tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90539859031403159512024-02-07T17:55:16.860-08:00Allegory MalapropThe personal blog of Allegory Malaprop of Schadenfreude, and random musings upon life in Second Life.Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.comBlogger97125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-86436568349643338142013-06-26T23:49:00.001-07:002013-06-27T03:32:24.831-07:00New alphas, a crash courseThe new Materials feature has added in a number of new features- one being more control over alphas. We've only been asking for the ability to use 1 bit alpha masks since....the introduction of the stupid alpha flicker issue so, that's, what, 7 years? I don't even remember. It's been a long time. But we have them now, finally.<br />
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In the Texture panel in Build, there are more dropdowns and thingies now. Right now, we are interested in Materials, Texture (diffuse). Under that, Alpha mode, and the dropdown there gives us options, huzzah. Note: make sure you've selected a texture face with an alpha (transparency). No alpha, no options.<br />
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None just turns off the alpha channel, as if you uploaded a solid texture, no alpha channel at all.<br />
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Alpha blending is the default for textures with an alpha channel. This means an 8 bit alpha mask, gradual alpha transparencies with gradients, the old potential alpha flicker issue. They added an option in the Develop menu that would turn this "off" (make them 1 bit) for all alphas that were also set to 0% transparency a few viewer iterations ago, Develop>Rendering>Automatic Alpha Masks (non-deferred). THAT IS STILL THERE. THIS CAN SCREW STUFF UP. If that is checked, which it appears to still be by default, even if you have it SET to use 8 bit transparency, it won't- if it doesn't feel like it. Here's the fun part, kids, it used to always just set it to 1 bit, now it seems to decide for you, and it may not decide the way you want to. To force it to use 8 bit transparency, up the Transparency % to 1%. It's such a small bit you won't see it, but it will force it to use the alpha properly. Why is this a deal? Because any gradual transparencies will no longer be gradual. It will be on or off, sharp edges, no transparent glass or soft edges or shadows- when it decides you shouldn't have them. This is also a deal because it's set on the viewer side, NOT server side- so while you can set it in your viewer to show things the way you want, that doesn't guarantee what other people will see. And because it's viewer side, there's no way to really know where the cutoff is for everyone (especially once you get into the whole mac vs. windows vs. linux thing). Bright side? It does actually seem to be smart about it now, whereas before it just destroyed everything.<br />
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But! Now we have another problem. Full bright no longer consistently works on alpha blended textures- even ones the deferred rendering makes solid. For some people, it is never full bright, ever. For me? It is sometimes, and then not others, which is extra fun! Generally it is renders fullbright to begin with (but doesn't even always start out full bright), it will cease to once I select it, and stay that way until I reload the object entirely (tp out and back in, relog, etc.- toggling the Automatic Alpha Masks also seems to go back and forth between full bright and not, turning non-deferred on kills full bright). If you have alpha cutout vendors, this is a problem. One that you will want to fix by using Alpha masking instead- but you sacrifice all gradual transparencies once you use that.<br />
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Alpha masking is 1 bit transparency. This means everything is on/off, no gradient transparency. Thankfully, it isn't entirely pixel by pixel based, but will smooth out your angled lines on the cuts- just like Automatic Alpha Masks (non-deferred). Things that already used this are the avatar- alpha masks, and the edges of the system skirt when you had anything with a transparency- and system plants. Upside to this? No more alpha flicker! That's why we've wanted it forever! Also it's a little easier on the system in general, so it's a good idea to use it if you can get away with it anyway, but your alpha edges will be harsher, and smoothed angles still may not be actually straight, but may be lumpy. Still, full bright with alpha masking seems to work properly for everyone!<br />
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There is a slider under Alpha masking for Mask cutoff. This defaults to 0. Defaulting to 0 is stupid. That is just the same as setting it to None for the Alpha mode, it's solid. What you will almost always want is 127, that is the center of the range. Lower means more will be solid, higher means less will- if you have a haloing problem with your alphas, you'll probably want to set that number higher, possibly as close to 255 as you can without moth eating chunks in the middle unevenly. And you'll want to learn ways to avoid that haloing issue, see my previous post for some tips on that (though for solid cutouts, which is what you need here, taking pictures huge with antialiasing off, and shrinking after you've cut them out from the background will work, so long as you fill the empty background with something like the <a href="http://www.flamingpear.com/goodies.html">solidify filter</a> with your alpha channel in an actual channel).<br />
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The last option is Emissive mask. This also turns your texture entirely solid. Full bright also completely destroys this option, because what it does is choose WHAT to make full bright. The solid parts of your texture will be fullbright- the transparent parts will be rendered with the surrounding lighting! It does not do gradual transparencies well/at all, and you can't adjust what it sees as solid/bright, so make sure you have a VERY clean mask before using. This and None are the least backwards compatible- it will just show the regular alphaed out texture if you are using a viewer without materials, both currently show no alpha, but also no emissive fullbright area, on a materials viewer with Advanced Lighting Model off.Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-65052435709151469702012-10-26T22:24:00.000-07:002012-10-26T22:24:19.322-07:00Perfect alpha cutoutsGetting something cut out of a background in SL perfectly can be difficult and frustrating- unless you know the trick of it. Many people use the green screen trick, but you can have slight acid green bleed in your semi transparent areas, like hair whisps.<br />
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First requirement: you need to be able to take at least 2 completely identical pictures, aside from background colour (if there are flexis, you might want to turn them off after you've gotten everything into position, including your camera- Advanced menu>Rendering Features>Flexible Objects. This CAN be optional, your flexis might not move so long as nothing moves...but then again, they might, depending on settings and conditions)- and you need to be able to change that background colour.<br />
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Take one picture with your background solid fullbright white. Take a second picture identical but for the background being solid black. Optionally, take a third (or more) with the colour a general match for the touchy alpha issues- a vague match for your hair, any semi transparent spots, etc.<br />
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In Photoshop, one of the layer styles is "Difference"- copy paste the black or white background over the white or black background, and set the top layer to that. The image will be all black and white- the background will be white, everything else in the shot will be black, with perfect alphaed edges for cutouts. Select all and shift-copy, paste that into a channel mask for the image, and invert it, so it's a white outline on a black background. If your picture has shadows, you probably WILL still have to clean this up in minor ways, due to lines and shadows rendering differently on different backgrounds- make sure the places that should be solid are white, with no grey spots from shadows not rendering quite the same, and if you're taking larger than screen size, the line problem will have to be fixed. If you're not taking it with shadows on, your mask is already perfect- aside from occasional minor shiny glitches, so you might want to zoom in on those and make sure they're all white!<br />
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If your white and black aren't quite 100% pure (which can happen, even with fullbright- especially with shadows and Windlight), you may need to adjust the levels of your mask ever so slightly pulling the end arrow in to the center a tad. You should not need much, if you need this step at all- but you can have a slightly messy background mask that is mostly, but not 100%, transparent, under some circumstances (i.e. SL having a bad day).<br />
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Now, you can use this mask on your white background picture, your black background picture, or the picture(s) with the alpha colours. This last option works best- if you have multiple problem spots, layer them all only showing the bits you need where to prevent the colour bleed (if you're scaling the picture down, the colour bleed may disappear, depends on how much of a stickler you are as to how much effort to put in here- it's going to be minor even if you just use the white background version). If you have antialiasing on, there will be VERY slight bleed over the entire outline, so if you're wearing black, might want to do your cutout on the black background copy (black halo can also be less immediately noticeable than white, "shadows" rather than "halo"). But whatever you decide to cut out, use that channel mask for your selection or mask for your cutout!Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-56788869302323145992012-09-19T00:21:00.002-07:002012-10-06T00:47:27.677-07:00Lining up LODsThis is a prime example of why a public jira is a VERY GOOD THING. I would have been thoroughly perplexed by the entire problem AND would have taken much longer (if ever) finding the solution without the ability to browse preexisting jiras for this problem. (I made an assumption that was incorrect, because it made logical sense to work that way, and no logical sense to work the way it does. And computers are all about logic, right?)<br />
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The problem: you can upload multiple separate mesh objects at once into one linked object (this is great for, say, everything already being in the right place instead of having to line shit up! Hooray!). HOWEVER, when one does this and attempts to also upload your own custom LODs and physics shapes, the objects do not always line up! This leads to lower LODs being wacky shapes, or just plain saying "nope, not doing it" if you don't have the same material setup on them all (texture faces). So....you can upload multiple items and have them all in the right places in respect to each other OR you can have control over your LODs. Not both. (As an aside, the auto generated LODs seem to trim off the objects semi randomly- sometimes one object will get the LOD jacked down a lot, and the other will be barely touched, it doesn't seem to do it evenly.)<br />
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The Real problem: the collada exporters just randomly decide on an order for your objects in the file, not based on order selected or any other criteria over which you have control. This definitely holds true for the blender 2.62 exporter- but it is not alone, other programs also have this issue.<br />
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The solution: reorder your collada file by hand. First step, in your modeling program, before exporting, name all your objects useful names. You need to be able to distinguish what is the same object in different LODs by name only, so keep that nice and consistent! Export your collada file now that everything is named and easy to tell apart blind. Use a basic basic text editor (WordPad works perfectly), open up your dae file. It's a bunch of xml code in there, nested <type> <subtype>. Now, you're on your own here a bit, because collada files vary WILDLY in what they call things and how they're ordered.<br />
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There's going to be material data in there (probably), which you can just skip by. You're looking for geometry or something similar. In my current exporter, I'm looking for <geometry id="object_name" name="object_name"> (Note: those names don't have to be the same, and they are things you set, so you should know what names you're looking for). There will be a bunch of nested attributes, and then a close geometry tag, and then another open tag with a new name for the next data block. Find out what order your data blocks are in there! Then open up another LOD file, scroll down to the same geometry blocks, and reorder each entire block into the same order as the first file- repeat for all LODs (the ENTIRE block needs to be moved, from start to end tag for an object). Save the newly reordered files (just as text, don't let it do anything fancy, don't rename from .dae). Now they should line up so the objects agree across LODs instead of randomly assigning!Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-44694221024315324332012-09-15T19:04:00.001-07:002019-12-17T22:13:19.505-08:00The Arcade<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTm5kVGEDAncYItlDDTjFf87eFpXozFewz0r0J2i7ltVnqCHvetHzKwtqaOEItuhWg_Cz_SB5RtkLp9cN4mGdLnMVkk6lr-3UNel6rbAf_rriJ7MkuZB9yBBHFHfprHqSjI6OaTnljl1ym/s1600/tiny-arcade-planet_7986982028_o.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTm5kVGEDAncYItlDDTjFf87eFpXozFewz0r0J2i7ltVnqCHvetHzKwtqaOEItuhWg_Cz_SB5RtkLp9cN4mGdLnMVkk6lr-3UNel6rbAf_rriJ7MkuZB9yBBHFHfprHqSjI6OaTnljl1ym/s320/tiny-arcade-planet_7986982028_o.png" width="320" /></a><br />
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It's been forever since I've posted anything here, and even longer since a tourism update. I want to do those more often (I've been preoccupied with moving and a broken thumb and <a href="http://slschadenfreude.blogspot.com/">too many events</a> and an <a href="http://discopomp.tumblr.com/">occasional fashiony blog</a>- I haven't BEEN much of anywhere a lot lately).<br />
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This time, I'm cheating. Because, you see, I got in early because I'm a participant, so I have pictures that aren't crammed full of eleven jillion people (or, you know...30. whatever the avatar limit is). <a href="http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Country%20Club/168/242/3115">The Arcade</a>!<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/a_malaprop/7987001158/" title="Archie by Allegory Malaprop, on Flickr"><img alt="Archie" src="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8455/7987001158_aa747dc058.jpg" height="388" width="500"></a></center>
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Aside from the actual, you know, the spendy money on awesome things reason to go, the venue is amazing. It's an enclosed skydome, with an entire planned environment separate from everything else.<br />
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It is, as you can probably tell from looking, pretty much 100% mesh. Mesh really does open up possibilities that were unavailable previously- sculpts helped (a LOT!), but mesh is much more flexible with efficiency and texture management. (I'm also lucky/spoiled and can run with shadows on all the time on this computer, so I do, oh, how I do.)<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/a_malaprop/7987005808/" title="sit here, trust me! by Allegory Malaprop, on Flickr"><img alt="sit here, trust me!" src="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8315/7987005808_513a8314d5.jpg" height="500" width="376"></a></center>
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You super duper want to sit on a donation kiosk, whether you toss any money their way or not. Make sure you've got default camera (hit escape a couple of times).<br />
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Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-39186876411692117332012-02-19T21:20:00.000-08:002012-02-19T21:32:48.229-08:00New MathWith meshes, we now have 2 ways to calculate prim count, old math (one prim = one prim), and new math (one prim = however many land impact prims depending on a number of variables). Any linkset linked to a mesh always uses new math (just one mesh in a linkset will force new math for the entire linkset, always). But you can choose to use new math on a linkset of traditional and sculpt prims as well.<br />
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But do that with care! There are reasons to do it, and reasons not to. Biggest reason to? In new math, a single prim can count as HALF a prim in a linkset, so one linkset of prims can be half the number of actual prims. Link six boxes and use new math? 3 land impact prims. (Note: this always rounds up. 5 prims will also be three prims, 7 prims will be 4). THIS ONLY APPLIES TO STATIC PRIMS. THEY CANNOT BE SCRIPTED OR PHYSICAL. It's a bonus modifier we get applied to "simple" prims, those that impact the server less.<br />
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However, new math is not straightforward like old math. There are 3 variables, and you have to figure out how to juggle them. Some people are just telling people to set entire linkset to Convex Hull and watch the savings: but if you don't have the right things in your linkset, your prims will count as MORE, and you may not be able to walk into your buildings anymore!<br />
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There is an easy way to find out what things will cost, and if it's worth trying (AND how to fix the not being able to walk into places problem). Click on the "More info" link to find out what your object will cost (it can take a bit to calculate though!):<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqu69FPRHcVvQOjDbKFw0vKaQ3sYDa9Ejar5BzbggaNkf89UuyFoKC4J4ZBvi-7GW5anqKKFx2Lw0Yon5BVoUWRBkkSicw5NR-9plbzATpZosQtZ04pS8vd22Yz4DV1zlJobm6Znba55Pa/s1600/prim+info.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqu69FPRHcVvQOjDbKFw0vKaQ3sYDa9Ejar5BzbggaNkf89UuyFoKC4J4ZBvi-7GW5anqKKFx2Lw0Yon5BVoUWRBkkSicw5NR-9plbzATpZosQtZ04pS8vd22Yz4DV1zlJobm6Znba55Pa/s1600/prim+info.png" /></a></div>That will bring up this second menu with all your infomation. The thing I currently have selected is 3 prims. The three things that make a difference to us for prim count are Download, Physics, and Server. This Features tab, with the Physics Shape thing? That's where you need to set Physics shape to use new math. If all prims in a linkset are traditional prims, and use Prim physics, that linkset will use old math. If ANY prims in the linkset are set to either of the other two options (Convex Hull or None), the entire linkset will use new math- this is how you set non mesh prims to mesh math.<br />
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Download is how complicated the object is. It calculates by number of faces and size, complicated prims have more faces. Aside from replacing prims with less complicated ones, or shrinking prims, or removing complicated prims from the linkset entirely, we can't get this number any lower. Sculpts are a MINIMUM of 1.3 Download, even tiny, even with faces thrown away in the sculpt map (that, in fact, doesn't seem to have any impact to sculpt calculation ever- sculpts seem to have a flat calculation, regardless of the sculpt). And they go up from there. Linking 2 sculpts together will become 2.6- which will count as THREE prims. So only use sculpts with new math if you can balance the cost with other prims! Sculpts and toruses and spheres and tubes- anything other than boxes and prisms (and how often do you use a prism?)- can cost you, depending on size and complexity, they can cost too much. Boxes are cool. Boxes are 0.1, even at 64mx64mx64m, hollowed (even circle hollowed) and cut! (NOT twisted. Twisted ads a very substantial amount more to it, because it requires many more faces for the twist.) So, say you have a linkset with a bunch of boxes and a sculpt? You may find you can link that together and use new math and prim count goes down. But you may not.<br />
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Physics is where you can really play with your linkset cost. Simple physics (boxes! But not as much cutting or hollowing this time!) cost very little. Complicated physics, especially hollowed or cut things, even boxes, start costing. You can reduce physics cost by making things Convex Hull, but that makes them VERY simple: you will not be able to walk though hollows or cuts, and the actual outer shape beyond that may not be what you expect (it's not straight up bounding box all the time, but sometimes it is). You can reduce physics further by setting SELECTED PRIMS IN THE LINKSET to None. The root prim CANNOT be set to None. Physics set to None works like Phantom: so you can mix Phantom and non Phantom prims in a linkset this way too! Hollowed or cut prims for doorways may have to be set to None (you can set them to Prim so long as the rest of your Physics allows for the calculations). Many sculpts you may want to set to None to take them out of the Physics calculation, as well as not having their physics get in the way. You can set all the prims in the linkset individually to your choice of the three options, and you may need to! These example prims? I need to set my physics to Convex Hull or None to bring down my cost before I use new math, or not use new math at all, as well as linking them together (in practice? The base had to be set as Convex Hull, AND all the linked prims had to be set to None, before I could get the Physics low enough to see enough savings to actually lower the prim count. They are a sculpt and 2 cut tubes, so, complicated- but those cut tubes actually don't cost all that much at this size, so I can get away with it, so long as I don't need proper physics collision).<br />
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The last variable here is Display. That will NEVER be less than half the number of prims in your linkset. In this case 3 prims, divided by 2, equals 1.5. This is an unscripted unphysical linkset, so I get the static bonus. If this is equal to the number of actual prims, it's not worth trying to use the new math, because you won't see any savings!<br />
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The largest of these three numbers will always be the one used. The land impact number is rounded by linkset, 1.5 will be 2 land impact prims, but 1.4 will round down to 1.<br />
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A lot of land impact can be saved if you are smart in how you juggle your physics- and in what you link together! But that large sculpt? You may want to unlink that to leave it using old math and make sure you select it too before you move your thing.Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-28091282816862437012011-12-30T14:53:00.000-08:002011-12-30T14:53:23.349-08:00Adventures in ExportingThis is a run down of my personal glitches with the collada exporters in Blender. Your builds may not have the same problems, but I had to stumble around in the dark to find the ways around mine, so if these issues are plaguing you too, might be worth a try. This is not telling you how to export in Blender, or how to use Blender, it assumes you know that already- just that you are having these particular export glitches when doing it.<br />
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I primarily use Blender 2.49 (an old Jass build, that's long since not been available for download. It's comfortable for me, it predates Primstar, and it doesn't have some of the other glitches/intentional refusing to do what I want that was introduced that messed up my workflow). I haven't really jumped on the 2.5 bandwagon much yet, 2.49 does what I want, how I want it, and I haven't spent the time to find the way to work around 2.5 (just trying to cam around in it irks me with the new settings, and I haven't spent the time to get used to it or change it!)<br />
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Around half the time, exporting with the collada 1.4 exporter works just fine. The other half...it randomly divides out a few faces and assigns them to new texture space (the closest to tracking down any reason behind which faces it chooses I've come to is that sometimes, but only sometimes, when I merge edges, it glitches some of the faces to one side into a new texture space). This is NOT visible in Blender- it assigns texture faces just as you would expect, you only find out when uploading the collada and either the uploader fails because your models do not all have the same texture faces (or have too many- also note that you actually have to have all the _same_ textures assigned, not just the same number as well- or at least I do!), or you get it uploaded and find out you've got some straggler faces sprinkled around here and there that have a different texture face.<br />
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I've tried all sorts of ridiculous and time consuming experimentation with trying to track those down, fix them, replaced my collada exporting scripts with new versions, all to no avail. Finally I found one thing that actually fixed it: opening that blend file in Blender 2.5, and exporting in there.<br />
<br />
BUT. The collada exporter in Blender 2.5 is twitchier. You MUST always make sure to tick the "export only selected" box in the file popup or it will export your entire blender scene with all pages in one piece (with my workflow, extra pages have the other LODs and collision and in progress working bits, so it's an enormous mess). ADDITIONALLY. IT ONLY SOMETIMES DOES NOT EXPORT THE UNSELECTED THINGS ANYWAY. This last go round, it would export around half of the rest of the stuff that had nothing to do with what I wanted to export, even though it wasn't selected! It was a consistent half, but it was not a helpful half.<br />
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So, time for making a copy of your blend file so you don't save over and lose everything. Open that in Blender 2.5. Delete everything on ALL the other pages. Delete everything you DO NOT NEED on the page with what you want to export. IF YOU ARE EXPORTING RIGGED MESH, DO NOT DELETE THE SKELETON. It needs that for the skeleton data. The body you're building around? All that can go, but not the skeleton itself. (And make sure it's the right skeleton if you've duplicated things for alternate working versions, of course.)<br />
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Last note: current version of the SL mesh uploader seems to require the collision object to have the same number of texture faces (and the same textures!) assigned as the LODs. Previous versions of the uploader did not, future versions may not again. There is no reason for collision to require textures assigned, and there is no helpful red error message, the button to calculate and upload just silently disables itself.Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-71066860163973499862011-05-21T17:09:00.001-07:002011-05-21T17:19:40.065-07:00Drowsy<center><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/a_malaprop/5731916598/" title="drowsy by Allegory Malaprop, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3077/5731916598_b6a31b78af_z.jpg" width="640" height="424" alt="drowsy"></a></center><br /><br />Drowsy has been closed for a while, while they remodel. I'm always a bit sad when that happens to a good sim- often it's great, but it still means all those places that I used to love are gone. For now, Drowsy has just a little bit open, high in the sky, while they work below.<br /><br /><center><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/a_malaprop/5731335937/" title="drowsy island by Allegory Malaprop, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3356/5731335937_38659e5581_z.jpg" width="535" height="640" alt="drowsy island"></a></center><br /><br />The island in the sky hasn't quite escaped the wolves, but there are far fewer wolves lurking around, and quite a few more cats!<br /><br /><center><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/a_malaprop/5731336195/" title="drowsy cat by Allegory Malaprop, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5229/5731336195_1ef8587f3f_z.jpg" width="640" height="516" alt="drowsy cat"></a></center><br /><br />Bits and pieces of the sim below have collected together in shards, the clocktower, the library, the swings from the playground, all collapsed together in a small space.<br /><br /><center><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/a_malaprop/5731884278/" title="drowsy library by Allegory Malaprop, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5168/5731884278_a874650b0e_z.jpg" width="640" height="423" alt="drowsy library"></a></center><br /><br />Only BP* and Kurotsubaki have reopened in the sky, with their signature beautiful little bits and pieces, tucked here and there around the library and the rest of the island.<br /><br /><center><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/a_malaprop/5731884616/" title="drowsy librarians by Allegory Malaprop, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3062/5731884616_7ff2bef792_z.jpg" width="640" height="335" alt="drowsy librarians"></a></center><br /><br />There's a room with a projector and mementos of previous festivals, ephemeral memories of Drowsy past.<br /><br /><center><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/a_malaprop/5731337129/" title="drowsy projector by Allegory Malaprop, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3251/5731337129_397a6e3621_z.jpg" width="640" height="335" alt="drowsy projector"></a></center><br /><br />Visit <a href="http://slurl.com/secondlife/Drowsy/247/78/3024">Drowsy</a>.Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-83387253914349580152010-02-28T15:48:00.000-08:002010-03-01T02:43:59.736-08:002.0 jirasList as of 2/28.<br /><br />This is not every single jira relating to 2.0. I have weeded out some (all the language ones, for a start!) I'm including a mixed bag- some I have kept are badly worded, but good issues at the heart. Some are issues that I am in fact NOT voting on, but I can see how they would appeal to some people. Some I have not seen for myself as I do not use said features (like Voice), or cannot reproduce due to not using the system combination in question. Many do not really cover the whole issue, but are at least a start. I urge you to read up on the issues and make an informed choice of what you want to see fixed/added.<br /><br />I WILL be adding more, and dividing them up into categories, until I run out of steam- they will be added to the end of the category for new additions.<br /><br />SERVER SIDE:<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-5411">No notifications when someone accepts inventory offers</a><br /><br />SECURITY ISSUES:<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17124">Ability to copy UUIDs on NOT full perm assets</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17066">Automatic acceptance of inventory</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17044">HTML on a prim: IP and UUID security issues</a><br /><br />GENERAL USABILITY:<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17445">Skins so we aren't limited to the harder to read light text on dark</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17668">Text too small, contrast, font options</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17671">Text too small, bold options</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17576">Again, readability issues</a><br /><br />PERSISTENCE ISSUES:<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17387">Parent persistence catchall</a>- appear to NOT include a few issues<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17242">RenderVolumeLODFactor sometimes reverts to default on relog</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17030">Ruthing issues</a><br /><br />SNAPSHOTS:<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-7709">Snapshot bugs, parent catchall</a> Note: this parent issue is NOT viewer specific, there is a lot relating to many viewer versions<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17202">Hi rez snapshots broken</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17349">Hi rez snapshots broken</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17314">Hi rez snapshots broken- plus glow</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17349">Hi rez snapshots broken- INCLUDES TEMPORARY WORKAROUND OF UNTICKING RESTRAIN PROPORTIONS</a> (and this is why it pays to slog through the jira- not only do you find issues to try to get them fixed, but sometimes people have found workarounds until they ARE fixed)<br /><br />HOVERTIPS:<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17127">Bring back hovertip info</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17604">Hover has no context on how the object interacts- Touch/Sit/Buy/etc.</a><br /><br />SIDEBAR:<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17012">Parent catchall for sidebar issues- this links to individual behavior issues</a><br />including: Americans with Disabilities Act violations, camera movement, HUDs getting messed up, sizing issues, undocking items<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17005">Only one Profile visible at once under current sidebar</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17076">Similar single Profile issue</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17589">Profile images are not the same ratio across Profile and Search</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17588">Missing Interests (Language!) in Profile</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17608">Proposed fix to many sidebar issues:pop out everything!</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17041">Group notices and Inventory occupying same space</a>- added 3/1<br /><br />INVENTORY:<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17049">Object properties difficult to use</a>- can only edit one at a time due to side menu restrictions.<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17578">Request for easier renaming, following Windows convention</a><br /><br />CHAT:<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17073">Object chat behavior broken</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17010">Make the chatbar go all the way across unused space</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17016">Chat popups too fast</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17011">Chat bar focus issue</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17224">Chat popups too fast- seizure and migraine issues</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17146">Ctrl-T shortcut to minimize chat removed</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17472">No minimizing chat at all</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17444">Popups too fast to join group without having to reopen</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17432">Visibility of popups, again</a><br /><br />CONTEXTUAL MENU:<br /><a href="https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17130">Build missing</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17232">General size and order issues</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17655">Useful and intended default functions like Sit/Buy/Pay buried low in menu</a><br /><br />TOP BAR:<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17106">No build/script/fly/etc. icons on by default</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17606">Coords on by default</a><br /><br />SEARCH:<br /><a href="https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17022">Easy way to see what Events are on right now request</a><br /><a href"http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17536">Search efficiency issues</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17602">Partial names no longer return results</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17679">Missing coordinates on Search results: harder to find things</a><br /><br />MAP:<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17028">Coords not on Map view</a><br /><br />NOTECARDS:<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17703">No Discard button</a><br /><br />CLOTHING LAYERS:<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17019">Tattoo layer doesn't have tinting ability all other layers have</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17337">Drag and Drop broken on some parts of new layers</a> (Note: appears to also effect the Upper/Lower bodies on the Tattoo Layer in my testing)<br /><br />SCRIPTS:<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17470">Set Running progress window missing</a><br /><br />MEDIA:<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17151">Flash not working for some users</a><br /><br />VOICE:<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17347">No way to tell active/inactive speakers</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17401">Voice not connecting period</a><br /><br />ALPHA ISSUES:<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17258">Unable to Pay object with transparant texture</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17372">Alphas on HUDs getting in way of interaction</a><br /><br />ASSORTED BUGS:<br /><a href="https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17102">Play and Pause buttons reversed</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17297">Group Role Abilities not applying correctly</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17537">Perfomance degradation on some systems</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17522">Sculpt loading issues</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17453">Cannot create clothing in appearance</a> (Note: I've also experienced some wonky Save As issues with items saving OVER the current as well as Save As. I have not tested fully to report a jira, and if this is a problem for more than me there will eventually be a jira for it so I haven't started one up, yet)<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17436">Antialising won't turn on until you relog</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17563">Chatlogs saving in random places</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17567">Parcel media not restarting under after relogging</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-16986">Standing from sitting makes you fly</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17577">Grid options not applying to Y immediately</a><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17584">Selection working strange</a> (for me, this is but one part of how selection is working strange, but the rest may be related)<br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17715">Prims not rendering randomly</a><br /><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-17141">Key binding request</a> (Note: this is not the first time this issue has come up, but why not add it in now when it's easy?)Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-57826950052125638472010-02-25T03:21:00.000-08:002010-03-05T20:29:09.380-08:002.0 interfaceThis is all, obviously, personal opinion. I encourage you to develop your OWN opinions about what is right and what is wrong, and jira accordingly. Some of this will probably never make it to jira, or if they do, be totally ignored (limitations of the side tabbed thing, which I'm sure they're all chuffed about and won't be able to admit limitations). This is open letter no one of any import will read, as well as a personal reasoning through the reasons behind the knee-jerk annoyance. Plus! Maybe you found some of these preferences that I haven't found groping around in the dark yet to fix some of this!<br /><br />Herein being a random smattering of things that hit me, edited periodically with more and for clarity. I'm harsh, I'm blunt, I'm not writing this as a true appeal, this is a recording of thoughts. I am talking about <i>interface</i> here, not <i>features</i>- they are not all the same thing. Alpha masking, the extra layer, HTML on a prim? Nothing to do with the interface, we just got them at the same time because there was a feature freeze until this interface was ready. They are the cherry on top to make you like the rest of it, which isn't a bad way to lure people to learn the new way, but that's what it is, they are not integral to the new interface, at all. That said, the UI for HTML on a prim? Bravo. Good solid intuitive focus changes behavior of tools to what you expect when you're doing the equivalent with tabbing out. It's intuitive to get in and out, to browse, when what shows where so you know what's happening (like the top bar- the way it goes in and out dependent on what it thinks you want...and it guesses WELL), degrading gracefully to texture on older viewers, everything is perfect (to me). I haven't seen a single thing I would want changed (other than bugfixing some issues of people not being able to see certain things even in 2.0). Still, this interface has nothing to do with the interface of the viewer as a while.<br /><br />Stability is HUGELY improved for me in this version. I can do whizbang stuff that crashed me hard previously. I haven't crashed yet once, period. I lag significantly less. Backend here, they've done some seriously good work. This is THE most solid viewer I've used, hands down, since WL went live (weird funfact? The First Look WL viewer was a very good viewer for me, the day it went live everything tanked). That is ALSO <i>not interface</i>.<br /><br />Interfaces are HARD. They really are. You take them for granted using them, but developing a successful interface is really really difficult. There are a lot of things you need to juggle- making things familiar enough that using the interface comes naturally (i.e. basing interface on existing things with somewhat similar function- look at how many MMO's have copied WoW's interface to a large degree, WoW itself being based on things that came before it, etc.), making them different and exciting enough to not be boring and add new functionality (just directly copying an existing interface is bad from a lot of viewpoints), finding ways to "fix" previous interface mistakes because even the best interfaces have room for improvement, working ergonomically and being intuitive to a huge diverse subset who are all coming at it from different directions with different desires- which just becomes more and more of a problem when you've got something that does a lot. You're also prone to fall in love with your interface and be blind to its faults. Even when it's a team, and there are focus groups and feedback, it's very common to ignore concerns because you want to do it THIS way. An interface this complicated, that has so many hurdles to overcome, that no one yet has done truly right? That is really REALLY hard. But there are problems inherent in this, from very basic tenants, and that's an issue. (Now, if I believed they were this devious and thought ahead, I'd think that 2.01 was the REAL interface, and this was to shake us up enough to accept it, something that has some of the aspects of this but excludes a lot of the more radical and hard to deal with parts.)<br /><br /><br />My problem with any new interface is twofold- 1) I've been using the previous one and know my way around. This presents serious problems in any interface overhaul, the learning curve to the new is always a frustrating experience, even if it is 100% better (take Blender. Please. Er, I mean, look at Blender- it's got a clusterfuck of an interface, but once you find your way around it starts making sense. Almost anything would be an improvement, and yet, anything would cause a lot of stress in anyone who actually knows what they're doing because they know how to do it the hard way, and the easy way isn't obvious until they learn it). The aim here is new players, who are not familiar with this system in any manner. I'm not sure they've succeeded in a lot of what they were attempting, in part because they've gotten hung up in what's "slick", as well as using things for interface basis that doesn't necessarily carry over because we've got a lot more functionality, and things needing to be used across and at the same time (for instance, I go to _another interface_, my desktop, to drag and drop an image over a trillian window to offer an image the easy way. We've got drag and drop here, but we've got the place you drag from and the place you drop to, occupying the same space at the same time, which makes it impossible without breaking away from the _default_- that's an interface fail, if I have to find a way to make your system work in an unusual way to do simple tasks). 2) I'm not their test case, even as a noob- day 1, after groping my way out of Orientation Island, I started making a fishnet shirt. Literally, the first DAY in SL I started the process of making things. As the new interface is designed, creation tools are "out of the way" so as to "not confuse" the new player. That would have frustrated the crap out of me. I've always been interested in a 3d chat program far less than a 3d immersive world that I can create.<br /><br />I'm trying to put aside BOTH of those biases to evaluate this and its usefulness to everyone. I may not always succeed.<br /><br /><br />The whole side menu thing: Herein we're going for style over function. It's "slick", it's gimmicky. It serves as a one window holds everything which is an interface trick that I'm never fond of, and usually falls flat on its face because it's confusing, and requires a one size fits none sizing scheme. Some, but not ALL, of the things stored there seem to have tear aways (new window inventory still hangs on my computer, and will probably crash me if I try to do it after being logged for a while, which is why it's a function I ceased using in previous viewers- in fact, so far inventory is the ONLY thing I've been able to tear away, I want to have the option for every. single. thing. Flexibility in interfacing is a GOOD thing). Inventory AND everything you want to drop things into FROM Inventory in the same space (Profiles, Group Notices...)...right there you're forcing people to find ways around the default. There's the "mini tab" with profiles, but this still requires more clicking through (ergonomics fail), but Group Notices just generally seem to say "well, we failed here by the default scheme, find the way around it!" That is not good interfacing. They've also generally introduced more action required to do a lot of tasks- the side tab is a big reason that's necessary, and that is also never good in interfacing- you want quick, easy, ergonomic design, not clunky. They're following the web interface linear click this to this model- but I thought even IE had tabbed browsing now? Not that I have used IE for anything but testing for....a very long time (that period when Netscape went the way of the dodo, before the rise of Firefox, those dark and dismal years), but I think that's been added to the feature list, and I've been using it on Firefox since it started. Prior to that, I opened a mess of windows at once. This moment, I have more than 20 sites open (yeah, I may have a problem), and tabs make for easy navigation back and forth, multiple windows wasn't bad either, I'd minimize what I wasn't looking at at the moment and grab new from the list. I do not browse linearly, and with the rise of tabs, I think it's pretty obvious I'm not the only one. I still open new windows at times when I want to see two at once instead of the tabbed thing. Yeah, we've got side tabs, but I want to have multiple of the same things open at once: profiles, groups, group notices, the list goes on. The popping out and recentering camera is understandable with the way this works BUT makes one queasy. Can I get used to it? Yeah, I can. There are people with disabilities who have serious problems with it, so even if <i>I</i> can, that's not the issue. That's a very serious issue regarding this choice, period- and it's a larger interfacing issue that's a very basic thing for anyone who knows anything about interfaces. Plus trying to scale it if you need to increase the size of the text in places is absolutely atrocious. Pros: you know where to look for (almost) everything.<br /><br />On the absolute opposite side: defaulting chat to _un_ tabbed, so that's a huge clutter spread across everywhere. That has a setting, but I can't think of an IM client I've installed for years that didn't default to tabbed and let you tear away, instead of starting off the other direction (they also all had easy ways to merge tabs by dragging and dropping them over each other, not having to find a setting. I keep trying to merge chat windows and they just won't drop in). (Disclosure: I've never downloaded a straight AIM client, all my AIM has always been in a multi system IM client, so I don't know how AIM does it.) New users will be left tearing their hair out if they try to talk to more than one person at a time- power users won't have a problem to adapt, they will find the settings, but they're also trying to make new users have a better experience. Additionally, world chat can't be collapsed into that, so I'm still stuck with an extra window I would rather have the _option_ to be able to collapse into one, even if I _chose_ to expand it into multiples. Again: flexibility and the option for the user to alter the interface to suit them, and not being forced to conform to an interface that's awkward to them, is key, especially when it can be so easily managed. The user has to adapt, but the interface should make adapting EASY, and as flexible as possible.<br /><br />I'm of 2 minds of the way popups are handled. Out of the way and non intrusive when I'm doing something else? Awesome. Super easy to miss entirely? Less awesome. Small icons in the corner of screen are an indicator, but not much of one. Lots of notices will go unread, lots of IMs will be accidentally ignored. That's a hard hard thing to find the sweet spot for though, the fine line between too intrusive and too subtle. All in all, this is probably a reasonable choice as is. The popup duration itself may bear more investigation. I don't have a problem with it. Other people DO have legitimate problems with it. I read fast and I don't have a history of seizures- those that differ from me in these respects have valid points. Have a setting for duration and you can get by all of those issues AND please everyone.<br /><br />Inventory:<br />No contextual icons for "system" folders...now, icons can be cumbersome and cluttered, but I can't even tell the Trash at a glance? Tack on icons were easy indicator "you can't delete this folder". Ease of interface, no. I'm hoping this is just a "we're not done yet" because it's random and weird to exclude when everything else has new icon art (and they understood the concept in the previous viewers).<br /><br />There's an inconsistent "sticky" inability to scroll past what item in inventory that's selected that is not useful. Not only because it's completely inconsistent and pops up when it pleases, but also if I tell you to scroll...I want you to SCROLL. This is consistent across most interfaces we are familiar with, and popping me back up is annoying and bothersome. Most let you keep selected off screen and only pop back when you move your arrow keys to select a neighbor- not just lock out the ability to scroll entirely. (This popped up a lot. It's a minor issue. It's also a stupid issue.) Because I've seen it happen sometimes and not others, I don't even know what is as intended and what's the bug functionality, or if there's context in the working/not that isn't readily apparent to me. I can find ways around it. Other users can find ways around it if they don't just simply get frustrated and say "fuck this" and leave SL before even starting. However, there is no apparent advantage to breaking from tradition in other interfaces- so interface fail.<br /><br />Inability to edit properties on multiple items at once. This...has always been tedious and badly done (I should be able to batch set perms in inventory, always- the alternative of having to change settings, close window, change settings, close window, is tedious but less tedious than having to change settings, optionally go back if you haven't torn off a new inventory window, choose new item and right click to go into properties, etc.- a lot more work than click click ctrl-W. Of course the flip side to the problem the old way is that sometimes I want to change properties, sometimes I want to double click ctrl-V ctrl-W when batch renaming- still easier than this, but a speedbump to batch perms. Which is also tedious and a pain in the ass and there are easier ways but they are rarely used anywhere so I understand SL not trailblazing here, though it would be nice), but to remove it entirely...not so awesome.<br /><br />Related: double click pulling up Properties. This is counter to just about every interface we use. Look at your desktop, cluttered with icons of various sorts (or if you're not a desktop slob like me, look in a folder). What happens when you double click any of those things? Why, they do their task. I get to see that image, read that text file, listen to that music, browse that website. Properties/File Info have always been just a right click away (or an apple-I/flipper click away in my beloved Mac of a decade plus ago. I still miss apple-I), but you need that LESS than you need them to do their purpose: in inventory, that means wear that stuff! With the rise of double click to take off as well in alt viewers, I'd say that should also be included: it's obvious, it's easy, it's intuitive. Even though they are not always worn, it's actually even MORE imperative for the new user with Objects- prim hair, shoes, skirts, etc. will be confusing to a new user when they can't figure out how to put them ON. Notecards: read that notecard! Script: read that script! Landmark: oh shiny crap I didn't mean to TP in my underwear! (Not their fault I think about About Landmark instead, that is the way it should be done. As for finger slippage, it happens with any interface.) We're looking at new user experience here: how often do you NEED to go into Properties unless you're building something to give away/sell? Changing clothing? WAY more useful, especially to new users. And it's just a right click away, just like on your desktop, when you need it. I'd love to see a similar renaming ability (i.e. you don't have to right click, select, pause, select to rename, or some combo of hover and select) as that _is_ a bit tedious, but I hardly ever rename there anyway (I go into Properties....which adds to the blow-age of only being able to do one at a time that steals focus from what else you were doing). Generally: the old way of inventory management did a lot more obviously, more intuitively, and more what everyone, even a new user would expect- and there are a lot of changes made just to change, with no redeeming features at all I can find.<br /><br /><br />Tabs no longer respond on drag: I'm torn on this. Doing it accidentally is annoying as sin, but this is a very obvious and common way of doing things (other interfaces use this a lot- and consistency is good to follow in interfacing unless you have a very good reason not to) and does have drag and drop advantages. (To illustrate what I'm talking about, Edit an object, grab a texture in inventory, whole holding it drag it over the Texture tab to go into Texture to be able to drop it in the correct place. Pre 2.0- this would pop into Texture for you so you could change tabs on the fly. In 2.0 it does nothing.)<br /><br /><br />Notecard links (like images) are too long. Across the entire line means it's easier to accidentally click. This is not a big gripe, but this is a "this is confusing for people and a simple little choice that should have been made the other way." This is also a very common interface snafu that slips by (accidentally or intentionally) and people often complain about it. Sometimes it gets changed, sometimes it's left as is. Landmarks in notecards seem to have some sticky issues with triggering, I'm guessing/hoping that's a "beta" thing, not as intended. Everything going straight to inventory (like LMs), no having to choose to copy over, will mean a HUGE amount of inventory clutter. Which also is an issue with no Discard button on things- I read notices, check out what I want, and Discard so I don't keep them- now I've got a bunch of notecards I need to keep going back and nuking.<br /><br /><br />And where did my About Landmap, view on Map, copy slurl to Clipboard go? I like not having to haul ass all over creation (in my underwear) to be able to make slurls. Or have to build them on my own. New user unfriendly. Old user additional unnecessary tedium.<br /><br /><br />Map coordinates! PLEASE! Why can't I enter in my coords on Map, there's even the empty space for it right there? I NEED my z. I go from 1300 one place, to 50 another, to 1100 another, to 30 another, etc. Flying the whole way is tedious when I can just GO straight there. Yeah, I can go, THEN type in new z in top coords. But...why? I don't need to double teleport constantly. Why not just have it in Map where it makes sense? I can't find a setting to reenable anywhere, if we think new users will be scared of all those nummmmmmbers.<br /><br /><br />I rather love the multipurpose top bar (which hid my coords until I found out it did stuff- as well as hiding land icons which make more sense to be on by default than off so you know damage/no build/no script/etc.) for the most part. It's something that I thought the OnRez viewer did really really right. However, the multipurpose search next to it (that they also did), is less cool. Bring back a search button. I'm ALL for having both- top bar quicksearch is like my google bar. It's awesome convenience. Search button that opens search window (like, going to google.com) gives more straight up targeted searching, which is ALSO good, so both would be nice. Search in SL is already tedious and somewhat awful, making it more restrictive makes things harder, not easier. You know how interfaces are hard? Good search algorithms are also hard. I'll cut you some slack, though you've still got to integrate basic basic search interface features that should have been there from the start. In practice though, there is a HUGE step backwards in how search functions as well, that actually makes it HARDER to find things now.<br /><br /><br />Images...I really really love the aspect ratio dropdown in the bottom corner. But why, oh why, can't you open it by default to the ratio of the actual texture? You already do that in previous viewers! It's easy! I could change it if necessary, but the, what is that, 3:2?, default is silly. Nothing is that size natively, nothing. You even made profile square (finally! Though that's going to be a long period of everyone's profiles looking like crap in one or the other). Though...and here's the huge issue: INCONSISTENTLY. Now you can see the same image in multiple places, with different aspect ratios (Search vs. actual Profile). This means you can NEVER EVER have a profile image that actually works across everything- huge, and I do mean HUGE, mistake. Pick one and stick with it everywhere, period. That just speaks of utter carelessness, and not giving a damn. More parts of profile at a glance, like 2nd and 1st lives? I'm all for. Or more accurately I don't care either way, people should have always been filling out their profiles like anyone could be looking through all of it...because they could be. Maybe this will be a "hey, don't put shit in 1st life you don't want people to see" reminder. We've lost some info as well, or appear to have at least- the Interests tab, while most of the info was potentially interesting if they filled it out and you wanted to know if they were a builder or not, also held LANGUAGE, which is a huge thing. Huge. Have you forgotten we are multicultural and don't all speak English? (Maybe you have. God knows the jira is full of very careless fuckups on alternate language versions of the viewer. Lots and lots of typos and stupid little mistakes that never should have made it this far, because you should have had actual decent translators working with you on this. Again: going public with this degree of careless mistake, even in a Beta, makes you look bad and like you don't give a fuck. A few things slipping through? Fine. Pages and pages of jira entries just on language screwups? Should have been fixed in internal Alpha.)<br /><br /><br />Context menus: A-fucking-MEN getting rid of the pie menu, but these need to be scalable without scaling everything (the sidebar scales horribly: the context menus, however, start out on the small side by default). I'm sure most of the people reading loved it- it's not intuitive. It's limiting and you either have wasted space or need to divide into new pages for no good reason (see: the problems with the side tab, you've replaced one one size fits none with another). The plus side to the pie menu is that you don't have strenuous order enforced, so contextually you don't have to decide on a good order for "Sit" and "Edit" (and all the rest of the stuff that's in a bad order in the contextual menus), and nice _large_ trigger spaces make things easier- especially with the aforementioned scales horribly. Unfortunately the contextual menu's advantages are offset by options in the Context menu being an an order that I can't see making sense to ANYONE, and the entire "Remove" menu is just plain in backwards order. Accidental ARs for everything, hoo ray! The actual order of options now makes a HUGE difference, as you are saying "this is more important than this." (And apparently we don't actually want you sitting on chairs any more, let's discourage interactivity!) Most of the menus I would juggle order, and even coming at it from a not-builder I'd still be juggling the order of most of them. So far the groupings have been great though, just badly ordered. Generally all the menus are...weird and some following in the footsteps of some interfaces that were later scrapped in some cases, but they've actually pretty well organized for all that they've spread things out. As someone who runs with Advanced options all the time I like the easy link to the _second_ Advanced menu at the bottom of the first, having a menu option (in Help maybe?) to the first as well, instead of just relying on hotkeys, would be a really good idea. Maybe you haven't noticed, but people access Advanced a LOT- especially unhobbling certain features (like RenderVolumeLODFactor)- even people who aren't exceptionally well versed learn how to get into those options because the default is just plain too low. Upload in Inventory threw me for a loop initially, but it actually makes very solid sense since that's where you're uploading _to_- that's very much a user of previous system bias.<br /><br /><br />User list: why oh why have you hidden who can see me online/map me/mod my stuff/whose stuff I can mod? You've got ACRES of space there to continue it across like current because you're in the huger than necessary side tab. It's harder to accidentally turn on, yes, but you always had warnings- and now it's very very hard to get a feel for who still has mod on your stuff following a project, and that slipping and THAT causing problems (you had a falling out with your best friend and you forget to take that off? WHOOPS). Going into stealth mode for a few hours so you aren't pestered by IMs while working (bravo to the Busy and Away easily accessible, btw- but those are not always enough, sometimes just not appearing online is better) just became a LOT more complicated/tedious/pain in the ass, as well as a lot easier to miss turning it all back ON visible (yeah, not a fan of Emerald letting you know if someone has you invisible for that reason: it may not be permanent. It may be "fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck I have too much to do if anyone talks to me I'm going to SCREAM"). I now have to go through a complex process just to see what people are set to to remind myself. Info at a glance: good. Hiding things: bad.<br /><br /><br />Tooltips: why have you forsaken me? Not only can I not find settings ANYWHERE (on all is good sometimes, trust me), but only item name? This is really REALLY bad. Especially for new players- they NEED to be able to see the price of things at a glance (we ALL DO). Tooltips need to have name, description (because there's often useful info when it is set- a LOT of Pay vendors put the price there so you can see it without opening up Pay, and it's a really good idea so you have an idea what something costs at a glance), PRICE, and owner. These are necessary. Not in a separate popup, but in hover, so you can see things at a glance. Having to click through to find out necessary info loses sales in a world driven by commerce, not to mention all the other problems it creates, ESPECIALLY for new users. And don't truncate that because you don't feel like putting it all in, either. Don't throw the baby away with the bathwater just because you want a change.<br /><br /><br />The Worn tab: now, I get that with virtual links and junk that worn works differently now, so I can understand this choice....but not being able to see the folder the ACTUAL items I am wearing are in is really kinda...not so cool. Worn tab in alt viewers is great because I can put the rest of my boots back on after taking the uppers off for pants, without trying to hunt for where I put the damn things- or any other other parts of the same folder/area, it's both good for easy reference of "oh right! That's where I filed that!" and Attach All in a folder when I know there are just the other bits I want to wear at the same time. This is a minor annoyance, but it does make this Worn tab less useful than the Worn tab in everything previous.<br /><br /><br />Colour scheme: This...is...Interface 101. I saw previews of 2 additional alternate skins on a blog a while back in addition to this one. I'm rather shocked I can't find an easy way to flip back and forth now (did we learn NOTHING from Dazzle?) Both of the alternates were dark text on light. Anyone who knows anything whatsoever about interfaces knows this simple fact: dark text on light is significantly more readable than light text on dark. Light on dark is cool, it's pretty, it's slick for the gamers and the kids with good eyes, it's something you see on games and blogs that don't actually care. SL is not targeted exclusively to that group- in fact, SL is only vaguely targeted at it period (for reasons including SL being a joke in the gaming community due to engine, prims instead of meshes, and a lot of other things they've been trying to do something about like, oh, WL and shadows. It'll NEVER be a real gaming platform, because from a basic control standpoint, combat sucks, and is largely thrown in as an afterthought and clunkily hacked and slashed in with LSL). Educators, people with disabilities, older users, people who want to read without wrecking their eyesight...DARK TEXT ON LIGHT. (That said, I'm happy with light on dark, I've been using dark skins for a while. I have white text on black here, you can see. I'm a spooky fucker, but I would never ever present this as the only option to a client, and would only suggest it as an option at all if it fit them. It's just not a good idea to be the only option, period.)<br /><br /><br />There are a LOT of useful features that were just removed for no reason at all (tooltips are but one example). Why take out things that weren't "confusing", that added obvious functionality, without giving anything back? Just because you wanted to throw out everything? This is a bad bad move. Also a puzzling one.<br /><br /><br />And, you know, in any interface: hotkeys, hotkeys, hotkeys. Need to be more, preferably need to be user set, and defaults also need to be in the menu (be it context or bar) next to that option so you can find it and look and say "oh, hey, that's useful, I need to remember that!" (They are, at least- but being so they also illustrate how few there are.) Say...oh...ctrl-I for Properties? Hotkeys are a HUGE boon in ergonomics for those users who choose to use them. No user should be forced to use them (unless you are Blender, and then you just delight in making us grab our heads in pain).<br /><br />Generally, feature list: look to Emerald and other alt viewers. People want built in radar (which is here...but often broken, I was finally able to get it to work and it seems to be 1/4 sim, with zero context on distance. How about settable range, to at least entire sim, preferably everything you can see on minimap? And colour coded chat range please- bold and strong in chat, not bold and faded out of. Generally the ability to SEE how far away people are helps, a lot, in meters- so you know where people actually are), people want built in AOs (with script limits impending, this is ALSO a big thing, though generally it's friendlier to do it client side for lag anyway). I want to throw away my flight feather (or equivalent), and be able to ungimp my flight height in viewer. I'm fine with default being default, but give me the option, I want to fly up to MY OWN SKYBOX without an attachment. I'm not talking boob physics (though some people want that too), but there are a lot of solid features alt viewers and script attachments have pioneered that have made the user experience better- AND easier- even for someone who doesn't know what they're doing. I want to be able to NOT have to give a friend I'm introducing to SL a huge pack of confusing script attachments to get them around limitations in the viewer.<br /><br /><br />p.s. Can we have auto follow finally? Pretty please? Yes, I am still a refugee from WoW at heart and I miss being able to tag along AND type when someone is showing me around (yes, I know there are attachments, but shouldn't more things be built into the viewer and not hacked around it? Like AOs!) I lose people when touristing around a LOT, at least yellow dots mean I have some faint hope of figuring out where they went now. WoW has the ability for addons to improve the viewer experience, having an official viewer that could be altered with plugins wouldn't be a horrible idea either.Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-28497606100019403822009-11-22T17:13:00.000-08:002009-11-24T02:40:31.805-08:00My problem with the roadmapSo, I've been pondering the real reasons I'm so displeased with the xstreet thing. The initial knee-jerk is of course "wow, fuck you for adding yet another surcharge without providing anything in return." But the real reason I really really don't like the change goes a lot deeper than that.<br /><br />The freebies thing...kinda sucks, and kinda doesn't. I don't like it, but it may actually not be a horrible idea: I don't know whether it can actually _work_ (in fact, I think it stands a snowball's chance in hell of actually helping any), but it's a reaction from LL to the fact that freebies have gotten out of control, and freebies do not drive the economy. They can't ban freebies in world, where the problem has gotten to be more of an epidemic, this is one place where they can try to stem the tide and hope that it spills over- problem being, there are a LOT of freebies that benefit the community as a whole that wouldn't be as useful if they weren't freely available, as well as the fact that freebies lure new users into joining and staying, and eventually putting money into the system to stimulate the economy. I don't know for sure, as I don't browse the freebies on xstreet really, but I think that most of the free swag on xstreet is of that type, and most of the type that stagnates the economy is available only in world. So I doubt this will truly have any positive impact upon the real base problem, that too much is available for free as "promotion", but that's backfiring and causing people to not see the reason to pay for anything, period.<br /><br />The bigger problem, is the 10L per month per item fee that's slipped in there. Firstly, they tried to slip it in so we wouldn't notice- note the name of the article is Managing Freebies, and that's the main thrust of the article, and this is snuck in such that many people (including myself) missed it on first reading. That is underhanded, and you don't get a warm fuzzy feeling when you realize someone is trying to hide the fact they want to fuck you over.<br /><br />And fuck you over it does: aside from the fact that, quite simply, merchants will have to waste a shitload of their time delisting items to avoid fees that xstreet does not support (after having wasted a shitload of time listing in the first place on a system with a miserable interface), this also inherently changes the entire service of xstreet- it removes a service that worked in one way, and replaces it with an entirely different service that I do not think will be anywhere near as useful- I know, with absolute certainty, that it will in fact turn a useful service into a useless one, for me personally. And THAT is my deeper issue here.<br /><br />I've talked to a number of people about xstreet (and onrez before that) for a number of years. Everyone that I've talked to uses these services in somewhat similar manners:<br /><br /><br />1) Web based searching, even though xstreet has an absolutely horrible search system (onrez's was far superior, which was just yet another reason killing off onrez and not implementing the better features as promised was a mistake), is still a lot easier than in world searching. In world searching will always have a lot of problems because there's simply too much out there, and it's a lot harder to find what you're looking for. You need to search in All to be able to _try_ to pick up on people who've thought to tick their vendors for search, and then you have to sift through all the things that have nothing to do with what you want to buy- if I'm looking to purchase a particular style of building, I don't really want to end up in sims with that theme instead. Additionally it takes a lot of time to go to a sim, wait for things to rez, find the particular vendor you're looking for, wait for it to rez, and then find out if you're actually interested in that, or want to keep looking down the list. There's a huge inconvenience factor when it comes to shopping in this manner- and xstreet fills a very necessary gap in services. I'm far more likely to get frustrated and give up, if I'm limited to in world options- and with less being listed on xstreet, I AM limited to in world options. It won't be worth it to even try to find things on xstreet, knowing that an already limited pool is limited even further to such a drastic degree- I just plain won't bother to even try. They should be moving towards having <i>more</i> listed on xstreet, not less, for a convenience to find what I'm looking for. Now, the real kicker here, is that unless there's a special deal or only available on xstreet, I would go IN WORLD and buy the item I found. There's no way to know that xstreet fostered that sale, because I wanted to see the other things people had in world, as well as the whole buying process being a bit more cozy if I can go see their place, and the way they've decorated and get a feel for the whole thing, and pay the box and get the thing instantly- instead of fearing yet another layer of failed transactions (there are still failed transactions on xstreet, far more commonly than in world, and my transaction records prove it). And if it's something I can actually _see_ physically in world, like poses? You'd better believe that xstreet fostered that sale, but could not MAKE the sale on its own.<br /><br />2) Gifting no transfer items is also a huge convenience perk on xstreet- I can try to do it manually, but I have to notecard the merchant, wait for them to be online, find out how they want me to deal with it, get them to send the item, hope they actually <i>do</i> (thankfully I've never run into anyone who didn't, but you do need to have a certain level of trust in who you're buying from, a stranger who is doing it by hand and in whose control it entirely lies). Doing it through xstreet means I see something that I think a friend would like in SL, I know this merchant has xstreet so I bring up their profile, find the item, send it off, and I'm all done. Convenience is a huge motivator in commerce- or really, the converse is more true, inconvenience is a huge detractor. If the line at the store is too long and I don't really need what I've got in my cart, I may just walk out without buying what I'd chosen- I may buy the items there later, but on the other hand, I may buy them somewhere else, or I may simply not buy them at all. xstreet provides a very necessary way to conveniently bypass a problem inherent in the way SL has to work- especially as copy/no trans is what more people have moved towards because of transaction and asset failure (additionally there is a huge convenience factor in resizing prims and such- but that could also be gotten around if the permissions system was more sophisticated). In other words, xstreet provides a way to work around the problems that LL has never FIXED. And, the Christmas season is coming up! A time when gift giving (whether it be Xmas presents or Hanukkah or whatnot) is on the rise- this is the LAST time you want to encourage people to be taking things off xstreet. In fact, this is the time you want to be encouraging merchants to put their entire stock ON xstreet.<br /><br />3) In a related point, xstreet serves as a great place for a merchant to keep stock- they can keep old retired stock, but additionally they can provide a different browsing experience- both "Textures loading slowly for you today? Browse on xstreet!", and offering an alternate organizational scheme (which, unfortunately, is another something that xstreet does NOT do well, and onrez did far better, between tags and the ability to browse tags by owner, I could easily "build" pages with different options that were related and link them in the description, in a far more flexible manner than could ever be presented in world). I had my entire catalog, constantly kept up to date as part of my releasing process, on onrez before it was bought out and discontinued. It worked as a great supplement even though people rarely bought through it. I've recently started trying to build up my catalog on xstreet again, as listing is far less friendly and takes far longer than onrez- so you've also got the pissed offedness over all the wasted time- I've spent literally DAYS updating xstreet, and will be deactivating at least 90% of what I have there, if I stay at all. The whole system with alternates (say, different colours) of an item also means that if I stay, I will be unlisting a LOT of things that LL <i>has</i> received sales commissions on- there's no reason to have more than one "display" colour up, even though they sell, on xstreet as well as in world, in _all_ colours.<br /><br /><br />The new system is trying to turn xstreet into a standalone marketplace- and I don't think that SL is a system that can truly support that. I know that it's not something I can actually see any benefit in having, turning the entire system just into a "spotlight" of "best sellers"- on top of that, I don't think LL really wants to be showing the world, in a forum easily viewed by outsiders without taking the time to even create an account and see the system, what ARE the top sellers. Badly made stripper wear, blinging stripper heels, that full prim schoolgirl skirt with the dropping and mooning animation that was constantly on the front page? You already have enough of a problem with SL being seen by outsiders as a den of iniquity and sex and perverts, and this is NOT an image you want, and you know this. It's the image you are more than likely to get however, because these things _do_ sell, and I could make a hell of a lot more money in SL if I sold out and didn't care and made crappily made stripper gear. Sex sells, and the internet is made for porn (the internet is also a filthy perverted place, and for the tiniest bit of proof, go to <a href="http://google.com">google</a> and type in- why won't - and watch what it autocompletes. This is also why searching in SL DOESN'T WORK, until the computer can read my mind and interface with other sophisticated computers that are capable of truly understanding, we rely on algorithms, and they are always inherently flawed, it's just a case of making them the least flawed possible. Also, be very very happy I chose that as an example, not any of the truly fucked up things out there, that make clown gangbangs look tame). Now, thing is, sex doesn't sell to me, and the higher proportion of stripper wear and blingtard heels will serve to alienate me, and all the people like me who aren't interested in it, out of the market. It may not be all that's there, but it will go up in <i>percentage</i>, which will make it look like there is so much more of it, and so much less of anything in which I am interested. Not only will there be less I am interested in, but there will appear to be EVEN less because the things in which I am not interested will stay in a higher percentage than the things in which I am. And as that happens, it will foster the trend to continue, snowballing until there's no reason to ever use it for anything else.<br /><br />People have been defending it by comparing it to ebay- without considering that ebay does offer a number of free insertions a month, it's an <i>insertion</i> fee, not a recurring one, and, when it comes down to it, you're comparing apples and oranges. They're both fruit, but the two systems are, and always will be simply due to the way SL works, completely different in very fundamental ways. I can't see a truly ebay like system being able to flourish in any real way in SL- limited quantities and time sensitivity are things that are more foreign to this medium, and you have to do <i>intentionally</i>, instead of coming naturally.<br /><br />There are some other intrinsic problems here: if xstreet is such a money pit, why did you buy not one, but <i>two</i> of these services that were doing quite alright on their own, where they didn't have the rest of the infrastructure in place that should make this <i>cheaper</i> for LL to run, not more expensive. Either someone didn't do their research to start with (and a very high, higher than has happened, growth after the takeover should have been expected and included as part of this research), or something has been handled very very badly. Neither inspire any sort of confidence whatsoever in LL's ability to handle ANYTHING.<br /><br />Additionally, "money" doesn't mean the same thing to LL- it is the carrot and the stick approach (mostly the stick), not what money converts to. They print the money, they control the supply, they have the money sinks of uploads, classifieds, etc. as money sinks to keep the economy moving (outside money needs to be brought into the system for it to continue functioning, additionally this means _less_ money can be taken out of the system, leaving them with the difference)- they give things worth. Textures have some intrinsic worth not simply because of the work involved in making them, but they have also an actual dollar amount (fractional as it is) added on top of that- which ceases it from being entirely "free" in any way, which instills some sliver of actual concrete "worth". Classifieds have the money system so there's a way to be "on top" by being willing to spend more than anyone else. LL doesn't "make money" directly off of these fees, instead they make money by <i>removing this money from the system</i>. Lindens are imaginary money until they are cashed- except to LL, when they are real money that belongs to them, <i>until they are cashed</i>, so they need to keep money coming into the system to keep paying for things, as well as have certain ways to keep it in the system. (Land fees are a somewhat related issue, although there's a more direct added cost on top of that that gives it more direct "worth".)<br /><br />So, by instituting these fees, they're adding another money sink- but its direct result will be the stick. It actually serves as a <i>disincentive</i>, just as upload fees serve as a disincentive to upload trash to the asset servers. The disincentive is a mechanism of control, to mold the system into what they want it to be instead of what it is, NOT a way to make money.<br /><br />And, the real problem at the end of it? The system they want it to be, is one that certainly is less useful to me, and may in fact be entirely useless. It certainly means that I have been operating under an <i>entirely</i> different set of assumptions when using this system, both as consumer and merchant- and the new rules don't have any benefit to me. They want to foster commerce because that's what brings them money- however I can only see them removing convenience, and placing roadblocks in the way of commerce, instead.Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-42662908420120709452009-11-20T00:11:00.000-08:002009-11-20T00:27:04.100-08:00xstreet alternatives- a recapSo, a short form of the 6 services:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.metaverseexchange.com/">Metaverse Exchange</a>:<br />My top choice, as the services are currently, semi tied with apez. Beats out meta-life because that excluded itself from being useful to me. Beats out apez (somewhat) because it has somewhat better bulk listing. Listing itself is weird and takes a lot of getting used to, may in fact be harder to list individual items than any other service, so it's not super awesome.<br /><br /><a href="http://apez.biz/">apez.biz</a>:<br />Semi ties with MVX, in fact I'm still waffling as to which of these two I prefer. MVX has easier and more interesting bulk listings (which I like...but also kinda don't like, because you can't SEE everything at once easily), but apez has some semi decent bulk listing features, so long as you never, ever, EVER change your mind. I would say it's easier set up than MVX for singles, LOVE the collections way of grouping items.<br /><br /><a href="http://meta-life.net/">meta-life</a>:<br />Mostly a pretty damn great service. Pretty damn near totally useless for me because of the image thing. Wish it would have website image uploads, and apez's collections- with a few very minor interface tweaks on top of that meta would quite possibly be my perfect service.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.slapt.me/">slapt.me</a>:<br />Of the four I could get up and running, slapt was the most lackluster. No bulk features, just about as clunky listing wise as xstreet (and if I have to choose something else, I'm choosing something with BETTER features), and interface problems that make it almost unusable for me because I have problems figuring out what things say at all.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.vitty.jp/">vitty</a>:<br />Suffers from the "if I need to move, I should move to something that makes my life easier" problem- listing looks similarly clunky, about on par with xstreet. Geared towards the Japanese market, _and_ has a deal on commissions for low priced items, so, as a consumer, this is quite possibly a hidden gem full of holy crap that's amazing and I need it right now. It's just not something I'd use for selling on, currently.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.cariama.com/">Cariama</a>:<br />Not yet open (the website itself only launched at all the beginning of last month), so out of the running.Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-35682109784398912572009-11-19T23:28:00.000-08:002009-11-20T00:31:39.299-08:00xstreet alternatives- cariama & vittyTest drive 5: <a href="http://www.cariama.com/">Cariama</a><br /><br />Not actually open yet! So. That was fast. Somehow someone has listed 1 item (maybe a test item in some manner?) but otherwise, this isn't running yet.<br /><br /><br />Test drive 6: <a href="http://www.vitty.jp/">vitty</a><br /><br />I am guessing vitty's having issues with the influx of people, I'm incapable of getting a box delivered to me to try a listing. However, looking through the help docs, there is no bulk listing feature at all, so that kinda excludes it as an option for me. Additionally, I'm not fluent in Japanese (and not even barely literate), so as it's a Japanese site, I would be excluding most of the audience by being unable to list in Japanese. The website itself is set up well for English speakers though, and for people looking to expand into the Japanese market, I think this would bear looking into just for that.<br /><br />Additionally, there's no commission at all on any item under 51L, so it would be a great market for cheap promos. (Standard 5% on 51L and up)Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-37196508935486636072009-11-19T20:44:00.000-08:002009-11-20T23:30:07.833-08:00xstreet alternative- metaverse exchangeTest drive 4: <a href="http://www.metaverseexchange.com/">Metaverse Exchange</a><br /><br />We may have a winner, for me. It's strange, and not 100% ideal, and reinvents the wheel. But, it might be my best option.<br /><br />Also, you'll see that my evaluation is coloured by previous things- meta-life plus proper image integration is currently what I'm measuring things against (in other words, I want to see them get close to that, _or_ similar convenience in another package- this approaches the second). I'm also more concerned with cursory listings and will work on more of the extras later, while skimming through each to get the overview.<br /><br />For convenience (and my wrist's) sake, I'm going to be referring to this as MVX because I can barely _remember_ the full name, aside from it being long. The info from digging around the website looked interesting- a "listing here is weird, but that's because we actually let you group alternates". And listing IS weird.<br /><br />Signup's a little strange because this is an "integrate all your virtual worlds into one account" thing (as well as multiple SL accounts, from the looks of it)- there's currently one other world (Legends Online? or something like that. I've heard of it, never been), set up an account, integrate it to your SL account second, and they actually USE your email address in sign up...so it makes sense to ask (maybe that's why the whole email signup process on slapt was weird to me? I don't know). Box gets sent, you don't have to leave the privacy of your skybox while wearing awesome but wacky demos and other neat things people send you while you're standing around. p.s. I'm also a fan of convenience.<br /><br /><br />Good Things:<br /><br />Multiple options of the same item (like colour alts) collapse into one really easily. One listing, dropdown for all the items on that listing. Totally different system than any of the others, and a nice one- cuts down on the dreaded clutter that omg is the reason the sky is falling and we have to fuck with you. Editing the batch is also pretty quick and reasonably simple...once you know what you're doing, which is not easy.<br /><br />Image uploading with multiple options, including the ability to grab previously uploaded images fairly easily. Also, you can assign a crapton of images to any single thing (I threw in all 30 alts of the shirt, just to see if I could- it doesn't have a scrollbar, so it's rather useless beyond the first 5 or so, but it DID let me), though it doesn't tell you in the thumbnail that there are other images than just the default. It automatically reorders things as you assign in a manner that appeared random to me, so beyond image 1, who knows what the order will be- this only makes any difference when you have too many images and some may get shoved off screen!<br /><br />edit: I just looked back- thumbnails are smaller than before so I can see more, AND it now scrolls sideways if you have more than fit. So, something may have been hinkey when I first checked that's ironed itself out.<br /><br />I think you can do copy and transfer options integrated into single listings easily as well, if you choose to. I largely avoid transfer on web based systems when I have a copy alternative because I don't trust redelivery and unscrupulous people. (Generally, this is why I don't like transfer, period, btw, and only offer it in very particular cases now.)<br /><br /><br />Bad Things:<br /><br />Holy crap is listing confusing. It sort of kinda makes sense once you've done it, but even then, parts are NOT where you expect them to be, divided up between two sections- and some things in one part don't carry over but others do...generally, very steep learning curve. You WILL need to have the <a href="http://www.metaverseexchange.com/help.php">Help page</a> open while you're listing, and will have to look back at it for every. single. step. The instructions are pretty good, but they are 100% necessary, and it will probably take me a handful of listings to get used to it at all to where I _don't_ have to refer back constantly. I also got totally turned around trying to edit a listing, and learned a lot the first time that will help out next time, but did a LOT wrong the first time, even going through their instructions. It would be nice if there was an easy way to integrate fatpacks too? However I think that would involve changing the system a bit- prices seem to be constant, and that should be a somewhat different option in the dropdown instead of just alphabetical...so, I don't see an easy way to do it that wouldn't just cause more confusion. This is also assuming that there isn't that ability and I just didn't see it because I'm still picking up on the system. But I was able to easily edit the non fatpack and the fatpack listings to link to each other (BB Code, not HTML- I'm more comfortable with HTML, but BB is pretty common and what most of these sites use anyway, and it's not bad)...once I figured out how to edit active listings (I also made it active before I meant to- again, first listing WILL confuse the crap out of you).<br /><br />Generally, I'd overhaul the organization in certain ways and move some of the info back and forth- the setting info from one to apply to all thing doesn't make as much sense when you've also got a SECOND place to put in info that applies to all, and the division doesn't entirely seem to make sense. Some does. I also found it may not have applied things across right, and couldn't see where to change the info in the individual and apply it across to all _again_- which is useful.<br /><br />Images are not bad, but could be yet less clunky. Meta-life's the only one that gets close- let me apply secondary images to all the selected at one click, please. Also, would love to see thumbnails at the item list so I had a clue which ones I'd done what with yet! I had to go through my listing repeatedly to make sure I hadn't listed everything, and some of that won't change with practice, because it isn't so easy to see how the lot of it is set up at a glance. This is less a "bad thing" and a "wish it was this way thing", of course!<br /><br /><br />All shirts, plus fatpacks, listed. Took (quite a bit) longer than meta-life because a) figuring out system, b) actually changing the pictures for each one! Proper meta-life listings WILL take longer as I didn't slot out the image for each, and c) it may still take slightly longer generally because of the way things are set out across two pages, and how that info there is organized. But, listing all didn't take much longer than one (main problem being assigning images to each)- so for colour alts and such, very good. Listing singles is divided up in the same manner, so that _is_ a little clunkier than some, but not altogether horrible. Still, this is my current personal frontrunner, with meta-life not having uploadable images supported. It has beaten out apez in my book, although single listings are probably a bit more time consuming in the long run than apez.Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-82765775771957791912009-11-19T16:21:00.000-08:002009-11-19T16:52:11.510-08:00xstreet alternatives-slapt.meTest drive 3: <a href="http://www.slapt.me/">slapt.me</a><br /><br />Now, people have been raving about this one, so I figured I would go with it next. But I started off less into it, and I'm not entirely sure why. Was it the initial screen before you can go into the site proper? Was it the "look" of it generally? The sign up process continued this slightly...off feeling. Put in a valid email...not your av name. We won't do anything for signing up with that email, go here, say this in local chat out loud on channel 0 (not that it's something that matters really...) and we'll sign you up. The whole thing is just...not the way I want it done, and makes me slightly uncomfortable for reasons I can't put my finger on.<br /><br />But, then we've got nice shop profiles, yay! Mind you, it's one per avatar, the multi shop thing on meta-life spoiled me, I like that feature. There are split profits- I'm not doing that right now, so I don't know if it applies to all across the board or what (nor will I be looking into that now, as it doesn't apply to me- if it applies to you, check it out!)<br /><br />Door to door box service, which is "how it should be." Something good about all of them so far- they wait to update so you aren't constantly cycling when adding a group, or changing or whatnot (I've had to change in box perms on a bunch of things before, my xstreet box went postal).<br /><br /><br />Bad Things:<br /><br />The category listing box...is too narrow...and I can't SEE the categories to figure out where to list something. /facepalm Now, this is because my browser window isn't maximized, but, even with it, I can't see it all and it will cause more trouble with listings. Generally, the interface is too size dependent and has the sidebars that block it in, and this causes a lot of "wait, what's that supposed to be? Ok, first two letters...what might that spell?"- some even with my browser maximized. My screen may be a laptop screen, but it's large for one of those, so I can see this causing trouble. I could lower my font size to squinty...maybe.<br /><br />The image file cutoff is _way_ lower, and my first try told me "no sir, this is too big!" Now, this _is_ a fairly large image, but is effectively 1024x1024, not above SL sizes.<br /><br />I'm not seeing any way to make "bulk" listings easier. I put up with that from xstreet because it was "the" thing, there are alternatives that have it, and that means thumbs down from me. I only listed on onrez until after the takeover and killing of it, and never listed as much on xstreet (in fact, until a month ago, I had very little on xstreet, and only just started listing more with the spotlights).<br /><br />It strips out HTML (oh, you wanted to link to something there? Too damn bad, you get the links that we tack on to the end of everything, and you'll like it), and ignores BB code, so looks like just text is what you get. This also...does not thrill me. The links there at the bottom of each entry auto generated? That's awesome. But, I want the ability to offer other links, for various reasons. What if this has something to do with a location that only this item has to deal with? And I obsessively link pages to the blog entry for that item- this links to the blog...but not the right page. Now- some people DO have lists. So, there may be a way around some, if not all, of this. But the obvious ways to me are not it.<br /><br />Collections appear to only apply to in world vendors? Which makes them useless to me.<br /><br /><br />Good Things:<br /><br />It's not xstreet? Honestly, it's about on par for clunkiness with xstreet (though it's prettier), unless there is a way I'm not seeing here. You can upload images, unlike meta-life, which continues to make me curse the world for not allowing that. In other words: not a fan, don't know why people are raving so much.<br /><br />And the searching system doesn't suck- but so far all of them do it way better than xstreet, so that doesn't give it a leg up in this race.<br /><br /><br />I listed....2 shirts. And gave up. Barring not seeing a LOT of useful features, slapt is not for me.Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-1886112157636350072009-11-19T01:33:00.000-08:002009-11-19T16:52:15.445-08:00xstreet alternatives- meta-LIFETest drive 2: <a href="http://meta-life.net/">meta-life</a>. I'm...less of a fan.<br /><br />Step 1: sign up and get a box! In fact, I ported into the one and only place listed to get started 3 times- first time, getting password; second time- got the wrong box full of stuff because I found the popup menu confusing. That was my own fault though! I also changed out of the lingerie during this as I kept porting over to random stranger being there. So, following the doorstep service of apez, minus .001, meta-life (because really, this is not something you'll do often, so it doesn't really matter! Just teeny tiny annoyance).<br /><br />Rezzed the box in my corner, dumped shirts in. Headed off to the site. The site...confused the crap out of me. In fact, I still don't know if I'm listing properly.<br /><br />Now, as an aside here- I am NOT interested in using the in world vending solutions provided by these services. I don't like scripted vendors generally. Scripts = lag, even low lag vendors add up if you've got a lot, and I use scrolling vendors somewhat sparingly because seeing everything is better. I think, if I liked in world vendors, I would like meta-life more.<br /><br />Content management tab takes you to options for setting up stuff. First, set up the brand(s) you want to sell things under- this is great. I then made a group for the Oxfords with My items groups. Then went over to my items to start editing.<br /><br /><br />Bad Things:<br /><br />Images. Gah. I HATE the way they do images. They just want you to dump UUIDs for the textures uploaded, not upload your own images. They still need to upload these to their servers...the quality is shitty. The aspect ratio...is shitty. I am not interested in making these things available in world through an affiliate or my own vendors, so this gets _me_ no advantage. Mostly I cry because the quality is shitty and I have to dig through inventory, copy the UUID, paste it in, and can't update my listings when I'm logged off SL. Images are basically my only real hate, but oh, how I hate. Also, I put in a secondary image. It has the UUID there. It ignores it everywhere on the site other than sitting in blah blah numbers in that text box.<br /><br />Item groups don't appear to have searching goodness- it's great for listing, put all the things to mass edit in one place so it's easy. But, I don't see any way to _see_ everything that's in there as a consumer, which is not as useful.<br /><br /><br />Good Things:<br /><br />MASS EDITS! HUZZAH! Tick your checkboxes for items, edit the slew of them at once, and boom, there you go! You'll still need to edit individual bits, but that gets you way way way ahead started on listings- PLUS you can go back and change your mind and edit them all easily. I wish Apez had mass edits _this_ way too. Annoyingthing: perms are NOT one of the things that are in the mass list...THERE. Images are...but perms aren't. Which is less cool. You CAN mass set perms, BUT it has to be a different step, which is clunky. Not seriously clunky, just teeny tiny bits of clunky, but still, offputting and seems left out in the other thing, and easy to miss. Category listings...is also weird and easy to miss, in a similar fashion.<br /><br />Tags! That I can see! And use! And click on to see all the other things with the same tags!<br /><br /><br />I listed all the Oxfords, every single one, in less than 5 minutes. BUT, that's because I didn't slot out the images for each individual one. Because I hate hate HATE getting all the damn UUIDs. The image thing is quite obviously a deal breaker for me, for a LOT of reasons (hell, the image for the oxfords is fucked up because of the way I had to cheat to get it to work in SL and fix on prims). I have zero interest in also having in world vendors linked to the website presence, and always have, and have always avoided tying SL textures into vendors, even when it was _easier_ to do than this. If meta-life changed the image thing to allow uploading off my harddrive, I would probably be saying, right now, "let's all switch to meta-life". It's not as slick looking as apez (but black text on white, so better for readability), but it's got solid functionality aside from the image thing.Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-31717444336729202312009-11-19T01:01:00.000-08:002009-11-19T16:52:18.871-08:00xstreet alternatives- ApezI'm starting to test drive alternatives to xstreet, following today's awesome announcement. So far I've started with two, apez.biz and meta-LIFE:<br /><br /><a href="http://apez.biz/">Apez.biz</a> is my frontrunner. It threw errors every so often, possibly entirely due to being overburdened with people flocking to it, and it caught up and fixed itself pretty well.<br /><br />It uses a bit different listing system than xstreet, thank god. This does mean, woo hoo, learning curve. Step 1, obviously, sign up and snag a box through their procedure (it was painless, I 'ported over to set up my password while wearing lingerie to one of the list of places, it was deserted and no one saw my rumpled sexiness. p.s. Apatia Hammerer is to blame for the state of undress. And then I had the box sent to me while standing in my messy skybox server box corner).<br /><br />Dumped the oxfords in the box. They sell pretty well, and they are _very_ multi listing dependent. They could be listed super easy (onrez was pretty easy!)...or eye stabbingly hard (xstreet). Then went to the website to try to figure out...what to do. The what to do was helped out by the aforementioned errors, which popped up as I tried to muddle through setting up the system and helped confuse things.<br /><br />"vend" tab, then "inventory" shows your list. I got a bit lost in there, and went to "products" first (note: "catalogs", the next option, is currently not implemented). I created a new collection- with that option being at the right hand side it was less intuitive (eyes go left first. It's a super minor thing, and later it works), to put all the oxfords in to set them up together. I'm guessing this is how it's done, but it's just a guess. Back to "inventory" and clicked on the icon with the fairy wand, which now let me create a new thingie since I have a collection to put it in.<br /><br /><br />Bad things about listings:<br /><br />There doesn't appear to be anywhere to fix the perms. So, it shows perms of box, which are probably none, not perms of contents, which usually are not.<br /><br />The text interface for the description threw in lots of messed up characters when I was editing it, and it took a bit to find a way around the excess bullshit and crappy formatting. This may be due to copy/paste from xstreet listing. I went into the html view, because a) I know it and have more control, which continued to fuck me up with the special characters on saving, and b) I could play around with accepted tags. One really awesome useful tag that's not allowed? img. So....no images in your listings, oh people with logos and such at the bottom making things prettiful. Because yes, I was going to try that, but massively failed. Which is sadface.<br /><br />No shopfronts, dammit. I liked that about onrez. Also, joint listings, branding, etc. would be nice, for side projects, partnerships, things like that. Maybe you'll get some of that ability with catalogs, who knows.<br /><br />You can't select a bunch, and edit them all at once. This makes listing, even with the duplicating listings thing, take a hell of a lot longer, because I have to constantly click through and create new and wait for loading blah blah.<br /><br /><br />Good things about listings:<br /><br />You can "duplicate" an existing listing and just change the bits you need to. It doesn't update the listing name when you update the object...which is not so good.<br /><br />It _does_ carry images over so you can have the same extra alt views, plus you can pull down a drop down to access the other images you've uploaded on other items! Which is super duper awesome. I have only made one collection- if it doesn't limit by collection, that list will get unusably long, so we'll see if it retains usefulness at all.<br /><br />It looks like you can view just the items in the currently selected box. THANK GOD. I can never find a damn thing in my xstreet list because there's too damn much of it.<br /><br />Tags! Yay! And mini descriptions are neat. Ok, the downside to tags is I don't see a way to USE them other than just invisible search terms, but at least they're there, and will be useful for search terms.<br /><br />Collections! YOU CAN SEE ALL THE ITEMS IN A COLLECTION AT A CLICK! For items that go together, colour alts et c. this. is. awesome.<br /><br /><br /><br />Listing multiples of the same colour is still a little clunky as you have to click through to each item to change most of the stuff (onrez had that pop out thing that was REALLY useful, but the carrying info across thing is not bad), but still, head and shoulders above xstreet.<br /><br />The look is slick- BUT it's white text on dark background. This looks cool...and is harder to read. I would strongly recommend the ability to choose stylesheets and have a nice crisp black text on white for people who aren't so wild about that. Me, I like the dark, but it's a well known _bad_ thing for usability.<br /><br />p.s. I listed about half of them before I said "fuck this noise, I'll play more later." Still, even with going back and constantly editing all of them (because I was still fighting with formatting), it went way faster than xstreet. BUT nowhere near as fast as meta-LIFE.Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-77640467126294812592009-07-28T00:01:00.000-07:002019-12-16T00:12:53.355-08:00Drowsy<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhynZI5COJ35N-KMGXkcDUYGJbqoR6l7p0RrTBsazu-T53B_HrIa1ACmd0i-ZTNZ-hWDav-uMuEBOkG4yvQ348GucrooxKMqeZ0ziYIFIdm-Ks5fmM-5UojDTfonzv1wneD7Fq02BxtW6Jh/s1600/drowsy-dancers_3744634656_o.png" imageanchor="1"></a><a href="http://slurl.com/secondlife/Drowsy/45/47/23">Drowsy</a> does festivals in a space that changes from time to time. They're filled with awesome.<br />
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Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-55837856378647755222009-06-08T23:54:00.000-07:002011-02-16T23:59:29.368-08:00Hotel DareAn interactive art installation.<br /><center><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/a_malaprop/3695927052/" title="hotel dare brick by Allegory Malaprop, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3604/3695927052_d0c9cba060.jpg" width="500" height="294" alt="hotel dare brick" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/a_malaprop/3695116773/" title="hotel dare room 103 by Allegory Malaprop, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2657/3695116773_e20913b306.jpg" width="500" height="294" alt="hotel dare room 103" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/a_malaprop/3695925944/" title="hotel dare voyeur by Allegory Malaprop, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2462/3695925944_5d120c64e4.jpg" width="500" height="294" alt="hotel dare voyeur" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/a_malaprop/3695115873/" title="hotel dare cottage by Allegory Malaprop, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3523/3695115873_9f144e525c.jpg" width="500" height="294" alt="hotel dare cottage" /></a><br /></center><br /><br />This installation at <a href="http://slurl.com/secondlife/Poetik velvets/182/94/73">Poetik velvets</a>. The Hotel periodically closes and changes in entirety.Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-81158883022100901242009-01-07T17:29:00.000-08:002009-01-07T17:51:39.507-08:00Decripple your build toolsI recommend skimming through <a href="http://tentacolor.com/">Tentacolor</a> if you're a huge geek, there are some amazingly awesome things in there.<br /><br />One of which is <a href="http://tentacolor.com/2007/05/14/howto-fight-prim-drift-with-awesomeness/#more-126">how to decripple your build tools.</a><br /><br />Disclaimer: the TOS is sort of murky on the legality of this maybe? I don't think that's what they intended with that clause and it's more towards don't copybot shit, but yeah, I feel I need to give the disclaimer. But hey, it's all in xml files, so it's EASY to edit, if they didn't want us doing it, there are other ways they could have approached that instead. Basically, <a href="http://tentacolor.com/2006/12/04/hacking-xui-for-fun-and-goodness/">read Jacek's disclaimer</a>, because I can't be arsed to write a decent one.<br /><br />Go to skins\default\xui\en-us and open up floater_tools.xml with a regular vanilla text editor (unless you like Dazzle Jazz Hands, in which case you want skins\silver\xui\en-us. I avoid it like the plague, so if things are done differently, you'll have to figure that out yourself). Head down to Position (meters), and in the next 3 declarations of code, change decimal_digits="3" to decimal_digits="5" (in my testing, 5 is the max amount SL keeps track of, you just get wiggly numbers you can't do anything with if you go higher). label="X" is doing it for the x, "Y" for y, "Z" for z, of course. Things are in the same order as the actual Build menu in here.<br /><br />Do the same for Size (meters)! You can up Rotation as well, but 5's probably excessive for use there. You can also play around with the decimals in the rest of the declarations, as sometimes you can get more out of it (sometimes you can't).<br /><br />The other SUPER DUPER AWESOME thing to do is fix your texture tab (which is talked about in <a href="http://tentacolor.com/2006/12/06/decrippling-the-ui/">this entry</a>, this is all Jacek's smarts here). Transparency is capped in the editor...because the Lindens think we're idiots? I don't know. There's no reason not to make that puppy 100, so you can do full transparency in one click WITHOUT resorting to another texture.<br /><br />Go to Transparency %, and bump max_val="90" to max_val="100"<br /><br />I also up both the Repeats Per Face, max_val="100" to more than 100 too, because it's useful for Planar mapping (normal people have no need of this, but I've passed 100 repeats more than once. I haven't had to bump past 500...yet).<br /><br />Unfortunately EVERY SINGLE TIME you have to update a viewer you have to go through this process again, which generally leads to me swearing, making due for a brief period, and then telling people I'm logging off to make my tools not awful (because you get used to them being awesome, and going back....sucks).Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-80413278868108436972009-01-04T13:08:00.000-08:002009-01-04T14:37:29.170-08:00Adjustment Layers, yay! Also, a tad on ActionsEver wanted to, say, change the Hue/Saturation on a bunch of layers without flattening? Or Levels? Or Curves? Or wanted to change any of those things but keep the original stuff uneditted in case you change your mind? Well then, my friend, Adjustment Layers are for you!<br /><br />However, I'm a total tease, and FIRST I'm going to tell you about Actions. Actions are another way to apply the same adjustment to multiple layers. It doesn't stay edittable....but it can also do so much more!<br /><br /><br /><b>Lights, Camera, Actions!</b><br /><br />Actions are great when you have repetitive motions you need to go through. Say you need to go through a bunch of files, auto level them, hue/sat them to the exact same value, rotate them 90 degrees clockwise, and resize them to exactly the same size. Actions can try to save our poor carpal tunnely wrists by doing this in one bing bang boom click, once we've done the first one. Actions can record any repeated motion with <i>exactly the same settings</i>, and save that to be applied with one click, regardless of how many steps, at any time.<br /><br />Firstly here, I'm going to assume throughout this (and, really, all my other) rambling, that your window setup is like mine. There's no real reason for this assumption, other than I think I pretty much keep the default, and you may have to.<br /><br />You see on the probably right side of your screen (your right, not its right....ok, so I don't think I've mentioned this, but I have a really hard telling my left from my right. So if it's not there, look at the <i>other</i> right, ok?) there are these windows. One of them, possibly the bottom, is where you do your layering magic <jazz hands>. But anyway, each of them have these tabs at the top with other options. Right now, I want you to find the one that says History. It should have another tab that says Actions.<br /><br />If you can't find it, pull down the Windows menu, and choose Actions. If it has a checkmark next to it it's already center stage- if not and you click it, it becomes active, and pops out if you don't have it up already.<br /><br />There are a couple of folders- Default Actions, possibly Textures. Make a new one, name it "Mine" or "Tralala I can't hear you" or what so ever you please. This is where you will keep your actions so you can find them.<br /><br />Take your first file, or layer, that you will be applying all these same things to, and make it active. Create a new action in this folder with the same new icon you should be familiar with with Layers. Name it something you can remember, and hit "Record".<br /><br />Now, do your stuff! Remember, Actions are reeeeeally dumb. They can do exactly the same thing, nothing else. However, they're also kind of smart, you can set your resizing to width by pixels, or percentage, or whatever, and it defines by what it sees set (so you can always scale by 50%, or always 512 wide, or set both height and width to pixels)- it also can apply identical filter settings, or adjustment settings, or pretty much anything really.<br /><br />Once you're done, hit the stop button, that looks like an old timey cassette tape player stop button. (It's the box.) Now, go to whatever you want to do just like you did....and hit the play button (the filled in arrow), with that Action selected. Sit back and oooooh and aaaaaah over the magic!<br /><br />You can see everything your action is doing by expanding the arrow next to it, it will show each step with a checkmark next to it. You can toggle steps on and off with these checkmarks, and some expand further to see their settings, what it will apply when the Action is played. Actions will play from the one selected down, if you select one in the middle, skipping the first steps.<br /><br />Actions are useful in some cases, useless in others. They may or may not be something you want to use. But keep them in mind, for they can save you a lot of hastle, time, and typing, when you do have things you can automate.<br /><br /><br />But! To get back on the train of thought that got toooootally disrailed there, plowed through a pasture with some cute bunnies, hopped on other tracks and went around a few circles, and finally is reconnecting with what we came here for: Adjustment Layers!<br /><br /><br /><b>How I Learned to Stop Worrying, and Love the Adjustment Layers</b><br /><br />Sorry about that. I get distracted by shiny things, and oh! hey! that's kinda useful crap too! My brain, she is kind of a cluttered mess.<br /><br />Adjustment Layers are pretty damn superduperawesomefunsauce. They've got a lot of great advantages:<br /><br />1) They are non destructive. Your original layers are still intact and full of every last drop of juicy information they started with.<br /><br />2) They are infinitely adjustable. You can go in and tweak that red value 2 degrees up more if you want, you can do a rough "oh, I'll shove everything in that general dirction" and go back and do settings for reals later.<br /><br />3) They apply to EVERYTHING below them. All layers, without flattening or doing each by hand.<br /><br />4) They can have masks. You should have learned in our last installment how damn jibbing awesome masks are. This will make you love masks more.<br /><br />And probably many more, but, eh, that'll do for the sales pitch for now. Once you've used them, you too will squee with delight.<br /><br />Now, to <i>do</i>: Look to your Layers palette. There are a bunch of wacky icons at the bottom. Mine are chain, squiggly f in a circle, box with a hole in it, circle that's half black/half white diagonally, folder, folded up page, trashcan. In real world terms that translates to:<br /><br />Link (chain), which links layers so when you move one, you move all, and such things;<br /><br />Layer Style (f in a circle), which lets you do fancy smacktacular things like drop shadows the easy way, none of this making a selection, filling it with black on a new layer underneath, and blurring it until it looks good like the old days;<br /><br />Mask (box with a hole), which should you should somewhat understand from our previous installment;<br /><br />Fill or Adjustment Layer (half black/half white circle, diagonally), which is what we want!;<br /><br />and New Folder, for putting layers in folders; New Layer, which you should be well versed with; Trash, which you should also be well versed with.<br /><br /><br />Pull down your half black/half white circle. Pick the type of adjustment, like, say, Hue/Saturation. The normal Hue/Sat thing pops up, move your sliders. Every layer under what you've got selected, including what you've got selected, goes what you choose, like magic! You've got a layer now that's got a wacky sort of control panelly thing instead of a drawing box as its icon, with a drawing box full of white next to it.<br /><br />If you want to hue shift everything there, we're done. If not though, we have options for applying this selectively. If you want to change your selection by masking, turn to <a href="#Page3">Page 3</a>. If you want to have your adjustment layer apply to cutouts and not a background, turn to <a href="#Page5">Page 5</a>.<br /><br /><b><a name="Page3">Page 3 - Masking for Fun and Profit</a></b><br /><br />You have chosen to play with masking! Masking is a highly rewarding way of dealing with your adjustment layer. You can do things like apply a black to white gradient on your mask to fade the change, or guassian blur selections, make selections off of other layers, or draw what you want directly on your layer. White will show the effect. Black will hide the effect. Draw right on your layer with black and white to change how the effect deals with the layers below it. You can, for instance, make an adjustment layer for shading on clothing, delete it all so it's black, and draw on it with white for the shadows, and this will apply your adjustments. You can easily shade patterns! You can change base layers instead of hue layers on top to change colours of things! And, best of all, you can go back and tweak your shading at any time without messing up your original image- those of you who dodge and burn shade may find that you can get the same effect with adjustment layers without having to start all over when the cat hops up and knocks your mouse arm!<br /><br />In short: anything you can do to a regular layer, pretty much, can be done to an adjustment layer mask. It will be done entirely in greyscale, and the amount of white in the pixels will determine how much the adjustment shows. Adjustment Layer masks are <i>exactly</i> like layer masks, folder masks, and channels.<br /><br />For the end blabbering that doesn't really make any difference, turn to <a href="#Page8">Page 8</a>.<br /><br /><br /><b><a name="Page5">Page 5 - You Mean You Kept the Easy Way for Last?</a></b><br /><br />You have chosen the easy way, when you have cutouts! You're smarter than I am, you know, I ALWAYS forget this, and end up selecting and knocking out my selections in the mask the hard way instead.<br /><br />Put all of the cutouts (basically, but this I mean "anything that isn't a full layer that covers the background and has an alpha") that you want your adjustment layer to apply to in a new folder. You get that with the Folder icon, as if you didn't know already. Now, place (or create) your adjustment layer on top of all of the layers. Still applying to the Background, and you don't want that. But, with one little tiny click...<br /><br />And that tiny click is you at the top of our Layers palette, there's a dropdown that says "Pass Through". You probably already know about layer modes- if not, they're reeeeally fun. Overlay for highlight layers, for instance. Multiply when you want to make the darks pop. But I digress. Change that from "Pass Through" to "Normal", and now your adjustment layer only applies to things that are "solid"! Magically your background is now happy and free of your adjustment layer, since it isn't in the folder.<br /><br />For the end blabbering that doesn't really make any difference, turn to <a href="#Page8">Page 8</a>.<br /><br /><br /><b><a name="Page8">Page 8 - The Mostly Unnecessary Conclusion, in which I Blabber Randomly</a></b><br /><br />You're actually going to be happy I didn't illustrate this tutorial at this time. 1) It would have taken me way way longer to do, 2) I would have been illustrating everything with a really badly drawn cartoon of a mantis, and it would have been really bad as I am a totally incapable of using a tablet, as I thought through a lot of this last night as I was trying (and failing) to sleep, as my brain that makes sense decided to try to get a nap, and the other brain that suffers from really bad insomnia makes no sense, ever. Like, WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! I'M NAKED! GIMME A CUPCAKE!, but worse. It sometimes involves imaginary critters and going over the same phrases of nonsense over and over like they are the most profound things in the whole wide world.<br /><br />But anyway. That's adjustment layers! This has only passed on the very slightest and tiniest bit of how awesome they are. This should give you enough of an introduction to find out some of that on your own as you experiment and play with all the amazing things you can do, and enough choice words to drop in a google search for a real proper tutorial, which is how I learn 90% of the stuff I know how to do in Photoshop. Dear Google, I love you. Even when perfectly innocuous search terms drop me into yaoi websites. Or, wait, did I mean especially when?Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-41245715669518028782008-12-08T12:50:00.000-08:002009-01-04T14:18:45.193-08:00A treatise on image formatsA few unrelated things lately have led to this. Now, a lot of you already know this, so please do skip over and ignore, but people from SL come from all sorts of backgrounds, so this is new (and rather important, if I do say so myself) information to some, as they aren't versed in such.<br /><br />There are a large number of image formats available to us today. Some are more suited to certain applications than others. I come from a webnerd background, to a degree, so that's where some of my bent comes from, and I've been around long enough I've seen a few of these formats come to popularity. Now, you'll have to bear with me being opinionated and the memory of my failing brain, so some of the history here may not be entirely accurate. I'm old, dagnabbit.<a name="1up" href="#1down"><sup><font size="2">1</font></sup></a> I'm also almost entirely self taught, so this is all stuff I randomly picked up here and there- and to add on, I'm going to gloss over some of the more accurate seriously technical bits and try to translate it into something that is, I hope, easier to understand, although possibly less technically accurate.<br /><br />In brief: JPEG bad. BMP pointless and stupid. PNG awesome except for transparencies. Yay TGA!<br /><br />I'm also going to do a bit of a runthrough of how _I_ do alphas with TGAs, at the bottom. This applies to Photoshop CS2, your mileage may vary when using any other version.<br /><br /><br /><b>The JPEG and You</b><br /><br />Ah, the ubiquitous JPEG. I've never really liked you, you know. Not even when you were the only viable game in town<a name="2up" href="#2down"><sup><font size="2">2</font></sup></a> when it came to full colour- even though the poor little GIF was limited to 256, I always liked him better. (Note: I'm not going to cover the GIF. GIFs are lovely for small and portable oldskool pixel images with either/or transparency. They're pretty much useless when it comes to the sort of things you'll be doing in SL.)<br /><br />You see, Mr. JPEG, you're a lossy format (lossy = oh, I can lose some of the information here and it won't <i>really</i> matter! No one will notice! Except when they will!). I really don't like it when someone decides that, oh, only parts of my image are important, let's just divide it into chunks, and make guesses about what the contents of the chunks are. I like all of my pixels equally, they are all my dearest darling wonderful children of light, and I am rather offended you think that it's "good enough" to just get kind of close.<br /><br />In the land before the time of the PNG (oh, my favourite dearest for everything but SL, you magic format you), JPEG was really the option we had if we wanted to not have things be friggin' huge, and if we wanted to actually, you know, be able to load them. It's good for images with a lot of information in which not all of it is pixel specific- like photographs. Our eyes throw out a lot of that info anyway, since there's so much noise and variation. BUT, and here's the problem- JPEGs throw out MORE information. They use this funky algorythm that looks at chunks of pixels, and then instead of saving what each one is, it builds something that it is more efficient (at the time, as we're talking the deep dark ages here) than saving each pixel individually. But....if you ever save a JPEG a second time, it does that AGAIN, and it gets less acurate, each time. Plus, that slider of compression? Tells it the size chunks, the accuracy of guessing, and the more compression, the more assy your picture will be. This causes worse artifacting- you know when you look close and you can see those square muddy areas that aren't quite right?<br /><br />Basically, AVOID AVOID AVOID. You do not EVER want to use JPEGs with SL. EVER. Trust me. There are better formats (and due to SL's recompression, the file size isn't even a deal). Also, in anything you do, NEVER use JPEGs for working copies. Save things you'll be working with again as any lossless format instead, because you lose information every time you save a JPEG, until you start seeing the mush, and that's crap.<br /><br />If you're making sculpts, and you save your sculpt maps as a JPEG...You're fucked. 100% double fucked. Your sculpt map turns to jelly, because those actually need pixels to be WHAT THEY ARE, not just a half decent guess with a blindfold on. If you've got some severe lumpy mesh deformation going on, this could be your problem. Make sure no exporter or anything along the way uses JPEG.<br /><br />Plus, SL uses JPEG itself. It recompresses everything you upload into JPEG2000 (which is a fancy smacktacular JPEG format that does more stuff, but is still a pissy little bastard and I hates him), so your artifacting gets worse due to the multiple save rule. Bright side? Your hugeass TGA file is a managable size and can actually be loaded by people's computers faster, and that's why they use it. Even though I'm still kind of against it. I told you I was opinionated!<br /><br /><br /><b>The Mighty BMP, or Mommy, Why Is My File So Huge?</b><br /><br />BMPs (Bitmaps, should you ever be at a dinner party and feel the need to show off that you are a GREAT HUGE NERD) are a really old skool format. They are lossless, so they fit my "use a lossless format" criteria. They're an old Windoze format that lets you save what you actually want (PICTs were the Mac equivalent, as they wanted to do something different, read: more efficient. Once upon a time it wasn't always easy to open PICTs on Windows, but I never had problems with BMPs on Macs. This is all ancient history, and feel free to completely ignore the old lady nattering on about her childhood and walking uphill to school, both ways, in the snow).<br /><br />The downside though? Dear mother of god that's a big file. SL used to save your screenshots as BMPs, and you had no say in the matter. Which is why your harddrive filled up by leaps and bounds if you took snaps, because it's a horribly inefficient format, and we live in the modern age of miracles and flying cars, and have better options now. The newer SL viewers allow you to save your snapshots as PNGs. Do that, and be happy, as you don't take one snapshot and have your terabyte drive going "oh hai, I gots no more space."<br /><br />Basically, we've another example of AVOID AVOID AVOID. Not because you're fucking yourself over with the actual image, but because there are better ways to do things now, and we don't need to bother with this jackassery anymore.<br /><br /><br /><b>The PNG Comes to Save the Day. Sort of.</b><br /><br />Once upon a time, there was this new up and coming format, the mysterious PNG. It was going to be magical and mystical, and let you put images in webpages that had more than 256 colours, but also were lossless and crisp and beautiful. What's more, this magical fairyland format was going to let you do transparency, which JPEG did not, and, oh!, you could also do gradual transparency so it wasn't just one colour set to clear, but you could have gradients and fades and it was all wonderful and beautiful and we lived hapily ever after.<br /><br />And, of course, while this was a format targetted towards the web, Internet Explorer dragged its feet on implementing it properly, taking years and years to implement the transparency on the PC, while the Mac, and Netscape, had it wonderfully. Yes, I'm talking about Netscape, back when they actually updated it regularly, when it was the viewer of choice for most people. I told you, I'M OLD.<br /><br />PNG is my format of choice when saving snapshots, it's lovely and portable, and it loves each and every pixel as all of its beautiful and perfect children, and wouldn't dream of forgetting one. I used to batch my screens as PNGs and trash the BMPs, to make space. It's as crisp as BMP, and your screen as you're seeing things, but it's smaller file size and takes a lot more to fill up your harddrive.<br /><br />In short, it's perfect. All of the advantages, none of the disadvantages.<br /><br />Oh, wait. That's not <i>entirely</i> true. There are disadvantages for content creators: the white halo of dOOOOOOOOOOm.<br /><br />When it comes to making textures, PNGs are not quite as perfect as you would hope.<br /><br />If you are making textures with no alpha, you're golden. Now, if you're making those textures in PS, you want to make sure they are REALLY without alpha, due to the dreaded alpha flicker- so make sure your PNG is totally and entirely flattened before saving, and says <i>Background</i>, not Layer 0<a name="3up" href="#3down"><sup><font size="2">3</font></sup></a>, in the layers palette. Layer 0 gives you an alpha channel you aren't using- so it all looks nice and lovely, but you get it in SL and put a texture with alpha in front of it and cam around...and oh crap. Our z sorting issue is the price we pay for features like light, so we put up with it....for now. Even though it can bite my shiny metal ass.<br /><br />The problem with PNGs, see, is that any pixel that's fully alpha, doesn't exist in colourspace. And because we read things at multiple resolutions with SL, and the way that it deals with the transparency (I'm going with "it's all JPEG2000's fault"<a name="4up" href="#4down"><sup><font size="2">4</font></sup></a>, although I sort of mostly ignored that format because it did a lot of floundering and dying in the areas in which I was interested....it was totally someone's pet nerd project, to use JPEG2000. One of the devs fell in love with the format and convinced everyone else he was right), the dead space gets SEEN. And dead space = white. So you get white edges, because SL divides the image up into "pretty colours" and "this is what we see" and loads them separately.<br /><br />(Note: That Interlaced or none prompt? Is a loading order thing<a name="5up" href="#5down"><sup><font size="2">5</font></sup></a>. It means nothing to you, since SL makes them JPEG2000. I always leave it on none.)<br /><br /><br /><b>Oh, Wait, You Mean You Want Me to Use a Real Game Format, Mr. TGA?</b><br /><br />Our workaround here, is the TGA. Now, TGAs have disadvantages: namely, like BMPs, they are inefficient in their lossless compresion. TGAs are an actual proper format used in game design for real things, and it's got all sorts of extras that BMPs don't, and that's part of why it has the file bloat- even if you aren't using it, it sort of leaves the door open and decides that it needs to keep track of it all anyway.<br /><br />I didn't say it was really the most brightest crayon in the box. Just that it was what worked the best!<br /><br />I save ALL of my textures as TGAs, regardless of whether they have an alpha channel or not. It's easier for me than flipping back and forth to PNG, but that's a decision I leave up to you. Things with alpha channels should be TGAs though, period.<br /><br />You see, TGAs save the dead space! They do alpha channels separately. This can make them more of a pain to work with, if you're used to the PNG way of just leaving areas you don't want seen with nothing on them. Because, see, with TGAs, your entire image is filled, and flat, and you don't see the transparency at all. And in the next section....we'll talk about the solution to adding your transparency. Look, really useful stuff finally!<br /><br /><br /><b>Masks, Channels, Alphas, and How to Make It Not a Filled Up Square</b><br /><br />TGAs are so useful because the alphas are separate from the image. You paint outside the lines on the image proper, but you make the lines somewhere else. If you're unfamilar with this way of working, it might be a bit of a challenge adjusting how you do things to make it work. I'm not going to tell you the way to do that, you're going to have to find out what works for you, as everyone finds a different way to do things. (After all, they're sort of endless!)<br /><br />Now, technically, this applies to CS2. It MAY apply to other versions, however, I make no guarantees.<br /><br />Do you know about Masks? Masks are lovely. If you have every used an adjustment layer, you see that black and white box, where the white areas get the adjustment layer applied, and the blacks don't? That's a Mask. Basically, a Mask is a separate alpha channel you can apply to any layer or folder, it's a little black and white box that pops up next to your layer (or folder), that lets you draw on it in greyscale. White = visible, black = invisible, and the greys in between are the gradient along the way to give you pretty edges and not make things pixelated. To add a mask to any layer, select that layer and hit the square with the circle in the middle in the bottom of the layers tab. When you have a mask and a layer, the one actively selected will have a dotted box around it in the layers tab, so you know which one you're drawing on.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4JyJXV1H12vULZaKwF77HQ5hBh9rpUdqajd8tRB1yAjXc9dICMEHeesoRiIkPFz2BG2AwBbzyrXztfBB4_DLChvIqbM7lARey-E91_oWqXiY73HLbhyphenhyphenLgaOi39xihl-cGAyrNmbMWwP1i/s1600-h/mask.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 227px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4JyJXV1H12vULZaKwF77HQ5hBh9rpUdqajd8tRB1yAjXc9dICMEHeesoRiIkPFz2BG2AwBbzyrXztfBB4_DLChvIqbM7lARey-E91_oWqXiY73HLbhyphenhyphenLgaOi39xihl-cGAyrNmbMWwP1i/s320/mask.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5277524950679042626" /></a><br />Yes, a drunken monkey drew this. Obviously, this is not what it should REALLY look like.<br /><br />Now, to see your transparency in this brave new world of TGA, so things look like what's you're used to, make a folder, put evvvvvvverything in that folder, all your layers, and make new layers as you go in this folder, and make your mask on _that_ folder. Now, everything that gets seen, gets seen! And everything that doesn't, doesn't! It looks just like when you were doing PNGs! (Even if it means you have to _do_ it differently.)<br /><br />When you turn that mask off, by holding Shift and clicking on it, you should see all the spaces outside the lines. Which should be very similar to the pixels next to them, that are seen. I leave it to you to decide how this is done. Fill a background layer behind it all with a colour that fits? Smudge an underlayer out? Draw all over the dead space in the first place and make things keep going? (This last one is my way, but I also come from a different graphic background....so I was doing it anyway.)<br /><br />To make your mask, you have a few options. You can select a layer, or just make any selection, and either make your mask while that selection is active and it will apply it, or fill the mask with white (or black, if you want it invisible) in the selection (delete with your choice as the background colour, as a real fill may screw you over). You can also take your paintbrush and draw your mask right there as you go, using white to reveal areas, black to conceal. You can also use vector masks, which let you use Paths (PS's gimpy vector tools) to make hard edged selections that remain edittable. (Note: If you are interested in this, look up PS tutorials on Paths and Vector Masks for the techniques, I'm not going into it here. Its usefulness entirely depends on how you want to do things- it can be useful, or it can be extraneous and something you'll never want.)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5X4Wrj_SmRlbihfQsMTGML0j50bbkPvJULI_D-Sk1WVGiSQxt8Dq5rOk3P8FTHWDgwjHfT6ny4gJM0DKUgkk3yrzWD5tUcV9JLEP5oUA63KbbEVj6OLmpF7KKya2DDiN2mWPVT-q7JrrG/s1600-h/mask+off.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 227px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5X4Wrj_SmRlbihfQsMTGML0j50bbkPvJULI_D-Sk1WVGiSQxt8Dq5rOk3P8FTHWDgwjHfT6ny4gJM0DKUgkk3yrzWD5tUcV9JLEP5oUA63KbbEVj6OLmpF7KKya2DDiN2mWPVT-q7JrrG/s320/mask+off.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5277524949838046754" /></a><br /><br />Now, once you're done, and you've got your image that spreds out beyond the invisible edges, and your lovely alpha mask....Turn that alpha mask off. Hold Shift, and click on it, and boom! your lovely selection goes away. Now, select your alpha mask (ctrl+click on mask), and go to the Channels tab. It should be in the window with Layers, it should say "Layers", "Channels", and "Paths" for the tabs at the top. Make a new channel, the same way you make a new layer, and fill that with white by deleting, or hitting invert, or whatnot.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB7y1b0qJJzhzOTVXXUDiGZTvDhtJRjcBYxpgqDDlmyJ_IVxRkUtrfFbJzpKqoZeiqlYgtvYSe7GDDQ5rOM5nB5fGziLKT4ZYXvjJuUXY2YIaM7i9uTD1ecLWYuf-ssFrtM38Xg7pU_8qW/s1600-h/channels.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 227px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB7y1b0qJJzhzOTVXXUDiGZTvDhtJRjcBYxpgqDDlmyJ_IVxRkUtrfFbJzpKqoZeiqlYgtvYSe7GDDQ5rOM5nB5fGziLKT4ZYXvjJuUXY2YIaM7i9uTD1ecLWYuf-ssFrtM38Xg7pU_8qW/s320/channels.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5277524955702244770" /></a><br /><br />Now. DUPLICATE YOUR IMAGE. Trust me. You don't want to lose everything when you flatten it and accidentally save instead of save as. And you DO want to keep a layered backup, I'm sure you know by now!<br /><br />Now, flatten your image. With the mask inactive, so it's all that messy outside the lines, and you have no lovely alpha....OR DO YOU? Because, see, you've got it in your channel!<br /><br />Save your image as a tga. Make sure Alpha Channels is ticked on (and As a Copy isn't), then, it will prompt you:<br /><br />16 bits/pixel<br />24 bits/pixel<br />32 bits/pixel<br /><br />Ignore 16, forever and always, it means nothing to you. CHOOSE 32. If you have an alpha channel, you NEED 32. On the other hand....if you don't have an alpha channel, to get away from the dreaded flicker, you NEED 24<a name="6up" href="#6down"><sup><font size="2">6</font></sup></a>. That says "oh hey, no alphas for us, nevermind!" instead of "I have an alpha channel even though it doesn't look like it, I just choose to make everything visible, so I can fuck with everything with transparency around me." Those extra 8 bits ARE the alpha, if it has that many, it has an alpha, period (and, as an added oh hey PS hates us bonus, if you don't have Alpha Channels ticked on in the save as dialog...it trashes your alpha channel and puts in a pure white one if you save as 32). If it doesn't have them, no alpha, regardless of your masking. You can open that file up again to look at it, and see if there is an extra channel there. (Remember, there will ALWAYS be 4 layers in there, for full view, red, green, and blue. The colour separations are awesome if you get into some wacky sculpting stuff- but generally not so useful with regular textures.)<br /><br />Other uses for channels: you can cntl+click a channel and it will load that selection. If you have a selection you want to keep? Hey there sailor! There are also certain filters that can be used in conjunction with channels for whizbang effects. Now, you MUST make sure to delete all extraneous channels before you do your saving, since you don't want it to get confused!<br /><br />For a last somewhat helpful note: if you're making clothing, save your image as 512x512, always. I make them double size, but my last step is scaling down. Why? Because SL will scale to 512x512 for you, regardless of what you want. That IS the resolution the avatar textures will be, period (and you gain nothing but crappy jagged edges if you go smaller). There is no way to squeeze more out, and this way you aren't making SL do another step of work, so things load better, faster, stronger. I work larger because I can play around with more detail and have more fine control.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a name="1down" href="#1up"><sup><font size="2">1</font></sup></a>Ok, I'm not really THAT old. But I might be older than you. I remember the day before you young whippersnappers and your css, when we had to do all our formatting in HTML and tables, and we liked it.<br /><br /><a name="2down" href="#2up"><sup><font size="2">2</font></sup></a>There was the BMP and PICT, of course, but I'm coming from a webnerd background here, and those were not viable options. Plus, I'll be getting to the BMP later.<br /><br /><a name="3down" href="#3up"><sup><font size="2">3</font></sup></a>The thing you have to understand about computers, is that they're sort of dumb. They can't figure out there's no alpha unless you tell it repeatedly<a name="7up" href="#7down"><sup><font size="2">7</font></sup></a>. Flattening to Background is how you tell a PNG that no, really, FOR SURE, you didn't mean to have an alpha channel. Honestly. For reals. Trust me. No, really, PNG, I'm serious.<br /><br /><a name="4down" href="#4up"><sup><font size="2">4</font></sup></a>In reality it's probably Photoshop's fault, with the way it does PNG alphas- since there AREN'T any pixels there in the first place, so it has to make shit up, and white is the colour of imaginary angel pixels, or something. However, I would really rather blame it on JPEG2000, because I keep grudges. Also, because of the way SL works, you get to see those imaginary pixels, so THERE, that IS JPEG2000's fault. Neener.<br /><br /><a name="5down" href="#5up"><sup><font size="2">5</font></sup></a>Interlaced is kind of nifty for the web, back in the day when we were all on dialup and things went slooooooow. It would load the image in "stripes" kind of, instead of top down, so you would sort of see the image, and it would get clearer as it loaded. Kind of. Again, ignore.<br /><br /><a name="6down" href="#6up"><sup><font size="2">6</font></sup></a>Again, see "computers are dumb". Because really, TGA, even though I told you once before already, I REALLY TRULY want an alpha channel if it's 32 bit<a href="#7down"><sup><font size="2">7</font></sup></a>. And I REALLY DON'T if it's 24 bit. Also, if you save a TGA with a channel at 24 bit? Your channel GOES POOF. So make sure you save as the right bits! Also, this is another reason we make a duplicate of the image!<br /><br /><a name="7down" href="#7up"><sup><font size="2">7</font></sup></a>There are, of course, limited cases in which you WANT an apparently solid image to actually have a transparency channel- if you're doing something fancy with invisiprims (like the flea with the magnifying glass), things that "look" solid will become invisible, and in limited cases, it's quite a clever effect. Just...not so awesome, unintentionally.Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-8398273444411407332008-11-20T23:31:00.000-08:002008-11-20T23:43:32.432-08:00I dream of wide open spacesThe Open Space announcement from LL was...disappointing. It's the right decision done in totally the wrong way, basically. Yes, limitations needed to be added to the existing, and obviously there needed to be another tier, in between the two.<br /><br />But this....is verging on ridiculous. To go from 3750 to 750, for the same price, is just... Really, did they think this was going to make anyone happy? And then, the new Homesteads, still to be stacked in 4 (oh, _maybe_ we'll consider 3), since the stacks of the Open Spaces were what they were stating as the problem?<br /><br />Really now. This is just another way to get people to leave. God knows, I'm considering it (I won't, of course. At least, not until my friends do. But I have signed up for another grid in the meantime, but they're a ways away from being a real threat....but eventually, they will be).<br /><br />Instead, what I think they SHOULD have done, is make Open Spaces what they were meant to be, what they were SOLD as: 3750 prims. However, add in the hard limits to avatars and scripts to ensure they aren't "abused". Then a midway sim that's stacked in 2, rather than 4, that's more of a half sim, again with limits that are somewhat less restrictive than Open Space. I fear this is a case where they saw all the money they "could" have been making by charging more for the minisims, and got too greedy. There were problems that they should have seen coming (seriously. I saw them coming and I'm not on the damn technical staff and don't know much about their load capacity), and could easily deal with, since they run the whole system.<br /><br />There's a huge amount of art and beauty that will soon be dead because of the change: places that could have been worked as legit Open Space sims with the limits placed upon them, but which need the higher prim limits (750? That won't go anywhere). A lot of people were able to justify the price tag for sims that served little purpose other than to be a playground of beauty, and SL NEEDS more of that.<br /><br />I'm sad I won't see them all before they go- I will only see a small fraction of them.Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-47057183930324961762008-04-16T16:11:00.000-07:002008-04-16T16:31:08.810-07:00Mapping problem, cont.(These are mostly personal musings on problem- I'm not explaining it explicitly enough to describe it for others currently [primarily because I think to really explain, I'd have to draw diagrams, and I'm still not sure how well I could translate 3D deformed space to 2D flat and still retain any sort of clarity]. I'm still looking around for potential solutions, but am just coming up with more problems instead.)<br /><br />Upon further research, the wall gets taller. Apparently there are a number of imperfect tools out there to try to get around the problem (including one that takes an obj and imports it as a sculpt through the SL menu...which, aside from the fact it's extremely touchy on what you can ever try, I generally don't trust at _all_), and it sounds like they all do it badly. There's a big discussion on the forums about trying to do it and how tos in ways that...I just don't understand why they're trying to do it _that_ way, as it seems like the hard way to me. Looks like Blender is not the only program to not map proper though (no programs were raised as "well, you know x does it right, even if it is expensive" which isn't really heartening. If Maya actually got around it without all the hoops and etc....)<br /><br />Tacked on, I'm not 100% sure I'm on the right page with the way SL does it. Mostly I'm a little perplexed as to texture mapping regarding, as they seem to be at odds to me (which is another dimension of The Problem with inaccuracy). At least in certain ways- it mostly comes down to "well, you stitch it this way and I get it. But you stitch it that way and I'm starting to get a little confused." There's also one more somewhat esoteric and bizarre stitching method I'd love to have, just generally (a modified sphere stitching, basically. It's odd and strange enough although it makes sense while modeling that I can't see it even being something they would consider adding, as much as it would be useful).<br /><br />Worse, in regards to my immediate problem...I'm not sure where I stand on that at all. This is not 100% due to the inaccuracy problem (now, raise the prim limits to 20x20x20, and I wouldn't have any of that dimension at all, because I wouldn't have to worry about splicing bits and could skip my problematic steps. *sigh* I wih megaprims came in more useful sizes, and the massive chunk of them weren't just hacked to make it work in one particular manner this way, which means it won't with anything else), but also due to a bit of uncertainty how to actually approach certain features of the object itself. This is a point at which existing architectural reference would come in handy, as I'm not sure how x and y would translate properly, nor how much they would be desired. So yeah...spinning my wheels entirely until I can get a concrete vision on what I'm doing.<br /><br />Tacked on, the thing for me...I'm still very heavily in the "that would be a nice thing to have" mode, not really the "ok, let's do this!" It's another thing that I need to wrap my head around the scale of before I can get much done, and I'm just...not sure at all. At least a) it's something that there is architectural reference of, even if I am not going those ways a lot, and b) I've already figured out how a fair bit of that will function regardless, prims willing.Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-10212152240662012272008-04-15T13:31:00.000-07:002008-04-15T13:57:14.487-07:00Improper Mapping in Blender: a problemI'm trying to be a little more zen about certain things annoying me (times when people refuse to stop jumping up and saying LOOK AT ME I'M RIGHT LOOK AT ME DO WHAT I WANT!...take a step back, a deep breath, and just stop feeding into it and walk away. They are free to think they won, in reality they aren't worth my time. There's a reason I'm a misanthrope). I know I'm also a bit less able to deal because I've effectively had a bad cold for a year and a half now. *sigh* I want to go home.<br /><br />My new new irksome though is not related to people. I've finally run into the wall that I've known was there for a while about Blender's imprecision on mapping the sculpt texture. Instead of mapping the points where SL maps them, it has a tendency to basically map in between (this is most disasterous on the edges, as that's where the problem begins, and has the greatest deformation). This is not such a huge deal for a lot of sculpts: SL does a bit of deforming your mesh here and there anyway, although your seams may still be somewhat messy, which is not cool. This becomes a greater deal with sharp edges (which have needed a fair bit of PS post anyway, in my experience- even when they shouldn't), as, even when you redo the edges you've still got a pixel of messy lead in (which can be eliminated by making it the edge as well, so long as you can sacrifice it- but it still means the sculpt and texture are pulling off. One top of this, the corner corner top/bottom edges...are just a total wreck, because it doesn't pull them where it ought to.<br /><br />In this case, I can probably reason through the math and do it all in PS from a Rokuro (not that I actually want to do that, but this problem right now is entirely fueled by the 10x10x10 prim size limit, it's not a hard shape in of itself), but that simply won't work in some cases, nor does it change the fact it's always stretching things improperly. I'm not comfortable with many of the tools in <a href="http://www.xs4all.nl/~elout/sculptpaint/">sculptypaint</a> yet, and I don't think it has the robust _sculpting_ tools that I need, but it does map properly (too bad it doesn't import .objs itself for mapping), and, damn. Stairs. Truly, totally, awesome. Too bad I don't see a way to work another staircase I'd like to with it, that's going to be "a challenge" and require a lot of fixing it up in PS, I'm sure- although I think perhaps the map here has given me a good concrete view of how to (until I try it and find the niggling things I haven't thought of, of course). Aside from everything else, it's pretty brilliant for importing your sculpt map and finding out what havok Blender has dealt with the way it goes about it- whether it's even worth trying to pull into SL.<br /><br />I've got an idea to try that will, I'm reasonably certain, require a bit of post to get functional (if it's even possible, which I'm not sold on- it's a kinda sorta maybe, not a perfect answer), to get around the problem. This model has enough other troubles inherent in the way Blender deals with it I'm not sure it's a model case to try though. (I think it would actually be pretty straightforward to write a program that would take the one data and convert it to the other correctly, that's just not something I'm up to. I do not write programs, and haven't any desire to learn that, a little light coding and scripting is more than enough, thanks.)Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9053985903140315951.post-28691204200641268652008-04-11T21:54:00.000-07:002008-04-18T03:31:47.358-07:00New viewer and code, joys and flawsI've been running the Windlight Release Candidate for a while. The regular viewer started cascade crashing, and the other options out there (read: fan made viewers) weren't working right (one had the same crashing, the other corrupted textures constantly). I had found it to be a far more rock solid uncrashing viewer than the regular, by far. It's...not as much anymore. It's still not horrid, but not as stable as it used to be.<br /><br />I'm sure they merged the code branches less because they were actually ready, and more because they didn't want to be working on multiple code branches at once, so they could just apply everything to WL (especially with the big move to Havok 4). Shoving both out at once makes it harder to see what is causing which flaw though.<br /><br />I don't think it was lost on anyone what a massive clusterfuck the launch of Havok 4 was. Some of it wasn't even their fault.<br /><br />Something has gone rotten with the camera. I don't know which one started it- the RC WL wasn't doing it, and the beta grid running Havok 4 wasn't doing it. But the proper viewer...yeah. They "fixed" the camera in the 1.20 RC, and I had to switch to the regular viewer instead, because it was making me queasy. The camera was often moving with less constraints and more sensitivity, and, and this is the bad part for me, it isn't updating the location of the selected outline properly. It lags behind the camera rotating around, which is very disconcerting, and well, not a fan. I'm not sure what's up here, but it ain't good.<br /><br />(As an aside, I wish they'd rework the camera in regards to focusing on objects. Most noticeable in larger prims, so it shows in builds, not in jewelry, the camera has serious issues with hollows and dimpled cube/cylinder/prism surfaces. It wants to focus on the "outside" that isn't there. This is mostly not a deal...except that they've now semi sanctioned megaprims so more people are going to be using them, and with the extremely limited number around, a lot of them are dimpled to mimic other sizes, and, worse, the interior of cylindrical buildings of any type just doesn't work well. It would also be a great primsaver with hollowing and cutting for right angle walls and such- which some people do, to the camera's detriment.<br /><br />As another aside, I wish they would just go ahead and up the prim size limit legitimately. I would kill for 20m instead of 10. More would be nice, but that would be a great start.)<br /><br />1.20 also has Jazz Hands (aka Dazzle), which is ugly as sin, and has a lot of really bad UI choices. I really hope people are already working on skinning this hideous thing so it doesn't have to look like crap when they do force it on us.<br /><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2778">The SKIRT BUG</a>. Motherfucking pudding, but I can't believe they let this thing go live with that. Obviously, from things they've said, they just plain don't care. They've also been trying to say WL isn't the problem...in which case, why is that <i>the</i> thing that makes them go away? I know, I know, it's a packet thing blah blah, but come _on_. If you never used WL, you never got the bug. Therefore, don't make people change, until the bug is gone. Is this so hard to grasp? I know, we don't think skirts matter. This is why you will never truly be a viable economic platform, and people will jump ship when something else comes along. Not because you didn't "keep up" and put in voice and awkward lighting effects. (God, voice. I still think my random laggy hangs have to do with that, since that's when they started.)<br /><br />Memory leak! Yes, it's complex, yes, you have to track it down, yes, this should be your number one priority. I've heard, *cough*, that some of those 3rd party fanviewers do not have this problem. Maybe you should actually consider listening to these people who are fixing your viewers? Because it isn't as if they aren't trying to share this information with you.<br /><br />I know, it's too much to ask for that friends going on/offline, group notices, and, in fact, being anywhere with more than 5 people not cause random lagspikes that freeze me entirely.<br /><br /><a href="http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-5052">This new texture thing</a> makes me cry. Ever so occasionally I'll get the useful thing back...briefly, and then it will break again. Matching offsets becomes so very much more of a headache. And it looks like it's yet another "oh, you use an Nvidia card. Well, too bad"- which was also apparently the source of my cascading crashes, from the information I could track down.Allegory Malaprophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07343812047840641373noreply@blogger.com1