One of the most popular technical requests for Second Life in recent months has been to extend 2K texture support to the Bakes on Mesh service, so it can be accessible for use directly on avatar clothing layers. During the Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting of September 10th, 2024, Pepper Linden indicated that an initial release of 2K Bakes on Mesh support could be forthcoming within the next week or so via the Beta grid – or Aditi, as it is called.

In an announcement posted of September 1th, 2024, Pepper confirmed that the capability is now available on Aditi for testing – and that accessing Aditi had now been simplified. To quote from the announcement:

Previously, residents were required to submit a support ticket to manually copy their accounts to Aditi. This process is now automated. Upon your first login attempt to the beta grid, your account will automatically sync, significantly simplifying access. Please be aware that the initial login may experience a brief delay as your account is copied over, but subsequent logins will proceed without delay.

And:

Inventory Synchronization

Each night, the beta grid will sync your inventory from Agni, provided you have logged into the beta grid within the past 24 hours. If you encounter issues where inventory items appear to be missing after synchronization, clearing your viewer’s cache should resolve the problem, as it may have cached your old inventory.

2K Bakes on Mesh Notes

In order to reduce the rendering impact in using 2K textures on system layers (skins, tattoo layers, clothing layers), there are limitations imposed on the system, whereby bakes will only be made at the highest resolution texture used in the avatar layers. So, for example:

• If all the layers are at 512×512 resolution, the resultant bake will be 512×512.
• If the majority of the layers are 512×512, but one is at 1024×1024, then the resultant bake will be 1024×1024, with the 512 textures up-scaled to 1024×1024.
• If the layers are all 1024×1024, the resultant bake will be 1024×1024.
• If the layers are predominantly 1024×1024, but one is 2048×2048, the result bake will be 2048×2048, with the 1024×1024 textures up-scaled to 2048×2048.

As Pepper revealed at the SUG meeting, the exception to this is eye textures: these are capped at a maximum resolution of 512×512, no matter what the resolution of the rest of the bake.

Issues and Feedback

Again to quote the official blog post:

We anticipate a temporary increase in system activity due to these enhancements. If you encounter any issues with these new enhancements, we highly recommend attending the Server User Group meetings held every Tuesday at 1 PM PST in the Denby region. Alternatively, you can submit a bug or feature request on feedback.secondlife.com. Your feedback is essential for refining and improving our services.

I’ll also continue to update this work through my SUG meeting summaries and, should the topic be raised at them, my Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting summaries.

Have a great week from all of us at Zoha Islands/ Fruit Islands/ Nocturne Project