Making Avatars Look Good in Black Dragon! Share Your Hints and Advice!

[Raevyn Addams]

It's probably not the place to mention it but since this is BD related I figured it was relevant. Maybe someone else has the answers.

I know @NiranV Dean has mentioned avatar complexity at length and oft spoke of the borkened state of LL's complexity. Admittedly I didn't put much thought into it until recently. As I get more familiar with using BD as an everyday viewer I've also noticed everyone around me is a jellydoll; I haven't seen one single avatar over the last two days just lots of colourful avatar shapes. This led me to question what my own avatar complexity was and if others could see me. After checking the default settings in BD I've come to the realization that *I* have been a jellydoll to everyone else too (in BD, unless they have their slider higher than the default). 

So what I want to know is; what do others strive for or have as their avatar complexity? What do you personally consider acceptable? (Forsaking the generic answer of 'as low as possible' 😑).

Interesting comparison just now to illustrate my point;

This is my current complexity on Black Dragon (yikes!)...

 

And this is my current complexity on Firestorm (wasn't sure how to bring up the Advanced option as BD)...

Hopefully this didn't derail the thread too much, but as we're talking about making avatars look good unless the complexity is satisfactory the only place they can be seen and admired is or will be the forums! 😳

[NiranV Dean]

48 minutes ago, RaeLeeH said:

It's probably not the place to mention it but since this is BD related I figured it was relevant. Maybe someone else has the answers.

I know @NiranV Dean has mentioned avatar complexity at length and oft spoke of the borkened state of LL's complexity. Admittedly I didn't put much thought into it until recently. As I get more familiar with using BD as an everyday viewer I've also noticed everyone around me is a jellydoll; I haven't seen one single avatar over the last two days just lots of colourful avatar shapes. This led me to question what my own avatar complexity was and if others could see me. After checking the default settings in BD I've come to the realization that *I* have been a jellydoll to everyone else too (in BD, unless they have their slider higher than the default). 

So what I want to know is; what do others strive for or have as their avatar complexity? What do you personally consider acceptable? (Forsaking the generic answer of 'as low as possible' 😑).

Interesting comparison just now to illustrate my point;

This is my current complexity on Black Dragon (yikes!)...

 

And this is my current complexity on Firestorm (wasn't sure how to bring up the Advanced option as BD)...

Hopefully this didn't derail the thread too much, but as we're talking about making avatars look good unless the complexity is satisfactory the only place they can be seen and admired is or will be the forums! 😳

1.4 million complexity *gets an heart attack*

This topic is as good as any other. Probably better than making a new one if your intention is getting help with the Viewer or my attention. Remember hiding your questions in topics i dont read isn't gonna get you an answer unless you specifically tag "Black Dragon" or my name (because i semi-frequently search the forums for these two tags to see whether my name or my Viewer was mentioned somewhere) and even then it would probably be better to do it all in one spot.

To your question, i see 250.000 max as "good" which is why i've set it as default for the Viewer (and that's quite generous taking into account that 250.000 complexity can be ~250.000 polygons without any textures for a single avatar). Up to 400.000 i'd still consider "okay" but they fall clearly out of my "would render" spectrum. Everything past 400.000 is simply not worthy being rendered, taking into account that a common polygon count for a single character in games is between 20.000 and 80.000 in most games, i'd say 400.000 potential polygons is quite a lot leeway, everything above is simply wasting resources to waste resources for no visual improvement.

To your complexity... 1.4 million complexity is insanely extreme. You could wear me as scarf, as purse, as shoes and as skirt and still squeeze me in 21 more times into your polygon count. You could easily replace yourself with 15 times me and have roughly the same impact (minus the huge magic impact any avatar always has due to extra calculations outside of simply rendering your geometry). In comparison your Maitreya body alone which as far as i know is only the body, no hands no feet no head, has 3.5 times more polygons than my entire avatar. That's just your polygons, your textures weight in with 250MB texture memory, thats a quarter of a GB. Remember that most Viewers can only set Texture Memory to 512 (= ~1024MB total), you basically use a quarter of that alone, not counting the Viewer which needs another 200-250MB easily, i currently use 32MB and that's with Specular and Normal Maps. That's a crazy difference.

Your "Riley"... is the reason i'll never have kids... as you can see they make up a good chunk of your own avatar's complexity despite having much lower polygon counts (probably using alphas and a lot of textures).

The reason you see no one rendering in Black Dragon is simply because basically 95% of all human avatars are far and FAR beyond 250.000 or even 400.000. Most Avatars start at 500.000 and hover around 700.000 - 900.000 with extremes sprinkled in like your own avatar. Some may say 250.000 is unachievable and are wishful thinking or would require you to be bare bones naked with a 2007 SL avatar but that's absolutely not true. My body has 35.000 polygons, you could easily add 5.000 more polygons where needed (around shoulders, crotch and possibly fingers and still only be 40.000 and that's with a double set of arms, legs and hips (leftovers of modding but required to cirumvent ugly mesh transitions that the creators of said mods were incapable of fixing despite it being easy). And to everyone saying "but Niran, thats a furry avatar, they are super cartoony and are much easier to optimize"... just no. These furry avatars have mostly anatomically correct human bodies (so technically anatomically wrong bodies for what they are supposed to be), some more than others, some are a bit more stylized like this snake to give it a "snake-like" human body but in general Furry avatars are by no means less complex, if anything they require even more work because they face additional issues, rigging, extra bones (like tails and wings), extra limbs (like quads or centaurs) and often have slight deviations from the human skeleton that SL uses requiring special work to make them look good and work properly with the given tools and limitations. The reason they are more cartoonish is simply because we can only imagine how real-life furries would look like (probably not as cute as we'd imagine) and because those real-looking ones look really fugly with SL's limitations (try squeezing millions of fur-hairs into a simple 1024x1024 texture and making it look good) but their cartoonish looks has no bearing in how making or optimizing them is done, they use the same tools, they use textures like any other and they need to be scripted all of which has been done several hundred times and in a much more efficient way than the "big" two have been doing (Maitreya and Belleza). If anything Maitreya and Belleza bodies are a shame, they are the epidemy, the black plague of bad content, they mirror the sad unoptimized state of so many Early Access games and game development in general as of today. "Get a better PC" is the excuse over and over again, just throw more horsepower at it rather than using the vast amounts that lie dormant since over a decade.

Edited February 6, 2020 by NiranV Dean

[Seicher Rae]

Questions: 

These are where are the buttons questions and/or ARE there the buttons in BD...

1) In Firestorm I will often go into inventory, select an object that I am wearing — and for photographs it is usually my facelight or other projectors — and select edit so I can move it. This is really important to be able to do with projectors. Is this available in BD? I've looked and looked and don't see that option.

2) I really like how I can select a Windlight in BD and it'll stay in that WL between sims and even logging out. Until I don't. Yesterday I was trying to find a way to use the SIM's natural Windlight and I couldn't find the button for "use sim WL." All I could do is set a preferred WL from my system, which of course didn't include the sim's version. I spent a really long time searching preferences and darned if I could find the option to switch back.

Edited February 6, 2020 by Seicher Rae

[Alyona Su]

2 hours ago, RaeLeeH said:

So what I want to know is; what do others strive for or have as their avatar complexity? What do you personally consider acceptable? (Forsaking the generic answer of 'as low as possible' 😑).

TL;DR: Set the three complexity sliders to maximum for equivalent "150k Complexity Limit" on other viewers.

It seems to me that 1 million in BD is around 100,000 in others as far as judging yourself. In preferences for BD, I have *everything* at defaults, except for the complexity sliders, I set all three to maximum (and non-imposters to 8). This allows a good "salt-and-pepper' effect of others that render without having to do so manually. Ironically, a lot more MEN render than the ladies. LOL

As for how @NiranV Dean has this set-up: I will not complain. He states directly and frankly that Black Dragon is something he makes for himself and to his own preferences. I see it as a kind gesture that he shares it with us and has even made reluctant changes to help appease other users; something he is neither obligated nor expected to do. And to be clear, I am not debunking your perspective or belittling anything, etc. I am only expressing my own purview on the Black Dragon "settings" subject!

Other than the jelly doll "issues", I think the rest of it is outstanding and trumps this little annoyance (annoyance to the rest of us, NiranV, because we've been poorly trained for so long that we aren't used to it! LOL)

One thing I *do* like is that notice that "All other avatars can see you" - actually give a count "1 Avatar cannot see you", etc.

23 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

and select edit so I can move it.

@NiranV Dean - this. To be able to righ-click an attached object in inventory and have the "Edit" option. It makes it easier when needing to edit multiple attachments that are not easily accessible by click in-world, such as embedded inside the avatar, etc. So: feature request. (I did get this once, maybe twice, but I'm unsure what the criteria was that allowed it.)

23 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

I couldn't find the button for "use sim WL."

I use the Side bar (a.k.a. Machinima Bar?) - there is a toggle checkbox for "Use Region Windlight" there.

Edited February 6, 2020 by Alyona Su

[Seicher Rae]

2 minutes ago, Alyona Su said:

25 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

I couldn't find the button for "use sim WL."

I use the Side bar (a.k.a. Machinima Bar?) - there is a toggle checkbox for "Use Region Windlight" there.

GAH! And thank you. Yep/nope, I did not check the F1 sidebar. FFS.

 

[Coby Foden]

46 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

Yesterday I was trying to find a way to use the SIM's natural Windlight and I couldn't find the button for "use sim WL." All I could do is set a preferred WL from my system, which of course didn't include the sim's version. I spent a really long time searching preferences and darned if I could find the option to switch back.

 

23 minutes ago, Alyona Su said:

I use the Side bar (a.k.a. Machinima Bar?) - there is a toggle checkbox for "Use Region Windlight" there.

 

20 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

GAH! And thank you. Yep/nope, I did not check the F1 sidebar. FFS.

This is one reason why everybody should finally learn to use the term "region", instead of "sim". 😁 😉

Edited February 6, 2020 by Coby Foden

[Seicher Rae]

28 minutes ago, Coby Foden said:

This is one reason why everybody should finally learn to use the term "region", instead of "sim". 😁 😉

I didn't look in the right place for that either. I'm aware enough that had I seen region WL I would have selected it. But yeah, thanks for the pedantic mansplaining. It was helpful. [sarcasm font] The correct answer was the one Alyona said, the F1 Machinima bar.

ETA: What I thought was obvious, but because I got a confused reaction emoji: Pedantically pointing out that I typed "sim" vs "region" was just that, pedantic. Not helpful. Technically correct, but so the eff what? If I had seen sim/region WL I would have clicked it. I didn't. Alyona answered the question, without the snark. Coby didn't answer the question but just gratuitously snarked. Fine, I'm not the thread police. Post what you want. Don't expect everyone to appreciate it.

 

Edited February 6, 2020 by Seicher Rae

[NiranV Dean]

2 hours ago, Seicher Rae said:

Questions: 

These are where are the buttons questions and/or ARE there the buttons in BD...

1) In Firestorm I will often go into inventory, select an object that I am wearing — and for photographs it is usually my facelight or other projectors — and select edit so I can move it. This is really important to be able to do with projectors. Is this available in BD? I've looked and looked and don't see that option.

2) I really like how I can select a Windlight in BD and it'll stay in that WL between sims and even logging out. Until I don't. Yesterday I was trying to find a way to use the SIM's natural Windlight and I couldn't find the button for "use sim WL." All I could do is set a preferred WL from my system, which of course didn't include the sim's version. I spent a really long time searching preferences and darned if I could find the option to switch back.

1) Shame shame shame on me that i did not include this into the "UI Secrets" post.

For anyone interested:

Go here:

Go there:

Double click ANY attachment (no matter if it is yours or someone elses), it will highlight the object like this

Have edit open or open it (via Ctrl + 3 for instance) without deselecting and you now have your thingy selected.

1 hour ago, Alyona Su said:

TL;DR: Set the three complexity sliders to maximum for equivalent "150k Complexity Limit" on other viewers.

It seems to me that 1 million in BD is around 100,000 in others as far as judging yourself. In preferences for BD, I have *everything* at defaults, except for the complexity sliders, I set all three to maximum (and non-imposters to 8). This allows a good "salt-and-pepper' effect of others that render without having to do so manually. Ironically, a lot more MEN render than the ladies. LOL

Ah uh. Ouch. That's not what i said and neither would that be a good TL:DR and what i'm going to say now.

150k complexity in other Viewers is meaningless. 10k 50k 100k 150k 200k 500k None of these numbers mean anything. They are useless. My Kobold has twice as much complexity than a 3.5 million triangles avatar. Yes no joke.

Bottom right you can see if you look very closely that theres someone with ~40k complexity but 3.5 million triangles whereas i am in the top left with 150k triangles and ~70k. Note that most of my complexity comes from a few tiny lights and the flexi hair i'm wearing. Those 3.5 million triangles on the other hand apparently are free and half as impactful as a few tiny lights.

This picture was the reason i changed complexity and made triangles and textures more punishing while lowering others and giving static things much more realistic values. You can stack 200+ lights (all wildly colorful) before you reach a framerate impact as high as that one avatar, just saying.

1 hour ago, Alyona Su said:

As for how @NiranV Dean has this set-up: I will not complain. He states directly and frankly that Black Dragon is something he makes for himself and to his own preferences. I see it as a kind gesture that he shares it with us and has even made reluctant changes to help appease other users; something he is neither obligated nor expected to do. And to be clear, I am not debunking your perspective or belittling anything, etc. I am only expressing my own purview on the Black Dragon "settings" subject!

Other than the jelly doll "issues", I think the rest of it is outstanding and trumps this little annoyance (annoyance to the rest of us, NiranV, because we've been poorly trained for so long that we aren't used to it! LOL)

One thing I *do* like is that notice that "All other avatars can see you" - actually give a count "1 Avatar cannot see you", etc.

@NiranV Dean - this. To be able to righ-click an attached object in inventory and have the "Edit" option. It makes it easier when needing to edit multiple attachments that are not easily accessible by click in-world, such as embedded inside the avatar, etc. So: feature request. (I did get this once, maybe twice, but I'm unsure what the criteria was that allowed it.)

I use the Side bar (a.k.a. Machinima Bar?) - there is a toggle checkbox for "Use Region Windlight" there.

1) While Black Dragon is my Viewer and made mainly for personal use it is as much also done for others, at least while moving inside the restrictions i've set. There are features i wont implement ever obviously and there are also misc limitations, either technical or personal.

2) Jellydolls isn't really an issue its an answer to the actual problem that is the negative impact of everything around you. The solution would be optimization of course.

3) See above.

4) Regiolight or Region Windlight can be toggled in Machinima Sidebar, the main menu and the Environment Editor. Except the Machinima Sidebar all of these options are in the same place and available in all other Viewers.

Edited February 6, 2020 by NiranV Dean

[Candide LeMay]

I'm keen to try this viewer. Is there a way to disable the youtube video that plays on the login screen (for whatever reason)?

[Seicher Rae]

6 minutes ago, NiranV Dean said:

1) Shame shame shame on me that i did not include this into the "UI Secrets" post.

For anyone interested:

Go here:

Go there:

Double click ANY attachment (no matter if it is yours or someone elses), it will highlight the object like this

Have edit open or open it (via Ctrl + 3 for instance) without deselecting and you now have your thingy selected.

 

Yee-ouch. Thanks for the explanation and I'm glad it can be done, but that is complicated! Can we request a simplification ala Firestorm? Go into inventory, click on item worn, select edit?  

[NiranV Dean]

Just now, Candide LeMay said:

I'm keen to try this viewer. Is there a way to disable the youtube video that plays on the login screen (for whatever reason)?

Yesno. There is no option but there is a way.

That whatever reason is IT being the Viewer's trailer/intro. I put a lot of work into these and want people to see them.

[NiranV Dean]

8 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

Yee-ouch. Thanks for the explanation and I'm glad it can be done, but that is complicated! Can we request a simplification ala Firestorm? Go into inventory, click on item worn, select edit?  

Yes you can request (anything) but i'm not going to add it (everything). That's why i added the double click select to the complexity window as "side" feature. I don't like doing what others already do.

Edit: Actually thats not the reason i added it. The reason was to make it easier to see which item the UUID that is having 5 trillion complexity is coresponding to, the side effect was that you could use it to select your own attachments as well and use it to select hard-to-select rigged items. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to do it at all and trust me as someone who wears only rigged items, it IS annoying not being able to select your stuff sometimes.

Edit 2: It's not really complicated at all. Its just like opening your inventory and searching for your item and right click - editing it. Only theres no shortcut to open the complexity window and you dont need to search through a slow window. But it has double click to select!

Edited February 6, 2020 by NiranV Dean

[Alyona Su]

I get what all your saying (I wont say I understand it all  ) - My comparison was just my own guesstimate of a reference for an avatar being referenced in one viewer and how the same avatar is referenced in another viewer (that has been years in teaching us the evil ways LOL) As was shown in an example above: If I am dressed a certain way and in LL Viewer and Firestorm viewer I am approximately 100,000 complexity score (they still vary between viewers) then I log out of those and log into Black Dragon my score is now 1.1 million or so, Which scared the heck out of me!  The reason I use that "deductive-reasoning" for comparison is mostly for myself as others in those other viewers all tend to see me just fine. It's just a point of reference, something to mentally use as an anchor, I guess.

As for the jelly doll others I see a lot when in BD, it doesn't bother me much, except when I go somewhere and there every single other avatar is a jelly doll. So I turn those settings up for myself so there is, at least, a "salt and pepper" sprinkling of rendered agents so I don't feel so awkward (maybe a placebo effect)

And you are absolutely right that my TL;DR; is not phrased properly as I should have been very clear that this is how I set my own settings and others' result will vary. I don't have a "Gamerz!" powerhouse computer system, but I am fortunate that it is relatively hefty because of the graphic work I do, and so it may be above average in terms of many, if not most SL users.

Edited February 6, 2020 by Alyona Su

[NiranV Dean]

16 hours ago, Alyona Su said:

I get what all your saying (I wont say I understand it all  ) - My comparison was just my own guesstimate of a reference for an avatar being referenced in one viewer and how the same avatar is referenced in another viewer (that has been years in teaching us the evil ways LOL) As was shown in an example above: If I am dressed a certain way and in LL Viewer and Firestorm viewer I am approximately 100,000 complexity score (they still vary between viewers) then I log out of those and log into Black Dragon my score is now 1.1 million or so, Which scared the heck out of me!  The reason I use that "deductive-reasoning" for comparison is mostly for myself as others in those other viewers all tend to see me just fine. It's just a point of reference, something to mentally use as an anchor, I guess.

As for the jelly doll others I see a lot when in BD, it doesn't bother me much, except when I go somewhere and there every single other avatar is a jelly doll. So I turn those settings up for myself so there is, at least, a "salt and pepper" sprinkling of rendered agents so I don't feel so awkward (maybe a placebo effect)

And you are absolutely right that my TL;DR; is not phrased properly as I should have been very clear that this is how I set my own settings and others' result will vary. I don't have a "Gamerz!" powerhouse computer system, but I am fortunate that it is relatively hefty because of the graphic work I do, and so it may be above average in terms of many, if not most SL users.

I never had a Gamerz powerhouse, never will. I find these too expensive for what they do. I've always had "budget" PC's. I just recently swapped from from an AMD FX 6200 (which was 8+ years old) to an AMD Ryzen 5 3600, both are low pretty low budget CPU's but had a big bang for their low price, the FX ran everything at playable framerates given that the game wasn't a complete unoptimized mess. My GTX 1060 (and previously my 670) aren't exactly high end either, they are medium-tier GPU's (the 670 being a low-tier GPU), both the CPU and GPU you can get for like 200 each and i'm very confident that both will stay for another good 2-3 years at least, the Ryzen probably much longer given that CPU utilization is still in its infancy and game optimization is still laughable theres pretty much no reason that a Ryzen 5 3600 shouldn't be enough in 5-6 years still. In SL i always had around 20-30 FPS with Deferred, Shadows, SSAO and everything else on, i've never "lowered" my graphics for any place or any reason ever, i simply made it work. If anything SL is in a place it could run at max graphics on almost any machine as of today unless you count these really trashy dual core netbooks you pay 5 times as much as you would for a PC of 3 tiers higher. If only SL's content would be more optimized... we'd see even better framerates, more stuff, fancier stuff and LL might just get off of their horse and considers adding more graphical features.

[Alyona Su]

5 hours ago, NiranV Dean said:

I never had a Gamerz powerhouse, never will. I find these too expensive for what they do. I've always had "budget" PC's. I just recently swapped from from an AMD FX 6200 (which was 8+ years old) to an AMD Ryzen 5 3600, both are low pretty low budget CPU's but had a big bang for their low price, the FX ran everything at playable framerates given that the game wasn't a complete unoptimized mess. My GTX 1060 (and previously my 670) aren't exactly high end either, they are medium-tier GPU's (the 670 being a low-tier GPU), both the CPU and GPU you can get for like 200 each and i'm very confident that both will stay for another good 2-3 years at least, the Ryzen probably much longer given that CPU utilization is still in its infancy and game optimization is still laughable theres pretty much no reason that a Ryzen 5 3600 shouldn't be enough in 5-6 years still. In SL i always had around 20-30 FPS with Deferred, Shadows, SSAO and everything else on, i've never "lowered" my graphics for any place or any reason ever, i simply made it work. If anything SL is in a place it could run at max graphics on almost any machine as of today unless you count these really trashy dual core netbooks you pay 5 times as much as you would for a PC of 3 tiers higher. If only SL's content would be more optimized... we'd see even better framerates, more stuff, fancier stuff and LL might just get off of their horse and considers adding more graphical features.

I enjoy reading your posts because they are edifying to me; I often net-search to know what you're talking about. In this case, mostly video cards, right? This helps my perspective. So I looked up mine - and mind you, I have no idea what any of it means! I have a "Intel core i5-7400 CPU @3.00GHz" and 8.00 GB RAM and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB. Where all that sits in the scale of $300 netbook up to %50,000 Mac Pro, I have no idea. Well, near the bottom of THAT scale, I figure.  

[NiranV Dean]

1 hour ago, Alyona Su said:

I enjoy reading your posts because they are edifying to me; I often net-search to know what you're talking about. In this case, mostly video cards, right? This helps my perspective. So I looked up mine - and mind you, I have no idea what any of it means! I have a "Intel core i5-7400 CPU @3.00GHz" and 8.00 GB RAM and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB. Where all that sits in the scale of $300 netbook up to %50,000 Mac Pro, I have no idea. Well, near the bottom of THAT scale, I figure.  

Basically this: Your GPU is the same as mine, except it has less memory, the only difference this makes is you'll run faster out of texture memory and see texture thrashing faster, also in some games you wont be able to set Texture Quality to maximum. Your CPU was basically miles ahead of my AMD FX 6200 at least in SL, in multithreaded stuff not so much, your RAM is slower and much less but the only real difference that will do for you is slower loading times and less stuff open at the same time and probably some games wont run at all because they require 8-10gb to run minimum. *caugh*Rust, Minecraft, Ark*caugh* *caugh* basically any procedual game nowadays *caugh*. On a scale from a 300$ netbook to a 50.000$ Mac Pro is basically a scale from nothing to nothing, there is nothing inbetween. Mac's are overpriced, glorified junk. Sad as it is but they are just manipulating with big announcements, presentation and some eyecandy but if you look under their hood they are the equivalent of a diamond horse. See below.

 

[Maitimo]

My system is almost the same as Alyona; same cpu, same ram, but my graphics card is not quite as good, nVidea 960 I think. Can't check right now cos I am not at home.

And Black Dragon works just fine, certainly no worse than Firestorm in Ultra, even with most of the graphics options turned way up. I haven't noticed any texture thrashing in either viewer and fps is not much different between the two.

However I wouldn't want to go to a busy club with BD any more than I would do in Firestorm at Ultra graphics, and BD won't be my main viewer while there is no inbuilt AO.

[NiranV Dean]

A new update has been released

https://niranv-sl.blogspot.com/2020/02/black-dragon-64x-update-370-improving.html

[suzyst]

Must admit first attempts to use black dragon didn't last long, after using firestorm for years I found the interface too confusing.  This thread and the links to the blog and tutorials have got me interested. I'm still using firestorm for most of my inworld time, but switching more to BD for serious pics. Thanks to Niran for making it and everyone else for the useful info.

[NiranV Dean]

Login button doesn't enable on first run, you need to hit enter or come from a previous successful login for it to enable...

My god, you merge Linden Code, they touch something and all their spaghetti drops into your bolognese. I HATE SPAGHETTI. Give me any noodle, no matter which. Give me spaghetti and i'll snap your back clean like you snapped the spaghetti you just served.

When something breaks so spectacularly that you stop, drop n roll the living hell out of whatever you were doing just to fix this mess.

 

-> Fix incoming.

Edited February 11, 2020 by NiranV Dean

[Jackson Redstar]

There are a couple features missing out of BD that while most may not notice, can be frustration, one in particular when trying to video

1) cannot turn off 'show look at' target. On a couple occasions in the past when  used BD to film weddings, I actually get IM'd rather anger like, "why are you zooming in on my..." Uh, dude, I am filming a wedding here! sheesh!

2) This for me is why I can't use BD to film a wedding anymore. There is no re-synch (the ctrl+s) to re-synch animations in the scene. Pretty much impossible to film couples dancing without hitting ctrl+s a few times to try to get them aligned, or for that matter, even to take a photo

3) there is no 'texture refresh'. If a texture isn't loading properly or one starts to thrash, right clicking on it and hitting texture re fresh can be a big help alot of times

Besides those 3 glaring holes, when it comes to BD filming scenes where alot of avis are present  and or 'complicated' scenes, BD can struggle to load, taking 10x longer, or more, to load than FS (sometimes, if ever), texture thrashing can still be an issue, and when you are filming a wedding (or anything, really) having textures blur in and out, well, that just isn't gonna work

Having said that I still like BD for doing photos esp. using the Poser (Damn sure wish LL would let that be used on another avatar! with thier permission of course) BUT, some of the in word advantages in BD rendering can be made up in photoshop, so there is that too....

[NiranV Dean]

2 hours ago, Jackson Redstar said:

There are a couple features missing out of BD that while most may not notice, can be frustration, one in particular when trying to video

1) cannot turn off 'show look at' target. On a couple occasions in the past when  used BD to film weddings, I actually get IM'd rather anger like, "why are you zooming in on my..." Uh, dude, I am filming a wedding here! sheesh!

2) This for me is why I can't use BD to film a wedding anymore. There is no re-synch (the ctrl+s) to re-synch animations in the scene. Pretty much impossible to film couples dancing without hitting ctrl+s a few times to try to get them aligned, or for that matter, even to take a photo

3) there is no 'texture refresh'. If a texture isn't loading properly or one starts to thrash, right clicking on it and hitting texture re fresh can be a big help alot of times

Besides those 3 glaring holes, when it comes to BD filming scenes where alot of avis are present  and or 'complicated' scenes, BD can struggle to load, taking 10x longer, or more, to load than FS (sometimes, if ever), texture thrashing can still be an issue, and when you are filming a wedding (or anything, really) having textures blur in and out, well, that just isn't gonna work

Having said that I still like BD for doing photos esp. using the Poser (Damn sure wish LL would let that be used on another avatar! with thier permission of course) BUT, some of the in word advantages in BD rendering can be made up in photoshop, so there is that too....

1) Not turning off lookat is intended. I wish Firestorm would stop showing names for them. Make it a password protected option or only available for self-compilers already.

2) Resync animations can be done via the Dragon - My Useful Features - Animation Controls/Manipulation window, you can select all avatars and hit Reset there to restart everyone's animations at the same time, pretty much guaranteed to sync up animations pretty reliably without needing to do it several times.

3) Texture refresh was an option long ago but has never been reimplemented, it has never served a purpose for me. Textures do not trash and they do not "fail" to load properly. If they would, something is horribly broken and a relog might be in order. So far all cases of texture thrashing were either user error or the user running out of VRAM. Any texture corruptions were real corruptions, as in pink funky squared textures that absolutely needed a relog + cache clear because everything was slowly going funky.

Texture trashing is only an issue if you are not giving the Viewer enough texture memory or if you are simply running out of texture memory. In the latter case nothing can be done about that, if you run out, you run out, all i can say is "get a GPU with more VRAM" if you insist on having everything load fully on screen in that particular place that is causing you issues since i assume you are not the owner and cannot edit and downscale oversized textures where necessary. If the issue happens only on BD then your settings are at culprit and Firestorm would be maxing your texture memory with only a tiny tip missing to make it spill over as BD doesn't use any more texture memory worth mentioning (again depending on your settings).

[NiranV Dean]

Soon™ on 1. April.

[Deidra Heartsong]

I am hoping someone can give me some help on downloading the update for the viewer. I keep getting an error of the connection not being secure, and I can't bypass that to download even when I remove the "s" out of the http. Any suggestions?

[Pussycat Catnap]

Eyes bugging out?

Catznip viewer:

Dragon Viewer:

As my head moves and eyes blink - one or both eyes will poke through.

 

If I log in using Catznip and use an alt to log into Black Dragon - then watch myself - this does NOT happen. It only seems to happen to the avatar actually logged in through Black Dragon.

If I login with Black Dragon and use Catznip on the alt. The alt watching me doesn't see this - but I see it on Black Dragon. Putting viewers side by side:

Something in BD I suppose lets me set a lower detail?

Checking debug... 'rendervolumeLOD' reports 2 for both of these. I manually set it to 2.5 and to 4 and no change.

Edited February 27, 2020 by Pussycat Catnap