Cartoon of The Day: Red Faced

 

 

 A bakes on mesh error led to my avatar's head turning red. Which made for a picture, and punch line. 

By Bixyl Shuftan

Firestorm Has Bakes On Mesh

It was a little over a month ago when Linden Lab announced the Bakes On Mesh feature was on the official Second Life viewer. As it's the Firestorm viewer which is the most popular, many residents were not as excited as they otherwise would be, feeling it's real impact would be felt only when it's team came out with a version with the feature. A few days ago, Team Firestorm announced their new version 6.3.2.58052, which has Bakes On Mesh, was live and available for download.

The Bakes on Mesh release from Firestorm has been long awaited; apologies for that. This should be considered by all in SL a MAJOR UPDATE, and it is important that all our SL users upgrade to it. This update contains a lot of rendering-related changes from Linden Lab, without which you WILL be running into avatars that look badly broken to you. Even if you don’t intend to use or purchase anything with BoM, you will still need to be able to see BoM items in your viewer. Please take the update. I can assure you we have put this through a rigorous QA process; it’s a great build!

On the whole, response has been positive. I have heard a couple people feel the viewer was bugged, and recommended people wait a few to several days for bug fixes until downloading for use. But others didn't seem to notice a problem. Some are already taking advantage of the features Bakes On Mesh has to offer. And using the previous version, I was starting to notice a few of them, identifiable as their textures appeared glitched. To stop seeing these glitches, one has to download the new viewer.

With the most popular viewer in Second Life now Bakes On Mesh compatible, hopefully residents will start seeing more of the benefits such as better designed avatars, and somewhat less lag.

Bixyl Shuftan

Eye On The Blog: "What's Next For Linden Lab?"

Earlier this week, Linden Lab posted on the official blog "What's Next For Linden Lab," which was a rundown of improvements and changes to Second Life, and Sansar, in addition to some upcoming developments.



The Lab touted their success with Animesh mentioning there were over 1300 animesh items in Marketplace (I found almost 1600). They also mentioned Bakes On Mesh, with a youtube to learn more about it.



The Lab went on to say they were getting their Environmental Enhancement Viewer "into shape." For those who don't know what the EEP is, it's "a series of new customizations in the environment rendering system that will allow for the creation and sharing of advanced environment settings, including up to four different sky layers which can be set independently. " (link to video)

Of the migration of Second Life's data to cloud servers, the Lab stated progress was continuing, saying they were trying to make the move as "invisible" as they could, "Your inventory data has been in the cloud for quite some time, and the maps website moved a little while ago."

The Lab told readers to, "Stay tuned for updates on when to expect the return of Last Names, availability of a new mobile app beta, changes to Premium options, improvements to Events, Search, the Destination Guide, and much more." 

Something else the Lab discussed were "New Growth and Community Initiatives." Among them was an upcoming "Second Life Blogger Network." "This new initiative will promote high-quality independent blog content to the Second Life community." The Lab stated there would be more details on it soon.

The Lab also told residents to expect some Halloween fun in October, "Residents can expect a mix of new events, freebies and other spooky surprises." Among the events, a Halloween-themed Swaginator hunt.

Also mentioned were the "New Video and Ad Campaigns." These included the Second Life Destinations Youtubes, the "Made in Second Life" videos, and the "Lab Gab" show by Strawberry and Xiola Linden. 

And the Lab has been doing new video tutorials, featuring Strawberry Linden. These include "How to Get Started in Second Life,"  "Shopping and Buying Linden Dollars," and "Customizing Your Avatar Shape." 

And of course, Linden Lab had a few things to say about their other virtual world, Sansar.

"Sansar introduces new features including improved avatar editing, experience points and titles, and new core worlds. We also have first-of-their-kind partnerships with several established music and entertainment companies. Now with a rich backstory and new quests, Sansar has come a long way since it debuted in beta in 2017 and is worth a second look!" 

A press release mentioned musical performances in Sansar on Wednesday September 25 and Thursday September 26.  

For more information, click on the blog post here.

Bixyl Shuftan

Linden Lab Announces Bakes on Mesh Feature is Live

Earlier this week, Linden Lab announced on their blog the release of a new feature for the Second Life viewer: "Bakes on Mesh."

In short, Bakes On Mesh is a feature that allows you to apply a server baked texture to a mesh attachment, similar to the way that standard system avatars currently work. Using this feature, you’ll be able to apply several texture layers to customize skin, tattoos, clothing, etc on your mesh object as a single server baked texture without the need for multiple transparent layers.

The major features of Bakes on Mesh were described as:

Any face of a mesh object can be textured using any of the server baked textures.

The corresponding region of the system avatar is hidden if any attached mesh is using a baked texture.

New texture bake channels have been introduced to give more control over how meshes get textured.

A new “universal wearable” is now provided with support for the new texture channels.

The potential benefits of Bakes on Mesh are avoiding the need for appliers, avoiding the need for different layers and therefore needing fewer meshes and fewer textures to display, and allowing the customization of any mesh set to the system by "simply equipping the appropriate wearables, without needing to modify the mesh itself."

There's a new "Bakes on Mesh" channel of threads in the official forums, where people can ask questions, or get some answered. Inara Pey has written an introduction and overview of the new feature. The Slink avatar brand has a FAQ page about "BOM," as some are starting to call it. They have also announced they've been updating their avatars for it as well.

The Slink body parts system has undergone a MAJOR update for Bakes on Mesh. We have gone back to the drawing board on many features and redesigned the whole thing from the ground up. We have streamlined the geometry and texture usage, and removed as much unnecessary overhead as possible. This includes extra onion skin layers that were no longer necessary, and the script system and HUD have been completely redesigned to take full advantage of this opportunity. The end result is that the user experience is easier, cleaner and lower avatar rendering cost, especially in the body bundle packages.

Also the Black Dragon Viewer (and presumably Firestorm) are making BOM updates. Hamlet Au quoted Black Dragon creator NiranV as saying BOM was a much needed feature that would help greatly with avatar complexity and the lag that goes with it, an issue he previously talked about as some avatars have been getting very resource-demanding, "Bakes on Mesh idea is nice and it's a much needed thing, especially with onion layers. This could potentially reduce texture memory usage by up to 75%, and polygon counts too."

But just how fast and how much residents will demand Bakes on Mesh enabled products, and how many and how fast avatar designers update remains to be seen. On older viewers that don't have the feature, what is seen is basically a mess of textures that don't make any sense. As Niran stated bluntly, "BOM doesn't mean jack ... if the creators don't swap for it since the user can't, because all the ... human (avatar) trash content is no-mod."

Sources: Linden Blog, Slink, Modem World, New World Notes

Bixyl Shuftan