Thecla

Unfortunately it does not appear that the forums here have poll functionality so we'll do it the old fashioned way and just chat about it lol. And I understand that users of this forum are not representative of the general in-world SL population, but I'm interested nonetheless. Also, I think pretty much any opinion on the matter is valid; there are good reasons to make Experiences a requirement of a sim and there are good reasons to be concerned about Experiences with respect to the potential for them to be abused. Personally, I think it would be great if LL segmented experiences into say three "levels", with level one allowing environmental and movement (tp) control, and level 3 being the full range of current controls. But that's never going to happen.

Actually, this is not going to help you out. In fact, if something does not rez properly at 1.5 it means that the creator attempted to reduce the LI of the object, but did it poorly. The object was likely very complex so they knocked the medium and low and perhaps even the high poly limits way down. The best measure for a lay person of an objects impact on your viewer/sim performance is simple LI, which combines multiple factors. In sum, if an object does not rez properly as you gain distance from it, it's just poorly made but may not impact your viewer performance. Also, from some of the most skilled creators in SL, I've seen high poly objects that hold up their LOD, rez quickly, and still have a very low LI. If you turn on wireframe you'll see an extremely efficient construction. So in that sense poly count is relative. Knowing if something has "too many polys" is not always easy to judge. As for how a "lay" person can tell if a given product or object is either well made or "efficient" (not likely to impact performance), that can be difficult and sometimes impossible in advance of purchasing it, particularly if you can't inspect a rezzed copy. I generally go my land impact. While triangle count is a better metric for viewer performance impact, land impact is a blended number that also incorporates how an object will impact the server, to a degree. My general rule of thumb is if something about the size of a steamer trunk or smaller is more than 1 LI, there needs to be a good reason for it; it needs to be extremely intricate, or be scripted. I will break that rule if I just really like something, but I try to hold to it out of principle. If I can't inspect a rezzed copy, say with a product on the marketplace, the first thing I do is look at the LI. If it seems reasonable for it's size/form, then I'll be comfortable. If no LI is given, and there are no reviews it's buyer beware. Generally speaking, newer products will be better made, so when searching on the marketplace I will often sort by "newest first". If something is 100% mesh, that gives me a better comfort level than "partial mesh" as that indicates the product is old, or uses sculpts, or both. Yes it may use simple prims which is fine (looking at the product photo should give you a good sense of what's going on). Lastly, I avoid anything with sculpts entirely unless I can inspect it. There are OK sculpts and there are really laggy ones, and most of them out there are bad and there is no way to tell unless you can peek under the hood at the maps.

Just for the record, there are a lot of things you CAN'T do in terms of promotion with an adult sim. You can't have an event you create show up in the list of events and you can't be in the in-world Destination Guide, for example. So anyone who is hosting events, or selling something is going to opt for a moderate sim. I didn't know these things when I bought my sim and rated it adult. Why not, I thought, what does it matter, even though I'm not promoting or hosting adult activities. There are some aspects to the sim that have kept me from having it re-rated (a city theme with subtle evidence of violence and drugs, which are precluded from moderate sims), but were I building it all over again I might have done it differently. Your hyperbole betrays your personal subjective opinion here. Facts please if you want anyone here to take you seriously. SL is a lot "cleaner" than it was 15+ years ago. I think LL raising the cost of sims (back around 2010?) may have sifted out a lot of the trashier places. You know for a fact they left because SL was a dirty place riddled with pornography? Many of my friends have left as well, but none of them for that reason. They got busy, or they were addicted...lots of reasons, but not because they could not avoid the seedier side of SL, which everyone can.

In terms of land impact when uploading a model, the medium, low, and lowest settings have the greatest impact on land impact as they are likely to be viewable by many more avatars than one close by. Or at least that is my theory. So creators will knock those down instead of playing with the high setting or ideally making simplified yet coherent models for the other settings. And on the texture front, don't get me started. I have small piece of jewelry that use up to FIVE 1024 textures. They would be absolutely fine at 256 or maybe even 128. On the other hand, there are some creators who are highly skilled and absolute wizards at efficient building, squeezing a huge amount of detail into a very small LI object that does not blob out at distance. Kudos to them.

I am sad I wasted five minutes of my life reading the original post, waiting for some valid point to be made and instead being led on a meandering perseverative screed. People can be what they want in SL. You don't like it, go start another grid. I'm average height (5' 8") and have never been "discriminated" against or even had someone comment on my height. Maybe there are areas of SL where trolls who do that hang out but I guess I've not been there. Seems easy enough to avoid with the teleport button.

Ceka is on the money. Engaging with this person in any way whatsoever is just gasoline on the fire. Ignore them completely. Ignore anyone you suspect is an alt. And for God's sake take your pick about them out of your profile. I have been stalked a few times, unfortunately, and I'm talking from experience. The fastest way to make this person go away is to ignore them. At a certain point they will feel invisible and continuing to harass you will be unfulfilling, versus the interaction you are providing them now.

A few more random but related thoughts... Build kits. Yes they are great for objects that have repetitive parts...walls, caves, castles, etc. But in my experience there are VERY few build kits that are broadly useful. In some instances it boils down to the lack of creativity or foresight of the creator. But in truth it's because builds that don't incorporate repetitive patterns of parts are, generally speaking, more intrinsically interesting, visually and spatially. As for tiling vs. baked textures, the "baked texture" fad was the result of SL not having shadows...so building/home creators added them to add more realism to their builds. They looked great in product shots, and in some instances worked well when you got home and rezzed the building, but more often than not you'd just go "ugh" and never rez that product again. And they were hugely inefficient. They are less of an issue with respect to household objects, if done well. But there are a lot of products out there that you can immediately identify as textured in Substance Painter where the creator has used a poorly lit environment and the AO make the product look irradiated from every angle. Very frustrating. Bottom line is that texturing is as much an art as a science, and tiled textures, when created and applier properly, are superior to baked textures...IF the rendering engine is advanced enough to provide real-time shadows and reflected lighting effects. PBR gets us partially there, mostly because of tonemapping vs. the improvements in reflectivity. We'd all love for SL to run on Unreal 5, and maybe someday we'll have an engine that fullfills that dream. LL has to get there one way or another, sooner or later, or risk being seriously leapfrogged to the point of mass exodus of the user base.

I literally don't agree with any of this. Here's why: "but users want access to unlink and use them as building sets, or as part of 'derivative works' that they may put their own name on. Surely this is not really what the creator intended, and the cost of allowing modify that shouldn't always include that ability." No mod does not mean full perm. We're not talking about distributable derivative works, we're talking about one-offs that are assembled from disparate parts which any user can see on casual inspection has multiple creators. When you say "surely" you're speaking for other creators, and as I've said several times, many of the best and most popular creators in SL *expect* their work to be modified and recombined with other pieces, and in fact welcome it and provide advice. For example, Jorge at MINIMAL has on several occasions given me advice on how to pull out one part of his backdrops for inclusion in something completely different. "Funny example. Creator puts out art on a frame, selling it as art.. but its purchased for the frame Yes it happens haha. But was it supposed to be sold as an art piece for a wall, or as a customizable frame product? 2 end uses, and 2 prices might be asked." If something is sold as "art" then it can be defensible for it to be no mod, if the creator is so inclined. They may not be, and be comfortable with the frame being filled with another image. That's up to them. But SL is a funny place, where the distinction between what is art and what is not is often blurred. In any event, I do think that this is one area where "no mod" is defensible depending on the perspective of the creator on their work. "End use affects the end price for the consumer. No-mods can be cheaper than mod items, especially if people do above." I've never seen that, ever. Ever. Would love for you to point out an example. And you're hypothesizing that an object that is modify has more value than one that is not. Don't tell the artists that. ""The creators vision": there is merit to this and should be some respect for this, regardless." This is true on a case by case basis. There is creative work where this is true. But there are thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of products on the MP that are entirely pedestrian what are no mod. I will say that in my experience, the majority of no mod items for sale are of generally lower quality. I think this is the result of less skilled and experienced creators just not thinking about the topic before they set perms for their products. "Then practical. Modify is nice, but not always necessary - and the custom textures will just override and ruin it anyway, especially for tiling vs baked, and more advanced texture methods. Most users only have ability to apply textures (even PBR) one way.. as the underlying UV determines." Again, you are making value judgements that you're in no position to make. "Nice but not necessary"? How do you know? This is entirely dependent on what the buyer wants to do with the product, and you have no insight into that. And custom textures do not unilaterally "ruin" a product. They may well improve it. Is it subject to the skill of the buyer? Yes of course. And you're in no position to say that baked lighting is superior to tiled. An example. I took this building and expanded it dramatically. There was baked lighting with bright sunlight and heavy shadows on the floor stones and it would have made no sense had I left it as applied. I used a tiled texture and it turned out very well IMHO: Lastly, are some products difficult to modify the texture on due to the UV map? Absolutely. It's not incumbent on the creator to make textures easily modified, partularly if efficient usage of the space available in the UV map dictates otherwise. Finally, I realize you're throwing out these ideas to promote discussion, but I think most of them are red herrings and don't lead to valid reasons for permissioning products no mod.

I've been using the Firestorm alpha and beta PBR viewers and I've noticed that when it comes to clothes, different EEP settings can be a huge issue. I've also noticed distinct changes (gradual improvement?) in the issue with each viewer release. In general, it appears to be over-influence of ambient light and it's color on the specular quality of clothes. Not sure if that is changes that SL is making for the Firestorm group, but either way it may be nothing to do with your process.

Wulfie is correct. While it might be possible to get a match working directly on the 2D texture images, the amount of trial and error could be epic, particularly working with gradients. It will help using Robin Wood's texture templates (https://www.robinwood.com/Catalog/Technical/SL-Tuts/SLPages/AVUVTemplates.html) since they include a topology map which helps you to line up various sections of seams. If you use Blender, you may need to use your body's developer kit to get a perfect result, not sure. Asking in the Fashion forum might get your question in front of people more familiar with using Blender to create avatar clothes and accessories. Also, this tutorial on making tattoos in Substance Painter may prove useful, even if you don't use the tool:

I think Lelutka EvoX will give you the most "mileage" if one of your goals is to buy something that a) has a lot of compatible "accessories" and b) will "last" a long time. As mentioned BoM are just textures that you wear. With the Lelutka EvoX it's as simple as just that...wearing it. One advantage of BoM, which is likely more relevant to women with respect to makeup, is that "applier" layers tend to glow, as though they are full bright, under projector lights, such as the colored lights in clubs. BoM layers do not do that as they are flattened with the skin by the server and sent to the viewer as one texture. The "new thing" recently is 4k heads...heads that use four textures instead of two resulting in a higher resolution for your skin. Personally I've not noticed any perceptible difference in appearance with them and consider it a bit of a marketing gimmick at present.

I will say as a sim builder there are few things as disheartening as inspecting some incredibly cool or beautiful object in SL only to find that the creator is no longer active and does not even have an MP store. And I totally get why people stop. I had a pretty successful store about 12 years ago and the grind of maintaining it and its vendors just got to be too much. And life changed, and I moved on. So yeah, cheers to those that created cool stuff. If only they had boxed it all up full perm and put it on the MP for a $0L LOL.

I really doubt this. I frequently retexture the upholstery on certain pieces of furniture to meet the surrounding decor. Think of it as going to a fabric store and choosing the specific fabric that you want for a chair you bought where the pattern was wrong for it's placement. I frequently buy a table that comes with clutter on it, which I don't want. I unlink the clutter, then retexture the top to remove the baked in shadows. Or if the clutter is part of the mesh but a separate face, I make it transparent (yes, accomplishable through a script). I frequently takes parts of pre-built buildings and backdrops and recombine them to make different structures. I will retexture buildings with baked in lighting to eliminate it so it fits with the lighting that I have created. I rip the lighting control scripts out of every light fixture I buy and set the light values specifically how I want them for their location. And I tint almost EVERYTHING that I rez to fit the lighting in it's environment. Lastly, and this is important, the ability to group numerous objects from different vendors allows you to dramatically reduce the LI impact of an unlinked collection of objects. I've tried to find a good example. In this room, virtually everything has been modified in terms of size, tint, pattern, and finally grouped to get the end result that *I* wanted: You also said at one point "To be clear, I'm ALL FOR giving the end user as much customizability as possible, but only as long as it doesn't conflict with my intentions and end-use intentions for the product that I would make." I think this is the rub here. People may have different end-use intentions for the things they buy than you do. You do have the right to restrict that use by virtue of no-mod permissions. I think that the availability of making something no-mod within LL's architecture implicitly gives you the right. I also think that the *ability* to set any given item in SL to no mod is important as there are obviously use cases where it is appropriate. But I personally think that doing it for any other reason than protecting intellectual property runs against the very ethic of Second Life. It's not unethical per se, but rather it goes against the grain of a big part of what makes Second Life special. So we must agree to disagree. I'll end by saying "at least it's better than it was." I think the general trend, aside from clothing, is towards making products modify. As I mentioned earlier, most well respected creators leave their products modify, and I really appreciate that and the trend towards that.

I buy a LOT of stuff for sim building and if a product is no mod, I won't buy it unless I absolutely have to and know that it will meet my needs out of the box for the specific application I have in mind. Do I find no mod stuff annoying? I'm over it. Creators have the option within the permissions system to make stuff no mod and I have better things to do than wonder about their motivation and/or ethics. The only time I get upset is when I buy a piece of clothing and find it to be no mod, somewhat gratuitously, and there is some flaw in it that I could correct if it were mod. I'm one of those people who takes everything apart and reuses pieces in various ways, and it's not to "get stuff cheaply", it's to acquire parts, scripts, etc. that I can repurpose in creative ways. I do have the skills to make my own mesh and will go that route if I cannot find what I need, but buying and modifying available items is generally faster and easier. In my experience, the leading creators (and by leading, I mean highly-regarded creators of high quality non-clothing products, almost to a person release their products as modify (specialized scripts excepted) and beyond that, are *extremely* helpful when you ask them for advice on modifying their stuff. For the most part, it seems that creators who make stuff no mod fit into two camps: those with less experience building for commercial purposes, and those that see their work as "art". Whatever. I just pass those things up.

There's only so much time in the day and despite likely having numerous employees, managing business on multiple platforms is exhausting. I had a clothing and accessories store in Gor back when it was enormous that in a good month did 1mm lindens and I'm sure Blueberry does exponentially more. Keeping up with new products, various vendors, partnerships, events etc. was totally exhausting. I ended up pitching the whole business. While I doubt she's doing that, I am sure she's mulling over the best use of her precious time. It sounds like it's a personal issue (use of the word reflect), but could just as well be taking time to take stock of the breadth of the brand's activities and make some decisions about how to grow or where to focus. I sincerely doubt the SL economy will take any sort of hit. While a very large and successful store, Blueberry is overall just a drop in the bucket in terms of clothing. I've not shopped there in years (just a matter of taste) nor seen them prominently at events and there are a zillion other quality clothes makers out there.

Is SL addictive, whether it's a "game" or not? To some people, obviously, yes. I know plenty of people who have struggled with SL addiction and have a few friends who still struggle with it. And by struggle I mean "spend an excessive amount of time in SL to the point where it adversely impacts their RL". But people struggle with all sorts of different addictions to various behaviors aside from the obvious endorphin producing triggers like drugs, alcohol, sex, etc. Because some people are addicted to SL does not mean that SL is fundamentally addictive. And from what I've seen, different people become addicted to SL for different reasons.

What a long strange trip it's been... @ 2006-7 and today:

I've been back to this installation several times and it's pretty mind-blowing. Well worth a visit. Crix is underselling it by calling it a "live particle show". It's way more than that.

I'm not sure how you see either of these utilities being "alternatives" to either Substance or Instamat. They are pretty limited in comparison and really nothing more than utilities.

I can't really help except to say that relying on SL to downsize images larger than 1024 yields poorer results than sizing them to 1024 beforehand in Photoshop or similar. You might also try clearing your cache. I've had instances in the past where a texture would just not (apparently) upload correctly. After clearly my cache it appear correctly (and had evidently uploaded correctly to begin with). What I'm not clear on is the difference between your two photos of the texture on the shorts. Both of them appear to be in-world snapshots of the texture on the shorts object. Is the clearer one the local texture preview on the object WHILE the edit texture window is open?

You could use Area Search, with your view set to say 400, search on you as owner, and look in the list for objects that have no group listed or the wrong group.

I personally dislike buildings with baked lighting unless it is extremely subtle and confined to AO details. The reason is that I'm a bit of a lighting freak and like to have control over all aspects of it through EEP local and ambient light. And given that advanced lighting is going to be the default in viewers going forward, with PBR, that baked lighting is potentially rendered redundant or even counter-productive. While efficiency is a laudable goal, I believe that buildings are one type of object that get a bit more of a pass than other objects. I have a pair of hair pins from a well regarded creator in SL and was horrified to learn that each one uses four 1024 textures...for a total of 8 between the two of them. Not to say that poor craftsmanship on smaller objects excuses lack of efficiency on larger ones, but at least you're working on an object where 1024 textures can make a significant difference in visual quality.

What kind of help can anyone here possibly give you? It's not a technical glitch. The only person that can help you is the person who's profile you were looking at. If you're certain they copied it, ask them why. Better yet, completely ignore them and go about your day.

I think it's quite lovely. For the sake of offering some useful criticism, however unnecessary it may be: Naturalness in landscapes is heightened by paying attention to the smoothness or coherence of transitions between types of terrain and materials. Think of how those appear in nature, and often some intervening "transition" material is required. When making cliffs and large expanses of rocks, pay attention to the "grain" of the rock. If you start rotating pieces in an attempt to achieve a certain shape you often end up with rock striations that don't make sense from a geological perspective, and the viewer's brain will notice that. Either change the shape of the rock or rotate the textures to get a more natural look. Large expanses of any one material tend to look artificial. In the case of the rock face, consider breaking it up visually with vines, moss, etc so it's not so monolithic. In the case of grass, adding some prim grass and just slightly altering the hue of each patch can make it look more natural.