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Cathy Foil

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Everything posted by Cathy Foil

  1. Bakes On Mesh finally released!!! Hopefully it won't take long for the 3rd Party viewers to incorporate it. Here is the announcement:
  2. You are right I should have said from what people have told me mesh body designers seem to use UVs that more closely match the UV layout and positions of the LL Default avatar UVs than many custom mesh heads. This is why mesh bodies seem to have less distortion of skins made for the LL Default Avatar. Your first sentence however is wrong. "Just because they all use the same UV does not mean that they all line up exactly the same on that UV." Two different meshes using the same UVs as in their UVs match up perfectly the textures will line up exactly the same. What I think you probably meant was two different meshes using very similar but not identical UVs textures will not line up exactly. It all depends on the mesh body designers and mesh head designers as to how well their UVs match LL's UVs. It is not impossible for them to match up perfectly their UVs to LL's UVs. It may take weeks worth of effort to match but not impossible. Again those designers wishing to give their customers the widest range of wearable skins and also make things easier on skin designers will be the ones matching their UVs perfectly to LL's UVs and they will have a big advantage over mesh body and head creators who do not. "Another really big issue is that old system skins will not work with the hands and feet of mesh bodies. " System gloves can be worn to cover up and replace old skin's hands, feet and fingernails. A mesh body or hand creator could provide a texture that is almost completely white except for a few grey shaded areas were things like finger, palm and knuckles creases are. Then the customer can simply edit the gloves while wearing them and adjust the tint to match the skin. It is not that hard I have done it. It only takes about 5 minutes. You can even wear a second pair of system gloves to texture fingernails color and or tint them. So please keep in mind there are solutions for everything you brought up. Will old skins work well on every mesh body or mesh head? No. How well they work depends entirely on how closely their creator's UVs match LL's UVs. Many if not all custom mesh bodies and heads are using modified LL UVs. Some are closer to LL's UVs than others. In the future I am betting they are going to make more of an effort to match more closely LL's UVs at least the smart ones will.
  3. Just wanted to clear up the mesh head issues. The problems you are seeing are the result of the mesh head designer deciding to use UVs that are different than the LL Default avatar head UVs. If you wear a skin that was designed to use the LL Default avatar head UVs on a custom mesh head that is using different UV layout the skin will not look right. It is not being caused by Bakes On Mesh. The reason Bakes On Mesh works better with all custom mesh bodies is because the custom mesh body designers all use the LL Default avatar UVs. A number of mesh head designers are using their own modified version of the LL Default avatar head UVs. Skin designers wishing to make skins for these heads have to make their textures to fit the UV layout of the particular head. This means they have to upload a separate textures they custom make to fit each head designer's heads. So what is the solution? Each skin designer that is making skins now and currently using appliers will have to make a system skin using the same textures they already are using with the appliers. Then they just have to name the skin with the name of the mesh head that skin is supposed to work with. So as the customer when you buy their skin you will receive multiple skins made for specific heads. Now it would be smart of those custom mesh head designers to provide two heads to their customers. One with their own custom or modified UVs and one that has the LL Default avatar head UVs. They both can use Bakes On Mesh but the head using the LL Default avatar head UVs will be able to use any skin textures made for the LL Default avatar and also make it a lot less work for skin designers as they can merely create one skin instead of having to make multiple versions for multiple heads not using the LL Default avatar head UVs. Of course it is totally up to the custom mesh head designers if they want to provide two heads or not. I think that those mesh heads that don't at least provide a mesh head using the LL Default avatar head UVs will loose out and sale will drop. The thing to remember is Bakes On Mesh doesn't care what the UV layout is. It just takes multiple layers of textures and flattens them to one texture. The textures just need to made for the particular UV layout of the mesh it is to be applied on. All the current textures and skins made for all the custom mesh heads have already been uploaded and it is just up to the skin designers to use those same textures and make system skins. Basically the steps for a skin designer to update to Bakes On Mesh is right mouse click in their inventory and choose "New Body Part < New Skin". Then wear the skin and edit it. Then just drop the correct textures, they already have and been using to create appliers, into the 3 slots "Head, Upper Body and Lower Body". Then name the system skin in such a way so that the customer will easily be able to understand which custom head it is supposed to be used with. The whole process only take about two minutes. Hope that clears things up. Cathy
  4. Vir said LL will be updating the Wiki page that has the UUID information on it soon. It will be a super easy fix of just replacing the UUID numbers in their scripts once they get them. Any creator who releases stuff during beta testing should already know that doing so their stuff might get broken and they will need to fix it. Vir always discourages people from selling items for any new features while they are still in beta testing. The only product I know that is available right now is the BoM Omega test appliers and that is free I believe but I am sure it will be updates ASAP. Do you know of any other products up for sale for BoM?
  5. Vir Linden announced earlier today at the Content Creators meeting that Bakes On Mesh in now in RC (Release Candidate)!!! This is the last step before it is officially released as a new feature in SL. The Bakes On Mesh viewer has a new update. One major change is the UUIDs for the head, upper body, lower body, skirt, hair and eyes ended up changing to fix a bug. So any current script that uses the old UUIDs will no longer work. The Bakes On Mesh Omega test appliers will have to be updated to the new UUIDs. This is wonderful news and if all goes smoothly we might see Bakes On Mesh released soon. Update: Forgot to add link to where you can download the RC viewer for BoM http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Alternate_Viewers
  6. You can't redistribute your baked UUID to your alts or anyone else. All avatars use the same UUIDs for the head, upper body , lower body , eyes, hair and skirt. If you were to give someone your UUID it wouldn't work because they are already using the same UUID for their LL default avatar. Think of it this way everyone has the same UUIDs for the different parts of their default LL avatar. So say for the head textures the UUID was 1234. You bake your textures for your avatar by wearing a skin and a tattoo. The skin and tattoo are baked to one texture UUID 1234. Then UUID 1234 is applied to your default LL avatar. So when someone come in the same sim or within your draw distance the veiwer gets the UUID of 1234 for that person say me Cathy Foil. My viewer gets the UUID 1234 for you Fionalien. It is the same UUID so even if I have a script that says to apply UUID 1234 all I would see is the texture of my own skin and tattoo baked to a single texture and not yours. The actual UUID for the head is "11c5d053-0ea9-a529-46cb-351d4e84d17a". Your head and everyone else. So giving the UUIDs doesn't give them your baked baked textures. http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Internal_Textures As for someone stealing textures using BoM. Yes it is possible but there are so much easier ways to steal a texture. All textures are stored on your computer and are not hard to find if you know where to look. Also there are certain viewers which will grab any texture people want even off other avatars within a split second. Textures are perhaps the least secure type of item in SL. Those who make and sell textures in SL I am sure already know this. Worrying about BoM is like worrying if you shut your porthole in your cabin on the Titanic as it is sinking. Shutting it isn't really going to make any difference. In my opinion the huge benefits of BoM far outweigh the small disadvantage.
  7. Bakes On Mesh has sort of been on the back burner for months and months as Lindens get pulled into other projects. Finally those projects are coming near to completion and work on Bakes On Mesh will hopefully resume full speed. There has already been some progress made in the past few weeks. We had an update to the Bakes On Mesh test viewer a week or so ago. I am not sure when it happened but we did get two new bake channels. A "BAKE - LEFTARM" and "BAKE - LEFTLEG". They appear to work just like the Baked Aux channels. I assume this is to make it easier for people to use for things like different tattoos on each arm or a single tattoo on one arm. There is no built in limitation in having to use the two new channels and can be easily thought of as bake aux channels 4 & 5. I don't really know when BoM will be released. It could be a month or two or six or eight months. It probably all depends on how many features and functions will be added to it. A lot of people want some new LSL functions added to make BoM more flexible and easier for content creators to port over their existing textures over to it. It appears many people make and sell textures solely for mesh bodies and thus haven't put their textures in system clothing so would have to create them. An LSL function that allow a script to be ran that read a note card with UUIDs or textures placed in the inventory of a prim and then ran to make the system clothes would speed up the process and cut down the work load of these content creators. Better yet an LSL function that could read UUIDs or textures in a prim's content and bake them to a single texture would be awesome! This would allow the LL servers to only need to pull one UUID for a single system clothes item instead of perhaps 2 to 11. The resulting single UUID of such a function could not only be used for systems clothes and BoM but the UUID could be used to texture a prim or other object directly. Really it is one of the simplest functions in Photoshop. Think of each texture as a layer in Photoshop and all you are doing is flattening the layers to a single layer. Of course the order of the layers will affect what the final texture will look like. Anyway I hope that answers some of your questions. Cathy
  8. Sounds like a business opportunity to me. If a custom mesh body designer doesn't want to go through the effort of making their updated BoM bodies compatible with existing clothes by releasing alphas of all the individual parts of their onion skinned bodies then I can see someone making a nice business of selling alpha fat packs for those bodies. It would probably take a day or two for a custom mesh body designer to create the alpha textures and upload them to SL if they don't already have them. Most likely they already have them in one form or another. If they already do have them it take a day at most to organize them and upload them. My guess is most clothing designers will make their most current creations compatible with BoM by releasing an alpha update. For clothing designers it take about 5 or 10 minutes to create an alpha for each of their clothes.
  9. Just been reading the post on this last page and wanted to clear up some things. 1. Bakes on mesh require no scripts to work. You only need the Omega Applier script if a custom mesh body wasn't setup to use Bakes On Mesh and is no mod. Almost all the current mesh bodies were sold with no mod permissions so the customer can not edit the settings to use Bakes On Mesh. Hence why they need the Omega applier. The Omega Bakes On Mesh applier is to get around the no mod problem. It is a bit limited and does not have the full functionality that a custom mesh avatar has that is setup to use Bakes On Mesh by the mesh body designer. I am sure most, if not all, custom mesh body designers will setup the bodies to work with Bakes On Mesh or will release updates of their current mesh bodies so they work with Bakes on Mesh and there will not be a need to use the Omega Bakes On Mesh applier even if the bodies are no mod. 2. Will my old skin made by a creator who has left SL work with Bakes On Mesh? YES!!! 3. Does the old skin need to have mod permissions for it to work with Bakes On Mesh? NO!!! If you can wear it on your LL default avatar it will automatically be applied to your custom mesh avatar that is setup to use Bakes On Mesh. You are limited to 60 system clothing layers if memory serves me correct. So you could wear 1 skin and 59 tattoo layers or any other combinations of skin, tattoos, underwear, shirts, pants, skirts, jackets and so on. Most custom mesh onion skinned avatars are about 4 layers. You are really wearing 4 avatars. Each one is just a bit bigger than the next to simulate the 4 layers. This is called an onion skinned avatar. Bakes on mesh we get 60 layers on a custom avatar that is just 1 layer or one avatar not 4 avatars. 4. System avatar skins are limited to 512 by 512 textures. Won't that make my custom avatar mesh look bad? System avatars are no longer limited to 512 by 512 textures and can now use 1024 by 1024 textures. So while yes older skins that were uploaded with 512 by 512 textures will still be at 512 by 512. New skin textures can be at 1024 by 1024 textures. I have seen some great old skin textures that were and are 512 by 512. Smaller textures don't necessarily mean bad looking or less attractive textures. 5. Alphas and hiding the custom mesh avatar body parts that poke through my mesh clothing? Right now the custom avatar body designers have to cut up their avatars into a hundred or more individual pieces and create a hud so the customer can hide different parts of the body and hopefully they will be able to hide just the part of the body they want. With Bakes On Mesh the mesh clothing designer will provide an Alpha for the customer to wear just like they do for mesh clothing made for the LL default avatar. Making an alpha only takes about 10 or 15 minutes for the clothing designer. With Bakes On Mesh you could make your own alpha as long as you know the UV layout. Since all the custom mesh avatars I am aware of use the LL default avatar UV layout this will not be a problem. Basically Bakes On Mesh makes changing outfits and skins for custom mesh avatars as easy as it is for the LL default avatar. Just go into your inventory and right mouse click on a folder and select wear or wear the mesh clothing and wear the alpha made for it. 6. What about Normal Maps and Spec Maps? Bakes On Mesh does not apply them. They will either have to be applied manually or with an applier. LL is looking into adding them to Bakes On Mesh but no promises that they will. Here is my video I made 9 months ago. I believe almost all the information is still accurate though things have been added since I made the video. Hope that helps! Cathy
  10. I know this question has been brought up by others and answered but I thought I reply anyway to expand understanding. BoM can certainly work with partial mesh bodies. By using the Baked Aux channels you can replace any part of the body on the default avatar mesh but also on any part of custom mesh bodies that are using the BoM system. You just are not seeing the full potential of BoM. To replace the hands on either the default LL avatars or a custom mesh avatar like SLink bodies, assuming they are using Bom, the mesh hands you want to wear just need to use one of the Baked Aux channels and then you just wear a simple Alpha created by they mesh hand creator. As long as you know the UV layout of the mesh body you could make your own alpha if one was not provided. There is no need for a custom mesh body to even have an alpha cuts or hud to hide parts of the body. Here is another example to show just how versatile BoM can make custom mesh bodies and body parts. BoM can be used to replace parts on custom mesh bodies as well. Take a custom mesh head for example. Just as there are Dev Kits for mesh bodies a Dev Kit could be made by custom mesh head designers. Other designers could create new lips, noses, ears, cheekbones, chins you name it to replace those parts on the original mesh head without having to make the whole head. To the average buyer they just wear the original mesh head, then an alpha and then the new replacement lips or nose or ears or whatever. The original mesh head designer is happy because people have to buy their head as a base and customers are happy because they can buy new lips and noses and so forth to really have fun customizing their heads. Think of these in the same way you think of mesh clothes for custom mesh bodies. They are add-ons something to enhance your avatar. It is a win win win. All this without really making it any harder for the customer. All they do is just right mouse click on the head, add-on and alpha in their inventory and select wear. Will mesh head designers make Dev Kits available? Maybe or maybe not but the potential is there.
  11. If your texture is square like 256 by 256 try using a 64 by 1024. Stretch your image to fit 64 pixel high by 1024 pixels wide. This should help keep your image from getting bury at a distance. Hope that helps. Cathy
  12. Well said CoffeDujour! The whole reason I brought up the RLV viewer code was that it had a feature I thought would be very useful for Bakes On Mesh. I also knew that LL has limited resources for any project and so why reinvent the wheel if code already exists that can make HUDs to trigger an avatar to wear a system clothes UUID. I have never used RLV or RLVa myself so I am not aware of its limitations and problems. That is why I brought it up here so they can be discussed by everyone and potential problems be avoided or solved. I really appreciate your input and ideas. Cathy PS I thought of a 3rd way to stop grievers from using this feature. If the code were only executable from an object worn on the HUD attachment point.
  13. You bring up some good points and concerns. I would probably limit the RLV code to just system clothing and not extend it to attachments. Hopefully this would make it different enough so less association with BDSM. As far as griefers using it perhaps the RLV code can check to see if you do indeed have the UUID in your inventory before proceeding. This would mean even if you unknowingly click on an object that contains griefer RLV code that tries to force you to wear a UUID the viewer would stop it since it is not in your inventory. Another way might to make it built in that only objects owned by the resident can run the RLV code. So if you click on an object owned by someone else the code doesn't execute the rest of the code.
  14. Unfortunately we won't have another Content Creators meeting for two weeks but I plan at the next meeting to bring up LL incorporating some of the RLV viewer code that a lot of third party viewers have, like Firestorm, that allows scripts to make an avatar wear system clothes and system tattoos. Since this already exists I would think it wouldn't be that difficult or time consuming to bring it into the LL default main viewer. If this happens we get the best of both worlds. We can have huds that make it easy to pick out and wear system clothing and tattoos which are less lag producing than regular huds and we can get rid of onion skinned avatars whether human or other.
  15. I understand why people want an API for Bakes On Mesh and why they want it in the initial release of Bakes On Mesh. An API would make backwards compatibility with content people have made for appliers much easier and give Bakes On Mesh more versatility. I also understand that the fear is if it isn't included in the initial release that no followup project to seriously look into adding API will ever happen. For me personally the addition of API for Bakes On Mesh isn't that important and I be happy with a firm commitment by LL to do Bakes On Mesh in two stages. One release Bakes On Mesh with what can be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time say 4 to 6 months. Then stage two which seriously looks at things that will take longer which probably includes a more extensive API. If LL would commit to that I would be for it. The API I like to see added LL should be able to get from the RLV viewer code. I see a big benefit of a HUD that has pictures representing system clothes and when the resident clicks on one an LSL function causes the avatar to wear it. The HUD LSL would just need UUID of the system clothes to be worn for that particular picture. I agree with what was brought up at the meeting that staring at a folder in your inventory that might have a hundred different system clothes and tattoos with just their names to describe what each represents would be less than optimal. A HUD in this case would be a big asset and make things a lot easier for the end users. It shouldn't cause lag since it would be communicating directly with the viewer and is only worn for a short period of time. Once the resident is happy with their look if they want they can simply right mouse click on their avatar and edit their outfit to save the whole thing using "Save As" to create a new outfit folder they can wear anytime.
  16. Theresa Tennyson SAID: No mesh avatar will be able to use system alphas effectively unless it's set to alpha masking with an alpha cutoff that isn't 0%, (0% is the default setting) - as the popular mesh bodies are no-mod and not set to use alpha masking that way, it's not possible to use the alphas on them. This is something that needs to be changed either in the viewer or by the makers of the bodies. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-216057 My response: So you just told me the applier being sold is limited and all the popular mesh bodies being textured by it can't use worn system alphas. So you just made my original point that it is giving people the who are using the applier a miss impression that Bakes On Mesh isn't capable of using worn system alphas. It doesn't matter if it is because the applier is incapable of setting alpha masking or if it is wasn't set by the original mesh designer. It is still causing a miss impression. You know I was happy to keep my opinion to myself as to whether or not I thought selling such an applier at this early stage of beta testing was a good idea. They have a perfect right to sell it. I was even happy to go back and change or edit my video if it had any incorrect information and asked politely for their help in case I miss anything after watching it again for errors. After reviewing the video I found that I didn't give any incorrect information. Came back to the forum and happily started to read the response to my request identifying anything wrong I might as said in the video I might have missed. What I got back was rude demand that I can not say in my video the Bakes On Mesh can work with mesh clothing or show that materials actually work on mesh using Bakes On Mesh because there isn't a perfect solutions for them right now. Then I was accused of starting rumors and told I should take down my video. They gave me their unvarnished opinion so I gave them mine. This forum has become an unproductive waste of my time to read and respond to. I am just going to attend the content creators meetings to hear about problems and bugs there and do my best to offer potential solutions and fixes.
  17. While yes Bakes On Mesh was originally thought of to help with custom avatars to reduce the amount of lag they produce and to make them easier to use if you don't think content creators are not going to use Bakes On Mesh for other things other than avatar bodies you are quite mistaken. Part of the job of beta testing is to try and come up with different ways residents will be using Bakes On Mesh or what ever the project is. This helps to anticipate problems. There will be plenty of people who don't use custom mesh avatars and so mesh clothing using Bakes On Mesh will work perfectly fine as it is now with no additional changes. There will be plenty of people who like their onion skinned avatar as they are and plan to keep using them as they are without Bakes On Mesh and mesh clothing using Bakes On Mesh will work perfectly fine for them too as it is now. You don't have the right to dictate that mesh clothing designers can not use Bakes On Mesh. There is no way to stop them if they wish too. The conflict problem is something that needs to be addressed even if it was only ever used for the custom mesh avatar bodies. Last I heard hands, feet and hair are all apart of a mesh body. If we solve the conflict issues for those we automatically make it possible for mesh clothing to not conflict as well. What rumor I heard going around was that if a mesh was using Bakes On Mesh to apply the diffuse map that this somehow made it impossible to apply normal maps and specular maps. This was not true and I demonstrate it in my video. I also made it clear that right now Bakes On Mesh does not apply these maps automatically. Could this be added to Bakes On Mesh? Maybe we don't know yet. I am sure it could be but LL may not have the resources to write the code for it or modify the existing code. You might not have like the normal maps and specular maps I was using in the video but they look identical to how they look on a mesh that wasn't using Bakes On Mesh. I have made a new video "Bakes On Mesh How To Use With Mesh Clothing" yesterday and go over some of the problems I was having with one of my normal maps that didn't look that good in the previous video because I made the map very quickly to get the first video out as fast as I could but it wasn't an issue with Bakes On Mesh it was just a sloppy normal map I made quickly. I am not starting any rumors that LL has fixed anything. I appreciate your enthusiasm I really do but don't you think that releasing and selling your Bakes On Mesh applier on the Marketplace is jumping the gun and that it could be fuddling things up right now? I haven't tried your applier but from what I understand it doesn't allow converted onion skinned avatars the ability to use system alphas to hide body parts for clothing? From what I understand using your applier means the current custom onion skin avatars still have to wear full body alphas to make them invisible? If so you are giving people the miss impression that Bakes On Mesh is less capable than it is currently. You also take away those mesh body designers ability to decide for themselves if they want their old onion skinned avatars to work with Bakes On Mesh or not. If your applier doesn't give the same performance and ability as I demonstrate in my video and if you haven't gotten permission from every mesh body it can currently work on then I think you should take it down and stop selling it.
  18. I will watch the video and edit notations on the video to help clarify things. Can you give me a time stamp or stamps on things you think where I was not being clear? That would help me a lot because I might miss things.
  19. I can't seem to find it either. Perhaps it was taken down by a moderator for other reasons. Anyway if it has I restate the idea here. If we add a Baked_Aux slot and a text field where content creators could enter any number between 1 and 1 million in the diffuse Pick: Texture window and then in all system clothes add a new Baked_Aux texture slot that also has a text field where content creators could enter any number between 1 and 1 million. This would solve the problem of wearing two meshes using the same Baked_Aux slot. See only textures from system clothes that have the same Baked_Aux number or as you say integer would be applied. So if the content creator wants other people to be able to make textures for their mesh all they have to do is release in a note card or in the objects description what faces are using Baked_Aux and what are their number or integer. If a content creator doesn't want other people to make textures for their mesh they simply don't release that information. The chances of any other meshes using the same number of integer is very remote.
  20. I have no problem with LL taking up an additional baking API. It would suffer from problems as well because no system is perfect. The API she proposes would not be as easy for the end user to use nor as flexible as Baked On Mesh. It would suffer from many of the same problems as Bakes On Mesh plus some problems Bakes On Mesh doesn't have. If you don't want to give out your UUIDs then you have to put them in a script. If you put them in a script you can edit the order or add more UUIDs. If you run a second script with additional UUIDS you lose the first baked texture. You can reorder the textures. You could probably fix the texture order problem with a HUD but that would only work for UUIDs contained in the script but that would require additional scripts making the whole system more and more laggy. Read my previous pose to see how a single extra slot or Baked_Auxiliary slot could be made to work on many worn meshes and faces with only a minuscule chance of conflict. Remember we are still in the early stages of Beta testing. Many bright minds are going to come up with brilliant solutions. I have already come up with a solution to the conflicts you see. Will LL do my solution? Maybe or maybe not. It depends on how much code would need to be written or changed to make it work and if LL has the resources. It is very possible someone will come up with an even better solution.
  21. What he means is right now normal maps and specular maps are not being handled by the baking system so Bakes On Mesh can not apply them. It doesn't mean that by the time Bakes On Mesh is released that it won't. Even it if doesn't get in the initial release it is entirely possible it will be added in a followup project to Bakes On Mesh.
  22. The mesh body maker would make one of the arms set to Baked_Skirt not the customer so no need to make the mesh Mod. Also I am going to propose that a new script function that would allow a HUD to change which baking slot is being used. A mesh body maker simply applies a different material to one arm so your standard mesh body like SLink body would have 3 materials instead of 2. I am already working on a plan to eliminate or make the possibility of conflicting baking slots down to a one chance in 100,000 with the addition of a single auxiliary baking slot. How about coming up with possible solutions to problems or don't you have the brain power to be able to come up with some? Try being a productive positive force for once. You might like it.
  23. I am going to do some experiments on how to combine two or more normal maps and specular maps. I think I have an idea of how it could be done but I don't know if LL will have the resources to make the code necessary for it. Like I said don't give up yet.
  24. We are hoping to get extra bake slots and I have an idea how we can do it with one extra bake slot that would make the possibility of conflicting textures very very remote. Remember this is still the very early stages of beta testing. It is good you bring these issues up but don't give up on the project just yet.
  25. Normal maps and specular maps can still be applied to mesh avatars using Bakes On Mesh system. The normal maps and specular maps will need to be applied manually or by using an applier like Omega just as they are now.
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