Rhys Goode

The main problem with the fitted mesh/collision bones scheme is that meshes do not deform the same way as the SL avatar. Now, one way to do this is to replace the SL avatar mesh with the rigged mesh mesh, and blank out the SL avatar mesh with an alpha mask. That is what the lady in the turtle neck was doing, bouncing around in the linden feel good flick. If I had a way of *legal* using an avatar's skin, applying it to a mesh, rather than just the SL avatar.... Not so easy, but doable, making a mesh avatar with the same texture faces as an SL avatar. If you happen to have your own .tga files for the skin, then it is easy to make mesh clothes that "fit" arbitarty slider positions. Just mask out the SL shape, and bring on your own, and weight the clothes to follow the skin. Starlite is nice, but being able to use the same textures that go into a proprietary skin on a mesh avatar (conforming to the same UV map) does not seem like that big a deal in the IP department. But I do not know if the technolgy would allow it. I know very little about the dark arts of copybotting, and it is sufficiently unacceptable, that I have not delved there myse. However friends tell me it is not impossible, with a bit of trial and error, to get the UUID of the particular textures..in question. My question... is there a way to do this without trampling all over someones copywight rights? Or a way for a copyright holder to sanction such use? It would make living with "fitted" mesh, a lot more palatable. Is there

Oh, there is no doubt that it works, after a fashion, and even makes a sexy looking turtle neck. But thats because the SL avatar is pretty much fully masked out. You are seeing how the mesh of the sweater changes with sliders, not how the SL avatar changes, it would be bulging out left and right. Now, this is not really all *that* bad a thing. When I wear a top like that in RL, between my bra and the sweater, my shape is changed by the clothes. They do not look painted on. No, the bad thing is that it will only really work for cases where the clothing mesh completely covers the whole chest. It just seems that there is a fundamental conflict between Fitted mesh and decolletage.

I've been playing around with the new collision bones for a month, trying to make a "one size fits all" skimpy bikini. Skimpy, because with the old SL bones, the bikini bottom can be locked to mPelvis and the bra to mChest, and you are done. Now with collision bones, the bikini bottom is easy, so I have a prototype for 1 size fits all panties. But no way fort the bra. I can make a mesh bra and have it grow and shrink with the sliders easily enough. But the "shape" is not particulary close to the SL avatar shape. And if you keep careful track of the tip of the bra, as you change sliders, you can see systematic changes in the shape of the SL avatar mesh that are simply not there for the fitted mesh. Even if it is the exact same SL avatar mesh you are trying to rig. The SL avatar mesh, rigged to the original CHEST bone, simply deforms differently with the sliders than the precise same mesh linked to collision bones. And while it does work well for some clothing styles, it just is not an easy solution if you want to make womens clothing that includes a bit of cleavage. I suspect that at the end of the day, I will be able to make a custom fitted top that allows the use of physics, but will not do a good job at all for an avatar with sliders more than about +/- 5 points from the design avatar for breast cleavage, breast size, body thickness and body fat sliders , and maybe +/- 2 points for breast bouancy. (Mesh rigged to the he orignal SL bones scaled perfectly with body thickness) There are really only 3 of the collision bones that are useful to rig a bra, and it is hard to fix 5 different sliders with only 3 levers to adjust. The people who are thinking this will be the end of alpha masks are going to be sorely disappointed. And the notion that you can "keep your own shape" while wearing the new stuff is simply delusional. You may be able to keep the same slider values, but the shape is going to be different, you will still have to alpha mask out your own shape, and go with whatever the clothing designer came up with for that particular garment.

"Why o why do so many people still believe in the old and wrong solution of clearing the cache?" I am quite aware of the critical importance of my internet connection, and I am reasonably good at telling when a particular server is having a bad day that just happens to overlap mine. But cache clearing is part of my ritual for clearing my SL problems. Which are usually: being a cloud, being the only one seeing a cloud, clothing or attachments that are "stuck" and will not derender even when they show as off in inventory. My first try is to relog. That often, but not always fixes things. And when it does not, further relogs do no seem to help. So, I do my ritual: I set my avatar to the default avatar (when things are borked, I might not transform at all, or get stuck halfway through). Log out of SL. Maually delete the cache folder on my PC. Then log into a different server so that the sever cache has none of my info., usually a nice quiet SL area like Hatton or Hippo Hollow. Wait patiiently while my inventory rebuilds. Change back to myself and go on my merry way. I do this ritual because it works more than 95% of the time to resolve the kind of issues that I have. And so I tend to recommend it to my friends who report back that it works for them. If there is a better way to deal with this, I'd love to hear it.

I've done a bit of furniture modling, I made myself a nice digital replica of the table and chair I am using now. I used the RL measurements in Blender, and imported to SL. Numericaly, the RL, Blender, and SL versions were all the same size. The only trouble was, it needed to be about 20% larger for my AV to sit in in. Now, it is my contention that this is because the SL meter is miscalibrated, although the argument that it has to do with the viewer camera placement has some merit. At any rate, while SL avatars *can* be adjusted to regular RL sizes, in practice, most AV's are larger than life.

" What I can't understand is why (high performance/low quality) has such a low frame rate compaired to the rest when it should be the highest. Am I missing a setting or is my logic flawed?" I dont understand why low graphics is so slow, but the steady decrease of FPS with rendering quality is exactly what one expects for any veiwer. As you increase the quality, you increase the amount of work your computer has to do to render it, and things slow down. The setting lets you trade off slowr performance for higher quality.

I have an ASUS G74S, about 2 years old. Not quite strong enough to run shadows in a crowded sim. CPU: Intel® Core i7-2670QM CPU @ 2.20GHz (2195.04 MHz) Memory: 16362 MB OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601) Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 560M/PCIe/SSE2 Windows Graphics Driver Version: 9.18.0013.1144 OpenGL Version: 4.2.0

Thanks! I had started looking at collision bones a few months ago, the different shapes were very confusing. I was able to make a mesh respond to butt size though, not well, but clearly moving in the right direction! Thanks so much for Avastar! I really don't know enough to have much of an opinion, but that rarely stops me.... It seems to me that keeping to the standard display options would be a bit less confusing to a beginner. Also, while your recent tutorial really helped, and while I am used to the interface changing as you - and Blender - add and fine tune, the difference in bone shape was really jarring.

Using Blender 2.69, Avastar beta 1.1.964. When I go to look at the collision bone, I see regurlar octahedra, rather than one of the cononical stick, b-bone, or wireframe display options. Even different that the original octahedral bones. Is it something I am doing wrong, or is it an undocumented feature and benfit of the beta version Avistar? (BTW. Avastar rocks, thanks Gaia!.)

I have never had much luck tracing packet loss issues with speedtest.net. I do a bit of travel, log on from different routers a lot. And SL packet loss can be a real issue (5%+), even when the speedtest site shows low or no packet loss. In SL, look at the help>about tab, it will produce a report that includes packet loss at the bottom. If that is more than 1 or 2 %, you will notice nasty rubber banding. Here are some links to info that I have found useful for diagnosing connection issues. http://blog.nalates.net/2011/10/26/troubleshoot-your-sl-connection/ http://dwellonit.taterunino.net/2012/07/18/your-router-could-be-screwing-up-your-connection-to-second-life/

I have a lot of well made, old style shoes, I found a set of free alpha masks on Marketplace, here is a link to the first set I found today, I know there are others https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Avatar-Alpha-Overlays-101311-update/2312783 I spent some time trying on shoes, switching between "advanced lighting" on/off, and matching alpha masks to shoes. Now the shoes look good for everyone. I like the new lighting, my computer runs it just fine, but I often have it off because of obnoxiouos facelights. But thats a different story. For hair, and a few of my vintage shoes, its not so much prim count as script count. A lot of hair comes with a script in every strand for resizing. Most hair these days has an option to remove the scripts once its sized right. I have a set of boots that has over 100 scripts in each boot. If I wear them "out of the box", I cant even TP half the time, too much load on the servers. Drove me nuts before I found the "remove scripts" button on the resize dialog. I had to abandon my earliest fav stilletos. The had 50 scripts per shoe, and no way to get rid of them. Not so bad, I was tired of the bling by then, anyway.

My old computer was similar to yours, I found it very helful to use the Windows Performance Monitor while I was running SL. I found that unless I was careful about running other programs in the background, I would run out of RAM, SL would start page swapping to disc, and my performance would crash. Also, for some reason, just having voice enabled, without even using it, caused a lot of page swapping, and that cut my framerate down a lot all by iteself. Running in a window, rather than full screen also helped me. And I agree with others, your connection can be crucial. I pay very close attention the the figure for dropped packets, at the bottom of the report you see from help>about. If that is more than a few 0.1%, your performance will suffer. Running with wifi can easily (but not always, it depends on the modem and external interference) boost the packet loss up to 5 or 10%, even on a link that tests out find for upload/download speeds.

I've had very laggy connections that test out with high upload, download, and ping numbers like yours, when using WIFI at hotels and such. Take a look at Help>About (your browser) tab. This will give you a report of your machine config, and at the bottom there is a number for packet loss. *IF* that number is more than about 1%, you will get lag, no matter what your download speed.

From the wiki, a page on uploading mesh from 3d max: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Exporting_a_mesh_from_3ds_Max You might want to look at this overview, too: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh

Sorry, I have no thoughts for just what your problem is, but I can say for sure that mesh does not have to be rigged to be worn. I make jewelery, and most of the things I make are unrigged. And they look about the same whether I rez them on the ground, or attach them to my avatar, or look at them in Blender, where I made them.

Some ideas that worked for me when I had an older computer. Which I got rid of several years ago, so some things that did work for me, might not work for you. In SL: graphics to low, draw distance to 32. Keeping an eye on packet loss (ctrl-shift-1); If it goes up, SL goes to the dogs real quick. People often confuse a bad internet connection with a bad computer or with SL misbehaving. I use wifi, but had to change my router to get the packet loss under control Voice, media and audio streaming all off. Sometime I could turn on the music without much impact, but not all venues. On the computer: make sure you dont have anything else running in the background. You can quickly run out or RAM, and once you start swapping to disk, performance dives. Use the window Performance Monitor to see if you have an issue with page swapping. The big hit I had with voice was that with it enabled, there was consant page swapping to disc, even when I was not using it. So turning it off nearly doubled my (slow) frame rate.

I use Blender myself, but I have found several creative ways to make it fail on a dae export. Sounds like Maya has its own traps. Anyway, when I run into a problem such as you describe, I turn around and try to import it right back into Blender. If I can't import it back into my own software, then it is usually not a SL issue.

7 years in SL and never the hint of a security problem. I have a separate email account for SL, and have never even gotten a single spam message. Watch where you click, and be very afraid of ripping off music from unknow sources, but do not worry about getting a virus from downloading SL.

It is *far* from obvious that SL assest severes have anything to do with what google flags as spam. I regurlarly have to rescue forwarded SL emails. Along with newsletters from various other places completely unconnected with SL. Seems like just about anyone I regularly do business with ends up in the spam file sooner or later. For instance, I get a daily newsletter from AAAS, of which I am a member. Sometimes it ends up in spam. Now I admit, I do not read it every day, and often delete it without opening. So eventually, Googles algorithm might well conclude "spam!". The only odd thing is that it will only do one or two issues. Hmmm. Never thought of it before, maybe that is the algorithm checking to see if it really *is* spam. Anyhow, far from obvious that pushing IM's to spam has anything to do with asset servers.

Hmmm. Not much info, but here is a wild guess, it happened to me with my first mesh model. Working in blender, I exported to the .dae format *before* I unwrapped the UV in blender. So when I brought the model into SL, it had no UV map. One trick I've learned that can help diagnose various issuses. I export my model to the .dae format, save the blend file, then start a brand new blender session and import the .dae model back into blender. I've caught a number of odd problems this way.

Well, you can check to see if the sim is very laggy by bringing up the Statistics panel, ctrl-shift-1, There is a section for the simulator, and once you are there, look at SIM fps, and time dialation. An unloaded, lag free sim will show 45.0 fps and 1.000. Time dialation values less than 0.9 are quite noticable, and by the time it gets down to 0.1 or less, you are pretty much frozen in place. My old laptop (the good one is in the shop) has some issue that will cause my fps to drop to less than 1. Fortunately it does not happen often, and when it does a reboot clears it. But looking at the statitics panel, I can cleary see that the lag is on my machine, and not the sim. Here is a wiki link about statistics http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Viewerhelp:Statistics

Don't forget the test grid. I myself have a long friends list, and no one on it has ever given me a hard time for being in "busy" or "autorespond" mode. But I can see when someone tries to concact me, and that can be distracting. But If I really want to concentrate and not be interupted, the test grid is always (well, usually) there.

I do a fair amount of travel, and on the road I almost always hook up using wifi. About 1/3 of the time, it works flawlessly, and at high speed. About 1/3 of the time it is useless for SL, even when it works OK for other purposes. In my experience, the best predictor of a wifi network is the packet loss. I usually test my line with speedtest.net. Bandwidth does not tell you much, unless of course it is less than about 0.5 Mbps. But it is not terribly unusual to measure a DL speed >10 Mbps, see no issues with packets loss on speedtest, and yet see very poor performance in SL. At home I have 20Mbps internet, and two routers (in the same room as my computer). The router from the ISP gives 10% packet loss for SL, but my own router usually gives <0.1% packet loss; it does have "fits" from time to time, presumably because of interference from other RF sources, but only rarely. After I log into SL on a strange WiFi network, I look at Help>About, and at the bottom of the resulting page, the packet loss is listed. If the packet loss is less than 0.5%, then I find that I can cruise around SL at full speed. As packet loss goes over 1%, lag becomes an increasing issue. Higher than a few % I start making adjustments: turning off http textures often helps, and so does turning down the max bw If it is more than 10%, then I give up on SL. A line that does a crap job of running SL can usually stream video (if the BW is high enough). I don't know why, but SL seems to be more prone to packet loss problems than other applications.

Wow, I would have been stuck a long time. Thanks so much, Dree!

I am using Blender 2.69, and getting a bit frustrated. I have two meshes that I want to join. Each is assigned to different material, and each has been UV unwrappped. When I joined the two meshes last week, I was left with two UV maps, and I could sort them out using the different materials, and either apply different textures to the different materials, or edit the UV map so that I could use one texture for both materials. Today, when I join the two meshes, only one of the UV maps survives. The other materiel has its UV map collapsed to a single point. I think I am doing exactly what I did last week, when joining worked fine. But today, I can only get one UV map to survive the join. Could I have changed some setting in Blender?