FrankLee Anatra

To Nexii and Abu, thank you both very much for the help! For everyone who might read this thread in the future: SL mesh import only reads map channel 1. That's the knowledge I was missing.

I'm at a standstill with texture mapping a mesh. I have successfully exported a mesh from Max with multiple faces that are selectable once imported to SL. I don't import any textures with the mesh. Instead I bake them and render to texture each face. The problem comes when I apply them to the model in-world: only the first textured face that I unwrapped is aligned properly to the mesh. The second and third textures do not line up. My texturing process goes as follows: • make the model an editable mesh • assign selected polygons to each material ID (in this case 3 IDs) • create a Multi/Sub material with three channels • apply UVW Unwrap modifier and put it to channel 1, edit, flatten map • line up all faces of material ID 1 as desired • apply UVW Unwrap modifier and put it to channel 2, edit, flatten map • line up all faces of material ID 2 as desired • apply UVW Unwrap modifier and put it to channel 3, edit, flatten map • line up all faces of material ID 3 as desired • Apply the Multi/sub material to the model Now all of this looks perfect in Max. I light the scene then render to texture the three sides. Then I select the model, reset xform, collapse the stack and export using Autodesk Collada .DAE ( I have Max version 2011) Once in-world, as I said the model will take the texture from channel 1 as expected but the other two faces have lost their mapping. I must be doing something very wrong. Any help would be much appreciated.

According to the original blog post, the fake name feature was due to roll out "in a project release at the end of August and be deployed gridwide in late September" I have no idea if it's actually grid-wide now because I don't use their completely messed up viewer 2.x. I guess I'll know for sure if I see some hapless new person walking around with the unfortunate last name of "Resident" floating over their head. I don't expect any proud announcement about it from LL either. I just wonder if there was anyone around Phillip Rosedale during their brainstorm/planning session who had the foresight and guts to speak up to say, "There could be a big backlash against this idea which will force us to plaster everyone's real SL name AND fake SL name everywhere in-world and on the site. The confusion and need for double sets of names everywhere may negate the whole purpose of the project and make us all look stupid." I doubt anyone thought of that or if they did, spoke up about it. The more believable scenario was probably a bunch of nervous employees with huge grins on their faces saying, "Yes, Phillip! It's a great idea, Phillip! That's a good one, Phillip! Wish it away to the cornfield, Phillip! Please, wish it to the cornfield!" In the case of your Fake Names idea, Phillip, please wish it away to the cornfield!

So gang, here's a little twist. It's been announced that Avatars United is being shut down. .....anyone wanna take a bet that that little announcement and this "feature" are somehow related (though not necessarily at the exact same time.). Cause for me? Survey says YEP. I can clearly see how AU was not going to play nice with display names. It wasn't set up for one account to have a bazillion aliases that can be updated at will when the in-world data changes. I think It's pretty disgusting that LL bought a site that was for ALL MMOs and now is dumping all the accounts for the other worlds like WOW, etc. What a way to spread good will across the built-in demographic for potential SL'ers</sarcasm> Also, I just am going to throw in and say that I am already confident that aside from Ann's suggestion about coloring display/usernames differently, this feature is going to roll out *exactly* as it currently is, and no matter what we think or say makes a kidney bean's worth of difference. Just sayin. No doubt. Never did think it would. Good business decisions have repeatedly proven not to be LL's forte. Reinforces the belief that their initial success was purely an accident of right place, right time coincidence especially when one watches them scramble to chase after internet fads like Twitter and Facebook instead of blazing new trails and leading the way. However, their boondoggle with charging for SLExchange listings was quietly forgotten. But I suspect that it will rear its ugly head after they get through moving to the new site. Right now it's a complete and utter mess operationally speaking so charging for listings could still be years away.

I am willing to voice my opinions, as mine are as valid as anyone else's. Let us try to debate the pros and cons rather than impeaching the character of those who you don't agree with. Good advice you should first try applying to yourself: Insight Homewood said: http://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2010/09/13/changes-to-display-names-based-on-your-feedback#comment-786783 "It is, as I see it, selfish self-interest in protecting your "business," and a myopic view that SL should cater toward your needs because you 'drive the economy.'" "It is amazing to me that so many creators are so narrow minded and self interested that they can't see for the life of them, the big picture." ----------------------- Insight Homewood said: http://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2010/09/13/changes-to-display-names-based-on-your-feedback#comment-787325 "This worry over the possibility of imposters is absolutely ludicrous. You people who seem to be so afraid that someone can make their display name the same as you and successfully ruin your reputation are so unlikely it is laughable. Are you all so paranoid to think people are out to get you? To thine own self be true. Why are you so concerned about what others think about you?" ------------------------ Insight Homewood said: http://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2010/09/13/changes-to-display-names-based-on-your-feedback#comment-787458 "If you are so paranoid to think this is going to be widespread and the destruction of Second Life as we know it, then get out of the game." "Do you people think the rest of us are so stupid that we could not tell the difference? Either you are so arrogant to dismiss the intelligence of the rest of us or are so introverted, you only see the trees in front of you and don't know you are in a forest." ------------------------------ Insight Homewood said: http://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2010/09/13/changes-to-display-names-based-on-your-feedback#comment-787649 "Why did you give your Alt your real life name? OH, wait, you gave it the same Second Life user name. Oh dear, so does this mean your alt is going to go grief your real name? Wait, wait.. don't tell me, you think I am being sarcastic." --------------------------------- Please find me a single instance in this thread where people against this idea have attacked those posters who are for it with as much repetition and fervor as you and Werewolf have. I got sick of reading your attacks and decided to push back and now I see you preaching about how we should refrain from such things. LOL What you really mean is that we should just shut up and quietly take your abuse. Not hardly.

It will take time for people to adjust. Nothing will stop the griefers and fraudsters though, and while this may increase the number of attempts, it also will give LL clear audit trails with which to ban people for fraud, rather than the ambiguous and difficult to verify information they usually get from fraud reports now. Banning some a-hole's day-old throw-away avatar does not and will not help those who were screwed over by this new griefer tool; never has been the answer, never will be the answer. Yes, griefing has been in SL and will be in SL even if this griefer tool is not launched, but making it easier to do harm is not a solution to a griefing/con/theft problem. The standard justification goes as follows: "Since there is crime in a place already, we may as well put up with a little more and make crime just a little easier to pull off. People will adjust to it in time" I get the argument. I don't with it agree at all! Because if that's the logic put forth as a way to MAYBE get more residents to come in, then it's heavily flawed. The only guarantee from this "feature" will be MORE VICTIMS of fraud. But at least it will supposedly be a minority of egotistical business owners it happens to. Who wouldn't get a chuckle at sticking it to those greedy so and sos? Smooth move, Phillip!

I do not discount that such things happen already. I do not discount that an impersonation can take place. I do say, it is an unfair world we live in. Those of us who get it, accept what we can, change what we can. Fro those those who can't, the world is always unfair, and what Linden Labs will roll out is unfair, only because of the potential. What I dislike is this potential problem being exaggerated as if it is going to be a major problem If you swim with sharks, you have to know how to bite and feed with them. As far as making real life money in SL, yes, a small minority depend on that income. If your income in SL is marginal for living purposes, I would say you might want to look into something with a bit more security. If you depend on SL for your life's necessities, I can understand your attitude, but I still can think that is a foolish to put your eggs into such a fragile basket. Remember the dot.com bust? Whose to say Linden Labs doesn't go belly up someday in the not too far distant future? It could happen, since there was a major corporate downsizing recently. It is the economy after all; its bad all over. You realize you can't get away from bad people. Second Life is not a shot at utopia that some folks think it is. There are few problems in SL that are not duplicated in real life. I think if you want as much protection as laws enable for real life businesses, then you have no business trying to succeed in Second Life. Life just isn't as fair as you want it to be. I'll disregard your lengthy strawman arguments, your exaggerations about people's motives here who disagree with you and your sermon on how nothing in life is fair and crime is everywhere, duh. And just say this: This change is a bad business move simply because it will not make it harder to grief and steal and con people in-world. It will make it easier -- and even those like yourself who obviously resent people doing business in-world can't argue that fact away with a straight face.

As Axi said, usernames will be unique. And it won't take as many brain cells to know that the display name FrankLee Anatra belonging to the user franklee.anatra is not being impersonated. My problem is that I am not only paid personally for playing a venue (not through a vendor object) which means a busy venue owner could be spoofed into paying someone else and NOT me, but in the not too distant future someone will be able to approach a venue owner wearing the Display Name FrankLee Anatra (or any other performer/DJ's display name) and try to get a gig there. I could be seeing myself in the live music search playing at various venues at the same time. That is bad bad news for my group members trying to find my show! How utterly egotistical of me! But I digress. I meant to illustrate that the people signing up after this bad idea has been implemented will be conditioned to regard their username as unimportant as long as it's unique because they will be able to choose at will what people call them in-world. So new users will think up junk to put in at the sign up process to get it over with; junk like billybill4039 for instance. Now lets say billybill4039 calls himself William Tell in-world and lives his second life for a while, makes friends and then maybe an enemy. That enemy wants to mess with his relationships in SL, so he creates an alt with an account name of billybll4039 and calls it William Tell. What fun that moron could have then, huh? It takes a bit more than a few brain cells to distinguish between the two usernames, and as Axi points out, the real damage might probably be spread by misinformed gossipers telling others about how old Willie Tell was caught being a subversive no-good weasel.

Insight Homewood said: "Axi, I agree with most of what you say. Your arguement in the end, is a presumption I find hard to take. As I understand Second Life, very, very few people are famous grid-wide. While any sim owner with high traffic can number thousands of unique visitors weekly, of those visitors, only small percentage actually know who owns the sim, so that sim owner isn't as famous as they might think. Second Life is so vast that as I see it, there are many big fish in small ponds in Second Life. One person I can say is grid-wide famous is Craig Altman. I bet a majority of people here would not know who he is. Bits and Bobs animations is who he is. I think it is ego-bound for someone who feels well-known because they have a few hundred friends in their circles in Second Life. Since smartness and observational are characteristics that vary among a continuum in the population I would not be so concerned of that small minority at the one edge of the bell curve as so many seem to be so urgently afraid of. Another observation I have made from when I was a mentor, there are a minority of people who caused a lot of issues at welcome centers. Many experienced citizens were there to bait new folks and cause problems. It was a case of a small minority causing a very large problem. I have noticed the most griefiing occurrs where there are a lot of new folks and on sims where a lot of young (in rl age) folks congregate. I think it has something to do with all those hormones and such." ------------------------------------- So it's okay with you that people get griefed with new griefer tools suppied by LL as long as they are content creators and those trying to run a business in SL because they are in the minority? Got it. Who cares about them? Obviously not LL ... and you. By your own admission, you are in no position to observe how often a Stilleto Moody or Bits and Bobs business has to fend off thieves, con artists and dishonest competitors' antics. This tool will make all of that even easier now. If you are in the majority with that anti-business attitude, then good luck with your game. It won't last long without the economy.

@ Insight: Why did you give your Alt your real life name? OH, wait, you gave it the same Second Life user name. Oh dear, so does this mean your alt is going to go grief your real name? Wait, wait.. don't tell me, you think I am being sarcastic. Until the world functions for a few months with Display Names in the wild, none of us KNOW how it will be. Actually, if you do, I think Linden Labs would love to have you in their employ. I think Linden Labs experiments with changes. I would advise you to go about your business in SL and not worry so much. Worry can cause your blood pressure to rise, making Second Life less fun, and possibly shortening your real life. So now you are resorting to belittling someone who speaks English as a second language? You have offered nothing in this thread but personal attacks and put-downs for people voicing their concerns and opinions. Do you not realize that if you could easily defend your point you wouldn't need to act the way you've been acting toward us? I for one would appreciate it if you could be content with your first of numerous put-downs way up above in the thread and just know that it applies to all of us who dare to voice our opinions which run counter to your all-knowing reason. We all get it: you think that those of us bringing up concerns are just being silly, paranoid and/or egotistical. You are confident that everyone will be smart enough to check profiles to make sure they're dealing with the person they expect to be dealing with, and also that the Lindens must protect their name because we're all too dumb to check profiles to make sure we're really dealing with a Linden. You want it both ways, and that makes perfect sense to you. We get it. We bore you. Thanks for the arrogance and condescension. Have some back, Sparky. Cheers!

Hi Ponsonby, I think it will take a while for the test grid to get the information regarding a newly made account/avatar. Sometime quite a while.

I look forward to the day when an attorney for Linden Lab has to stand in front of a judge and explain why the company shielded itself and it's employees' identities from the tools it created which helped crooks steal its customers' identities. It will be one heck of a spin job. After completely ignoring this subject in three blog threads and numerous jiras, LL has proven it has no argument that will stand the smell test when it comes to the safety of its product and why it can't expose itself to the junk it is pushing on its customers. If this were a car company that made a model of car with crappy brakes for the general public but made a version of the same model car with good brakes for the company's owners and employees, they would be in serious trouble! The living I make in SL is JUST AS IMPORTANT as the living LL makes off of me and its other customers. I reiterate to the deaf ears at LL: Show us just how safe your display name idea is. Open up the Linden name to the public and see how wonderful your SL experience will become! Grow a pair and put your reputation where your mouth is!

Charging a fee - no matter how large - to change an avatar's name isn't going to stop a griefer (and most likely not a scam artist either) because the first display name will be free when one opens an account and that's usually when a griefer strikes: on day zero! Every time I've been griefed at a concert it was by a zero-day-old noob avi. The kiddy clowns aren't going to care if it costs them something to change that throw-away's name. Next time they want to grief they'll just sign up again with a new account and choose the display name to spoof the person who is the object of their affection for that day! And yes, the next stop for this wonderful display name idea is for LL to share our personal account details with other social networking sites. I won't be surprised if there is a plan to target in-world advertising banners to load real world ads that are "customized to our buying habits" when our avatars come near them. Greed is the word of the day at LL. Greed plain and simple, and they don't care how many oldbies they chase away to get that coveted 500 million user base they are so jealous of. Who wants to take bets they'll eventually code into v2.x a new place for banner ads displaying real life products for the real life account holders to sit and look at while running around in-world. After all, why not? FaceBookers are perfectly content to put up with that crap. "Your friends like this product! You should too! Click now to buy!" First life is creeping into Second Life before our eyes. They should just be up front with their plans and rename it "First Life Lite."

@Darien. Agreed, but my point was that even the crappiest of todays computers can get anyone onto FaceBook, Twitter, etc. with little to no tech savvy or effort. This latest display name change to SL will do nothing to garner new members who are just fine socializing on those web sites. The two friends I did manage to convince to try SL had no problem with the way they picked their names, but they ran into nothing but technical problems once in-world, like crashes and lag. And since they had to use the lowest viewer settings just to be able to move around, their in-world view looked fuglier than a three-year-old's finger painting. Nothing about the effort made them want to continue. And so far neither one of them has come back. And no amount of new abilities to link their FB accounts to SL will lure them back. It's anecdotal, I know but it's probably not that uncommon. I want more people to come to SL! But bad ideas like display names will only cause more existing content creators to leave in disgust rather than continue to sign on to LL's "sunk cost" keep-on-frantically-bailing-out-the-sinking-ship mentality which AK describes above.

Exactly, AK! I have tried to bring so many of my friends into SL only to be met with questions like, "Do you need a super computer to use SL?" and "I don't have a PC that can handle that stuff." They won't come in and try it! Second Life is to social networking as Bed & Breakfasts are to the lodging industry. Only a small percentage will like it. The rest want something else entirely. Look at it this way: if Facebook were an application people had to install separately instead of simply using the web browser that is already there and ready to use, there would NOT be a half-billion FaceBook users. There would be nowhere near that many FB'ers. If FaceBook required a strong video card to be installed on people's PCs there would be very few FB'ers as well. This goes for Twitter, MySpace and every other successful social networking site. The people at LL are fooling themselves into thinking that everyone will love them if they remake themselves into something they're not, never have been, and never can be... unless they do away with the whole virtual world concept and dumb it down to just another text-based website.