Dana Hickman

Turn off Environmental Shaders, Basic Shaders, as well as disable VBO until the bulk of the textures and geometry have rezzed, then you can re-enable them. It also helps to turn your camera right away so it's not facing the bulk of rezzing AVs, as those more so than almost any geometry will cause this problem to happen (or so I've noticed from dealing with this for a LONG time).

I can sympathize with all the frustration, but it really doesn't matter one bit how long you've been contributing... If one starts to become a problem, ie- by not letting it go and persisting with demands, then they can expect to be blocked. Posting this kind of thing here, especially with that edit, you should really be thankful that JIRA was the only thing you were banned from.

Heh, even in Kirstens things reset.. (minimap, buttons, etc..). Plus all the settings are not universal for the viewer install, which means you have to repeat all the customizing for every different account you log in with.

I noticed this as well, and agree the exact match thing isn't really going to help when one can type anything in the box. I did notice the auto-complete usually came up with similar "already entered" interests, but also many duplicates of the same subject that are just worded differently. I would say that unless LL gets rid of the entry box and goes with a rigid, premade interest list, then the only other decent option I'd think is to encourage people to select from existing interest matches whenever possible. At least that might help to cut down on some of the redundancy. I do like the wildcard idea for displaying matches, but they'll need to improve on the hits vs. misses ratio because even without it there's tons of unrelated stuff coming up.

Willow Danube wrote: Oh... as the typical Virgo, I filter my potential partners through multiple layers even before they knew they wanted to be with me. So the one that finally got through will be exactly the way I always want a man to be. On the good side, I don't have to tell or force the guy to 'mold' into my type, he comes with the package... on the bad side, no one might be able to pass all the 'tests'... which is why i'm still single.. lol! PS: His appearance is part of the 'layers' that he needs to pass! Yes, that ^^^ I'm the same way when it comes to potential dates, playtoys, etc.. I have high respect for people who take the time to express their individuality and creativity through their outward appearance. Not only does it give insights into the person inside, but it's also just plain fun to look at sometimes :smileytongue: For friends it's not that big of a deal with me as the type of friend I usually gravitate to either already has those traits, or my OCD about my own appearance rubs off on them lol.

No, the mesh forum is for the new imported mesh objects. This question concerns the avatar mesh we've had since the beginning, so it's the correct place. I'm unsure how much info is even available on this officially, though if you can find the wiki in this new setup it might be a good place to start looking. The AV meshes consist of eye, eyelashes, hair, head, lower body, skirt, and upperbody, and the last four of these have 4 additional LOD versions, each one lower in detail than the previous (for the automatic switching of detail based on viewing distance). The eye has 1 LOD version, eyelashes don't have any. The AV meshes can be found in the second life install directory, inside the character folder, and they are in .llm format. If you wanted to do this without hacking up the viewer code and compiling a completely butchered viewer, then you'd also have to create a mesh for every different morph point that the AV uses. Morph points are the minimum and maximum adjustment meshes for every adjustment slider (in Edit-->Appearance) that changes something about the mesh (including hair, skirt, shirt sleeves, pant legs, and shoes), as well as every facial gesture, blink, and hand pose. The system uses them to know which vertices on the real mesh to move, and which direction they need to move when the adjustment slider is moved in a certain direction. It's also how the system translates ones shape item data into actual changes on their AV when a shape is worn or loaded. Additionally, If any mesh part or morph is changed from the default number of vertices (like making a higher poly AV) then every corresponding system layer texture in the character folder (like the system makeup layers, wrinkles, etc..) must also be changed to match the new meshes UV layout. The final nails in the coffin are even if you did manage to get all those meshes and textures made and installed properly, there's no guarantee that LLs database would accept the AV and shape item changes, and even if it did you'd be the only one to see your new avatar... Everyone else would be seeing you with the old mesh (because the mesh is read locally from the character folder) and it would be contorted to your new AVs new morph points instead of the old ones. I would consider trying to make a new system skirt mesh, as that one only has 13 morph points and only a couple of layer textures IIRC. Although there's still the issue that nobody else could see the new skirt unless you were to modify all those files on their install of SL too. Is it any mystery why the AV has gone unchanged for so long?

Mags Indigo wrote: I was thinking less about friends and more about 'romantic liaisons' - or dating with benefits if you prefer. I know many people on SL partner for reasons that have nothing to do with sex or romance - convenience, business, warding potential admirers off etc. Those who do look for and enter SL relationships that within SL have all the attributes of an RL relationship - intimacy, sex, romance and companionship all twined together - does this mean that they are being unfaithful to their RL partner. If not does that mean that regardless of what they tell their SL partner - SL relationships are nothing to them apart from an imaginary/fantasy game and as such aren't worth even considering as 'relationships'? As usual, I'm the gray area that pushes the boundaries, and in this case it's no different. I'm firmly committed in RL to my BF, and grounded to him is where my true deep feelings stay. That said, I do date and fool around in SL, but it's never anything more serious than a strong friendship and sex. I've found over time in SL that I have no problems with conflicting interests or emotions, and no overlapping relationship territory as long as I leave the romance out of my SL. Everything other than the really mushy stuff is platonic or pure entertainment, and the BF agrees it doesn't pose any more problems for us than his little internet pr0n habit lol. He knows what I do, and I know what he does, and our consensual agreement is about honesty and respect for personal space, and it works for us. In SL, anyone that I might get involved with fully knows up front, in no uncertain terms, that I'm not going to be "falling in love" with anyone and not to expect much romantic pillow talk type stuff... everything else is cool though. Even though it may be a bit handicapped on the romance side, it certainly qualifies as a real relationship, just one that's kept on the exciting fun side. It's the same as any other relationship is with a few extra limitations, and so it carries the same weight and importance for me. Consequently, the typical type of person I might get involved with isn't the regular "RL single and looking for love" type.. they're usually married or have a GF of some sort. Since I know there'll be no emotional cheating going on with me, and physical cheating is pretty much an impossibility, I don't pay it an aweful lot of worry. I will bail on someone if they lead me to suspect they're hiding or lying about it to someone in their RL, like a spouse or something, because that's just not cool. Mostly though, I believe those kinds of RL things are their responsibility to handle... Openly and honestly like I have, or take the full beating if they get themself in hot water.

I would've sworn I had a couple old pics from back in early '07, but I guess they're on my backup drive which I dont have access to at the moment. Anyway, the only real changes from when I joined in '06 to now is my skill with editing and access to better quality clothes, skins, and accessories. My shape hasn't changed hardly at all since then, which is an enhanced approximation of my RL shape, although I have shrunk a few inches. I've always masqueraded as different forms on occasion, but don't seem to stay away from human form for very long.

LiveReport wrote: I have only been around for three months but in that time I have changed my appearance by improving my skin, hair and cloths. That's an impressive improvement for only 3 months.. very well done. The last pic is hawt and I completely love that outfit :smileyhappy:

Randall Ahren wrote: If your look in world like your forum profile images, your appearance is likely overwhelming to many hetero males. They cannot get past your appearance and their primitive urge to mate drives out all rational thought. The snip quote above is an example of what I was referring to. If the looks hadn't already been sexually objectified and stereotyped beforehand in their mind, then there wouldn't be any overwhelming blocks to "get past". Again, that's other people trying to fit me into one of their neat little mental catagories. It's not my doing, it's their own prefab thinking that does that, so there's no way I'm going to change just to accomodate other peoples shortsightedness. I never asked for any sort of socially-elevated status based on how I look, and so it's not up to me to have to deal with everyone else, it's up to them to have to deal with me.

Randall Ahren wrote: I think this is just role playing while not being conscious of it. Dana is playing the role of the super-hot, unapproachable women at the club or bar, besot by males unworthy of her notice. Until finally, Mr. Cool walks in, i.e., Ben Affleck or Tom Cruise or someone of similar stature, who is worthy of her affection. That is a common female fantasy, is it not? No, and actually that kind of assumption is one of my biggest peeves in SL... I don't label, play as, or think of myself as super-hot, unapproachable, beset by tons of guys, OR find people unworthy of acknowledgement like a snob would. It's other people that make that uninformed assessment about me based on my looks alone, without ever having spoken to me. The truth is I'm not at all like that, and yet I spend most of my "out on the SL town" nights without ever receiving even a single IM from someone new. I just don't disapprove of the tacky, blunt approach as much as others do because in the end it winds up being convenient for me. I'm selfish and practical like that, but if anything that should be a plus for others.

I prefer the straight up sex question to the 20 questions, because that way if I'm not interested I can just say no, instead of trudging through endless banter until they eventually get around to asking the very same sex question and I finally get to say no. I swear some guys think boring me or ruining my immersion is really going to tip some imaginary scale in their favor.

I used to spend about $80 a month on tier and L$, but now that finances are super tight I've sold all my land, only pay for premium, and haven't bought any L$ in ages.

Ciaran Laval wrote: It's a shiny that makes people giggle and generates publicity, better things will come of it I'm sure and thanks for mentioning the pupperteering project, hopefully that can be revived at some point. I agree, which is why I hope that LL won't stop here at "marginally useful to some", and put in the next step to make it "universally useful to anyone wanting such a thing". They did a great job making the AV Alpha system "user-definable" by employing image maps that control the area to be affected. The same setup used to control the physics application IMO could literally explode this thing in terms of useability and functionality, and I think it would be stupid not to make this feature a fully functional tool that covers the whole range of potential uses that exist. Puppeteering is also one area that hopefully they will expand on. IMO not so much for things like controlling an AV with devices like the Kinect, because that's fairly impractical in most situations. It would however, lay the ground work for real-time bone control, which then would open up a million new possibilities.

Millennium Sands wrote: I've tested this feature on 2.6.3 Beta. Even after hours of tweaking, I never came close to a smooth bounce like it's shown in the videos. Whatever I do, my boobs always seem to be on a slideshow, changing from one freeze frame stance to another every few moments. And when I'm not even moving they continue to bounce and sway this way, like they have a life of their own. I didn't check them in the previous version, but it looks to me like the physics are seriously bugged in this beta, and not useable at all. But once they are fixed, people might see one important reason less to use a 3rd party client. It's actually not bugged, it's that there's a pair of contradicting sliders that seems to fool people because of their names, and that the adjustment threshold on a couple of them is very small. Here's a basic set of settings I came up with that seems to work fairly well as a place to start tweaking from: Bounce Max: 50 Bounce Spring: 100 Bounce Gain: 20 Bounce Damping: 70 Cleavage Max: 20 Cleavage Spring: 100 Cleavage Gain: 10 Cleavage Damping: 70 *Sway Max: 70 *Sway Spring: 100 *Sway Gain: 5 *Sway Damping: 80 Advanced Mass: 4 Advanced Gravity: 40 Advanced Drag: 6 *Note - the sway setting is removed from the official viewer (what were you thinking LL?), but still remains active and working in Kirstens test viewer. These settings are based roughly on breast size of about 70 or so, so some amount of tweaking will be necessary depending on size and preference. The effect threshold seems to be pretty good (i did over an hour of dance testing), so one might only have to adjust the MAX settings to get the desired look. In some cases a little more gravity might be desired, but be carefull with this setting as altering the balance it has with the individual GAIN and DAMPING settings can throw the whole thing out of whack. The ADVANCED MASS setting also has a huge affect and can easily throw the other settings way off.

What I look for in latex is always quality alpha edges, quality seams, and realistic shading / highlights. The types of styles available are much less important to me than the quality of the craftmanship. Even the most basic of styles or looks can be used or mixed effectively, but it makes no sense wearing it if it's not made well or doesn't actually have realistic highlights. For this reason alone I buy very little latex in SL, because what most people sell as being latex (or leather for that matter) is actually junk.

Myranua Eichel wrote: ...hands were fine one minutes then when I adjusted the ball up a little and got back on, hands were messed up. Chances are the above is actually what caused it. Sometimes animations are uploaded without a specific hand posture, so when you run them you still might have the hand pose from any previous animation that was run (if it wasn't overridden by another one). If you had just edited the poseballs position, and the default hand posture for editing on object (with the dotted beams pointing to the object being edited) would indeed be the spread hand with stiff fingers, then jumping on the poseball would not have changed the stiff hand posture to something else if that particular animation didn't include one. The editing hand would remain, and it's not uncommon for this or even the whole straight arm and hand that goes with editing something to stick. All one has to do is run another animation from your inventory, one that has a hand pose specified in it (and most should..) before you hop on that poseball and your hand should be fixed for the photos.

I spent several hours messing around with these new physics settings and I gotta say.. until you get the settings fairly close to correct for your shape and size, it's going to look like crap. Once you do though it really adds a lot to the realism and believability. The added bonus is that the unique settings you specify for yourself are what others will see on you, unlike the TPV implementation where all other AVs rendered show the same physics, whether you want to show that to someone else or not. On the nerdy side of it, my first impression was that these physics features would've been much better handled by using custom "physics slots" instead of predefined, hardcoded areas named breast, belly, and booty. What if I want to apply physics elsewhere and have.. say.. noodle arms or flappy thighs? What if the shading on my skin dictates that that low of an area under the breast shouldn't move? If generic bounce, cleavage, gravity, rebound, and sway settings were applied only to the corresponding white area of an uploaded image map (just like the AV alpha maps), then these features become not only more flexible, but also user-customizable. As they are now, the effect being confined to strict hardcoded areas on the mesh restricts usability to the point of making a potential powerful tool into a mere novelty. My suggestion would be 5 or 6 slots where one could upload an AV image map (that defines the area on the AV to be affected by that slots settings), and a base set of sliders to adjust the effect for each area would VASTLY improve this feature.

For me, fashion is a means to take the average and make it stand out from the rest. 9 times out of 10 if I look around a room and see commonalities, I'll use whatever fashion sense I have to do exactly the opposite from what I see. Room full of frilly barbies? I'll be in dirty beatup old leather and heavy tattoos in no time. Room full of the tired old goth or grunge look? I'll throw down something cute, country, 80's rag pop, or classically sophisticated to avoid being lumped in with the bunch. It is a tool like Rhonda says, and if you're good at it, an edge or an ace in hand. I do the opposite of any trends I pick up on and do it purposely, so I'm more of an anti-trend fashionist combatant with a very large arsenal.

Kascha Matova wrote: I look at how much stuff gets transferred in a session and I simply can't imagine it would be that small an amount. I guess it really would take an enormous amount of additional services to get to 150GB with your figures. I used to LIVE on SL constantly (sometimes up to like 10hrs a day at one point.. Shopping! Dancing! Music!), as well as places like youtube and whatnot. Fortunately I don't have capped internet (I'm on Charter), but unless one is downloading and saving lots of full-length HD videos to your harddrive then there's almost no chance one could accidentally move over 150gigs of data. That cap really only affects those who are serial torrent freaks, literally spending all day trading huge amounts of data.

Well I just got begged by a noob for some .. umm.. "volunteer work". I believe he even said it would be in the interest of learning, though it was pretty obvious what he wanted to get a grasp of had more to do with me, and very little to do with understanding SL or the viewer :smileysurprised: An all too familiar scenario in the last few years, which is why I usually only help those noobs who sincerely want to know about SL or the viewer, and who wouldn't waste the opportunity to learn something just to hit on someone like me.

Rhonda said just about all that I would've. She even had the link to Elohs skin files which I don't seem to have any more, so thanx fer that. I would recommend playing around with those skin files, maybe try adding a layer or making simple adjustments to get a feel for how changes made to skin files translate to the changes you'll see inworld. It can be frustrating and very time consuming, but once you get comfortable with working on the "unwrapped" skin textures it can be a lot of fun.

Jenni Darkwatch wrote: @Void: Sure, server issues are on LLs head, if they happen while using LLs official viewer. If they happen with a TPV... sorry, not LLs problem. Therefore, simple rule: If one has problems, try it with the official LL viewer and see if it can be reproduced. Often it can, I think, but sometimes it cannot. Sorry, Void's correct... Server, database, and sim issues are LLs domain, regardless of what viewer is used. LL doesn't give support for TPV user and viewer issues only, but for everything else they will. Inventory problems that occur on LLs end are handled by LL, usually with a rollback. These type of losses that sometimes happen when servers receive maintenance is not a new thing, and many of us TPV users have already gotten our missing items BACK (the items that disappeared specifically due to recent server work) by submitting a ticket, clearly indicating the problem, and requesting an inventory rollback. Many of us have had to ask LL to recover missing items multiple times because of server work over the years, and in most cases they're able to make it happen.

Thanks, I appreciate it :smileyhappy: Torley Linden wrote: May I ask what and how you create animated GIFs? I posted a mini tut description-like thingy in the cool badge thread with all the nerdy, sordid details :smileytongue:

Since I was asked by the watermelon guy about the animated GIFs, here's what tools I use and a basic "how I did it". For the vector graphics type like this one I use Ulead Cool 3D (vers 3.5 iirc) Creating these ones is literally no more than picking the new image size, picking a font while adding some text, positioning it with the move tool, setting the desired number of animation frames, and then selecting whatever preset effects you like from the object, global, and transition effects lists. You can tweak them by adjusting their settings in the bottom detail window, and also by adjusting or staggering the effects start and stop times on the animation timeline. Can also add many more to it, like the combination one above which is simply a starting text with object style preset, adding a Global Effect->Fire, adding an Object Effect->Dance, adding an Object Effect->Explosion, and changing the ending position of my text at the end of the timeline to finish the falling effect of the explosion out of view. Added a white background because of the background here and exported it straight to a GIF animation. I didn't use transparent background, but it is an option as well. It's all pretty simple as the software does it all for you basically. For the SL video-based ones I mainly used Fraps, Photoshop and Gif Animator 5, but I did also use AVS Video Converter 6 in place of editing timeline in PS because I like the timeline controls better than Photoshops. These ones consist of shooting the source video with Fraps against a white backdrop. Don't plan on using much more than about a 5 second clip of your video as the end file size has to be kept down, and file size can easily spiral out of control if you're not careful. Open the resulting AVI video into Photoshop and 'box-select' the middle part you want to keep, keeping the selection about the same shape as the badges are (not size, just shape). Image-->Crop, then File-->Export-->Render Video and set to use the quicktime MOV format, also give it a new name. Close the video and open your new cropped one, Then Image-->Image Size and specify a final badge size (I used 150x198). Then again do File-->Export-->Render Video, set to the same quicktime format and give it another new name. Next is chopping out the timeline segments before and after the section you want to use. For this you can use Photoshop as well (window-->animation to show the panel), instead of AVS VC 6 because the principle is exactly the same, although the specifics may be a bit different. AVS makes this very easy with 'trim start' and 'trim end' buttons in its built-in editor. In either one, the basic idea is to mark the video timeline from the very first frame(trim start) to the beginning of what you want to keep(trim end), and also mark from the end of what you want to keep(trim start) to the very last frame of the video(trim end). Same principle as cropping out a photo leaving only what you want. Once marked, you Export-->Render the video again (convert in AVS) to quicktime MOV format (AVS is quicktime, original size, 4000kbps). close programs. Last step is opening the cropped, resized, shortened quicktime video clip in Gif Animator (or something like it). The software should import all the frames in order. There should be a max of about 80 frames for a final pic without using any compression/optimization, or up to a max of about 180 frames with lots of compression/optimization. Delete any frames you don't want or that might be duplicates, then shift-select them all and set their desired delay ( 3 / 100ths of a second is about right for 29-30FPS on the web ), lower makes it play faster. Use the preview to tweak to your liking and save it or export it as a GIF animation. It may be necessary to use the optimization wizard to reduce the final file size to get it in under the size limit here, but too much optimization can result in a very blotchy, ugly looking mess. That's why it's important to choose and use video clips that are shorter and can avoid having to use heavy optimization or lossy compression. The example animation above was a real short clip originally, but I duplicated all it's frames and reversed the duplicates order (added to the timeline after the original frames) so it plays more like a real looped animation. Many tricks can also be done by blending a few static frames that have a long delay (timer) with short chopped animated sequences added to it to create the effect of the GIF being much longer than it really is. Have fun with it.