ChinRey

Bobbie Faulds wrote: 2 bodies/heads is insane. You can wear many fitmesh clothes with the mesh bodies without a problem. You mean a ton of fitmesh clothes will solve the problem? Sorry, couldn't resist it. You have a very important point of course. If everybody got rid of all the unnecessary things, all those details that will never actually be rendered on anybody's computer screen anyway, we'd hardly have any lag issues in SL at all. That's not going to happen though. Bobbie Faulds wrote: As for the "rubbish", The SL default is deformed on the curved sections, like the breast, calves, elbows, etc. They are really pronounced if you go over certain limits in the butt and breast areas. And we all want to go over the limits there, don't we? I certainly do. You forgot to mention the spades they use for hands and the tree trunks they use for feet. The Second Life avatar was actually absolutely brilliant back when it was introduced and even today it's still way better than what you get in most other virtual environments. But it is beginning to show its age and avatar appearance has become so important to Second Life. Without it, there's hardly anything left to interest people here. Somebody at BB chat - can't remember her name - started making fun of various social media, Facebook is for telling the world what you had for breakfast, Twitter is for insulting people and so on. When asked what SL was for she wrote: "Second Life is where we play with Barbies and pretend it's art." Linden Lab could and should have upgraded the system avatar long ago. But they never took client side lag seriously. They're beginning to realize their mistake now. But I don't think they've realized the magnitude of the blunder yet and although they're desperately trying, they still haven't found a way to out the genie back in the bottle. We could start a group called "I Told You". Could become a big one.

Alwin Alcott wrote: i can't wait till the render limit is in all viewers ... It's not that effective unfortunately. The render weight formula it is based on is old and doesn't take into account recent lag inducers like mesh bodies, normal maps and specular maps. You'll have to derender lots of percetly safe and innocent avatars for it to catch all the lag monsters. Besides, people aren't going to accept that solution. They don't want to see a world populated by red jellybeans. So they turn render protection off or set the limit so high it might as well be off and then they get angry and blame the lag on everybody else and especially on how bad SL is. There's a not too old thread on this forum where somebody complained she had been evicted from a club for nudity when she tp'ed in and her mesh body didn't render. She got lots of sympathetic replies: people have to understand that modern avatars are laggy and it's not fair to ban people from a place just because they lag everybody else down. Even Linden Lab seem to still be in denial to some degree. As far as I know, they still claim the many event sim breakdowns were caused by griefers. Well, I went to an event just before it opened once. No supsicious looking avatars there, just event organizers and merchants and it still was so laggy the poor sim was barely able to function. Edit: Has anybody else noticed the recent promo pictures on the SL website's start page btw? Heavily photoshopped closeups of unrealistic avatar faces. That's the message they want to give the world: "This is what you get if you join Second Life!"

Persephone Emerald wrote: To make matters worse, I heard in the first Bento project meeting that some people actually wear 2 mesh bodies at the same time. You're on the team? Last week a friend of mine told me she had seen an avatar with a render weight of 376,000. We couldn't figure out how that was even possible, I guess that could be part of the explanation.

Bobbie Faulds wrote: I seem to remember reading somewhere that the Catwa head has something like 20 or so layers on it. 20 layers? Yes that sounds about right. I had a chat with somebody on the project Bento team the other day and was told that the real reason LL came up with that idea was to prevent SL from being flooded by this new generation of mesh heads and feet and hands. With something like that on the market there's no wonder they're worried.

IvanBenjammin wrote: The answer in SL is free-market capitalism, for better or worse. I fully support the democratic ideal of the platform: everyone has the right to create, in whatever capacity they choose. Yes and for good or bad, it simply wouldn't be Second Life if it wasn't for that. IvanBenjammin wrote: What bugs me is the stagnation of it - a stagnation that's a kind of feedback loop. Highly popular and influential creators who shun the new technologies (for whatever reason), and pass their opinions on to their customers. New creators who want to establish a name for themselves will imitate the most popular brands, which results in more stagnation. To me it's even worse to see some of the great builders of the past who jump on the bandwagon using all those new tools without understanding them. Nothing an inexperienced newcomer can up with will ever be quite as sad as the works of an old master who has lost the touch. IvanBenjammin wrote: ... because for some reason individually modelled buttons are important. Buttons? Highly detailed, high poly shoelaces are essential these days! A friend of mine told me she had once seen a house where the maker had carefully made detailed meshes for the holes in the power sockets. IvanBenjammin wrote: Then someone sounds off the old "materials cause laaaaaag!" nonsense, and the cycle continues. Everything causes lag. Every single pixel, vertice, tri, script line... It's the sum of the load on the weakest link in the chain from the asset server database to the client's computer screen that matters. There's really no definite answer what is the least laggy solution, it depends on what we're trying to make. It seems I got away with my shameless boasting last week so I take a chance and post a link to that thread here: https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Building-and-Texturing-Forum/What-it-is-actually-possible-to-build-in-Second-Life/td-p/3000850 I've added 5637 more plants and some more paths since I posted that but it's still is one of the lowest LI, lowest lag and highest level of detail (in both senses of the term) landscapes ever seen in SL. I mentioned in the thread that something like that could only be made by using all four basic materials, mesh, sculpts, prims and particles. What I forgot to mention was that it also required just about every surface effect we have. Standard and baked textures in resolutions all the way from 4x4 to 1024x1024, alpha masking, alpha blending, normal maps, specular maps, old style bumpiness and shininess - it's all there and it all needs to be there to keep the lag down. I'm not actually saying it's a best build in SL - it has some really annoying flaws I'm amazed nobody has commented on. But it is certainly based on the right principle: be ready to use all available tools and materials and choose the most suitable for each specific task.

steph Arnott wrote: it just for me an artistic and cerebal exercise, I don't know if you're willing to accept music as art but if you are, I can assure you that like all true musicians, when I'm on stage performing, I'm certainly not myself, I'm much less "myself" than I ever am in Second Life. There and then I'm somebody else's avatar. I'm the composer's avatar and the lyricist's avatar. This is even true if I'm performing some ditty I wrote myself. Most of all I'm Music's avatar. Art is very much about taking people out of themselves and into a different existence. If you look at Monet's Haystack now in cold February, you should be there! You should feel the evening sun in your face and savour the smell of dry grass and burned French soil. Oh well, this is getting rather pretentious and way off topic. Voice can be an important part of how some people perceive others in SL and that's perfectly understandable and perfectly OK. But don't think it's any kind of reliable identification of anybody's gender or anything else. It can be just as illusionary as the avatar.

2Lips wrote: Kudos to the Logic (I think) brand for doing what they do for this problem....the rest need to follow suit....at the very least!!! Just in case Sassy's short explanation wasn't enough: Not many designers have the skills required to make good quality mesh clothes. Some who don't do it anyway but many realizes their limitation and buy ready made full perm templates instead. Other don't have the time to make their mesh from scratch. Spending days creating an outfit that will probably only sell 20 copies for 50 Lindens each is not everybody's idea of a good time. The person(s) who made the full perm templates a while ago had this idea they could reduce lag by eliminating the inside of the meshes. They were right there but yes, they may have gone a bit too far in the saving. The solution is to find some good mesh maker to create a brand new set of full perm templates for everybody to use. Unfortunately it's hard to find somebody who's willing and able to spend weeks on a dollar-a-day level pay for that.

Madelaine McMasters wrote: But, one of us has died her hair to look more authoritative... Might have worked better if she had dyed it. Hope the poor hair got a decent funeral at least.

IvanBenjammin wrote: This is a major soap-box issue for me, so I'll try to restrain myself... Does that mean I don't have to? == You're absolutely right of course. All those tools and techniques content creators in Second Life have can be used to create a better and richer virtual world if they are used right. But here's my rant: Before I came to SL i was a musician and a music teacher. One of the most difficult parts of that job was to tell a fresh pupil, full of enthusiasm that maybe it's a good idea to learn how to play Mary Had A Little Lamb in tune before trying to handle Paganini. Or when somebody in the local amateur orchestra showed off this expensive old violin he had bought and started demonstrating it by butchering Bach's Chaconne. That was wonderful. The sheer joy he expressed through his clumsy attempts more than made up for the pain he caused to the listeners' ears. It wasn't that lovely when he started to fancy himself as the next Yehudi Menuhin. This is one of the best and worst aspects of Second Life. Here everybody have access to professional and semi-professional tools and. Anybody can be a Great Master in their own eyes and even get some others to believe it. But to actually be a master, to really be able to use all those tools efficiently, that takes a little bit of talent and a lot of hard work. Many people have the talent actually. But not all do, and much fewer are willing and able to put in the work required. In Second Life everybody are supposed to be equal, and that's how it should be. We need all those people who feel like great builders doing the 3D modelling equivalent of Chaconne butchering. But we also need the skilled craftsmen and craftswomen who are able to use the tools effectively and we don't have a way two distinguish between the two. I don't really have an answer to this dilemma - I'm not even sure if there can be one.

steph Arnott wrote: "We're all wearing a mask, we're all playing a role." you maybe, many of us are not. If you say so.

A few random ones in no particular order: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Dreams/124/166/26 http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Gunnar/97/162/27 http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Kuula/55/168/28 http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Natoma/210/164/28 http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Sandbox%20OA/126/123/24 http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Tutorial%20Island/210/164/27 (probably) http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Plum/89/162/35 (simple scripts only) http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Morris/207/131/33 http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Amsterdam%202/137/56/25 And lots and lots of others. There are probably far more sandboxes than sandbox users in SL and, as Rolig said, most of them allow scripts. (Edit: maybe not completely random order. For some reason some of my personal favorites ended up on top of the list. Blame it on my subconciousness)

Kwakkelde Kwak wrote: That would finally explain the name: sans AR Careful with what you write here! Lindens do occasionally read posts on the forum and they've already misinterpreted one French word. We do not want to give them ideas - not that kind of ideas at least.

Maybe a bit off topic, maybe spot on. In either case definitely rather.... umm... errr... well. Read on if you want to - or don't Phil Deakins wrote: That's where you said that coming into SL is coming into roleplay. It's not, and that' what you didn't get. That depends on how you define the word roleplay really. If you mean in the strictest sense, standing around in a laggy sim posting dialogues as quotes in emotes, I think very few are. But in the widest sense - presenting yourself in SL as somebody not quite identical to how people see you in RL - I think we all are. I know three people in SL who have no real interest in their appearance at all. They're here only to study SL as a phenomenon or to examine the mechanism behind this weird little make-believe world. I never met any of them in RL but I still know that they're not quite as handsome and cool looking there as they are here. We're all wearing a mask, we're all playing a role. But that doesn't mean we're hiding or true selves here. Quite the contrary, a mask can be used to emphasize our true selves, not to hide it. And I actually believe that's what most people in SL do. Or maybe to bring out what they could have been. I discussed this with a woman in-world a while ago. She told me her SL avatar looked pretty much like she did in RL ... ... ... before the fire. It's because of people like that I still believe in SL as more than just some silly entertainment. I even like to think they're the reason I'm still here. (In case anybody were planning to ask embarrassing questions: Chin Rey was supposed to be fake - a minor fun character, obviously fake Asianish, vaguely Chineseish - a diversion from the increasingly stale second life of my original main (who is very blonde blue-eyed and Norwegian, much closer to my RL avi). It was a series of coincidences that made Rey my de facto main. I swear I never meant that to happen, it was an accident!)

Theresa Tennyson wrote: I'd suggest waiting several months before buying another mesh head. There are changes to the main avatar skeleton being worked on right now that will allow mesh heads to have a much wider range of expressions once the changes are released and if you buy a new head now it will be outdated very soon. Yes, this is probably not a good time to buy a new mesh head. It's different if you already have one though.

LuxCross wrote: Alright. Did the windlight settings but it doesn't change the fact that the mesh head shows the seems as to where the make-up around the eyes and the skin part. Yes, you can't always fix it that way. Windlight is the system your viewer uses for atmospheric and shadow effects, among other things how dark each surface should be depending on the way it faces. Many skin and mesh body part makers recommend you use a very "soft" windlight that blurs out all the details. It's a bit of a cheat but sometimes a necessary cheat. The problem is that soft windlight blurs out all details in the scene, not just the ones you want to hide. You can only take it so far before you loose all details in the view and sometimes it's not far enough. Part of the problem is that such blemishes are very easy to hide in a photo, such as the ones you see on MP and on blogs and on the front page of the SL website, only takes a minute or two of work in Photoshop or Gimp. And then people start believing their avatars can actually look like that in-world and ... they can't. We have to cheat a bit. I don't know about mesh heads but most mesh bodies come with a blender collar to hide the seam between the body and a system head. Some of these are rather crude, others so well made you have to look really close to notice the distortion. This should work for a mesh head too and I think Omega launched a separate and quite cheap universal blender collar recently. Worth checking out. That should help a lot with the neck issue but won't do anything for the eyes. For that I think the only solution is to try different skins (that is demos of different skins unless you have a ton of money to waste!).

Kelli May wrote: (a lot) Well said, Kelli. I can't imagine why anybody would even dream of criticising our smooth, logical, user-friendly and well organized Marketplace! Oh btw, if anybody looking for a mesh body for some reason actually has problems figuring out the perfect logic of MP, and maybe wants to learn about the ones only available in-world too, this may be a good place to look: http://meshbodyaddicts.com/ (Yes, I know that link has already been posted in several threads recently

Pamela Galli wrote: I don't think baked lighting effects are ugly at all That depends on how they're made and used. You can't really compare how the great texturers like Cory Edo and Hattie Panacek and Pamela Galli use shadow effects to subtly emphasize and enrichen an already well made work to how many lesser builders use them to hide the basic flaws of their builds. In addition to the problem Drongle already mentioned, all baked texture effects are by nature static. They may look great at a carefully staged photo session but the way I see it, SL isn't really meant to be a series of still photos, it's supposed to be dynamic. Then of course it's the question of alignment. Say you have two pieces of furniture with heavily baked textures right next to each other and they look really good together. Then rotate one of them ninety degrees and suddenly the lights on them come from completely different directions. Absolutely disatrous. Then of course there's lag. If you're careless with tour baked textures, you can easily lag down even the most powerful game computer in the world. Even so, there are some artists who make very good use of textures with baked light effects, not only the three (completely random) names I mentioned. But it takes skill, understanding, attention to detail and artistry to get it right.

Aminlove Faulkes wrote: ...but almost everyone activate shadows and ALM when making snapshots. Oh, you better be careful with shadows if you're using normal maps. Shadows tend to obscure the effect of normal maps so that's rather pointless. You can compensate by using extra strong heavy-duty normal maps but then they'll look absolutely horrible without shadows.

Qie Niangao wrote: One other (total) tangent: Do I remember correctly that ALM is what's enabled in order to have unlimited light sources? Otherwise we get the nearest -- what? six? -- light sources per scene. There's no way to have unlimited light sources. Without ALM you have six, nothing more and nothing less. With ALM you have as many as your computer can handle, could be anything from just one or two and upwards. Hardly unlimited though.

LuxCross wrote: I think it is the head.. but I might just try the windlight settings. If I know where to find them. World Menu -> Environment Editor -> Environment Settings But please be aware that your windlight setting only affects how you see your avatar yourself. It won't change how others see it.

insilvermoonlight wrote: Well, that's why you ask. I'm new to SL, I'm even newer to creating and selling on the MP. This doesn't have anything to do with SL specifically. The copyright laws that apply here are exactly the same as everywhere else. insilvermoonlight wrote: The item in question is a rather famous painting, you can find it all over blogs and what not. The fact that others are breaking the law doesn't mean you should.

Yes, the umlaut O and A are actually included as unique letters in the Swedish alphabet but not in the German. We don't have them at all in Norway though, we use Æ and Ø instead and so do the Danes. I think you'll find Ebbe is Swedish rather than Norwegian though.

Which viewer do you use? Media-On-A-Prim recently switched from Java and QuickTime to html5 and if you have an older viewer, that may be the cause of the problem.

It doesn't allow the Swedish/German umlaut o either which is particularly odd given that the CEO is Swedish. ;-)

Do you mean one specific Magnum sim or all of them? I'm at a Magnum sim rezzing prims right now and they all are perfectly solid. If you nly tested at one Magnum sim, you may want to request a restart of it. I've had similar things happen at two of my sims at various times (neither of them Magnum, one is a regular one, the other Blue Steel) and both times a restart fixed it.