Jump to content

Cristiano Midnight

Resident
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    811

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    13

 Content Type 

Posts posted by Cristiano Midnight

    What Justification Is There For No Mod Permissions?

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted · Edited by Cristiano Midnight

    What is the purpose for making items no mod? I understand it with scripts or configuration notecards, but beyond that, why are so many items made no mod that don't need to be? A good example are animations. I own a lot of poses and like to rename them to include a keyword in them so I can filter by stand, sit, etc.. If an animation is no mod, it cannot be renamed. WHY? I appreciate when furniture and decor items are mod so they can be scaled to match the environment they are in. The only other category I can think of that makes sense potentially to be no mod is rigged mesh, but even then, why? I try to avoid no mod items where I can, but they are pretty prevalent. The whole no-mod thing just feels anti-consumer.

    An example I can think of that seems particularly nasty is a skybox that the paint on the walls is no mod, but conveniently, the creator sells paint huds for 500L in different collections of colors. That is just lame.

    • Like 11

    How does your avatar look today ?

    in Your Avatar

    Posted

    2 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

    Coffee-and-Scepticism-(SM)-Blank.thumb.png.11704949bd94ffa07879d6fe7a310f97.png

    I don't say this enough, because I am usually responding to your comments on my pants, socks, and various body parts, but you are truly an artist. It is a wonderful thing to witness your evolution over time. You are a beautiful reminder of how SL can be used to create art ❤️

    • Like 6
    • Thanks 1

    How does your avatar look today ?

    in Your Avatar

    Posted

    2 hours ago, Eddy Vortex said:

    PerfectMemeSearch.thumb.jpg.a87b24be3e6043817e040e41feb2f1dc.jpg

    I swear some of my friends respond with the perfect meme while I am still typing. Meanwhile all I can remember in the moment is the Sure, Jan! gif which I use for everything, and occasionally, the one of the little girl smiling while the world burns. It fits most situations.

    • Like 2
    • Haha 3

    How does your avatar look today ?

    in Your Avatar

    Posted

    On 4/2/2024 at 7:06 PM, taisiyakarpenko said:

    In case that some of you do not know, the latest version of the Alchemy Viewer (Beta 7.1.4.2413 - think all version is beta?) have the BD Poser included, it also have some of the other features BD is known for, like the ability to "tilt/rotate" the pics... It also have a built in AO like Firestorm (but not the"favourite Wearables! :( ) - and the interface feels a bit more Firestorm-ish/familiar to me... Going to check it out closer the next few days...

    Snapshot_002.thumb.jpg.c675a78cde5192601d63f0f99dc2572a.jpg

    SnapshotA_004psx.thumb.jpg.ed15ded29afbd21540814b9d5172eeb0.jpg

    I gave it a try, and has a better UI than Black Dragon, but is missing too many Firestorm features and Black Dragon renders better still. Hopefully they will borrow features like favorites, contact sets, and some other things I constantly use from Firestorm, then it would be a contender to replace Firestorm and Black Dragon.

    • Like 3

    How does your avatar look today ?

    in Your Avatar

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Orwar said:

       I don't disagree at all, I think BDW has some amazing features. But the time it takes me to set up a shot in it is a lot longer than it would be for me to just throw together a pose, do a shoot in Firestorm, and run it through Gimp to tinker with it (having post-process things like noise in-viewer is nifty, but it's also a 5 second process in Gimp, so, eh, lol). 

       If I were wanting to do Machinima, however, I'd probably force myself to wrap my head around BDW. I'm curious to see what those QoL changes might bring though. 

    I guess I am used to it. I set up most of the shot in Firestorm, and then I switch over to BD and adjust the pose and lighting as needed. I can do it very quickly, but I know that pose editor inside and out.

    How does your avatar look today ?

    in Your Avatar

    Posted

    22 minutes ago, Orwar said:

       Aside from that there's no option to get your avatar's individual shape, it's extremely simple to use. Particularly by 'demoing' the animation, it's easy enough to tab back and forth to adjust it until it looks right in-world. Also the bento version not being finished is too bad, the bento beta has worked fine the times I've tried it, but it also only has a male model in it and I more often find myself posing female avis. 

       Yes, but I also immediately feel like gauging my own eyes out when I see the UI. Switching from FS to BDW is almost as bad as switching from FS to Blender. 

       I think it's a huge miss on LL's part that they haven't given us more in-world creation tools over the years, and that their efforts to tell people what third party software works for making SL assets are pretty minimal. Animating your avi through the viewer and uploading poses/animations directly should have been a thing 16 years ago, at least.

    Black Dragon is not ideal as a general purpose viewer, but it is fantastic for photography. Part of that is the pose tool, which lets you precisely pose every single bone to the smallest of degrees. I use it all the time to tweak existing poses for pictures, and to make my own. Once you learn the pose tool, it is not that complicated, even if the UI is awful. It is getting a QoL update eventually, though Niran is very specific in his ways.  It is by far the most comprehensive posing tool available, and it works directly on the avatar.

    I agree that LL needs to remove the restrictions that do not allow avatar bones to be scripted. In world tools like Anypose and Animare have to use ridiculous workarounds with microanimations that make them incredibly imprecise. They are good for slightly adjusting poses, but far too imprecise for real work with them.

    • Like 1

    How does your avatar look today ?

    in Your Avatar

    Posted

    2 hours ago, ValKalAstra said:

    Oh snap, I probably should have been more clear when I wrote that. I assume you refer to the pose? The pose was sadly made in Blender/Avastar, although I hear that Qavimator works well too but someone else could probably write more about that. Either way, I made the pose in Blender, then exported it into BVH format.

    The preview allows me to essentially "demo" the pose on my end, without a need to upload it. Basically Upload -> Animation -> select BVH and you get the preview window. Set to loop, increase priority if needed and iterate away. That way I can tweak and iterate quickly, simply hitting reload in Firestorm with every change and almost getting a live preview in Firestorm. All without a need to actually upload. Saves time and money and yah, allows quick modifications.

    It's a bit of pain to setup Blender but once done, having tools like inverse kinematics greatly eases the difficulty of posing. Kind of cuts my posing efforts down from hours to fiddling and playing around to 30 minutes or so. I can't say much about qavimator but I am sure others here can chime in.

    Now if you were asking about the background, that's just some basic masking done in any image editing tool and using a CC0 stock image for the galaxy background. If you're lazy like me, you can use a Segment Anything AI model to automate the task of seperating the avatar from the background, so you don't have to mask things manually, or you use a flat background and let the depth picture version of your scene do the work for you.

    Hope this helps, even though I feel like that wasn't quite what you hoped to hear.

    (The day Firestorm gets an integrated posing tool... one can dream! And I feel like a dream it shall remain most likely).

    Black Dragon has an integrated posing tool, and you can use it to create poses from scratch that can be imported back into SL as animations. No better way to iterate than using your own avatar.

    • Like 2
    • Thanks 1
×
×
  • Create New...