Tag: Content Creation 2019

56578 Go Wild Blvd, Watery Cove, IS 245785, June 2019 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on Thursday, July 25th 2019 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.

Environment Enhancement Project

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 includes the ability to use custom Sun, Moon and cloud textures. The assets can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others, and can additionally be used in experiences.

Due to performance issues, the initial implementation of EEP will not include certain atmospherics such as crepuscular rays (“God rays”).

Resources

• Project definition document.
• Project summary (this blog).
• Full EEP Documentation.

Current Status

• A further version of the RC viewer is in the pipeline and will be available soon.
• As the project is seen as a “getting closer” and that now is the time for issues to be reported.
• EEP and Bakes on Mesh have also swapped their internal QA teams, so that each project has fresh eyes on it as it gets closer to a potential release.

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, but 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

• Bakes on Mesh knowledge base article.
• Bakes on Mesh forum thread.
• Bakes on Mesh JIRA filter (courtesy of Whirly Fizzle).

Current Status

• As noted above, the BOM and EEP QA teams have swapped responsibilities, so that there are fresh eyes on both projects.
• With BOM in particular, this means the project is to be subject to extensive internal review by the Lab ahead of possible release dates being considered.

Animesh Follow-On – Project Muscadine

• DRTSIM-421 on Aditi now has the server-side code to support the new visual parameters LSL code.
• The simulator build and a build of a project viewer supporting the new LSL code are both undergoing LL QA testing.
• Once both have passed QA, the viewer will be made available for public testing on the relevant regions on the DRTSIM-421 channel on Aditi.
  • The viewer might be available within the next 2-3 weeks.
• It’s been suggested that imposters for Animesh and imposters for avatars should be separated.
  • This would be possible, although it would require some code re-working within the imposter system, which hasn’t been planned.
  • There’s also the question of how many people would use a separate Animesh setting, even if it were provided – or perhaps even be aware of it – or if two settings might not confuse people

General Discussion

Tutorial Videos

• The Lab is looking to again start producing tutorial videos.
• Some of these will focus on the basics with content (e.g. how to dress an avatar, wear jewellery, etc.), and how to recognise well-made / optimised content. These videos may start to appear later in 2019.
• The hope is that as well as helping to educated consumers, these videos may start encouraging creators to think more about issues of optimisation.
• The Lab will be interested in hearing ideas on this from creators.
• It is likely this work will be linked to things like Project ARCTan, which will look at rendering costs, etc.
  • It was intimated that in the future, landowners might be able to limit access to their land by avatar complexity as well as by the more recognised script load.
  • Any such changes will be introduced gradually, with the educational programme – videos, etc., preceding it to try to help users better understand optimisation and benefits.

In Brief

• In-World Pose System: this has grown out of a code contribution, but is current on hold pending resources.
• Pathfinding: something the Lab would like to look at again, but unlikely to be in 2019.
• Puppeteering: this is an old project that several have suggested re-vitalising. The view from the lab appears to be that it is now too old and SL has moved on too far for it to be practical to try to just resume work.

Meetings

Due to the Lab’s internal SL Feature Summit and the monthly All Hand meeting at the Lab, the next CCUG meeting will likely be on Thursday, August 8th, 2019 – but check the wiki page to confirm,as it might be possible there is a meeting on August 1st, depending on the start of the SL Feature Summit.

Jilin Estates, June 2019 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on Thursday, July 18th 2019 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.

Viewer Update

The current Maintenance RC viewer, Umeshu (version 6.2.4.528492 at the time of writing) is now considered “very close” to promotion to release status, with Vir linden noting that if SL viewer users notice they get a message to update “that’s very probably it.”

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, but 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

• Bakes on Mesh knowledge base article.
• Bakes on Mesh forum thread.
• Bakes on Mesh JIRA filter (courtesy of Whirly Fizzle).

Current Status

• There have been a couple of further issues show up during internal testing of Bakes on Mesh related to local appearance when editing an avatar’s appearance – changes don’t always resolve consistently, particularly with regards to texturing non-rigged meshes with bakes.
• Transparencies on the Bake Service aux channels: after meeting with mixed expectations on how this should be handled (see recent previous CCUG summaries in these pages), the Lab is anticipating supporting two cases:
  • If a creator wants the aux channel to be opaque – this will require the placement of an opaque texture at the bottom of the bake stack (e.g. a skin-like universal), and setting Alpha Mode for the object (Edit > Texture) to None.
  • If a creator wants to have a translucent layer with portion of it see-through – this will likely require a universal wearable that just has transparent textures, and setting the Alpha Mode to Alpha Blending.
  • Vir noted that it is possible to have other combinations of textures and Alpha Mode settings, but these can give unpredictable results.  To help avoid this, the plan is to get some better documentation put together ready for when BOM reaches release status.

Note: there is an internal Bakes On Mesh review meeting scheduled for Friday, July 19th, at which the issues mentioned in the first bullet point will be examined. If these are determined to be edge cases, and no other issues are noted, the Bakes on Mesh project is liable to be moving to release status “very soon”. Creator wishing to test the capability are therefore asked to download the Bakes On Mesh RC viewer and use it and report and bugs or issues they encounter “right away”.

Animesh Follow-On

• Vir is working on a project viewer in support of the new LSL functions that can be used to set visual parameters for Animesh objects.
  • It had been indicated that the capability would allow parameters to be looked up by name or ID, which is a little inconsistent compared to how things usual work (via using integer constants). It’s therefore been decided to support all of the applicable visual parameters by means of a set of corresponding constants.
  • There is no current time frame on when a project viewer may appear – this is dependent on the viewer being build and then passing through the Lab’s internal testing / QA.
  • Obviously, when the project viewer is released, it will be subject to further testing – including the impact updating the parameters for multiple Animesh objects (making them taller or shorter or fatter or thinner, etc) has on a region / viewer performance.
• These commands will likely be throttled to prevent the mechanism being used as an alternate (and potentially impactful) means of animating Animesh. Concerns have be raised that the throttle could be set too low.Vir has requested that discussions on throttling wait until a project viewer is available, so they might b properly tested and discussed in terms of possible changes.
• There are still requests for Bakes on Mesh for Animesh to be included in this project. This is unlikely, as it would require further extension of the BOM project before it has even gone live. Which is not to say Bakes On Mesh for Animesh might not be (part of?) a future project.
• Attachment points for Animesh, however, may be something that is looked at “fairly soon”, possibly as a later part of this current Animesh follow-on.

Environment Enhancement Project

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 includes the ability to use custom Sun, Moon and cloud textures. The assets can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others, and can additionally be used in experiences.

Due to performance issues, the initial implementation of EEP will not include certain atmospherics such as crepuscular rays (“God rays”).

Resources

• Project definition document.
• Project summary (this blog).
• Full EEP Documentation.

Current Status

• A further version of the RC viewer (6.4.0.529247) was issued on Monday, July 15th, but overall, testing is still on-going.
• It’s been reported that the “forced sky update” ability in EEP could adversely impact performance. This is due to by looked at be the Lab.

Kun-Tei-Ner, May 2019 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on Thursday, June 27th 2019 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.

Environment Enhancement Project

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 includes the ability to use custom Sun, Moon and cloud textures. The assets can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others, and can additionally be used in experiences.

Due to performance issues, the initial implementation of EEP will not include certain atmospherics such as crepuscular rays (“God rays”).

Resources

• Project definition document.
• Project summary (this blog).
• Full EEP Documentation.

Current Status

• A new viewer update is due to go to the Lab’s QA team over the weekend, and should surface at the start of week #27 (commencing Monday, July 1st). This should address a number of issues in the EEP code including
  • Water transparency rendering.
  • The glow seen around facial features (freckles, lips, eyelashes, and around the neck fix for mesh heads should no longer be apparent.
  • The difference in viewing an environment with Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) off and viewing it with ALM enabled is not as drastic.
  • Daytime lighting seen at sunrise, midday and sunset are much closer how they appear in the default viewer.
• The request is for people testing EEP to grab the RC viewer when available and test drive it.

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, but 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

• Bakes on Mesh knowledge base article.
• Bakes on Mesh forum thread.
• Bakes on Mesh JIRA filter (courtesy of Whirly Fizzle).

Current Status

• The Bakes on Mesh RC viewer was re-issued on Tuesday, June 25th, in the form of version 6.3.0.528495. This includes:
  • A new inventory icon for the “universal” wearable type.
  • A fix for a serious security issue type of bug.
• It had been indicted at the last meeting that a required appearance service update had been made. However, this deployment did not occur until the afternoon of Thursday, June 27th.

Animesh Follow-On

• Vir now has LSL functions to both set and get the visual parameters of slider-related bones in an Animesh object.
• These should be enough to test the ability, so he is starting the work on getting a project viewer put together that supports the functionality.

Script Processing Issues

As I’ve noted in recent SUG summaries, there have been numerous reports of script run time issues. See  BUG-226851 and BUG-227099 as examples.

• There are simulator updates awaiting deployment that should provide better script performance on the “more expensive [resource-wise] scripts events”, such as sensors.
• Rider Linden has been working to eliminate the overhead of idle scripts, reducing the time they need to simply work out they don’t need to process anything by 20-30%, although actual mileage once the improvements are deployed, may vary.
• Rider is not promising to get script performance up to 100% per cycle (Homestead don’t end to achieve this anyway due to the number per core), but is hoping to see general improvements in processing and around those scripts that can cause unnecessary bogging down (e.g. multiple open listeners, sensors, and similar).
• Viewer-side tools are to be provided (“after July”) viewing statistics on general script usage across a simulator to help diagnose local problems. These might even include / take the form of a visual indicator, such as the visual object update option (CTRL-ALT-Shift-U).

Next Meeting

Due to July 4th being a Thursday, and July 11th the Lab’s monthly All Hands meeting, the next CCUG meeting will be Thursday, July 18th, 2019.

Hors du Temps, May 2019 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on Thursday, June 20th 2019 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.

Environment Enhancement Project

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 includes the ability to use custom Sun, Moon and cloud textures. The assets can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others, and can additionally be used in experiences.

Due to performance issues, the initial implementation of EEP will not include certain atmospherics such as crepuscular rays (“God rays”).

Resources

• Project definition document.
• Project summary (this blog).
• Full EEP Documentation.

Current Status

• Graham Linden continues to work on the shader / rendering issues.
• A simulator-side RC update went to the Magnum and LeTigre channels on Tuesday, June 18th, with a number of bug fixes that should hopefully have addressed some of the current rendering issues:
  • BUG-226815: “[EEP] Since the grid was rolled to 19.04.15.526263 yesterday, region windlight is broken for all legacy viewers”.
  • BUG-226252: “[EEP] Please create an internal error code for llReplaceAgentEnvironment() & llSetAgentEnvironment() that distinguishes whether an agent does not have the experience allowed and if the experience is not allowed at their location”.
  • BUG-226917: “EEP Environment, New Sky should default to midday and not 6pm”.

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, but 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

• Bakes on Mesh knowledge base article.
• Bakes on Mesh forum thread.
• Bakes on Mesh JIRA filter (courtesy of Whirly Fizzle).

Current Status

• As noted in my Simulator User Group summary, the Bakes on Mesh RC viewer has been pulled due to a significant bug surfacing.
  • The viewer remains listed on the various official viewer pages, but cannot actually be downloaded.
  • Anyone attempting to run a previously downloaded version will be forced to update to the current release viewer.
• It is believed the Appearance Service has been fixed for correctly handling alphas on the new “universal” channels.  However, this cannot be tested until the viewer issue noted above has been rectified.

Animesh Follow-On

• Vir believes the basic ability to adjust the visual parameters of an Animesh object via LSL (i.e. changing its height, length of arm, etc.), is now working as expected. However, he’s like to get a little more functionality in to the capability before a project viewer supporting it is provided.
  • The capability allows parameters to be looked up by name or ID, and the command uses ranges from 0 to 1 to make adjustments.
  • It has been suggested many of these values (e.g. head shape and facial parameters – lip size, thickness, angle, etc., – breast size, torso muscles, leg size, butt size) require non-zero values to better define a neutral state for those bones. However, the problem here is that many of the slider values on which bone manipulations are made are entirely arbitrary within individual bones (one might have, day, a range of -1 to +1; another might be 0 to 10m etc)., so defining a value of 0.5 (being the mid-point between 0 and 1) to a bone might not actually correctly map to the “neutral” position of the bone as defined by the slider values.
  • Note that there are obviously sliders that morph the avatar shape rather than directly manipulating bones, and these cannot be manipulated through this LSL mechanism.
• The Bento Skeleton Guide has been further updated and now: with a list of So this page now attempts to:
  • Define all sliders that directly affect bones and which might therefore be manipulated using the new LSL command(s) with Animesh.
  • Define the sliders that affect collision volumes, to help with things like fitted mesh that could potentially be used with Animesh objects.

UI Panel for Manipulating Animesh Object Shapes

• A repeated request has been for the Lab to provide a viewer UI panel for manipulating sliders associated with Animesh objects to allow their shapes to be edited a-la he shape sliders UI for avatars.
• The major issue here is that for such a panel to work, Animesh objects either:
  • Would require an associated body shape, which they currently do not have.  While this has not been ruled out, it is not something the Lab is committing to at this time.
  • Requires an extensive project to not only develop the UI, but to develop a means to represent and manipulate all bones, etc. that someone might want to individually move on an “on the fly” basis, and then present this through a UI element. As such, this approach isn’t being considered at present.
• Instead, it is hoped that the LSL parameter manipulation noted above would perhaps provide the means for Animesh creators to offered their own HUD-based “slider system” that is specific to adjusting the shapes of their Animesh creations, rather than being a generic UI element in which assorted options may not apply to their Animesh.

General Discussion

Rigged Mesh HUDs

• As we’re all aware, HUDs are objects that are taken by the viewer are effectively attached to our screen space without being displayed in-world when attached.
• However, rigged mesh HUDs which have been produced by some behave differently: when attached, these HUDs appear to the person using them as being attached to their avatar (although no-one else can see them as such, as HUD rendering data isn’t sent to other viewers).
  • This has been described as an “unexpected” behaviour, but given such HUDs are – as the “rigged” in their title implies – rigged against the avatar skeleton, it perhaps shouldn’t be that surprising, given the viewer would naturally assume rigged objects to be associated with a skeleton (avatar or Animesh), regardless of the selected attach point.
• The Lab is now looking at some way to warn people when this happens, to help prevent people being caught by surprise (e.g. by having clothing knocked-off by the HUD as it attaches).

In Brief

• Feature request BUG-202864 “Change Mesh Uploader to preserve Scene File object names when a full linkset is uploaded”: viewer-side work has been carried out for this, which should be appearing in a Maintenance RC viewer soon™. However, it is dependent upon some yet-to-be-done back-end work.
• Feature request BUG-227171 “Bring Avatar Cloth to Mesh”:
  • Bento and Animesh have, to a degree, allowed some cloth behaviour to be seen in mesh (e.g. the skirt of a gown moving with an avatars legs, rather than the legs extending through it. However, these solutions can be labour intensive.
  • Currently, LL have no plans to work with cloth-like motion for mesh clothing, but this request has been imported for future reference.
• Project ARCTan: this is the project to re-align the impact of rendering content.
  • It’s still on the back burner at the Lab, although it is hoped focus can be returned to it soon. There are obvious concerns as to how it might affect land impact with in-world objects; given this one suggestion has been to only apply it to new content uploaded to SL, effectively making it something of an “opt-in”, a-la materials.
  • However, there is nothing official to report on how ARCTan will be implemented, as there is still a lot to be done before thing get to that point.
• Script processing issues: the music at the SUG meeting this week meant this didn’t get to be discussed. In short, Rider Linden is leading the investigation into understanding what is going on and possible causes, and what can be done to correct  / mitigate the problem.

Yúcale – blog post

The following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on Thursday, June 13th 2019 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.

Environment Enhancement Project

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 includes the ability to use custom Sun, Moon and cloud textures. The assets can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others, and can additionally be used in experiences.

Due to performance issues, the initial implementation of EEP will not include certain atmospherics such as crepuscular rays (“God rays”).

Resources

• Project definition document.
• Project summary (this blog).
• Full EEP Documentation.

Current Status

• A further EEP RC viewer is in the works, but no current ETA.
• The most recent EEP RC viewer (version 6.4.0.527723, dated June 6th. 2019), has not received a lot of feedback. It’s not clear if this is because issues aren’t being noted or if people aren’t filing them. If you’re using the viewer and see a problem, please raise a bug report, even if you think it may have been raised before.
• Graham Linden continues to work on the shader / rendering issues.
• A simulator-side RC update is anticipated for week #25, which will hopefully address some of the region windlight rendering issues currently being seen.
• Rider has been away from EEP, looking into the issues of simulator  / script performance (again, please refer to my recent Simulator User Group notes).

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, but 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

• Bakes on Mesh knowledge base article.
• Bakes on Mesh forum thread.
• Bakes on Mesh JIRA filter (courtesy of Whirly Fizzle).

Current Status

• As noted in my Simulator User Group update, there was a new BOM RC viewer update on Monday, June 10th, with the release of version 6.3.0.527701.
• A potential issue has arisen around the new “universal” texture channels (e.g. Left Arm) and how people want them to work. The expectation from the Lab has been that while these might be transparent, there will always be an opaque texture “under” them. However, there have been attempts to either use them with a transparent underlying texture or have them partially transparent (currently, the “universal” channels aren’t recognised / masked by an alpha wearable), and this has led to errors in how the Appearance Service is handling them when compositing / baking (unfortunately, no bug report was reference so I cannot verify the exact issue). It’s currently not clear how this might be resolved if it is an issue.

Animesh Follow-On

• Vir has been carrying out further investigation into the mechanism for adding new attributes to objects with a view to trying to make it easier to do so. This might, as an example, make it easier to add new body sliders to the avatar (although there are currently no plans to add sliders to the avatar – this is purely investigative work).
• In terms of the visual parameters work to allow Animesh objects to be resized:
  • Originally there was going to be the one command to set visual parameters (llSetObjectVisualParams). This was to work on a list basis that alternates between slider ID (or name) and parameter value (e.g. Slider ID A, value for Slider ID A; Slider ID B, value for slider ID B, etc).
  • However, a request has been made to be able to query a set of visual parameters (e.g. llGetObjectVisualParameters), and the logical format for this is for a list of parameter IDs to be supplied, and the corresponding list of values to be returned.
  • This prompts the question of whether llSetObjectVisualParams should use this latter approach.
  • The consensus is to use an approach consistent with the rest of LSL parameter setting.
  • As a side note, it is unlikely manipulating slider values via LSL would be extended for use with avatars, as this could potentially conflict with the back-end system that currently manages the slider mechanism as it affects the avatar.
• There are a large number (200+) sliders, not all of which affect bone position / scale, which can make it potentially confusing when trying to set values against Animesh objects. To this end, Vir has updated the Bento Skeleton Guide with a list of slider names that actually affect bone position / scale.

Flourish – blog post

The following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on Thursday, May 30th 2019 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.

Environment Enhancement Project

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 includes the ability to use custom Sun, Moon and cloud textures. The assets can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others, and can additionally be used in experiences.

Due to performance issues, the initial implementation of EEP will not include certain atmospherics such as crepuscular rays (“God rays”).

Resources

• Project definition document.
• Project summary (this blog).
• Full EEP Documentation.

Current Status

• It has been noted that the current EEP RC viewer – version 6.2.3.527250 – is a “little rough”, with issues around midday light, ambient lighting, water transparency, projected lights, etc. Additional effort is being put into checking code merges to try to avoid similar issues in the future, although viewer updates may be a little slower as a result and involve smaller changes.
• An updated EEP RC viewer is with the Lab’s QA team that should fix many of the current issues, and should be available soon.
• Alexa Linden, who a Product Managing EEP, and who spends a good deal of her time in-world both exploring and building, as well as designing environments, is spending more time in checking upcoming EEP builds to help get things back on track.

Non-EEP Viewer Rendering Issues

• Following the simulator deployments of week #22, there have been a series of reports of windlight settings failing to render correctly in either non-EEP viewers or the EEP RC viewer.
• The Lab is unable of any simulator changes that would cause this.
• BUG-226815 outlines one issue, and further bug reports have been requested as the Lab investigate the problem.

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, but 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

• Bakes on Mesh knowledge base article.
• Bakes on Mesh forum thread.
• Bakes on Mesh JIRA filter (courtesy of Whirly Fizzle).

Current Status

• A BUG related to the AUX channels showing up black for BOM has resurfaced.
• An updated viewer with a fix for his issue has been undergoing testing and should be available “soon”.
• This update also requires an appearance service update as well.
• It is hoped that the bug fix and viewer update will allow BOM to progress.

Animesh Follow-On

• 

  Vir continues to work on adding visual parameter support to allow shape adjustments to be made to Animesh.

• He now has the LSL side of things working “fairly decently” – the command allows users to set individual parameters, and correctly handles vertical height placement, as demonstrated on the right.
  • The LSL capability allows multiple shape parameters to be adjusted.
  • Parameters can be looked up by name or ID, and the command uses ranges for 0 to 1.
  • This allows shape parameters to be adjusted in a similar manner as would be seen when using shape sliders when manually editing an avatar’s shape, albeit with different value ranges (0 to 1 being equitable to 0 to 100 on a slider).
• In the example clip, right, the LSL is being used to apply settings to the Animesh height, arm length, shoulder width, leg length, etc., simultaneously.
• It has been suggested having a Get command to obtain parameter settings would be useful, and this may be added.
• A further question is whether there needs to be a capability to remove parameters (by default an Animesh does not have any visual parameters until they are set – and once set they cannot be removed..
• Overall, the plan remains to get the capability into a usable state and then provide a project viewer for further testing within test regions.
• The meeting also included further discussion on allowing Animesh characters to have clothing / outfits in a similar manner to an avatar’s Outfit folder, and to support attachment points.
  • A problem here is that the Outfit Folder runs through the Appearance Service, which would have to be extended to encompass Animesh objects.
  • Similarly, attachment points operate via the concept of avatars having an associated  agent – which Animesh objects currently don’t have.
  • While neither of these have been entirely ruled out, they are considered significant projects which have their own set of implementation issues that would have to be considered.