, please refer to the following links:

Linden Lab:

Creator-related BoM documentation:

Informative Bakes on Mesh blog post:

In addition, Firestorm has created their own Bakes on Mesh wiki.

TPV Notes

  • Catznip has a BoM beta (and has done for a while), but release is pending some more work being completed.
  • Radegast is close to having a BoM release available.

The colour of love and implied horizons in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Lovers Art Gallery: Etamae

Currently open at The Lovers Art Gallery are two exhibitions that recently caught my attention: The Colour of Love and Implied Horizons, by artists Carelyna and Etamae respectively. The two exhibitions are split between the ground and upper floors of the gallery, with Implied Horizons occupying the lower of the two.

Active within Second Life photography and art since 2018, Etamae has established a reputation for presenting transformational images: captures from around Second Life that she has then edited and post-processed to create something quite different and striking to the eye. She has also, in some of her exhibitions, has presented pieces that have been of an organic, abstracted nature (see A late summer exhibition at the Rose Gallery, August 2018) that are as equally as captivating.

The Lovers Art Gallery: Etamae

With Implied Horizons, the focus is very much on the former of Etamae’s approaches: images from around Second Life that have undergone post-processing to give us something very different to the location or item that gave rise to them. The result is a baker’s dozen of images that are bold in tone, colour and presentation, some of which include perhaps a lean towards abstract in their finish (take Ferris, located on one of the easel at the front of the gallery space, for example), while one Ikea, has an almost surrealist aspect within it. All are richly engaging, demonstrating a marvellous eye for colour that gives several of the pieces – Two Stags and Town Limits, for example – a captivating sense of vitality.

On the upper floor, The Colour of Love presents 15 of Carelyna’s pieces. These offer something of a complimentary connection to the ground floor exhibition in that the majority of the pieces offered have also been post-processed, this time to give them the look and feel of paintings.

The Lovers Art Gallery: Carelyna

Given the title of the exhibition, it’s no surprise that several of the pieces in this selection are presented in warm reds, yellows, oranges, greens and soft browns, offering a feeling of warmth one might associate with love. However, even where colder colours – blue, white, grey and harder greens – are used, there is a sense of memory that suggests a recollection of intimate times.

Some of the places within these pictures may be easily familiar (perhaps most notably in the case of Calas Galadhon’s Santorini and also with Mandingo Quan’s Hazardous); other may tug at the seasoned SL’s traveller’s memory, although a right-click and examine might be required to bring the place properly to mind. However, wherever they were taken is really secondary to the emotional essence each contains. Meanwhile, there are two pieces that sit perhaps a little apart from the rest: Waiting for My Real Life to Begin and Autumn Wings. In comparison to the other images presented, Waiting… has undergone far less post-processing and retains the look and feel of a photograph while Autumn Wings has a soft, abstracted look to it. Different to the others they may seem to be, but again, there is no escaping their emotional power.

The Lovers Art Gallery: Carelyna

These are two engaging exhibitions, well presented, and with pieces that are fascinating to see and appreciate.

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Fleur: a region with a Dutch flavour in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Fleur Nederland [Dutch], October 2019 – click any image for full size

Magisch en kleurrijk dat is herfst op Fleur welkom op Fleur. Onze muziek is altijd goed.

“Magical and colourful, autumn is welcome at Fleur. Our music is always good” – so reads the About Land greeting for Fleur Nederland (allowing for my translation!). A Homestead region designed by Sammy Recreant and that has – as the welcome and name indicate – a Dutch flavour to it, we were led to visit on the suggestion of Shawn and Max. 

While the Dutch have a traditional Halloween-style celebration, Saint Martin’s Day on November 11th; although like many parts of the world they have perhaps absorbed more of what is regarded as the “American” approach to All Hallows Eve – pumpkin jack-o’-lanterns, trick-or-treating (rather than singing songs), and so on; and this is reflected within Fleur’s décor at the time of our visit. Thus, for the next few weeks visitors are liable to find a haunted house, witches, scuttling pumpkins (yes, scuttling), giant spider webs and more.

Fleur Nederland [Dutch], October 2019

Fleur’s landscape is now in the most beautiful colours that autumn brings. Come and have a look, enjoy the peace and colour. Welcome to colourful Fleur!

– Sammy Recreant, describing Fleur

Cast under a dusk heavy sky, Fleur offers a largely rural setting, heavily wooded and with scatted houses and other structures to attract visitors. There was no enforced landing point as the time of our visit, although one can be found in About Land, and I’ve used it as a starting point for this look around the region.

Fleur Nederland, October 2019

It’s actually good place to start, as it sits close to three of the public structures on the region – a cosy little garden hideaway watched over by sheep; a waterside barn converted for fine dining, reach via two stone arched paths; and – a little further away – a delightfully furnished stone-built cottage protected by a wall and grass embankments. Alongside and between these locations are dance systems offering visitors a chance for romance and gentle dancing.

Beyond these lie several more points of interest, all edged with hints of Halloween. There’s the little coastal chapel for example, a lone shelter sitting out on a headland and, to the south-west, a little dockside setting with wharves boats and little commercial properties set around a courtyard, all decorated for the holiday season and with the Dutch flag flying overhead. This area also have a bit of a North American feel, with adverts for New England lobster together with someone of a New England feel to the buildings.

Fleur Nederland [Dutch], October 2019 – “When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning or in rain? (Macbeth Act I, Scene I)
In the square there are further opportunities for couples and visitors to enjoy dancing – with the local radio station sitting on one of the wharves helping to make the area have a further celebratory feel. Take a walk out to the little ferry terminal and you’ll find a teleport disk. Right-click on it and select Teleport, and you’ll be lifted into the sky to the beach of Fleur, a wide expanse of largely flat sands and coastline modelled after the Dutch coastline along the Wadden Sea.

Currently with an incidental hint of Shakespeare with its Halloween dressing, rich with places for visitors and couples to enjoy, and with nice touches in the wildlife, Fleur makes for a pleasing visit, and those who enjoy Halloween hoping are also likely to enjoy dropping in.

Fleur Nederland [Dutch], October 2019

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Second Life: parent/child script communication issues

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Friday, October 4th, 2019 Linden Lab blogged about the recent script related issues that caused widespread disruption (notably with rezzing systems) across Second Life following the SLS (Main) channel deployment made on Tuesday, September 24th, 2019, and which ultimately resulted in a complete rollback from the grid on the 27th/28th September.

As noted in my Simulator User Group Updates, the release that caused the problems  – simulator release 2019-09-06T22:03:53.530715, included a number of updates intended to improve overall script performance, including how scripts are scheduled and events are delivered. However, these changes resulted in an unintended impact which, due to the region sampling, was not revealed by the update initially being deployed to a release candidate (RC) channel on Wednesday, September 11th.

The October 4th blog post from Linden Lab indicates that improvements have been made to the code, and once deployed, these should help prevent a recurrence of the problem. As an aside, it has been hoped that these updates might have been deployed to an RC channel on Wednesday, October 2nd, but a last minute bug prevented this (see: Deploy Plan for the week of 2019-09-30), so the updates will likely be deployed during week #41 (commencing Monday, October 7th).

However, even with the fixes, there blog post goes on to note there are come best practices when using parent / child script communications between a parent object and a child it rezzes:

One common cause of problems is communication between objects immediately after one creates the other. When an object rezzes another object in-world using llRezObject or llRezAtRoot, the two objects frequently want to communicate, such as through calls to llRegionSayTo or llGiveInventory. The parent object receives an object_rez() event when the new object has been created, but it is never safe to assume that scripts in the new object have had a chance to run when the object_rez event is delivered. This means that the new object may not have initialised its listen() event or called llAllowInventoryDrop, so any attempt to send it messages or inventory could fail. The parent object should not begin sending messages or giving inventory from the object_rez() event, or even rely on waiting some time after that event. Instead, the parent(rezzer) and the child(rezzee) should perform a handshake to confirm that both sides are ready for any transfer. 

The blog post goes on to define the sequence of events between a parent and rezzed child object as they should occur, and provides sample code for such parent / child operations.

An important point to note with this is that when the fix from the Lab is re-deployed, any scripts that still exhibit these kinds of communication issues will likely need to be altered by their creator to match the recommendations provided by the blog post.

Those wishing to know more are invited to read the original blog post in full, and address and questions and / or feedback through the associated forum thread.

Get more from the space you have via Mangrovejane’s video tutorial

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Mangrovejane

Blogger and vlogger Mangrovejane (Groves to her friends) has produced a nifty little video tutorial on using Second Life scene rezzers to help give a feeling of greater space in Second Life by allowing you to quickly and easily change the layout of one or more rooms (or even an entire house) without having to manually swap everything from inventory.

Scene rezzers are not new to SL – they’re pretty much as old as the hills (and again, just for clarity, I’m not referring to temp rezzers here – they are a nasty no-no); however, it is surprising how many people haven’t actually come across them – so Infinite Space: Making Your Second Life Land Work for You is liable to be a welcome eye-opener for many. At 17.25 minutes, it is informative and provides all the essential information on what’s required as well as clear and concise instructions on using the rezzer systems she opted to use (the RF Scene Rezzer and the Optimus Multi Rezzer).

I’ve long been an advocate of using rezzing systems (I save every design of out island home to one, allowing use to easily swap between houses / landscapes if we wish), and have blogged on the subject a couple of times in these pages:

In her video, Groves also discusses the use of the Curio Obscura Anywhere Door by Pandora Wrigglesworth, something I’ve used to create doorways in pre-built structures where doors don’t exist, rather than a TP system as we usually look upon them (see Still messing about in (house)boats in Second Life for example), and can again recommend.

Groves is planning a follow-up article to the video on her on her blog in due course, but in the meantime, I’m embedding her video below for those who haven’t seen and who don’t feel like reading my articles on the subject 🙂 . You can also check out more of her videos via her YouTube channel.

 

Sansar Product Meetings week #40: avatar updates + nudity in Sansar

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Nexus

The following notes were taken from my audio recording of the October 3rd (week #40) Sansar Product Meeting, which examined upcoming avatar updates and nakedness in Sansar. The official video is available on YouTube (and Twitch if you prefer) and is also embedded at the end of this summary.

Notes:

  • I was not present within Sansar for the meeting, but watching one of the streams, therefore the image captured from the demo video appear to be at odd angles due the positioning of the in-world camera used to relay the video.
  • Timestamps below will open the video of the meeting at the relevant point of discussion and in a separate tab. However, the topic summaries also include answers to questions raised in the Q&A session at the end of the meeting; therefore these will not be reflected in the video link.

Sansar Avatar

Pre-Morph Skeleton

[Video: 5:22-9:30]

  • The Avatar team is aiming for this to be available in the next major Sansar release, currently being scheduled for early November – but this is not a guarantee.
  • Gives custom avatars the ability to create differently sized and shaped avatars without being constrained to the Sansar base avatar.
    • Allows custom avatar creators to adjust bone translation (positioning) but not the bone rotation.
    • Providing they are correctly rigged, these differently sized and shaped avatars to correctly use Sansar emotes (“gestures” in SL parlance) and speech animations.
Pre-Morphing Skeleton – coming soon
  • Bone movement is being restricted to translations, and this works better with the automated animation re-targeting.
  • Part of this work also involves extending the Axis Aligned Bounding Box (AABB).
    • This is described as “not being a huge extension”, but is intended to offer a little more freedom in creating avatars and clothing.
    • It is likely to be constrained in terms of a (still TBD) minimum AABB and a maximum AABB.
  • Questions on the pre-morph skeleton from the Q&A session:
    • How far can bones be translated? As far as the minimum / maximum AABB limited allow.
    • If there is no bone rotation, will finger bones have to be in the same pose as the default avatar? Yes, although further testing may be carried out to see if this can be relaxed.

Additional Avatar Related Work

[Video: 9:34-20:00]

  • Camera movement in the avatar editor:
    • Work is in progress to involve the camera movement capabilities to address reported issues.
    • This is likely to include a more freecam style of camera movement to allow a better degree of panning and zooming when making very fine adjustments.
  • Avatar Skins:
    • Work is about to start on allowing custom skin uploads for the Sansar default avatar.
    • Creators will not initially be able to sell skins through the Sansar Store, but this will be added as the necessary licensing updates are made.
    • The system skins are being improved.
    • (From the Q&A session): will skin colour tinting be added? No. Tinting will be handled by swapping skin textures.
    • (From the Q&A session) will uploaded skins work with custom avatars? Initially, no; however, the option is being considered for a future update.
  • Full Body deformation:
    • Due to the feedback (particularly) concerning the avatar 2.0 base female shape, the avatar team is working to release full body deformation as soon as possible.
    • The plan is to have this working in a very similar manner to the face deformation.
    • Rigged clothing should adjust with the skeleton, and most of the deformation will be changing the size / shape of the skeleton.
    • Marvelous Designer™ clothing will use the clothing transform tools in the avatar editor.
      • Scaling / translating MD clothing is a challenge as it isn’t specifically rigged to the skeleton nor does it use skeletal bones.
      • LL and MD have been in conversation to see if MD could provide more information within MD files to allow for certain types of non-uniform scaling, and MD has indicated this is not possible on their end.
    • Part of this project may include the Sansar avatar team producing a wider range of base / starter avatars
      • For example: shapes and sizes that might be regarded as “standard” and worked for when creating custom avatars and also to help with producing clothing for different avatar “types”.
      • This feeds into attempts to limit market fragmentation (below).
  • Market fragmentation / Avatar Inventory:
    • There is already a degree of fragmentation in the store (avatar 1.0 clothing re-rigged for avatar 2.0; MD clothing, items for custom avatars, etc).
    • The Sansar team is looking to refine the Store and avatar inventory to make it easier to denote / see the types of avatar that items of clothing and accessories are designed to work with.
    • (From the Q&A session): for avatar inventory, this will likely include the ability to filter inventory contents.
    • (From the Q&A session): it is also hoped that the inventory improvements will include swapping (so if you are wearing a shirt and select another, the two will be swapped on your avatar, rather than both being worn).
  • Avatar editor lighting and background: LL are iterating on the lighting and improving the shadowing.
  • Facial Presets are being adjusted to give better starting points.

Contests

[Video: 20:35-23:00]

  • The idea has been floated that perhaps LL could run a contest for skin designers, with the winning skins being featured in the default inventory so users can view / use them and (via a right-click) see who made it.
  • If creators are interested in participating in this kind of contest, it could perhaps be extended to include avatars, etc.
  • Such competition would also include money or other practical prizes to rewards the creator’s time and effort.

Nudity in Sansar

[Video: 23:06-35:25]

  • New content guidelines will be available “shortly” in an attempt to clarify the rules around nudity.
  • In short:
    • Nudity is not permitted in Sansar.
    • Nudity is defined as something where there are visible genitalia, buttocks or breasts, especially with regards to humanoid avatars.
    • As a general rule, humanoid custom avatars should have underwear covering these body parts
      • This underwear should conform closely to the underwear seen on Sansar base avatars.
      • Changing the colour of the underwear is permitted, so long as the colour isn’t designed to blend with the skin to give the appearance of nakedness.
    • Certain humanoid forms that do not emphasise a sense of nakedness or that are not intentionally sexualised (such as the character show on the right by Sansar user Polygon) may be permitted.
    • Anthropomorphic avatars (animals, fruit, etc.) and nudity:
      • Such avatars do not necessarily have to have underwear, providing they are not being intentionality sexualised / showing genitalia, etc., in an attempt to bypass the guidelines.
      • Fur or feather coats on humanoid type avatars is OK, again providing they are not otherwise being intentionally sexualised.
  • The nudity guidelines will also extend to custom skins, once the capability to upload them is added to the platform.
  • Clothing that is also intentionally designed to show genitalia, etc. will be seen in violation of the nudity guidelines.
  • A point to remember with the nudity guidelines is that that are not something Linden Lab has arbitrarily set – rather, they are:
    • Intended to meet the expectations of content partners (.e.g. Sanrio, Levis®, etc.).
    • Allow Sansar to be offered to the widest audience of potential users without necessarily gating access to worlds, etc, and be a “family friendly” platform.
  • Avatars / content that is deemed to be in violation of the guidelines will be taken down.

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