I see the light!

If this is coming soon, then forget blue mars Is it coming soon ? When ? So be prepared for Secondelife 2.0 and head off to learn your 3D-tool in full depths.

And watch out Second life 2.5 :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=DE&hl=de&v=flkgNn50k14&NR=1

Sometime in 2010 is all that's really carved in stone. My personal thought is that it will happen in the first Quarter, anytime between you reading this post and the end of March most likely. That's a tough question to get an answer to because Lindens are under a non disclosure agreement right now and are keeping quite tight lipped about it. At Qarl Linden's last office hour meeting alot of my questions were answered with "Are you under NDA?" Lol, and of course the answer was no, so he couldn't say.

Along those lines, one of my questions was "Is there going to be a specific SL mesh format", because I read that converting meshes was "pretty painless". So I asked outright if there was going to be a new SL mesh format and after getting the NDA treatment, that more or less tells me that the answer is yes.

I applied to become a beta tester for meshes, and if accepted, I might wind up having to sign an NDA myself to get there. If so I'll have to become as tight lipped as the Lindens are

Not too long most likely since they're getting close to beta I would think.

As far as Blue Mars is concerned, I've already forgotten it. Aside from some slightly better graphics, absolutely everything about it sucks. Even simply stuff like walking around is difficult, the client download is monstrous (took me nearly an hour to download, not to mention the huge installation). You have an avatar name, but it's not above your head, your log in name is... (why have a log in name and an avatar name both in the first place?). So you don't know who you're talking to half the time. You have to chase a blue cone to walk around. Avatars are people only, no furies, tinies, robots allowed. And with mesh support coming, using external "industry standard" tools for building externally will be here soon as well. Also, the new Media plug-ins will allow for dynamic web pages on a prim with support for Flash, Java, Web-kit, or anything people want supported in world. So, LL is quickly filling the gaps of the so called 'advantages' Blue Mars has over SL. By the time Blue Mars comes out of beta, LL will have been there already. Maybe BM should have kept their mouth quiet until they were ready to come out of beta.

Well, not much to add that hasn't already been said other than the redundant observation that local lighting offers up some real weird behavior.

I took Ephraim's problem and recreated the basics with simple, untextured block prims and still experienced odd illumination distribution.

Just for ha-ha's I did a little experiment with an untextured mega prim and simple light source. I'm sure the effects have been described before but for your entertainment (or not) here is my rather shabby video of the result.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYHJHHg2asc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYHJHHg2asc

Interesting video...

Given that, on my system at least, illumination gradients on prim faces are relative to prim size I created a quick lash up of Ephraim's wall using more sections of a similar size. Though not perfect the result is a lot more pleasing than the original.

Here they are side by side:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4015/4267415229_0802561907_o.png


Note that the section above the door is too deep and intrudes on the transom window space. If simpy made shorter the odd lighting effect starts to creep back in. It might be resolvable by changing the orientation and performing an end cut to get the right size.

Rime

Rime came up with this solution, which uses prims of roughly equal size to distribute the light more evenly. My original wall is on the right, Rime's modified version is on the left:

http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/7861/rimessuggestion.png

The prim count on Rime's version is crazy (28 prims to the original count of 12 where each tall prim between the windows is replaced by 5 smaller prims). I'm much indebted to him for the idea, which I'll use it for the time being. Hopefully the Lindens will solve the issue before I have to rent another plot to finish the build.

I guess Phil won't be using this technique at Prim Savers™ in a hurry.

Glad to have been of some help, though I would definitely classify this as a work around rather than a solution

Cheers
Rime

Phil probably would've used a single mega for the whole face, and alpha'd the windows =)

That was my first thought also, but if you check out my video from a few posts back you'll see that has its own problems. (Let it get past the first few seconds as it got screwed up at the start)

Rime

I did exactly that trick with alpha. I just added an extra prim in front of the wall, made it super thin and cut out window frames with alpha and placed the brickwall texture on it too. Earlier i worked with 2 thin half walls (as Ephraim's wall is wider than 10 meters) But as the light does not go more than 5 meters from the lamp (in his settings) the 1 prim approach was good for me.



Well it is a hack though and when you go far away, it does no longer look "realistic"... Is it that what you mean by "its own problems" ?

Anyways just another weird thing in the galerie of oddities

I did another experiment and ... Hey, i have done it again with 2 flat sculpted prims. And guess what : The lighting behaves much nicer than with normal prims when you move away. The blocky lighting seen on Rime's video does not appear to happen with sculpties...

That's interesting, Gaia. I really appreciate these ideas and I agree the lighting looks much better on the sculpties. What's more I might just be able to make the original texture stretch without too much loss of detail. The prim version is tiled with a 512 so I figure these sculpties will look more like they are textured with a 256.

My one misgiving is that I like to save sculpting for smaller objects - I think that door frame is the biggest object I have ever sculpted - so wrapping the build with sculpts on three sides makes me a little nervous. All the same, I'll look into making a version of my own: there's no way the current lighting on standard prims could even be considered reasonable.