[How much complexity is normal for an average avatar?]

On 8/20/2021 at 2:04 PM, Coffee Pancake said:

We're not dead, far from it .. we just don't do full releases as often as we would like, RL, work life balance, depression, ripping it all apart for EEP, stuff ... The beta tends to be far more current, latest was released little over a week back.

Speaking to that point, on the download page:

https://get.catznip.com/downloads/beta

It lists up to beta 8, but the installer file is 

Catznip_Beta_R13_0_6_x64_Setup.exe

- is that correct? It seems 2 versions old. And on installing, it says it's put in version R13.0.6, not x.8

 

[How much complexity is normal for an average avatar?]

On 8/13/2021 at 10:41 AM, Coffee Pancake said:

Suggest you give the latest Caztnip Beta a whirl to see the impact these new tools have had on viewer performance, we're up to 200% faster than all other viewers with like for like settings at this point and we haven't even touched avatars yet.

 

Thank you for the info. Still following up on a lot of it, but will see how this updates my understanding. My end goal is always to find the best ways to reduce my "lag footprint" and I'm always seeking the most current knowledge on the subject.

I've kept a quote of your comment about Catznip as I had been presuming this a dead viewer. The 'release candidate' doesn't seem to have been updated since Nixon was in office , or rather since somewhen in 2019 or so - before the new replacement to windlight.

Last I checked the beta didn't seem much newer and also lacked the new lighting system.

But I'll grab the beta and see what it reveals and see if I can improve my understanding on what makes one mesh item more or less burdensome than another.

[Does the 'Away' Status have something do with Copy bots?]

On 7/17/2021 at 7:11 AM, Extrude Ragu said:

I would understand an AFK eject system for a particularly busy shopping event sim or something, but to protect against copybotters?

Yeah it ain't got nothing to do with nothing.

There's a LOT of rando-paranoia in SL stemming from the fact that the educational level and technical awareness of SLers tends to be a little on the lower end. Mostly technical awareness due to an older userbase (so those people have an excuse), but then there's also an amazing amount of people that will believe a rando screaming scary stuff at them but not believe facts and evidence...

 

[Advice on where to place a new region]

Only thing I'd say is to make sure it's very far from where the linden homes are or you will end up having it get moved on you at some point.

 

[Again (probably) about respecting neighborhood themes...]

7 hours ago, Sparkle Bunny said:

Perhaps because I live in a country with lots of 19th century homes, I think Victorians work fine decorated in a contemporary style and it would be very boring if everyone just went chintz with them.

I Agree.

The fantasy theme is the very first theme they have done that doesn't fit a modern day city or the regions within an hour's drive of it.

And that's only due to the plants they rezzed - as the buildings in the fantasy theme look like they could easily be found in some modern cities.

 

Back when I had a Victorian I had graffiti on the sides of it with Electric cars parked out front because that's literally what half of San Francisco looks like.

- If I'd had the prims, I would have added solar panels as well.

 

 

[Best Lesbian Animations]

The list on this is not all that good actually.

You can sift through some adult stores and look at the bento animations but you will find most of them are repurposed hetero animations that furniture makers rez a 'strap on' for one participant...

The animation makers tend to make 1 animation in this category for every several dozen they do in hetero animations.

 

 

[Question about linden homes farm]

When you see something that to you looks like it is most likely a violation of the covenant the best response is to quietly file a report and not contact the person nor call it out in groups. As in, don't "stir the drama pot". If it is a violation, the lindens will get to it in time, and if not, they won't. Note that the staff that responds to those things is a very small team so response time can be anything from instant to a week or more depending on how much 'stuffz' is going on right then...

That said, if you DO decide to go posting up about it to everyone, the response time could get delayed if the drama pot gets stirred and the team finds itself having to sort through dozens to hundreds of reports, most of which are "so an so was mean to me."

 

[Do you own more than one plot of land? If so why?]

On 5/14/2021 at 3:12 PM, Prokofy Neva said:

I feel avatars are avian creatures. Cooping them up in houses is criminal. They need to fly around, perch in trees and such.

Random memory:

This reminds me of my first ever "sim crossing glitch" when I was a newbie back in 2009. I got stuck in that problem where you avatar floats off in the air at an angle while the ground rushes by. I didn't know what was happening so just went with it for a bit...

When my viewer snapped back to under control (somehow I didn't crash), I found my avatar standing many regions away...

On a telephone wire, next to a pile of crows the builder had rezzed on that wire.

I so wish I had thought to screenshot it. It occurred to me that I had a perfect screenshot about 10 seconds later right after I hit the 'home' button... oops.

 

[Do you own more than one plot of land? If so why?]

Tier cut...

My main plot has an oddball size and no matter how I manage it there's need to either bump up tier to 1700 more than I need, or have a second premium account...

I recently cut down all my premium accounts to just one, so that left me needing to bump to the next tier allotment. I had owned a 480-something plot on M-rated mainland, because even with an alt that had a second linden home I still had a weird tier round off... but with a LOT of left over tier now, I got a second A-rated plot by the road on the opposite side of Zindra, and made it a public 'rezzing spot' with a pile of unlocked vehicles people could drive off with (they get auto-replaced if missing for more than 3 minutes). Which is the same kind of plot I had on "M" land before, only now on a bigger "A rated" plot.

I also have a linden home. If I were to cut out my linden home I might be able to also toss the roadside and drop down a tier ranking, but my linden home is in one of the best locations in all of SL for sailing so... not happening.

 

 

[What is a legacy name]

There is a paid service, I think $40, to get a legacy name.

You want to be dedicated before you spend that kind of money on a name for a character in an MMO though...

If this was World of Cosbycraft, that'd only cost you $15 or so, in less 'handsy' MMOs it'd be $5-10.

 

[Kalhene ERIKA Mesh Body]

6 hours ago, Lillith Hapmouche said:

"A steady amount"... 5 items in the past 3 days, according to their FlickR. Now looking at Kupra... err, nope, better not.

I am hopeful that this is ramp up time - people get a kit, then need a little time to ensure their early products fit well and aren't junk.

I don't know per se - but I have been told that various kits are harder or easier to work with. That implies to me that this is more than - take your ready made item and plug in numbers to a few database columns, then sell it. That even with a kit there are always some tricky things to work out. If that's true then yes - folks would need time to get all their stuff set up for a new kit.

That at least, is where I am putting my hopes.

"Steady" may be overstating. Stuff is coming out, not as fast as I want. I'm spoiled by furry bodies that do tend to ramp up super fast when they first come out - but often trickle off a month or two later when there's a new shiny for everyone to cash in on. Human bodies tend to ramp up way too slow - causing most of them to become dead product lines. The few that ramp up fast enough, eventually hit a groove of regular support.

With luck Erika will land on the right side of that balance.

 

 

[Kalhene ERIKA Mesh Body]

1 hour ago, Tarina Sewell said:

That started because someone said they did not get the kit.

Yeah we don't know. There is a steady amount of new stuff coming out so it's unlikely there's a mass blockage.

 

 

[What has SL taught you about the world?]

On 8/9/2021 at 10:33 AM, Alma Palmira said:

These and hundreds of others of interactions with real people behind fanciful avatars have taught me that the world is much smaller with far more diversity and similarity than can be imagined. Here are a few lessons that added clarity to my life.

That's one of the things I learned through a poly-sci degree:

We're more alike in the places we think we're different, and less alike in the places we presume we're similar...

Cases in point:

Some "basic common sense manners" are not basic, common, or even considered polite 5 miles away from where a given 'you' is from...

Yet on many issues of 'ideology / politics / religion' over which people fight - as soon as you remove the 'phrasing / slanting / etc' that leaders use to get people against each other - we find that people tend to hold about 80% of the same core stances on these topics. And the remaining 20% can be anything big or small - not specifically the "important topics".

 

SL is a microcosm of people fighting over things they actually agree on, and ignoring things they disagree on - basic humanity...

 

[How do I get rid of my original body parts (like my feet) when I'm adding a new one? I don't like having 2 pairs of feet.]

On 8/15/2021 at 8:04 AM, Quistess Alpha said:

Yes, it's limited, and only works for things that cover all of what the texture defines, but we're talking about body parts, not dresses (although, full-length pants could benefit from having a linked cube with the BAKED_LOWER texture) I've seen heads in particular that have small cube inside with BAKED_HEAD texture on it, so even if the head is not in BOM mode (the texture of the head itself could be non-BOM) the user doesn't need to wear an alpha.

I've never heard of this trick, and now I want to mess around with it as this sounds really cool.

[Kalhene ERIKA Mesh Body]

For me the 'gold standard' for how to launch a new body is how Regallia (a BOM Bento Furry Body) did it.

- It came out as copy/mod with a notecard to download the dev kit. Any fool could jump in - and the market very quickly decided who the fools were and who was quality. The third party items out there for it are often top notch in quality and there's a huge amount of them considering the body came out just before the pandemic.

It is of course, a furry body... and even though it has a wholly unique UV map, so every skin for it had to be made specifically for it, there's a lot of them,

 

This was good for all three sides involved. The end users got a LOT of choices, the merchants were able to make $$$ while it was new and hot, and the body seller sold an absurd number of copies as it very quickly became THE BODY to have for a furry in SL.

- Everyone who wanted to make money did, and everyone who wanted a new body with solid support got it, and by it's first or second month in existence it already had close to the top amount of support AND user adoption for bento-furry bodies, top for BOM-Bento furry.

 

If you go to all the forums talking about Kupra you won't see me in them making these points. Where I was in I had other points but not these... and that was because I didn't like that body.

I'm all over this one because I like it, and I want it to become my default choice.

 

[Kalhene ERIKA Mesh Body]

11 minutes ago, Tarina Sewell said:

There are of course a lot of included clothes with the body and if she had of made a HUD to change colors or textures would go a long way. I personally do not like a flooded market of items as some people do.  A bunch of full perm items choking servers as store owners bloat up the marketplace with theirs and undercutting others in the process...  It is a double edged sword.

I can't see how it's a problem issue for a user to have more choices.

Ideally everyone who tries the body would also want to be able to use it to meet their personal style preferences. And that by definition means we would want a flood of options.

I would in fact prefer if some of those options are in direct competition. Not just one skirt to use, but a plethora of them for me, you, and others to pick from that have different cuts, colors, etc.

And a pile of 'full perm items' is actually exactly what I want because it means more 'ideas' can get on the field.

I do like that the body came with a LOT of premade outfits - I wish they had all been full perm OR Mod with UV maps included (so other designers could make new textures for them). But just having them is a leg up over other HUMAN body makers. And I say 'human' on purpose because compared to Furry Makers we're still not there - those folks 'often but not always' include the 'dev kit' in the initial purchase for everyone, so that a lot of people jump in.

 

[Landing point does not allow me to teleport to other position]

52 minutes ago, sakira Mirabella said:

Hello, I rent a 1/4 sim and deeded to my roomie's group which i am officer. We set landing point to our stores on skybox and it works ok.

when we try to teleport directly from other sim to land or to our skyboxes we land on landing point. should we have to be able to teleport anywhere?

When you TP onto a parcel with a set landing point you will land at that landing point unless [maybe you're wearing the group tag for that plot] - I put that in brackets because I think that's how you TP anywhere, but I'm not sure.

 

That noted, what do you have in "Teleport Routing":

 

- Here I have it set to "anywhere"

If it's set to "Blocked" or "Landing Point" then teleporting around the parcel will be complicated.

 

[anyone knows non afk, and chatty sims?]

Good chatty sims are also likely 'time based' - there are events and meetings and during those people will be around who are more engaged, but the venue might be totally empty otherwise.

Try 'Commune Utopia' if you want a 'hippie like' place.

For a 'softer entry' into adult venues, try 'Naked'. There's a spot on that region that is usually a pile of people sitting on chairs chatting.

In both of these examples those are also the region names on the map.

 

10 hours ago, Lewis Luminos said:

I used to enjoy hanging out at NCI Kuula for that reason, but its rarely used these days.

Anything 'NCI' that has a crowd on is is also a good place to go, especially for newer users.

 

[Kalhene ERIKA Mesh Body]

11 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

 

 

This ... is going to make the body fall back in popularity. It is wrong to be selective. "This is not the style I want for the body I made, I will control what's made for it" is not ending well.

Being selective is an EXTRERMELY BAD DECISION.

There is too much established competition, and people have no reason to 'wait' for a new body to spend a few years building up a list of merchants. It needs to be ready on day "-1" if not sooner.

There's no advantage gained by it. There is every advantage gained by swamping people with options as fast as possible.

This isn't 2014 anymore.

 

 

[Kalhene ERIKA Mesh Body]

9 minutes ago, Lokiande said:

Erika... will always be pear shaped, even with torso muscles at 100. I could pad out the arms with the leather jacket which was nice, but Freya will be my go to for my medieval RP, Erika will be more for casual everyday exploring.

I actually got Erika out of pear shape without much difficulty.

Numbers in an earlier post in the thread. I reached an hourglass. Rather than dial up the top, dial down the bottom. It's the same thing I had to do with Freya years ago - but with slightly different dials and degrees to those dials.

[How much complexity is normal for an average avatar?]

On 8/14/2021 at 11:01 AM, Persephone Emerald said:

Are you saying it's easier to make Alpha Cuts for multiple mesh bodies than it is to make one or two Alpha Layers for them? Before mesh bodies, creators made Alpha Layers all the time. There are even pre-made ones available for free on MP.

People just forgot how to make them and how to use them. The era of alpha layers was only a few years long. It's now back - but a large number of the creators in SL today were not making product back when it was around the first time.

People just need to relearn it.

Making Alpha layers is actually super easy and something anything user can do for free thanks to Gimp.

 

[Caming]

56 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

The 60L rental places stack several skyboxes on one parcel

I'm surprised this business model still exists and still manages to con people into paying for it.

 

[Alpha for the nose]

  

8 hours ago, MisakiMatsumoto said:

what are the ways to do this

 

7 hours ago, Orwar said:

regular alpha masks

 

A regular alpha mask means to open up Gimp and make a file with a transparent cutout in it. Download one of the templates here:

And open it in Gimp, then make the area you want to be hidden transparent - upload the resulting file to SL and use it to make an alpha mask

[Vigilanty warning]

16 hours ago, Abigail Merlin said:

I am not sure where my uuid was harvested from but judging by the first line it was probably from one of the child avatar groups.

It's probably unwise to have anything NSFW in your public information or publicly accessible land you own if you're in Child AV groups.

 

[How much complexity is normal for an average avatar?]

On 8/12/2021 at 4:15 AM, Coffee Pancake said:

That's what we all thought .. turns out, if you have a reasonably modern graphics card the poly count isn't the problem.

 

I'm not saying high poly models aren't bad and entirely unsuitable for a real time environment, but the render time is a drop in the ocean next to iterating over every object one by one when processing avatar animations.

So we have proof on this from a technical source? As it defies normal logic for technology. I'd be curious on the technical source of this change.

 

I'm hearing of even modern video games having technical issues from too high polygon elements being allowed into production code, so wondering on the exception here.