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Rooke Ayres

First of all, my most sincere apologies to BadKittyBeth for my running out on her parteh and earlier turning down her invitation to chat...

The last two weeks have been absolutely miserable for me.

Q: Why?

A: My avatars have all been dead.

Comments from teh peanut gallery: WTF?

OK, let me explain...

First, check out this JIRA: Vote for JIRA VWR-7935 - Face with same color that the hair, and if you feel sorry for any other mesh based avatar with the same affliction then please vote for it.
Note: Since starting this thread, I was tipped off to VWR-7957 - Clothing skinning error on nVidia. See below for details.


Now for the Details:

Two weeks ago from yesterday, I installed a brand new EVGA nVidia GeForce 9800GT 512MB video card...

Damn it was fast! Way, way, way faster than my old ATI X800XT 256MB.

To make sure I had no problems with SL, I even replaced the EVGA supplied drivers ( June - 175.31 ) with the newest ones from nVidia from July - 177.79.

I logged into SL with my Alt that uses a tattoo skin and prim hair. She looked OK, and WOW was SL running smooth as silk! (Hmmm, why is the bottom of her pants skin colored and go all the way down to the ground? Must be an SL glitch. It'll go away later. Don't worry about it.)

Then I logged in with my main avatar (Rooke) on a second viewer. Everything came up looking OK... Did I have Super Lag like before the new card? NO! Both viewers ran as smooth as silk.

Wow, was I ever a happy camper. I was so excited! I can finally edit/build/design with one avi on one viewer and test out on another avi in another viewer without having to wait 5-10 seconds between frame updates - which was a huge pain in teh rump.

I teleported to all the worst sims I could think of to test the card. Everywhere I went, it ran smoothly. So I went back to my shop on Solare, which, before, always had terrible lag when running dual viewers. It was still running smoothly. So, I was just about to do some editing when I noticed...

Why are my hands black? Huh? My feet are black too? Then I finally turned my avatar around to look at his face...

GASP!



I was a Poo-Headed Rooke! Waaaaa!!!!!!!

This was even worse than the time my Devil avatar got Ruthed:



So, I figured, I'll just go into Appearance Mode, pop out, rebake, and everything will be OK.

Oops! Wrong decision. Nothing got corrected in Appearance Mode. For that matter almost none of the controls worked in Appearance Mode. Whether I made the values 0 or 100 made no difference. I still had PooFace or white face or black face or whatever color my hair was, face, GIANT UNIBROW, a Torso, arms, and hands the color of whatever shirt (but not undershirt) I wore, Pants that dragged on the ground with flesh colored bottoms, socks that went all the way to my waist if I wore no pants. And feet that said "Top Foot" and the mirror of "Top Foot" if I wore no shoes or socks.

OK... Maybe Rebaking will fix the problem. Nope.

Well, lets try a different avatar... Nope. Another... Nope. Etc., Nope.

I went thru all my male avatars. They were all POO!

Suddenly, paranoid delusions whirled thru my mind like vultures over fresh road kill in Death Valley. ( zOMG, that's a great line! You may quote me on that anytime you wish. )

Did LL disable all the mesh based male avatar skins or something? I tried one of my female alts. Better, but the unibrow still showed up in Appearance Mode. I quit and undid the changes. The head was a different color than the torso skin but not as bad as on the male avatars.

All of my avatars looked like crap. They were all dead to me.

Suddenly I felt terrible. All that work I went thru to make them look exactly the way I wanted - ruined, and not correctable.

I couldn't let anybody see me like that in-world. Those weren't me. I no longer knew who those avatars were.

So I searched out little used corners of SL, where I could try to figure out what was going on - without anyone seeing me. Of course that's when everybody all of a sudden wants me to come to their partehs! Aagghh! Not looking like that. ( Sorry Beth, I just couldn't face anybody then - mainly because it wasn't my face. )

I spent a week trying everything that I could think of with the skins, shapes, and clothing. Nothing worked, and some things made things worse.

Last Monday I finally tried the JIRA. Amazingly enough I found someone else had the same problem. So I added my two cents to it. But there were no solutions... Bummer.

I spent another few nights trying a few last ditch wild ass guess type things and they didn't work either.

...

Yesterday morning, my wife and I were both on the same sim together. She was using the same viewer as me - the current official one. I noticed on my viewer that there were other mesh based avatars with the same problem that I had. We looked on my wife's viewer -- they looked normal!

Aha!!! My wife's nVidia card - a GeForce 7600GS, is using drivers that are about a year old.

But I was using the latest and greatest drivers. Hmmm... Someone once mentioned using the drivers that came on the manufacture's install CD. Would that work? It was worth a try...

Remember at the start of this thread, I said:

Well, I re-installed the June - 175.31 drivers...

Bingo! Everything was back to normal - after re-editing all of my avatars in Appearance Mode and "touching" all the afflicted parts, and saving.

So, as the title used to say, "Teh Hippie is Back from teh Dead!"

Yay!

__________________
Have a good one!

Brig McD

Welcome back Rooke

__________________


May the road rise up to meet you
May the sun shine warm upon your face
May the wind be at your back, and the rain fall soft
May your days be blessing filled

Rooke Ayres

Thanks Brig!

Macphisto Angelus

Good to see you back, bro!

I hope your post over in Katt land doesn't get butchered too badly.

Welcome home.

__________________
Mah OpenLife blahg

Joshua Nightshade

What is a "mesh based male avatar?"

Aodhan McDunnough

weebee

__________________

We can't get rid of Landbots but we can stop the damage.
VOTE this proposal on the Jira. Current votes: 71
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2905

Kontours Classic 1-prim chair. Sculpted, menu controlled
http://www.sluniverse.com/php/shop/s...ct=786&cat=500

Rooke Ayres

I'm not using any prim hair, prim shoes, or any other prim attachments. Instead I'm using Appearance Mode to add textures as hair, shoes, gloves, etc., then using the sizing controls to make those parts the size and shape that I desire.

I'm also not using any body or face tattoos for skin.

I wasn't sure what else to call it. I saw somebody somewhere else call an avatar that was using the mesh based hair a mesh based avatar.

Is there another label for that kind of avatar?

Rooke Ayres

Thanks! It's good to be back.

I survived Katt land.

Katt did add a comment to my post, and a comment to Brenda's quote of my post.

I'd like to comment about her comment, but it's not worth the aggravation that would follow.

I said my peace and she didn't remove it. So that's cool with me.

badkittybeth

Apologies not needed Rooke, but much appreciated.

Sorry to hear you had all that trouble over simple missing drivers. Glad to hear you are back to normal.

I request a makeup dance Even if you are a dirty flithy hippie.

Rooke Ayres

OK you'll get a make up dance, but you'll have to give me advance warning so I can take a shower first and wash off some of that dirt and filth.

I'm sure you'd rather I looked like this --> and not like this --> at the dance.







(mumble, grumble, dirty filthy hippie... sheesh. I wash every day... Not all hippies are dirty or filthy. Some of us are beatnik hippies out to make it rich, man. Oh yeah, it must be the season of the witch.)

badkittybeth

LOL sometimes dirty can be fun

no warning neccessary, just comeas you are.

Rooke Ayres

Note: Since starting this thread, I was tipped off to VWR-7957 - Clothing skinning error on nVidia.

All nVidia 8000 and 9000 series cards using nVidia 177.xx drivers on the 1.20 viewers are affected.

Joshua Nightshade

Er I think it's just an avatar, avatars with prim hair and stuff are still mesh based avatars as well. There's no difference to the system.

Rooke Ayres

The main reason I said it that way was because the the avatars using completely tattooed skin didn't show the corruption anywhere near as much.

Skins sans any tattoos got colored - heads take on the hair color, torsos take on the shirt texture, and feet either turn black or loose all texture completely depending on the pants worn, yet if not wearing any pants, then the legs up to the waist take on the sock texture.

Head and Upper and Lower Body Tattoos prevented most of that weirdness. Although the head coloration would be tinged with the hair color.

But unless you've got a 8000 or 9000 series nVidia card and are using the 177.xx series drivers along with the 1.20.xx viewer, then you don't have to worry about it.

Would "Avatars without head or body tattoos" be a better way to say it?