Dana Hickman

AlessandraAndria Zapatero wrote: Is there some way to tweak the settings so that my alphas aren't flickering and dissapearing? Thanks! It's a variant of the OpenGL alpha sorting bug that appears when using shadows in ANY viewer, and can appear as flickering, ringing, or bright bordering around 32 bit alpha textures when they overlap another one. Using shadows (aka deferred rendering or HDR) minimizes the frequency of these things, but the tradeoff is the safe distance between the two overlapping 32bit alpha textures is greatly increased, so now you can get these bugs between alphas that are very far apart (like a tree against the sky). It's said that turning off anti-aliasing while using shadows will help.

Noel Loordes wrote: Well, sadly it doesn't help much. It's not the strafing which is of primary importance but rather the mouse-turning. I know you can get this type of control by holding [Alt], but this makes Second Life beyond unergonomic. Well, more arcade like controls (Press down -> run and face backward) would be okay too :-) If there's any kind of keyboard combos that let mouselook-style camera and turning happen outside of mouselook, then it's guaranteed that the GlovePIE input emulator can do it. You said ALT + mouse axis? it can do that, and remap that to anything you want. It can't do the "L mouse button + click on AV" to spin the camera because it can't read where you're clicking on the screen, but if it's only keyboard and mouse input it can.

For me personally, this is one of the very few new things LL had been working on that I really cared about and that raised my enthusiasm level, and I'm completely disappointed that nothing at all has become of it. Another one is the puppeteering project that they back-burnered, cancelled, then removed the source code from the WIKI repository. BOTH of these made use of avatar physics, and both have also been demoed and shown working( !!! ), yet still there's nothing and I have little hope of ever seeing them. It's quite disheartening, and I think I'd rather have not known these projects ever existed, because now I have much less faith that any future changes from LL will be anything meaningful at all to me personally... since they already killed the only meaningful projects I personally cared about. ..but we'll have Facebook for everyone !!! *dull monotone yay*

We need to team up with a few landowners who own roadside land, where the street traffic of these idiot vehicles is really bad and have a mass roadside "bump and return" party :smileytongue:

Maxx Mistwalker wrote: ... and to get rid of those angular spots...liquify is my best friend. It smooths and contours with little effort Thanks and kudos for that tip! I can't believe I never bothered to try that one... it's almost exactly the same as power goo.

I'd like to see a minimalist option for one new badge, one with the name, title, SL join date, and posts moved to the very top or bottom of the badge, and using a fully transparent overlay instead of a semi-transparent or solid one. I'd probably also trade in half of my 100 photo allowance for a bit larger max file size if I could.

Deltango Vale wrote: I will go so far as to suggest that 95% of residents came to SL in pursuit of that 5% in one form or another. I would think 95% is a bit high when talking about direct pursuit of it. However, I would say that 95% is about right if one's talking about dancing around it, brushing up against it, intermingling with it, and occasionally adding to it like most adults here seem to do. This is one of only a very few areas where SL is wholely unique when adding in all the other stuff that SL offers. It's a highly valued option to residents here even if it's not always used, and there's no mistaking how much it can influence peoples decisions when it comes to sticking around or reaching for their credit cards. I agree with your logic about the incompatabilities. What made SL stand out was the fact that it wasn't like everything else, and to know being like everything else is what many want to see SL become is a bit disheartening to me. If that happens there'll be no reasonable, workable place left for one to take the blue pill and remain in fantasy land, and not just in the adult sector either.

Perrie Juran wrote: Should I get a training bra? Mommy.. the orange man is scaring me :smileysurprised: :smileytongue:

A thread dedicated to the software, plugins, tips and techniques for improving ones photos might be useful. I'll start by giving my solution to the "how do you fix the ugly angles of the mesh polygons in your photos?" I use the old Kai's Power Goo photoshop plugin. Available in the Kais Power Tool 6 pack as photoshop-compatable plugins, and also as an old stand-alone DOS program with more features. It's quite easy using the smear tool and 75% power to stretch, pull, and reshape any of these kind of graphicals annoyances. It's a far superior method to trying to cut-paste-edit-blend layers as it's done mathmatically and there's no loss of pixels at all. It also does wonders for stretching clothing and skin textures over to match seams as well. One does not need photoshop to use the plugins, as many editing programs can recognize and use them. An example of one is the free and highly regarded Irfanview (which I use a LOT). For other photo editing plugins to use in improving photos and making fine adjustments, I'd have to honestly say that Xero Graphics makes the best. I've used all the filter forges and flaming pears and such, and tons of independant plugins, but very few individual plugins and none as a collective group have impressed me more than those from Xero. Have fun.

Analog Dog makes a longer bob very similar to the first one Argus posted, with straight bangs, but it's symmetrical and a bit longer. It is still a bob though and does angle forward when looking from the side. Can't check the name right now, but I'll attest to it's very high cute factor (I don't wear it because it's too cute). Alternatively, you might go see the vast collection at Tukinowaguma as there's lots of hair in that or very similar style. Even longer ones that have the same look as you want, but are easily modified, like this Giorgia one. (btw- half the bang part in this one isn't straight because I made it that way.. and there are non-curly versions of the same style available)

I keep hearing the line from American Pie, "I'm gluuuueeed!!" I'll echo what Venus said. It's nice there's more options like these available lately, but it's not something I'd feel natural with. C-cup is "in" with me in both worlds.

Torley Linden wrote: then offload some of the work onto your feet and get a USB pedal! One can also use the GlovePIE input emulator (which is free) to simply bind one of those mouse thumb buttons that SL doesn't make use of to your recording softwares start/stop key. :smileywink: The software can, in fact, bind any input (key, axis, motion, macro, combo, etc..) from any supported input device to that of any other, and the list of supported devices is almost awe-inspiring (Kinect support very soon, if not already.. i haven't looked lately). Anything from a simple "keyboad.left = keyboard.A" to using the advanced built-in scripting engine to create your own nested loops and conditionals. I use it to bind that useless zoom toggle in the middle of my internet keyboard to the ctrl 8-9-0 zoom. I also have the left / right scroll features of my MS mouses 4-way scroll wheel bound to a bunch of other stuff as well, and I have it scripted to all turn on/off with a simple ctrl-alt-home. Endless possibilities.

Govindira Galatea wrote: You can identify it by the fact that the line in which it is located begins with "input value". Thanks! This was the spec of info I was missing.

I saw my first one of these vehicles the other day, it was 10 minutes after selling all my land in that sim and I was standing on the road nearby. It was some kind of truck, but had a had time telling for sure as it hit the guardrail on one side of the road and immediately bounced away while rotating itself sideways in mid air so the passenger door was on the road. I let it plow into me while standing there and an amazing thing happened... my MystiTool movelock easily won the battle and I wound up pushing the sucker over the near guardrail and into Outys open front store lol. Ooops... So I watched the dumb thing bounce off every suface in there until it stuck itself on a nearby tree, at which point I just pulled out a big gun and launched it 2 sims away. I got sick of automated vehicles years ago when the skies around that area were filled with unmanned ufos and other strange creations that used to do 4-sim circles around the linden pond. These unmanned thingies are just as annoying as they were back then, only these ones are easier targets with the heavy weapons lmao.

Ellone wrote this is still not solved. is there away of getting it off with 3rd party? In Phoenix: Advanced-->Character-->Meshes and Morphs headMesh-->headMesh-->currentMesh-->save OBJ The exported (shape applied) file is in the Phoenix install directory-->Character folder, and will be named avatar_head.llm_current.obj In Blender.. starting with a new blend: File-->Import-->Wavefront(OBJ) The head will appear on it's side.. don't adjust it's position or rotation, just minimize Blender. Go back to SL and export the upper body the same way, and import it into the same blend as the head. It'll show up aligned to the head. Repeat process for all the body parts you want to include in your model. Once all are imported into Blender, shift-select them all in object mode and group them. The only parts I'm aware of that wont import aligned already is the eye meshes, so those you'll have to move into position yourself. As you can see, that is not the ruth AV shape, nor is it deformed in any way. From this point there's a thousand things one can do. I personally skinned each part, joined the individual parts, stitched the seams together in edit mode, exported the joined object as an obj, and imported it into photoshop cs4 extended to use as a shape mannequin. Specifics: Phoenix 818 / Blender 2.49b

Aubry Brinner wrote: This all could have been avoided had I been asked to stop, etc etc. Nobody should have to ask you to stop. You should've exercized a little common courtesy beforehand and not started anything worth having stopped. The problem, it seems from reading what you wrote, is showboating, and doing it at a staff members expense. You yourself say you didn't know this DJ, so what made you think it was kosher to jab, rib, and heckle the person like their known friends do when they weren't a known "friendly" to you? The only explanation other than it being a really poor decision would be to smart off to try to impress the crowd. Nobody with more than half a brain gets impressed by that sort of thing, and least impressed of all is the club staff member that's the unwilling butt of your jokes. Duh... of course you got kicked. I don't know of any clubs that wouldn't kick someone for lipping off at a staff members expense.

Have you tried changing the stitching type on the SL object? Sometimes, and depending on the sculpt map, oddities like this can show up if the stitching type is set to the wrong one.

Ishtara's right, in that very few skin/clothing creators in SL have any sort of formal RW experience in what they do in SL, and quite often what appears to be a "cross-world" talent really isn't. I'm passionate about it in SL, to an obsessive/perfectionist level even, but all that comes from a burning desire to create, and a lot of digital art and 3D character experience in the real world. My interest in it is pretty much specifically confined to the digital realm, as it's only a casual hobby and creative release more than anything tangible.

Benski Trenkins wrote: The only thing that really helps for me in cases like that, is clearing cache and relog I'll agree with that... Sometimes on rare occasion, a texture in the cache gets finalized before it really finishes downloading, so you end up with a blurry texture that doesn't want to be replaced. Rebaking doesn't work because it's just reloading a fuzzy saved texture from the cache, NOT re-downloading it. Clear cache should fix it.

I only buy hair that's copy / mod, and hats are only one of the reasons I refuse to buy anything else. I always edit a copy of a hairstyle to match the hat, because even as boring as it can be at times, it's still less work than tromping around the grid not finding what I want. For removing pieces, I always rez it inworld and do it the easy way... With "edit linked parts" selected, and only the pieces of hair I want to remove highlighted/selected for edit, go to TOOLS-->UNLINK. Click away on something else and then back on the main hair part you want to keep ('edit linked parts' won't be selected anymore), and just move the main hair away from the pieces you cut out.. done. I do it this way because you never have to unlink the main bulk of the hair, so linking screw-ups are almost eliminated. For adjusting sculpted pieces, I usually just reposition them individually and resize them if necessary. For adjusting standard prims (which are almost always a twisted torus), just 'edit linked part' on the individual piece you want and go to the Object tab, then adjust the "Path Cut - Begin" number (the first one by the 'B'). That cuts away (or adds to) the thick part of the prim, which is usually the hair root that touches the scalp. Just cut it away enough so it no longer pokes through the hat, maybe adjust position a little, but it's very easy and doesn't change the look of the hair like making pieces transparent, removing pieces, or drastically resizing pieces does.

Unless you plan to change your AV into a 3D floating, trademarked company logo or something, then the idea of using it as a brand or trademark is nothing more than fools play. As Jessika pointed out with her oh-so-appropriate pic of Phil, one cannot remain static or latch onto a certain appearance and ever hope to not be copied and eclipsed. There is no trademarking or branding of an AV style, look, or combined appearance unless the only things that are in it are protected things not freely available to anyone else. So, unless you don't use the standard AV mesh with clothing, you won't have anything unique for very long, and no legal grounds whatsoever to defend or protect it's originality.

@Kascha - Yes, there is a new under-layer specifically for skin layer tattoos, but it's useful for so many other things as well. If you go into appearance mode and don't see both 'tattoo' and 'alpha' buttons on the left with the rest of the clothing layers, then you'll just need to update your viewer to get them. The tattoo layer is basically a second skin layer for head, upper body, and lower body that shows over the skins textures, but under everything else, so is perfect for tattoos as well as cosmetic or custom alterations. The alpha is a black and white variant of that which tells the viewers which parts of those 3 body textures to render or not, just like a regular transparency texture in a tga or gif file, but can only be either 'all showing' or 'not showing at all' (no semi-transparencies allowed **grumbles and utters something mumbly and offensive towards LL**). Both tattoo layer and alpha layer use the same UV map as normal skin textures do, so one can use any of the free skin/clothing creation templates as a guide. @Dee - Hi there :smileywink::smileyhappy:

Clear your Phoenix Inventory cache ('Clear Inventory Cache' button found in Edit ->Preferences->Network & Folder tab) and relog. It's advisable to also clear your regular cache and specify a different location for the Phoenix cache ('clear cache' and 'Disk Cache Location' on the same tab)... to help keep it from happening again.

One has to have the Advanced menu showing and visible for the Ctrl-Alt-R keyboard shortcut (for rebake) to work. Hit Ctrl-Alt-D (or Show Advanced from Phoenix menu if using Phoenix viewer) to show the Advanced menu. Then once the menu is available you can hit Ctrl-Alt-R (or Advanced Menu->Character->Rebake Textures) and rebake should work.

Canoro Philipp wrote: how about muting the spammers to everyone? the spammers would see their spam all over the forums thinking that he made it, but nobody would see it, and he will not be encouraged to create a new account thinking he is being succesful. That's completely brilliant! A "hide this accounts posts for all except self" control for the mods. The spammers won't be creating all sorts of new accounts, nobodys sees what they post except the spammer, they'll spam less because their old junk isn't deleted by mods, and nobody gives up a thing. An "auto-remove posts older than xx days by this account" would also help with the cleanup. Probably a pipe dream wishing for that, but certainly would put a wrench in their works if it did happen.