Tag: Catznip Reviews

Catznip version R13 surfaced on Sunday, January 2nd, 2022 as the current release version of the viewer. It comes some two years after the last full public release of the viewer – although there have been interim releases of “alpha / beta” versions during that time. As such, it is a significant release in terms of Catznip moving back towards a good degree of parity with the official SL viewer.

In reference to the official viewer, this release see Catznip:

• Reach full parity with SLV release 6.4.12.555248 (Dawa maintenance viewer, promoted to de facto release status, February 1st, 2021)
• Incorporate:
  • The Environment Enhancement Project (with Catznip improvements).
  • The Camera Presets capability (again, with Catznip improvements).

As always, full details of the changes and updates in this Catznip release are available through the official release notes; what follows is a general summary of the more interesting updates.

Linden Lab Derived Updates

Environment Enhancement Project (EEP)

The Environment Enhancement Project (EEP) was officially released on April 20th, 2020, and incorporated into numerous Catznip “alpha/beta” builds, but R13 marks the first “full” release of the viewer to incorporate EEP functionality.

A complete overhaul and replacement of the Windlight system, EEP is a complex capability which has been covered expensively in blog posts and tutorials including within this blog. As such, I will just drop a couple of links in here for those who may need a further introduction to / understanding of EEP and its capabilities:

• Second Life: EEP – the Environment Enhancement Project – a very brief overview with official introductory video.
• Environment Enhancement Project: a primer – a more detailed introduction to EEP, including overviews of the various panels and floaters.
• Tutorial: Environment Enhancement Project (EEP) – a comprehensive examination of all EEP capabilities.

However, Catznip R13 incorporates a number of refinements over the original EEP implementation, as outlined below.

EEP Quick Preferences: The Catznip Quick Preferences panel has been updated to provide a set of EEP options. This includes:

• Buttons to apply a region’s or parcel’s Shared Environment and to access the Personal Lighting floater.
• Individual sections for selecting / editing Fixed Sky, Day Cycle and Water settings, each with:
  • A drop-down list of available settings, defined by those in your inventory → Settings folder and those in the Library →  Environments folder.
  • The ❮ [left] and ❯ [right] buttons to cycle you through each type of setting.
  • A wrench button to open the Edit floater for each class of setting.
  • Day Cycles only:
    • Radio buttons for selecting the Sun or Moon
    • Azimuth and Elevation sliders tied to the radio buttons to adjust the position of the Sun or Moon.
• A Reapply Current Windlight at logon check box, which does precisely what it says when checked.
• An Interpolate Preset Changes checkbox. When checked, this will transition you from one setting to the next over 5 seconds; if unchecked, transitions between EEPs will occur fairly instantly.

Edit Library EEP Assets: Under most EEP implementations, those contained within the Library → Environments folder must first be copied to a user’s inventory (e..g to the Settings folder).

Catznip R13 allows users to open EEP assets within Library → Environments directly into the appropriate edit panel (highlight the asset, then right-click on it and select Open) the Windlight settings straight from the library (right-click inventory / Open). This allows changes to be made to the settings, which can be saved to inventory (e.g. within the Settings folder) using the edit panel’s Save As option (or, if the changes are to be temporary, Apply Only To Myself can be used without creating a new inventory asset).

Active EEP Asset indicator: Catznip R13 will display “(active)” alongside the currently active EEP asset / settings in both inventory and the My Environments floater.

General panel / floater clean-up: the majority of the EEP panels and floaters have been cleaned up to reduce their footprint without feeling too cramped.

Camera Presets

The ability to create and save custom Camera Presets (how the viewer camera is positioned) became part of the official release viewer release viewer in the first half of 2020, and which finds its way into the Catznip release viewer with R13.

Again, I’ve covered the capability in depth within: Tutorial: Viewer Camera Presets, so those unfamiliar with the capability should refer to that document – keeping in mind it directly reference the official viewer. However, Catznip have implemented the capability with their own updated Camera floater, which also includes a couple of options specific to the viewer, and this panel and its options is outlined below.

• A gear icon opens the Presets panel, where the default set of Camera positions (e.g. Front, Rear, Side), can be amended to suit personal needs, and where additional custom presets can be created (via the New button within the panel).
  • Note the Catznip Camera Prresets panel also allows the setting of the viewer’s field of view, an option not included in the official implementation of Camera Presets.
• All presets (default and custom) can be accessed via a drop-down list at the top of the camera floater – click the arrow to the right of the button to open the drop-down and then click on the required preset.
• The Zoom and Field of View sliders:
  • Using the Camera icon, the Zoom camera slider does what its name states: zooms the camera in and out.
  • Using the Eye icon, the Field of View slider  controls the field of view (Ctrl-8 / Ctrl-0) which is more commonly used to ‘zoom’ in tight to an attachment for editing.
  • Note that both of these sliders will refer to their defaults on tapping Esc.  If you wish to set a new Field of of View, this should be done by creating a new preset.
• Catznip have also included Penny Patton’s popular over-the-shoulder presets within R13.

 Catznip Updates

Resolution Scale

Viewer frame rates (FPS) can be a problem for some, and while Linden Lab is attempting improvements to address this, Catznip R13 includes one of the Catznip team’s approaches to boosting FPS – altering the screen resolution scale in the viewer.

A new slider, Resolution Scale, has been added to the Advanced Graphics Presets panel (Preferences → Graphics click Advanced Settings … button).  By default, this is set to the highest resolution of your monitor, and but can be reduced by up to half of that resolution by moving the slider to the left. Doing so should improve viewer FPS – but will make the scene resolution displayed on your screen look increasingly blocky.

Other Updates of Note:

• Places Search tab: Catznip R13 adds the following capabilities to the Legacy Places search tab:
  • Pressing Enter within the text input field will search on the text in the field (as will click the Search button).
  • Pressing Enter or double-clicking on a specific search result will teleport yo to that location.
• CATZ-530 – Group Notice Creation: when writing a Group notice, the number of remaining characters is displayed under the text entry field.
• CATZ-547 – Option to turn off extra lighting that is applied when editing appearance.
• CATZ-557 – Improve initial opening time for the landmarks floater (+ improved filtering performance).
• CATZ-584 – Give visual feedback when using an invalid regex for an inventory search.
• CATZ-593 – Add option to sort Nearby and Friends list by username.
• CATZ-594 – Opening the feedback floater should give focus to the feedback form.
• CATZ-601 – Increase default and minimal texture cache size.

Again, please refer to the official blog post from the Catznip team for a complete list of updates and fixes.

Feedback

Catznip still lags somewhat behind the official viewer in terms of more recent releases from the latter, but this release gives a good base on which to build and catch up. Points worthy of note for me are:

• EEP Quick Preference Tab – well considered, and with more-or-less the right options.
• Camera Presets – good to see them “officially arrive” in Catznip, and the reworking of the Camera floater and the Camera Presets floaters / panels is very well done.

Even so, and again from a personal perspective, Catznip still isn’t quite there in terms of becoming my viewer of choice – in that regard Kokua has currently overtaken it in terms of an alternative to Firestorm, but I remain swayed towards the latter purely because of the Phototools floater and its tabs – it simply offers everything I need in a nice, convenient package that Catznip R13’s EEP Quick Preference tab doesn’t fully match and Kokua really lacks – although it does offer more that is up-to-date with the official viewer than either Firestorm or Catznip.

That said, for Catznip users, there should be little, if anything, in R13 to complain about.

Related Links

• Catznip 13 Release Notes
• Catznip Download page

Catznip version R12.3 surfaced on Tuesday, October 15th, and made it the default download / update version on Wednesday, October 16th.

This is a maintenance release, following on from version 12.2, which saw a “de-coupling” of updates that are more focused on bug fixes and improvements from larger releases that include significant updates and new capabilities. However, it does include one major new feature: support for Linden Lab’s Bakes on Mesh capability.

As always, details of updates are available through the official release notes, although given the size of the update, just about everything included is noted below.

Linden Lab Derived Updates

Viewer Parity

This release brings Catznip to parity with Linden Lab viewer release 6.3.1.530559, formerly the Umeshu release candidate viewer (Dated September 5th, promoted to de facto release status by Linden Lab on September 10th).

Bakes on Mesh

R12.3 provides support for Bakes on Mesh (BoM). This is a capability to allow system wearable layers as used with the “classic” Second Life system avatar – skins, tattoos, underwear, shirt and jacket layers – to be used with mesh bodies and heads, and without the need for additional applier systems.

The system requires mesh bodies and heads to be “BoM enabled” – and many creators have already updated their products, or are in the process of updating their products to support Bakes on Mesh. In addition, some applier makers are producing applier systems that leverage Bakes on Mesh to apply wearables to mesh bodies and heads – although these may be limited in some respects due to differences between how skin textures and mesh bodies are made).

Through Bakes on Mesh, Linden Lab hopes:

• Users can avoid the need to use appliers, but can add wearables to their mesh avatar directly from inventory.
• Creators will be able to simplify avatar mesh bodies and heads by removing the need for some of the “onion” layers. This should – if done – reduce the rendering complexity for bodies and heads, thus hopefully improving people’s SL experience (as avatars won’t be quite so resource intensive or require quite so much “assembly time” when encountering them on logging-on or after teleporting somewhere).

Bakes on Mesh support is required to both use the BoM capability and to correctly view mesh avatars using BoM.

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

Linden Lab:

• Bakes on Mesh knowledge base article.
• Linden Lab Bakes On Mesh release notes – includes a list of known issues.
• Bakes on Mesh sub-forum.

Creator-related BoM documentation:

• Slink Redux and Bakes on Mesh FAQ – Slink brand specific and general Bakes on Mesh FAQ.
• Maitreya Bakes on Mesh – How to use BOM with the non-BoM Maitreya Lara mesh body.

• Bakes on Mesh – A Basic Primer – this blog.
• Get Baked – A Quick Beginners’ Guide to Using Bakes on Mesh – Virtual Bloke.

Catznip Fixes

Release 12.3 also includes the following updates from the Catznip team:

• Minor installer issues.
• Revert SL-1579 and allow taking rezzed items if their originating folder was Received Items.
• Crash in busy/crowded places while camming around (thank you Nicky from Firestorm).
• CATZ-532: Avatar (sometimes) ends up deformed when detaching something while an Animesh attachment is worn.
• CATZ-535: Remove Google+ links.
• CATZ-539: Creator Name on the build floater is always disabled.
• CATZ-542: Render Everyone As setting affects your own Animesh attachments.
• RLVa – FIRE-24230: Login crash when RLV @showloc restricted with no teleport history file.
• RLVa – BoM universal layer is missing from @getoufit.

Related Links

• Catznip 12.3 Release Notes
• Catznip Download page

Saturday, July 5th, 2019 saw the release of Catznip R12.2. With two major releases on the horizon from Linden Lab – Bakes On Mesh (BOM) and the Environment Enhancement Project (EEP) – R12.2 is intended to be primarily a maintenance and “quality of life” release.

Table of Contents Maintenance Releases Transition Times Linden Lab Updates Quick Preferences Worn Items Inventory Folder Button Inventory Improvements Show in Inventory Clear Inventory Filter on Close Collapse All Folders and Collapse to Folders Name Tag Hover Offset Feedback

In this, Kitty notes that starting with R12.2, she hopes to de-couple these smaller “maintenance” style of release from those containing major new features and capabilities, and to be able to make this style of release on a more regular basis as a result.

The following notes cover the key improvements seen with R12.2. For a full breakdown of the release including all improvements and bug fixes can be found in the Release Notes.

Maintenance Releases Transition Times

Kitty also notes that with these maintenance releases, there will be a shorter transition period before they become mandatory for all users. For R12.2, this means that it will become the default download from around July 19th. Therefore, if you experience any problems with R12.2, the request is that you contact the Catznip team sooner rather than later, or offer feedback via the viewer.

Linden Lab Updates

Catznip R12.2 brings the viewer up to parity with the (at the time of writing) current Linden Lab viewer – version 6.2.3.527758, formerly the Rainbow RC viewer dated June 5th and promoted on June 18th. This version specifically contains a Windows 10 fix for some Nvidia users, where on exiting Second Life, the system video is distorted. It was this update in particular that encouraged Kitty to release Catznip 12.2.

Quick Preferences Updates

Worn Items

With R12.2, Quick Preferences adds a further button to the Worn Items display. This uses the same shirt icon as the top-level buttons on the Quick Preferences panel, and when clicked, will open the Wearing tab of the Appearance floater.

See: CATZ-475: Add button to open wearing panel to the ‘Worn Items’ QuickPrefs panel.

Inventory Folder Button

Similarly, if you have a folder set for the Quick Access inventory button, there is a new button (again using the same suitcase icon) that will open the corresponding folder in your inventory.

See: CATZ-476: Add button to open the selected folder to the ‘Quick Access’ QuickPrefs panel.

Inventory Improvements

Catznip R12.2 includes a number of improvements to inventory.

Show In Inventory

Ever wanted a quick way to locate a worn attachment in your inventory – particularly if you have multiple links to it scattered through your Outfits? Well, Catznip has the answer: Just right-click the worn item and then select Show In Inventory from the Context Menu.

See: CATZ-501: Add ‘Show in Inventory’ to the worn attachment context menu.

Clear Inventory Filter on Close

Inventory filter are useful – but can be annoying if you forget to clear them; if you do, you can re-open inventory and be confused as the last filter is still active. Catznip 12.2 solves this problem by adding an option to the filters selection panel that, when checked, will ensure any set filter is reset when you close inventory.

See: CATZ-494: Option to reset the inventory filter when closing the filter floater.

Continue reading “Catznip R12.2: a little extra quality of life” →

Tuesday, February 19th, 2019 saw the long-awaited release of Catznip R12.1 – the release coming a little over a year since the last update. The key feature with this update is support for Animesh, although it also sees Catznip come up to parity with the Lab’s viewer cove (release 6.0.1.522263 at the time of writing), which means there are a lot of bug fixes and other tweaks within the viewer.

Table of Contents Log-In Splash Screen Web Links Destination Guide Panel Revised Information Tabs Lab Derived Updates Animesh Catznip Updates Avatar Rendering Optimisations – Quick Preferences Windlight Quick Preferences Avatar and Appearance improvements Other Updates Of Note Feeback

Catznip R12.1 also introduces a number of features and enhancements directly from the Catznip team.

These notes are designed to cover the most visible changes with the release. For details on specific bug fixes, please refer to the R12.1 release notes.

Log-In Splash Screen

The first major change with Catznip R12.1 can be seen within the viewer splash screen. This includes a revised destination panel and revised information tabs.

Web Links

The splash screen now includes five buttons located to the left of the large Catznip logo. These are links to:

• The Catznip Patreon page.
• The Catznip Flickr pool (empty at the time of writing).
• Clearer buttons to Catznip on Google+ (although Google+ will be closing on April 2nd, 2019), Facebook and Twitter.

Destination Guide Panel

The Destination Guide panel has been overhauled for better access to destinations by selected category and to display information, as outlines in the image below.

Revised Information Tabs

The log-in screen information tabs located below the destination panel have also been revised, so it contains the following tabs:

• What’s New: primarily useful during Catznip beta releases, when it lists all the JIRAs that were fixed or added for that particular beta.
• Grid Status: displays information from the Second Life Grid Status RSS fed.
• Modem World: displays posts recorded by this blog’s RSS feed.
• Reddit : displays recent threads from the Second Life Reddit community.
• Seraphim: lists blog posts recorded in the Seraphim blog RSS feed. Clicking the location column will set your login location to that specific event.

Note that the tabs are considered experimental, and feedback on their inclusion from Catznip users is requested.

Lab Derived Updates

This version brings Catznip up to parity with Linden Lab release viewers through to release version 6.0.1.522263 (formerly the Spotykach RC viewer, promoted on December 13th, 2019. Major updates in that release include:

• Voice Server:
  • Second Life: Vivox version 4.9.0002.30313.
• Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) Dullahan:
  • Dullahan: 1.1.1080
  • CEF: 3.3325.1750.gaabe4c4.513446.
  • Chrome: 65.0.3325.146.

Animesh

Animesh allows the avatar skeleton to be applied to any suitable rigged mesh object, which can then in turn be animated using suitable scripts and animations contained within the object’s Contents. This opens up a whole range of opportunities for content creators and animators to provide things like independently moveable pets / creatures, and animated scenery features.

While Animesh is likely to primarily be used by content creators, it has been designed so that any suitable rigged mesh can be converted to Animesh directly from the Build / Edit floater. Do be aware, however that simply converting an object will not cause it to start animating – you’ll need suitable animations and a script to run them. Like any other object utilising animation, this is done by adding the animations and scripts via the Edit > Contents tab for your converted object.

The best way to get started with Animesh is to use the available resources. These include:

• Official Linden Lab resources:
  • Animesh User Guide
  • Animesh test content ( Raptor and Aditya – rez and wander; Teddy – attachment)
  • Animesh test regions: Animesh 1 ; Animesh 2 ; Animesh 3 ; Animesh 4 ; Animesh 5 ; Animesh Adult.
  • Animesh LSL methods:
    • llStartObjectAnimation
    • llStopObjectAnimation
    • llGetObjectAnimationNames
  • Animesh feedback thread
• Additional resources:
  • My Animesh overview
  • Animesh example content by Silas Merlin (free and full permissions)
  • Animesh on the Marketplace.

Continue reading “Catznip R12.1: Animesh and more” →

Monday, January 1st, 2018 saw the long-await release of Catnzip R12 – the release coming a little over a years since the last update – and slightly earlier than planned, thanks to the auto-update!

As one might expect, this update brings a large number of user-facing updates, which are quite comprehensively documented in the accompanying release notes, and rings Catznip up to parity with the current LL released viewer code base 5.0.9. It is currently only available for Windows, in 32-bit and 64-bit versions, the latter conforming to the Lab’s Alex Ivy 64-bit build.

Given the depth of the release notes, I’m providing an overviews of just some of the updates here:

• Quick Preferences updates.
• Inventory Management improvements.
• Chat / group chat updates.

For the rest of the changes, please refer to the release notes.

Quick Preferences Updates

Main Quick Preferences Panel

The main Quick Preference panel sees a number of small updates and improvements:

• The short cut CTRL-SHIFT-P no longer conflicts with Print Selected Object Info (the latter now ALT-SHIFT-P).
• The panel can now be minimised via a button (item 1 in the image below)
• The Other Section of avatar rendering now includes a button to open the Exceptions panel for listing exceptions to your avatar rendering settings (item 2 in the image below)
• The worn items tab button (item 3 in the image below) now displays a tab with button to display sort options for the items listed in it (item 4 in the image).

Quick Inventory

We all use HUDS – HUDS for AOs, HUDs for mesh bodies, HUDs for mesh heads, HUDs for appliers, etc.). However, wearing the all, all the time not only clutters the viewer’s window, it actually eats texture memory. We also have certain things we like to wear all the time. However, even if you dump all of your HUDs into a single folder in inventory, finding the one you want can be a pain.

Catznip R12 helps ease some of this pain through the provision of a Quick Inventory function. Used via Quick Preferences, this can afford faster, cleaner access to your HUDs, etc. To use it:

• Create a folder anywhere in your inventory (if you don’t already have one ready to go).
• Drag and drop your HUDs an bits (or links to them ) into it.
• Open Quick Prefs and click on the inventory button (item 1 in the image below).
• Click on the Folder <click to select> button (item 2 in the image below) to open a folder picker.
• Click on the folder with your HUDs and bits to select it.
• The contents of the folder will be displayed in the inventory tab of Quick Preferences each time it is opened, allowing you to easily Wear / Add items from it (right-hand picture in the image below).
• The folder can be changed at any time by clicking on the folder button in the inventory tab.

Inventory Management

Inventory management updates make up the core of the R12 changes, and these come in a number of improvements, from how you chose to receive goods purchased in-world in your inventory or passed to you by others, through searching inventory to where boxed items are unpacked and stored in your inventory.

Accepting In-World Purchases and Inventory Offers

With Catznip R12 you can now designate where the items you purchase in-world or are given by others, are stored within your inventory. So, for example, you could opt to receive all your in-world purchases in a folder you call “Shopping Bag”, any demos you grab in a folder called “Demos”, anything your offered by friends in “From Friends”, and so on. How you organise things is entirely up to you. This means both the Pay and Buy floaters in Catznip R12, together with the Accept Inventory floater now offer you the ability to select where incoming items are going to be stored in your inventory.

The options should be fairly self-explanatory. Check Accept in and the remaining options are activated. The drop-down will display a list of folders you have opted to allow incoming items to be delivered (show in the image on the right), the browse button allows an alternative to you list of folders in the drop-down to be selected, and the spanner button allows you to establish your list of destination folders. The roadmap of these various options is shown below.

Not only can you select the folders into which you want incoming purchases to go, you can also set Catznip R12 to dynamically create new folders in which to place incoming items. This means, for example, that if you got to a big shopping event at one location, you can set the viewer to deliver all the demo you obtain / items you purchase into folders define by – say – the month in which you got them, and the location where they were obtained.

So, for example, if in April you go to shopping event X on region YYYY, and grab a load of demos, and then later in the month go to event A on region BBBB and grab more demos, you can have them delivered to sub-folders in your “Demos” folder, respectively labelled “April 2017 YYYY” and “April 2017 BBBB” – both of which are dynamically created by Catznip as they are needed. So even if you don’t get around to trying them for days after your visit, you can quickly and easily locate the demo items without have for fiddle around searching for folders and objects.

Continue reading “Catznip R12: inventory, shopping and more” →