Medhue Simoni

Marcus Hancroft wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: In my eyes, the main concern is that LL is making almost full rights claims to our content. Now, sure LL is a business and there is a certain amount of trust we need to give them. That said, LL is just a corporation, which are bought and sold, and can live forever. By claiming almost full rights to our work, LL is jeopardizing all of our futures. They may not choose to screw us, but if they sold the corporation and all it's assets, or they went bankrupt, our content would end up being in the hands of some1 else, who might not care. For this reason, I feel that SL's current TOS language is extremely dangerous. Well then the only course of action that *I* can see because of this, Medhue, is to completely cease and desist all content creation in Second Life. Right now, I'm not willing to stop, delete all my inventory, close my account, and send a DMCA takedown notice for all my previously sold content. Is that the course of action you are advocating? I'm advocating for LL to change the TOS to actually protect us from any of the future boneheaded LL decisions they may make. If they choose to stay the course and not change the TOS, I would not advise people, that make a living creating 3d stuff, to continue to upload content into SL. LL is putting our future at risk. You can argue that the risk is small, but you can't argue that the risk is not greater than it was. I'm not sure if all our past uploads can be deleted from the grid, so it makes no sense, at this point, to remove everything and leave. I would never advise people to do that. As an artist in today's world, I have many options to spend my time creating for, and I'm going to create for the platforms that allow me to make the most, over time, on what I choose to create. I will not be creating for platforms that put at risk my future earnings on products that I create. There is a whole real world out there that SL and LL have nothing at all to do with, and I personally won't let SL, or LL interfere with my prospects outside of their network.

In my eyes, the main concern is that LL is making almost full rights claims to our content. Now, sure LL is a business and there is a certain amount of trust we need to give them. That said, LL is just a corporation, which are bought and sold, and can live forever. By claiming almost full rights to our work, LL is jeopardizing all of our futures. They may not choose to screw us, but if they sold the corporation and all it's assets, or they went bankrupt, our content would end up being in the hands of some1 else, who might not care. For this reason, I feel that SL's current TOS language is extremely dangerous.

Andrew basically gets beaten up pretty bad, but he still comes out with some good ideas and people talking about the UI. It was very interesting to hear every1 speak about all things Blender. For me, it was interesting to hear about how and why the animation interface is the way it is. That is easily the 1 are and set up that I love. Everything in the animation interface is how I need it to be. Yes, I have to resize windows alot when I move from working in the Dopesheet to working in the curve editor, but at least it's right there when I need it. Tho, it would be cool to have a shortcut key that allows you to cycle thru UI's, instead of opening more windows.

http://status.secondlifegrid.net/2013/10/24/post2089/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter Seems billing went thru maintenance today.

Chic Aeon wrote: It is really amazing to me how very few folks write reviews. Like one in fifty? Not sure. Just wanted to say that LL will not necessarily remove a yelling and screaming review with no substance. They do sometimes I hear, sometimes not. This is not my experience, and believe me, LL shows me no favoritism. I do have a review I reported on monday tho, and I haven't seen anything done yet. It definitely should get removed, if I compare it to others I've had removed. Overall tho, a bad review is very rare, and if 1 is not removed, then my other customers usually call the review out in their own review. As far as people not writing reviews, this has always been a rare occurence. This was not a problem when we had Xstreet tho. See, Xstreet did the ratings and review system correctly. They made it super easy for a purchaser to give the product a rating. If all people have to do is click a star option, they do it. When you force them to actually write a review, few people will. With Xstreet's system, I got multiple ratings daily. Probably 25% of all purchasers were giving me ratings. I had the same problems as you early on in my SL career with competitors trying to rate me down, but with a system like Xstreet had, you got so many ratings that your competitor's actions were drowned out by your other customers. 1 of my most popular products in the beginning had, for example, 75 5star rating, and 3 1star ratings. Those 1 star ratings became insignificant. Plus, with all those ratings, it was a much better evaluation of the product that the system we have now. So, why did this change? IMHO, it was changed because merchants that didn't know any better, and didn't get many sales, complained like crazy that they were being unfairly rated down. They saw the ease of just clicking a rating as a negative and asked that LL force people to write a review. These merchants didn't understand that this current system would not help them at all. I see this current system as extremely bad for every1, as some1 who is angry is much more likely to write a review than some1 that loved your product and is inworld playing with it.

1st, if it's a really bad review which is just a bunch of insults and has no substance to it, or doesn't even state the problem, you can have it removed. 2nd, if it is a bad review and you help the customer out and correct the problem, or inform them of what they are doing wrong, I generally say something like this, "If you can find the time, I would greatly appreciate it if you would update your review on the product". That's all I say. No pressure. I'll wait a day or 2, and then I will put my own comment in under their review stating that the issue was addressed, if the review was not updated. All this said, I've actually had customers have a problem, even failed deliveries, and the customer gives me a 5 star rating. They also state the problem they had. I have no idea why they do this, but It's better than giving me 1 star. lol

Well, I'd check the scene again in Blender, as I can't see where the uploader just magically makes a 2nd mesh. Check the scene window where the items in the scene are stacked up in a tree format. Before you export it in Blender, check the polygon count, or vertex count and make sure it is right. That should show you if you have another mesh attached.

Czari Zenovka wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: Rod goes on the record says how much he understands the community and we all thought we had a CEO that was 1 of us. I'm on record as being suspicious of Rod and his motives from the beginning. I never thought he was one of us; when someone "laughs" and says "SL? Is that still around" when being offered the CEO position of LL was always someone to keep an eye on imo. I've basically had my head down working on a few different projects, and only coming around SL to check on things. When I saw all the TOS stuff, I looked it over, but I think I was just too caught up in my other work to even want to worry about this stuff. Despite having tons on my plate, I can still watch videos, and I did watch some of the TOS discussion with the lawyers over the weekend, which got me to thinking. Then today, I read Darius's blog, which had the specific TOS section in question. This time, when I read it, all I could think was WTF is LL thinking. Seriously, the only restriction they put on themselves was non-exclusivity. No rational creator can read it and not be extremely concerned and offended. None of us would be here if that was our original TOS. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't believe in all the different conspiracy stuff, especially the 1 that Darius put forward. That said, it is extremely difficult for me to believe that LL changed the TOS just for BS corporate reasons. Something is going on and they aren't going to tell us until they are ready. If it was just corporate BS, they would have caved already. With all my projects going on, I never heard anything about Philip's new project, so today I decided to check it out. As I'm sure many of you know, he is making a new virtual world, and he wants to make it more interactive. Nothing on the site states straight out that there will be creation abilities in this new world. I'm not saying there won't be, just that they are vague about it. This does make me wonder if this isn't part of the reason for the new TOS. LL is involved with Philip's project, as are a few big names. I'm actually quite surprised at how far along they are, especially since I just learned about it. They are still using basic avatars right now tho. I'd be willing to bet that High Fidelity has something to do with these new TOS. Whether it is good or bad for us, is yet to be determined. I can see it going either way.

Pamela Galli wrote: Without content, all you have is a chat room. What I have heard repeatedly is what Dart says -- the operative word in Open Sim is Open, as in opensource is king. Meaning free. The writer acts as if "content" means objects. I don't think many of us just make objects. We make interactive content, which means people use it and play with it. Without that content, yes, SL is just a 3D chatroom with ugly avatars. The only people that would ever come to a place with no content, is content creators. Without the ability to make or buy content, SL is a worthless project. Content is KING!!!!

I'm going to recant a bit and put my support behind any efforts the community wants to pursue. I stand by my earlier statements, but I don't think I took this as seriously as I should have. Of course, I read the questionable lines. My thinking at the time was that the whole ordeal was just boneheadedness or innocent. Outside of the "non-exclusive" part, LL is claiming rights that no content creator would ever agree to, even if we sold the models/content to game developers. They would never ask for the right to "re-sell". If they did, they would understand that the cost for such rights would be significant. Personally, I'm embarrassed for both Rod, and Will. These are 2 people that I once had much respect for but these TOS, and their signing off on them, shows they have little to no respect for us. I see them more as thugs that actually think they can do whatever they want. The fact that neither of them have come forward to address the issue, says quite a bit. Rod goes on the record says how much he understands the community and we all thought we had a CEO that was 1 of us. Obviously, he is just other money hungry corporate hack that doesn't give 2 sh.ts about the community, nor the creators within it. If any 2 people should understand the issue, it should be both Rod and Will. They obviously would never agree to such terms themselves, so what makes them think they can pass this all off on us? Again, it is a serious lack of RESPECT!

I've briefly skimmed thru your issue here, and I just want to point out that if you change the UV map, it will likely screw up your faces, or material IDs. I would think reapplying them would correct the issue. Kind of just guessing but I've seen issues like this before in 3ds Max. I have little to no experience in Maya.

Pamela Galli wrote: There are certainly 3D artists out there making a good living, but probably mostly by contracting for specific jobs. And those are the ones who are making stuff that when rendered are indistinguishable from a RL photo. (And presumably do not get calls when someone accidentally retextures the floor. As far as putting my eggs in one basket -- I can't keep up with this one basket as it is. It is unfortunately unthinkable to devote any time -- other than the little I did initially -- to Cloud Party or anywhere else where the time spent will not be an investmet. I have not one but two households depending on my store not for total but substantial support. A total of six people. I am too busy now trying to compete with people who make nothing but upload tons, to do anything else. Dartagan Shepherd wrote: Pamela Galli wrote: I took a look at what people in forums said they earn in 3D sites like Unity 3D, Renderosity, Turbosquid -- and found that, as I suspected, SL, for all its failings, is by comparison simply a gold mine. I too would put my money on Cloud Party if I had to bet against SL. Then there is Phillip's new world, forget what it is called. There is that. There are some people making some good incomes on some of these other sites or projects, but the skills needed and competition are steeper than that of SL. Agree that SL is still one of the best places to sell and compete. Probably should have mentioned that these are alternative paths or for people looking not to put all their eggs in one basket. Being a 3D artist is a career path that has always existed outside of SL and it "can" be lucrative, but SL is the easier and more profitable path depending. Wouldn't recommend giving up SL income to replace it easily with other income. Just that there are choices. On the other hand, I'd never recommend a 3D artist start creating for SL, because the TOS puts restrictions on their work that aren't in their best interests as a career path if they're pursuing game development or film careers. I'll just add, that my website and the items there have gotten me jobs from independent producers. This despite the fact that I don't advertise my services for custom work. I generally do accept the jobs tho, as because they are real world projects, they pay what I ask for. I have been contemplating offering my services with a specific rate on my site, but I'd rather just make what I want. lol

Of course, I have spoken about this topic many times now. The whole reason I promoted mesh so much was to help give creators the freedom to move outside of SL. I hope every1 that argued viciously about it all with me sees now what my point was. Unlike others that continuously refers to SL creators as inferiour to other, I see/saw that SL creators could be just as good, as many in the professional 3D industry. Most 3d content sites want to charge you 50% commission, which is ridiculous. My advice about selling 3d content outside of SL, is to get a website and sell the products directly. Through your own website, you can sell for any platform as long as you let the customers know exactly what they are buying. It is my website but I use Shopify to sell my items, which I currently pay $30 a month, and they handle all my credit processing. I can except almost all credit or debit cards. I also pay $10/month to a delivery service to handle all my download pages that get generated by a purchase. The download page that is delivered to my customers after a purchase, is time sensitive, which allows you to set that time limit. So, a customer could have a month to download the items, or a day. I updated my most popular product on my website a few months ago, and the services made it super easy to send out update notices to every past purchaser, and give them all a new download page, which I gave them a month to download the update for free. The services are so well put together, I really never have to worry about anything. My site has been profitable since I started it, and now makes me a decent profit every month. So, how do you market your items for your website? There is always a forum for almost every platform created. So, if you are selling to Unity users, you goto their forum and post a link. If you are selling for Daz, they have a section in the forums for you to post your items. Of course, you also want to create the proper google tags for all your products to show up in a google search. As a funny note, if you search for "crotch bulge morph", my website will likely be the top choice. What drives 90% of people to my website, is YouTube. I make a video for almost every product on my site, and every video I create has a reference and link to my website. Of course, my field is a bit different that most, so I'm sure you will have varying degrees of success there. In my case tho, Youtube is a huge part of my plan for independence from SL. I already get a decent check every month from Google right now, and I've only really been concentrating on it for a year now, but I've been trying many different types of videos and testing the waters. Again tho, I'm getting a check every month despite this. In a year, I've gained 600 subscribers and gained well over 300k views. Shooting for half a million next year, or more. On a side note, I'm working on a 3D animated video series now and plan on doing many more in the future. If any model creators want to donate models for the little movies that I want to make, you'll get free advertising thru my videos and your name in the credits. The hardest part for me, is getting all the items that I need for a whole scene. I'd much rather work with an SL creator and help promote their items, versus spending money on items that might not fit perfectly with what I'm doing. Animating little movies are a ton of work, so I'll likely be working on this current series, and their episodes for the rest of this year. I'm creating it all in Blender, and this first series is more about learning all the functions I need to in Blender. My next video project will be much more detailed models and environments. My goal is really to put together a team of people to put out 3d animated videos on a regular basis, with each of us making money off all the items in the videos. If I have to, I might even use the SL default for all the characters for a movie, which would make it easier to animate, and the other artists donating character items won't have to create for a different character. Just some ideas I wanted to throw out there. I won't comment on open sim related projects, as I'm sure many can chime in there.

That's interesting! I don't make many larger items. This does make my want to take another look at my boxing ring and bridge tho. They have decent LODs at distances and are around 10-15 prims right now. If you are correct, I should be able to get a little lower Land impact. I'm sure my customers would love to get an update for them with lower LI.

Personally, I would not make a custom LOD, unless I had to. The way the uploader works, you take no hit at all when you use the original model for the 2 highest LODs. I've made LODs for the 3rd and 4th, but never for the 2nd, as it is pointless and saves you nothing. If I were you, and the mesh is pretty evenly formed, I'd not make any custom LODs unless you have to. 90% of all the meshes I've made, I can get decent LODs using the auto generator. Plus, the distances are way too far away to see any detail you might keep by making custom LODs. I'd play around with the auto generator before I'd go making custom LODs.

Cathy Foil wrote: It truly saddens me to see Qarl leave Second Life. I hope if he ever gets involved with another virtual world he will let us know because I will know that is a world worth investing in. As far as the Mesh Deformer I don't think it bodes well when LL won't even communicate with the person who created it. Qarl has been extremely patient with them and it took him two years of waiting to throw in the towel. I doubt we will ever see the deformer. I'd have to agree with you. As a watcher and participator in the deformer project, it is pretty pitiful how it was all handled. LL had people jumping thru hoops, only to stop communicating totally. Think about all that time people wasted. Does LL care if we waste our time with their ridiculousness? It certainly doesn't seem like it. I recently decided I would create a JIRA for a problem I've known about for years now. So, I created a JIRA. The problem is, LL expects me, an Animator, to know exactly what the issue is. If I don't hit the nail on the head directly, I have to start all over again and create another JIRA. Seriously, WTF! Do they not understand that my time is also money? And, I am the customer, and not a coder. As far as I'm concerned, I gave them all the info they need to fix the issue and I won't be writing another Jira for SL. I actually do have to make money doing something productive. I also just had LL charge my PP account for my subscription, when I had just paid it directly not 2 days before. They cleared it up as soon as I talked to support, but what the heck is wrong with their system that I can pay, and still be charged again. That sounds like a fundamental flaw in how it is coded. When you look at all the problems with the MP, with 7 day cashouts, the deformer, the TOS, and I could go on and on, I see little reason to keep devoting so of my time to a system they refuse to make right.

Coby Foden wrote: Wow. I like the new UI ideas presented in the video. Lately, I've been deep into a 3d animated video I'm creating in Blender, which means I'm using many functions in Blender. I'm fricken amazed at how easy everything is to implement, like fire, water, cell fracturing and especially compared to other 3D programs. With a UI like what is being proposed, it would truely make Blender a joy to use. I'm still pretty new in Blender, and I always have this feeling that there are all kinds of things I don't know about because I don't know the shortcut keys. The W key is becoming my new friend. I amazed at Blender almost daily.

Oh, I figured out why I was having a problem switching bones. I changed my select option to Left mouse click, and the bone selection won't work in weight paint mode this way. I just changed my selection option back to Right mouse click and now I can switch bones easily.

Karla Marama wrote: Now I have a problem where after Bone Weight copying, and I go to upload my boned mesh into second life, the "Skin Weights" is greyed out. I've made rigged mesh before, and so I've had that option work for me in the past with the bone weight copying script in Blender 2.5.. but now that I'm upgraded to 2.68 everything is so new and I'm not sure how to get skin weights to pop out as an option. Any ideas on how this is done? (I'm gonna post a forum topic on this as well!) Thank you so much for your time. I knew you would love it. What's not to love about it? As far as your problem, I'd make sure that you are exporting the model correctly. I've accidently selected more than just the model, and gotten the same things as you. So, double check that you are only exporting the model, and not something else with it. I'm not totally sure what you mean with the with the skin weights. I can only tell you what I just saw when opening my items that I finished a few months ago. I can't easily switch between bones when the mesh is in weight painting mode. I've tried on a few different models I've made and they are all doing the same things. I have to go out of weight paint mode, switch bones and then go back into weight paint mode to see weights on another bone. I only messed with it for a half hour or so, so I can't say why it is happening, but it is seriously annoying. Maybe I'm just forgetting to do something tho. I'm deep into a completely different Blender project, so I can't really spend the time to figure this out, but I'm sure this won't be a problem for long, if it really is a problem with the software at all. Of course, Gaia knows much more about this software than I ever will.

I'll just post the webpage so you can see for yourself. http://blog.machinimatrix.org/avastar/features/

Arcy Halfpint wrote: Hey Guys Whats needed to upload mesh deformer or liquid mesh to SL. what viewer i saw somewhere saying Qarl's Mesh Deformer works on firestorm, can anyone provide me some usefull links I'm not sure the Mesh deformer is in Firestorm. LL does have an SL mesh deformer viewer, but you have to get it on the Jira page. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/STORM-1716

I can only guess that you have some issue with the pivot point of the mesh, or something like that. I'd try creating a box, place it in the center of the head, then attach/merge your hair with that cube, so the it inherits the cube's pivot point. Then detach the cube from the hair and rerig or weight the hair. I'm more of a 3ds Max user than a Blender user, but it should work similarly. I'd also suggest getting Avastar for Blender. 1 of the main issues that every1 has is finding a working rig. It becomes hard to figure out an issue when you have no idea if it is the rig that is the whole issue. I suggest getting Avastar because I know the rig is correct and works properly. I've done a few fully rigged and animated characters in it, and it's been a dream to use.

Awe Thor wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: To be perfectly clear, I'm a Libertarian. To us, the NAP(non aggression principle) is our guiding principle. It just so happens that capitalism, not corporatism, is consistent with the NAP. IMHO, Libertarianism is, by far, the most logically consistent political philosophy there is. Medhue, I might have agreed with you, and even laughed at the Hayek v Keynes "Big Fight" (with Milton Friedman as referee?) but I couldn't get past the highlighted phrase. Politics and philosophy, two concepts composed of meaningless posturing, juxtaposed to an epithetical phrase like "logically consistent" - it sounds like something my Sociology tutor might have said. And he was absolutely full of dynamic drivel. Well, the translation from greek for philosophy is "love of wisdom". Philosophers are the original truth seekers. Without philosophy, it would be difficult to see through all the propaganda that the Dem and Rep parties push. Logically consistent is not just a fancy word device used to sway an argument. It is a quantifiable measure of an ideas reliance on logical fallacies. I would agree that the phrase, as I used it, sounds like the typical propaganda we are all used to.