Model's Workshop is the BOMB

Some things that people do are so necessary, yet so simplistic, that you wonder why they weren't done by anyone before. Ideas that are so brilliant in their conception, and execution, that you stand in awe of the person who conceived them and then implemented them. Monica Balut is one of these people. She, and her self-effacing 2nd in command, Herradura Baar have done exactly that, taken a simple idea, a play so basic that we all know it instinctively, and refined it into an on-going, must attend event.

Each week, on Thursday @ 5 SLT they host a "free" show. They invite/beg/conscript/arm twist a guest speaker who selects a topic of their own choice and shares anecdotes, hard-won wisdom, amusing tidbits, plugs for their company, and. often, hands out must have "freebies/spliffs". Agency owners, supermodels, , event winners, and trainers who run L$10,000 tuition modeling schools all appear, stand there and "pay it forward" to the audience of rapt listeners that gather each Thursday evening.

Model's Workshop was begun in February 2009 and almost 30 sessions have been held so far, as well as a couple of runway events and contests including one running now. Monica was kind enough to give me the previous meeting transcripts, which I've been reviewing for the my book. I plan to edit these and give them back eventually, that is on my to-do list. These transcripts are long but buried in them there is all sorts of stuff I was never taught in any modeling school. Invaluable stuff................... Monica's treatise, Reducing Lag and Maximizing Performance for Fashion Shows(And other recommendations) alone should be read by every SL model before they ever think about walking a runway ( I have appended that at the end of this post with her permission). Monica has also produced/created a number of very nice tools for models including the Balut Runway HUD, the Balut Walk Replacer and the Balut Easypose.

The mere fact that Model's Workshop doesn't charge stuns me. I believe that donating to support it is like giving blood. A good idea, but one that Monica and Herradurra don't pursue loudly at each meeting and one that I am proposing here in public without their permission :-P.

I can’t say enough about Monica and Herradura. Support Model’s Workshop generously

I’m just,

Nave


Reducing Lag and Maximizing Performance for Fashion Shows
(And other recommendations)
by Monica Balut 5/28/09

Lag in SecondLife generally refers to when responsiveness appears slower than what we would expect it to be. There are three sources of lag in SecondLife.
1) If the simulator (the Linden Labs computer managing the particular region you are in, aka the server or sim) is overloaded with things it has to do, it falls behind. Everything looks like it slows down. What you will notice most is that your walk will slow down, sometimes to a crawl. There is not much you can do about server side lag except to not contribute any more to it than possible. (See below.)

2) If there is a problem with the network between the LL computers and yours, or among the LL computers themselves) the information flow may be slowed or lost altogether. Again there is not much you can do about network lag except to make sure that your own network connections are okay and your computer can handle what is coming at it.

3) Your own computer may not be able to keep up with the information it has to handle. This is really the only thing you can do something about and is the focus of this paper.This is a compilation of various sets of recommendations I have received as well as my own research on this topic.

Maximize your computer’s performance in general

1) Get the most powerful computer you can afford.

2) Get the best video card you can afford with the most on board memory and make sure the latest drivers for it are installed.

3) Put as much RAM memory into your computer that you can (at least 2 Gig or more if possible) This is probably the single most important thing that will help performance.

4) Defragment your hard drive regularly.

5) Connect to the internet via a cable rather than a wireless router.

6) Close all unnecessary programs.

7) If you have a dual or higher core processor (most new computers do) consider having a higher core (CPU) run the SecondLife Viewer.

This involves setting the processor affinity. Start the SecondLife viewer.
Start the Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del). Click on the Processes tab. Search for the SecondLife.exe process and right click on it. Select Set Affinity. Check one of the higher CPU's. You will have to do this every time you start the program.

The viewer is the program you run on your computer (sometimes called the client) that connects via the internet to the computers at Linden Labs (the server side). Client side lag essentially is caused by your computer not being able to keep up with all the information it has to handle. There are a number of things you can do to significantly reduce the amount of information that has to be processed and thereby reduce client side lag.

The following are recommendations that will help reduce client side lag. Mixed in are other recommendations that are useful for fashion show work although not necessarily related to lag.

1) Clear Your Cache:

a. Prior to the show, Edit -> Preferences -> Clear Cache. Close the viewer -> Restart the SL viewer. Once restarted, open your inventory, and in the search bar type a long string of characters like “***********”. This forces SL to immediately reload your inventory. Give yourself at least 15 minutes. This can take some time, especially if you have a lot of items in your inventory.

b. After your inventory items have reloaded, Cam out into the audience and show room to reload all the textures in that area.

c. Try on all the outfits you will be wearing in the show to make sure everything can attach.
2) Edit Preferences Settings

a. General
i. Show Names -> Never (if you can get by without seeing the names of your team members)

ii. Start Location -> My Home (if you crash on the runway, you don’t want to rez back there in the middle of someone else’s walk.

iii. Small avatar names, Hide My Name on My Screen, Hide All Group Titles -> checked

b. Network
i. Maximum Bandwidth -> A mid range setting is probably best. If too low, your pipe to the internet is too small. If too large, you may be trying to take more data in than your computer can sustain. If you are experiencing high packet loss, you may want to reduce this setting. (Monitor packet loss with View -> Statistics Bar). If you find yourself "rubber banding" (your avatar walking a short distance and suddenly snaps back) this is a sign of packet loss. If this is happening first try to do everything described below. If it continues, reduce your bandwidth setting.

ii. Disk Cache Size -> Set to the maximum that your hard drive can sustain.

c. Graphics

i.Set the Quality and performance slider to low. If you have trouble seeing if you are in a dark place, World -> Environment Settings -> Midday. This is one of the most important things you can do. It reduces significantly reduces the work your computer must do to render the scene.

ii.Check the Custom check box. Further set the following:

1.Shaders: Uncheck everything

2.Avatar Rendering: Check: Avatar Impostors and uncheck the rest

3.Draw Distance: 64

4.Max Particle Count: 0

5.Move all remaining sliders to low

6.Lighting Detail: sun and moon only

iii.HARDWARE OPTIONS - click to open menu

1. uncheck Anisotropic Filtering

2. Antialiasing choose Disable

3. uncheck Enable OpenGLVertex Buffer Objects

iv. Check “Run SecondLife in a Window” and consider reducing the size of that window as you would when running any program in a smaller than maximum window.


d. Audio & Video

i. Turn off the sound by clicking on the speaker icon to the right of the master volume.

ii. Uncheck all the other boxes


e. Voice Chat

i. Uncheck the Enable Voice Chat box.

f. Communication Show Online Friend Notifications -> unchecked Uncheck everything else you can get by without.

3) Further reduced unnecessary rendering. Uncheck the following: (These will all revert to the default settings when you restart the viewer)

a. Advanced -> Rendering -> Types
i. ctrl-alt-shft 3 Tree
ii. ctrl-alt-shft 6 Sky
iii. ctrl-alt-shft 7 Water
iv. ctrl-alt-shft 8 Ground
v. ctrl-alt-shft 0 Grass
vi. ctrl-alt-shft - Clouds
vii. ctrl-alt-shft = Particles
viii. ctrl-alt-shft \ Bump

b. Advanced -> Rendering -> Features
i. crtrl-alt F5 Foot Shadows
ii. crtrl-alt F6 Fog
iii. crtrl-alt F7 Palletized Textures
iv. crtrl-alt F8 Test FRInfo
v. crtrl-alt F9 (opt) Flexible Objects

c. Press CTRL+ALT+D to open advanced menu, then click Advanced- Debug Settings

i. Type: RenderAvatarMaxVisible. This sets how many avatars the viewer will attempt to keep visible.
ii. The default is 35. Consider changing the value to 25 (or lower) if you dare. BUT CAREFUL. It will affect your view. You won’t see all avatars anymore. Only 25 or whatever number you allow will be visible, the ones that are most near. You may even lose sight of the model you are suppose to cue off of and she may not reappear until it's too late in a laggy environment. You definitely have to experiment with this value. But it's great for reducing client side lag.

4) Reduce the load on the servers (the sim) at Linden Labs
a. Detach any HUD attachments that you are not going to use during the show. b. Keep shoes, jewelry as low prim as possible.
c. Do not wear bling items.
d. Do not wear anything with scripts in it (except of course your walk replacer and pose player)
e. Consider low prim hair and other attachments.

5) Other recommendations

a. Advanced -> Rendering -> Axes

i. Turn this on and a vertical white line will appear through the center of your body and upward. Use this to line up with where you want to walk. (It tends to be a little inaccurate in tight places where you can’t see very far ahead, like when the camera auto zooms in over your head because of nearby invisiwalls)

b. After every wardrobe change, immediately Edit Appearance and close the window. This forces clothes to appear more quickly. Then rebake textures (Advanced -> Character -> Rebake Textures or Ctrl-Alt-R)

c. Avoid wearing sculpties because if they don't rez you're wearing balloons. If you need to wear them, make sure you have a quick alternative available.

d. Turn off the typing animation. This keeps you from inadvertently starting to type if you accidentally enter text in the chat box. Advanced -> Debug Settings -> PlayTypingAnim -> False.

e. Uncheck Advanced -> Character -> Tap-Tap-Hold to Run. If this is checked and if you inadvertently hit the forward arrow key twice in a row quickly, you start running down the runway. (Not cool).

f. Remember to wear the correct group name tag.

6) Consider having a separate settings file just for fashion shows.Most of the settings described above will persist between logons. The settings described above are likely NOT the ones you will want to use in your regular time in SL. Consider maintaining two (or more) different sets of settings so you don't have to set all of these for every fashion show. This can be done automatically using command line settings when starting SL and using a command file to execute all of this.

Here is how to do it in Windows.Right click on your desktop screen then select New -> Text Document.

Rename it as SLFashionShows.cmd (The .cmd is the important part. The rest can be any name you want).

Right click on the new icon that was created and select Edit. Type in the following, all on the same line:

"C:\Program Files\SecondLife\SecondLife.exe" --settings settings_show.xml

The part in double quotes (yes you do type in the quotes) is the path to the SecondLife viewer (program) on your computer. It may be different on your computer. You can verify where that is on your computer by right clicking on the icon that normally starts SecondLife and looking at the Target field.The part after --settings (settings_show.xml) tells SecondLife what file to use to read all the settings from. Usually this is just named settings.xml. By using settings_show.xml (or whatever you want to call it (the .xml is a necessary part of the name)), you are telling the SL viewer to load a specific set of settings.Save the file.

The first time you start SL with a new settings file, it will be like starting SL for the first time with all the default settings that came out of the box the first time you downloaded it. Go through and set up SL the way you want to see it, including all the settings described above. The settings will be saved to the new file when you log out.

Create a similar file for your normal everyday use of SL. The contents of the cmd file would look like this:

"C:\Program Files\SecondLife\SecondLife.exe" --settings settings.xml

(The settings.xml file is the default file that contains the settings used. If you start SL from the usual icon this is the file that will be loaded.)

You could also create other such setting files, for example for photo work.

When you want to start SL with a particular set of settings, just doubleclick on the icon that you want.