Romaq Rosher

"Will people use it if it doesn't have morph targets?" One serious question I have is: "Will people use *ANY* mesh if the mesh viewer adoption rate is in the toilet?" In that light, morph target adoption would appear really beside the point. Besides, if LL has clearly stated, "No can do this cycle" we would appear to be stuck in, "Field the product without LL's involvement or do without." Perhaps the 'do without Avatar 2.0' is the better way to go. *MY* target goal isnt' human at all, my plans call for doing entirely without LL support, and if nobody ends up making clothing or being able to use existing clothing for my ferret, I scamper about nekkid anyways. I just fail to see how we are going to get a better more-or-less standardized human avatar mesh so long as the community is stuck in, "Gee, I wish someone ELSE would do something to make the world a better place!" BTW, I can't seem to find any reliable data on adoption rate other than, "When I go inworld using my NON-SL viewer, V2 compatible viewers are a rare bird." I'm quit open to source of data other than licking my paw and shoving it into the wind to see which way the wind is blowing.

"One project at a time" That's fine, even commendable. That *still* means Avatar 2.0 done without pretense of Linden direct participation. I'm still in favor of an X-Prize like bounty on a clear set of specifications that have to be met, and a license that allows the work that claims the prize to be published open for commercial use. If and when Linden allows for superior deformations to an avatar mesh, we can see Avatar to 3.0 built upon what we've learned on a community effort at Avatar 2.0 Or we can wait until enough people simply give up that if Avatar 2.0 with mesh deformation plug-ins actually shipped, nobody would really notice or care. We do have options. Leaning on Linden Lab to produce something they clearly state is not on their radar would appear to be a poor choice among options.

I agree support for better features on an Avatar 2.0 would help a great deal. Unfortunately, I find Linden Lab's ability to communicate a coherent policy on their product development ... lacking. If we have to depend upon Linden Lab for features required for Avatar 2.0, we have at least two problems. Add 'any mesh support at all before year's end' and 'common adoption of a viewer capable of displaying mesh' onto the stack of seemingly intractable problems, and THOSE two we seem dependant entirely upon Linden Labs. You know how that's going so far. Depend on LL for anything to do with Avatar 2.0? From where I sit, I don't see it. I'd dearly love to be proven wrong. I need those very same non-existant features for the development of my Open MeshTiny quad ferret.

The Tinys community has a folded avatar that is freely available. The folds are basic poses, and anyone can then extend the poses with animations (some are quite good) and clothing that fits the typical prim-based avatar shape. This is not 'endorsed' by Linden Labs, but the Box Robot in the library is based upon the same folds, and the Raglan Shire community has many people developing content for the Tinys 'brand' avatars. I believe if Avatar 2.0 is to exist, it will have to be done by some one person with a vision and competent towards creating a single standard that is a 'best of class' new avatar shape that is better than the default. I believe that this new Avatar 2.0 will have to be freely and openly licensed for commercial use by anyone, same as the Tinys brand, and I believe this Avatar 2.0 will have to be embraced by the mesh community at large into accepting it and using it to create new products for sale. It would have to be done in such a way that if Linden Labs does nothing, it will not matter. LL's participation will be unexected and unnecessary. Then you'll have to get people to use this. LOTS of people. Given the current rate of acceptance of Viewer2, ANY mesh is going to have to push upstream without a paddle. From where I sit, finding anyone willing to turn out a very high quality (and EXPENSIVE to produce in time and skill) product and then give that product free without restriction is improbable. For this product to be adopted with little conflict within the community is again, unlikely. And for this product to be visible by the majority of browsers you can convince people to actually use is dismal given the burning, passionate hatred of Viewer2 and anything connected with Viewer2 currently. That is not to say it could not happen, but I think the requirements and the timing put some rather steep odds on it. I do have questions: Is there a professional content artist in this forum who is willing to produce specifications in an Avatar 2.0 mesh on what it *has* to do better than the current avatar in order to be worth the bother? If such a specification were made, is there a professional content artist willing to put in several thousand or more dollars OF THEIR OWN TIME AND TECHNICAL SKILL into creating such an Avatar 2.0, and releasing several thousand dollars of personal investment with an open commercial license? If the first two miracles were to occur, is anyone in this community willing to put their desire for someone *ELSE* to do the work and investment into a fund to defer the cost and personal loss of income opportunity into a fund that would go towards the artist willing to make such a sacrifice? Presuming things got to this point, would anyone be willing to shove aside difference of opinion about this Avatar 2.0 to embrace and accept it as part of a new SL community standard and produce content for this community based Avatar 2.0 despite personal differences? Are you the reader personally willing to sign on to encouraging your friend and fellow SL community members to use Viewer2 and Viewer2 based clients able to view mesh in spite of the threat of being torched at the stake by your follow community members? I will state for the record that if a fund I can trust (Like an X prize thing) becomes available towards Avatar 2.0, I will contribute $L 5000 towards that fund. I have to trust the management of it, but I will put my personal money where my good intentions are. AND I'll have to pay in chunks. But I'm willing to bet if a trusted community member or small team were to set up an 'Avatar 2.0 x-prize', we may be able to get a decent chunk of cash to put towards an Avatar 2.0 prize for the first artist to produce the content that meets an acceptable specification. There are community members I trust to manage this, I just don't see such a contest in the works yet. http://marianne.secondlifekid.com/ Marianne McCann is one community member I trust. So is http://raglanshire.com/rsforums/index.php?action=profile;u=6 Zayn Till. http://www.robinwood.com/ Robin (Sojourner) Wood. I'm thinking I can spend 20 minutes looking up people I trust to manage such a thing, they would be people I know and I'm sorry to leave you out if you happen to come across this. This isn't about me and my list. This is about the community and people who know they are trusted by the community, and they are willing to stand up and risk being targets to say what THEY are willing to do to see Avatar 2.0 exist, even if they can not create the product themselves. We need people the SL community can recogze and trust. We need that small group of trustworthy people to create a working standard to evaluate Avatar 2.0 submissions. It needs a prize worthy of artists to make the attempt at meeting the standard. Avatar 2.0 needs *YOU* who are reading this to publicly state what *YOU* will do if you really want this thing so badly as you claim you do. I will put L$5000 (in a series of payments over the course of two months) towards an "Avatar 2.0 community prize" once a small group of community members I trust set up the fund. Is anyone with me on this? Or are we just here to make a big stink about what we'd wish somebody *ELSE* would do so we don't have to do anything else but be smelly about it in a forum?

I'm thinking along several lines of the problem. We have the 'old sk00lz' way of using sculpties and bone offsets. For you humans out there, I think your best bet will be a nice body scupty without hands or a head, except... GAH! Now we have these wiggly breasts, bellys & bums (B3). So you can have B3 wigglies, but NOT if you use the full body sculpt. You can have sculpty feet and not have to mess with mesh at all, and you can use mesh for non-human legs, such as you have with various non-human avatars. Hands and face are still a problem I think will have to be solved by mesh & sculpty attachments to points. I have to wonder if you can have a detailed mesh head without a lower jaw, use .BVH modified bone offsets to alter eye position and a sculpty lower jaw. My hope is you could have something like a mesh wolf's head with working sculpty jaws same as many now have simply using sculpties alone. A HUD will still have to be used for detailed lower jaw/ tongue expression, but I don't think mesh would help on that aspect anyway. Altering the bone offset for eyes and other bones, even if it is deprecated, will allow for unusually placed or sized eyes and jaws. I plan to make or pay to have made a ferret avatar that is natural ferret sized yet fully articulated. It would have to work much like the micro avatars. But in the end, I think even the very best human avatars will end up being a mix of basic, sculpty and new mesh. That is how you will get the B3 bouncy bits, 'human' looking feet, hands and facial expressions that look proper yet still function with most clothing and weapons.

Please verify if everything for SL 'just works'. As I understood it, we have to use an older, 'stable' release to have collada export work properly. My wish would be to have a 64-bit compile of Blender that is 'latest & greatest' and is suitable for SL mesh as well as PrimStar work. I'm still in the position of doing a 'roto-router' on my computer. I did the full install, but I forgot to install and activate WinXP *FIRST* so I can use my Win7 'upgrade' key. I get to do that all over again, yay! I'll also be installing three different versions of Python in both 32 and 64-bit flavors. I dearly look forward to 32-bit issues just 'going away'.

On the question of a mesh prim being worth the cost, I would say as with anything else 'it depends'. If we are talking about 'fake terrain' over the void sea, I think sculpties would be the win. The problem with sculpty terrain is tied to having physical blocking prims to give a shape to the sculpty. The difficulty of using simple prims to 'mirror' the complex sculpty shape, as well as the count of those simple prims adds up just as much as streaming cost. Just as the situation we have today without mesh prims, your very best builders will know how to squeeze the most form and function out of existing tech while keeping the prim count and loading time down. Prim mesh adds a new wrinkle, new tools, more stuff a good artist has to deal with (or pay someone else), but the problem of 'bang for the buck' remains the same. Back to the original question, I think the problem reduces to what you can do with 'llModifyLand', which you can read here: http://lslwiki.net/lslwiki/wakka.php?wakka=llModifyLand The problem with either a sculpt or a prim mesh, a script has no way of extracting detail about the container object. "What is your Z plane height at X, Y location?" The container of a script won't tell the script that, so it can't run an array on X, Y of the container object to set Z at a specified location. The best a script can do is get the X, Y, Z of the container object, then use a given action and brush size, and apply that to the land. Come to think of it, a script can get the overall 'size' of the container prim, but that still isn't going to be very useful. The best idea I can come up with is to have something like those 'land to sculpty' scripts in reverse... you upload to an external server a land height-map you want. The server comes up with a matrix of Z height values. Your script then uses the matrix and 'walks' across the land setting Z plane values. Unfortunately, as your script 'walks' the land, you have to deal with it COLLIDING with the land as it walks, and errors that would produce. You also have to deal with translating 8 or 16 bit heightmap values on that image map to the real number Z plane values. You will also have hell with the object making a change at one location that totally fouls up the values of adjacent locations it has already done. In other words, the script is limited to the same evil, ham-fisted tools you have in your client. The amount of technical work to make a script 'walk and terraform' would cost more and provide far less general satisfaction than I can see someone selling it for. I could be wrong, though... I have not attempted anything like this in script. But from where I sit, it doesn't look so good.

Well, the honest-to-god BEST thing would be for 'some means' to have control over specific elevation points on the land grid. I know the land grid is 'fixed' with respect to X, Y. I can live with that. I *WANT* to select a specific point and be able to edit just that specific point and *NOT* have the surrounding area points flip every which direction along the Z plane. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for LL to get around to better (more precise) Z-axis control over points on land. The very best thing I can come up with as an alternative is to simply replace the land mesh with my own mesh upload, and hopefully merge & mask the border between my land edges and the mesh prim I upload.

Well, the current land 'mesh' and the tools to manipulate it... well, let's just say it leaves much to be desired. Sorry I misunderstood your original request, but I think that simply the ability to 'swap' the land 'mesh' for a mesh you can directly manipulate would be the better way to go. You could alter the 'land' mesh texture, even if you are on mainland. You could create proper caves that fit in with the surrounding landscape. Mostly, you would have better control over the landscape with a mesh than we have with the current tools. Going from a mesh to land (in the direction you suggested) would seem a step backwards to me. In any case, I do hope someone takes up the challenge. I think JVTek has a good shot, but the proof is in the doing.

JVTek Landmap does this using sculpties, and you can see the video here: I am not the owner of JVTek (that would be Janthra Vanmoer), but I have been in contact with him. He 'may' do a version of his product that uses mesh instead of sculpties. Look at the product and ask him about it... talk with others and see if there is enough market to get Janthra to look at this seriously. I mean... SERIOUSLY, I'd really like to have a means to make credible mesh tunnels that fit within the landscape, as well as the ability to retexture land. The worst problem with the JVTek solution is the limitation of sculpties and the fact you have to make physical blocking prims, same as with any OTHER sculpty. A mesh version you can edit to suit yourself makes that particular problem simply go away.

Just a quick question... I plan to release a series of http://www.filterforge.com/ filters based upon the bump maps, and I would like to publish the original .j2c images converted to black/white .PNG maps as well as deritvitive images (including masks) that would make such filters useful to the Second Life community. Would you know if those bump maps are also under the CC 3.0?

I'm using Windows 7 x64, but I would like to use Primstar, which appears to be 32-bit python compiled. I would also like to edit terrain in SL using GIMP... again, 32-bit python compiled, and various other plug-ins tend to be 32-bit. It would be a delight to have applications move to the 64-bit realm and we can just drop the 32-bit vs. 64-bit issue, but that day is not today.

Thank you for the reference! Yeah, it would be good to have references to that website and other helpful current info pinned. At the moment, it appears I'm going to have to do a backup/ bare-metal reinstall of Winblows in order to get a few things working properly. I'd run Linux, but that would destroy the games I enjoy playing in addition to Second Life. Maintaining Linux distros is also a major pain as well. After the reinstall, looks like I'll be installing the 32 bit versions of Blender, Gimp, Python and other software. How DARE I attempt to run my 64 bit machine and 64 bit OS with 64 bit applications! Neither here nor there, I'm happy to have references posted here where it's easy to get to.

Thank you! That's where I was confused about which version I should deal with. I think for the moment I'll UNinstall the Beta I have and install the older version. I'm going to have to practice with sculpties first so I can do 'something', then move foward from there on real mesh creations. Baby steps, but it sure helps when I understand what and why of Blender versions. Cheers!

Thank you for the link! It would be helpful if someone could 'munch' the details of the archived thread to come up with a single new post that could be pinned at the top. I'll try to read through the archive, but I have the following questions on my mind: I recall something to the effect that we need to use a *specific* version of Blender, because something in the current version (2.56?) does not handle 'something' properly, so an older version (2.49?) must be used instead. It seems a good start to 'best practices' is using the 'correct' version. I'd also like to know what 'broke', and if this is something to be 'fixed' in a new release. I'm using lots of quotes here, because I'm fuzzy on the details, and I'll have to revisit that message archive to sort out what I'm attempting to recall. Is there a website for sharing files pertaining to Second Life and Blender, or good 'tutorial' places that are specific to Second Life mesh? Would such a place have good 'Creative Commons' files so those who are willing to share can do so for the benefit of us who wish to learn? Is there a web page that has the definitive info on SL bones and rigging? Particularly info on resized (offset?) bones and 'non-human' rigging and animation? Someone brought Big Buck Bunny into SL. Would someone be willing to create a post on how to duplicate this? It should be 'legally' acceptable for anyone to do so given the Creative Commons and open nature of the Big Buck Bunny project sponsered by Blender. In fact, a tutorial on 'how I did it' on recreating Big Buck as an avatar within SL would be the whole point of the BBB project and Blender. Anyway, that's a start on thing I'll try to dig up on the archives as I have time, and of course I would be happy for someone to beat me to it.

I met my real life wife in Ultima Online. It turned out she lived nearby to where I was, we met, and eventually married.

@Fornicola Butuzova: That is a good story, and I hope to hear more of those. Rod Humble's name did leave a very bad air with the SimCity 4 fanbase. The way SimCity: Socities turned out may not have been at his direction, and thus not 'his fault', per se, but EA appeared to have a deaf ear to the SC4 community, and Rod Humble represented EA. Maybe there was really nothing Rod could do except stand on the figurative stage dodging rotton tomatoes from fans like me who very much wanted a game more like SimCity 4 and less like The Sims. Anyway, I am willing to give Rod the benefit of a doubt. I must say it would be damn skippy if we had a blog, or better yet a video presentation like the one last summer by Philip Rosedale last summer stating what are the major issues with SL at this time, what he intends to do about the issues and the timeframe he has in mind to solve them. People who participate with Second Life may disagree with what the hot SL issues are. But we can certainly take a look at what Rod is willing to claim publicly about his intentions, his timeframe, and his ability to meet his own publicly stated objectives. I do note that the area of mainland I had to leave abandoned remains abandoned, and there is a *LOT* of old mainland simply dead. This is not good for SL's health, and it doesn't put money in Linden's cash register. I note the current person I'm renting land from is 'one foot out the door' of dropping Second Life for another grid. I'm not sure where my loyalties lie. Actually, I do know where my loyalties lie. It is where I am having fun. A crashy client is not fun. Having to hold my nose and learn viewer2 was not fun. Saying something in group chat and finding chat still borked is not fun. I have a laundry list of things 'not fun' involving Second Life. If another grid fills my desire in the 'fun' category better than SL for my $72/ year + $25/ month + random $L purchases, that grid will have my loyalty and my money. I'm open to keeping things going with SL, but like the Nationwide Insurance ads... "life comes at you fast!" How does Rod plan to steer Linden Labs into moving at the speed of Internet Life?

The term "game" is so open to interpretation and context as to be utterly useless. A "game" is the color purple, because ice cream has no bones. "Of course SL is a game!" "Of course only an idiot would consider SL to be a game!" "People watching is a game." "It's only a game if *I* win!" Trying to define 'game' and applying that definition to SL is like trying to nail Jello to a wall. Good luck with that. We can say, however, that with respect to certain incidences within The Sims Online and with the marketing of SimCity: Socities, some things could have gone better, particularly under Rod Humble's watch. While 'mistakes do happen', these 'mistakes' were in the line of poor communication with the potential market. "Mistakes we can recover from" is also different from, "These projects died under my watch of a disenfranchised fan base." As I said before, I am very curious to what Rod would have filed under, "Lessons Learned." Rather than focus on the nature of "SL is/ is-NOT a game", it may be useful to look at what specific style of leadership Rod has had with his other projects, particularly in the area of marketing and communcations to the fan base. It would also be useful to find out if his leadership is a net plus for the projects under his control, or if Rod is better known for driving projects off a cliff and then leaping off just in time to avoid getting the worst of the crash splattered on him. Yeah, EA has squandered the good will of their fans and collected a good deal of hate from people who would *want* to buy their games. How attached is Rod's name to that hate? Has Rod learned anything from his time in EA about dealing with a disenfranchised fan base?

A quote of the thread: "Why do peopel hate SimCity Societies?" from http://www.tiltedmill.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24290 The actual main reason why Societies got a bad reception is because the vice-president of EA in charge of the Sims division, a certain Rod Humble, came to the largest Simcity 4 fan site to announce Societies. (snip for space, but read the article and responses...) Just to sum this up, the answer to your question basically is... Rod Humble. I would be curious to ask Mr. Humble what he took away from the SimCity Socities experience. I note that SimCity4 (published 2003) is still selling on the shelves at the local Wal-Mart for $10, and the $20 "SimCity Box" with SimCity Societies ALSO includes SimCity4 prominent on the box. SC4 has a thriving enduser mod community, and you can read up on it at simtropolis.com. Rod may have been more PR than anything to do with the development of Societies, but given how EA turned down input from the SC4 fan community that keeps that 2003 game fresh to this day, I'm very curious to know if Rod would have comment from that period of EA ignoring the fan community and turning a beloved game into a "simple puzzle for the masses". I really do not wish to see the same thing happen to Second Life. And years later, there is still a great deal of negative vibe in the SimCity fan community for EA and Rod Humble associated with "Societies". Perhaps Rod has learned the value of listening to an involved fan community, perhaps accepting what that community has done to incorporate their work into a better product.

I'm told Estate Windlight (Not Parcel) is in the Server Code placed by Tiggs Linden, and that the SnowStorm Viewer is slated to put the code in. Once this is tested, then to Viewer 2. Tiggs said it is 'estate only'. Given I'm not sure I'd care to have every 512 lot I cross dink with my Windlight settings. But it would be very happy for Estates to have control. We'll see how the user market ends up choosing between them. I didn't find anything public in Snowstorm about where Estate Windlight falls into the queue.I'm following https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-7677? and I told Tiggs Linden they really ought to do some follow up there.

I guess this is old news by now, but it looks like "Mission Accomplished" on Windlight Estate Settings. Cool!

I had to tell my banner blocker to explicitly allow *blogs.secondlife.com* so I could view this page at all. I'm curious how LL intends to get past my ability to block distracting ads.

I agree with Nekololi Woodget. When will https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-7677 (Estate / Sim Windlight preset / day cycle options) see some love? What you've done is very nice. Where is the "shared experience", however? Looking over the comments, Torley agrees! When will we see Linden Lab publish?

Would anyone have links or testing done concerning bone offsets for rigged avatars for 'avatars of unusual size'? I can't seem to find info, though bone offsets do get mention as 'being worked on'. I also note that using the tiny 'Body Crusher' does the obvious to a mesh avatar: it crushes it. Unless you explicitly create your mesh with a folded avatar in mind, crushing your avatar is ... not pretty. I'd like to get away from the body crushing anyway, and it would be great to learn more on the bone offset issue if it solves the problem of creating more tiny Tinys. As a solution, body crushers still have a lower limit because the bones are not shrunk, simply folded. Thank you for your time.

Using one of the landmark links to the mesh section would be a good idea also. I traveled for a while my first time in looking for mesh. I didn't catch the part that I couldn't upload or see anything until I went to one of the Mesh City areas. But then again, sometimes kvetching appears an easier path than admitting igorance and asking for assistance. Oh well, ignorance is as ignorance does.