SL Mesh Users Launch Fundraiser for Ex-Linden Dev to Fix Mesh Issues Now That Linden Lab Has Delayed Fixing

Click here for a fascinating project, especially if you love Second Life mesh, but don't like how it now fits your avatar. It's a Kickstarter-style fundraiser to pay former Linden Lab graphics developer Karl Stiefvater (formerly Qarl Linden, now Qarl Fizz) to fix mesh so that it can better fit avatars. This project was initiated by mesh developer Maxwell Graf, who has led hundreds of other content creators and mesh users to ask Linden Lab for a "Rigged Mesh Parametric Deformer", which in basic terms would (as he puts it) "eliminate a plethora of unavoidable problems with mesh clothing, reduce workflow considerably, open the market, allow avatars AND clothing to be worn (both mesh), one size would fit all and we could keep our physical (virtual) identities."

However, as I blogged last week, the Lindens have downgraded that request to Someday/Maybe.

Enter Karl, who was unexpectedly fired from Linden Lab last year. However, the programmer (who also created effects for The Matrix movies) is still a passionate believer in SL and its content creators. As he tells me:

"Honestly, I love this arrangement. Back at the Lab, the only thing I wanted to do was give the Residents what they were asking for. In fact, for a while I petitioned to create a position where i would simply tackle the issues with the most Resident support. Now if this project works out, we'll have a mechanism where I can do exactly that: Residents vote (albeit with dollars) for exactly what they want and I do it." Sounds like a great deal to me. Presumably his code will be added to one or more third party SL viewer. And seeing as more than 30% of Linden staff have been laid off in the last year, I imagine others ex-Lindens would be interested in doing something like this. I could even see a new company forming, call it Ex-Linden, working on the Second Life projects that actual Lindens are too busy or too disinterested in addressing.

Go here to read about the project and donate if you want. So far, almost $1000 of a $5200 goal has been raised. Read more here at Prim Perfect, where I first read about it. Hat tip: Ms. Toxic Menges.

Comments

[Ciaran Laval]

Your headline is a tad misleading, LL haven't declined to address the issue, they can be fairly accused of dragging their feet over the issue, but to say they have declined to address it is a tad harsh, Charlar said:

"We did some investigation into the problem that Maxwell’s solution attempts to solve. We’re doing some more research and prototyping, trying to find a solution that might be faster/easier to implement. We have Top People on it.

As we said in the Usergroup, we’ll have the results in about two weeks. At that time we’ll update this ticket and also talk about it in the usergroup.

I can’t promise anything – we might come back and say ‘no’, we might say ‘yes, but later’ and we might say ‘here’s what we doing’. We might say something i haven’t thought of yet."

However, it is a novel approach by users to get something addressed, maybe Qarl could join Coffee&Power and offer his services via that platform for other wishlist fixes.

[Hamlet Au]

Hmm, good points, I tweaked the title a touch.

[Damien Fate]

I'm all for it as long as the parametric deformer system is OPTIONAL and can be activated by the consumers.

Otherwise, it takes far too much control away from a content creator create items that are rigged in interesting ways or for non-human avatars.

I already talked with Maxwell about this, and hope to hear that this can be introduced as an optional feature.

Either way, this project will provide and excellent code base for future iterations.

[qarl]

Damien - yes, of course. once the 3d math is completed, adding features like a toggle is easy.

[Shirley Marquez]

Better still would be for the use of the parametric deformer to be a setting for the mesh itself; that way the content creator can easily set whether it should be used or not.

I think LL got caught by surprise by the amount of push for this feature. They saw mesh as a tool for architecture, landscape, and non-human avatars; their early blog entries about mesh were all about those things. I don't really think they expected clothing for human avatars to be a prime use of it.

[Danielle]

@Shirley - given that 1/3 of the Marketplace is clothing, and probably more than that by sales, their not expecting mesh to be used for clothing is astounding.

@qarl & Damian - In the "suggested implementation" attached to SH-2374 some edit window controls for "strength" and "bias" were proposed. Strength of 0 would have the mesh ignore appearance changes, 1 would move the mesh as much as the avatar skin, etc. Bias would move the mesh a small amount in or out, and also control layering (higher bias value means render later, and so appear on top). That will help when multiple items are worn.

If a creator wishes to lock down the settings, they can just make it "no mod". The proposed method may not work, or perhaps you can come up with a better way, but I think those kind of adjustments will help a lot in tweaking and fitting.

Another issue to think about is "deform from what?". Mesh creators need to know what the reference avatar appearance settings are to test their items against.

[Metacam Oh]

Its despicable that the Lab is not the ones fixing these broken features. They roll out an incomplete feature, then the residents have to band together and come up with money on top of what they probably already pay Linden lab to fix their platform. Linden Lab is a multimillion dollar business. I got a better idea, why don't we start a fund for Qarl to polish off Open Sim so we can get rid of that useless entity Linden Lab.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

If they have Top People on it, why's it in "someday" status? I'm confused.

[Sugar]

@Danielle, "deform from what [reference shape]?"

I've also though about, especially about the balance betwenn "good fit" and "maintaining creative freedom".

There are several ways and I hope it won't be a generic "glue it"-algorithm. The solution with a reference-shape seem handy. Maybe the *.obj that's downloadable from LL, or a shape with all sliders at a neutral setting. From this mesh-shape correlation (vertex offsets) the further warping takes place.

What I'm afraid of: the projects says "eliminate the need of rigging (skin-weighting)".
If this 'automatic weighting' happens, then it will not be possible to make attachments with 'stand off' parts...like overknee boots where the part over the knee stands off from the thigh.
An automatic skinning would probably make the boots upper part 100% sticky to the thigh - something what wouldn't be wanted.

[shockwave yareach]

Now, why should I pay Qarl (whom I admire btw) to do the job that LL should be doing in the first place? And how would I know that even if he succeeded and gave us the perfect solution, LL would not simply ignore it all since it didn't come from inhouse? Remember how many errors Nicolaz Beresford fixed in his viewer that he told LL about, but LL pointedly ignored fixing them?

Even if Qarl succeeds, I have zero faith that LL would incorporate the fix. So I don't consider it a good investment. Actually, I don't consider anything having anything to do with LL as a good investment, and LL has only itself to blame for that.

[shockwave yareach]

@Sugar - A simple solution is to change the body's UV map where the clothes are to be transparent. Then you don't have the clashing issue where the body mesh is larger than the clothing mesh. Add a Mask layer to each body part and a new script command (llSetBodyMask(int bodypart, key texture)) so that wearing a mesh item can automatically mask off the UV map under it, and your mesh clothing will work perfectly.

[qarl]

shockwave - yeah, very good points.

re: LL including the code - i can promise you - if LL does not include the code, someone will offer a viewer that is EXACTLY the LL viewer but with this fix. so you'll get it anyway.

if LL comes along and implements their own version - well then you still get it, with the knowledge that this project probably provoked them into doing the work themselves.

[qarl]

and either way, maybe just maybe, LL learns a little bit about why it's bad to ignore their customers.

[paulie femto]

Charlar Linden deleted my comment, mentioning Karl's project, on JIRA SH-2374. Maybe I violated a prohibition against including a URL to an outside website. I have resubmitted the comment without the URL.

[Danielle]

@ paulie - the link to the fundraiser is still available if you click the "All" or "History" tab of the issue, rather than the "Comments" tab.

The mere fact that people are willing to *pay* for this feature should be a wake up call to the Linden staff how important we think it is. Also note that since it is being done as open-source, then OpenSim based worlds can include it with their mesh feature when they add it. Having clothes that fit on another grid and not in SL would be an incentive to move away from SL.

[Catnap]

Ok so lets say he fixes it.

What then?

What's to get LL to actually use his fix?

People have been fixing problems with SL for years and then getting soundly ignored...

I'd be wary about donating to this cause until we could see a contract in hand for him to show that if he fixes it, his fix will get implemented.