Rick Nightingale

I don't think many creators even know they exist, seriously. Like you say, they can make a dramatic difference to what can be achieved.

There's some really rubbish stuff around, LOD-wise. Lots of it based on the same source of full-perm meshes. I ended up making my own tables simply because the one I liked turned into a mess if I stood at the far end of the room unless I set my LOD factor all the way up. LODs should be designed such that the object looks right at any distance, within reason depending on its intended purpose and at a reasonable viewer LOD factor. I tend to design for factor 2, and at that, my stuff will look the same shape at any distance, even when it drops to much lower detail. You'll be hard pushed to see the change, but I can still get very low LI. My tables and chairs are 1LI, quite detailed up close, and in any reasonable size room (even at SL giant scale) you'll never see them look bad. That's how it can and should be done.

Ignore the instructions some sellers still give to set your viewer's LOD factor at 4 or even higher in order to 'see their wonderful creations properly'. Furthermore, don't buy anything from someone who says to do that.

No. Every AI created, supposedly artistic image I've seen looks wrong. Sometimes it takes a moment to see where and why, but it always looks wrong. I don't care if it has pretty colours and some fancy bits pulled from elsewhere and merged into a conglomerate of rip-offs. Art is something created by humans (and maybe other sentient or nearly so beings). And no, I don't think typing a handful of key words into an AI pool classes as creation. Beauty is something that's in the eye of the beholder so I guess someone might find an AI produced image beautiful, but I don't. I'm happy for pictures of urinals and welded-together bits of scrap to be called art, even though I don't generally appreciate it myself. But I draw the line at something produced by an algorithm out of a database. Frankly I'm sick of seeing it on DA etc. They should have a filter so it can be excluded. It isn't art. Fine if others like it and want to see it, but it isn't art and shouldn't be presented as such.

I'm very far from an expert in either Blender or Avastar - purely an amateur who uses them maybe once or twice a year and forgets how to drive the things in-between. I've found the support for Avastar on their Discord server to be superb and invaluable though, both from other users and the staff. If you need help, that's the place to go I suspect. I seem to recall some new videos were published just some weeks ago too.

Not so sure about that. I can't speak for very recently, but a year ago I read similar to the above so often that when I wanted a dev kit, I nearly didn't bother asking. My first Lara mermaid tail was rigged by trial and error. I did ask though, and had a kit within a week with no trouble. I'm hardly a big name maker; I only dabble in it for fun (and didn't pretend otherwise) although I also take it seriously, with regards to licensing and product quality. Like I say, that was almost exactly a year ago so maybe things have changed but back then, there was no problem getting a dev kit.

Out of morbid curiosity, where is your constituency, and were you voted in there as their local MP/representative?

Hmm... that's a situation we haven't met yet but yes, if a body add-on uses the BOM texture then the alpha layer won't be useful there. Will remember that one, should she get any. (Otherwise I would likely have had a "D'oh" moment, lol)

My wife has had endless problems with Maitreya's auto-hide for years, to the extent that she (well, I, I did most of the hard work for her) set up individual bodies, ready-alphad and script-removed, saved with each outfit. Total pain in the backside when an updated body came along but the auto-hide was so unreliable it seemed the only way to be sure (the 'nuke them from orbit' approach). Then there's clothing with poor alpha settings (or ones you would rather change), and poor rigging so you either get a gap, or a clip because the clothes don't line up with an alpha band. For some outfits I went as far as using an RLV script to control and synchronise the clothing change, with multiple auto-alpha 'dummy' attachables. We finally solved it in a much more usable manner, although it's still a bit of a pain to do initially (for me - she just 'plays'). I'm pretty sure is was Qie who reminded me, in my thread on the matter ages ago, that BOM worked with system alpha layers, just like system clothes. Now, we either use pre-made alpha layers that happen to work (Slink has a box of free ones in the store), or I make one myself in photoshop and upload it. It's easy enough to do with very basic editing skills. It still means you have to remove the scripts from the body if you can't remove the script from the clothing (>=v5 script but there's a lot of clothing that predates that). It's much better than the way we were doing it though and the alpha is often an improvement on what the clothing's auto-alpha did. Yes, an option to just turn off the auto-alpha in the body would be a godsend and mean we could keep the rest of the scripts in it. Finally, it is always worth asking the clothing creator to update to V5. A few are responsive (most are not, in my experience, but a few are). One even went so far as to remove the scripts altogether for her and send her a copy like that (this was pre v5). They of course have had a lot more of my wifes L$ since.

I don't sell much (can't take money out due to RL situation/tax etc) but have had a fairly constant earning in SL for years. I've also added quite a lot more to my store over the last year or so. Always made enough to cover membership for two and a bit of land. The last six months has been my lowest earning for a long time, by a large margin. And yes, in Britain prices are becoming ridiculous for everything. We should be self-sustaining in gas and almost in oil, but the companies moved out all the storage and most of the refining so we have to sell to Eu, then buy back at Eu prices. Of course the big companies make a fortune doing it this way but the country can't look after itself the way it could a few decades back.

Assuming the IM is something worth answering, I'll usually answer and then read/cam out of curiosity while waiting for a response. I rarely ignore an IM unless it's clearly objectionable and sometimes than I play with them for a laugh. I've no objection to random IMs as long as they are interesting, or at least not just begging for something.

You got it!

Oh, wait... it's not 42 days logged in constantly, but 42 days where I logged in every day, is it? I misunderstood. I bet my stayed-logged-in time is still a lot though. I did used to just leave the viewer logged in all the time on my server. @Ceka Cianci Yes, I just realised that and was typing as you posted.

Yes, my stats are for one alt only back then. That 42 days was just me. I used to run on a server, which was on all the time anyway.

Twelve years ago today, I apparently joined SL! Can't believe I nearly missed my rez day again, but then I have other things on my mind right now (tomorrow I check into hospital for surgery, and my lovely neighbours have kept me awake with their idea of music every night for the last four nights until 2 - 3 am which is why I'm here right now.) Anyway... SL's email tells me my longest logged in streak is 42 days! That's really me, not me as a bot, although I'm sure I wasn't actually at my keyboard the whole time. I know I used to stay logged in for a long time, but that's quite incredible: 1. Firestorm didn't crash... 2. SL didn't crash... 3. Windows 7 didn't crash... 4. My internet didn't crash... 5. I was there for every region restart to run away in time... ...for 42 days! Can anyone beat that? EDIT: Seems I misunderstood (I blame 3am neighbour music) - it's 42 days logged in every day. not 42 days without logging off. Oh well, not nearly as impressive. I could actually believe my first interpretation because I used to leave it logged in all the time.

I always thought (from researching this years ago) that only the first viewer instance has access to the cache. It certainly seems that way when I run multiple logins on the same grid.

I'll let you all into a secret I've kept almost entirely in SL. Only one person in SL knows this... until now. I have high functioning autism, diagnosed when I was in my 40's after it (and me trying to figure life out without knowing I had ASD and constantly, utterly failing) had destroyed every aspect of my RL. I got to the point I can hardly cope with being in company at all, in RL or SL. Not because I don't want to, but because the stress if causes my trying to figure out all the social stuff that I just cannot comprehend or even see is too much. I'm absolutely not antisocial; I just cannot cope with being social. It sucks. I'm saying this because I've seen a few posts like this here, and if someone like me can make friends, just about anyone can. And I did. Polenth's suggestions are spot on. That's what I did. It doesn't even need to be something you are really into, just something you can join in with. I was never good at RP (see: ASD) but joined a pirate battle group that used to run in Blake. It took me weeks months to work up the ability to actually say hello and join in, but I watched the group chat and events for a while to get a feel for it and the people. They were good people and when I did finally take the plunge, I fit in well and we all got on. I would turn up to the battles and events and even ended up running them, although I could rarely join in with any of the more social stuff they put on. I hated that, but that's the way I am. Another group that's really a good lot (and your name fits in quite well) is... I'm not sure I'm allowed to name it (would it be advertising?) but if you check my profile/picks, it's the only commercial pick in there. Or just IM me. We can all be gods Hanging around that group, especially around special occasions, hunts and holiday seasons is a really easy way to get involved. Amazingly, I ended up dancing on stage in costume at one of the events (Edit: I just remembered I was even pole dancing at another there). I couldn't even imagine being able to do that. That's the power of that group, its owner and members. It's a special place in SL, it really is. Hunts, while we're on that topic, is another good one for meeting people either just for a little while or longer, and since you're busy hunting you don't necessarily need to really talk much at first. Join the group, hang around, there's often someone at some point looking for a hunt partner. Or just shout out yourself for one. And there you go. I like the most twisted hunt in SL myself; more good people there. Unfortunately for me, I'm not doing well right now and haven't been able to join in anything for a long time. I've tried but just can't cope right now, plus my RL is pretty hard and unreliable due to my issues and my wife's health. That's the other reason I don't try to make more friends - I don't think it's fair on them to have someone like me who's there one day but then has to go quiet for a month or six because I can't even cope with a simple chat. I care about people and don't like letting them down. I'll probably regret posting this later...

I seem to have irked you @Henri Beauchamp - wasn't my intention and I think your tone is unwarrented. However... It doesn't seem to be an obvious LOD issue to me. When there is a second set of trees, identical to the first, right next to them not suffering the issue then I think there is something else going on, especially when the 1st->2nd and 2nd->3rd LOD switch points are so far away from me; hundreds of metres when I'm about ten metres away. I have to ask... what exactly do you mean by 'badly designed mesh'? The first video shows the trees completely vanish; not even the lowest LOD is visible. I wonder how you could make mesh that looks correct when the LOD model is viewed explicitely (all four do), but then not be rendered by the viewer, or whatever you think is happening. Earlier in the thread I mentioned that the FF edit panel shows an incorrect, tiny object radius (about 1m) when the trees have vanished. The trees do not have a small radius, nor do the shadows they still show when invisible, so why does FF think they do? Something must be happening before the LOD selection to give that incorrect radius. Even at 1m radius, the lower LOD models should still be visible to me at the distances concerned. Besides, I've never seen that sort of behaviour at LOD switches (flickering etc), and I check that out a lot when I'm making mesh. At some random point, the viewer (I guess, don't know how animesh is handled re. server/viewer) loses the plot for one (or more) of the trees. I do not think the trees being visible for days, then suddenly not (even when I've just turned away from them for a moment), then suddenly coming back with no intervention, is a different issue. I've read that bug report before and it is not the same as I'm having with these trees. The trees have their own issue. Thank you anyway for trying to help. Like I mentioned, I did have a visit from a Linden quite a while ago, following up from the bug report. He said he has quite a workload but this issue was in his queue (basically). Hopefully the I'm moving up the queue.

@Lucia Nightfire it's 30 (was 20 before I started investigating this issue). The region is empty most of the time apart from me, and no other animesh present. I'll try setting unlimited and leave it on that for a while, but I'm guessing it won't make any difference. Might take a few days before I notice the trees vanishing (or not); they behave when I'm waiting for it to happen.

@Henri Beauchampare you sure you were looking at the Animesh trees? There are a lot of trees on my land; just two sets of animesh near the pond. I'm checking because the point of using those trees (for me) isn't that they are animesh (I don't even have their animesh animations active), but they have a very strong LOD behaviour. I can see them (when they don't 'vanish' which can happen at any distance) at 1st LOD model from one end of my sim to the other, at viewer LOD factor 3. See screenshot below for switch points and triangle count. Note also that the behaviour seems completely random; the trees will be visible for days then suddenly they'll not be there (or at least one set wasn't - the other set was still visible). I made no changes to any viewer settings. If it was a straightforward issue that the trees were badly designed, would the problem not be more reliably reproduced? (You clearly know a lot more about the viewers than I do though, so I might be talking nonsense.) @Qie Niangaothe trees have astonishing numbers in the More Info box when animesh is unticked; see below. They have a high triangle count in all the LOD models (which is why I like them... they are visible from a long distance). It's all download:

This is still happening. I haven't used the trees for ages, but put some out a few days ago. This is with the latest FS viewer. I did get a visit from a Linden investigating the issue - sorry, can't recall your name now - hope you see this. This is odd - when I noticed one lot of two animesh trees had vanished today, I went into edit mode and clicked around where they should be until I got them. If I move them up and down, they vanish when I lower them and reappear when I raise them. Videos of this, and the trees just flicking in and out, especially if I cam around.

It's nothing to do with politics, but don't worry, I know when not to waste my time.

In case anyone finds this thread because of similar issues... I've just rediscovered (had completely forgotten since I last played with all of this) that the Maitreya Lara autoalpha script in the clothing can be removed* even if the clothing is no-mod. That means I can leave the scripts in the body (so still be able to change other things about it without having to change bodies for each little change). Problem solved... bye-bye autoalpha Just type in chat: /95 [item name] delete You can also say menu instead of delete.. for a menu I guess. Edit: Needs to be version 5 or later though... so I bet she has a lot of clothes that it won't work on.

She's my wife (in RL and SL )