[Export rigged Meshes with Blender 2.63]

Thanks for explaining. :matte-motes-smile:

[My ex keeps banning me from places, how do i stop it?]

When you say he bans you... that implies he has ownership in the land and the ability to ban you. He is within his right to do that. It is not a violation of the ToS. Hangout somewhere else.

If he is just talking to the club/land owners and convinencing them to ban you... that is different and very unlikely. He may talk, but I can't see him being overly successful. Most club owners know the game of revenge and usually will not play the Pawn in that game.

If you think he is making alts and doing things to get you banned, that too is unlikely. Regardless of what his alt's display name is, bans are by UUID. The land owner must pick the name from a list. The viewer then looks up that avatar's UUID to put in the ban list. It cannot be fooled by identincal or similar display names or even similar login names. So, it will be his alt's that get banned not you.

You may be getting banned for other reasons. There are still some anti-copybot tools around and you may have been falsely ID's by them. Ask the owner that has banned you.

[Just installed this, but have blank screen - half black and half grey? Please help]

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. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post.

Check that your computer meets the System Requirements | Second Life.

[How to find something in my inventory that is causing viewer 3 too log me out.]

Odd problem... 

There cannot be anything in the database that crashes the viewer. The Lab screens data coming into the database. Some new griefer thing might get in. But, soon the Lab will have a defense against it and filter it out. So, very unlikely it is an item.

There are things that can be rezzed from inventory that will crash the viewer. But, just having them in inventory is not a problem. It may be an attachment on or near the avatar that is the spam problem. They can cause render, pointer, name resolution issues and other problems. Try setting your draw distance as low as possible, zero if your viewer allows it.

Some items can take a bit to download. In the case of inventory, you are getting a list of UUID's as handles for connection to the items for download when you rez, not the actual items. So, you get some text and numbers and they make up your viewer side inventory. I hope this makes sense to you and explains why we doubt it is something in inventory.

With friends lists, contacts, and other avatar name things you are getting information from another database... or databases. In a similar way  the data is filtered and an unlikely source of the problem.

A more likely problem is the size of the data download, the quantity of items. If you are having a connection problem, the additional time needed for the large inventory (yours is not all that large) may be allowing some packet lost to create problems. So, before you start ripping things apart, closely examine your connection. Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection. If your connection is OK, then move on to other fixes.

There is nothing downloading from SL or a viewer crash that can disable your router. That you have to restart the router to get any connection suggests some hardware issue. I find that in 2008 some routers were having a problem (Netgear CVG834G with a wire) with SL. One of their solutions was to turn off VOICE. You can try disabling Voice before logging in. If that works it suggests a connection or hardware problem.

Some routers provided by ISP's are modified for their network. They have different firmware than the retail versions of the model to allow their support teams to more easily troubleshoot. Those modifications can conflict with SL connecting. I doubt that is your problem as the other avatars can connect.

I would check the temperature of the router. If it is running hot, it may be intermittently failing. You'll see packet loss if that is the case. Packet loss can be from other causes. If the router is hot, blow out the dust and get it where air can more easily circulate.

When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. Get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post. 

In this case include your router information. You may want to check whether there is a firmware update available for your model of router.

You may want to add your information to VWR-6734. If you haven't posted bug reports, please read the instructions before posting. The issue remains unresolved because the Lindens cannot reproduce the problem and lack information specific enough. The issue is open and there are a few occurrences of the problem in 2011 and 2012. But, the problem appears to be on the client or ISP side.

I doubt clearing the cache is going to help and may aggravate the problem. Before clearing the cache I suggest you log into Pooley, Furball, or any deserted empty region. My hope is the light load on the server may allow you inventory and name lists to download in a shorted time and reduce any errors slipping in from a connection problem. Keep your Viewer Statistics (Ctrl-Shift-1) open and watch for packet loss and long ping times.

[New Default Walk animation seems to be a different Priority than before]

A combat game or two has noticed the problem with their weapons animations. They have sent out notices of the debug setting change too. 

[Downloaded AMD catalyst. What now?]

Everyone is guessing at an answer because we know so little about your system.

When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. Get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post.

If the general fix is not working, we need to know more about your system to say what the problem is.

[Weight Paint Problem Blender 2.63a]

Thanks, forcing those vertices using Automatic weighting broke them fee.

[Weight Paint Problem Blender 2.63a]

I've run into a weight painting problem. Then I ran into a problem uploading an image to the forum. All I get is the error: This file does not appear to have any content. So, I uploaded to my blog... it has content. Anyone know what that is about?

Back to WP prob...

I started playing with weight painting. I am experimenting with making skirts that will work better when one sits. In the process I found some vertices that will not move as I weight them.

As I paint, normally the color changes and the vertex moves. Except for those vertices I have arrows pointing at. They change color but do not move. I've tried changing weight, brush strength, appending to another file, normalizing, auto-normalize... and no joy.

Does anyone have a clue what I may have done or what the problem is?

http://blog.nalates.net/?attachment_id=7565

Windows Vista 32x

Blender 2.63a - CUDA on GTX560 v301.42

[What are the things you should know when creating a complete avatar or a cloth?]

There is so much to know I have no idea where to start...

I have a tutorial for setting up blender for mesh clothes making: Second Life Mesh Clothes Blender 2.6 Setup 2012 Tutorial

I have two short articles on retopology and they link to a good video tutorial: #SL Blender Clothes Retopology & Blender Retopology – Clothing Update.

And there is a recent warning of a problem with 2.63: Blender 2.63 Import Problem.

If you use the menu on my blog to open the Mesh Related or Clothing Tutorials sections you'll find more.

When working with clothing, you don't have to learn to script. If you want to make things no-mod you may need scripts to change color, size, and textures. There are public scripts you can use for that.

Animation is not necessary for making clothes or avatars. But, a related part, weight painting, is needed.

 

[why can't i log in?]

You should always look at Second Life Grid Status Reports to see if a grid wide problem has come up. It can take a couple of hours for a problem to appear there. So, keep checking while you try to resolve the problem.

Other times a transient problem like todays is fixed before the notice hits the status page.

[Where are the free stores and what are the names?]

This is one of those cases where you need to use SL Search. A weak as SL Search is, it will return some results.

[Still no resolution for DNS problems?]

If you are running a Mac you will need to change your DNS settings. That is a known problem.

There is a section on DNS in: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection.

[Why do people say they can,"record and save" chat logs?]

I suspect it is an attempt to scare off griefers.

[trouble wtih sims rezzing in a timely manner can anyone help with this please?]

In this areticle is onformation about deciding whether the region or your connection is a problem: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection. It explains how to use Viewer Statistics to determine the state of the region. If the region is lagging, everything is going to be slow. There is nothing you can do about that.

When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. Get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post.

In this case we need some hardware and viewer information.

You can try restarting your modem/router to see if that helps.

You can get a bit of a performance boost by exluding the SL cache from your real time anti-virus protection. Since the Lab uses lossy compression on most of the assets it is unlikely a virus can survive upload to SL. So, there is no point in checking the asset downloads.

Keep your bandwidth setting under 1.5mb/sec. You'll see how to test connection speed in Troubleshooting.

Check your cache size setting. 1gb is good. Experiement with it to see what works best for you.

In Debug Settings look for ImagePipelineUseHTTP and try setting it to FALSE. This may speed up your downloads or slow them. It depends on the load on SL at any given time. The change switches you back to the legacy UDP protocol. If most of the people in the region are using HTTP you'll have an empty highway using UDP.

In Debug make sure CurlUseMultipleThreads is true.

If your on Apple try experiementing with RenderAppleUseMultGL.

You can look up what theses do in the SL Wiki.

[Log in issues]

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. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post.

You can test your connection using these steps: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection

After a viewer crash and subssequent failures on restating... reboot your computer.

Something may have messed up in your computer. You can try reinstalling your viewer. I would install over the top of the existing install. If you decide to uninstall... remember to save your chat logs, if you need them.

You can look in the SL log and see if you can get a clue to the problem.

C:\Users\[win_login_id]\AppData\Roaming\SecondLife\logs\

Start at the end abd workbackward. Look for warnings and errors.

[Have a problem installing the viewer(first time player)]

Hitomi is right, we need more information to have an idea what's wrong. 

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

Otherwise, on WIndows click Start and type CMD. When the CMD or Command Line comes up in programs run it. That will open a commandline windw. Type dxdiag in the window. This will give you your system specs. We need to now video driver version, OpenGL version, and the stuff Hitomi asked about.

You can try some general fixes. Reboot the computer. Login as an adminstrator. Disable your anti-virus. Now try an install.

If you run any anti-malware software, disable it too.

After the install enable the AV and malware then run SL.

[10-second latency]

Run through these steps to determine if it is a connection problem: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection.

If you have more than one network connection port on the computer, try changing to the other network card. Network cards do go bad. Plus if there is not surge protector on the network connections a spike can cause them to fail or partially fail.

[What video card do I need for SL?]

There are some thigns that make a significant difference in how well SL performs on a given set of hardware.

• Plenty of fast memory. 4 gb of RAM is decent and more is better
• CPU multiple cores. The more the better. But, be practical. The render process in the viewer is currently a single thread, meaning it can only use one CPu core. However, the texture decompression process, network processes, and number others are multi-threaded. The result is the world rezes faster with 4 or more cores. i3, i5, and i7 CPU have a highly efficent threading process. So, efficient that each core works as well as 2 of the older Core2's cores did.
• i3 is more for video but it works well with SL.
• 64 Bit OS. This makes a significant difference. While there is no 64 bit viewer, AFAIK, there are LAA (Large Address Aware) versions of the viewer that can use the additional memory available in 64 bit systems.
• NVIDIA video cards - You have a choice between ATI-AMD or NVIDIA. NVIDIA provides way better support for OpenGL and SL is an OpenGL based application.
• The 200 to 600 series nVidia cards work well with SL. The higher the first digit the newer the card. The higher the next two digits the more horse power the card has. GTX is better than GTS and that is better than GT.
• Windows provides better OpenGL support than Apple.
• Fast harddrive with a large buffer helps. The new SSDrives are fast but expensive.

No matter what you do you will not get the type of performance you will get with other 3D video games. Frame rates of 50 to 90 FPS are possible with SL. Most get far less. You can look through an old thread to see what people were getting: How Fast is Your Viewer? - Second Life.

My Core2 Quad w/GTX560 gets 15 to 25 FPS on Vista 32 w/4gb of ram using the 257716 Development Viewer.

It is not uncommon for i3 users with a $200 video card to run on Ultra in the 25 FPS range.

[An alternative to rigging in blender?]

As Dora suggests, try Blender. The recent 2.6x releases have BMesh and Cycles. Check out the new features in the videos at CG Cookie.

Maya, 3DS, and Blender are about the best tools availalbe. Of those, the Lab puts more effort into supporting Blender, they figure more of their users are using Blender.

[Rigging and uploading - problems]

I just rewrote a tutorial on setting up the base file for rigged mesh: Second Life Mesh Clothes Blender 2.6 Setup 2012 Tutorial. It is a text tutorial.

So, it is about as up todate as possible. Also, tutorials are only out of date in the sense that the user interface of Blender has changed. The concepts used in modeling and rigging mesh have not changed. It is a bear changing from 2.49's UI to 2.5x and 2.6x UI. But, things are way easier to find in the 2.5+ versions.

If you rigged the mesh using the tutorial for general rigging rather than Second Life rigging, that is the problem. You need to use the Second Life armature for rigged mesh going into Second Life.

[Question about rigged mesh]

There is a long tutorial about setting up a base file for doing rigged mesh for SL: Second Life Mesh Clothes Blender 2.6 Setup 2012 Tutorial.

The basic steps are:

• Append the armature and avatar mesh from either a Domino Marama or Gaia Calry file to a new Blender file. Links to the files are in the tutorial.
• Bring your new mesh into the file.
• Parent it ot the armature.
• Use Gaia's Copy Bone Weights to get a beginning set of vertex weights. 
• Do your weight painting.
• Export the mesh.

That is over simplifying, but it is the basic steps. The tutorial take 9,000+ words to say the same thing.

[Deploys for the week of 2012-05-21]

The Lindens deal with these things everyday and have years. I think it is some times difficult for them to realize how much information they are assuming when they write a post explanning what they are doing. I am sure I have the same problem. I hope I'm a level or two below their geek level explanations.

I won't say that I always get it right, but I try to write a geek to human translation of these events in my blog. I run a bit behind these posts. But, I include information form other developement teams too.

 

[Export rigged Meshes with Blender 2.63]

Why are they called Empties for Avatar.blend and bone attchaments in other files? Aren't these the same things?

[friends list wont update when i first log in?]

Several people have been complaining of this problem.

First step should be to check your connection: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection. 

Next... When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. Get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post.

 

Also, if you have your bandwidth over 1,500kbps, turn it down to something less.

Check the region stats in Viewer Statistics (Ctrl-Shift-1). Region Phsycs FPS and Time Dilation should be 45 and 1.0. Anything below 30 and 0.8 can contribute to the problem you are seeing.

The common reason for the problem is system lag, SL system. Relogging to a deserted region usually clears the problem. 

Oddly another cause is font size. If you recently changed screen font size that could be the cause. Or if you changed font size in your viewer (this is a TPV thing).

Mac's have a DNS problem that can prevent the friends list from loading. See: Google Public DNS. Keep at least one of your existing DNS servers. Use 2 of Google's or OpenDNS's servers and one of your ISP's with your ISP's being last. This can also speed up performance a bit.

 

[Unknown problem with the login]

Check that your computer meets the System Requirements | Second Life.

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. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post.

Initial login problems are usually either form a poor connection or a computer that does not meet the minimum specs.

You can test your connection: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection

You can clear the viewer's settings and probably get the opening error message again. The file you need to wipe is: C:\User\[win_login_ID]\AppData\Roaming\SecondLife\user_settings\setting.xml

OR...

You can look in the viewer log file to see what is failing. The log is here: 
C:\User\[win_login_ID]\AppData\Roaming\SecondLife\logs\SecondLife.log

That is a text file. So, you can open it with most any editor. Start at the end of the file and work toward the beginning looking for warnings and errors.