Galaxy Generator Example Movie

I recorded and edited a little bit of the galaxies in motion. I'm wondering if "Galaxy Generator" is a poor name since some of the effects look less like galaxies and more like glowing clouds. Then again I suppose that sort could count as an elliptical galaxy. Perhaps sometime I'll be able to update the generator to generate specific types of galaxies.

Anyway, here's an embedded version of the example movie, and links to alternate sites follow:



Video links (in case the embedded doesn't show or play):

YouTube
Blip.tv
Vimeo
Flickr

Galaxy Generator Coming Soon

I've made a galaxy generator that cycles through about 40 presets or generates galaxies at random. I have the poster finished, but I don't have the instructions written, so it won't be available until tomorrow.

I think they look much better in motion than they do as still images, but here's a few snapshots of some presets and randomly generated galaxy effects:

Double tap to initiate running

LL is trying to push for a double tap on the forward key to start running. This conflicts with many, many products across the grid and makes adjusting your avatar's position slightly difficult since a double tap might send you running instead of taking that half-step you wanted to take. Vote on this issue to attempt to keep LL from implementing this change.

Havok 4 Jump Differences

There is a considerable difference in jumping in Havok 4 compared to Havok 1. If you have noticed this and would like it changed please vote for this Jira issue. Apparently there is a loss of 1 to 1.5 meters. I found a link to this issue at Daikon Forge.

A comparison can be made on the beta grid where there are still some Havok 1 regions available.

On a related note, I will probably be making a free version of the jump assist gadget to help compensate for the difference for those who enjoy jumping.

Eyana's Ninja HUD version 1.4

I have an update for the Ninja HUD available (finally!). Included in this update are some bug fixes, a new layout and icon style for the HUD to make it more intuitive and take up less screen space, and also a Sky Walking gadget was added.

Unfortunately I cannot get in-world to finish testing the update server and update all my single prim vendors because LL has disabled logins:

"Resident logins have been disabled until our toplevel routing issues have been resolved.

We deeply regret the inconvenience, and we’ll keep you posted."

I'll update this post with a list of bug fixes as soon as I can get in-world and access my notes.

Windlight and Particles

Yesterday I posted something on the JIRA about particles not displaying properly in the current relase of the First Look: Windlight viewer. Basically I'm not seeing enough particles no matter what my max particle count is. In the below snapshot there is a comparison of the same effect in Windlight and on the Release Candidate viewer. My issue was a duplicate (oops--there wasn't one that I could see dealing with that problem when I checked, but apparently I'm not good at using Jira) but I attached the snapshot to the original issue.





That brings me to another point I wanted to mention. Second Life currently has a little bit of a problem keeping particle textures in memory or whatever and ready to be displayed on the effect. This makes short particle effects start off as grey rectangles before the particle texture loads and can be quite annoying for trying to make a short particle effect look nice because even after the texture is loaded once it might need to load again the next time it's used. There is a workaround for this for creators: the particle texture should be put onto a prim. For example, for my chain lightning staff I am working on I put a tiny cube inside the staff. The cube has all the particle textures I'm using and even though it's hidden by the rest of the staff the texture still loads and the particle effect never has any problem with showing grey blobs instead of lightning.

Update: Eyana's Commission Vendors

Earlier this evening I updated my affiliate/commission vendor script. There won't be too many noticeable changes for those people using the vendor. Most of the changes are back-end things to better manage vendor tracking for auto-updates. The previous version had no way of knowing which vendors were removed or deleted from the grid. That oversight made it difficult for the updating script to work efficiently because people have had the tendency to rez all the sizes of the vendors and then remove the ones they didn't want.

Anyway, the old vendors should have a message saying that there is a new version available. The new vendors can be purchased for L$1 through the old vendors, or just pop by the main shop to grab them, or just ask me to send them to you. The L$1 fee through the old commission vendor to get the new one is another oversight in the original script where it would not allow any L$0 sales.

Windlight Firstlook

The Windlight Firstlook is available. I'm testing it out currently and I am having mixed feelings which mostly lean towards extremely displeased. The environment looks great. The shading on prims looks fine.

Avatars look awful.

Dreadful.

Ugly.

Any type of shading or shadow on any avatar for me looks awful. It's like the shading is not blending at all. Ugly lines going across the avatar. It's like doing a gradient with only eight colors.


I updated my video card drivers. I tried all kinds of settings. If I turn off all the shaders I have no problem, but then it looks worse than it does in the old client.

Blah.

I was really, really looking forward to Windlight and now that I can't use it without grimacing whenever I see a person while nobody else seems to be having this problem is kind of upsetting. The environments looked really nice. The reflections were nice. Everything was nice and smooth on pretty high settings, but no matter what the avatars looked so poorly shaded.

I posted on the SL forums, so maybe someone can help me.

edit: of course jira is not loading in my browser either.

relaxing

relaxing
Originally uploaded by eyanayohkoh

This is my first painting that includes some elements straight from Second Life. The tree, terrain, and person (me!) are taken from a high resolution snapshot in my home sim, Mew.

The moon and stars are from scratch in Photoshop, and there are some touch-ups on the SL snapshot done in Photoshop as well.

I'm not sure I have the lighting done properly. Something seems a little off, but I'm not sure what it is.

edit: The stars look oddly blurred in the lower resolution versions of this image. I painted everything at 4000x3000 and it looks fine there. I'll have to figure out a way to make it look better in a regular resolution or just paint a new star field.

Rolling Restart Bug Fixes

I just read about the rolling restart Linden Labs plans for the 6th and this bug fix made me smile.

• SVC-912: Sky Eclipse’s avatar crashes regions EVERYTIME she logs in, regardless of where she logs in

Poor Sky Eclipse!

Eyana's Ninja Hud 1.3 released

Version 1.3 is released to address a few bugs and add a new button.

------

New to the HUD:

Options button added to projectiles menu to allow varying the speed of kunai, shuriken, and hook. (The projectile speed was too slow to be registered by a few combat systems.)

Bug Fixes & Revisions:

Some scripts combined to eliminate unecessary extra scripts.
Dust cloud no longer automatically active when first rezzed.
Permissions inefficiency and weirdness with jump assist and projectiles addressed.
Jump assist calculations now take avatar mass into account properly.
Shurikens should successfully collide more consistently.

Havok4 Beta Grid

After reading a post on the Second Life Blog about the upcoming physics update I decided to go check it out on the Beta Grid. I don't know much about the technicalities about what they are changing but it was mainly this blurb that made me curious:

"Some slight dynamic changes - avatar movements have changed slightly"

Firstly, the spacebar does not work quite like it did before. Previously, you could achieve a bit of a slide across the ground by using the spacebar or in the air. This—although technically a bug—has been used but quite a number of people as part of their fighting style for C:SI and other similar combat systems. The debate over whether or not it is an acceptable action should come to a grinding halt when the Havok4 physics stuff is on the main grid. Spacebar works only to stop the avatar's momentum. It will not give any sort of speed increase whatsoever.

Sliding along the ground does not appear to happen anymore. This was always an annoyance: tripping over a prim and going sliding across half a sim was just annoying. I have not tested this to my satisfaction yet, but a number of perfectly level floors with a prim added that would have normally caused a slide has yet to cause any sort of sliding.

This is good and bad. I'll just have to rewrite a couple of scripts (probably minor changes) to make them work as intended since they were designed with the sliding problem in mind.

There also appears to be a new llMoveToTarget bug introduced. If the avatar is standing still then a llMoveToTarget simply will not work until the avatar starts moving. I need to do more testing for this, but I think applying a small push will help.

Anyway, I'll post more if I figure anything out.

Ice Cave

I just uploaded some snapshots of the ice cave I've been working on as a sculptie learning project. Here is a link. The sun is set to midnight and I have the RenderGlow option in Debug settings enabled.

Let me know what you think!

Dealing with Alpha Textures in SL

Felidae and I worked on a Shinto shrine together recently, and during that time I came across the problem Second Life has with showing a prim with an alpha texture on it in front of another prim with an alpha texture on it. After some searching around and testing and scratching of heads we figured out that if the textures on the object in front of the background object is 1024x1024 it does not disappear as easily. The same placement and same exact camera angle with a 512x512 texture made it disappear entirely.

I really had a good time work on this project. It is very satisfying when working with someone else and all the pieces fit together perfectly.

We do plan on offering the shrine as a free item sometime soon, but currently we don't quite have it packaged for that.

UPDATE: Here is a SLURL to the shrine.

Eyana's Ninja HUD Released

The ninja hud is finally finished and for sale.



Click this link to view the SLExchange listing.



Here's a brief list of things it has:

• Jump assist (variable assist levels)
• Landing cloud
• Teleport poofer (cloud of smoke)
• Smoke bomb escape (teleports to camera position)
• Smoke bomb poof
• Kunai
• Shuriken
• Caltrops
• Foot trap
• Water walking
• Free updates!

swept hilt rapier - work in progress

This is one of the things I've been working on:

C:SI Politics and Policies Rant

Recently, someone opened a new sim for C:SI combat. They aren't selling their own weapon system. The sim is just there for dueling, mainly because another sim was closed for a while and the person opening wanted another alternate spot for sparring.

Apparently this is a big deal to the owner(s) of Samurai Island and Samurai Edo. The person who opened the new sim was banned from all of the C:SI owners' sims. Gasp! If they don't want their stuff working in other sims then they should restrict the scripts to work only in certain regions (which subsequently would cut their business in half or more).

What in the world is wrong with someone spending their own money to open a sim for C:SI combat? Do they really expect people to be content going to Edo? It's *always* laggy, and sometimes the people there can be very annoying.

Another note about Edo is they are hiring security, and so far the person hired I would not trust at all with any amount of responsibility.

And what of Shrouded Isle? Are Alyssa and Jed going to get banned from Edo and related places for owning a sim initially based around the C:SI combat system?

There has to be more behind this. I really would think they would welcome another sim simply for the free advertising.

More on this later I guess.

Poofy Color Cloud

The poofy cloud thing is released. It turns on a cloud when you fly and turns it off when you land.

Poofy Color Cloud on SLExchange

Grappling Hook Price Cut

I decided 650 was just too high, so I dropped it to 450.

grappling hook controls

Okay, so the passthrough thing was something I was overlooking. I figured it out. The gun works. Now all that is left to do is make a hud to switch between short and long range modes (short range mode is 100m, but moves the avatar to the target a bit quicker because of the less steps taken), make some animations and/or poses, and do a little re-texturing.