Materials Processing and SSA – a Designing Worlds special

Posted on by Inara Pey

designing-worldsOn Monday May 13th at 14:00 SLT, Designing Worlds will be premiering a special show in their current series which explores some of the new Second Life shiny which is coming out of Linden Lab at the moment.

The show, recorded earlier in the month, features Brooke, Oz, Troy and Nyx Linden as they discuss the upcoming deployments of Server Side Baking/Appearance and Materials Processing in SL.

Nyx, Troy, Oz and Brooke Linden during the recording of the Designing Worlds show (image courtesy of Wildstar Beaumont)
From left-to-right): Nyx, Troy, Oz and Brooke Linden during the recording of the Designing Worlds show (image courtesy of Wildstar Beaumont / Designing Worlds)

As regular readers here will know, Nyx Linden has very much been the public face / lead of Server-side Baking, and he’s joined in the show by Troy Linden to explain what is going on with the project, and why people need to understand the importance of ensuring they are running a viewer which supports SSB/A.

Following this, Oz and Brooke Linden will be explaining about Materials Processing and the use of normal and specular maps in Second Life. They’ll also be demonstrating some of the capabilities of Materials Processing, using samples of various items on display at Hippotopolis. Just remember that if you want to go and see them for yourself, you’ll need to download, install and run the Materials Processing project viewer until such time as the necessary code is made more widely available in the main SL viewer and TPVs.

With and without: how materials will look when running a viewer in differed mode (top) and in non-deiffered mode (bottom). The differences are clear, but the in-world experience in non-differred mode is not in any way "broken"
How materials processing can alter the appearance of objects: the top image shows a series of objects which use material properties (normal and specular maps) as seen through a viewer which can render them. The lower image shows the same objects in a viewer which is not using the materials processing capabilities

All of the Lindens attending the show took time to answer questions put to them by the Designing Worlds team on behalf of users.

Saffia Widdershins, who co-hosts the show with Elrik Merlin, said to me in discussing the premiere, “We were really pleased to have been able to do this show and discuss the issues with people from the Lab. Changes like this can worry a lot of users, and it was good to have the issues and benefits clearly explained.”

Watch the Show Live

If you would like to watch the show, you can do so in one of two ways:

If you missed either of these, catch up with the broadcast via my blog, or via the  Designing World’s channel on Treet TV.

Related Links

Published by Inara Pey

Eclectic virtual world blogger with a focus on Second Life, VR, virtual environments and technology.

5 thoughts on “Materials Processing and SSA – a Designing Worlds special”

  1. All that i watch in a Sl day basis is that most users don’t even know what is deferred rendering
    Main reason, most still use old Phoenix or if any V2/V3 viewer cide based, they run it without deferred rendering due to their hardware!
    This behavior is easy to find, just watch how many still use shoes with invisible prims instead of alphas!
    In any sim you will find at least 1 in 3 that keep using that and we all know that deferred rendering don’t show invisible prims properly so that means that at least 1 in 3 are not using deferred rendering (i’ll dare to say that even those that can use it don’t have it enabled, I’m one of the few that use always Dr and shadows on, but how many have the hardware necessary?

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    1. I have no idea why you raise Phoenix. The numbers of people using that view have been in steady decline since the start of the year, and Firestorm has long-since overtaken it as the most popular viewer in use in SL.

      While it is true that some people cannot run in deferred (or Advanced Lighting Model, as it is now called) isn’t really an issue per se, because materials processing doesn’t stop anyone from using Second Life when running in a non-deferred / ALM mode. All that will happen is that they won’t see the added depth materials gives to textured surfaces. Given that it is likely to be some time before materials is in widespread use across the grid, this is hardly a major detriment to their in-world experience.

      Also, LL have made a number of changes to rendering code which may mean that some who previously had a hard time running in deferred / ALM might actually find things somewhat improved if they try with a more recent version of their preferred viewer.

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  3. Phoenix, firestorm niran, it does not matter if users will not use Advanced Lighting Model!
    And its a loss, cause in fact Advanced Lighting Model used for instance with niran’s already makes SL amazing and i can only dream about waht materials can allow and improve!
    But for how many? When i go to any place and i watch a avatar, with their feet not rendering properly and the only way i have to see them good is to downgrade my graphics and uncheck Advanced Lighting Model!

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    1. Lolwat? As long as nobody fixes the combination of objects with partially transparent faces with projector lights, you will see lots of ugly people in the future WITH deferred rendering enabled! And with all the other bugs still present in deferred rendering mode, it’s no wonder nobody uses it.

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