Peggy Paperdoll

Check your settings in your browser. You probably need to change them to "Do not filter ......", or some such.

If you want to start from the beginning here's the link to the first Second Life forums: http://forums-archive.secondlife.com/294/1.html There's a ton of information posted by the original creators of content for SL from the very beginning. The "stickies" posted in each sub-forum contain almost all the basics for content creation. The forums were closed over 2 years ago so no new posts have been added but, really, the basics for any content creation in SL have not changed at all. It'll probably take several hours to skim everything (and days to read it all) but I believe it will give you a good start. You'll see all the arguments concerning how to set permiisions.........how permissions can be abused or exploited and advantages for each combination of permissions. Bookmark the URL..........you'll find it a place you'll visit often once you get going with content creation in SL. Good luck.

Copybotting (or content theft) is a RL crime. Being inspired by someone else's content is not. I've never heard of any "rule of thumb" concerning "30% different". If someone is inspired by someone else's content and creates their own content using that someone else's content as a model it's perfectly okay. Yeah, there's a gray area and making your "inspired" content in such a way that it's obviously not a copy is probably a good idea.........but it's not rule ("of thumb" or otherwise). To the OP. Make sure you do not directly copy any prim, texture or script in your creation. Make your own prims using your own textures and create (or purchase full rights) scripts, if you use them in your build. As long as you do that, there will be differences. If you are so close to being exactly the same as your inspiration, you might be in danger of being accused of copybotting..........but that's unlikely since not even the original creator can duplicate the build from scratch without copious notes.............and you won't have those notes.

Sometimes the simpliest little test does it for ya.........reset your router and modem. When you do that shut down your compter until the devices are reset. That kills three birds with one stone.......reboots your router, reboots your modem, and reboots your computer. It might work and then even you can laugh at your rant. :matte-motes-big-grin-wink:

I got to agree with Marigold. Seems you are one of a very few with such issues (probably the only one since I've never heard of anyone having 1 FPS for a half hour then suddenly get 70 FPS). One thing I've noticed in the 5 years plus that I've been reading SL related forums (and attempting to help when I can) is that, without exception, the people who refuse to give complete computer specs, stating that their computer does not have any issues are the very people who just don't know what they are talking about. If you can find any program delivered via the Internet that has real time 3D graphics rendered on the fly, content provided by the users (about 99% of the content, by the way), uses OpenGL rendering engine and is free to use, then you can compare.....since there are none out there, I would suggest you do some research before you accuse the software for all your problems. The vast majority of users have acceptable performance on mediocre machines.......why not you? Think about it.

No, Linden Lab does not support any of that. Keep filing Abuse Reports........yeah it does sometimes take a while to get it all resolved. But, over the years, I've found that a properly submitted report with all relevant facts (and any supporting information) are responded to quickly........resist the urge to embellish your complaint and never accuse the Abuse Team of imcompetance (I know, it sometimes seems that way). There are a ton of AR's submitted daily (many of which are bogus). If the team member who picks up the report can't figure out what it is that is being reported (or finds some exaggerations in the claim), it's going to go to bottom of the heap........maybe to the trash bin.

You don't say if your mother bought a private estate or mainland. Either way, unless it's a brand new sim purchased directly from LL it's very possible that the previous owner did not clear the sim of all the prims that were on it prior to the sale. Your mother has full rights to the sim so she can delete or return anything on it that she wants to ruturn or delete. Have her go to "About land" and look at the total prims on the land and if they are "owned" by others. She can return all those that are owned by "others". If it's a brand new sim purchased directly from LL then a support ticket would be in order.

Is it possible that you have more than one hard drive in your computer? The normal path that any viewer follows is a path on C: drive. If you changed that to, say driver D: (or whatever drive you second drive is designated) the program should pick up the change.........it sounds as if it did not. Or maybe you installed SL on some removable media (like a memory stick).........that must be in your computer for the viewer to work.

You've got to know,after all these years, that I respect your opinions and suggestions. I do not mind being corrected when I need correcting. In this instance it just struck me wrong...........I also apoligize. I should have known. I'm sorry......forgive me, please.

The cache folder does not contain any chat logs........there's nothing to copy and save unless you want to possibly save some corrupted file. You are absolutely correct about saving any chat logs (what I called "logs" in my response) if you manually delete files after an unistallation.............I mentioned it. Deleting the entire cache folder does not harm the installation since the viewer will rebuild the folder that is missing due to the delete. You mixed two different processes.

A crash sometimes damages files...especially a system crash (where your operating system crashes and you have to shut down your computer to get out of it). If the normal "clear cache" doesn't work, then the next step is to go to the cache location on your computer (you can find that by looking at the location on the tab you go to in "Preferences"......in Viewer 2 that is the "Setup" tab) and noting the location. Close the viewer and navigate to that location on your computer and manually deleting the entire folder......it will not harm your viewer installation. And, if that doesn't work, the next step is to uninstall the viewer from your computer, do a complete search of your hard drive for anything "SL or Second Life" and manually deleting those files (you will lose any logs so copy them if you want to save them). Then go to the SL web site (or Third Party site for your viewer of choice) and get a fresh copy. Save that setup file to your hard drive and get off the Internet................install the viewer.

To add a little to Void's very good response. Do two more things.........both are simple and solve many problems people encounter when using SL. First clear your cache. I'm assuming you are using Viewer 2 (the default SL veiwer supplied by Linden Lab). Under the "Me" menu click "Preferences", then on the "Setup" tab look at the "Cache location" and click the "Reset" button. Okay out of the information dialog box and "Quit" SL. The second suggestion is to reset your modem and router. You can do this when you clear your cache since you are already logged out. Shut down your computer and unplug your modem and router from their electrical source and leave unplugged for 3 to 5 minutes. Plug the devices back in and wait for the lights to settle to their normal routine (about 30 seconds) then try SL again. If everything fails to clear your problem then Marigold's advice is next........we need some information about your computer and how you connect to the Internet. To get the basic information needed, the easiest way is to launch the viewer (you don't need to log in). Under the "Help" menu click "About Second Life". You'll see the basic specs for your computer as reported by your viewer to the LL servers. Copy those specs and paste back here. And tell us how you connect to the Internet.........cable, DSL or T1. What your connection speed is and if you are connecting wirelessly or Ethernet. Hope it all this gets it sorted for you. If not, someone here can help.........but we will need information so we are not "shooting in the dark".

Intel graphics adapters are not ideal for 3D graphics but they will work. As mentioned, you'll probably not be able to run SL at much more than low settings in your preferences. However, I have a good RL friend who has the same IGP you have and she can run SL at high settings (she experiences a good amount of texture lag but she doesn't mind......her frame rates are decent). She also runs her computer without much background programs and she has quite a bit of system RAM (plus a fast quad core CPU). You'll have to experiment to find settings you can live with...........so many things effect how any computer will run high end graphics programs. One of the main things to be on the watch for is heat on that chipset........it will get hot and since it's part of the motherboard, you could get some serious damage (possibly burning up your motherboard). I talked my friend into getting another case fan and hardware monitoring software. If your computer is a laptop, get a cooling pad.

Sounds like a router (and/or modem) issue. Shut down your computer, unplug your router and modem from their electrical source, wait 3 to 5 minutes, plug them back in and wait for the lights to settle into their normal blinking routine. Try SL again. For the particle mist ball, try changing both your skin and shape and then changing back to what you normally wear (do this after you visit Pooley or one of the other LL managed sims).

You've done just about all you can do. It's up to Linden Lab to investigate but, you are correct, it is one of those "he said, she said" things. However, you can contact Linden Lab directly: http://lindenlab.com/contact

I'm not sure what you mean by "loud". If it's just the fans spinning and slapping air due to the speed of the rotation, then I agree with Rolig........it's a good thing. But if it's a grinding, grating sound (like bearins or bushings rubbing against each other, that's another story..........a precursor to a fan failure. A cooling pad is something well worth the $35 to $40 USD that they cost..........laptop computers are just not made for heat producing programs. Graphical and computational intensive program work your CPU and GPU to their max..........that makes them heat up. SL is one of the most GPU intensive (and, to some degree, CPU) programs available to the general public. You need to constantly think about heat............or you're likely to burn something up. Desktops, since they have more room for fans and cooling devices, aren't as prone to frying themselves (though that happens to them too).

Are we talking about aspect ratios or formats? I read the question to ask about formats........aspect ratios are entirely different.

I wish I had the skll to write something like that. I was so frustrated when I first started trying to make textures for SL and everything was for Photoshop. The technique and process is identical...........really, it is. GIMP, being open source and having slightly different methods (terminology?), makes it hard to make the connections (online referrences, for the most part, assume some level of experience with imaging programs) did not help much..acttually they created more confusion than anything. I finally decided that I had to bite the bullet and start from the beginning........I bought a book on Amazon.com. That book taught me be basics and all that Photoshop stuff I read about in the tutorials and explainations started to make sense. I figured that it's going to take time (for me, it was about 6 months) to figure out how to do what I wanted to do........it's been a very pleasant road since then. :matte-motes-big-grin: The book I purchased was "Beginning GIMP from Novice to Profession" by Akkana Peck. Easy reading, and step by step instructions for anything you want to do with imagies (textures). I paid about $30 USD some 4 years ago.....it's worth every penny.

I understand exactly what you are saying. I'm one to push myself when I want to learn something.....but, I also know that I create so many problems for myself by attempting stuff before I understand the basics. The question was how to make a shadow for a texture that is all the way around the texture. I can think of about a half dozen ways to do that.......great for me. However, I get the distinct impression the poster of this thread is not all that experienced with image editing programs (let alone GIMP)...........I wanted to keep it simple and to the specific question. The drop shadow filter does what the question asked. Actually Rolig's response is what I really think the question is implying.......but, man, that requires some experience with layers and shading. I just don't think that was the question. I could be wrong.

Yeah.............haha. Think back to when you first started using GIMP..........would that make sense? :matte-motes-big-grin-wink:

The format really doesn't matter for a profile picture. JPEG, or any other lossy format, will show some loss in quality though. Any lossless format (TGA, PNG, or BMP) will produce the best quality. I use either TGA or PNG for such uploads. But if a slight loss of quality is unimportant JPEG is fine.

There are a couple ways to make a shadow for your texture in GIMP. The easiest way is to use the "Drop Shadow" filter [ Filters > Light and shadow > Drop shadow ]. You'll get a dialog to define the drop shadow. The default settings are X = 8, Y = 8, Blur radius = 15, Color = black, Opacity = 80, and the box to "Allow resizing" is checked (this is important because the drop shadow is going to increase the pixel size of the final texture). Accept the defaults or adjust to your needs (you might have to experiment to find what you want or need). Once you click "OK" the filter will create a new layer under the layer you want the drop shadow placed. The next step is to go back to the "Drop shadow" filter and repeat the process except that you change the settings for X and Y to the same number but make them negative in value (X = -8 and Y = -8). That will give you another layer placed under the texture layer that is 180 degrees rotated from the first drop shadow layer giving you a shadow all the way around your texture. Now, since the drop shadow increased the pixels both horizontally and vertically to accommadate the drop shadow your image size has to be increased. The way I do that is to merge the two drop shadow layers into one layer (don't merge all your layers incase you want or need to modify them later). Then under the "Image" menu click "Fit canvas to layers". That will increase your image size to accommadate the drop shadow and the size that you were working at will change. You need to remember that when you do your final save for uploading to SL For instance if you are working at 1024 X 1024 pixels after you fit the canvas to your layers your size might be 1044 X 1044..........you'll need to scale your image back down to 1024 X 1024 so that you don't get distortion or let the SL software do the resizing for you (it sucks big time). There's a few other ways but that's the most straight forward and probably the quickest.

You're experiencing lag. Lag is caused by many things. A couple of the most common causes are your computer and/or it's connection to the Linden Lab servers. The other most common cause is the sim you are located in having problems. The first thing to try is the easiest. Clear your cache (Me > Preferences > Setup and near the middle of the dialog box you'll see your cache location and a "reset" button. Click "reset". You'll get a pop-up telling you that your cache will be cleared on your next log in........click "OK" and log off SL (quit). When you are logged off go ahead and shut down your computer and reset your modem (and router, if you have one). Once you do that, log back into SL and be patient..........things will probably load slower after the cache was cleared. See if your SL works better. If you still have problems try clearing your cache again and logging back off.........you don't need to reset your modem/router. When you log in again, change your log in location to another sim. Try Pooley or Smith. Once you get to one of those sims don't do much of anything but wait (maybe move off the landing point a few steps but don't be moving around a lot or changing clothes, etc). Open your inventory and in the "Search" box type the letters "A", "B", "C" slowly until your counter starts showing "fetched" items. Wait for that counter to stop completely (it might stop and start several times so be patient). Once your inventory has loaded you can TP back home and everything should be fixed for you. If neither of my suggestions work for you, then we need some computer specs from you. An easy way to get the basic specs is to open the "Help" menu at the top of your interface, click on "About Second Life" and then copy the specs listed and paste back here.

Pay attention to what Rolig said. The picture you posted is showing one of a couple things that could be the problem. The first is a corrupted driver (or maybe an outdated driver). The second is a failing graphics card/adapter. Since this apparently just started happening a few days ago and you made no mention of a major system crash, there is no reason to think it's a driver problem. That leaves the GPU, itself, is failing. The problem will not get better (or fix itself) and it's entirely possible that the problem will get worse over time.........until the GPU fails completely. Clean the inside of your computer as Rolig suggested. If your computer is a laptop, take it to a computer shop and have them clean it for you (laptops are not something an inexperienced person should be taking apart to clean). Another case fan is a wise investment...........you can get them for under $25 and they are very easy to install. If your computer is a laptop, invest in a cooling pad...........you can get good ones for about $35. Go to Download.com (CNET) and get some hardware monitoring software so you can keep tabs on the temps of critical hardware devices in your computer..........there are many free ones that are quite good. And think about where your computer tower sits........it's nice to have it out of sight, inside a cabinet but that is a heat trap. Many computers have fried themselves simply because they were closed up inside a neat cabinet........at least, remove the door if you insist on looks over function. Hopefully, no huge amount of damage has occurred. Depending on how much you've used the computer in this condition, everything should be fine once you get it running cooler. Just be aware that if the problem continues, it will get worse until one day it's over..........the GPU fails.

I, too, would love an updated avatar mesh. But, think of all the existing SL clothing that would suddenly need replacing. Can you imagine the uproar from the residents? It would be that classic "LL broke a perfectly good avatar mesh!!" It matters not that it's really a cheesy mesh (and always was), that's what people will say. I think LL is banking on mesh solving that problem for them when mesh creators start making full avatars rigged to the base avatar..........and that would be fine too. The rest of SL is user created, why not the avatars too.