One of the very best Third Party Viewers in Second Life, Catznip, released the version 8 release today and it is GRrrrEAT! Oh right that's Frosted Flakes, well Catznip is wonderful and this release prepares for the server side baking we've all been eagerly awaiting. Read about the release here http://catznip.com/2013/06/12/catznip-r8-release/ then hurry over to the download page You will eventually need a viewer that can handle the new process, I recommend this one, it's fast and easy to learn, not to even mention some great features you'll only find in Catznip. See you in Second Life
Second Life needs more than anything someone who will champion what it is doing, someone to shout about the good and interesting things it does...Advertising anyone?
Here's a recent interview with the current CEO of Linden, the creators of Second Life
After seeing this video, I was reminded of an interesting piece that Philip Rosedale (the creator and prior CEO of Second Life) did a few years ago. The video covers many things, but, he does talk at length about Second Life. At 10:10, he talks very candidly about getting into Second Life; a bit of the why and the rewards. The whole video is an hour long, I found it interesting and hope you will too.
I have commented on and follow a Jira (SH-3025 - Multiple tattoo layers will possibly cause avatar texture bake to malfunction)
It deals with an avatar rendering problem that is not as well publicized, within Second Life, as it probably should be. It is becoming more common, I think because make-up layers have become quite popular and are on the tattoo layer. The issue arises sometimes - it is very inconsistent and hard to replicate, you can go for weeks without an incident. One of the manifestations only becomes apparent when someone tells you, that you are not rezzing for them yet you look fine to yourself. Often when you sign out, you come back as that lovely incandescent cloud. The fix is incredibly simple... take off the tattoos and put them back on, voila, you're back. There are other indicators, one that you change your outfit but nothing happens for you, others may see you naked, but, your inventory or outfits folder shows you wearing clothing and unable to remove it. If you have suffered that, the tattoo layer may be your culprit. Hopefully all of that is about to change.
Just today, Dan Linden commented on that JIRA, directing us to a project in the "secret" Linden Labs, as he put it...some work being done on avatar rendering among other things called Project Shining
Pass it on, please pass it on to all of our long suffering comrades, tired of Ruth and the endless list of things that cause us to have to use her.
I don't know how many of Natale's list of reasons and the solutions will become unnecessary, I just hope a lot.
The Catznip Viewer is a new addition on the third party viewer (TPV) list. It offers Restrained Love in a viewer modeled closely on the Linden viewer. For new residents of Second Life and those of us who have become accustomed to the Linden Viewer over the more than 2 years of its existence, this is good news.
It offers an alternative to the Firestorm Viewer and Marine's venerable Restrained Love Viewer, along with others who have offered RLV for varying periods of time.
I've been using Catznip for about 4 months now, yes it was available before being placed on the TPV list and it works great. It became one of the recommended viewers for girls joining the Toy Slaves Brothel (RLV required) approximately 8 weeks ago and has functioned very well.
There is more to the viewer than just RLV, here's what the developers Kitty Barnett & Trinity Dejavu say about their viewer.
"Catznip aims to refine and reinvent your window into Second Life. Our focus is stability, usability, privacy and plenty of new original home grown features.
As a project, Catznip is not and will never be a bucket list of features cherry picked from the other projects, nor a laundry list of pre-release Linden code. It’s about taking a fresh look at things and attempting to do them better.We are very open to feature ideas or requests, but please present them in the form of a use case and not simply “Add X from Viewer Y” !"
If you have followed the development of RLVa, you'll recognize Kitty as a developer of the Restrained Love used in many of the Third Party Viewers.
To read more about Catznip or to download this excellent viewer visit their website
Here's a short video about installing it. It's easy, no files to transfer over, just download, install and jump into Second Life. It comes with RLVa turned off. All of the viewers excepting Marine's (where it's always on) arrive with Restrained Love turned off.
To activate it in the viewer go to Preferences (Ctrl+P), when the Preferences window opens choose the side tab labelled Catznip and place a checkmark in the box for RestrainedLove API suppoert (requires restart). The viewer will need to indeed be restarted for RLVa to take effect, so log out and then back in and you'll be in RLVa.
Watch the video in YouTube to take advantage of fullscreen and HD
Correcting a bad hair day in Second Life may just be easier than in Real Life. I've created a video to illustrate how to use the edit menu and resizing menu(available in many hairs) to properly fit hair to your avatar in Second Life. Anyone who has tried to explain how to do this to a new resident using text is sure to understand, I hope this video helps. I hope that people eventually do learn all these things without much help. I would hate to think we lose too many who find it just too hard. Anyway for what it's worth... Oh and for the RL Bad Hair Days, I just wear a hat. The video is best viewed full screen and in HD
Click here to read the script or use the script to translate
I've been a little lazy in posting to my blog in the last few months. Lots of different reasons that I simply won't bore you with. Getting back to my original purpose of promoting and informing and training (that might be three purposes) in Second Life, I have decided on starting back up with a new video. One perplexing issue that I see over and over again, is residents not wearing their shoes properly. Shoes have evolved from simple objects with feet squeezed into them, blocky SL toes revealed in our open toed sandals, to delicate constructions with beautiful feet and incredibly detailed shoes. Along with these changes came HUDs to do many, many things. Perhaps the most important of these was matching the foot colour in these new shoes to your skin. That was always the early knock on wearing the shoes, however, the creators have become incredibly adept at skin matching offering the ability to make very subtle changes even in some cases including notecards with RGB numbers for the most common skins. With all of this, the most common mistake I see new residents make is failing to wear the shoe shape...
it's the clothing layer piece that allows your foot to be shaped to fit inside. The video gives more details on how to wear shoes.
I hope to have it make it into a new and updated Quick start video to replace my now outdated walk down memory lane
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjIY4w03HB8 I could get distracted and off track here, but, this was to be about shoes and wearing them. I'll save things like my love for the new Catznip viewer for another post. Hopefully it'll come a little sooner. Here's the video, as always the video is designed to be... Watch in full screen and HD from the You Tube
