Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Idle Thoughts on a Second Life Tuesday

Five Level Mayan Temple Maze   (general )

Idle thoughts on a Tuesday:  I was thinking about mesh this morning and naturally went to look at Sculptie Island.  Well it made sense to me.  I'm looking forward to mesh and I'm ignoring all of the doomsayers because I don't think anybody really knows what the final prim cost will be or the impact on viewers.  I remember all too well the shrieking and wailing when there were plans announced to put script limits on land - some kept insisting it would kill their businesses.  This in spite of the fact that the "limits" were never specified.  I assume those who accused the 'powers that be' of heartless retail murder must have had some secret knowledge of the numbers - however, they never revealed that information. 

I can say that my few trips into the mesh beta lead me to believe that rezzing mesh will be much faster than sculpties - the latter being textures - but I'm not an expert by any means.   I do think there will be a quality improvement to the grid landscape and (see video at bottom of screen) some really interesting improvements to avatars.

Parthenon (general)

Referencing my discussion of workarounds for Viewer 2.8 Environment Settings, I got a couple of tips on my JIRA from Torley yesterday and wanted to share them:

Also, here's another workaround: use Ctrl-Alt-F1 to hide/show the WHOLE INTERFACE. Or use a macro program to map it to something simpler, sometimes I use foot pedals so my hands are free, I swear the 3-pedal Scythe has been one of my biggest photography timesavers! I've done this lots before WRES (WindLight Region Environment Settings), and it's been hugely beneficial for seeing a clutter-free view of the world so I can get my angle, framing, etc. precisely how I want.


UPDATE: Here's a quick video tip showing how to hide/show the user interface! If you take snapshots in SL you should at least know about this, then do what works best for you!. This is even more handy if you primarily use an external tool to do snapshots due to the SL Viewer's awkwardly elongated list o' snapshot bugs (sigh) — I use FRAPS for both my still pics and videos.


Green Men in Pond (general)

I've a tendency to learn things through trial and error - which is fine to a point.  It is a great source of joy to click on random buttons and sliders to see what happens but I think it's time for me to find some more formal  online resources that will improve my photography. 

What I won't attempt is a mastery of Blender or anything to do with the magic inherent with mesh.  I watched this video in awe and decided I have as much hope of doing this as I do painting anything I wouldn't immediately trash.  I'll just take advantage of what these talented individuals do.


2 comments:

Salvatore Otoro said...

I think mesh will bring lots of changes to SL. There will always be the doomsayers that think it's the end of the world when these advances are presented. There are also those that refuse to move to the 2.0 viewers. These advances are needed to keep SL not only up to date but attractive for newly arrived users.

While there are some things that need to fixed, technology moves on and to pass up their implementation would leave SL stagnant and eventually discarded for another virtual world that keeps up with the latest advances.

Brie said...

Aha...Ctrl-alt-F1. Thanks for the great tip! <3 your blog...always some great places to explore.