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arabellajones

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Everything posted by arabellajones

  1. arabellajones
    That's the routine answer, widely used at the SL-Birthday events and others. With the content-delivery changes moving much of the high-volume traffic away from the Linden Lab servers things are very different from "A few years ago". Whatever the event, it doesn't help that some creators are still producing grotesquely over-complex models. Just look at some avatars in wire-frame mode. If the mesh looks solid, it isn't worth using at a busy event. It also helps if people turn up early, and give their viewer cache time to fill. But avatar components and textures can still be a problem. Starting with a minimal draw-distance can help. Come SL17B and I shall be running around with an all mesh avatar showing under 15k ARC. That's not a perfect measure of the load I put on somebody's connection and viewer, but it does leave me wondering what excesses Bake-on-Mesh really cures.
  2. arabellajones
    There is one thing you missed at this stage, though it trickled out in the thread. Windows, Mac, or Linux, and which version. I had a fun time, earlier this week, with trying to get some software to run. Long story, nothing to do with SL, but some open source programming teams can't document their way out of a soggy wet paper bag. There was a bit of "everyone knows" in the process which nobody had bothered to document, neither before nor after a significant change.
  3. arabellajones
    I know that the SLRR trains use a script in the root prim to detect the "Guide" prim in the track. These scripts are very old, and much is hardly documented: a few comments and maybe something about variable-names. Is there some way of getting the same sort of position vector between the nearest "Guide" prim and a child prim in the linkset. There is real-world rolling stock which, when scaled in proportion to the SLRR track gauge, is over 30m long. If a model were behaving like the real vehicle, there would be two points following the track, not the single central point of a root-prim. So, if one prim is still the root of the linkset, how can the position vectors be generated for the other prims? I know that there are train-things on the SLRR which are a single-vehicle/linkset that bends to follow the track. How might they work?
  4. arabellajones
    There is a version of the standard VRC train script which allows this, but it depends on the SLRR track system to keep the follower vehicles on the track. It does allow sim crossing, but there can be failures. It works on the SLRR but not on the new Bellisaria line, because of differences in parcel permissions. The follower vehicles have to be set to maintain their distance from the "driver" of the locomotive. This "Carriage" modification is by Kadai Flanagan, and the copy I have is No Transfer. I know you can get it in stuff from the Waxen Works range, and Kadai Flanagan is still active in SL I am groping for an articulated vehicle version of this, a single linkset that can bend in the middle, but I need to understand how the Guide prim on the track is detected and followed. The documentation for the SLRR is woefully inadequate, a huge gap between knowing there is a Guide prim and the erratic commenting in the code.
  5. arabellajones
    On what I have seen, most of the available train scripting is pretty old, maybe 2015, and there are features of the the new continent's system which make some SLRR features unusable. As far as I can tell, it is only possible to operate single vehicles on the line. Because of the permissions used on the SLRR, it is possible for a train to be multiple vehicles, most following the locomotive. That works on the SLRR but it's the big weakness at region crossings. Because the Belliseria railroad doesn't have the track as a distinct parcel with the normal SLRR permissions, these vehicle cannot work. The Quarry Freight train that people are showing off uses a different technology, a single vehicle which bends in the middle. It works well, SLRR or otherwise, but it's rather limited. The same tech applied to something in the style of the Wisbech and Upwell Tramway, passenger and freight traffic, would look rather good. Waxen Works did some SLRR-standard models for this. This web page has some photos of the real-world rolling stock. https://www.lner.info/co/GER/wisbech/stock.php I am slowly struggling through the train-scripting, trying to understand how it works, to produce some decent mesh models which run as a single articulated vehicle. Something such as a GWR 48xx locomotive with an autocoach would look pretty good. It wouldn't even need to flip, they could be driven from the far end of the coach. We really need a mole with a top hat...
  6. arabellajones
    Depends on how your internet connection is set up, but it's fairly common for a domestic-line IP address to change if it's been disconnected for a while. So if your problem started after a disconnection, you may be able to fix it by turning off your modem before you go to bed, and reconnecting in the morning. Don't do this more than once. Repeated disconnections can make the ISP think they need to reduce your connection speed. There are other ways that somebody else could have been making a fool of themselves on the same visible IP address, but this is one you have a chance to deal with.
  7. arabellajones
    I've been struggling with the Puppeteer script. The version in the Wiki is very old (http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Puppeteer) and a later version is available elsewhere (https://grimore.org/secondlife/puppeteer) I have not found anything more recent. The problem I have been seeing is an apparent failure to record and dump all the steps. Often there are a different number of steps for the position and rotation data. That different number of steps suggests that it's not my forgetting to use the "Mark" option to record a step. Since the most recent version is dated 2015, and there are some old script packages still using it. I am wondering if anything has changed. In one case a 12-step rotation was dumped as a 6-step half-rotation. I can program a similar rotation, without problems, but synchronising the result across different prims seems poorly supported.
  8. arabellajones

    Blender 2.82

    arabellajones replied to animats's topic in Mesh

    I have Blender 2.79 with Avastar and blender 2.8 with the Avastar beta. This image works well as a desktop icon. Rescale to suit your OS and desktop,
  9. arabellajones
    Short Answer: Yes The jargon and methods vary a bit with the modelling program but you can set several materials with their own UV mapping. Each material is what is called a "face" in the SL editor. The UV mapping is the 2D coordinates of the vertices of the 3D object. This is an example of a UV map; each section could be a distinct material/face, and the UV coordinates re-scaled to each fill the full range: they would overlap but each could use its own texture without wasting space. This is a tee shirt, front and back panels and two sleeves. There's a few things wrong with that UV mapping, a doubling over at the bottom edge, and I should have set horizontal edges in the mesh to be horizontal in the UV map.
  10. arabellajones
    The CoolVLViewer install on Linux makes some of the assorted Windows installers look pretty sluggish. The only thing that might catch somebody out is that you have to make the file executable. It's a good, up to date, piece of software, but far enough from the current UI to be awkward. I am not sure if it's even worth trying the SL viewer for Linux. it's such an ancient piece of software, so many things just aren't there. With EEP out there, the only choice for that would be the Windows viewer running under Wine, but good luck finding up-to-date info for setting that up.
  11. arabellajones
    I now have some of this stuff. It appears that the way a train works is still close to the old SLRR/VRC method, with components of the train still being distinct objects, running as vehicles and tracking the locomotive/engineer. The vehicle setting have been moved to an editable notecard rather than being defined in the script. The end result is easier to adjust, but still horrible for sim crossing. I do know about Literate Programming
  12. arabellajones
    I have put a fair bit of effort into a Tahoe home and I cannot see is as easy to move, with all the extra bits I have built and scattered around. The new Log Homes might be a good substitute, but the whole home hopping thing feels a bit strange to me. Especially now, with RL as it is, that old-style Linden Home works as a refuge for me. I am not even clear on what process i would have to use, packing up furniture, relinquishing the old Linden Home, and taking a new one. I reckon Tuesdays and Wednesdays could be awkward days.
  13. arabellajones
    OK, just a general point. Mountain areas with lakes are pretty common, and the local water level is the baseline for everything, visually. So a mountain region could be made with a 20m water level. But the transition from mountain to coast would be difficult. One RL example I know is 25m in 10km (I just checked) which is less than 1m change per region, but distances in SL are rather compressed. We do have other continental areas with higher-level water. They must have looked odd while under construction. It would be nice if we did have standard way of having sailable/swimmable/visual water other than the ancient sea-level thing, but I'm not holding my breath.
  14. arabellajones
    The Solarian Feline and Blue Galaxy Feline devkits are still available, just not from the links supplied with the models. A quick google turned them up at http://kanzaki.cat/files/ You can also find current links at the various in-world stores at Caisteal It's a pretty efficient mesh with a trickle of support, though I doubt we'll see a BoM version. On the other hand, with ARC numbers usually under 20k I doubt the effort to support BoM would gain much.
  15. arabellajones
    The Status webpage showed restarts beginning at 03:00 PST, which is unusual timing for a Wednesday restart run.
  16. arabellajones
    This is a 9400-class pannier tank of the Great Western Railway, one of the last locomotives they built before the railways in Britain were nationalised. I have most of the mesh work done now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GWR_9400_Class This is just with basic materials, no texturing.
  17. arabellajones
    Track gauge is the inside measurement, the distance between the rails. Real life: Standard Gauge 1.435m (4ft 8½in) Irish Gauge 1.600m (5ft 3in) Iberian Gauge 1.668m (5ft 5¾in) Indian Gauge 1.676m (5ft 6in) SLRR Standard (from http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Second_Life_Railroad/SLRR_standards#SLRR_track_standards ) 1.960m (7ft 5in)
  18. arabellajones
    I'm putting this info here since it may help anyone else trying to build stuff for the SLRR standard. While some model railways use a wrong track gauge for the vehicle scale, the only significant example of the British OO system, which uses the same gauge as HO models, but a larger vehicle scale. SLRR uses an oversized track gauge, so to look right models should, according to the 1m nominal scale used in SL, be 138% or the real measurement. I've decided to use 133% for any railway models I make. The result is close, and the 4/3 ratio is a little easier to work with.
  19. arabellajones
    Maybe last one for a while. Here we are at Crumbi Junction, with the pre-1946 loco number, coupled to an old Pattern V5 PBV of the GWR, waiting for a signal to clear before heading for Leafroller and Tuliptree
  20. arabellajones
    And, just for comparison, here's a pic of a real one. (The loco numbers did get changed from the original 48xx series to 14xx in 1946) The best typeface for GWR nameplates and numberplates seems to be called "Swindon" and is related to Clarendon. The links here still work. https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/116740-class-4243-warship-nameplate-font/&do=findComment&comment=2496169 I seem to have the distinct moral failing of bothering to look things up. It seems to be offensive to politicians...
  21. arabellajones
    This is the same pic marked up to show some of the changes the mesh version has. The wheels and coupling rods were also replaced by mesh. Only the lamps were on the prim model. The access steps for the cab use the same mesh as the marked steps, but the original had them as prims. I really should try to set up animation for the wheels and coupling rods.
  22. arabellajones
    I noted prim sizes but built the mesh components from scratch, with some slight size tweaks after import.
  23. arabellajones
    OK, so here's a mesh model of a 14xx class tank locomotive of the Great Western Railway, about half the LI of an old prim-based model, and with a lot more detail. There are some things I got wrong, but this is getting pretty close. Actual spoked wheels rather than cylinders with textures, that sort of thing. It runs on the SLRR with the standard, rather ancient, scripts.
  24. arabellajones
    It's a different version of the real helicopter, may be more than one creator-team making them, but there's a very nice freebie model of an earlier version of the MD-500 from Spijkers and Wingtips. I know one vendor for it is in the general market building on the East side of Hollywood Airport. There are quite a few free and low-cost textures and accessories. If you want to try helicopters, go for it. This is a colour scheme I made. It's pretty easy to fly, a little bit different from fixed-wing types, but it doesn't get into the real-life effects that make helicopters so demanding. Flying a real one isn't trivial. Unless you're using a long draw distance, the chances are you'll never see an SL-aircraft passing. A friend asked me to duplicate this look for one of the bigger SL planes. I did, and the mad beggar flies like that in SL. Want a lawnmower for your parcel?
  25. arabellajones
    Since I didn't notice any log-in problems myself there could be something ISP-related in the mix. Remember, every IP packet comes with a source address and if they're not logging that for all log-in traffic, it's a bit of a security weakness. I have a permanent IPv4 address, which is pretty unusual on the modern internet, and if that's why I didn't see any problems something is really messed up. I know that in many ways, I am not typical, neither hardware nor software/firmware.
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