Features you want in the viewer that are way to complicated so will never happen.

[Judas Shuffle]

I was thinking about what I would want in the viewer if money and difficulty  and legality werent an issue. I have a couple of ideas but what are yours?

Remote assistance- If it could be made so you dont have all your money and details stolen I would love a feature so I could give control of myself and my inventory to a friend and they could remotely fix whatever is wrong with my avatar for me. I could even watch what they do and learn  how they did it. Like teamviewer but in sl.

I also want the viewer built into Blender . Then I can stand around in world and make things socially with my fave 3D package and people can tell me im doing it wrong

your turn...

[elleevelyn]

something like Remote Desktop

while we are logged in, able to invite another person to access and operate all aspects of the viewer from our account/avatar's perspective

some use cases: build out our parcel using our items, clean up our inventory., set up our rent boxes, vendors, maketplace stores, shop and/outfit our avatar, manage our estate/parcel, be a hands-on tutor

[InnerCity Elf]

Application of the "smells like a rainy afternoon with a whiff of sea salt caramel and a hint of lilies" tags that some roleplayers wear... But, more seriously, yes, scents aligned to sim landscapes, like "forest", "ocean", "city center bakery", etc., might be cool, although one might then have to avoid scenic spots with dumpsters, or hell, but I'd probably wouldn't have the money to upgrade accordingly on my side, if it ever happened. 

[Judas Shuffle]

45 minutes ago, InnerCity Elf said:

Application of the "smells like a rainy afternoon with a whiff of sea salt caramel and a hint of lilies" tags that some roleplayers wear... But, more seriously, yes, scents aligned to sim landscapes, like "forest", "ocean", "city center bakery", etc., might be cool, although one might then have to avoid scenic spots with dumpsters, or hell, but I'd probably wouldn't have the money to upgrade accordingly on my side, if it ever happened. 

Imagine what griefers would do with it lol

[AmeliaJ08]

Alpha painting: Some brushes that you could use to paint on top of your avatar and create custom alphas, then when you're done you could have the option of automatically uploading it or saving it as a PNG for refinement.

 

Shapes: add a whole bunch of new sliders to shapes that can also include bone rotation, individual bone control etc for much greater control of avatar shape. This one doesn't seem so complicated and could even be a retrofit, maybe include the extra controls under an 'advanced' tickbox or something and just bolt it on top of the existing shape system for those who want to use it.

 

 

[Katherine Heartsong]

A one click process in Firestorm to "take the 50+ animations you find in this AO I just bought and move them into a new custom AO group named this intelligently (i.e., walks go into walks)", instead of manually having to move animation files in groups over.

The LL official viewer to have the same feature; there is no chance of me ever using any other viewer unless it has a custom AO feature like Firestorm does.

The ability to create sub-folders (and sub-sub folders) in the Outfits folder, and have them show up in the outfits panel you can open. Please, bring back the first and do the second as well. Organizing large outfits inventories is a basic feature everyone needs. I still do not understand the technical reason this was removed, because from a UX point-of-view it's a mistake and adds a significant pain-point back into the experience.

Yes to both of @AmeliaJ08's points, especially the alpha painting one.

Edited October 20, 2023 by Katherine Heartsong

[Arielle Popstar]

6 hours ago, Judas Shuffle said:

I was thinking about what I would want in the viewer if money and difficulty  and legality werent an issue. I have a couple of ideas but what are yours?

Remote assistance- If it could be made so you dont have all your money and details stolen I would love a feature so I could give control of myself and my inventory to a friend and they could remotely fix whatever is wrong with my avatar for me. I could even watch what they do and learn  how they did it. Like teamviewer but in sl.

I also want the viewer built into Blender . Then I can stand around in world and make things socially with my fave 3D package and people can tell me im doing it wrong

your turn...

Are you meaning blender built into the Viewer? I suggested something like that years ago when viewers were still around a 25 MB download and was laughed at because of the additional size it would make the viewer and yet since then the viewer size is 5 times it was then and that's apparently ok in spite of no additional inworld building tools like parts of blender would provide.

[Judas Shuffle]

27 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Are you meaning blender built into the Viewer? I suggested something like that years ago when viewers were still around a 25 MB download and was laughed at because of the additional size it would make the viewer and yet since then the viewer size is 5 times it was then and that's apparently ok in spite of no additional inworld building tools like parts of blender would provide.

No I want the viewer buillding into Blender, Blender already does PBR and all that cool stuff. I miss colaborative building. Its probably not possible but why not dream big

[Ceka Cianci]

I would love the ability to freely mod my shape with my cursor.. also have more tools for that,  where we could really go in and tweak things with little touches.. then be able to save  not just the whole thing, but the different touches we add so that we could just grab them from a panel and apply them..

I think I would become way too addicted though, but what fun I would have in my addiction.. hehehe

[Paul Hexem]

Collaborative building in world like we can do in other games would be great. Games with voxels are starting to put SL to shame.

Detachable floaters like other games and software have so I can use all my monitors.

[Love Zhaoying]

32 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Collaborative building in world like we can do in other games would be great.

I thought we've had collaborative building all this time in Second Life.. 

I remember stories people told on the Forums about it (both good and bad).

[animats]

3 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Remote assistance- If it could be made so you dont have all your money and details stolen I would love a feature so I could give control of myself and my inventory to a friend and they could remotely fix whatever is wrong with my avatar for me. I could even watch what they do and learn  how they did it. Like teamviewer but in sl.

I also want the viewer built into Blender .

Multi-user Blender access is coming. Multi-user Maya access is working now. NVidia Omniverse Connector is a complicated system which allows collaborative editing across multiple programs. There's a special version of Blender which will connect to an NVidia Omniverse server, and when you change something, you can export to the server and everybody else in your session sees it. Some group of people who work together in Blender or Maya should try this and report how it works. This could be a big win for large group efforts, such as mole builds and Fantasy Faire.

This is all based on the glTF standard, which SL is now starting to use for materials, and which LL says SL will use for meshes at some point. Once SL makes it to glTF, it might be possible to put an Omniverse Connector into an SL viewer, for real-time import/export. It would be semi in world editing - you see it in world, and when you edit it in Blender it changes in world, but you have to commit changes and pay the upload fee for others in world to see it.

So there's a path that leads to what Arielle is asking for, but other things have to be finished first.

This is unlikely to be a typical user thing. More like a tool for serious creators with enough screen space and compute power for both Blender/Maya and SL at the same time. The  Omniverse thing is for production teams, not end users. There's a free version and a paid version. It may be too industrial-strength for SL.

[CaithLynnSayes]

2 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I thought we've had collaborative building all this time in Second Life.. 

I sometimes (way less now, then i used to) do that with a group of friends, it's really fun.

[PheebyKatz]

I want a button that, when I push it, a hand holding a knife comes out of the other person's monitor and jabs them in the face with it.

I've been told that this would be too difficult to implement currently.

[Frionil Fang]

11 hours ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

A one click process in Firestorm to "take the 50+ animations you find in this AO I just bought and move them into a new custom AO group named this intelligently (i.e., walks go into walks)", instead of manually having to move animation files in groups over.

If the AO uses the classic ZHAO-II style notecards, just extract the entire AO's contents, notecards and animations, to a folder and drag the config notecard into the Firestorm AO: it should do exactly what you're asking for. At least used to, but haven't tried in a while.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Frionil Fang said:

If the AO uses the classic ZHAO-II style notecards, just extract the entire AO's contents, notecards and animations, to a folder and drag the config notecard into the Firestorm AO: it should do exactly what you're asking for. At least used to, but haven't tried in a while.

That's interesting, I didn't know the FS AO is compatible with the classic ZHAO-II NC.

[Riley Brinner]

Pictures somehow automatically come with every single item. 

[animats]

Larger regions seem to be the big thing that is off the table. They work fine technically in the Other Simulator. This is an LL business decision, I suspect. People would want giant regions for their little house and yard. Most large regions on the grids that support them are mostly empty, and they make the world seem sparse.

Personally, I'd like to have them even if the only thing they were used for was Linden-owned open space regions. Large areas of open water or bare ground with a road or two to fill in the gaps between revenue regions, perhaps. Extra water around the edges of the continents, especially Sansara. Clean up rough edges, such as the southeastern empty space of Zindra and the northern edge of Bellessaria, where you can see the edge of the world not going down to ground level. (There's been progress there. The Moles put in some end of road barriers and shrubbery, so you usually don't see those spots by accident.)

[Casidy Silvercloud]

Mesh and animation creation tools inworld. 

Neither is reasonably feasible anytime in the near future (or ever, probably), of course, for all kinds of logistical reasons. Still, it would be lovely if I could just, as someone else said, work on creation while still inworld the way we used to with prims and to some extent even sculpts (with maps already uploaded into sl, that is).

Yes you can build with mesh, once it's uploaded, edit, and create, but all that initial work is done outside of sl. It does hamper collaborative building somewhat. 

Prims made it super easy (aside from texture creation), sculpts still had some out of world involvement (beyond texture creation) but still allowed for far more collaborative work than mesh does currently. I love mesh, I'm glad we have it, but it did take a lot away from this aspect, which of course not everyone was into to begin with. Sandboxes were once something spectacular though for sure, because of it! 

Animations are just a whole other thing. It would be cool if we could make them all inworld too. I know we can't, and I understand it would likely be a logistical nightmare, but wouldn't it be neat if you could go to a sandbox with a bunch of other people and just start working on animations right there in front of them? Or better yet, if you don't know how to make them, go to a sandbox and watch someone else make them and teach you how, getting to be a more immersed participant in the whole process?

The same could easily be done with mesh too, if we had better built in creation tools. That's exactly how I learned to create anything in sl (first with prims, then sculpts), and  taught some others how as well. It was an exciting time for me! 

That might be the "forever a student even if I'm a teacher" in me, who admittedly gets very excited at the mere idea of learning new things, or even teaching them. I'm told it's a sickness (I don't believe it). I still learn new things, every single day, I just miss that more immersive aspect that was way more prominent years ago. 

Yes I know, the whole of sl is "mesh" anyway, don't muddy my hopes and dreams with silly particulars! 

 

[CaithLynnSayes]

3 hours ago, animats said:

Larger regions seem to be the big thing that is off the table. They work fine technically in the Other Simulator. This is an LL business decision, I suspect. People would want giant regions for their little house and yard. Most large regions on the grids that support them are mostly empty, and they make the world seem sparse.

Personally, I'd like to have them even if the only thing they were used for was Linden-owned open space regions. Large areas of open water or bare ground with a road or two to fill in the gaps between revenue regions, perhaps. Extra water around the edges of the continents, especially Sansara. Clean up rough edges, such as the southeastern empty space of Zindra and the northern edge of Bellessaria, where you can see the edge of the world not going down to ground level. (There's been progress there. The Moles put in some end of road barriers and shrubbery, so you usually don't see those spots by accident.)

This is not a bad idea. It would cut down on the number of complaints of bad sim/region crossings and there would be less crossings, making the traveling experience in SL a bit more pleasant. But as you said, this will likely never happen. Shame, really.

[animats]

3 hours ago, Casidy Silvercloud said:

Mesh and animation creation tools inworld. 

We might get something else instead - AI tools to do the job.

There are AI tools that can make an avatar from a few still pictures. And there are AI tools that can make good still pictures from a text prompt.

"Victorian factory girl with dark dress and white apron." Generated by AnimeGenius in "realistic" mode, using GPT-4. Test for a possible NPC for a project in New Babbage.

Have any creators been down this road yet?

 

[Love Zhaoying]

9 minutes ago, animats said:

We might get something else instead - AI tools to do the job.

There are AI tools that can make an avatar from a few still pictures. And there are AI tools that can make good still pictures from a text prompt.

"Victorian factory girl with dark dress and white apron." Generated by AnimeGenius in "realistic" mode, using GPT-4. Test for a possible NPC for a project in New Babbage.

Have any creators been down this road yet?

 

Nice! Way too pretty (for realistic Victorian factory girl), plus she should be much dirtier!

[Orwar]

1 hour ago, animats said:

"Victorian factory girl with dark dress and white apron." Generated by AnimeGenius in "realistic" mode, using GPT-4. Test for a possible NPC for a project in New Babbage.

   But can it mesh and rig the character model for an SL avi/NPC? 

[ValKalAstra]

1 minute ago, Orwar said:

   But can it mesh and rig the character model for an SL avi/NPC? 

The tech is getting there but it ain't close yet. Most companies learned from the whole Stable Diffusion mess and are keeping things behind closed doors so it's hard to say how good things are but what's out in the open is middling so far. You can generate mesh, yes. However the mesh is a complete and utter mess. You could probably rig it but at the current state of things, it would set SL on fire.

https://github.com/threestudio-project/threestudio

What works really well is to bake textures onto mesh objects. You could create cool photo backdrops that way. I won't say easily because nothing about manual installs of the tech is easy - but it can be done. You could also create skyboxes rather easily (with say, https://skybox.blockadelabs.com/ and modifying it into the proper projection). There's pleny of AI on the grid already, usually in the form of low effort images though. As someone that does learn and experiment with AI - I get ticked off when I see typical AI mistakes someone couldn't be bothered to fix and then sells it anyway. But that's just me.

[Judas Shuffle]

Ai is a minefield of exciting .Make me a sim that looks like this  Heypresto . Im choosing to belive creators will still be the go to people for this.