Nalates Urriah

There is usually a way to see the skin tone you previously chose. Try with a copy of the old body and HUD and see if it will show you the settings. It is also possible to sort of feel your way to the right settings. Use the viewer's Color Under Cursor. It will not give you the "TONE" color setting. But, it will let you compare old and new bodies. You can see if you need more red, blue, or green to get a match. You trial and error your way in to the right settings. Be careful which Windlight setting you use. Once you have the settings, type them into the folder name for the body. Next time you will have them.

To post to more than 30 (?) groups one has to be a PRO member. There used to be a Grease Monkey app for Flickr so one could one-click post to a batch of groups. Today I find the site for the app is gone. I assume posting to 400+ groups is a matter of patience or OCD... or they still have the app.

The reason you are inundated with body parts is a technical issue. People wear a load of attachments. As all these things download and fully render you see the avatar as the owner intended. The first minute in a new region is a time when the viewer lacks all the information to correctly render everything. The result is you see arms, legs, boobs, butts, genitals, and whatever floating around the avatar. Clothes rendering off to the side expose even the body parts that have finished rendering. There is a minute or two of chaos while things download. About all you can do is close your eyes as soon as you TP. Count to one hundred and then open them... Orwar is right. Wearing stuff that isn't going to be seen is pointless and a bit inconsiderate. It would be great if people didn't do that. However, it is on the fascist side to force people to do what you want so you can have things as you want. If they are ignorant, that doesn't give us the right to force our opinions on them.

That addiction is kinda like alcoholism... some consider a disease... but you can get your shots for it at your local bar. You can post here to feed your photo addiction... or is that feed our addiction... 😕 ...not sure. But, it is fun.

Adding Butt-Jiggle to the Maitreya body is possible. But, that would make it incompatible with all existing 'made for Maitreya' clothes. The way that works is by the body being rigged* to bones in the skeleton (techy talk: armature). The SL skeleton is a mix of Bento and pre-Bento bones. Not all of those bones are connected to an appearance slider. Maitreya did NOT rig the butt to the bones and sliders that Avatar Physics uses to make Butt-Jiggle. That rigging is visible in the Maitreya Dev Kit. *Clothes are made using the kit and rigged to the same bones and sliders as the body. The 'rigging' process assigns values to each vertex in the body/clothes that tell the viewer what to do with that vertex when a "BONE" or slider moves. A vertex in the clothes and the nearby one in the body maintain a distance and position from the BONE. When the clothes use the same weights as the body things move together. THe body and clothes are 'independent'. Neither knows about the other. If Maitreya changes the body and uploads a new version all the clothes makers would have to update their clothes and upload clothes with the new values. Otherwise the vertices would not move 'together'. Everybody has to use the same numbers on every vertex or you get a bad fit and lots of poke-through. So, a new version butt would/could bounce. But, existing clothes would not bounce. Maitreya's choice is to remain compatible with your existing clothes or try and force you to buy all new...

It depends on what you mean by "adopt". Everybody, including Lindens updates mesh bodies. Every so often it could be said the Lab adopts new bodies, making them the Starter Avatars for new users. Original Ruth/Roth bodies are written into the viewer. A change to that code changes the body of anyone using the viewer and a Classic body. It is that body the Starter Avatars basically replace. But, those bodies are not built into the viewer. I don't expect the Lab to change the Ruth/Roth code in the viewer. I do expect new starter avatars. I think most if not all those Starters were made by non-Lindens and acquired by the Lab. The Ruth 2.0 in the MP is just another 3rd Party mesh body that uploads. If the Lab steps in and competes with designers giving away stuff for free, the Lab loses money. Lose enough and SL closes. Things are changing. But, the Lab will always need an income. I think BoM is an attempt to return people to the original way avatars work. I think BoM will reduce the learning curve. I expect the next set of starter avatars to use BoM and be much simpler to learn. The only reason I suspect the Lab hasn't done that is a lack of manpower. They have hired more people and they are still behind schedule on a couple of big features/projects. We may see EEP roll out in February... or at least by March. The new guy Linden said EEP is in the Burn Down phase, meaning the are fixing bugs faster than they are being reported. So, I expect soon... Cute avatar. When you turn up your graphics, reduce the Draw Distance. Turning graphics up may drop your viewer frame rate, but your mouse and clicks should be OK. Turning up Draw Distance increases the data load as more servers have to talk to the viewer and the com channel gets crowded which can result in a sluggish mouse or keyboard. A low frame rate, below 10, can make the mouse and keys seem slow as it takes a bit for the effect to show on screen. You sort of have to figure out what is being slow verses looking slow. As long as the server FPS (44) and Time Dilation (1.0) are good the mouse and keys should be decent along with the avatar moving even if jerky. With the Draw Distance high and com slow, the avatar keeps walking or standing for a couple of seconds after you press or release the keys or make clicks. Experiment to see what works well for you.

It's that legacy thing the Lab has. Their long history of maintaining legacy compatibility in all but extreme cases is the primary reason. Don't Break Existing Content... All the time I have been here people have asked the Lindens about a new Avatar 2.0... same answer for years, existing content. Firestorm has a Classic avatar fix that improves the UV Map and if I remember correctly improves the vertices arrangement. But, it only affects your viewer, only you see it and it has to be reinstalled with each viewer update. It isn't great but it is a nice improvement. Mesh bodies are still better. Ruth/Roth is built into the viewer. It is a bit tricky to get an original Ruth/Roth avatar these days. They are no longer the Test Male/Female bodies. From these changes one could speculate they are working to eventually eliminate the original Ruth/Roth avatars. But, I doubt it. There is also the economic side of things. Once an industry builds up the Lindens won't wipe it out. If they did, the incentive to produce content for SL would die and creators would go elsewhere to be creative. There is a reputation to keep. The idea is to keep SL healthy, which means the Lab has to show a profit. They have done a good job so far, albeit with some bumps.

The most active Flickr-SL group on Flickr and in-world I know is Too Sexy for this Group SL! Moderate group! They are chatting everyday and often adding Flickr links in chat. Plus, they have in-world parties and art exhibits. PS: This came up in chat in the group: [09:57] We also .. btw .. have a new area on the SIM .. main gallery .. called Ed Rhodes Scenic SIMS gallery ... Ed has championed putting up pics and LMs to some of the best SIMs on the grid for taking pictures Check it out if you've not done so already PPS: I didn't realize how hard it is to look up te gallery if you don't know the group, until I tried... here is the link.

A good source of inspiration that is quick and easy is Flickr's groups that require SLURLs. https://www.flickr.com/groups/secondlifelandscapes/ https://www.flickr.com/groups/sl_photo_locales_/ There are also the backdrop places in SL... just search backdrop... This is me trying the Maitreya v5 demo. I wrote up what my take of the body is. You'll notice the exotic location and amazing backdrop...

I got the v5 demo and tried it out. I wanted to compare it to the v4... Oops... I only had a v3 demo. So I used that. In the process I caught the HD nipples pre-render and posted a picture here. (Borderline NSFW) You can see the HD nipple is an overlay. If you wear a system shirt, the nipples will be on top of the shirt. But one should not be wearing large textures no one can see... Good question. I suspect human nature. People have egos and beliefs. Challenge either and you are in trouble. So, my thinking and way of doing things is the best. I am just waiting for the world to be woke enough to realize that. In a sense, yes. But, ultimately we decide where to spend our L$. And... we have the freedom to learn how things are built and build our own. Udemy.com offers a Blender 2.8 course of 33 hours of video for US$16 (formerly $187 but they use 2.8 Beta in the videos). I'll be all set as soon as a find a place selling talent. 22 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said: If a recognized and successful maker like Signature can't get support for one of it's female bodies, what hope is there for an unknown? My thinking is the problem is in the marketing. It is easier for the well known. The unknown have to work harder and provide a better product & service. Maitreya was once an unknown. They haven't changed the game, they have achieved dominance. But, someone was dominant before them.

64-bit is what the majority of users are running. Whether 32 or 64 bit you should see a render when you log in. Your new computer is likely not as new as you think* nor does it have a dedicated graphics card/chip. Or it may possibly have a graphics chip that is not turned on, common in laptops to save battery. In the viewer's HELP->About copy that info and paste it in with any tech questions you ask. *Some company's sell new (as in never sold or used before) computers that have 2nd and 3rd generation CPU's. Makes then really inexpensive. The newest Intel CPU is 10th gen. Without a dedicated graphics processor you have to have a 5th, I think, gen or newer CPU. So, paste in the specs from HELP and we can tell if this is the problem.

It is a good idea to keep a copy of everything you buy. I keep the original package and I also don't use the item I unpacked. I use a copy. A number of times I have deleted an item and made a new copy from the original. If the items are Mod-OK you can select them and Restart Scripts. I edit the item and then from the top of screen Build menu I click Scripts->Restart. If the items are No-Mod, you have to make a new copy form a backup or get redelivery.

The step by step for finding the connection issue is here http://blog.nalates.net/2011/10/26/troubleshoot-your-sl-connection/

This last Tuesday (Feb 4) the Lindens said the server version that supports name changes is rolling out. I am not sure they actually done working on the server side. The project turned out to be much bigger than the Lindens anticipated. I don't recall any comment about when we might see the viewer and web sides of the change.

If you are referring to the various 'online status' reports scattered through the viewer, it is a known bug. I often look at profiles of people I just clicked on in-world and see the status in the profile as off-line. I am not sure why it is difficult to fix, but it is and the Lindens do NOT see it has a high priority. Work time is being spent on other issues and projects.

At Tuesday's Server-Scripting UG, Feb 4, Rider Linden said he was working on improving region crossings by eliminating some of the server-to-server communication overhead. One of the attendees said they had experienced good crossings this last week (#5). 'Good' was not quantified... A 1 in 16 chance of disconnecting is an improvement over what it has been. Still there are some regions that mess up. Those have to be restarted to get them working well.

Whirly told you that in Firestorm there is a Debug Setting you can change. BUT, the viewer is going to override that setting and use HTTP no matter what you set that setting to. You cannot effectively change the setting. Madelaine gave you the setting name. But what is the point of changing a setting that doesn't work? To have your viewer work with SL it has to use HTTP. There is no other choice. The SL servers will ONLY deliver content via the HTTP protocol. Without the HTTP protocol active nothing in SL will render, no buildings, no clothes, no avatars.

Excellent job on the reflection. Way nice image. It should be interesting. You have to know the guys are going to want to pop your bubbles... aaaahhhh... well... that suit will do just fine. Photo Tip: Keep the big toes as far apart as possible in this type of photo... you know... Golden rule or something.

I doubt there are any 'good' ones left that focus on Classic. However, there are a couple and lots of semi-abandoned and newbie stores still selling Classic clothes and stuff. I stumble across them now and then. I don't LM them as the stuff looks old and is generally 512x512 rez. Not what I want these days. You can often find these shops in new user welcome areas. Use the in viewer Destinations to find welcome or new user hang outs. Much of the stuff sold in those shops went full perm long ago. Some pick it up and hope they can sell it to the new peeps. Be careful. A huge store that has a tone of Classic stuff is Alessandra, there are adjacent stores in the same building also with Classic, like Sintimacy - latex body suits. I have my inventory separated into Mesh and Classic. I was figuring I would eventually be trashing most of the Classic stuff. Then BoM-is-coming was announced and everyone was saying, 'keep your old stuff'. Now I am going through trying my old Classic stuff with my Slink Redux body. Only a little bit of the stuff works, as in looks good enough to wear. The rest is low rez and a bit fuzzy. Other stuff just looks data. Those old system skirts with a front and back panel.... O Geeze.. I'll never wear those again.

I suspect this effect is by design. If the Sticks cleared previous visibility settings they would not be additive... So... a skirt and shirt used in various mix and match outfits would either need a Stick for every combination or one Stick for the skirt and one for the shirt. As it is the two can be part of several outfits, stand alone in other outfits with different shirts or skirts, or alone or mixed with other clothes and the system can add the Sticks in any order and the result will work for the respective skirt and/or shirt. This is similar to how system alpha-layers work. We can WEAR and alpha and it clears other alphas or we can ADD an alpha-layer to combine various alpha-layers, which is what it appears Maitreya is doing.

Best is ambiguous and dependent on personal preferences. The Linden made SL Viewer is the cutting edge new-feature-wise winner. When you need images for something like BoM, a feature not a tool, then the Linden Release Candidates and Project viewers are the choice. Firestorm has the best Phototools in a handy interface. If you aren't technically oriented in graphic render tech then it is the dominating choice of photographers and machina makers. Black Dragon has a completely different set of default settings for the render and looks much better for it. Plus, it has render features not available in other viewers. The tools for changing environment are awkward compared to Firestorm. They are more just the basic SL Viewer environment controls. However, they work with the render settings in BD's Machinima panel offer a better organized, always on-screen-together set of controls. Rather than a set of small panels you tab between in Firestorm. EEP is coming and all this will change to some degree. Then which is best may change. Plus, EEP is taking WAY LONGER than planned. Some of the render engine problems are being fixed by new engineers hired specifically for that purpose and the coming Mac changes that drop OpenGL support (or retain a bad Apple made OpenGL driver without any support). Will SL move to Vulcan (OpenGL replacement) or add Apple Metal support? A lot of Lindens are Apple Mac fans... We don't know. The Lab isn't saying. I think something has to give as OpenGL ages out.

Getting more complicated? I suppose that depends on where you are starting from. If you come into SL from any of the other games that allows you to customize your avatar then SL probably seems complex and getting more so. SL was initially designed to be a gaming prototyping platform. So, its background is as a technical development system not a game designed for ease of use by players. The techs developing products here stretch the system. These are a bunch of freelancing geeks experimenting and trying things to see what they can get to work. We have a wide range of things that sort of work. The more popular of those experiments get adopted and become ubiquitous, meaning we all end up having to figure out how they work and how we use them. If you are here without a background in 3D modeling and virtual world construction then you are at a disadvantage and things can be really confusing. The Lab pretty much caters to developers. The developers cater to what we call the residents or users. Thus the complexity we perceive is mostly a matter of how well the developers can explain something. I think Slink has made a simpler to use BoM body and HUD. It looks like Maitreya has provided more options and thus more complexity. I do think the next generation of peeps coming into SL will have an easier time of it because of BoM, fi we can get away from talking about BoM. For now we are telling new people to be sure get a BoM body and of course they ask what is BoM and we explain the whole mess we have been through with appliers and totally confuse them. Slink eliminates any BoM options in their Redux body. It just is BoM, which I thing was the Linden dream of how it would be used. There is no need to even know about BoM with Slink. I see Maitreya as a transition body being a combination of BoM and applier options. That necessitates users understand all the mess we have been dealing with and how to deal with it all. While the update is a good thing and an improvement we may see more of the OP type of questions in 2020. I have little hope we can avoid that because developers tend to look at what people want and give it to them, generally more options needed or not. They don't consider 'new user learning curves and retention problems' as part of their design process. That part gets left to the Lindens. The Lindens give design flexibility and easy of use considerations with designers in mind with some effort made to keep things simple... simple for new designers. For the time I have been around things have been eventually working out... It isn't the end. But, designers could simplify things by making everything BoM compliant/dependent and never mentioning it again.

How do you know what you are selecting in the Object Manipulator? Everything is UUID. If I could right-click an object, grab its UUID, paste it in the manipulator panel and search then I might be able to use it...

I collect alpha-layers. Like Orwar I keep all my alphas in a single folder. I do use subfolders in it. But basically all in one place. I even take some alphas from individual items. Those I think will be handy. I think so far I have made about half dozen on my own. NCore's open toed boots that are a fav of mine... There are lots of thigh-high boot alphas, just not with open toes. Slink makes a tat that a wear for making alphas. It is one of the colored UV maps with lots of little squares. I got the last two alphas made correctly on the first try. So, that tat is WAY handy. I now have a master PS file for my alphas... well three, head, upper, and lower. So, while a little annoying, it is quick. For those older items I have that I am likely never going to see the designer go back and make an alpha for... being able to make my own is nice.