Nalates Urriah

Poorly made mesh objects can cause lag. Mesh can be deleiberatley made to crash viewers. But, moving to another region usually reveals whether it is a mesh problem or not. In general, well made mesh objects reduce lag because they reduce the number of polygons that have to be rendered. You can sort out whether it is your connection or some other problem. Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection is specific to SL users. It is worth the read even if you think you know you have a good connection. Once you have gone through those tests, you can confidently move on to toher possible problems.

When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. If the viewer will at least show the login screen, get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. Help->About... Provides all the version numbers we need. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post. --- Your connection speed is not the primary control over rez speed. Your cache size and the amount of video ram have major influence on rez speed. The connection speed has its maximum influence on control lag. If your key presses and mouse clicks seem sluggish, that is likely a connection speed problem. Look in the article linked to below to learn how to check your SL connection... and your SL connection is difference form what you may find on SpeedTest.net or another testing web site. Also, your viewer version has a BIG influence on rez speed. The Production viewer 3.4.1 does not have the new HTTP protocol in use for textures. I think only the Beta and Development viewers have that new code. Those of us using it have found item rezzing much faster. Also, depending on how you determined the quality of your connection, may make all the difference. Read: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection. Use those test to determine if your connection is strong or weak.

If you want a quick summary of the current state of the Mesh Deformer, see: #SL Mesh Deformer Update Week 48 If you are interested in the history of the Deformer, see: Mesh Deformer.

Gaia is the authoritive voice on mesh clothes and Blender. There is a problem you may be hitting that isn't mentioned. I think it is only the latest Blender 2.64a that handles the modifiers correctly for Collada export. I know that previous to some version one had to apply the modifiers BEFORE exporting a Collada file. So, check out the versions. As to which skeleton to use... there is a load of confustion on that point. For making clothes I agree with Gaia. The workbench file has the best skeleton and mesh skin. You can read about all the files being discussed in the JIRA and blogs here: Second Life Mesh Clothes Blender 2.6 Setup 2012 Tutorial - Page 2. It also explains how to get your custom shape out of SL as an OBJ file. I did some testing to find out how much difference there was between the Ruth/Roth shapes and the Default Shape. The difference is VERY small. If you are trying for perfection, the Defulat Shape is what Karl S., the Mesh Deformer programmer, recommends.

I have a section in my Blog that deals with mesh clothes and a couple of tutorials on Blender's Cloth Simulator. See: Tutorials Index Clothes. One can generally push the polygon count way up and create the cloth shape they desire. Once one has the desired model they can redo the topology to make an efficent model. I've getten into both of those tasks.

There is a problem with disk drives on ADITI filling up. They do not have the huge data storage that AGNI does. The Lindens mush manually clean the drives. At some point they will make a more perminent fix and avoid the manual cleaning. Until then, file a JIRA to report your problem. Keep trying to login. If you hit ADITI shourtly after a clean up, you will make it in.

Read Griefing Alert. See if it sounds like the problem you have. The land owner cannot see into your inventory. If they KNOW you have a greifer thing in inventory, it is because it is something you rezzed into their region. So, you consider the things you have rezzed in that region. You may be able to ask the region owner for the name of the object. Also, look in your inventory folder Lost & Found. Land owners cannot delete things you rez. They can however, return them to you. When they do that, they show up in your Lost and Found. So, a copy of the problem item may be there. Delete it and then search your inventory for anything with the same name.

When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. If the viewer will at least show the login screen, get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. Help->About... provides all the version numbers we need. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post.

It looks like your computer should run SL. That you are getting a black screen indicates a video problem. So, let's do the basics. First, you need to understand and take it into the core of your beleif system that using the term "the latest driver" means abosilutely nothing to those of us helping you. Next: When you ask a tech question here get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. Help->About... provides all the version numbers and OS details we need. If you are using #D Vision or other non-typical screen setups let us know. Where you install should make little or not difference. The key word here is SHOULD. I suggest you remove and reinstall in the default location. When it works we will have found the problem. Then you can move it. But, working with none standard installs just adds more confusion. Keep simplifying until you find the problem. I can't tell for certain if you have a desktop or a laptop. Normally the output from Help->About... would give me the indicators I need. If it is a laptop check the video driver controls to see if the settings are for Performance. If it is set to save battery, the video chip may actually be turned off, which would be a problem. You may have to create a video configuration for Second Life in the card's control panel. I'm not an ATI user so I can't tell you how to do that. Search for your card here and on SLUniverse for others using the card. They may help you or already have posted the details.

Everyone is pretty much guessing at what the problem is because you didn't provide us the information we need to help you. When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. If the viewer will at least show the login screen, get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. Help->About... provides all the version numbers we need. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post. We may be able to provide good help if you get us more information.

How Second Life is doing is purely a matter of who you talk to. In 2009, I think... may be 2010, the concurrent logins peaked at about 80k. Recently the peak is about 64k. The number of private regions purchased by people has been decreasing by about 8 per day. Some say this is a SURE SIGN that SL is dying. But, things have changed. One thing is the Market Place (MP). The MP has decreased the need to have in-world shops by removing the need for a place to store a Magic Box. Many of us have thought that removal of the Magic Box Land Demand would be a negative thing for land sales. Whether that is the cause or the world economy continuing to fail is the reason, we apparently see some decrease in the number of people using SL is hard to say. However... the addition of mesh has added a huge requirement to be learning and creating out-of-world. I spend way more time in Blender working on clothes for SL. Rod has implied that change is why they no longer publish some stats, they are now misleading. SL is continuiously being upgraded. Read a few pages of my blog to see what is happening. We have normal and specular maps coming, probably early next year. We have no way to evaluate that change. There is no way to tell if people are spending more time on YouTube watching videos on Blender, using Blender, 3DS, Maya, and whatever to make things... or paying less attention to SL. So, you will have to make your own call on what is happening. But, when it comes to whether it is worthwhile to learn Blender, the answer is yes. Because it can be used with any virual world. Whether CLoud Party takes over or OpenSim or something new... a 3D model is pretty much a 3D model.

The regions owned by the Lab are arranged now to provide a minimum problem when Havok is upgraded. One cannot drive vehicles from one version of Havok to another. Sailors and pilots have been on the Lab's case for months to get the arrangement they have now. I doubt changing the channel arrangements will be looked on well by them. Private regions are mostly in or out of RC channels based on the region owner's preference. Rearranging the regions in or out of channels is complex. We already have them arranged so that in-world adjacent regions are housed in the same simulator server, rack, or at least the same co-location facility. it apparently makes a considerable performance difference. Fair for the sake of fair is usually a bad idea.

For a time there were a number of problems that would appear immediately after changing password. See: #SL ADITI Fixed login inventory. The problem is supposed to be fixed. But, some people are still running into it. The fix is to change the password, wait 48 hours, login to see if it is fixed. If not, repeat. This eventually fixes the problems. On any given day on any specific region you may have unpredictable problems. Move to another region and see if the problem resolves. Any given region may be running a unique test version of the simulator software to test something. You can attend the Thursday Beta Server UG meeting in Morris, Aditi at 3PM to find out what is going on in some regions. The Lindens won't discuss unannounced changes. But, they will be interested in problems you have and will usually tell you whether it is a unique build that is being tested.

Rolig's answer is right on. I'll say it another way to make it even more clear. If you logged into your old account with a brand new computer that you had never used before, all your stuff would still be there. The viewers cache holds copies of things. If those copies are missing the viewer gets a new copy form the SL servers. If your viewer is old, definitely get the latest version. If you run more than one brand of viewer, update all of them. Update the one you plan to use most often last.

It can eat up 1.5 gb pretty quick. It can get by with less. I've heard of it going over 3gb but I have never seen that. If your computer doesn't have dedicated video ram, you will get poor performance. With a gb of video ram the SL viewer will use about 500mb. If you have less than 500mb of video ram, turn on video texture compression in Preferences-> Graphics-> Hardware. You will lose quality but get better performance.

Take a look at #SL Blender Clothes Retopology and Blender Retopology – Clothing Update. These will give you an idea of how people reduce polygons. Once we have Materials these tutorials will be more useful.

I will point out that it has an ATI video chip. SL rund better with nVidia chips.

I started working my way through learning to make clothes for Second Life. As I've progressed I've written tutorials. You may find them helpful. See: Second Life & Blender Clothes Tutorials. There is information for finding all the things you need to get started. However, the very basics of how to use Blender are covered better in other tutorials. There are lots and lots of video and written tutorials about how to use Blender. Making mesh clothes for animated characters is a complex aspect of 3D modeling. In general beginners use Blender because it is a free program with awesome capabilities. Those awesome capabilities make the learning curve steep. It is probably not something you will learn in a month. There are other free tools. They tend to have less capability and fewer users using them with Second Life. Blender is the preferred tool for use with SL. Sassy's link to Machinimatrix.org is great. I started learning how to make sculpty things from Gaia. Gaia's mesh tutorials are also great. You'll find I link to some of them from my tutorials rather than repeat the information. Good luck.

I agree with Kwakkelde... check your tempertures. Get GPU-Z and/or SpeedFans, both are free and will get you temp data. The latest stable nVidia driver is 306.97. There is a Beta 310.33 that is out too. The 301... is a bit old. Check if this only happens in one region or if it happens in all regions. There are mesh objects that can cause a video drver to crash.

I agree with Perrie... this system is difficult for users. The only apparent way to provide additional information on a closed JIRA is to file another JIRA item. Referring to the previous one helps. The only other alternative I've found is to email Alexa Linden and whoever was assigned or took on the bug. Most SL users are not going to know to do that. Also, unless the subect line of the email is something the Linden recognizes, it may be skipped. Since we can't see the MAINT numbers and the Lindens seem to forget the BUG numbers that creates a problem trying to make it a recognizable subject for the Lindens. Another problem comes in the amount of time it takes a problem to move through QA, Beta, and into the final release. When marked fixed in the JIRA the fix is just starting through QA. It can take 2 or more weeks to make it from QA to release. Recently viewer and server updates have been delayed from various problems. Some fixes have been caught in the jam for 4 or more weeks. I doubt we will hear much about how the new JIRA process is working for the Lab until early next year.

Massmi is right. You do not have to have Primstar. Gaia Clary makes Avastar, which can make your tasks much easier. But it is not a 'have to' type of thing. See: Second Life specific mesh clothes tutorials for how to work around having to buy additional software.

You may be running into a permissions problem. When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. You can get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. Help->About... provides all the version numbers we need. It can save lots of look up and writing. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post. In Windows we you can start Blender by right-clicking its icon and selecting: Run as Adminstrator. This can up your permissions and get things going. On Windows it also makes a big difference how Blender is installed. I am a great fan of using the Archive Install, which allows me to have as many different versions of Blender and Python installed as I want. Most importantly it avoids conflicts in Windows. See: Blender Archive Install.

When you find user group transcripts are not being updated, drop the user group's manager an email. I attend most of the meetings and write up a summary. You can keep up by following my blog (link in signature). Materials is in progress... we have no ETA. I doubt we will see it this year. We are getting close to the holiday update freezes. No new features come out during the freezes. Custom bones... people are looking at ways to use the various parts of the avatar that are not customary. Collada import allows us more freedom than we thought. Redpoly has used some bones to provide weighting and adjustable size that we thought only the Mesh Deformer could do. But, adding custom bonse is way out in the future. It is something the Lindens would like to add. But, we have no idea where it is in their 'like-priority' list.

You may want to look at Retopologizing... There are a number of tuotrials on how to reduce the polygon count for models. It seems lots of people model in unique ways, like sculpting a model. Changing the topology of the model can great reduce the number of polygons. When a high poly model is used as the guide, people seem to call it retopogizing... (if Engish is not your first language, that is not a real word. It is a sentence rolled into a word.) For examples see: #SL Blender Clothes Retopology and Blender Retopology – Clothing Update Having a low poly count is likely going to become a serious user/buyer concern at some point.

I doubt it is the 'upload' as much as it is inventory problems. For some time there has been a Beta Grid Inventory Problem. It was fixed and now seems to be a random occurance. The problem tends to appear after changing your password. Once changed, the inventory can go wacko. You will have trouble rezzing things recently added to your main grid inventory just before the password change. Also, things tend to disappear from inventory between logins. You can get more information here: #SL ADITI Fixed. I suggest you try changing your password. Wait 48 hours before trying to login into the Beta Grid. You can try at 24+, but my experience was 48+ worked better. Others have had different experinces. The problem was being discussed in SVC-7727. You can read through it to see some of the other experinces. If you don't hit 'the fix' in 3 or four tries, file a JIRA and refer to 7727.