Talking heads… euhm… sculpted faces
May 4, 2008 12:21 pmDr Muglerstein - Me won! Me won!
12:16 am
Le jeudi 24 avril soir, j’ai gag…. euhm… wait… I won! I won! I won! What did I win? Best ‘photograph’ - virtual world photograph, that is - in the Dr Muglerstein’s Machinima & Fantastic Picture Experience contest. Yeeey! Winning in the category ‘Art de la métamorphose’ with my Valentine Squid pic - I love it even more now, it also won me the Koinup contest - I’ll receive a large print of me kissing the squid. And it will get to hang in Paris somewhere. Yeeey! All hail squids! ;)
Other winners are:
- Machinima - Marie Lauridsen
- Instantané Paysage fantastique - Amelia Fayray
- Instantané Portrait d’avatar mutant - Maya
I must admit I am a bit jealous of the machinima winner Miss Lauridsen. She will get a real life sculpture of her avatar, crafted by Standard Non Standard. I’m extremely curious how that one will look, and if the French company ‘Standard Non Standard’ is better at replicating avatars than the company we all now from the ‘take your avatar to work day’ ads. What they have up at their website under 3D printing (click ‘impression 3D’) seems promising.
But despite my jealousy, I’m already really happy I won in the first place. I did not expect that to happen at all. You can see the winning machinima, photographs and the other submissions at the Dr Muglerstein Island in Second Life. Oh, and don’t be surprised if they say ‘allo’ in stead of ‘hi’. ;)
IM UR JIRA, FILNG UR BUGS
May 3, 2008 11:37 pmLMPAO, and not my virtual ass, that is. I knew the Greenies are what you can call ‘engaged residents’, but that they are this engaged, I had no knowledge of. :p
Found on the Second Life Wiki article about the JIRA issue tracker, and this delicious Greenie ‘lolcat’ was created and added by Mister Daedalus Young.
Mr Young, ty! for putting a huuuuge grin on my face! ;) (Despite the fact I seem to be unable to log into the *insert swearword* JIRA at the moment. Anybody else experiencing problems with that?)
More on ARC aka Avatar Rendering Cost
May 2, 2008 11:40 amTorley posted about the numbers that define the ARC - Avatar Rendering Cost - as declared by Runitai Linden:
- A base avatar begins with a score of 1
- 5 points added for each unique texture on the avatar (not counting the base skin). Rationale: Unique textures break batches, create CPU overhead for decoding, and consume GPU memory bandwidth. However, note that this is across the avatar- so two unique textures across 10 prims only count as two unique textures!
- All attachments are then looked at on a per-prim level. The prims are weighted as follows:
- 10 base points for having the prim.
- 1 point added if prim is invisible, shiny, or glowing (each counts). Rationale: Invisiprims/shiny/glow create a small amount of overhead by breaking batches or requiring an extra render pass.
- 1 point added for each planar-mapped face of the prim. Rationale: Planar mapping creates a small amount of CPU overhead that gets worse with flexible objects.
- 1 point added per meter, per axis, of the prim’s size. Rationale: Bigger prims are higher LOD and create more fill.
- 4 points added if prim has bump applied. Rationale: Bump mapping breaks batches and requires a register combiner, and creates a lot of CPU overhead when coupled with a flexible object.
- 4 points added for each transparent face of the prim. Rationale: Alpha creates a lot of overhead by needing to be sorted every frame AND by breaking batches.
4 points added for each animated textured face of the prim. Rationale: Animated textures break batches and require the use of a texture matrix.- 8 points added if prim is flexi. Rationale: Flexible objects create a lot of CPU overhead and consume graphics bus bandwidth.
- 16 points added if prim is a particle emitter. Rationale: Particles create even MORE CPU overhead and consume graphics bus bandwidth.
Note that these weightings, and their resultant totals, are not a *perfect* measure of your cost- but more of a relative counter to weigh against other avatars. Point: it’s close, but it’s not scientifically perfect. For that, you’d have to delve deep into batch sizes and draw calls. These weightings and their description/rationales were written by Runitai Linden, one of our most senior graphics engineers and a man who knows rendering efficiency! :)
And another note- ironically, the Avatar Rendering Cost display itself is CPU intensive, since it’s essentially profiling all the avatars all the time. So a good practice would be to walk around and turn it on when you want a glimpse- otherwise if you turn it on at all times, know your performance is suffering!
I tested some of my outfits for ARC values previously, and yes I must admit I keep it in the back of my mind when going to busy sims. Do you? Or is ‘Avatar Rendering Cost’ still a strange and surreal thing to you? ;)
Second Life web resources for April 26th 2008 through April 29th 2008
April 30, 2008 1:30 amUpperdedate
April 27, 2008 3:43 pmWhy I sometimes postpone blogging during the week, which leads to ‘oh well, it’s not that important any more after all’, if I’m rather busy on - amongst others - :
Crimson Shadow and Carnie ads
Rather happy with these two. The one for Carnival of Doom was shot with no anti-aliasing and no high resolution snapshotting available in the RC. So we made the best of it. The Crimson Shadow one was re-shot using RC 1.30 - I think, or RC 1.23 - which the bugs above mentioned fixed. I think it turned out pretty nice, although I should have positioned model Lokum 90° degrees to her left for the main avatar in view. Ah well… . Still like them. =)
The Triptych of the Rezzable Garden of NPIRL Delights
What happens when you touch Hell? Or Heaven, for those lucky souls amongst us? Will you end up in virtual purgatory - or get wings, a cute little halo and the power to throw lightning?
Rezzable is constructing the heavens, earth and hell for you together with ‘Not Possible In Real Life’ and a great team of fabulous builders. We couldn’t wait to give you a preview of what it looks like when art gets more interactive than it could ever be in a museum (don’t touch the exhibits!) or a book (who spilled coffee over the underworld?!!) With all due respect and a friendly wink to the great artist Mr. Bosch, we beg you to touch his art.
Want to find out what exactly happens when you touch it? Heard rumours about that utterly cute flying flash light? Saw the Godsent Wings and Godsent Lightning Bolt Thrower on someone and want one yourself? Always wanted an interactive piece of art in your virtual bedroom? You can test and pick up a copy of the Rezzable Garden of NPIRL triptych at the Garden HQ at The Dump sim (SLURL). For people who prefer to do their shopping off the internet, you can pick up one for free at OnRez.
And various other Garden of NPIRL Delights stuff. More information at garden.rezzable.com. And yes, this includes meeting very hansom avatars. *grins*
Greenies Staff Meeting
Aren’t we cute? Somehow it reminded me of Real life photograph by Lewis Hine.
Digging up RL art in a virtual world
Just when you though you had a desk job, you end up with your hands in the dirt in a graveyard, shovelling up photographs at Rezzable 09 where the ‘Kill All Artists’ exhibition is being held. Ah well, Mr Danone’s photographs are definitively worth the effort and sour virtual muscles! ;)
I - and my client’s camera - are ok now when doing the basic stuff: travelling, building, some exploring, talking 1-on-1, or even 1-on-5. But when things get really busy it tends to lag behind: I tell it to go up twice, notice it does not react, and 5 minutes later end up with my camera in the roof somewhere.
Luckily Ganymedes Costagravas found an excellent solution to stop the camera from lagging behind: twiddle with the debug menu setting ‘Camera Position Smoothing’. Not needed in normal circumstances, bit it works miracles when in a crowded sim!
With the latest Second Life® Clients (the 1.20 series) I noticed the camera tends to “sway around” when you turn. Other people might also refer to it as “the camera is lagging behind”.
Of course this depends on how good your computer is, and your Graphics Card and whatever. I have to admit I need a better computer to run Second Life® more properly (I am saving up for one, but we all know they don’t come cheap).
Nevertheless, if you are like me, and truly are not finding a camera that keeps “swaying” whenever you turn a lot of fun, I suggest you do the following:
- go to the Advanced menu (formerly known as “Client menu”)
- scroll down the list and open up the Debug Settings.
- type: CameraPositionSmoothing
- the default time there is 1.000 seconds, I lowered mine to 0.200
Like I said, it’s just a tip, and a lot depends on how well Second Life® runs on your computer.
Hugz & Greetz
Gany
10 000L$ Bounty for Best Trademark Parody - Winners
April 26, 2008 1:59 am
Sculpties…. or sculpted prims… they will always stay a no-go for me, I’m afraid. I understand how they work - a Sculpt Texture or Sculpt Map is a standard RGB texture where the R (red), G (green) and B (blue) channels are mapped onto X, Y, and Z space - but can’t create a good looking sculptie myself, I fear I think I think to much in 2D still.
But that I can’t build, should not stop me from learning and experimenting! *grins*
Thanks to Miss Kryptonia Paperdoll, I’ve discovered Mr. Mango Splash’s in-world sculpted prim generator. It’s an incredible thing that allows you to create sculpt maps in Second Life, without using external 3D software such as Maya, Blender, … . You do need some basic Second Life building skills to select prims, move them, …. .
The Second Life Sculpted Prim Generator Mr Splash build works as follows:
- The Sculptie Generator rezzes the basic shape for you: be it a cylinder or a sphere, and with a level of detail you can choose yourself. That basic shape exists of ‘nodes’ which are represented by little white spheres.
- By moving those white spheres, you change the shape of the sculptie. You can edit multiple spheres at the same time, by selecting them all and than using the resize tool. Handy if you want to work on something symmetric.
- Just to be safe, tell the Sculptie Generator to safe your work in a box.
- Then you tell the Sculpted Prim Generator to rezz a sculpt map - the texture you need for sculpties - based on the object you just created. It’s marvellous to see the Sculpt Map Generator do it’s work. It figures out the place of the white spheres, takes it coordinates and reverts that to a RGB value. In a minute’s time, you have a sculpt texture rezzed before you in Second Life.
- Allow the Sculptie Generator to lock your camera by sitting on it. Now you only need to snapshot the texture (made out of a whole lot of colour coded prims) and upload the snapshot.
- Rez a box, set it to sculptie and drag the snapshot you just took where the sculpt texture should go. Et voila: a very ugly mushroom. (See the ‘Vint can’t build’ disclaimer.)
Nifty, no? More demonstrating in this video:
And more detailed photographs of the Sculptie Generator on Miss Kryptonia Paperdoll’s blog.
