DanielRavenNest Noe

As of the latest Snowstorm in-development build (version 2.6.1, build 223988), a "basic" mode feature has been merged from a previously unknown development branch called "viewer-social". http://automated-builds-secondlife-com.s3.amazonaws.com/hg/repo/snowstorm_viewer-development/latest.html Basic mode is intended for new users, while the user interface we currently use is now called "Advanced" (and I guess the "advanced" menu will now be called "expert" or something). You choose the mode at login, and it requires a restart to change from one to the other. Being freshly merged and not yet to beta status, it has some rough edges, but you can download it from the above link if you want to see it. CYGWIN=Windows version

My understanding is each LOD should be half the polgon count of the next higher one. That goes along with texture loading, which goes in steps of "times one half" depending on distance. Thus the 3rd LOD would be 1/8 the polgon count. Doing mesh for another graphics engine we were told below 300 triangles it was not worth making lower LODs. The reason was it takes time to *switch* from one LOD to the next, and at some point that ends up taking longer than loading a small model saves you. It would be helpful to know if for the SL graphics engine and server streaming if there is a lower practical limit like that. In other words, below what triangle count does it stop saving you anything? If such a limit exists, then the remaining LOD files you select on upload would just be more copies of the lowest practical one.

A followup note, the owner of the Redzone system and several friends/alts, along with his in-world shop, have been removed from Second Life.

Whatever method is chosen should be made easy to set up in all the various programs people are using. I expect the main use for offset pivots is in aligning objects in a more complex build. What has been used in another virtual world is that the object pivot is set to the origin (0,0,0), and then the mesh geometry is positioned as needed relative to it. So if you want the pivot at a corner, just place the corner of the mesh at 0,0,0. If you want the pivot centered, place the mesh centered on 0,0,0. It doesn't have to work that way, as long as whatever method we end up with is easy to explain and use in practice.

In this case the article has been verified by numerous other people. For example, I personally saw the original video on YouTube before it was taken down. The account it was posted on was created in 2008, two months before the owner of the Redzone system's SL account was created. The video had been posted privately (not visible to the world) in August, 2010. Both the video and the account were deleted the same morning news of it's existence became public. Redzone's owner publicly claimed to own another YouTube account which was created 4 days later with almost the same name (kgb006mars vs kgbmars006), but still 2 months before his SL account creation date. How would anyone but him have known to set up a near matching account on YouTube to host a fake video, when he hadn't even started in SL yet? Why does the face and voice on the video match that of someone on videos he did claim ownership of? On the topic of the server breach, at least two people have come forward to claim responsibility, and have posted additional screenshots on another forum besides the Herald. Based on that information, additional other people (including myself) were able to document another website on the same server as Redzone (knightsofmars.com) which claimed to offer griefing services for pay. That site was *also* disabled right after it came to light, but not before it was screenshotted. In light of the accumulated evidence, the Herald's suggestion that Redzone customers change their passwords is on target. It couldn't hurt, and might prevent break-ins by *either* Redzone system admins or the people who claim to have broken into the server. Even a chance that the evidence is true is enough to warrant taking precautions. All of the evidence has been turned over to Linden Lab (Soft Linden must have a very full inbox). They are in a position to tell if any accounts were actually breached, and if their Terms of Service have been broken. In a way, I would prefer this all turn out to be fake. If true, it means Redzone customers have been abused by the very person they bought a security system from. But I will leave the final decision to LL, they have more information to go on than the rest of us.

A security warning if you own this device: http://alphavilleherald.com/2011/03/zf-redzone-security-breached-sl-passwords-compromised.html From the Article: "A shadowy group of Second Life hactivists claim to have breached the Redzone server’s security, gaining access to the server database and discovering cleartext passwords for most Redzone customer accounts on the site. As if storing raw Redzone customer passwords is not bad enough, there is apparently a second table that tracks passwords from failed login attempts in the hope users will accidentally enter their Second Life account password. These failed passwords are conveniently displayed on the user profile page of the "Admin Overlord App" as "Possible SL PW(s)". In light of these revelations, the Herald strongly suggests that all zf Redzone customers change their Second Life account passwords immediately – and ask themselves why they would continue to run a product that attempts to guess their Second Life password"

You can tell if it's logging you into Aditi several ways: * The login screen says "Second Life Beta Test Grid" * Before Login, Open Me > Preferences > Advanced, and turn on "Show Grid Selection At Login", then make sure the second box under "Start At" next to the Log In button says "Aditi" * Open World Map and search for "Mesh". You need to be on a server with Mesh enabled. Around three dozen "Mesh Sandbox" regions are set up for that purpose. The mesh upload display you screen captured should progressively show a 1 instead of 0 in the price quote and upload fields, then the uploaded item will appear in your inventory. My guess is you were not in a mesh enabled region, which is why the upload failed.

It's not just this topic, they did not carry along any posts from any category. Doing selective threads from the entire old forums would have been too much work. Best we can do is link back to the archive, like I did with the 3dsMax Best Practices.

OK, simple cylinder. I flipped two of the square polygons (4 triangles). You can now see through it, cause the "back side" of the single-sided polygon now points outward, and gets no texture, You can see the far side of the interior has no texture either. "Flipped" just means the side that gets the texture isn't the one you wanted. Some 3D programs have a button to invert the triangle or polygon so that the side you intend will show. It's also possible to set up the object "double sided" so that both sides will render (see second photo). The SL viewer can handle it both ways, it's all in how the .dae file you import gets set up, and therefore what you did in the 3D program in the first place. Doing everything double-sided isn't recommended, cause the viewer will render both sides even if you can't see it.

Henry Darkthief wrote I do have one question, though. Why should anyone pay attention to anything this Hamlet Au says? I've never heard of him/her before this so why would his/her opinion matter? Wagner James Au (the human behind Hamlet Au the avatar) used to work for Linden Lab as their "embedded journalist": http://nwn.blogs.com/about.html and published a book "The Making of Second Life": http://www.amazon.com/dp/0061353205 So he is more than just another random blogger just for the fact that people outside SL would pay him more attention due to his background.

Only the latest FBX version works, earlier ones don't. Also, imported models are one-sided, meaning the texture only appears on the front side of a triangle, and is invisible from the back side. So sometimes you have to flip the triangles to make them visible. Another cause of "invisible" models is some software uses "transparency", where 0% = fully visible, and others use "opacity", where 0% = fully transparent, so you have to reverse the values in the 3D software to see it in SL. The problem comes from the COLLADA Digital Asset Exchange (.dae) being an "XML Schema" and not a rigid file format standard. .dae files are writeable and readable by many programs, but they do not all contain the same set of information, nor mean the same things by the included values. It doesn't help that every 3D program uses different native formats, which even vary from version to version of the same program. So it's just a fact of life for 3D creators that we have to find a workflow that does the model preparation and conversion correctly, write it down (that's important), and follow it.

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2011/03/facebook-best-for-second-life-sharing.html#more All I can say is read the first comment, and expect more like it.

They likely use the site to *steal* credit card numbers. In other words, you try to buy some L$ from them, you get nothing, and they have your card info, which they go and use elsewhere. As often as the spam accounts have been deleted by LL, they likely don't *have* a valid account to pay anyone with.

In my "Report Inappropriate Content" message, I told them they should add "Eingee" to the dirty words list, and *bleep* it out. that basically would make their posts unreadable (and therefore useless). The whole point is to get poor suckers to give their credit card numbers, so they can get ripped off. If you can't even get people to your scam website, there's no point to post here. There are more active measures they could take, like checking the forum data logs, and block any IP addresses they are using to post from, but they could have done that months ago.

I find the best way to search is to use Google directly in a browser, rather than the internal search. For example site:world.secondlife.com/ soul skin brings up the original poster's desired shop as the first result. Since Google has a search engine that actually works, you can use the following to look for things if your SL viewer search sucks. For all but the specific resident name, type it into web browser Google search bar. For specific resident name type it directly into web browser address box. For all: site:world.secondlife.com/ [search terms] For places: site:world.secondlife.com/place/ [search terms] For residents: site:world.secondlife.com/resident/ [name] For groups: site:world.secondlife.com/group/ [search terms] For a specific resident profile: https://my.secondlife.com/user.name For Marketplace search: site:marketplace.secondlife.com [search terms]

84,000 triangles is way way too high for this type of object (and above the upload limit of 64K triangles). Note that details smaller than 0.5 millimeters are *too small to see*, given the Viewer camera clipping objects too close, and typical monitor sizes. When making gently curved tapers like the comb teeth, imagine a perfect curve for the object, and then the actual approximation made up of triangles. If the approximation deviates from the perfect by less than half a pixel at whatever viewing distance the object will typically have, that is good enough. At the closest viewing distance (0.5 meters), half a pixel is 0.25 mm. I would model one comb tooth as about 3 rows of triangles lengthwise, with a square base, or 24 triangles per tooth, and about 25 teeth in your version, so 600 triangles total, plus no more than 6 vertexes at the sharpest curve on the upper right of the image you show, somewhat more to model the gentler curves in the rest of the handle and body. I would estimate 300 triangles aside from the teeth, so 900 total for the model. That model will not be visibly different from an infinitely detailed one. Similarly for the texture map, if I assume the comb is 20cm long, and the smallest detail you can display is 0.5mm, then the comb will be at most 400 pixels long on the screen. Therefore a 512x128 texture mapped across the entire comb is sufficient. Any higher detail simply isn't visible, and a waste of texture loading time.

What about Linden Lab owned map regions/parcels? Is there a blanket permission to use those places? If not, who do you ask for permission?

You might want to start up a "Best Practices" topic for Zbrush, like we have for Blender and 3ds Max, so that tutorials and tips can be gathered in one place by software.

Falcon Linden gave us an update on Mesh status: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/When-is-Mesh-coming-to-the-Main-Grid/m-p/709363#M11 It *could* be as soon as 1 to 2 months, if no new major problems pop up. Or, it could be 6 months like you said. For myself, it's been working just fine the last several months, and I have uploaded quite a few models to the Mesh Beta area. The chair below effectively has 3 holes (2 armrests and between seat and back), and this is one model which counts as 3 prims. I agree that it is not too soon to start learning a 3D application. I started with 3ds Max 18 months ago, and now have a big pile of stuff ready to upload.

Thanks, Falcon. Even if you can't give us a date, a status report like you gave us is very helpful.

This WAS a test of what kind of word filters might be in place on this forum. The text below WAS a list of test words which were used to determine how SL search filters worked in 2009. My intent here is purely a test of the new forum, not to break the rules. The test has been completed so the list has been removed by editing this post.

The consistent answer by the Linden staff has been "when it's ready". Given that the last several months I have uploaded numerous mesh models with no problems, and there were not many reports of bugs by other people, I think the real answer is something else. The two things I can think of are: * They are waiting till enough residents are running V2 based viewers, so that they will actually see the mesh objects, and not un-rezzed default prims. * They are testing a "content removal" system, which was mentioned by Stroker Serpentine after settlement of his lawsuit about lack of such for stolen content. Many people have pointed out that import of existing, unlicensed, 3D models would expose Linden Lab to risks. A prompt takedown system (that actually works) would let them join how the rest of the web deals with such things, but it's not ready yet. If a Linden staff member can supply a better explanation, like specific unfinished code issues or other tasks that need to be completed before release, feel free to correct me. The only one I know of is setting the upload price, which could be set in a day if they really wanted to.

This is to restart the topic from the old forum system. The previous topic can be found here: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Mesh-Best-Practices-3DS-Max/m-p/182832/message-uid/182832#U182832 Please post tips for using Autodesk 3ds Max for making Second Life "Mesh" 3D models.here. but also refer to the SL Wiki 3ds Max Page for additional information, and update that page if you have better information.

That being said let me state one fact to remember, You will not be able to please everyone all of the time nor should you try to. Feliciana is very correct in that statement, so perhaps the goal is to have the software not get in the way of what we try to create. As a builder both in SL and in real life, I want good tools to work with, not broken or limited ones. And that includes having some options in how I get things done. There is no "one true way" that people like to do things, we are all different. On a practical software level, that means things like choices in preferences as to what to show and where to put them, or the ability to use a keyboard shortcut, a menu dropdown, OR a button to do a task.

Daniel: "Games are a subset of entertainment, but people use SL for education, training, and other purposes which have no game aspect, other than it shares technology with video games." Ah but that's where the supposition fails. Because if you dared to call SL "entertainment"... people would be coming back at you with, "No, I make my living here!" People who make Hollywood movies make their living at it too, but they are still part of the entertainment industry.