[Explaining driving in SL to a gamer made me feel old]

1 hour ago, Richardus Raymaker said:

Never used WASD in my life. Terrible placed keys for moving. Arrow keys all the way. Shame some software devs still think WASD side only.

I started off using arrow keys when playing first person shooters but it was pointed out that using WASD instead makes it easier to have multiple key bindings and also provides easier access to the three most common modifier keys (shift, ctrl & alt) which are commonly used for things like run, crouch, etc.

I used to play a lot of fps games and eventually got tired of wearing out my WASD keys so ended up buying one of these...

while it doesn't get nearly as much use these days it does still work perfectly, which is pretty impressive after over two decades considering how many regular keyboards I've gotten through in that period.

[ALM Proposal / Work]

43 minutes ago, animats said:

To be useful, this has to be supported in the viewer.

I'm all in favor of automatically generated billboard style LOD models, as long as they're optional.

There's no single workflow or solution for generating LODs that will produce the ideal models for every type of asset since what works best will rely to some extent on the assets intended use and while automatically generated billboards are obviously more preferable when compared to random floating triangles I'd still rather have the ability to make my own custom LOD models than be limited to auto-generated LODs simply because some people can't be bothered to do likewise.

[ALM Proposal / Work]

1 hour ago, animats said:

Overly large textures are becoming a non-problem. My experimental viewer only loads textures up to one texture pixel (texel) per screen pixel. If you have a giant texture on an object you're not right on top of,  the high-detail version of the texture will never be loaded. LL is putting that in their viewer. This is a huge win.

While I'm definitely in favor of LL updating the viewer and making some much needed changes in order to improve performance there will always be benefit to be had from encouraging creators to use common sense when determining what resolution their textures need to be.

In fact it's not just creators that would benefit from learning a little more about texel density.  Whether you're decorating your living room, putting together a new outfit or building an entire region paying attention to the comparative texel density of the assets you're using can substantially improve the end result.  As this quote (from the article Texel Density – What is it and why is it so important?) puts it

Quote

Maintaining a consistent texel density might seem like an unimportant technical detail in the grand scheme of making art, but it is essential for not only creating a great-looking asset but for keeping the quality of art consistent throughout the entire game. Having objects with wildly different texel densities sitting next to each other shines a light on quality issues of the assets and can be emersion-breaking as the player is no longer looking at a consistent world.

 

1 hour ago, animats said:

Creator User Group has been very encouraging lately. LL has hired some people from game graphics development, and they're gradually bringing the LL viewer into the current decade. Coming soon, per the last meeting:

• Loading textures based on how much space they occupy on screen, as above.
• PBR,  per the gLTF 2.0 spec.
• Avatar impostors as Z-sprites, so they depth sort properly.
• Better environmental reflections.
• All deferred rendering, which means the GPU does more of the work.
• Maybe even mirrors.

This should be interesting.

I'm definitely looking forward to the new features and improvements!

One new feature that was mentioned briefly but hasn't been discussed much is the ability to flag meshes (and hopefully individual faces) as being double-sided.  This may seem a little trivial at first but I'm guessing it will make a big difference to creators of landscaping items like trees and other items that make use of "leaf cards" since it could substantially lower the number of polygons required.  Another area in which double-sided faces could have a huge impact is in the creation of "billboard" LOD models since it will essentially halve the number of triangles required to make the low/lowest LOD models, perhaps it will even allow some creators to make mesh that utilizes proper LOD models and yet rivals the low land impact of mesh that doesn't.

[ALM Proposal / Work]

2 hours ago, EliseAnne85 said:

While I appreciate what Fluffy and what you Ernst are saying about 1024's but some items just do not look good lower than a 1024.  It's a some do, some don't kind of thing.

I'd argue that almost every object looks "better" with 1024x1024 textures, but it's nothing compared to how amazing objects look when you use PBR materials with 4k textures.  However since we don't live in a world where hardware resources are unlimited and some residents are struggling with the requirements of SL already it makes sense to limit the available texture size to something less excessive.  Unfortunately when you limit image resolution it seems a lot of people interpret that limit as the "recommended size" and subsequently upload every texture at the maximum possible resolution, which is unfortunate because better texture optimization would do wonders for those on low-end hardware who are struggling with poor performance.

Nobody is saying creators shouldn't be using 1024x1024 textures, just that they should be using them responsibly where appropriate.

2 hours ago, EliseAnne85 said:

What I was wondering and hopefully some geeks know more (I am not a geek) are you sure all the scripts in all these huds aren't causing lag?  I mean creators are scripting every part an avatar wears, even for like the grommets on shoes.  Are you sure all these scripted huds aren't causing the lag because having the LOD down to 2 is ridiculously low.  I just went to a human party with the LOD at 2 and items were dead, even some of what people were wearing.  It was a terrible way to enjoy a party at LOD 2.  I'm usually a Dinkie and we don't script (hud) items very often.  We sell color by color or a fatpack with many colors but no hud and it's NOT laggy.  Tinies and Dinkies tend to build optimized for everything though too.

What is the problem with SL?  It never was this laggy before EEP, not for me, and I've been here on and off over 17 years. And, I mention EEP because this is when my lag really started with the human avatar.

The term "lag" is so loosely defined that it's almost meaningless in regards to SL.  There are so many factors that can cause poor performance and so many different types of performance related issues that using the term lag to try and describe all of them is an extreme over-simplification and serves only to confuse people.  For example, scripts run on the server-side and each script will take a certain amount of resources and if enough of them are running at once it can cause the region to "lag" so that everything slows down however even when a regions performance slows down so much that it's about to crash you can potentially still be getting a solid 120 frames per second from your graphics card.

2 hours ago, EliseAnne85 said:

I miss the original Lindens.

Random, but okay... I'm sure they miss you too!  

2 hours ago, EliseAnne85 said:

And, forced ALM is going to kill people's laptops.  Forcing this is a bad idea.  You build another viewer, if people migrate there, fine.  If they don't, they don't.  

Meanwhile, this LOD is absurd.

Since LL have already stated that they're only going to remove forward rendering if it doesn't adversely impact the majority of residents it seems like your concern is unwarranted.

As for absurd LOD, that's entirely out of LLs control and something you should be taking up with the people that created the mesh in question.

[hola , edo want friend with girls . nice and funny one me wanted.]

1 hour ago, Robberinthemuseum said:

I think you would have more luck if you didn't refer to yourself in the third person.

On the other hand it's kinda quirky and some people might find that appealing?

(this lil fella did it all the time and everyone seemed to think he was adorable... even Drew Barrymore!) 😅

[Rebelle™ 5 Pro Texturing Program - Almost Free!/93%Off]

This looks quite similar to Corel Painter (originally created by Fractal Designs aka MetaCreations who were collectively responsible for Poser, Bryce and all the fun Kais graphics apps before Corel gobbled them all up faster than a Borg drone can say "Resistance is futile!" 🙄).

Unfortunately the minimum requirements for this seem about the same as Painter so it's not going to run on my old Windows tablet (which would be my main incentive for buying a more lightweight Painter-like app) but even so given how low the price is I'm very tempted to get it anyway.

One of my main gripes with Painter is that you can't export the "Impasto layer" (Painters equivalent of a depth/height map which it uses to calculate the relief on its natural media effects) in order to convert it to a normal map which would allow you to recreate the same simulated depth on 3D surfaces, so if Rebelle allows you to export the equivalent of a depth map which captures the height data used by its natural media effects then I'm sold!

[Uploading photos to SL]

2 minutes ago, Charalyne Blackwood said:

Fluffy said it much better! *awards Fluffy a trophy and a delightful decorated canister fulla tiny mershmellaz*

Mmmmmm ..... mershmellaz!  

[Uploading photos to SL]

You can find an explanation for why your images appear distorted on this wiki page Texture aspect ratios but the quote below sums it up.

Quote

All Second Life textures are constrained to powers of 2. This means if you upload a texture that's 257x514, it'll be resized to the nearest powers of 2, or 256x512.

If the image you're uploading isn't at the correct aspect ratio (e.g. 1:1, 1:2, 2:1, etc.) then it will get resized to an aspect ratio which most closely matches its current proportions, so if you want your image to appear correctly when viewing it from your inventory you will need to resize and crop (or add borders to) the image first so that it's the correct size (if you plan to display the images on objects in-world then it doesn't matter quite as much since you can simply resize the object the image is displayed on to change the aspect ratio it appears at).

ETA: If you just want to view the images yourself and don't mind manually resizing the window then the solution @Charalyne Blackwood suggested is definitely easier!  The only reason to edit the image proportions first is if you're worried about how the image appears by default to people you may give copies to.

[I paid for Linden but it doesn’t show on the Second Life viewer]

5 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

Good  question. The number that shows in your viewer often takes a while to sync with the real number that's on your account page.  That's why I never buy anything through the viewer, personally.  Relogging usually re-syncs it.

Didn't they previously add a feature where you can click your L$ balance in the viewer to update it or does that not work anymore?

Apparently it was a thing back in 2011 according to the answers in this thread

but it's been a while since I've had to do that so maybe it got removed?

[If you use an avatar of a gender you are not, are you good at portraying that gender?]

33 minutes ago, cunomar said:

Before they banned all the things that used to turn boys into men

Wait, they banned puberty, when did that happen?  

[ALM Proposal / Work]

11 hours ago, Candide LeMay said:

Folks who follow the PBR project - are there plans to support decals in the new renderer? That would be a big win.

I'd absolutely love to see SL support decals/texture layers however, given how extravagant some folks can be with 1024x1024 textures, giving creators the ability to apply even more textures per face would probably be disastrous for performance.

[ALM Proposal / Work]

On 9/30/2022 at 4:04 PM, Jenna Huntsman said:

Sure, you can make a rusty-looking metal texture, but it'll never interact with light correctly. You can make the metal shine, but then the rust will shine along with it (which is wrong), or you can make the metal matte, which makes the rust look correct, but the metal surface will be wrong.

Just wanted to address this comment and mention that it is possible to create different levels of specularity/reflectivity within a single material, you just have to utilize the specular exponent and environment intensity maps (which, as @ChinRey pointed out earlier, isn't something that most creators bother with).

[Male avatars with big bodies and small heads]

13 minutes ago, HeathcliffMontague said:

Even the classic superheroes are proportional head/body wise (mostly).

Supervillains, on the other hand, have no respect for realistic proportions at all...

[CNN Metaverse Report w/Philip Rosedale, Neal Stephenson]

I was a little surprised that they interviewed Neal Stephenson at the beginning of the video yet made no mention of his own metaverse project, Lamina1, since it's been the focus of several news articles over the last few weeks. 

So far, other than his involvement in the project (which I suspect is more a publicity stunt than it is a serious attempt at bringing tangible benefits to the development process) there doesn't seem to be a lot of information available as to how this latest metaverse offering is going to differ from any of the others currently in development and the fact that it's incorporating blockchain technology only reinforces the impression that this is just an attempt to cash in on all the hype.. or perhaps it's just a satirical poke at all the other fledgling metaverses being developed for being brazen enough to steal the name.

Quote

Neither Lamina1 nor Stephenson responded to a request for interview, but in a white paper announcing the launch, Lamina1 says the first virtual world built on its blockchain will be called “THEEE METAVERSE” and be designed by Stephenson. It promises “a richly-imagined, interactive virtual world with an unforgettable origin story”.

(The full article with a link to the Lamina1 white paper can be found here)

[ALM Proposal / Work]

19 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

That's more like it!

But 500+ ready made materials, that's not actually much. But maybe they'll expand it in the future?

True it's not a huge amount (and some of them aren't exactly the best quality) but those are just the premade materials available in their free library, you can also build your own materials using custom textures.  I've grabbed a few of the better materials on offer but mostly just create my own using Filter Forge or textures/materials available from free sites like freepbr.com.

[ALM Proposal / Work]

30 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

The cheapest version of 3D Coat costs 379 dollars.

Pilgway (the creators of 3D Coat) recently released a couple of new products, 3D Coat Textura & 3D Coat Print, as well as some new pricing models.

3D Coat Print is entirely free but is aimed primarily at 3D Printing (hence the name) and while it does have all the features of 3D Coat its options for export are limited

Quote

3DCoatPrint is a special FREE version of 3DCoat with voxel modeling designed for the fast creation of print-ready 3D models. All 3DCoat Voxel Modeling and Render inside. The only limitations are applied at the time of Export: the models are reduced to the maximum of 40K triangles and the mesh is smoothed specifically for 3D-printing.

while 3D Coat Textura is aimed specifically at texture artists

Quote

3DCoatTextura is a tailored version of 3DCoat 2021 which has all its professional tools for 3D Texturing and Rendering at a more affordable price. Paint your 3D models faster using Brushes, Smart Materials, and layers, Create hand-painted and PBR textures.

As far as pricing goes Pilgway now offers the traditional single payment perpetual license option ($95 for Textura) as well as rent-to-own and monthly subscription licensing options (6x $20 and $10 per month respectively).

It's still not as cheap as a free copy of Blender of course, but it's definitely a more affordable option if you're happy to do your modelling in Blender and only want to use 3D Coat for PBR texturing.

ETA: What Candide said!  

[If you use an avatar of a gender you are not, are you good at portraying that gender?]

I must admit I give about as much consideration to whether I'm convincingly representing my avatars gender in SL as I do to whether I'm accurately portraying stereotypes of my gender in RL, mostly I just try to be the best version of "me" that I can in the hopes that it will be enough to placate people I happen to encounter in either world.

I guess since I've yet to be approached by anyone and told "Hey, that's not your gender! Please turn off the engine and step out of that body with your hands up!" I'm doing well enough that I pass casual inspection.  

[ALM Proposal / Work]

13 minutes ago, Candide LeMay said:

Modern PBR workflow is the opposite of painting by hand. If you use a program like Substance Painter/ 3D Coat / etc you have vast libraries of materials and presets ready to be used. You don't go "oh wood looks like this and its specular highlights are like this, let me paint them by hand" no, you select a wood type material from your library, tweak it a little and apply it to a 3d model using brushes/fills/other tools (all nicely realtime). Same for stone, concrete, metals etc. Use layers to add damage/rust/irregularities. This allows even an anti-artist like myself to texture objects rather efficiently.

At the risk of meandering off-topic for a moment, while you're 100% right that hand painting PBR isn't typical behaviour, in the case of 3D Coat there's actually quite a few professional 3D artists/designers that specifically use 3D Coat for hand painting textures as it's arguably one of the best pieces of software for that particular purpose due to it's similarity to photoshop in regard to texturing tools and features.

It's certainly a lot easier and more efficient to just use the fill tool to slap on a few PBR materials and the results of doing so can be quite effective, but you do still have the option to paint additional details on PBR materials by hand and there are some texture artists who use those capabilities to great effect.

[ALM Proposal / Work]

3 minutes ago, EliseAnne85 said:

Why he didn't texture much I'm not sure

It's possible that the reason the example used in the video you saw doesn't use more complex textures is because the video is trying to highlight the effects of physically based rendering and how it simulates surface properties, in which case using textures with excessive details would only serve to make the example more confusing.

[LOD and LL creator meeting]

24 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

Honestly the bottom line is many folks don't care. This is BOTH the creators as well as the user populous.  The best the forum threads have managed to do is to get some (not all that many) popular creators to pay more attention to their LODs. That feels like a hard fought victory -- probably because it was.

It's understandable that the majority don't really care, after all if given the opportunity to have "more for less" (in this instance more content on a parcel of land for less tier fees) most people would choose the more immediate and obvious benefits of lower land impact rather than the intangible promise of better performance (especially when that increase in performance could only be attained if everyone else hopped on board the "optimized content only" hype train along with them) and, regardless of how many creators you convince to do things "the right way", if there's a demand then someone will be there to provide the supply.

32 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

We are after all mostly a platform of "hobbiest creators". Some care more about doing things correctly than others

I guess the benefits of giving your users free reign to create anything they like is that you end up with some really amazing content, the drawback being that you also end up with some absolute abominations as well.  I do appreciate the level of creative freedom that SL allows its residents, however there are times when it feels like LLs definition of creative freedom equates to "let them fumble around in the dark and work it out for themselves!".

[LOD and LL creator meeting]

1 hour ago, Sparkely Sugar said:

LL creator meeting ... frustrating

They certainly can be at times.

1 hour ago, Sparkely Sugar said:

LL needs to provide clear, concise , easily understandable tutorials on how to optimize LODs, explain LOD imposters, and how to make you mesh beautiful without breaking the system. This information needs to come from an official source, it needs to be kept current and easy to find. It is inefficient to expect people to search high and low for this from other places that are not SL related. The answer is not to say well creators just need to do better. It is hard to do better when the basic information is not available. We should NOT have to count on other creators for this, it is wonderful that many do help and offer guidance when they can but this is a huge stumbling block.

At some point LL needs to take responsibility  and not just say it is your world figure it out. Because people do and you may not always like the results. Help us do better so we can have a better more efficient world and still have beautiful things.

While I 100% agree that LL should really provide some general purpose guidelines for best practices when creating content for SL, there are so many different approaches to creating LOD models and the best approach often depends on the software you're using and the type of content you're creating, so it would be unreasonable to expect LL to try and provide detailed instructions for every 3D app and every method.

Sadly, even if LL were to provide comprehensive instructions and a clear detailed list of best practices there will be a portion of creators who ignore them because doing so means the content they create has a slightly lower land impact and is therefore a more popular and profitable product.

[Witch hats]

46 minutes ago, SatanTM said:

Thank you, I'll definitely look into the floating script.

 

Fortunately @Rick Daylightwas kind enough to post one for you so if you find a witch hat you can copy and paste his code into a script in SL and you're all set!  

[CNN Metaverse Report w/Philip Rosedale, Neal Stephenson]

59 minutes ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

Sorry if I have ruffled any feathers in here, I'm just passionate about SL and I get knee jerk reactions when people come in and talk about unity and this and that.   I guess those people miss sansar,  while it sounded good on paper, it never got to where it needed to be,  basically an SL 2.0 with full interopt with 1.0,  so if LL ever decides for a 2.0 again,  I might support it,  IF it's fully compatiable in all ways with what we have now and it locks nobody out from being here with us,  I know there are some users that drag tooth and nail holding onto old hardware and those people have to be included in this too, we are starting to see those locked out because of certain upgrades to the platform.  I know a few of them personally they are bed bound and have no interactions with the outside world and this is how they live, we take it away from them, we lose them too.

 

okay I'm done being on my soap box. 

If it's any consolation my feathers don't feel all that ruffled and I apologise if my own responses have been a little blunt, I can sometimes have similar knee jerk reactions when I see seemingly reasonable questions/suggestions being shut down just for making a passing reference to Unity or Unreal Engine.

I get that we've all heard some really outlandish claims and opinions over the years on the subject of what SL should be capable of but, given how sparse original topics of conversation and perspectives can be around here sometimes, I think it's at least worth considering each post on it's own merit rather than immediately jumping to the conclusion that anyone who brings up comparisons with other graphics engines is automatically wrong. 

I can't say I personally miss Sansar since you can't miss a thing you never tried and I never bothered going there (as much as VR technology has advanced in recent years it's still not really at the stage where it will be adopted en masse by the general public and so far nothing released in VR has been compelling enough to change my mind about investing in the necessary hardware).  As I recently mentioned in a different thread I'm not exactly running a high-end gaming PC myself and even if I were it wouldn't change my opinion that LL should try and accommodate all it's users if at all possible but the reality is that SL as a platform won't survive if its user base continues to shrink and while losing existing users is certainly not a desirable outcome, failing to attract new users will be equally catastrophic eventually.

Anyway (just to try and steer things back in the direction of the threads topic), the current crop of new "metaverses" may seem clunky and unappealing at the moment but if the development of some of these platforms continues at its current pace it won't be long before we begin to see more impressive offerings.  That may not seem like a big deal to SLs more dedicated users who, much like myself, intend to be here until they turn out the last local light but I'm guessing LL would like to take advantage of the current hype surrounding virtual worlds before the competition gets too stiff and that means keeping the platform at least somewhat up to date with some of the competing platforms that are starting to emerge.

[Witch hats]

17 minutes ago, SatanTM said:

So I'm unsure of if this is in the right spot, if not, I apologize.

It's probably not, but since you're here now...

By a strange coincidence I just swapped back to 3D Coat after taking a "short" break to check the forums and found this deformed cone I'd been absent-mindedly playing with...

it may even end up as a witch hat eventually if I don't get distracted by something shinier!

I'd imagine there are plenty of witch hats available on the marketplace though, and if you can't specifically find one that floats then try to at least find one that's modifiable and you can perhaps drop a "floating script" in it.

 

[Did AI fix art and when will we see it being used for Creation in secondlife.]

54 minutes ago, CaithLynnSayes said:

No it doesn't, not even slightly. This is machine learning at work. It is simply repeating what it was told art is. No computer in the world as of today has an "understanding". It only has a set of rules it has to follow and based upon that it does something random within said rules.

There are a couple of interesting articles floating around on how Google's DeepDream works and it boils down to the same thing: It has been given a set of rules to play within and it is "free" to generate things within it.

https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ is also a good one. Click that link and refresh the page over and over again. You will see a very realistic picture of a human being that in fact doesn't exist.

AI is essentially the first steps into A Brave New World (as in the novel by Aldous Huxley).

They're currently testing out their conditioning on impressionable artificial infant minds and then once they've worked out the formula for the ideal prototype citizens of each class they'll start trying it out on the rest of us!