Introducing - The Artiste SmartChange - Attacking Rez Issues

If you are looking for a video, there is none for this feature. Just a discussion and explanation on another feature of the Artiste Performance HUD.

Someone once said, after I had enumerated 57 features of the Artiste Suite, that they didn't know what half of them were. I sometimes forget that I made some of these terms up and that they will fall on deaf ears unless I do my due diligence and take the time to describe what they mean and do.

 How can I expect anyone to take serious interest in this product suite if they don't know what all the components do, and some of how it does what it does? Well that's a laborious process and requires patience on my part as well as potential customers. So I am trying to be patient and do what needs to be done first and foremost. Explain just what IT IS.

One such term is SmartChange.  It is a built-in feature of the Artiste Performance HUD. With just about every feature we introduce, we attempt to also solve pressing problems that performers face in this business. I am always looking for ways to solve live-show issues.

If you have ever had:

1) Missing hair
2) Missing shoes/boots
3) Double-worn items
4) Bare alpha layers

...then this may interest you and may someday help you resolve some of these issues, should you at some time in the future decide on the Artiste Suite as your primary performance solution, or at least, an addition to your tool-set.

 I was inspired to research this phenomena when I attended a festival show and saw 4 out of 5 sets for a particular troupe having failed hair rezzing. Me and my testing assistant and myself also experienced failed rezzing. This was 2 or 3 years ago. I have recently seen and continue to see missing hair, footwear and failed alphas which has brought this issue to the forefront of my attentions.

Anyways, after much trial and error, it appeared to be isolated to items with a lot of prims in their linkset trying to update at the same time; like hair, shoes, jewelry. We also discovered the timing of the application of alpha layers to be suspect.

So....I implemented an automatic feature that occurs during a full outfit change we call Wear/Unwear. You can can specify up to 5 SmartChange sets that describe special rules to follow when changing outfits. It can cover a maximum of 5 outfit changes per set.

You can isolate and advance or retard, in seconds, the wearing of certain items at certain times in an outfit change cycle. You can also specify applying alpha layers separately and in isolation of other items...waiting for the clothing or attachment 1st before applying the alpha, as well as not combining alphas. 

You have lots of other options like applying things to help force a rebake we call AutoRebake, appying a fake tattoo layer we call AutoTattoo, AutoTeleport, and other customizable features for a given SmartChange. These are implemented via notecards.

We had about an 75-80% success rate with regards to fixing an existing rez issue. It didn't always work but it seemed to improve our odds. And you can also specify the number of retries which seemed to increase our rate of success,  up to a point.

And even if you are not changing outfits during a show...this feature can be used to wear your initial outfit, especially if you are changing outfits backstage in preparation for your next set, assuming you didn't leave home already dressed...and even then...this can aid in helping to ease the burden on the servers to do a lot in a short amount of time, often exasperated by a busy sim.

Hopefully by release time, LL will have resolved these issues ...but may also introduce new ones. SmartChange allows us to not only have a means of fighting off current rez issues but provides for enough flexibility to maybe even  address future issues we don't have yet.

Yumz