Da5id Weatherwax

Read all of this with the understanding that I completely suck at rigging unrigged: No weights painted on the vertices in blender, any avatar accessory functions just like the older prim-based ones - stick it to an attachment point, position and size to fit, it then follows the attachment point. rigged: Vertices weighted to the SL skeleton. No matter where you attach it, it takes its position from the skeleton and cannot be resized (because the skeleton dictates where every vertex ends up, no matter what "size" the unattached object is). As the avatar moves, the individual vertices follow the movement of the bone(s) they are weighted to. So to use your example of a ring: Unrigged it would be able to be sized to fit any hand or be worn on any finger, but it would only be suitable for a non-bento hand as it would not follow the finger bones as they animate. Rigged, you'd have to size it and position it to fit the hand model it was to be worn on in blender, not inworld, but the weighting would be easy - every vertex would be 100% weighted to a single finger bone so the ring would follow that bone without distortion. Most ear-rings you wouldn't need to rig - the ears have attachment points and they track pretty well. (human avs, that is.. when you get into non-human ears all bets are off) Other piercings and body enhancements, yes - you will probably need to rig these. They will need to move with the vertices of the rigged body surface that they pierce. What's more they will probably have to be fitmesh rigged (to the volumes rather than the 'animation bones") because if they are not they won't fit for all ranges of the body shape sliders. As for whether or not you "need" avastar to rig to the SL avatar in blender, technically no you don't but practically you'd be nuts to try and do without it. Everything accomplished by the python scripts, painstaking modeling and in-blender coding that Gaia put together to make avastar can be done without it in blender, but you will face a learning curve like the southwest face of Everest and months of frustration before you start making it work at all well for SL, even if you've some experience building rigged models for other engines. So spend the few bucks on avastar instead of handing over a lot more to your nearest bartender, therapist or both.

That can't be Grandma's truck. She refuses to drive anything but a Chevy, thinks all Fords are overpriced junk. And the look on her face when I hauled her Chevy outta the snow-bank with my beaten-up old land rover was priceless.

There is only one right way to arrive in Hell... and that's in style and with plenty of company

Starting from the model I created as an example (so admittedly without the post and clip the OP wants to keep) highest LOD ended up as 369 tris. Reducing that by just merging or dissolving adjacent edge loops I was able to set medium as "use LOD above" and low at 111 tris. The lowest was a 3-tri impostor. In the default viewer set to medium graphics, zooming out from it I couldn't see the LOD switches unless I had the edit highlight enabled and was watching closely. That had minimal server, download and phys weights and was as cheap an upload as a model can get. If I was truly trying to optimize the heck out of it I'd have set the 111-tri model as medium and created an even smaller one for low....

I agree - but there is this "SL-ism" - reducing the highest LOD too much makes it hard to get acceptable lower LODs. - I'd prefer that the SL weight calcs recognized that the high LODs are "pretty low" and didn't penalize you for the lower ones being too close to their tri-count, but unfortunately it does. Sometimes an optimization pass omitted from the highest LOD and reserved for the lower ones makes sense just for SL.

ok. That makes sense.. Starting from the optimized model I showed you, for the post, you could get away with adding less than 32 tris - one extra edge loop on the back of the button, extrude it to make the post, then reduce it down to 8 sides from the 16 used for the button (edge slide the extras over to meet their neighbors then remove duplicate vertices) - smooth shading at that scale will make it impossible to tell it isn't a perfect cylinder. The clip, the dual curve makes it less easy to do cheaply but again, with the right faces shaded smooth or flat (an option that the uploader does respect) I'd be very surprised if you couldnt manage it at about the same magnitude ... Feel free to msg me if you want

OMG... talk about legal crack....

To quote Richard Thompson.... ... Miss, you don't know me, but can't we pretend That we care for each other 'til the band reach the end. One step for aching, two steps for breaking Waltzing's for dreamers and losers in love. One step for sighing, two steps for crying, Waltzing's for dreamers and losers in love. ...

I'd dance with you anytime - When it comes to couple dances I'm mostly a ballroom or latin guy, taking shameless advantage of the ability of SL animators to make me a better dancer than I'll ever be IRL (IRL I can waltz or twostep fairly well, and manage an acceptable but mediocre foxtrot - most of the latin repertoire is beyond me)

I don't use SL features for it, instead plugging the modules I want into the fx channel on my mixer, but when I've been in scifi RP zones and vox is enabled a little chorus and reverb on the mic channel can be tweaked into a reasonable Borg voice and, of course, there is the classic ring-modulation to vocally turn you into a Dalek...

@ChinRey is, as usual, correct - and so, @DAT4BASE, If I came across as "heavy" or overbearing, I do apologize.

The more I see of this thread the more I want to beg you not to upload that model like this. Your model is 4.6K tris. For an ear-ring! This one (losing the clip and post because they will never be seen, also losing the hole in the button because it isn't needed but keeping the one in the drop) is 364 ....and if you're zoomed in close enough to anyone in SL to see their ear-rings this big, I suspect that their jewelry is not what you're concentrating on!

Some things for folks who think of interesting things to do with weapon/vehicle/whatever scripts.... (although these would also require corresponding server-side stuff) A set of "arbitrary controls" mappable to keystrokes in the viewer (by default unbound) and corresponding expansion of the control functionality in LSL to include CONTROL_CUSTOM00 .. CONTROL_CUSTOMnn Direct access to joystick devices - maybe something like list llReadJoysticks() that returns a list of vectors giving the <x,y,z> position of each axis of the analog devices available to the users viewer or possibly a llPollSticks(float interval) that functions a bit like the timer and raises a joystick(list positions) event at the interval specified, either one with control events for CONTROL_BUTTONnn responding to all the stick buttons.

(me being ON topic for once) No. I've no alts other than a couple of "crash test dummies" who never rez outside my workshop and probably never will have. Right from the start I put a lot of effort into my SL self and my avatars being "me" - not necessarily in appearance (although there is always one that's reasonably close) but in that they always express a genuine aspect of who I am. Even my username when I first signed up was a laborious process of searching for surnames that struck a chord, that connected with a part of who I was, then hoping that my real first name was available for them. (ok, actually my real MIDDLE name, because there's a funny tradition in my family that the eldest lad in each generation goes by his middle name - I haven't ever used my actual first name on anything but tax forms or legal stuff) Unfortunately that latter part was a futile effort because "David" is such a common name that it was always gone by the time I found one of the surnames I could live with, along with just about all alternate spellings too. Fortunately, my voracious appetite for books of every genre came to my rescue. The hacker and founder of The Black Sun in "Snow Crash" put a 5, for the roman v, in his name and I'm a hardcore IT geek so I gleefully appropriated "Da5id" and if I was pulling one name from a book, why not the other - and being deeply involved in the pagan community the choice was obvious. Having put that much effort into being "me" in some meaningful fashion, there's no way I would ever let this account go and start over. I may "reinvent" myself, create a new avatar that expresses a different side of myself, move on to doing different things in (second) life, but I am the sum of my life in both the real and virtual worlds and to attempt to deny that and totally recreate myself in either one is folly - at least for me.

If you must perpetuate the cancer that is resize scripts, scale the local positions of linked prims by the same factor as you scale their sizes. Don't forget to take account of the object maybe moving or rotating, particularly if it's being worn while being resized. The math is simple enough once you take account of all the factors that need to be scaled to keep your item in proportion and correctly assembled. Why not just make the object mod-perm? Then the user can scale it in proportion just by dragging an edit handle. (If you say one word about security there's a trout-slap incoming for spreading misinformation, because the myth that a no-mod item is somehow more secure from content thieves is absolutely false) And while I was quite prepared to tell you what math you need to have your script do, there is no way I'm touching the code, no matter how much you offer to pay me. Not one line of my code will ever be written for this purpose, that's how much I despise resizer scripts.

That's a HUGE amount of geometry for something like an earring, some - like the post and clip - that will never even be seen when it's worn. Anyone who would want to wear that must really love how they look as a jelly-doll

HTT? asks the guy who is actually acknowledged as clergy by two different religions IRL (stretching the definition of "interfaith minister" until the seams creak) Actually, scratch that.. some of the most UNholy folks I've ever met have also been clergy in their own right.......

I know you said the HUD was a linkset, which is certainly the easiest way to build one, but have you considered making it a planar mesh, either using different materials assigned to faces that act as placeholders for your buttons and llDetectedFace to determine which one was clicked or using a single face with llDetectedTouchST or llDetectedTouchUV to determine arbitrary regions of the face or texture that can be buttons or not depending on the context in the script? Then hiding a button is just a matter of changing a texture and having whether clicking there actually does anything or not totally under the control of the script. Personally I've found one of these approaches to offer greater flexibility when the HUD has to "change context" in normal operation, albeit requiring a little more care in scripting it. When hiding the entire HUD, of course a rotated planar mesh will occupy zero area on teh screen and be totally invisible. (and unclickable, but a tiny face at right angles to the rest of it will give you a very small "click to bring it back" area)

The transaction_result event in response to a successful llTransferLindenDollars() call will even give the script the transaction id - so if that's reported you can link that directly to your account history. If the transfer failed the result will tell the script exactly why, and the script can decide whether to retry the transfer or report to the intended recipient that "so-and-so owes you X in tip shares that failed to transfer...."

3 years ago I went looking for venues where their online profile indicated that they (even occasionally) featured my particular genre of music or that they made a point of taking on newer performers - a "tech refresh" on my gear had led to it being possible for me to stream as well as perform IRL. I attended a few sets at them, particularly noting if their calendar was active at a SL time where my RL TZ would permit me to perform, then politely IMed the host at one of those sets asking who to contact if I wanted to be considered to play at their venue.... That got me my first regular set, during those a couple of other venue owners contacted me and a couple of other artists suggested places to contact and it built from there. Since then, there has been a little turnover in the places I play regularly, some have closed, some have shifted genres such that I no longer fit... When that happens and I have a gap in my calendar I start looking all over again, following the same methodology. It's not too unlike the RL music scene, contact several before you get to audition and several auditions before you get a booking with word-of-mouth the icing on the cake that "pays off" more frequently....

I suspect that a lot of the tipjar scripts with a split that "don't work" or give errors are using the basic (and older) llGiveMoney function. This has no way of telling if the transaction succeeded or not and therefore no way of gracefully handling errors. Using llTransferLindenDollars, and properly handling the asynchronous result of that transaction is marginally more complex but still hardly rocket science, particularly if the person getting the tips and who they are splitting it with are static rather than the object being a club tipjar that several performers might log in to. Handling that latter case would take more code and potential error-handling of course but not really that much - certainly still a task that smells a little cheesy to be claiming it's such a "work of programming art" that it deserves to be more than a free script in a library somewhere. If I get a couple of idle hours I might even create one and post it in the appropriate section of these forums.

ToS is, as Lucia pointed out, something that we may try to read with common sense but the LL Governance team are the "supreme court" where that is concerned - it means what they say it means. I can see one or two in the "laundry list" that I suspect they might raise an eyebrow or two at, but that's just my opinion and of marginally less significance than spitting in the Atlantic. If you think you're even skating close to the limits of the ToS then all you can do is try and get their answer to a ticket in advance or risk making it and see if they slap you for it. In general, reverse engineering an API, as an act in itself, cannot fall foul of any IP protection. IP laws, whether patent, copyright, trademark or any other variant thereof, do not - and cannot - protect knowledge. That's what secrecy laws and NDAs within contracts are for. IP laws protect the expression of it, as creative or artistic works or particular methods and mechanisms applying that knowledge. Provided you use no tools that are otherwise prohibited - an SL example would be a hacked viewer - reverse engineering itself is fine. Even if you do use a "prohibited tool" to do it, it is the use of the tool that would attract a sanction not the acquisition of the knowledge. It is only in making use of what you learn in that process you need to consider whether you're crossing any IP lines, whether or not you are making use of an IP resource you do not own in a way that you are not permitted to.

I love performing, but also will "honor the booking" and, for both these reasons, give the best performance I can even if my host couldn't get online and the place is empty. I might get lucky and snag somebody who just happens to log back in at their last location or stops by sim-hopping into sticking around for a song or two.Somebody not even in-world could pick up the stream. I'm not going to lie, any tips are "income" for me and contribute to gear maintenance, stream rental, spare strings etc, but if anyone is going to understand where you're at being short of (real or virtual) cash from time to time it's a musician! For the most part we don't have a "financially secure" existence. Should you be in the same boat that's no reason not to share the music with you anyway and it is a lot more fun if you're there. The music is what it's about. If I can entertain you and send you away feeling like you haven't wasted your time listening, that's the real reward.

Valid use-cases that violate neither the ToS nor anyone's IP: You have multiple HUD-controlled items from different creators. You want to make a single HUD that controls a subset of those items functionality for your own use - you'll still use the supplied HUDs for other functions but most of the time you will only be wearing your stripped-down (and less laggy) version to control the lot. You have multiple scripted items, each with their own APIs and you are attempting to coordinate their actions. Clean reverse-engineering (ie, without circumventing permissions, without reading any of the creators script code etc) is NOT an IP infringement under the protections that apply to LSL scripts and you just need to do it using tools that do not violate the ToS. Things like detecting script/anim UUIDs that you're not "supposed to have" and using them usually is a violation so while this is actually easier than reverse engineering an API and just issuing the right commands, the latter is the "legal" way to do it.

As a performer, I get a bit peeved when hosts/staff/scripts are too spammy with "encouragement" to tip - it detracts from my performance. My tip jar will thank them politely in one line of chat if/when they do, no silly unicode or ascii art and will emphatically not poof particles everywhere, make noise or do anything else distracting or lag-inducing. Fortunately I'm lucky enough to usually work with regular hosts at the venues I play at and I've only had to actually ask them to dial it back a couple of times - we work out what works best for us both and, because we're working together every week, that tends to stick. Now, I have been grumbled at by both venue staff and punters for not thanking folks personally, but usually only once and it stops after I point out the practicalities... Firstly, my hands are on my guitar, not my keyboard (even slapping a "key" to trigger the next lighting or anim cue is done via a USB-connected footswitch) so typing is out of the question, even between songs. (Have you ever tried using a keyboard while standing with a guitar slung around your neck and not have it bounce off the screen, your mic stand or whatever the keyboard is resting on?) Responding on-mic is a possibility between songs but there's at least 20 seconds buffering on the stream. I'm probably already singing the next one by now and won't be talking again until it's done. If the timing works out I will thank you personally on-mic but 9 times out of 10 it just doesn't.