Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Storage Box for Inventory


Storage Box for Inventory 120731

Susie Chaffe sent us a specialized storage box for holding inventory items in response to the post on Managing Your Dances. It features buttons for looking through your inventory and when you click on it, you get the highlighted item.



Here is our conversation about the box (slightly edited):

[05:27:34] Susie Chaffe: on the subject on inventory, might I suggest something like the box I am dropping on you to keep your fantastic Dance Queen Freebies organised
[05:31:19] Nottoo Wise: hi susie xxx
[05:32:27] Susie Chaffe: hi Nottoo.....inventory is something i get paranoid about...so I have boxes and boxes.....
[05:32:36] Nottoo Wise: i have a box that contains the sequences but this box has a feature ive not seen with the search capability
[05:33:20] Susie Chaffe: it was scripted by Ordinal Malaprop years ago...I touched it up a bit...but it has always been available
[05:33:41] Nottoo Wise: can i offer it to the dance queens group noting that u provided it?
[05:34:08] Susie Chaffe: customise...put your texture on....its a genuine freebie for the community...
[05:34:14] Nottoo Wise: ok, i will do so
[05:43:50] Nottoo Wise: will this box work if someone else uses mine, for example is it a giver to anyone
[05:44:40] Susie Chaffe: yes as long as the item is transfer....
[05:45:16] Nottoo Wise: ok :-)
[05:45:17] Susie Chaffe: if it is copy and has transfer perms.........the toucher gets it and you lose it....so be careful what you offer in there
[05:45:35] Nottoo Wise: ok
[05:45:59] Nottoo Wise: may i use an edited version of our conversation on the blog
[05:47:29] Susie Chaffe: feel free.....I am searching to see if I can fine the original
[05:47:34] Second Life:

[05:48:01] Susie Chaffe: there is a blank one to play with...it also contains a help card
[05:48:10] Nottoo Wise: ty xxx

[05:48:51] Susie Chaffe: ooh .. one mod I made....when you rename it....and then touch it...it puts the new name in the floating text
[05:49:14] Susie Chaffe: handy if you have a bunch scattered around :)
[05:49:22] Nottoo Wise: hahaha
[05:49:28] Nottoo Wise: u r an inventory fanatic
[05:50:22] Susie Chaffe: I used to teach at one of the colleges here........and my inventory exploded with bits and pieces....so it was born out of necessity
[05:50:35] Nottoo Wise: makes sense im over 50000 in my inventory
[05:51:18] Susie Chaffe: I am probably much higher than that......but so much is boxed that mine stays under 10K
[05:51:47] Nottoo Wise: wow


I put a copy of a blank box in the Free Stuff Box at Dance Central. It's called the SBX - [No Transfer] - Blank.

xxx
Nottoo

Monday, July 30, 2012

The Chicks' Video from the Dance Festival


The Chicks' Video from the Dance Festival 120730

VikkiLynn Caproni of the Chicks sent us this video that she had made at the Dance Festival V of the Chicks dancing. I love it.

====================

https://vimeo.com/46590202

 or

 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlYHYeuaQZM&feature=youtu.be

Same video ~ choice of locations.

The first song does not show the choreography at all, but it features the set design, the FX, and the Performers.   The 2nd song has the music a few seconds behind the choreography (the music was added later), but this is a very professionally done video.

 Hope you like it.

VikkiLynn

Managing Your Dances


Managing Your Dances 120730

Usually I take pretty good control of my inventory in SL. After five plus years in SL I have at least the top level almost in control and a few of the second level folders too. Since I was away from SL for a month and then devoted for a couple of weeks exclusively to the Dance Festival V, I haven't paid much attention to inventory. So, today I started cleaning up. It got me thinking about some of the special things I do with inventory because I dance. Let me share these with you.

As you read this think about the kind of person you are with your inventory. I'll describe it in jigsaw puzzle terms. You know, the puzzles that are in a thousand pieces all cut to look alike with a picture on one side. If you pour all the pieces on the table and immediately start putting the puzzle together without further organization, you are at one extreme. If you pour out the puzzle pieces, then organize the pieces by turning them all face up, putting the edge pieces in four groups depending on the orientation, then order the non-edge pieces by shape and color, then start working on the corners followed by the top edge, you are at the other extreme. If you are at the extremes these ideas won't help you much. If you are somewhere in between, here is what I do. If you have some ideas to help, add a comment to this blog post.
  1. Inventory Your Dance HUD - About once every three months I make a list of all the dances that I have in my HUD. Right now I have 5041 dances in mine. You probably don't have as many, but, if you are a dancing addict, you frequently add new dances to your HUD. Your HUD is growing. Having a list helps you know what you have. When you pass about 500 dances, you will find you can't remember them all. Think about dance shopping. Hmmm, do I have that dance or not? A list helps. Think about that IM from a friend, "do you have ___ dance?" I put a lot of animated poses in my HUD too and these are even more challenging to remember. To make a list follow the instructions for your HUD to get an alphabetized print out in chat. Copy the print out and at a minimum paste it into a notecard. Some of the HUDs give you added info, so you may want to put the list in a spreadsheet and remove the unnecessary info, then paste the list into a notecard. I don't go so far as to noting whether the dances are copy or transfer, but more extreme organizers may. The list is also good if you lose your HUD. After the crocodile tears stop, you know what you had when you are ready to get another HUD.
     
  2. Organize Your Copy Dances - Copy dances usually cost more than transfer dances and can never be resold, but when you lose your HUD or want to use the dances in more than one device, copy dances are the answer. I've posted about this before. I make a separate HUD from my main HUD and put the copy dances in the second HUD. The loaded HUD remains all copy so I even go so far as to make a copy of the loaded second HUD. I also put the copy dances in my inventory in a special folder called Dances - good. Since I collect all sorts of animations and dances, I also have folders for the not so good dances, like the ones in the Free Stuff Box at Dance Central. If you are a more extreme organizer you can further order your copy dances into categories such as dance categories and styles or by maker. If you are a real fanatic put your copy dances in a box and store the box on a sim. The dance database can help you with organizing dances because it contains information about maker, category, style and other ways you may choose to organize your inventory.
     
  3. Organize Your Animated Poses - When you first start dancing you may have a few animated poses to look sexy while standing, but you probably don't think about the thousands of animated poses that exist. Over time your animated pose list grows. Take a trip to Kuso, for example, where you can get 10 L animated poses and you come home with more than you expected. Or when you buy an AO you get all those animated poses. These are things like stands, sits, fly up, etc. Most animated poses have names only a programmer can understand. I never (almost never) rename dances or animated poses. A name like SLCST(30)58muri(P4) or D2663-Stand.U (185cm) or ao_drunk_stand_4 doesn't tell you much about what an animated pose does. You can check in the dance database if you need to, but you should think about organizing your poses as you get them. Most poses are copy, so you have a copy for your inventory. The database has animated poses divided into categories of the type of action. You can use this or devise your own category. If you don't, you will soon have hundreds of animated poses and you will have no idea what they do. Although I put a lot of animated poses in my HUD, most I do not. That is because with animated poses there are often not a lot of differences. How many ways can you put your hand on your hip for example. However, I do organize the ones I don't have in my HUD. This is because I like to make plays and use a lot of animated poses for this aspect of dancing.
     
  4. Organize your HUDs and AOs - I buy a lot of AOs and dance HUDs to get the dances and animated poses inside. I remove the animations I want, but since the AOs and HUDs are usually copy, I have a fully functioning HUD or AO. Rather than toss it out, I keep a copy of each one in a folder. Occasionally, I have found a special use for a weird HUD or AO.
     
  5. Organize your special animations - Most of us do not make animations. I thought I never would, but I do now. I have described the process for making dances previously. What I have found is that when I make a dance show, sometimes I cannot find a special turn or move. Usually it is something simple. So I have made anims and imported them into SL. As long as it's simple you can learn to do it too. Forget about making a sexy dance without the right equipment, but a simple move you can do. These are anims that are full perm, so I put them in a special folder also. Similarly, I have uploaded some of the Linden internal anims because I wanted to use them in a show. I have a special folder for them too. 
Since I run Dance Queens, I have even more organization of my dance inventory. You may choose to organize dance folders for your dance shows, for example. You spend a lot of money on dances and animated poses, so why throw away some of the benefits by poor inventory management.

xxx
Nottoo

Friday, July 27, 2012

New Couples Dances at Henmations

New Couples Dances at Henmations 120728

Hendrik Schroader sent this to the Henmations Group today ...

====================

Dear Customers,

we are proud to announce the first part of our new Couples Dance Series.

Enjoy the new Rumba Slowdances!

A wonderful set of 7 Rumba Dance Styles, very slow and smooth, performed by our professional real life dancers. Watch the short "making of" teaser clip on youtube: 
http://youtu.be/Tkl_lCkXtJc

Each new couples dance is available as...
- Synced Poseball Animation  
- Club Control Autoloader Pack  
- Intan Compatible Package  


Our new Couples Dance Series comes with 50 Animations in total.
Other new Packs will be released these days...

We highly recommend to try out Club Control, our new Couples Dance Machine.
Learn more about Club Control:   
http://henmations.com/hp/?p=3437
Enjoy your Weekend and have a nice Dance :)

Regards
YOUR HENMATIONS TEAM

Friday, July 20, 2012

NOYA Sensual Girl AO


NOYA Sensual Girl AO 120720

We received an announcement about the release of the NOYA Sensual Girl AO

======================

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/68414: *NOYA* releases *NEW* AO called SENSUAL AO for only 249L, you can test the animations at the landmark in my profile but you can only buy it here=> https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/NOYA-SENSUAL-girl-AO-Animation-Overrider/3698708

YUMMY - #5 - Falling thru the Cracks

TASTE


Festival related: SIM BORDER CROSSING



You will fall thru the border between the STAGE and the AUDIENCE sims to the next level below it when walking across it.

So here is a solution:

Add a prim BELOW the platform surface that is 63 x 10 x 0.5 along the length of the crossing. You will dip just slightly but not fall thru.  And remember to take it with you when you clean up, or if you leave it, know that it may be auto-returned by security. I am not sure what the policy will be.

And that's Yummy's *taste of things


YUMMY




Wednesday, July 18, 2012

YUMMY #4 - Restore to Last Position

TASTE

- #4  RESTORE TO LAST POSITION.


Wow. I heard from a few people about how devastated they were when the latest SL release broke the must reverred and depended-upon "Restore to Last Position". Well it looks it IS working again, and a lot of people including me were not aware that it is working again. And I am NOT an owner of the parcel located at Region (0,0), nor do I belong to a group deeded to Region(0,0)...which was a caveat.

I hope its not something unique to my settings or viewer or anything else.

UPDATE 7/19: Ok it is now NOT WORKING again on my parcel so I assume it is not working for others. Must have been some quirk. Am exploring it. Sorry. Seems unpredictable.

And if it turns out that it is still not working for you, I do have a fall-back solution, IF your set is MODIFY ...AND if you can stand within 10 meters of where it was rezzed before...then I have a free script (copy/no mod/no trans) for you that I just wrote as a backup plan. Place it in the set and click on the set before taking it into memory. Then stand close to where it was before and rez it from your inventory and it will remember and reposition itself.

And that's YUMMY's taste of things

YUMMY

Saturday, July 14, 2012

YUMMY - #3 - Texture Dragging and Lag Monsters

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 TEXTURE DRAGGING



News you can maybe use for dancer-builders:

(If this is too off topic, I will remove it quickly and I   apologize in advance to Nottoo. I just needed a reason to show an image.)

Save 30 Lindens.

Take 4 textures you want to upload to SL and make 1 image using your favorite photo/image editor.


Now load it as 1 image and pay the 10 L instead of 40 L for 4 separate images.

With the latest texture-drag feature of the newest viewer release in Firestorm/Phoenix, change Repeats per Face to 0.5 for both horizontal and vertical.

Now you must have Stretch Both Sides checked or Stretch Textures checked.

Now check Select Face.


You can now click on the prim face and select the one you want by dragging the texture around.




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*********************************************************

THE LAG MONSTER


Ok I had a lot of topics formed in my head to write about and was having trouble deciding on which ones when THIS one just jumped up and "yelled" and "screamed" at me. Seeing as how the festival is near, this information seemed like it would help newbies and new venues when it comes to handling LAG. This information comes from the "big boys and girls who look down on us from above".

 And if you are an old-timer or veteran, you can skip this article.

Please note that my use of CAPS is NOT meant to YELL at anyone but only to emphasize key points so they are more easily remembered.

The short of it...

Lag caused by physics (primarily avatar movement) is the number one cause of region lag



 ========================================


1)  SERVER SIDE LAG


The BIGGEST IMPACT on server side lag is NUMBER OF AVATARS. 

Second is UNSEATED avatars. Long-story short, PROVIDE SEATING at your venue and ask that people be seated and maybe explain why. This will heavily reduce lag moreso than number of scripted attachments worn.

 I think that in your own club, where you provide passive entertainment as in burlesque, cabaret or live concerts, if you see people standing because there are not enough seats, then provide more seats and ask them to sit. A person standing who is wearing no scripts can impact sim lag as much, if not more,  as the person seated who is wearing a lot of scripts.

So a LIGHTBULB turns on in my head. If this be the case then any performer who is standing around during another performer(s) act is also conributing to unneeded lag. So ideally, they should be seated as well. So add seats backstage or below stage to help strangle this lag monster even more.

Lag caused by physics (primarily avatar movement) is the number one cause of region lag. If physics lag is bad enough, scripts simply will stop running; avatar movement is considered more important than scipts. If there are 40 people at an event, and many are moving about, it will be laggy even if none of those people are wearing scripts.

Moving away from a scripted prim will not do anything to reduce the “lag” it may be causing you. Scripts all run on the region server, and therefore, they are “global” to the server. No matter where you are in the region, the effect of that script running - that is, the time taken to run it, and the memory it consumes - will be felt on the entire region.

========================================

2)  CLIENT SIDE LAG

 

  • reduce your draw distance (do you really need to see 512m away?);
  • turn on avatar impostors (this makes drawing of distant avatars much faster);
  • disable atmospheric shaders (which serves to drastically reduce how much your computer has to render, as the sky alone is very graphics-intensive); (this is under Graphics-General)
  • if need be, inhibit the rendering of other avatars: using Phoenix: Advanced → Rendering → Types → Character; using Firestorm: Advanced → Rendering Types → Avatar - or derender them
  •  

========================================

3)  SCRIPT LAG



Yes, the less scripts worn and running, the better SL will perform for all.  (Excerpted: There is no good reason whatsoever for anyone to be carrying around more than 200 scripts on a human avatar, even when in full RP attire, with combat HUDs)

AO's have an insignificant impact so it is ok to continue using them

Ok a cool new convenient feature of the latest release of the Firestorm/Phoenix viewers is that you can easily STOP scripts from RUNNING on attached items in cases where the item allows it. This would be handy when you dont want to remove (delete) a script but reduce its impact when attending a lag-sensitive performance

Right-Click and EDIT then choose from menu,  Build-->Scripts-->Set Scripts to Not Running.  You can set them to running again, after the event is over,  using the same path and choose Set Scrips to Running.


========================================

4) PRIM LAG


Prims (as is number of) effect on lag is minuscule.

Contrary to popular belief, particles do not “lag a SIM'. Their effect on a SIM, on the servers, is in fact close to zero


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5)  PARTICLE LAG

Don't be overly concerned about particles and their impact on a sim's performance. It''s a client-side thing. Also  you can turn down particle count on your client machine to reduce lag on your client.


========================================

5)  NETWORK  LAG


This is when you have connectivity issues. There are problems somewhere in the network between your computer and the LL servers. This usually can be noticed when you start to experience packet loss. Press Shift-Ctrl-1 (or View → Statistics Bar) and look at the top, packet loss; ideally this should be 0%; if it isn't you have a connectivity issue and are losing data, Also, check Ping SIM. Ideally, this should be under 200.

Symptoms of a poor connection include (but are not limited to):

  • failure of your avatar or textures to rez.
  • object information not display in hover tips when you mouse over them
  • Teleport failure
  • random crashes

You can try to mitigate network lag by playing with your bandwidth. Too high, or too low, a value will result in network lag.

Aside from the network issues mentioned above, some programs may inhibit or interfere with a good connection. Some firewall software and anti virus programs are known to do this. You may want to temporarily disable them and see if the situation improves.

 
 
**********************************************
 

BANDWITH


Recmmendation

 

Based on our experience, we strongly recommend the following maximum settings for bandwidth - unless the calculations above suggest lower values:
  • Any type of wireless connection, including home wireless: 500
  • Hardwired DSL: 1000
  • Hardwired cable or better: 1500.

===================


And that's Yummy's *taste* of things

 Yummy