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Scylla Rhiadra

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Everything posted by Scylla Rhiadra

  1. Scylla Rhiadra
    I've been having exactly the same experience with a well-known clothing creator. I've sent her two notecards now, explaining in detail what the problem is, and included multiple screenshots that make it absolutely clear that the issue was with HER vendor. And not heard a word back, despite the fact that she continues to participate in events and weekend sales. I sent the first notecard . . . two months ago? I'm going to send a third notecard, but at this point she clearly isn't going to respond. And I will no longer be shopping at a store where I have, over the years, dropped a fair bit of money.
  2. Scylla Rhiadra
    I PREDICTED THIS WEEKS AGO!!!! Just sayin'!
  3. Scylla Rhiadra
    Yes because PBR viewers also change, to greater or lesser degrees, legacy materials and, most importantly, the rendering of light generally. Which is why it's "broken" some old EEP settings (and why LL had to create a new "Midday" default EEP).
  4. Scylla Rhiadra
    Why and how do jackasses like this still exist????
  5. Scylla Rhiadra
    Yes!!!!!
  6. Scylla Rhiadra
    This is very much the kind of thing I meant when I suggested above somewhere that PBR is going require interventions of some sort for nearly everyone active in SL, and not just creators. PBR renders brights brighter, and darks darker, and in particular some interiors are now going to be gloomier. In this case, it's not after all a big deal: people are going to need to learn to set out interior lighting in some builds (depending upon the build, and the default EEP), or set up reflection probes to moderate the lighting. Or of course, visitors and explorers can start carrying flashlights, which sounds almost fun! But, again, the idea that this is going to roll out and the only thing most people will notice is "WOW NEW SHINY!" is a fallacy.
  7. Scylla Rhiadra
    And design it as a pay-to-play subscription service with goods and services outsourced to professional, external companies, as well as seeking to employ data-harvesting as an important revenue source. And all of those things will entail producing something that is in no recognizable way "like" Second Life. I tend to believe that one of the reasons that SL has never had a serious competitor offering something similar is that its business model isn't scalable. You simply can't make enough money to satisfy the demands of modern tech investors without distorting what we have here out of all recognition.
  8. Scylla Rhiadra
    Oh, I'm sure. There are good reasons, because of camera constraints, to have high ceilings in SL. What bothers me most are doors that are so large that the handles are at breast or even eye level, or window sills at shoulder height. It's one (although just one) reason I don't really want a Linden Home: I'm out of scale with them, and feel like a 13 year old wandering around inside their rooms. Mostly though, it's about how it will look in a photo. When I resize things (or gauge height for the backdrops and structures I make myself), I use as a base measurement a door height of 2.02 m (80 inches), and scale everything around that. Ceilings I don't generally mind a bit higher than is usual in RL, unless there is a reason for it (such as I want it, or a hanging lamp, to appear within the frame of a pic). And in some Victorian houses, ceilings can actually be as high as 3 m. But that's me and my particular hang-ups! If you're not bothered by such things, then more power to you: you've got one less subject to feel peeved over, and that's not a bad thing.
  9. Scylla Rhiadra
    This is why I won't buy things -- structures or furnishings and decorative items -- that aren't mod. It's not even as though there is a consistent standard for sizing such things in SL: everybody just seems to eyeball it. And almost nothing comes scaled for a "realistic" height and proportion (including animations and poses), which is more understandable as most SL avatars ARE oversized and relatively ill-proportioned. Permission to join me dancing on my countertops is the sign that I have fully accepted you as a friend.
  10. Scylla Rhiadra
    Peeve: Piecemeal and inconsistent applications of new standards in SL. So, when PBR went live a while ago, I decided to buy some PBR textures on the MP to test them out. One of them had clearly been put together without reference to the standards the LL was using for creating PBR materials, didn't include an actual glTF file, included confusing instructions, and used a different nomenclature for the component parts that LL has established. The other included only the materials glTF file, without anything you could use for the legacy textures and materials -- meaning that anyone not on a PBR viewer would see a blank where the texture should be. And a couple of weeks ago, I bought an Art Deco table lamp that may or may not have been labelled as PBR enabled (I don't recall the ad, and I can't find that info on the packaging either). The real problem is that it's textured with only PBR materials -- which again means that probably 80% of those coming to visit are going to see a pure white mesh object without textures. I think I'm going to hold off on buying things designed for PBR viewing for a while.
  11. Scylla Rhiadra
    Weirdly, I'm in the midst of setting up a shot (that does not use PBR reflection probes) showing what is, in a slightly different sense, a two-way mirror. Cool shots, @Cinnamon Mistwood! But, yeah, SL doesn't yet have the capacity for "true" live-time mirrors that accurately reflect "skinned" objects (i.e., avatars). And I doubt that it will for some time: that, I gather, would badly overtax a lot of graphics cards, and wouldn't be easy to implement.
  12. Scylla Rhiadra
    I totally thought this thread, from its title, was going to be about something else. I really need to get off Twitter for a while . . .
  13. Scylla Rhiadra
    That would be PBR. It's increased contrast generally, so dark is darker and light is washed out. A number of EEPs now look pretty awful as a result. It's one reason why LL produced a new version of "Midday," just for PBR.
  14. Scylla Rhiadra
    Yes, usually, I think. If you are going to "break the rules" -- for instance, by painting like a kindergarten kid, or producing abstracts -- you need first to have mastered the rules. If you haven't, then "breaking" them won't be meaningful: it will be the result of incompetence rather than design. And people who break the rules are always (or should be) doing so deliberately and with the intent of creating a particular effect that is only, generally, evident in the context of work that is more conventional. Cubism, for instance, really only makes sense when you consider how it departs from realism. I think defining art is a mug's game, and it's usually associated with some form of elitism as well: so-and-so is a "real" artist because their work corresponds with my ideas of what art should look like. In most forms of aesthetic criticism -- visual art, literary criticism, dance criticism, music, etc., the last 60 or more years has seen an understanding that the basic methods of criticism and interpretation can be applied to nearly any form of expression, including "popular" art, and produce insights about the art, the artist, and the culture that has produced both. That doesn't mean that the Twilight books are as important, or meaningful, or as interesting as To the Lighthouse, but it does recognize that they are both attempts to communicate meaning to us. And a whole lot more people have read the Twilight books than have dipped into To the Lighthouse, after all. I generally resist calling my own stuff here "art." That's only partially modesty or insecurity: I also just don't think it's a very useful category. I prefer to talk about my medium, which is less subjective. I create digital photographs that I hope are visually appealing and "interesting." That's more important to me than whether they correspond to some random person's notion of "art."
  15. Scylla Rhiadra
    I think, based not merely on what I read here, but on what I've heard from friends and others over the years, that I must just be extremely fortunate. I'm not being snide when I say that: I have no reason not to believe the stories of toxic behaviour I've heard, some of which have come from friends whose integrity I trust. But I just haven't run across much of this in-world. I haven't even experienced much in the way of drama -- at least, nothing more dramatic than an occasional case of hurt feelings or a broken friendship. By FAR the most toxic behaviour I've had first-hand experience of in SL has been here, on these forums. And in fairness it was often brutal. But that was years and years ago. My SL really seems very tame.
  16. Scylla Rhiadra
    IM from a friend just now. "What are you up to tonight? I can think of worse things than dancing with you." Swept off my feet, I was.
  17. Scylla Rhiadra
    Absolutely not! There are a great many creators, merchants, artists, and sim designers who are "basic" accounts. In fact, other than the ability to buy mainland parcels for stores or whatever, the only real advantage I can think of for creators in Premium Plus is free uploads of textures, sound, and animation files.
  18. Scylla Rhiadra
    So, I had an open invitation from the always lovely @MoiraKathleen to visit her home, and I finally got around to dropping by this afternoon. It's really, unsurprisingly, very nice, and beautifully pastoral. She has bees, and flowers, and a greenhouse, and plots of interactive plants that she needs to tend to. It reminds me a little of what I was trying to do in my own parcel, except hers is much much prettier. (And mine is more urban.) Anyway, this was just a quick pic taken on the fly. I need to go back and take others -- preferably featuring Moira in the midst of her little bucolic paradise!
  19. Scylla Rhiadra
    Broken record here again . . . yeah. The EEPs need to be fixed. And given how complicated EEP can be, I don't think it should be left to individual users to do: LL needs to update these themselves. Otherwise there are going to be a lot of pretty awful shared environmental settings in the future.
  20. Scylla Rhiadra
    *coughs* It's JUST possible . . . I've heard rumours to this effect . . . that Laskya is my alt? Personally, I give them no credence whatsoever! (And thank you!)
  21. Scylla Rhiadra
    You've got time. A quick search on the MP for "PBR" pulls up 1500 items, of which almost half are building components, e.g., mostly materials packs. There is a grand total of 72 structures, and 180 "Home and Garden" items, a largish percentage of which are . . . mirrors. That will of course change over time, but right now creators are being pretty slow to pick up on this.
  22. Scylla Rhiadra
    You know . . . I spend a fair bit of time working to make myself look distinctive, and nice when I go out dancing. So when some utter idiot on the dance floor informs me that I "look like a cartoon character" . . . I am most definitely NOT amused. Jinkies, some guys really are clueless! Amirite?
  23. Scylla Rhiadra
    What settings do you mean? There are actually MORE settings available for the individual components of a PBR materials -- the metallic and roughness factors, for instance, for the Metallic/Roughness component of the materials. (And that's actually a GOOD thing: it allows one, assuming that one can modify the object, to fine tune its appearance.) It IS easier, I suppose, to apply a single PBR materials to an object than three different maps -- diffuse, normal, and spectral -- to a Blinn-Phong textured object. But you can actually apply those now by dragging and dropping too (assuming you've checked off the correct slot in the textures tab.) And that's only going to be of use to people who are texturing anyway, which is probably a minority. I was thinking more of reflection probes, actually: anyone who buys a house or structure employing one of these is going to have to understand at least a few rudiments about how they work. And applying one to an existing structure is, at the moment, a bit frustrating and complicated. I think that, in general, lighting is going to be a bit of a challenge for some users, especially if LL doesn't update more of the EEP settings than just Midday. It's all manageable. But I don't buy the "everyone will be able to carry on as they were" argument I've heard in a few places. Sure -- if they don't care how their SL looks, or aren't interested in actually taking advantage of PBR (which, if so, rather defeats its point).
  24. Scylla Rhiadra
    Not at all a reference to you, Arton: you have been very generous and helpful here. But there have been others who have suggested that this isn't going to impact on most people's SL. And I think that's not correct. There is going to be a learning curve for a great many. And yeah, some of it is a bit complicated!
  25. Scylla Rhiadra
    Relax. I have been assured by people who are experts in condescension that we won't need to worry our pretty little heads about it.
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