Violaine Villota

What would I WANT to see brought to SL this year? As @Drake1 Nightfire said, fleximesh!!! That would be the biggest, because seriously, neither the rigged meshes nor the flexis look right as a skirt. I also wish that the materials could render velvet, but we don't always get what we want... But because we may never see that day, I guess I'm going to have to buck up and make mesh fairy wings. And clothing, as I now realize that I'd have more customers if I were to sell something that human avatars might want.

@OptimoMaximo Thank you! So, would I just create a new bone chain that matches the existing bento wing bones and then parent that chain to the existing bones (like Medhue does with this elephant trunk here: or is an IK spline something different altogether that is not a duplicate set of bones that's matched up to the bento bones?

You mean the Bendy Bones video, or do you mean that's what I need to learn to make the animation I'm wanting? Oh and now I know what I was trying to explain earlier - inverse kinetic bone constraints. Maybe there is some way I can utilize that to get the movement I want, but what I really wish is that it worked backwards - and not just the way that the forward kinetics would work because that makes all the child bones move along with it in a stiff way. What I would like to be able to do, is move the first wing bones at the base and have the rest of the chain follow but as if the joints were slightly loose so the whole thing would curve. It's possible there's something like that as an animation or plugin in a 3D marketplace to purchase, but then it might not work with Avastar and SL anyway. I came across one called "Tail Animator" sold in the Unity marketplace that looks just like what I would want to do, but I'm pretty sure it's not SL compatible. Oh well! Thanks all for your help, I appreciate it.

Pretty sure this is a custom rig or skeleton and we can't do this with Blender & Avastar, but I wish we could!

Ah ok. I was hoping maybe there might be some trick to getting the bones to react a certain way in Blender similar to the existing joint limitations - I'm forgetting at the moment what the technical term is. That option you check so that the skeleton bones can only be positioned or animated in ways that are physically possible for the human body, it would be neat if there was one that could create drag of some kind.

Now, when animating in Blender, is it possible to make the bones being animated behave as if in certain atmospheric conditions, like say, underwater so that if I move the wing bones at the base there is lag when the others move as if they are encountering wind resistance or water?

Ah! That would be fabulous! I won't hold my breath but I hope eventually this happens.

Thanks Kyrah. For some reason I'm not getting all my notifications either in my email or here in my dashboard, so I didn't see your reply til now. Ok, so I guess I'm confused about how weight maps work then. It seems like logically, let's say if I weighted a flat panel to a straight bone and weighted it so that both ends are weighted to really stick, and then towards the middle hardly any weighting, that when that bone moves the middle should bow as if it were fabric. But so, SL doesn't have mesh physics that react that way yeah? Weighting is only for how fitted meshes are to either an avatar's skin or bones and if an area is not weighted it just doesn't respond to appearance sliders and avatar animations yes? Then I guess my next question would be if I could copy my current wing bone animations to the hind bones if I want to make the wings mesh and utilize an upper and lower set of bones.

Thanks Optimo, maybe it was video from outside of SL that I'm remembering. What I would want to add flex to would be wings, or at least, wing tips using the bento wing bones. I think there are enough joints for that, but maybe what I thought I remembered seeing is impossible. If there were a way to weight the bones themselves too, so that some movements would affect lightweight bones differently than heavy ones that would be cool, but doesn't sound like it can happen. In all truth I'd rather at least get that damn online DMCA form available before we get any other new features anyway.

I did send as a PDF but still got a runaround before it got resolved and it would only be accepted after multiple fax attempts failed. I don't see any reason why it isn't accepted from the start except to discourage us from sending them. I mean, it kinda works, I have a couple infringements I've been sitting on simply because I have too many other issues stressing me out and I know it's usually a headache trying to get content removed with DMCAs with LL. It's bad enough when infringements happen, LL should be doing their best to make it easy for us to take care of, not harder.

I sent a DMCA pdf with a verified digital signature through Docusign, they still wouldn't accept it and directed me back to their intellectual property page and would not respond to my question about why they would not accept it even though I fulfilled every legal requirement. I can't remember anymore if my fax finally went through or if I had to email back and forth a few more times before they would process my claim but it's a hassle every single time. Either they take a week to remove the content when my fax actually does go through, or the fax won't go through and I keep getting denied the ability to email until I send screen shots of a bunch of rejected faxes. I STILL think that DMCA reports are discouraged partly because the longer the infringing content stays up, the longer they can profit from whatever the infringing content makes them and our current Safe Harbor laws protect them from any liability. There are some things that have changed and some lawsuits that may have taken away some of those protections recently but for now we are stuck with no online way to send DMCAs more than a year after being told one is being worked on. Someone brought up the false DMCA claims issue before but if the platform is doing their job correctly, they should be screening DMCAs anyway to verify that something is indeed a copy and was published after the original. I'm left feeling like LL does not care as much about protecting their user's IP as they do about profiting off the infringements as long as they can.

Tried that, they won't accept it. Told me to mail or fax

So uh,.... it's over a year since we were told that there was maybe a month's wait as an estimate to get a DMCA form from LL. Seriously y'all? It's kind of ridiculous. I have an online fax service I pay for monthly solely for the ability to fax DMCA reports to LL and more often than not the fax has a hard time actually going through. Snail mail, if we just use a basic stamp is cheap sure but also unreliable and slow. If we want it delivered faster with tracking that ups the cost, and it sucks that artists have to pay you just to be able to get their original content removed from your marketplace. It seems built to discourage reporting, and I'll bet many end up giving up while LL and the infringing parties get to keep collecting lindens on stolen content. Supposedly allowances can be made for people to email the infringements, but LL still has not granted that to me. Please, fix THIS before BOM or whatever other fancy shiny things are released. Infringement is rampant here and it's baffling that LL isn't up to speed on DMCA forms or emails like practically every other platform.

Ellestones, she just went over how to select textures for those wings and tail, maybe you meant to link a different video?

First off, I'm a huge newb to mesh in SL. I haven't tried making any wearable meshes yet, though I've gone through quite a few tutorials on it because I needed small invisible mesh parts to make my Bento flexi wings attach and animate. One animation I saw on YouTube showed a cat or tiger shaking it's head, and it looked a lot like the ears had a bit of flex in the ears when that animation happened. Was that an optical illusion, or can some amount of flexibility be built into meshes using weight maps? One of the big reasons I still make my wings flexi is I love the movement that only flexi prims can provide - or so I'm assuming. But if I can achieve that affect without having to animate the flexiness for each set I may change things...

Hey there Oz, has there been any progress on the online DMCA report form? It's been a while, and the original link of the one that got taken down doesn't go anywhere but I thought I'd check in case there is one up that I haven't found yet. I have another report to make but I would love to avoid the fax route if I can.

Okay, I'll just try the fax method and see if it works this time, I've just had so much trouble getting those to go through and no one at LL will tell me what I would need to do to arrange for email notices in the meantime.

So um, any chance that online form is coming back soon @Grumpity Linden? I got four more to report

Ah darn, okay. I'm glad I got that one in at least, and hopefully I won't have any more to send before it's back up

I always do, since it's usually something I am also selling here and if I ignore it they just steal more. It does feel like whack-a-mole though!

Yeah, I noticed they don't remove the content anymore when an infringing wing set was still there in my inventory. They used to though right? I would hope someone would be banned if they repeatedly infringe but I have no idea how many times it needs to be for them to consider someone a repeat infringer.

We can only register a batch like that if it has not been published yet, or if it was all published as a collection on the same day. The only other time is if it's photos, then you can register up to 500 as long as they were taken in the same year, but that doesn't apply to any other kind of art. Only photos. I wish I could do that with wing art! I do register in batches now before I even post anything, but I can only do that for new stuff. All the old stuff I have to register one by one for $38 each.

Oh yes I am aware of how many more protections we get when we register and how important it is, but so many artists haven't, or can't afford to because they didn't know they could register before publication in larger batches. I was mistakenly told years ago that wings weren't something I could register because you can't register halloween costumes, but that only applies to the costumes as they are considered fashion, and therefore a functional item that isn't protected. Once I found out, I started registering but had to slowly register one by one since it's $38 a pop after publication. It's just a little strange to not have a field for a photo or link to the original work especially if someone doesn't have a registration they can look up - and even then, the copyright office typically can take a year just to issue certificates and I don't think the images registered are even visible.

@Oz Linden I noticed that there is no field for a link or photo of the original intellectual property that belongs to the person filing the report, only a field for copyright registration. Does this mean that Linden Lab is not going to take action on content that isn't registered? Because as it says right on the form according to US law, we obtain the copyright to our IP the moment it's created. If that is the case - and I really hope not because I know not everyone can afford to register everything that they created and some just don't realize they need to - if that field is left blank, and there is no way to show the original work, how on earth does this prevent false DMCA reports? Isn't LL supposed to at least verify there is some credibility to the report by actually looking at the original and the pirated version? That's kind of concerning.

OMG a sunbeam just busted through the clouds and I hear an angel choir singing! Yay finally! Just in time too, I have more to report, unfortunately.