New World Notes

Why Does My SL Viewer 3 Install Have an SL Viewer 2 Icon?

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but after installing Second Life Viewer 3 and even upgrading to the latest version, this is still the icon I see on my Windows 7 desktop and in my program menu. Is there no special SL Viewer 3 icon that says Viewer 3? I'm fricking flummoxed; someone please explain what I'm doing wrong here.

And alas, this is about as far as I can get with Viewer 3. So far, I've had incredible performance problems and consistent crashes with the mesh-enabled viewer, even on my Alienware laptop that plays a mesh-intensive 3D program like Deus Ex perfectly. (In last week's survey, I'm in the "Sometimes use the mesh viewer, never buy mesh content" category, largely for crashtastic reasons.)

Just Look at this Little Big Planet-esque SL Mesh Avatar

I mean, just look at it. SL mesh may still be difficult for curvy avatars to wear, but that isn't a problem if you want your avatar to be a Little Big Planet-esque craftwork guy like this one. *DL* Flufee avatar by Dirty Lynx, as as photographed by Honour McMillan and modeled by Diana Renoir.

Ophelia's Gaze: The Bug in Second Life's Mesh Viewer That Keeps Me From Blogging About Second Life Mesh

 

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of virtual world and MMO fashion

This darling dress, Persephone from Violent Seduction, is easily my favorite mesh item in SL to date. It's not perfect, but the delicious little details made it love at first sight. Normally I'd look for any excuse to blog this sweet creation, but unfortunately for me, the new mesh-enabled SL viewer makes blogging a bit of a chore. Though you (hopefully) can't tell, I had to take every picture for my first review of mesh items twice-- once with shadows and once without.

Why? Just take a closer look at the screenshot above:

Want to Improve the Way SL Mesh Works With Avatars and Avatar Fashion? Vote and Follow JIRA SH-2374

Click here to vote and follow this JIRA feature request SH-2374 to improve the way mesh works with avatars. A lot of SL fashionistas have complained about the way mesh currently forces them to adjust their avatar (especially if it's curvy or "plump"), but this JIRA would address that. As the ticket creator Maxwell Graf (a well known mesh master) explains, "It would 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." Or as Simeon Beresford puts it even more succinctly, "The JIRA is about fitting the clothes to the avatar instead of the avatar to the clothes." So go here to vote, and be sure to select "Follow" as well, since the Lindens place more weight on tickets with a large user following.

The Trouble With Mesh and the "Plump" SL Avatar

Rowan Derryth has an extended post on the challenges "plump" avatars like hers face with new mesh-based clothing, expanding on points raised by Vaki Zenovka last week. Basically, if you have an avatar classified by SL designers like Janie Marlowe as "plump" -- that is to say, an avatar who looks like a healthy, sexy, bodonkified curvy woman -- you're going to have troubles with mesh. (As you can see above with Rowan's "plump" avatar above.) It is possible to fit that mesh to your curves, as Rowan explains, just an extra challenge. But the fundamental problem doesn't seem to be with mesh, so much as it is with SL fashion designers' strangely restrictive standards, in which an avatar like Rowan is classified as plump. Seriously, WTF?

Wish I Could Get a Better Pic of This SL Airship Made of Mesh

I finally had a chance to try out the mesh-enabled SL Viewer 3 last night, and immediately came across this lovingly detailed airship in the first mesh sandbox that came up in search. (Wish I knew who made it, but keep reading.) There's a satisfying solidity to these mesh objects, don't you think? While you often come across prim-based airships in SL about as impressive as this, you can usually see the seams, their cobbled-together feel.

Anyway, I tried to get a better screenshot of this airship, but then I turned my graphics settings up to maximum, and even though I have an Alienware laptop which can play graphics-intensive games like Deus Ex Human Revolution just fine, my viewer promptly froze, and refused to respond. So that's my mesh-filled Second Life so far, how's yours doing?

How to Skin Clothing Mesh for SL in Blender - Tutorial

This video is from a valuable series by ashasekayi that shows you how to skin clothing mesh for Second Life in Blender. Fashionista QueenKellee Kuu recommended it to me highly: "It doesn't cover any actual mesh creation, but all the other admin stuff: exporting your shape, getting rigging into your clothing. Probably the most helpful to all audiences is the one about simply the uploading into SL and all the details on that upload window." (That video above; click here to see the whole series.)

How to Make SL Mesh Shoes With Blender 2.5 - Tutorial

Gaia Clary of Machinimatrix has an epic tutorial on creating mesh-based shoes for SL in Blender 2.5 - and I mean seriously epic, with seven chapters and accompanying video. (Which also suggests how much work it may take many designers to fully integrate mesh into their lines.) Hat tip: metalibrary.posterous.com

Ophelia's Gaze: 3 Great SL Fashion Items Which Show Off the Potential -- and Limitations -- of Mesh

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of virtual world and MMO fashion

Mesh is finally upon us, and the fashion world of Second Life is going a bit crazy over it. Shoppers are desperate to buy it, and designers are struggling not to get left behind. The hype resembles what happened when sculpted prims and flexi prims were released.

But I have mixed feelings about mesh, myself: While I think it will allow for some stunning detail and previously impossible creations, I doubt it will make the contents of our inventories obsolete overnight. In fact, a lot of mesh designs out right now are not that far superior to prim-based fashion.

So this week, in addition to showing you some of my favorite, newly released mesh items, I'm going to point out some of the limitations and challenges these have as well. Among them:

• So far, custom mesh avatars are imperfect and difficult to dress.
• Mesh clothing often forces you to adjust your avatar to conform to it, not the other way around.
• "Mesh" is a very unclear category for the average Second Life shopper.

Let's start off with something dramatic...

Yabusaka's Female Mesh AV C [Click here to teleport to Yabusaka in YABU]

The mesh of our standard Second Life avatars is far from perfect, so naturally there's a huge demand for perfected bodies like the one pictured above. Mesh can both be very detailed and can be rigged to follow our avatar's skeleton, all the while looking smooth and seamless, unlike even sculpted prims. There are three head options to choose from with this body, three expressions, and three poses for each hand, as well as free mesh layers that clothing textures can be applied to (if you have them).

But that's also where mesh falls short: You won't be able to wear your normal clothes with a mesh body, and mesh clothing that's not specifically designed to match a custom mesh body may be difficult (if not impossible) to fit properly. (Thankfully, plain old prim clothing like the outfit I'm wearing above, from BareRose, can be adjusted and worn over a custom mesh shape as easily as the standard shape.)

Furthermore, while I like the potential this adorable avatar shows, it also illustrates some of the limitations with custom mesh avatars. The skin texture is smeared in some areas; in others, the mesh comes to an odd angle where it should be smooth, and aside from a few tank tops and some jeans that are provided, you're more or less on your own in terms of finding clothing for her. Bear in mind that it is still way too early to be expecting absolutely flawless mesh products, and being an early adopter always comes at a cost.

Nevertheless, keep reading for more mesh!

How to Create SL Mesh Objects with Google Sketchup

Now that mesh is available gridwide, this looks like an especially useful tutorial for creating and importing mesh objects for Second Life in Google Sketchup:

There's advantages with using Google Sketchup, versus other 3D building tools: It's free, for one thing, and looks much more user friendly then most other 3D modeling software platforms. (Experienced modelers, correct me if I'm wrong on this point.) My favorite part of the video happens around 4:50, where the mesh goes from Sketchup to SL:

As you can see in the demo, there's a lot of dynamic customization (size, texturing, and so on) that you can do with the mesh object once it's in SL. When mesh for Second Life was announced a couple years ago, there was a fair amount of talk that the offline building tools needed to make mesh would dilute the magic of dynamic, collaborative creation in SL, one of the world's most distinguishing features. But even if we see less prim-based, prim-by-prim building, I think we'll still see a lot of dynamic building in-world with mesh.