Medhue Simoni

Pamela Galli wrote: An in depth article on why the migration path is so critical, by SL's most insightful analyst, Gwyneth Llewelyn: http://gwynethllewelyn.net/2014/06/27/next-life/ (She also came up with a pretty good name: NeXT Life.) I have to agree with Gavin on this blog. I really don't agree with almost anything Gwyneth said in that blog. She must really be geeked about HF, as she pretty much praises it the whole time. Personally, I think Phillips has far too many balls flying around, and no clear strategy that even sounds remotely feasible, outside of silicon valley. Maybe Phillips needs to travel a bit more, or get less cronies around him. The way I see it, he has nothing but speculative ideas. Only 1 needs to fail for the whole thing to go down. Even his concept of the cryptocurrency is not well thought out. The only way for it to be stable is ..... time, or not be a cryptocurrency. This is not to say that cryptocurrencies will always be unstable. The point of cryptocurrencies is to not have a controller, so that the market can determine it's price. It takes time, and users for a cryptocurrency to become stable. He might call what he eventually uses a cryptocurrency, but it won't actually be 1 in the classic sense. I think I agree much more with Jessica Lyon than I do with Gwyneth.

Mony Lindman wrote: Thank you. I hope they will think about all the details .. There are also a lot of full perm animations made by animators who are no longer in SL so they can not make any modifications. And some other animators probably would not know how .. I hope there will be some "tool" to convert these bvh anims to whatever format will be used, or maybe LL could convert them upon moving them.. and then we must only pray that they will fit to all those skeletons.. Well, as Ebbe pointed out earlier, there can be all kinds of issues with just porting things over, namely products that might break, or merchants that aren't here anymore, as well as many other issues. Maybe, as a creator, I refuse to use the New SL because I can not agree to the TOS. Then I'd be pretty mad if LL just ported all my animations into the New SL without my approval. I, personally, would not expect to see animations in this new SL from long gone creators in the old SL. That said, there are more and more animators every day, and even more people who love fiddling around with it. There will be more than enough people to ask to make whatever might be missing.

Vivienne Schell wrote: "Yes, it is possible. This is all just speculating tho." So the "yes it is possible" is speculating too, right? I meant speculating about what LL will do, not what is possible. What is possible is generally pretty clear. What is doable, might be different tho.

Mony Lindman wrote: Yes, ok but I can not adjust by hand the full perm animations that I bought in SL, after they were converted and moved to the new grid. And even if the creator does this for all customers who bought their anims and we get them in SL2 again.. is it possible for the creator to convert them in such a way that they will fit to all possible skeletons that will be there ? Yes, it is possible. This is all just speculating tho. Who knows how it works out in the end. Like Gaia and I were discussing earlier, LL will likely have some kind of default skeleton. We obviously won't have to use that skeleton, but using that skeleton might be the only way to have animations that fit every1, depending on how LL does it. It could be possible to make a bone system where it could use any animation imported. Off the top of my head, I can imagine a system where the creators were simply given a bone naming standard. So, the creator just labels his bones according to that standard. Inside this new world, if an animation is played and the avatar has bones that match with the bone names in the animation, then it animates the avatar. If it worked like this, I could imagine making lion animations that every lion avatar could use, because they would all use the same naming standards for the bones. Here is maybe an easier to understand example of what I'm talking about. Let's imagine that I make animation for a tail. If every tail creator in the new SL names their bones like tail_1, tail_2, tail_3, and so on, then the animation will work with every single tail. Now, of course, I have no idea what LL has planned. I'm just saying that almost anything is possible if you think about it long enough.

Gaia Clary wrote: So, here is a short summary of what we (a few enthusiasts) think about migration from SL1 to SL2. Maybe this can take away some of the fear that we see flooding around since a couple of days. Prims: Are parametric meshes. That is: these meshes are defined by geometric parameters instead of vertices, edges and faces. From how these elements work i can imagine that some features might survive, others not. I have no idea if current features can be mapped to new features, but i guess that there will be at least a chance to get things ported "to some extent". However there might be better ways than trying to move prims over to SL2 as they are. Sculpts: Are meshes with a predefined flat mesh-topology (technically very similar to NURBS). And since they are regular meshes by all means, there is in principle nothing to worry about their migration to SL2, except their huge inefficiency (in most cases). The fact that they are cheaper than meshes regarding LI is not because they are more efficient but due to historical decisions. Avatars: are meshes with associated Riggs. And Riggs will become much more customizable than what we have today. Custom riggs will most probably make it already possible to transfer the current avatar to SL2 including its UV textures. Where it becomes tricky is when it comes to Morph shapes. If we get Morph shapes, then it becomes possible in principle to migrate the legacy Avatar's shape editor to SL2. Of course this highly depends on what capabilities the new system will have. System Clothes: Are textures basically. It might become possible to migrate system clothes into textures and from there it is no problem to get them into SL2. And finally put on a legacy avatar if desired. I bet this will be mostly a matter of license policies (extract textures from the system cloth items and trasnfer these to the new system) Scripts: will change dramatically i guess. So indeed scripts need to be mostly rewritten for the new system. So workload will come from here. But maybe that is not as bad as it sounds in first place. Animations: Depending on the format that will be used internally and for transport into SL2 it will be no big issue to transfer old animations to the new system provided you play them on legacy avatars (see above). I suspect the transfer format will be either BVH or FBX (and we are capable to convert .bvh and .anim to these formats for that purpose) Also the fact that we will get NPC's will probably make the animators very excited. So i bet that many LSL based animations will be migrated to Bone based animations anyways ... Currency: This has already been answered: We will keep with Linden$. And that implies that the currency will remain stable during the transition phase... i believe... I think that all questions about migration will be addressed and answered sooner or later by LL. How the migration will take place and how much effort tool makers will have to put into this, and how easy it will become for merchants and users... Of course there is no answer yet for all of this. But from general assumptions i am very confident that a lot can be one Sorry Gaia, I just want to add a few points to your well done list here. Prims, Sculpts, Meshes: Some people are assuming that we will still use Land Impact as a measure. I seriously doubt that it will all work the same, as the whole point of Land Impact was to try and match mesh land costs with prims and sculpties. We will no longer have to do that, and I'd be willing to bet that large meshes will not be penalized like they are now in SL. Animations: It's just wrong to think that somehow animation works like other assets. Animation is a somewhat universal asset for games, and converting animation to fit different skeletons is not all that difficult, and there are a number of ways and tools. Sometimes you might use a 3rd party tool, or sometimes it is done in the game engine, like Unity3D. Plus, in almost all motion capture systems, you import the avatar you want the animation to work on, and the mocap system fits it to the avatar you import. You then export that animation right from that avatar's skeleton. Most of the animator that work fulltime animating, aren't going to be rattled by a skeletal change. The animators that only use the simpler tools like Qavimator, will likely get some tools to convert things easily. To make my point about animation a little clearer, I'll give you a good example. I have motion capture that I created that I sell on 5 different platforms, which all use a different skeleton. The same animations, just applied to different skeletons, although, I generally do have to adjust things by hand, a little.

Ebbe Linden wrote: Teager wrote: Let me start by saying... I'm thrilled to see news of a new, improved grid. I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of the changes we've been needing and have been unable to build on the old platform. But... seeing that animations will change has made me very nervous. As a creator of mesh avatars which must be fully custom animated, you've just implied that my entire line of work may need to be redone for SL2. So this brings up one major question which, from my point of view, could be the single make-or-break factor for SL2: Will mesh avatar creators finally be able to create and name our own custom armatures? Providing this high-demand feature to mesh avatar creators could allow us to do so much - rigged mesh wings, tails, rigged faces, rigged fingers and toes. And (perhaps now more importantly) would prevent mesh avatar creators and animators from essentially having to start over on our creations. Is custom armature creation a feature we can hope to see with the new grid? I mentioned earlier that we want creators to be able to create user defined skeletons, so it's on the list. Not only do we need custom skeletons, but also Blend shapes/Shape keys/Morphs. They are called something different in every program, but they all do the same thing. They allow the creator to move the topology around on the mesh to create a whole new look, much the same as the Body shape sliders in SL. We also need to be able to animate these morphs. Imagine a Rocky avatar, whose face distorts, bruises and swells when he is hit. Plus, then we'll be able to make animated facial expressions, and have the face move realistically.

Coby Foden wrote: Phil Deakins wrote: Phil Deakins wrote: Note: But as long as Luis Suarez continues to play for my club team (Liverpool) I'm a happy man I wrote that before Luis Suarez bit the italian player. I so wish he hadn't done it. It's the 3rd time he's bit a player. Hmm.. have they tried to feed him well before the matches? I say make him wear a muzzle!

US is onto the next round. It was pretty nerve racking trying to watch both games at the same time, but that also made it exciting.

Gavin Hird wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: If you are right, then would it be reasonable to extrapolate that SL2 cannot accept any SL1 content that wasn't completely created by the migrating resident? And even then, only after excution of a signed business to business contract? If so, we can stop haranguing Ebbe about migration! Remember most of this discussion was about European legislation and how exactly that will pan out in the US I am unsure of. However, the way to fix this is to establish a developer group and set up developer and distribution agreements for all those who wants their items to be transferred. I would think this can be relatively be fixed by setting a flag or two on the items in the database and make once off tick-offs for developers who accept their creations are transferred. This would most likely solve the need they feel they have to have that special provision in the TOS that gives them full rights to everything. of course for old stuff where the developer is no longer around, there may be some issues, but then again... Personally, I don't want LL to migrate any of my assets over to the new SL2, as I can decide that for myself. Yeah, it's work, but I want the control to decide how I do thing in this new SL2, as I might do things completely differently. I know many here really want LL to migrate things over, and maybe that could be a voluntary thing done by merchants. Of course, I'm not a coder, but I also see this migration as a HUGE mess of code that will be lucky if it works right and doesn't cause more problems than it is worth. This is also exactly why the TOS is bad, cause we do not have control over our assets.

USA vs Germany today at 9 am SL time.

Qie Niangao wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: Drake1 Nightfire wrote: With animations and avatars changing "radically" will mesh clothing have to be re-rigged or will we be able to use the ones we already have? Of course, I'm not Ebbe, but I think I can answer this, maybe even better than Ebbe. Yes, and maybe no. If the avatar uses a different skeleton, then the clothing will need to be rigged to that new skeleton. If the creator uses the exact same skeleton from SL, then the old clothing might work, and I stress might. Right: "might" needs a lot of stressing, given what we've read in this thread. Asked directly, Ebbe wasn't even confirming that animations will be inventory assets. I suppose with this Sylvia was asking about something like "expressive puppeteering", part of the long gone Physical Avatar project. That could be a very brave new world indeed -- but still folks will want to replay animations somehow (and store them, if it comes to that), so I'm not sure what change could be so fundamental at to prevent any form of animation from existing in inventory. Well, this is not a knock on Ebbe, as I don't expect Ebbe to understand all the ins and outs of animation. Asking him, especially at this point, I think is a waste of time. He said some things that can lead me to make decent guesses. I'm not worried at all about whether we'll have animation assets, as I can't see how it would or could be done any other way. It would not surprise me if "radical change" just means using the FBX format, instead of BVH. Gaia seems to think BVH might stay, and I'm indifferent about which format we use, especially cause Gaia said her team will support whatever it will be. BVH, as LL did in SL, makes it easy to animated specific joints, where as I think FBX would need a complex system like Unity3D created to mask out bones for non use. The only part that worries me, is compatibility across all avatars. I'll be very happy if LL develops something like the Unity3d Mecanim system, which allows any character to be able to use any human animation. Of course, SL2's version would have to be internal and just know that these bones are human skeleton bones. Possibly, a bone naming standard would need to be implemented. So, if we all name our custom skeleton bones to the standard, then all human animations could work on them.

Drongle McMahon wrote: "We will get the ability to upload custom skeletons (rigged meshes)" Gaia, can you say where that comes from? In particular, do myou have any idea whether it applies only to avatars, or to non-avatar mesh? I am thinking about some ideas discussed a long time ago if we could access bones in scripts etc. Drongle, did you just wake up? Why would custom skeletons only mean avatars? Plus, Ebbe mentioned that things in the new world will be made in much more efficient ways. I take this as meaning that we'll use bones instead of scripts to move objects.

Drake1 Nightfire wrote: With animations and avatars changing "radically" will mesh clothing have to be re-rigged or will we be able to use the ones we already have? Of course, I'm not Ebbe, but I think I can answer this, maybe even better than Ebbe. Yes, and maybe no. If the avatar uses a different skeleton, then the clothing will need to be rigged to that new skeleton. If the creator uses the exact same skeleton from SL, then the old clothing might work, and I stress might.

Gaia Clary wrote: I could easily start nagging, that our 5 year investment in making cool tools has become void over night. And then drop everything and flee from here in panic. But actually i am HAPPY that we can eventually move away from brain damaging complexity under the hood. What a relief will it be when we no longer have to handle Collision Volumes as replacement for Morph shapes. or reuse the skull bone for facial expressions, or login an Alt account when all we want is an animated tree, or bend a human skeleton into a horse, just because we only have this one set of bones, or, or or... do you know how much time i have wasted just to explain an SL related problem to a "normal" modeller, animator, skin designer ? I feel like an idiot sometimes when i have to explain why this horse uses a human armature... and what sculpted prims are... and so on... Don't get me wrong. I do not say, it should have been done different in SL. I am aware that many things we see today are heavily influenced by what was possible in a given system where the main rule was "avoid to break existing content when implementing new features". Sculpted Prims as ugly they are, they where a genious idea actually. If the new world holds at least a fraction of what it promises, then all i can say: YEAH! Free time ahead, eventually i will be able to step away from dusty SL corners and step into the bright light of a new house (that's my hope: Sparkling experience!) Yeah, I hear ya! How about explaining how to make a perfect looping animation?

1 part that continuously bothers me, and really the only thing I can fault Ebbe on, is his TOS responses, which he doesn't seem to take seriously. When the CEO doesn't take my IP serious, I have good reasons to be nervous. It is not enough to say the company has no intention. By creating this new world, LL has seriously missed the fact that we aren't forced to join. The ONLY reason they got away with the current language in the TOS, is because we, and our stuff, were already here. We were essentially forced to agree. If LL wants their transition to the new SL to be smooth, then they better start taking our IP seriously.

Pamela Galli wrote: Yes if it turns out customers will not be able to port their inventory items, I am sure many merchants will find some way to incentivize sl1 purchases. Since I don't script or rig, what you describe is okay with me as long as I can pay someone to do it. This kind of rigging is as easy as it gets. You know I'll make a tutorial. Plus, if it's FBX, you could easily sell the exact same stuff for Unity3D.

Pamela Galli wrote: It would account for the inexplicable behavior and mysteriousness re the TOS, wouldnt it, if they intended to just port over at least some of everyone's inventory for them? May be just wishful thinking :-) I really do not think that is it. With the little information that Ebbe has mentioned today, it seems obvious to me that some specific features will be in this new SL that will allow you to do things much better. Cause I know, kind of, what you make, I'll give an example of what you might want to do. Oven doors, and cabinnette doors would all be weighted to a bone, which works as their hinge. So your oven will have a skeleton. You could even put food on another skeletal bone, and just use animation to make the different food appear in the oven. You could give the dining set a skeleton, and have the chairs move in and out using the bones, or turn them in any direction. My point is tho, that you might not want to port your existing stuff over, because you'll want to do things in a way you were not able to before. You did get me thinking about how we might thank our loyal customers in this new SL. 1 thing I thought might be a good way to do it, is to give those most loyal customers a voucher. For instance, I have many customers that own 4 or 5 of my AOs, or more. So, I might tell them that I'll give them a 5000 linden voucher in the new SL. I can't see why they would not be very happy. It's like winning a shopping spree. Or, maybe, if you are worried that people will have no reason to buy in SL now, you could tell every1 that whatever they spend from now until the new SL, you will give them a voucher for in the new SL. See, the great part about making virtual items, is once they are made, it costs us nothing to distribute. This being the case, giving products away to loyal customers doesn't cost us much.

LaskyaClaren wrote: However, let's get back to SL, which is a rather different ballgame. Your argument is premised on two false assumptions: The interests of the consumer are identical with those of the merchant. Well, sometimes they are, but a great deal of the time they are not. For instance, I'd like to see protections for consumers in SL, so that we can't be merrily ripped off by merchants and landowners without recourse, as sometimes happens now. "Caveat Emptor" serves your needs, not mine. Second Life is primarily about consumerism. Well, for some people it certainly is, and there's not much question that it is important. However, while I do buy things, that's not why I am here. What makes SL interesting for me, and for a great many others, are the things -- the art, the music, the reconstructions and gorgeous sims -- that are produced rather selflessly by people who aren't in it for the money. I myself ran a "business" for three years in SL, making online literature available for reading for between 1 and 5 L$ per book. I spent 100s of hours building those books, and, given the price at which I sold them, I sure didn't get rich. But I did it because I wanted to. Thank god, there are many others who feel the same way, or SL would be a giant strip mall. To reiterate: I too have a stake in this community, and I want my voice heard too. MY voice; not yours, claiming to represent me and the other unwashed masses. Of course, I could go on and on about how Democracies are the main societal problem, but let's stick to SL. I don't think any1 is saying the non content creators should not have a voice. The question of regulation is really about costs. The cost to regulate anything, is almost always higher than money lost because of unsavory players. The vast majority of unsavory players can be detected with just a little information. As you see now, there is much less fraud going on today, than there was when I started, as people catch on and tell others about it. Also, regulations keep new competition from entering the market and makes it easier for monopolies to form. The regulation also raises the cost for every1. How much more are you willing to pay to have regulations? Ask any merchant how long it took to make a single product, and most will tell you they spent way more time than the price indicates. In the vast majority of cases, the creator will never, ever make enough to cover that time spent. Easily, 3/4 of the products I have made are not profitable at all, and the rest basically pays the bills. I've updated my most popular product, my Lycan AO, 5 times in the past 8 years. The last time, I spend a full month just on the avatar, and then another month refitting all the animation, which there are over 200. Why? Because I fricken love werewolves and lycans. Thank god many others do to. This brings me to my point, the reason I can redo the whole product like that, is because of those profits. If not for the profits, I would have to work on something else. By making profitable products, I also have time to make things that I know I will never profit on, or make a custom animation for some1, who could never pay for my actual time.

Parrish Ashbourne wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: When the content creators are king, that really means the consumers are king. Content creators have to cater to the consumers. The reality is that creators are slaves to the consumer's will. False, there are lots of people that build for fun, or even if trying to make $ only build what they want. I all so rarely do custom work, when I do it's not about $, I only do it when the project is interesting to me and I don't charge them for my time just the normal price of the item. You can provide excellent customer service without being a slave, if your a slave to customer's then there's a motive to say what ever they want to here even if it's not true, I don't do business like that. You have convinced me I have no interest in your free market views if they enslave people, no one should ever be a slave. Oh, how 1 word can slant a whole statement. I meant a willing slave, if that helps. The free market is all about voluntary exchange. It is only when an exchange is voluntary that both parties benefit. Now, I could voluntarily be a slave to a certain market, because of the profits that I would gain. Yes, it is quite easy to decide that you will only work on what you want to, but that is likely not going to be highly profitable. As I said in an earlier comment, profits are really a measure of how many people benefit from what you do.

LaskyaClaren wrote: Funny that, in real life, so many of those CEO "slaves" are making in a few hours what one of their consumers might take a year to earn, eh? Sorry, but I don't want to be represented by self-serving "slaves." I want to represent myself, thank you very much. And I don't need your paternalistic reassurance that content creators are really looking after my own interests: I am articulate enough to express those myself. Money and profits are really a measure of how much you supply the consumer/public with what they need or want. In the case of something like SL, it is supplying joy/wants/needs to hundreds of thousands of people. Since this is the case, you would expect the CEO to make a good salary, and I'm not against that at all, especially when they are busting their a$$. If your interests lines up with many other consumers, then a merchant would be dumb not to cater to you.

Deej Kasshiki wrote: I keep hearing about how this new platform will focus on content creators as king. I want to know is how us poor schmucks (like me who have shelled out real money for almost 8 years now as a Premium member) who aren't merchants will figure into the equation? The fact that the CEO spoke first with the "opinion leaders and VIPs" over at SLU speaks volumes, IMO. Yeah I know that without content there's no VW but, I also know that without people to create for there's likewise no VW. Sorry but, I don't want to be seen as just another "consumer"; an ignorant open maw that takes whatever gets shovelled down its throat, important only because it has a wallet attached to it. All I know for sure is that whatever LL is working on had better be damned compelling for me to give up potentially 8 years plus worth of accumulated knowledge (and inventory) and they'd better start making that case as soon as possible. Otherwise as news of this gets more widely distributed people will panic and will start making plans to leave what will be seen as a sinking ship. When the content creators are king, that really means the consumers are king. Content creators have to cater to the consumers. The reality is that creators are slaves to the consumer's will.

Gaia Clary wrote: Maybe there will be a standard skeleton (hopefully not) I'm very curious to know why you think a standard skeleton is bad? Human skeletons are all basically the same. If every1 made their own Human skeleton, then animations could not be used universally by every1. Even Unity has their Mecanim system that standardizes any human animation to fit any character. Personally, I would like a standard skeleton, and the ability to import my own.

Drake1 Nightfire wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: Ebbe, considering we just heard that a beta will be ready next year, should you not be getting content creator in there now, or starting to have meetings with them? Or, did you already select a small group of FIC creators to steer your design? If that is the case, you will reap what you sow. I say the more people you bring in the better it will be. Fitted Mesh is a prime example of LL listening to bad ideas. I bet it's teh same group they keep interviewing for their ideas they say we all want... You know, the new improvements to things that "content creators" asked for. Funny how all of the Creators here have all said they were stupid ideas. Not sure which creators LL talks to, but it isn't us. Notice, that most of those ideas that we so called want, although I do like them, they are all coder stuff. So, again we see that coders have much more pull than content creators. If the coders need something to work on, how about fixing the 6 year old bug that breaks every single looping animation in SL? I'll also point out, that when you fix something, it is essentially like getting new features.

Gaia Clary wrote: I would be happy already if we could get to know early which data formats we will have to support in the future. It probably would help a lot for planning improvements of tools like Blender for example. And yes, i am aware that its too early to ask this question. I just hope, whoever is responsible at LL will remember to not forget us :matte-motes-wink: I will add, as it's obviously true, that Gaia could be LL's greatest asset from the standpoint of creation. If I were LL, or Ebbe, I would pay Gaia a salary, just to pick her brain whenever possible.

Drake1 Nightfire wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: Ebbe, considering we just heard that a beta will be ready next year, should you not be getting content creator in there now, or starting to have meetings with them? Or, did you already select a small group of FIC creators to steer your design? If that is the case, you will reap what you sow. I say the more people you bring in the better it will be. Fitted Mesh is a prime example of LL listening to bad ideas. I bet it's teh same group they keep interviewing for their ideas they say we all want... You know, the new improvements to things that "content creators" asked for. Funny how all of the Creators here have all said they were stupid ideas. Not sure which creators LL talks to, but it isn't us. Don't get me wrong here either. I'm not blaming those creators, nor saying we should not think out of the box. I'm saying that LL obviously doesn't have paid talent to know whether something is a good idea or not, from a creative standpoint.