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Ana Stubbs

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Posts posted by Ana Stubbs

    Animation priority documentation not quite right.

    in Animation Forum

    Posted

    28 minutes ago, animats said:

    I suspect this is why there are some animation conflicts on vehicles. An AO anim at priority 4 is fighting with a sit anim at priority 4. When you cross a region boundary, who wins in the new region is somewhat random.

    If you sit on a fixed object, the sit anim usually wins, at least for everyone who was around when the sit took place.

    The object sat on can turn off all animations if it wants, but then you lose low priority motions such as eye blinks and breathing. What's best practice here?

    On 5/16/2019 at 6:48 PM, animats said:

     

    Best practice is to turn your AO off.

    Animation priority documentation not quite right.

    in Animation Forum

    Posted

    As I understand it, animations are run by the viewer, so I don't really see the contradiction. You've set up a race condition where you can't control which animation is started first. It's completely agnostic to whatever happened before it turned up, or wasn't looking. I haven't checked, but you can probably just reproduce this with the resync animations option.

    This is a good use case (imho, the ONLY use case) for priority 5.

    llAllowInventoryDrop for one avatar

    in LSL Scripting

    Posted

    Script the object so that the user can touch it to enable inventory drop. You can check identity then.

    Disable it automatically after, say, 60s, unless a texture is received sooner.

    Presumably you'll want to delete the texture after applying it, to avoid them building up.

    If someone other than the user drags a picture onto it during those 60s, that's their problem. And also unlikely.

    • Like 1

    Bouncing Ball

    in Animation Forum

    Posted

    4 hours ago, EnCore Mayne said:

    i am familiar with and use all the mesh tools necessary with the exception of the antiquated QAvimator (referenced by you as Q-Animator). if i understand correctly, to animate a mesh object it must be rigged to a bone of the SL skeleton. having to use an entire skeleton for a single bone seems like overkill. guess i'll have to keep reading up on the animesh to see if anyone else has the same concept.

    It's absolutely overkill, but this is all we have at the moment. I think there were some noises made about custom skeletons, but at the rate things are progressing, I wouldn't hold your breath for animesh 2.0

    Lag - prims, meshes or sculpts?

    in Building and Texturing Forum

    Posted

    Quote

    Rendering an object isn't a single operation, it takes several steps and the various materials we can build with loads the different steps differently

    I think I know what you mean, but your verb has either become disconnected from the subject, or should be plural.

    Quote

     (and lots of things that once existed but has been deleted)

    same problem

    Quote

    The Second Life assets database has several billion of entries

    Extra word.

    Quote

    even a failry minor grid may well build a million entries base fast

    one typo, and end of sentence doesn't make any sense.

    Quote

     it's not at all unusual for the gpu to spend more than half it's processing time idly waiting for the gpu to finish its part of the job. 

    Too many gpus.

    Quote

    What Mole mesh is? 

    Sentence fragment?

     

    • Thanks 2

    Rotating the grid?

    in Building and Texturing Forum

    Posted

    I have a better suggestion than both of those Wulfie and Chin have provided.

    Rez a prim, rotate it to the orientation you want. Keep it selected.

    Go to Build > Options > Use Selection for Grid.

    Now you can switch the ruler mode Chin indicated to Reference, and your grid will be rotated to the orientation of your Reference object.

    • Like 2

    Weird download impact calculations on mesh upload

    in Mesh

    Posted

    21 hours ago, ChinRey said:

    That's one of the requirements for becoming a true SL builder. A few more things left to do before you're properly qualified:

    • Accidentally delete your work platform 1000 m or more up in the air
    • Fall off the platform whilst being so preoccupied with your build you don't notice
    • Retexture a huge linkset when you only intended to change one little face of it
    • Accidentally unlink a 255 part linkset
    • Send you build off so far into the distance it's lost forever
    • Upload a mesh with physics so heavy it overloads a sim all on its own

    Did I miss anything?

    Forget about autoreturn, and find your build has been returned in completely nonsensical coalescenced bundles.

    Forget where you left your build, and spend hours looking for it.

    Set your build to physical by mistake, and watch it explode all over the sim.

    And the big one - forget to name your build. You know it's in your inventory somewhere, but so are 10,000 other entries for "Object".

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1

    Weird download impact calculations on mesh upload

    in Mesh

    Posted

    Just now, Toastfan123 said:

    I have a model for the second LOD, but it's actually literally already the lowest I can go in vertex count while still maintaining some level of shape, I kind of don't care. It's a path, if you are further away it should be fine not even rendering at all (which for me just starts to de-render after a very considerable distance, so I think that's fine.)

    I highly doubt that people disable the highest level of detail, because it's the original mesh. LOD is a performance method, it's supposed to reduce complexity if the object is far away from the camera, in the most optimal case you wouldn't even see the transision. Nothing other than the highest quality mesh is supposed to be viewed from close up, so if someone actually disables the high quality mesh, well, without being rude, that's not my problem. That's not how LOD is supposed to be used, and I can't adjust for every misuse of technology ^^

    (I btw stated in the original post that I nulled out the LODs for showcase purpouses, because I didn't want them weighing into the calculations I was presenting)

    She (er, I hope? i never asked...) 's talking about the LOD Factor viewer setting, not the individual LOD levels.

    Building for beginners

    in Building and Texturing Forum

    Posted

    1 minute ago, ChinRey said:

    😮

    I really, really need to have a stern talk with my computer!

     

    But thanks a lot!

    I think your computer needs more coffee!

    And, it's no trouble - I used to have a small part time editing gig, so typos tend to jump out at me (er, when they're not my own, that is).

    Building for beginners

    in Building and Texturing Forum

    Posted

     

    Quote

     

    How to maneuver your camera

    • f that doesn't work, click the Esc. key again.

     

    Quote

    How to select a face

    For those familiar with building for other virtual environments: A afce is what is usually known as a material. Same thing, different name.

    That's all. Only, rememverr to close theEdit window when you're done.

    Quote

    How to remove an object

    You still have to reposition it but at least you don't have to rebuild froms cratch.

     

    • Like 1

    Building for beginners

    in Building and Texturing Forum

    Posted

    Quote

    How to Move and Rotate an Object

    Rotating an object the simple way

    • Point your cursor at one of the three circes that turns up. There is one for each axis.

    Precision positioning and rotation

    • Click on the "Onject" tab in the Edit window that pops up.

    THE MAJOR WARNINGS

    The developers and porgrammers who made the viewers are generally skilled professionals and well meaning people. But they don't know much about how to make user firendly itnerfaces, so they've made lots of mistakes there. This is the main reason why Second Life and opensim are often regarded as difficult to use.

    Most of thse mistakes are jsut minor nuisances and you even get used to them. Some can be disatrous though and two of those are about object positioning.
     

    The triangle trap

    When you move the object the simple way, you'll see some blue, red and green triangles around the object. DO NOT CLICK ON THEM! I think they are thre to let you move along more than one axis at the same time but they are very unpredictable and if you try to use them, the object will jump far away from where you want it. Sometimes it moves so far it's lost for good.

    When you type new values in those fields, make sure everything already in the field is selected first. If you don't, the obejct may fly away and be lsot ofrever.

    Some minor warnings

    You'll see it when you rotate the simple way. Clicking on it allows you to rotate around mroe than one axis at the same time

    When you move or rotate an object the simple way, some lines/cricles with numbers along them turn up. Move your cursor onto them anf the changes become stepwise. Really handy if you're familiar with it, not so much if you aren't.

     

    • Like 1

    The Deadly Sins of Texturing

    in Building and Texturing Forum

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Frenchbloke Vanmoer said:

    When materials first appeared I was in the Caledon sandbox. There was concern that using three textures on 1 was the work of the devil so it was suggested that to make it less of a resource hog why not make the normals and spec layers smaller. 

    Picture the scene, a 1024 diffuse brick wall with some cracks. Then the materials that were 512.  It wasn't pretty 

    To counter, I have some very nice leaded windows where the normal map and spec maps are a tiling 64x64, (because each light does not differ that much) and the diffuse is a 512x512 to add more visual variation.

    • Like 2

    "Optimized mesh"

    in Mesh

    Posted

    3 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

    Yes, that's the "extreme and very rare light conditions" I was talking about.

    It also shows very clearly how those extra vertices form a visible pattern across the surface. I'd say that for that reason even under those rare conditions where the extra vertices make any difference at all, they do more harm than good.

    I'm not sure it's that rare - I clocked onto this when people started complaining that the sconces on the wall had stopped working.

    "Optimized mesh"

    in Mesh

    Posted

    18 hours ago, ChinRey said:

    The proof is in the pudding. Here are two cubes. The one to the left has been tweaked to eliminate the mid-surface verticesn the one to the right is a straight one with those extra vertices. Notice the difference?.

    Do you notice the difference here?

    image.thumb.png.ff837a8c196e7ad1df6b0fdfa19e8e78.png

    The one on the left has 32 triangles per face, the one on the right has two. Lights are identical, and at identical distances.

    With ALM on they look identical. Unfortunately the sea distorts into the sky in ALM (WTF?) so I decided to spare you all that picture as it made me feel rather nauseous.

    • Like 1

    "Optimized mesh"

    in Mesh

    Posted

    15 hours ago, ChinRey said:
    • Remove vertices in the middle of perfectly flat surfaces (unless they mark divisions between materials of course)

    This touches on something that has confused me for a while - I've read in some posts to remove all extraneous vertices, and on other posts that, because of the per-vertex lighting used in non-ALM, you do need some of the extra vertices (and this is why, for instance, the SL cube has 9 faces per side instead of 1), otherwise you get some odd effects (which I can confirm do exist).

    They can't both be true!

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