Mesh Behaving Badly & Bad Case of Wind : The age of chaos

Back in 2009, Violet Studios was the first SL company to offer breast implant skin specially designed to match up. Of course at the time I was very proud of what I did but it would never be perfect as for one little problem.

You had to set your Viewer to Midday permanently.

However I asked people to do that to make what I refer to as “the standard”.

And for years, it worked.

Rewind a little though. We need to look at why it worked.

Back then, the tools for environmental editing were almost a joke really. You could mess with the environmental setting manually, but you couldn’t permanently change them or even share them.

The choice back then was simple – you used the SL default windlight and the most you could change, was setting the time of day to what you wanted.

Slowly though over time, things started getting more complex.

Firstly TPV makers started to add in new features such as preset defaults from various creators of environmental settings. This was nice as now you and your friends could play with the environment, and actually be able to share the experience.

Next up came a major change to viewers, again thanks to TPV. You could now preset your parcels Windlight settings in the Parcel Description and the viewers working on the system could pick that up and automatically change it.

Finally came the biggest change, when Linden Labs adopted the technology fully, introducing a region windlight presetting. This was a massive change and gave sim owners the ability to create stunning sim effects, and share those effects with everyone.

Except, somewhere along the way someone forgot something. SL by default still uses the original SL default out of the box for environmentals.

There is a secondary item that was forgotten about too. Rigged Mesh and the way the original SL default behaves with it.

This brings us back full circle back to the point. A standard.

My implant work, originally was designed to work with what was available on SL, and back then, and for at least 3 years, that standard didn’t change, however with rigged mesh now becoming a standard, people are now being advised to swap to another windlight setting, and that of course throws the default SL standard out of the window. And dare I say this, Viewer effects are Local, not Global.

It seems now, thanks to Rigged mesh, there is a fight brewing between differing standard, and I will say with little reserve, both arguments are valid and needed.

I will start with my own argument.

For Implants, you need a standard. And by default, no questions asked, there already is one. The Standard SL Windlight setting, at midday. It does everything you want on the tin, and for the most part it behaves almost perfectly.

The Reason this has to be a standard is simple. It is what comes out of the box, for just about ALL viewers, regardless of Viewer 1, 2 or 3, or what ever they are calling it this week.

I see the world, you see the world the same as me. By manually overriding this to midday, its a simple setting and even on my own sims, I set up windlight to emulate the midday perm setting, using the standard SL Default.

The Rigged Mesh argument.

This is where a seriously large spanner gets thrown in the works. These days, alot of companies, including myself are working on, and releasing rigged mesh attachments. I have for over a year now, had a rigged mesh “bigbutt” system but I have had to face off to a serious problem that I have been so unhappy with, I refused to release it.

The joint where the upper body meets the lower body rigged mesh is ugly. It doesn’t match at all even though its the same texture.

Its not just me though – other products I have seen on the market suffer terribly from the same issue.

So... what’s causing it? Its our old friend, the SL Default Windlight settings. Due to the way they are configured, they are making an utter mess – the rigged mesh behave differently to the avatar body.

I was, once again, pretesting the rigging work again last night and I was utterly *censored* over the issue, so I started fiddling randomly with the phototools set up and rendering to see if there was a way I could cure it.

To my surprise, I quickly found that not only could I cure it, I could cure it so perfectly it was silly.

Opening the windlight environmental presets, you pick either

AnaLu *studio* 5 (this gives a nice bright midday setting)

AnaLu – outdoor city night (this gives a mid tone dark setting)

AnaLuetia  - (This gives a really dark setting)

AnaLuetia – Avatar Opt2 Whiter (this give s a very bright rendering)

AnaLuetia – STUDIO2 (this give a sunset style redder)

AnaLuetia – Studio Light (this give a nice, predawn setting)

All of the above settings effectively gets rid of the rigged mesh seaming issues – skin, is skin, and matches perfectly on the joint. I have even tried this with the previous issue I had with Chestplate implants misbehaving, and to my surprise, it works on them too – its a seamless integration – no silly “upside down” issues.

So, two ways of solving problems. In fact its fair to say for implants, the rigged mesh argument has massive merits too as now you can effectively get 99% matching with it.

So what solution should I use to get to where I should be.

Well, first up, thanks to the way this rigged mesh issue is causing problems, I may have to rethink the way I do implants – make a new standard.

This is of course, not a simple job – it means I will have to retint / create new textures  for all my current range.

And then, I have to put a note in basically telling people “for the best results, use these windlight settings”.

However, its never that simple.

As I stated earlier, Windlight settings on SL are set in a Local mode, not Global.

If I tell you to update your windlight settings to one of the above, then that great, but your friends, or other people who are viewing your avatar may very well be using windlight settings that are very aggressive towards rigged mesh or the way I have set the implants up to behave with a even 360 light source.

In addition, Sim owners under Linden Labs update to region settings, can preset their windlight settings to what they want, and it will override your settings.

And some viewers still don’t have the auto custom windlight parameters. They are using Stock SL windlight.

This means you may be a happy camper with your custom windlight settings, but to everyone else if the sims are not rigged mesh or Implant friendly, you will look like a dogs dinner at Christmas.

The problem is, going back to 2009, the standard.

Standard SL Windlight, night to day and back parameters – its the default rule, and in todays radically changed SL, its a rule that out of the box is NOT working anymore.

Linden Labs really need to reset that standard – without it, things will remain in their current Windlight Choas, with different people recommending different settings and people being under a misguided impression that their avatars look fantastic, when they don’t to everyone else.

As already proved by the AnaLuetia settings, you can create a night to day and back based around it, it wouldn’t really take that long to implement and finally people will view rigged mesh as it should be seen.

Sim owners could also set their windlight on the sims with more forethought to their visitors if they know the problems surrounding this.

And then...

I thought I would discuss my findings with my good friend, Adrina from AW Design.

Showed her the solutions I had come up with and I am kind of thankful that I did talk to her.

Turns out there was one... little setting I had forgot about.

Local Lighting.

I normally turn off local lighting in all my viewers – it makes life simpler for me when trying to get tinting right.

Put a local light source near the mesh lower body, and even with a mesh friendly Windlight setting, the seam line shows back up like a sore thumb.

So here we are, back where we started.

1/ Using the SL standard as “the standard” for Windlight, presetting to Midday, Breast implants will match up. Thats the standard, that was the best solution.

2/ Using SL Default Windlight regardless of time of day, borks any Rigged mesh or static mesh attachment up even if its using identical textures.

3/ Switching to an even 360 Windlight setting (as above) will cure that problem with rigged mesh or static mesh, however as my implants stand, they were designed for a totally different windlight setting and one that everyone uses to some degree or another. And of course swapping to that 360 Even windlight setting is a local job, not a global, so only you can see it and to everyone else, we see the messy seamlines.

4/ If you walk past any local lighting source, the mesh will again go out of phase and the seam line will then show up, and even if you switch off local lighting, other will still see it, and if you want to wear body or face lights... you’re borked again as either you don’t see it, or you see the ugly seam.

Now... anyone know any good hair restorers? I seem to be tearing mine out too much