KjartanEno

Yes, users of the Firestorm beta 6.4.5 will not notice this issue. From the code commits I looked at, it was one of the last changes made to Love Me Render before the merge into the default viewer. I have a crazy guess that they realized that the Sunrise/Sunset presets were borked, along with any day cycle that involved the Sun being low on the horizon, due to the old WL 'haze' not existing in EEP originally. Instead of fixing presets, the ugly and limiting 'haze' was put in at the last minute in an attempt to satisfy users complaining that the Sunset/Sunrise light and specular were too bright. My previous posts in this thread showed that a very convincing Sunset preset nearly identical to the old WL version could have been made without the 'haze.' Not only that, but sky and day cycle creation would not have been artificially limited by something beyond user control. If I want to have a big, bright moon right on the horizon for whatever reason, I should not be prevented from seeing it exactly how I imagine it.

About the only complaint I have left with EEP are the fairly recent changes to the moon. It used to be possible to have a moon texture that remained visible within several degrees of the horizon, but now SL has a permanent dense 'haze' no matter what settings are used. A fully white moon texture set to maximum brightness just above the horizon is either invisible or dark grey. You won't be able to enjoy the moon setting over the sea because chances are you'll never see it, but the light from it will reflect on the water anyway.

As far as the interface goes, Marine's Restrained Love Viewer matches the default LL experience most closely on Linux. It was just updated with the latest code. Kokua offers versions with and without RLV, and it has been updated with LL's most recent code. If she's new, I'd especially avoid recommending the Cool VL Viewer. That leaves Firestorm, which still offers the older Windlight renderer v6.3.9 and the EEP beta v6.4.5. Neither is up to the latest code from LL, but at the same time they are feature complete viewers that run well. I know of someone who has compiled the default LL viewer for Linux with the latest code, which in my personal experience runs well. However, I understand that there is a reluctance to run some program that doesn't come from the official LL or TPV sources.

Yes, now at least Linux users have official third party builds that include the Love Me Render improvements. Of course, Cool VL Viewer had them first, but now Marine Kelley's Restrained Love Viewer and Kokua have been updated. We may see a Firestorm update soon, perhaps before the end of the year? And Singularity may never get EEP. I won't bother to comment on viewers that lack a Linux version. I hardly ever use the quick materials option when editing prims. I'm sure they were useful to many people. The assets and code exist, so a third party viewer could fit it back in, I suppose. Kokua 6.4.9 still has the quick settings for normals (bump) and shine levels. If that is an important feature for someone, then I'd recommend using Kokua. Another reason I like the RLV based viewers (not to be confused with RLVa) is that they maintain the invisiprim transparency feature in deferred rendering mode. I have a couple of Trudeau boats, and it annoys me to see water inside the hull. 🌊

Python 2.7 is available in repositories for all Linux distributions, even Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, which means it will be around for years to come. This is not an issue. Firestorm can be built in Ubuntu 18.04 (which I did before the instructions on the Firestorm Wiki changed). One could build it in Arch, Fedora, or OpenSuSE as well. I know of someone who is building Firestorm in Slackware. I can't speak for anyone else, but all of my testing with Second Life viewers shows that they run up to 40% slower on Windows 10 on my system with the exact same hardware specifications and viewer settings than they do on Linux. The open source Mesa drivers on Linux are as good as the official Radeon drivers by AMD on Windows, but I believe that the real gains are on the CPU side with the efficiency of the compiled code and lack of bloat.

I ran that version of Cool VL Viewer. The viewer itself did not crash. The media player would stop working (CEF 81 crashing). I can't speak for Henri, but it would not surprise me if he works out the cause of that issue soon. If you have been using Firestorm beta 6.4.5, you've been running Dullahan/CEF 81 already. I have an issue with Firestorm 6.3.9, where logging out would cause the viewer to hang, and I would kill the main process in the system monitor where multiple Dullahan processes would just be sitting there doing nothing [Edit: And this could actually be unrelated to Dullahan, but IDK]. Firestorm 6.4.5 never caused any issues like that for me. I'm running Firestorm 6.3.9 & 6.4.10, Cool VL Viewer 1.28.0.9, Singularity 1.87.8193, and Kokua 6.4.7. Each viewer has strengths and weaknesses, so I'll pick a viewer depending on what I want to do in world. I'm incredibly grateful that we have such a variety of viewers on Linux!

It does seem like a lot to do. I debated whether to answer, but as a fellow Linux user I want to be helpful. For one thing, you don't need to replace your operating system. Linux has GRUB, which makes it possible to boot into different operating systems. My main distro right now is RPM-based, but I am quite familiar with the Ubuntu/Deb distros. One can install Ubuntu 16.04 along side one's main operating system. I would not want to 'live' in Ubuntu 16.04, but I gave it a 100GB partition on my drive. It is also possible to run Ubuntu 16.04 in a virtual machine, but that's another layer of complexity even I do not care to add. The final product of compiling the viewer will be a compressed archive that you should be able to copy to your main distro.

All media inside Second Life is played using the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF). Dullahan is a headless browser SDK that uses the CEF. When you compile Firestorm, prebuilt binaries are downloaded to /var/tmp/<user_name>/install.cache, including Dullahan/CEF. There will be no need to compile a browser separately. The newer Dullahan/CEF enables certain types of encrypted media content, if I recall the message on my television correctly. I don't normally compile programs, and my coding is limited to some LSL. If compiling isn't something you wish to try, then maybe a new beta will be out soon or maybe not?

Good! I'll be sure to make some tests soon and pass along any oddities I may find. The reason I thought things might not be updated fully is due to an object that is supposed to blur vision, but it did not seem to work the last time I checked it. I'll need to do a bit of scripting to know for certain.

@arabellajones, it can be frustrating to wait. 🚏 Indeed, the Firestorm beta 6.4.5 is essentially obsolete at this point for the purpose of showing the state of the EEP renderer. There are many other factors to consider though. Firestorm beta 6.4.5 has an updated Dullahan with Chromium 81, and this is now required by some media content. A lot of work was done to get that ready for Linux users, and I'm very grateful for it. I don't think RLVa visual commands have been fully fixed for EEP yet, so that's another major consideration. I'm sure the FS team is working as fast as they can to address any issues that remain. As a fellow Linux user, I've attempted to run viewers via WINE and Steam's Proton, but without luck. If you are willing to try it, the Firestorm team has graciously put a guide for self compilers in their Wiki. I set up a 100GB partition and installed Ubuntu 16.04 on it per the guide's recommendation. All the steps are there, and while there is always a learning curve, it can be done! 👨‍🎓

LL has merged Love Me Render into their default release today, so I rushed to see what was new on the Firestorm changelogs. I was excited to see that the LL code was merged there as well. I know that this code change hasn't been thoroughly tested by the FS team, but being the adventurous sort, I compiled my own Linux version of Firestorm 6.4.10. I have been practicing the compiling process lately, and I soon had this new one ready for testing. I have to say, in my opinion, things are looking better than before. Without a doubt, EEP is going to be more 'shiny' than the old Windlight renderer. However, with LMR I believe that a reasonable balance has finally been struck between sun & moon light specular shine and point & spot light specular shine, the former being enhanced and the latter now becoming more subtle.

A new Love Me Render RC viewer is out, so I logged into Windblows to get the update. So far, I like what I see. At first the dimness of the moon had me perplexed. According to the code commits, some changes have been made to the way the moon is rendered, so EEP night skies may no longer work as they did before. Just set the LMR viewer to midnight and look up at the moon to see what I mean. However, with some tweaking, moonlit night skies can be made to work again. Keep in mind that the moon will appear to be far dimmer than before, thus the brightness of the texture may need to be set much higher. Increasing the light to get a brighter looking moon will affect how objects look at night, and that may not be what you want to see. Of course, one can always upload a lighter moon texture. Here is a space scene I set up with a custom EEP sky that I made. The apparent brightness of the moon is due to the fact that the sun is also above the 'horizon' and set to maximum brightness.

And yet that Blendswap web site hasn't been taken down by DMCA. And 'fan art' is still a thing despite the murky relationship with copyrights. If the file in question was in fact a direct copy of the mesh created by the movie studio, I'd say it was a copyright violation. All I see here is someone who wants to look similar to a character from a movie using a public domain mesh. I'm not a lawyer, nor do I offer legal advice. 🤪

I see what you're going for, and it can look natural with the right texture and specular settings. Skin shine can vary greatly. If you 'bake' the shine on the skin itself, then you're pretty much stuck with a certain look. However, using materials on skin with an applier can allow for variations and experimentation. Right now with the transition from WL to EEP, it will be a challenge to find a happy medium, but you can create a range of specular textures to put in an applier. You really don't need to worry about normal maps in this case since they don't offer enough resolution to give you a realistic bump effect. The challenge will be painting the shine in just the right places. You can experiment with brushes and textures in Photoshop and then save them to your hard drive. Then, and here's the trick to save the cost of uploads, set the textures on your head using the "local" setting. Many creators have rezzable 'developer' heads where you can do this kind of test, but I'm not sure how they all handle adding specular maps. You could buy a cheap head that is modifiable like the Utilizator Normie for generic tests. If you really want to dive in deep, the normal maps can be used, but only for the alpha channel. The alpha channel on normal maps varies the 'hardness' of the specular map shine. That way you can have a soft sheen on one area of the skin and a hard highlight on another. https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Material_Data

On the link you posted, the information on the left side indicates it is a CC-0 file. In other words, it is Creative Commons Zero in which the creator made it Public Domain with no restrictions on usage. You are free to modify the file and upload it anywhere, though it would be nice to give credit to the creator as a courtesy. It looks like a cool project. There is more to preparing it for SL than you might initially think, and the result would not look like the image shown on that linked page. Good luck! https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/

From the description, I would say no. First of all, it's no mod. In order to receive textures from Omega appliers, it would need to have an Omega system listener script installed. What you want to do is theoretically possible with the Omega custom mesh body kit script, but only if the object is modify. Your best option is to set the Maitreya body to use Bakes On Mesh, and if needed, get a BoM skin. ... I'm assuming that your skin texture only came with an Omega system applier and no system skin.

Which seems a bit lazy to me. I've been using Avastar for nearly 4 years, and Blender for much longer. Copying the weights is simply part of the job any clothing rigger should know, and there's no extra effort to copy the volume bones, unless the rigger is ... lazy? I could think of other words. I've done some clothing for my own projects, but I do not consider my quality or sense of fashion good enough to sell for a wide audience. Even so, I do know how to push & pull vertices, copy weights, and fix joints for animations. If a clothing maker can't copy volume bone weights in Blender, then I have to wonder at their competence. As for Slink, I've owned the body since 2016. It occurs to me that it was designed in an era when standard sizing clothing was fairly common, and so it conformed closely enough to the standard male body to take advantage of the available clothing. Whether one finds the newer bodies more attractive is always a subjective thing. My opinion on most male bodies is that they are silly with their bulging muscles and veins. At least Slink looks a bit more realistic to me. Support the creators who bring you quality products for the body you prefer. There is still a large amount of good clothing available for Slink.

More changes have been made in the viewer code commits since Love Me Render RC was released. I would not use any EEP viewer as a reference for creating materials on objects.

I went to a sim with a "moon base" set in a skybox and took some pictures. I made my own EEP Sky setting with a starry black sky, bright sun, and a custom Earth image to replace the "Moon" texture. I have had a Blender file for many years that renders the Earth using the old Blender render engine. It renders quickly, so I was able to come up with a crescent phase of the Earth for my sky. This particular skybox has an object positioned off sim to show a planet, but I derendered it because it didn't look good and interfered with my sky. Being able to use a custom "moon" is a great feature. Ambient Color, Blue Horizon, and Blue Density were set to black. The Sun was set to the maximum brightness and the scene gamma was set as high as needed to get sufficient contrast. All images were taken using Cool VL Viewer 1.28.0.7 (Linux) since it has correct Sun specularity and allows much greater than 512MB of Texture Memory (my GPU has 8 GB VRAM). My only issue was getting just the right amount of glow around the Sun itself. There had to be no atmosphere to get a black sky in the daytime, but then there needed to be a tiny amount to allow the Sun to 'glow' instead of being a white disk in the sky. The images I made with the Sun in them didn't make the cut this time. Anyway, on to the pictures. Moonbase 1 Moonbase 2 Moonbase 3 Moonbase 4

I believe they've already been working on it. Henri released an update for Cool VL Viewer today, and I'm using it now. The Cool VL Viewer release notes state: Backported from LL's viewer "revert part of SL-12978 change that broke low-angle sunlight" http://sldev.free.fr/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=81&start=520#p10003 Going by the LL viewer release notes, this change hasn't made it to any official viewer as of today, and please do correct me if I'm wrong about that. https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/index.html Now, based on my tests so far, this may or may not be the change you wanted. Henri's viewer has the same sun/moon brightness and specularity as Love Me Render RC in v1.28.0.6. However, v1.28.0.7 has the above mentioned fix for the low-angle sunlight. I can no longer create a custom Sunset preset that looks like Firestorm 6.3.9 with the new fix. @Henri Beauchamp, I really appreciate the fact that you keep the Cool VL Viewer so up to date. Are the sudden sky transitions also part of LL's code changes? Edit: Only the sky above 3500m changed instantly for some reason. Transitions happened normally when I visited another sim at a lower elevation.

I apologize if it seems like I'm being pedantic on the issue. I agree with your general observation about the presets. I'm also not sure how much attention the Lindens are paying to the feedback on this thread, but I want to give my own perspective on the current state of development. Hopefully the end result will be something that we both find acceptable.

I appreciate a good challenge. I've done the simple reproduction of the issue which you wrote about. I've also added my own test prim to the mix to see how well the materials should work under a 'fixed' EEP Sunset. I could have spent more time tweaking the Personal Lighting settings in this test, but I believe I've made my point well enough. The shine is fine. The presets are currently broken. Yes, Stevie! It can be done with Love Me Render RC. It is impossible to do this with the current release LL viewer or any third party viewer that uses unaltered EEP code and shaders.

This is not a simple and effective repro setup that 'can be reproduced by anyone.' It does nothing to show where the actual issue exists. All it shows is that one of your preferred presets no longer provides what you expect. It completely ignores the effect of the alpha channel in normal and specular textures with regards to materials because you simply applied a 24 bit white blank [specular] texture to a mid gray prim and looked at one or two presets in the viewer. If you don't like the Sunset and Midday presets, complain that the presets themselves are currently broken. 'An astronomer, a physicist and a mathematician are on a train in Scotland. The astronomer looks out of the window, sees a black sheep standing in a field, and remarks, "How odd. All the sheep in Scotland are black!" "No, no, no!" says the physicist. "Only some Scottish sheep are black." The mathematician rolls his eyes at his companions' muddled thinking and says, "In Scotland, there is at least one sheep, at least one side of which appears to be black from here some of the time."' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_joke

Could these images come from a Windlight viewer? These were all taken using the Love Me Render RC viewer (on Windows). Route 9 in Jeogeot #1 Route 9 in Jeogeot #2 Route 9 in Jeogeot #3 (I like this picture in spite of the blurry texture on the "donut." LL seriously needs to reconsider that 512MB texture memory limit.) Route 9 in Jeogeot #4 Route 9 in Jeogeot #5 (Specular shine on the building, dune buggy, and skin of the avatar would not be visible on LL's current release EEP viewer or Firestorm 6.4.5 beta. It makes a real difference in the scene, and I would go so far as to say that it's better than the old WL viewer Sun/Moon specular shine. I beg to differ with anyone who says that it is too much shine, especially if the complaint comes from someone who only uses the [old and in need of updating] Sunset preset as a point of reference.) While I have made a couple of completely original EEP day cycles for myself, I used the Personal Lighting dialog to set up the sky and lighting for these images.

I used the Personal Environment settings dialog to set the sun direction and mess about with the lighting and sky colors in that and other images on my Flickr page which were taken with the Firestorm beta. No post effects were added. I'd happily use Black Dragon, but I spend 99.9% of my time in Linux, which is significantly faster at rendering SL for me. I listed my settings and computer specifications in this post, promising more info when I had a chance to duplicate the test in Windows: And my results in Windows: FS EEP 6.4.5 12 fps Black Dragon 3.8.10 AVX EEP 14 fps Cool VL Viewer 1.28.0.6 EEP 14 fps Singularity 1.8.9.8338 WL 23 fps Linux (again, for reference): FS EEP 6.4.5 22 fps Cool VL Viewer 1.28.0.6 EEP 20 fps Singularity 1.87.8193 WL 32 fps The difference may have something to do with Windows performance settings, but nothing I found in that convoluted mess of an operating system indicated Windows was not using optimal settings. I certainly have no problem playing the few games installed via Steam on the Windows partition with very high to ultra settings... Now, whether or not EEP is better looking than WL, I think it's a matter of preference. I do see your point, however, since WL renderer is very capable in experienced hands. Nevertheless, if LL saw the need to update the code in order to prepare for the deprecation of OpenGL on Apple products in the near future, then the WL renderer's days were numbered anyway. I don't usually log in Firestorm 6.3.9 anymore, and I only use Singularity for clubs since it's very good at rendering many avatars without reducing my experience to a slide show. Otherwise, it's EEP all the time now, and I'll get better at using it for photography.