Nalates Urriah

Some tech is just way too complex moving from the need for an explanation to a training requirement. SL is SUPPOSED to be FUN. Go with whatever you enjoy. There are a number of posts in the forum by people voicing the same concern/desire to keep their face. Suffice to say it isn’t easy. Get the demos and see if you can adjust the face to be close enough to your original look to satisfy. I only got close to the look I wanted after 3 or 4 months of trying. I took a picture of my Classic head’s face, put it on a cube, scaled it to the right size, and parked it next to my pose stand so it was beside my face while I tried and played with head demos. Then there is the problem of the shapes that come with the heads. My classic head and mesh body shape does NOT work with my GA.EG Jennifer head. See image. Yikes! Their body shape doesn’t work for me. SO, I have to redo the shape if I use their head & body shape as a starting point. I am already redoing their face to get what I want… tedious. But, designers do NOT have to include a body shape in with their head shape. Plus, you can save your shape for use with different heads. You just have to remove your head settings from your shape file. See BUG-216131 in the JIRA for details. Then you put on their head & body shape and overwrite the body part with you body-only shape. Facial expressions… the classic avatar is limited to a small number of expressions. How the Classic head and Bento heads work are WAY different. The Bento head can use unlimited expressions. There is no HUD available for the Classic head that can duplicate what we see with Bento heads. That is a large part of why Bento was added. There are tutorials on combining Classic expressions and how to change the head-shape setting to get more expressions. It is tedious and I think only useful for still pictures. I've tried it. It works. But, it is so tedious I went with a Bento head for the WAY nicer facial expressions.

There seems to be some confusion in the answers. I think it comes from Applier vs Mesh clothes. As it is now Appliers place textures on layers of the onion skin bodies. The result is a 'clothes' layer makes stockings and t-shirts cover the body bridging toes and cleavage rather than filling in the gaps between toes and cleavage as if painted on. How this will be handled with BoM and no-onion skin layers is speculation. We don't know what designers will build. If the designer chooses to give up covering for paint... I probably won't buy that body. I suspect others feel the same. So, there is market pressure and that works in the free market as customers vote with their dollars. However, Applier underwear layer stuff is pretty much painted on in all cases. So, that layer could go away and underwear and skin could be composited with BoM. The same with the tats layer. The result is we may go from 4 or 5 layers of onion skin to just a couple and still have mesh bodies that look very much like we have now. When we get to mesh clothes we are not dealing with onion skins. These are a layer over the body. BoM does not change that. So, there isn't much room for BoM to help. As I understand BoM, we could use it with attached clothes, but that would not change the shape of the clothes, just the texture. They would still bridge cleavage or be loose fitting. BoM is an extension of a baking service we have now. The current and future service takes a number of textures targeted at various layers and bakes them into a single composite texture for use on a single mesh layer. So, skin, tats, underwear, and clothes layers all bake to a single image and layer. The current service can only apply the texture to the classic avatar. With BoM that changes. We can target mesh other than the classic body. So, bodies and clothes can still be whatever we want post-BoM. That also means we can still use our existing bodies and Appliers without change. BoM does not force you or the designer to use it. It just opens up possibilities. There is discussion about BoM being extended to all mesh in SL. I doubt that will happen. So, the initial BoM will be limited to avatars and their attachments and no materials. However, Appliers could still provide materials, but that 'materials thing' is a bit of a confused mesh for now.

One letter makes so much difference... on... in... Humans are so used to hearing and identifying voices and faces it is very hard to fool them. However, raising or lowering the tone of a voice is fairly simple. So, as with many things, less is better. Use as little change as possible to have it sound more realistic. Premium members can go get a voice-morph. There is an island where you can try them out. You speak a phrase, it catches it, and then plays it back. The SL morphs are drastic. No subtlety involved. I think they, the SL voices, are intended to be more of a funny toy than a serious spoof. So, you probably won't hear any celebrities using them as a serious disguise. Celebrity voice impersonators do some amazing impersonations. So, it is possible to change your voice with practice. Whether raising or lowering pitch, accent, whatever your imitations will likely be more realistic than the voice morph.

@animats Check into the function llDetectedTouchST(i). This will let you detect where in a face the touch occurred. It proves X,Y position. Using the function I have made 1 prim vendors with all the buttons being painted only on the texture. The series of 'if right of and below the upper left corner and left of and above the lower right corner' gets tedious but the prim count and mesh complexity can be greatly reduced. Script // www.lsleditor.org by Alphons van der Heijden (SL: Alphons Jano) // Mone Face Touch Calibrator - Nalates Urriah 11/19/2008 default { state_entry() { llSay(0, "Hello, Avatar! Left click any face."); } touch_start(integer total_number) { integer i; llSay(0, "Touched: "+(string)total_number); for (i = 0; i < total_number; i++) { integer touchedFace = llDetectedTouchFace(i); vector touchedpos = llDetectedTouchST(i); if (touchedFace == -1) { // cannot do llWhisper(0, "Sorry, your viewer doesn't support touched faces. You cannot use this vendor. Upgrade your viewer."); } else { // handle touch llWhisper(0,"\nFace: " + (string) touchedFace); llWhisper(0, (string) touchedpos.x + "=x"); llWhisper(0, (string) touchedpos.y + "=y"); llWhisper(0,"X,Y Copy: <" + (string) touchedpos.x + "," + (string) touchedpos.y + ",0>\n"); } } } }

Worried? No. There are fixes to the transient problems that cause your cloudiness. The name most commonly used is bake fail. I won't go into it in this thread. But, the Firestorm wiki has the best set of fixes I've seen: https://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/fs_bake_fail If you made your shape, you can export it from the Firestorm & Linden (probably others) viewers as an XML file. In the future you can import it as a new shape. As I tweak my shape I Save As... using a date in the name. I always have several earlier versions to go back to.

Strawberry Singh has tutorials on posing avatars in SL. There are some HUD's that can help. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvsHhi7ddQM

Doing shadows is easy in the Firestorm Viewer. In the LL Viewer it takes more clicks and is awkward, but is doable. Open the Photo Tools panel in FS and then in WL settings click the New Sky Preset to open another panel. Toward the bottom of the second panel (Create a New Sky Preset) are two sliders that control where the sun and moon are. Just slide those to move your shadows. When you are done, just click Cancel. Or you can save the settings as a new preset. I have the tools button on screen to get to easily. Makes it handy when I want to take a shot. There are over a thousand presets that you can download and add to your viewer. With EEP (Enhanced Environment Project) on the way and likely to soon release we will be able to trade and sell WL settings and have collections in inventory. Things are about to get prettier.

You could use a remote desktop program to access your computer from your phone. Google has a free app that works well for accessing your home or work computer. Not so good for helping others. I use Google's Remote Desktop now and then. I've run my SL viewer from my phone via the app. Long nails and finger size are issues. I find a stylist is helpful. I did have to get the Hacker's Keyboard for my Android to have the desktop specific keys (like arrow keys) not available with the default keypad. It is tedious to use the combination. I can expand the screen scale and scroll around. So, seeing things is not a problem. But, it is way too small an environment for what you want. But, it is available today.

There is the law (or a ToS) and its enforcement. Writing the rules only requires pen and paper, so to speak. Enforcement is impacted by reality. The enforcer has to be able to detect a violation and locate the perpetrator. So, often a law is not enforced because enforcement is unaware of the violation. In general a violation has to cause a noticeable problem to become visible to enforcement. That or someone has to complain. Changing IP addresses for a specific login is common. Some people travel and use SL. Restarting a modem/gateway device can result in an IP address change. Different devices will have different IP addresses. So, a change in IP address is not a tip off of illicit activity. I think of many parts of the LL ToS as simple liability reduction on the Lab's part. Those points are for their protection and not something they mount a policing effort to enforce. Cause a problem in those areas and they may use a hammer. But, otherwise they are unlikely to send muscle looking for violators to beat up. The risks people have pointed out are by far the more likely problem for you. Discretion hides many crimes.

The bitcoin demand for video cards seems to have subsided. NVIDIA GTX 1060's with 3-year warranties are showing up on eBay for US$160. The GTX and RTX 20xxx cards are pre-ordering now. That will have gamers selling their 10xx cards to upgrade, which should drive the price down. So, with some careful shopping you can score a deal.

The viewer's ping is not the 'REAL' ping time. That number is a composite of viewer, network, and server response time. So, the ping methods in my troubleshooter are important to consider. Using ping from the Windows command line at the same time you check the viewer's ping number gives very different results.

I don’t understand what you mean by using materials in Blender but no spec or norm in SL. IF I take that as written, my response would be that explains the color mis-match. Materials in Blender and SL accomplish the same thing, but are different. In Blender we use the ‘material’ concept as being a composite set of settings applied to selected polygons. It is the same in SL, but we use the term to mean the addition of the ability to add spec and norm maps. In SL a material is a different arrangement of settings. In Blender we can be using spec and norm settings to bake a material. But, if only the diffuse map is used as a texture in SL then the render of spec and norm values is missing and is going to be drastically different in appearance. This my confusion about your reply. If one brings in the Blender made spec and norm maps the result in SL is different. So, all parts have to have the same set of settings to even get close to a color match. If you research the SL Forum for information on color matching (site:community.secondlife.com/forums/ color matching) you’ll find this discussion has been on going since before mesh was introduced. If you add Drongle McMahon’s name to the search, you’ll get the more technical answers from a knowledgeable modeler. Drongle did considerable testing to figure out what is happening in the render engine and how to compensate for the various oddities. In various posts he provides extensive math and examples. Expect to dig through a lot of posts to find your specific answers and their explanation. If you change and use Gaia Clary’s name you’ll get a less technical set of answers from an also very knowledgeable modeler and the developer of AvaStar. Gaia has had to do a load of testing to get Blender to provide results as similar as possible in Blender-AvaStar as one sees in SL. Gaia has a video that I was looking for that explains the vertix nomrals issue in great detail and the SL work-arounds. I can't find it on YouTube (Gaia Clary) or Vimeo (Machinimatrix). Attend the Content Creator’s user group meetings. Meet some of the modelers in SL. They are usually willing to help with technical issues.

@Noel Loordes The basic difference is that the render engine for things and avatars is different. The System Avatar render does NOT handle materials. 'Things' render through a channel that does handle materials. Both channels tend to handle shading in a way that reveals seams. These may help you understand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9APc-AVp0g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owKVrnTAn3M

A couple of things... First, if you are thinking of SL as a game, you going to get confused. There are no goals, levels, or standardized ways of doing things to achieve some pre established thing. SL is a virtual world platform... meaning it is a foundation for other things. The original intent for SL was to be a game fast-prototyping environment, the tool used to quickly build games. There are plenty of games within SL. But, the 'players' (users) made SL more of a community than a game. You'll find considering whether SL is a game or not and just what it actually is, is controversial and often hotly debated. Most of the people that have been around more than 1 or 2 years don't think of it as a game. They think of it as SL, a unique virtual world where they can do anything they can think of... well, almost. Second, clothes making changes drastically every so often as the tech of computers and virtual worlds advances. We are in a mesh phase, which is a concept peculiar to SL, and that may change toward the end of this year as new features come out, i.e., Bakes-On-Mesh (BoM) and Animesh. We are unsure how clothes making will change. But, BoM has the potential to radically change things. We'll have to wait to see how users decide to use it... or not. That change is coming is a reason to take your time in deciding what you want to do. You can skim the tutorials on making system clothes, rigged clothes, and fitted mesh clothes. These are three different ways of making clothes. Soon we will have a hybrid fourth type which I'll call fitted-system-like mesh as we don't have a good new phrase yet that people understand. None of the clothes making is overly complex. But, there is a lot to know to make good lag-free clothes. So, take your time.

I am glad you are happy. SL will under preform for you until you deal with the connection issue. But, if you are OK with the level of performance you have, great.

Some years ago showing up naked was a problem. The Lab put some serious effort into getting avatars to quickly bake and render. The situation improved. With the addition of mesh bodies and clothes, things have reverted. It is common for a mesh body and clothes to render at different times often presenting a naked avatar. There is nothing to be done about that. Even the best connections and lowest ACI outfits suffer from the problem. A good connection to the SL servers helps. But, that only improves what you see. Others with a weaker connection may still see the viewer assemble you avatar as it downloads. If one is naked because the system is slow rendering the avatar and clothes, most people understand. Those that get on your case are often the less knowledgeable that don't understand, so don't pay much attention to the mental midgets. Others like to bully or have other anti-social issues. Many of those specifically target new people. Unfortunately, there are a significant number of those people in SL. So, thicken your skin and enjoy SL. Learn to distinguish when someone has a legitimate complaint versus one struggling to annoy someone.

You need to understand that what you are doing in Blender is then fitted to the SL avatar armature. You must tell the viewer what do do with the SL avatar to get it to change to what you want. Try this:

Yeah... they hang around forever. In January I'll move all my chat logs into a folder labeled 2018. I do that just to get e bit more performance from the viewer. However, it seems to I need a stopwatch to see the difference.

I suggest you write this up as a JIRA Bug Report and include the transaction logs. I would assume this is an assembly line type copyboting operation. If you have original items easily recognized, keep an eye on the marketplace's new items.

It is becoming an American thing. The original impetus for this thinking is probably just human nature. We first saw it effectively mobilised and used in Italy and Germany pre-WWII in the form of the then newly idealised Nationalist Socialism, the then new way to sell socialism. In America less and less history is taught. The result is the new label for socialism is Democratic Socialism and young Americans are clueless as to where it is going. For it to appeal to people they have to be taught to expect others to take care of them and think they are entitled to whatever. That movement has been being built for decades. Now it is taking its next steps as more people think socialism is a good thing. We see the primitive or day-to-day results as people blaming others and wanting others to do for them... Only that part of the world that has a significant level of affluence suffers this curse. So, most of the Western world.

That eliminates Whirly's suspicion it is in the video driver/card. The next two easy troubleshooting steps; try a different viewer and a different account. These steps will eliminate several possibilities. Tell us the results. The majority of users run the Firestorm Viewer. But, there are a half dozen or so viewers you can choose from. See: Third Party Viewer Directory Having a second viewer installed is a basic troubleshooting step. Keeping it installed makes testing much faster. Using the second viewer eliminates whether it is a viewer issue, settings problem, or a cache issue. Having what we call and 'Alt' is an alternate account-avatar. Just open a second account. It is ToS legal. This reveals most problems that are on the SL side of things. These are the less technical steps that provide information about where the problem may be. BUT... what you are seeing is almost always a connection issue. Your Packet Loss at 0.1% isn't that bad but it isn't great. You didn't tell us your PING time... if you want to quickly eliminate connection issues run through the Troubleshooting Your Connection to SL article I liked to above. If you need more help, tell us the results of the various tests.

Congratulations. Welcome to the club. Banning is generally not forever. Unless you made a memorable transgression that REALLY caught their attention. As things are most clubs have ban lists that fill up. Then the first in on the list are the first to age out of the list. So, in a couple of months are more you'll drop out of the ban list.

@teedy As pointed out, this is one of those cases where a cache clear most likely will make things worse. Only do a cache clear when you KNOW it is something caused by a corrupted cache. Which these days is VERY rare. Whirly is pointing you to a problem common to those using the Intel built-in HD Graphics. The Firestorm people have a fix for this on the Firestorm Viewer. If it isn't that, then Klytyna is likely right from placing more weight on the overall lack of texture renders as an indication you have a connection issue. The quick check of connection is to open the Viewer Stats (Ctrl-Shift-1). Look at PING and Lost Packets. These should be <250ms and <1%. If not, there is a connection issue. While you can connect with worse numbers, you'll see problems like you are seeing. To understand and use the numbers in the Viewer Stats panel to troubleshoot see: http://blog.nalates.net/2011/10/26/troubleshoot-your-sl-connection/ Avoid thinking because you have a great connection to other games and sites that you have a good connection to the SL servers. Actually test that connection.

The idea was to force a Jelly Doll kick in, which will never happen with your avatar only other avatars. So, try it at a landing hub or any place with lots of avatars. Preferably one where the people are spending some money on their avatars and wearing mesh. Ctrl-Shift-R can give you better idea of which mesh is better designed. But, you have to understand what you are looking at. So... it is probably less explaining to say change from a Quality setting to Performance and see who goes to Jelly. As to 'runs better'... We balance quality versus performance. So, our ideas of better are pretty fluid. The more advanced we are in our understanding of 3D rendering the more likely we are to knock the slider back a notch or two from what we like and tweak individual settings to get a better look and performance level we are willing to live with than from just tweaking the slider. http://blog.nalates.net/2016/06/05/nvidia-settings-2016/ More detailed explanations: http://blog.nalates.net/2010/12/17/graphics-tweaking-for-second-life/ (2010)

ChinRey's link is to a good post where their conclusions are based on their testing and measuring. A good opportunity to move off opinion. I would rephrase her "should not try". Looking to see who makes decently optimized content based on ARC/ACI is going to be misleading. But, we can press Ctrl-Shift-R and look at the item in wire frame view. So... shouldn't try based on ACI... To get an idea of what is reasonable, look at the classic avatar in wire frame, 7,000+ polys. With the recent video cards the render speed measured in polys per second has exploded. So, two are three times the density of the classic avatar isn't ALL THAT bad. But, less remains better.