Nalates Urriah

BOM nails would be the same as nails for the Classic avatar. Basically a tattoo. They were never popular because they sucked. We had prim and sculpty nail add-ons that were much more popular. I still have them. I can see how mesh body nails could be made to use the Classic UVmap for a BOM-mesh-body. But, that odd use of the map would require special textures made just for that particular mesh's UV. I doubt anyone is doing that and existing tats for classic body nails would likely distort. Which would eliminate picture nail polish. Most of the nails I have seen in use now are the mesh-body's nails and are still Applier based. There are also add-on nails like Slink's Stiletto nails and those are applier based. Most of my nail appliers work with my Slink Redux body's natural nails which I wear in BoM mode. I do run into problems with the add-on nails. I am still sorting my nail colors into which works with what. I suspect you are hopping to get a nail-color solution that lets you save outfits and not have to mess with color selection again. With add-on nails that should be possible. For similar things I have a starting copy of the attachment which is part of my "Starter Outfit" which is my nude avatar with all the parts I consider basic, including the add-on nails. Once I have made a new outfit starting from the nude outfit and have it together and everything the color I want, I take off the parts I changed and save a copy of them in in a descriptively named folder within the item's folder. Then I wear the copy. When I save the outfit it links to the copy that I never change. I can just wear the outfit and I am good.

I do not doubt some designers have dropped their support of Slink. But, I think our opinions on how much support Slink gets depends on where we shop. I've been to events where they are almost exclusively Maitreya. Others where most designers in the event included Slink versions. If you want to easily find clothes that fit, the first choice is a female Maitreya. But, I hate how the shoulders look.

Awesome!

There is a problem with facial animation HUDs. Because all the different head makers weight the vertices in their heads differently and vary as to which bones they weight them to it is difficult to make animations that work across all heads. So, demo to see if they work with your head. Some will. I find the better animations are generally made by the people that made the head.

Focus Magazine's group posted they have new photo place links up at the office, here. This is a good group to belong to. They do lots of photos and art. This is Solus. They have the cutest little animated ducks running around. Awesome animator, JIAN (jiansl). Too bad they didn't use Pathfinding but, it is tricky and tedious.

You should probably look in your viewer's log file to see if you can get a hint of why you are disconnecting. I assume you have restarted the modem and computer at least a couple of times. Modem back on first then 2 to 3 minutes later the computer. Also, the new modem may be defective. Or it may a cheap one with limitations. Search for reviews on that brand and model modem. There is also an events log in most modems. Look up how to access that log and check it for errors. Your ISP may need to get you a replacement.

Clearing your SL cache is a last resort type of thing. Avoid doing that unless you KNOW that is the problem and it almost always isn't. Most often clearing it aggravates whatever problem you have. The viewer generates a log of events it experiences. You can look in the log to find warnings and errors. These give us a hint what is happening. See: Always try logging into a different region when a login fails. I have a list of region names I use in such cases. Furball is one. If that one also fails then check the SL Grid status page. This can save you lots of problems and wasted effort. For quick help in the forum include your viewer's HELP->About... page in your post. If it is a version or computer problem we can often see that in the list of hardware and drivers. As it is you haven't given us enough to know what is going on.

Are you shaking the change of that kid's pockets? 😯 Fun image.

There is the set of starter avatars. That is a beginner start out thing... But, you have choices. Once familiar with SL you can do anything you can imagine or hire someone to do for you. The duplicating RL persons was once a big business. But, it is just way cheaper to find a mesh head in the marketplace that is close to your look and tweak to be more like you. The biggest step is having a skin made from images of you. A skin designer and a number of Internet apps can turn some pictures into a skin texture that can be used in SL. I think this rout is what put the duplicators out of business.

@riverjoy I'll give you the longer and more techy answers. I think that may help you more in understanding how SL works and how to use it. Some of the items you ask about are easily explained and have been. But the simple explanation may not be what you need to understand SL and make life here easier. First, understand we use an SL Jargon. No one thought it up not is there an official version. It just sort of evolved. And not everyone will provide the same definition for each item in the jargon. Not everyone understands what words in the jargon actually mean or refer to. So, you can get conflicting explanations. The word in our jargon bent the most is the word MESH. In common use the word mesh means this dictionary-wise. We mean that too in SL Jargon but we mean more than that. First every thing rendered in SL’s 3D real time world is made of mesh. Press the keys Ctrl-Shift-R to see the wire frame view of SL and the mesh. Press again to turn it back to a rendered view. But, it is all mesh. So, what do SL peeps mean when they say mesh? An item you did not ask about is key to understanding SL the meaning of mesh in SL, The Prim. Which is why the slogan “It all begins with a cube” is part of SL history. Understanding MESH Things made from Primitives were the beginning of Second Life. Because computers and the Internet were slow the engineers used Primitives, aka prims, to make things faster. Prims were built into the viewer, meaning the list of points making the mesh object are in the viewer and never have to be downloaded (Well, once the viewer is downloaded.). We call those points the vertices of the mesh as is common in 3D modeling. If you open the Build Panel (Ctrl-B) it opens to show the 13 primitives originally used to build everything in SL, except the avatar, which is a special case. It also shows trees and grass, which I’m not sure about how they are implemented just that they were built-in. Obviously, these prims can be manipulated. Cubes can be twisted, scaled larger or smaller, colored, textured, and more. Look in the Build Panel’s Object tab to see the geometry controls. These are parameters that are attributes of the cube one is working with. So, SL was known as a 3D parametric world. The parameters were all that had to be downloaded. To see all the things done with prims and how visit the Ivory Tower Library of Primitive, found in Natoma. About 2013 what we refer to as MESH was introduced to SL. This is a ‘prim’ that does not have its vertex list built into the viewer. We create the list in a 3D modeling program and upload it to SL. We can make heads, bodies, cars, houses, and… anything we want. When we view such a mesh-prim the list is downloaded. It can take a minute to render. We can do that because computers and the Internet are much faster now. Mesh heads, bodies, and other mesh named things refer to this type of mesh-prim. HUDs In the Build Panel you can see the controls for working with the basic prims. These work with the mesh-prim too but, in a complex limited way. With buildings and things, we can use all the controls. With mesh-bodies and clothes, we cannot. That is because prims DO NOT bend. Mesh-prims do not bend. So, a jacket on an animated avatar would have the arms coming out of the sleeves when the avatar moved its arms… The solution is a basic 3D modeling-animation thing called rigging which ties the mesh-prim to the avatar armature (skeleton) so the jacket will move with the arms. Presto a bendable prim. This idea has been extended to animesh, which is a whole other thing. When people build these bodies and clothes they put lots of work into them and want to avoid having them ripped off. So, they make them No-Mod. We can only change them via an included HUD, Heads Up Display. Which just moves the Build Panels controls into an on-screen control panel we call a HUD. They are customized for the specific item they control rather than the generic controls in Build Panel. Mama Allpa It isn’t Mama ALPHA. No such thing. Mama Allpa is an item (HUD) for simulating a women’s menstrual cycle. They base it on the original 4-hour SL day, 6 times faster than RL. It is for females (primarily, there is a male side) that want to do the sex, pregnancy, and birth thing to have children in SL. The HUD does a game thing decision on whether the coupling ‘took’ and tracks the days to birth. A Mama Allpa doctor or midwife usually gets involved in the process on request. It is a good simulation of the RL process. But, one can take the HUD off and stop playing. It is an RP accessory. The SL System does not have a pregnancy system built in. So, avatar pregnancy is an RP thing only. RLV This is short for Restrained Love Viewer. (Once Restrained Life Viewer but the Linden legal department objected and it changed.) While I suspect the majority of SL residents think of RLV as a BDSM/sex thing, it is more than that. But, sex is the primary use. There are loads of fun toys using RLV. RLV is a specific viewer. But, the special programming in that viewer has been included in other third party viewers, like Firestorm. So, RLV is now more a 'viewer capability' than a single viewer. The short explanation is it gives in-world scripts (programs) control over a person’s viewer. A user has to enable RLV for it to work and some type of RLV (script communication) Relay has to worn as an attachment or HUD. This is control like removing and adding attachments. So, clothes on, clothes off. If you have played with Stargates in SL, you have seen the permission problem RLV was designed to solve. Without RLV you touch the gate and it asks if it is OK to teleport you… every time and at every gate. With RLV enabled you can walk into the gate and get teleported, no extra click or popup questions. Without RLV one can still remove another's clothes but it is often a tedious process of repeatedly asking permission. A mood spoiler. RLV and the SL Experiences System are similar. Sex HUDs For SL avatars to simulate having sex in SL someone has to make and provide the animations. To control when those animations are played and which ones. Various methods are used. Sex HUDs are one way. The HUDs can get very complex. Getting two avatars to fit together is actually a challenging programming problem, considering all the different size avatars. So, sex furniture is often a simple solution to a complex problem. Pose-balls another but, lately those are falling out of fashion. Be warned sex HUDs are often filled with old and/or free sex animations. It is easy to get ripped off. Demo any sex thing before you buy it.

Clearing cache is an absolute last resort fix when all else fails. For most people the fix for missing inventory at the Firestorm Wiki works to fix the missing outfits problem. Work your way those those fixes.

@RavenzClaw you are fairly clueless. Most Tuesdays the server code is updated with a new version. For a few years that has been true. And you haven't noticed. On most Wednesdays the test channel of regions is updated with 1 to 3 versions of release candidate versions of the server software which they hope to release the next week and you haven't noticed. Have you noticed that when a region simulator is not restarted for a couple of weeks performance goes way way down? That is caused by problems in the existing system. Those problems are being diagnosed and fixes planned. It is an ongoing effort that results in updates every week. The SL JIRA is the place where users file bug reports and feature requests. There are several dozen bug reports filed weekly. The updates fix those bugs. Bet you didn't know that. The SL viewer gets new features and bug fixes about every 6+/- weeks or so. Some third party viewers fewer or more often fixes or feature updates. Surely you noticed that. The entire server side system is being moved into the cloud. The Lindens call it the uplift. This is being done to reduce the operating cost which eventually will reduce land cost and improve performance and gain computing power for future enhancements. SL is constantly changing for the better. Which I am sure you have have been oblivious to. After 23 posts to the SL Forum you had yet to figure out this is a user-to-user forum and had to be told. Some bug shook your world and woke you, you stumbled in here and made a grand display of your ignorance. You are now welcome to go back to sleep until next time or join the SL community that works to make the system better and learn something about the SL system.

Assuming you run Windows... Open the Device Manager. Look for Display Adapters. Open it and then right-click your adapter and select Properties. Next click the Update Driver button... or you can look at the driver version number and compare it to the manufactures version number on their website.

You may want to define low rezzing... Slow rezzing as in taking a long time, more than 5 minutes? Or only low quality rezzing, as in blurry? In general, I think rez speed has dropped. It takes long for regions to fully render. Avatars take longer to render. What I recall happening in 1 to 2 minutes may now take 1 to 5 minutes. It varies a lot from place to place. Some are still fast but other times even those are slow. So, it is hard to know if it is SL, the viewer, or my connection and computer.

@NiranV Dean may have a better answer.. The Machinima panel is a collection of viewer settings and server side Windlight settings. The viewer settings and be restored to their defaults, which depend on your computers graphics ability. Delete the viewer's SETTINGS file while the viewer is not running. The viewer will rebuild this file the next time it starts. That will return all the viewer's Preferences to the defaults and I suspect change the related settings in the Machinima panel. C:\Users\[Windows_ID]\AppData\Roaming\BlackDragon\[avatar_name]\settings_per_account.xml -- I think the blue part is correct. Niran often changes things to suit Niran. Save a copy somewhere before you delete it so you can restore it, if I am wrong. With the Windlight related settings you can restore the Environment Settings in their panels and that should handle most of the Machinima's Windlight related settings. The Machinima panel is not the 'master' panel of your environment settings. It populates it setting with whatever the viewer is using at the time. The existing viewer info is sort of a starting place foe the Machinima panel. Think of it as a way to tweak all the settings in the various places in the viewer that affect the render. Use the Windlight settings to get your basic look. The Machinima panel offers handy shortcut to the various settings in the different Windlight/EEP panels.

I've been playing in Imaginarium. Fun place to take pictures, region Bare Sun. I used Black Dragon to get the pose. I am getting quicker with the Poser. The image showing the witches face has quite a bit of PS work. The other, of just me, very little.

I think BoM is easier to understand and work with than appliers. It uses the original concepts and basic design of SL from the pre-mesh days. More or less working the way SL avatars were originally designed to work. The entire Applier Era was a work-around for the lack of layers on prims. Eventually, I think, most of the applier tech will disappear. The basic difference is BoM uses system layers for skin, tats, and clothes... the items that have distinctive inventory icons. It allows us to handle mesh bodies the same way we handle the Classic body. BoM is an improved second generation Server Side Baking, the process of compositing server side all the textures for skin, tats, underwear, clothes, jacket into a single texture. The idea was to reduce the client side render from a possible 15 or so textures to 3.

Photoshop 2021 now as AI filters. (Filter->Neural) I think it obvious they rushed its release. Maybe because Liminar has.

Most viewers will let you set the image resolution. Most allow 4k. Black Dragon, with a warning built-in, allow ridiculously high resolutions.

You can always say you identify as a woman...

We get used to adding and removing attachments but somethings can't be removed. Those can be replaced or disabled. For instance SKIN, it can only be replaced or hidden. Most applier heads/bodies will have layer clear or hide options. For demos I think will mess with my avatar I have a test outfit that uses a separate copy of my body and head. I only use that head and body in that outfit. I wear that outfit then try the demo.

Prims and avatars use different parts of the render process. Avatars are a special case using a dedicated part of the render system. That system renders the avatar or doesn't. The alpha textures/layers we add tells that system to render of not render. There is no semitransparent render. It is a binary 0 or 1. The part of the system that handles prims allows degrees of transparency, 0.00 to 1.00 or 0 to 100 depending on how you want to think of it. Unfortunately most body makers do not provide access to the transparency setting. If they did you could set the prim-mesh bodies to any level of transparency. Something that cannot be done with the Classic avatar body as it is non-prim.

Welcome to the forum. Thanks for posting your picture. Sexy cute avatar.

CRASHES... Blaming the viewer is not always fair. Windows versions, graphics drivers, memory limits, the computer's chipsets and drivers, and a number of other factors contribute to viewer crashes. My experience as of the time I write this is Firestorm EEP Beta is crashing way more than any other viewer I use, Win10 2004 update, Nvidia 436.48, i5-6600k (overclocked), and 32GB Ram. I forget the last time Black Dragon crashed. I do use it less than FS. BD is for posing and pictures. But I do take pictures with FS. A friend trying to take pictures with an old laptop and Firestorm (not sure which version) has to relog every 3 or 4th shot or crash. I can do snaps all day and seldom crash. My point is it takes quite a bit of work to nail down where the problem actually is. And most of us are having different experiences. It isn't until EVERYBODY is crashing on a particular version of a viewer that we can blame it. SHARPENING... It is an art. So whatever method one uses, it can be done poorly. One of the simplest sharpening tricks is to take a high res image and reduce the rez for the final image. While this is simple not all image editors reduce resolution as well as others. Photoshop has about 6 ways to change the resolution. The SL Blogosphere has debated which is best. My experience is which is best varies with some images looking better with one of the less recommended processes.

This from March 2019 when I was in my cartoon phase. Guys do lots of funny things that center around women. Cartoons are often funny because they point out those responses.