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Summer 2021 – New MST and ChoreoHUD beta releases!

Hello  MetaHarper Show Tools users! If you have been following our releases you may have noticed much polishing and maintenance over the last year. The performing arts in Second Life are growing and there has never been so many live choreographed performances as there are today. I am happy to see that this art form continues to flourish, and I hope to contribute to this trend by developing even bigger and more ambitious show creation equipment.

I’m happy to announce the next round of new features for MetaHarper Show Tools and ChoreoHUD Director for 2021! The following features are in a working/testable state and I’m actively looking for design partners to try them out in full live shows:

  • Very Long Path (VLP) movers. These movers can hold hundreds of waypoints in memory, so choreographers can keep them active in a performance for an hour or even longer without having to stop or takes breaks.
  • Movers can now be shared to multiple performance engines. This allows different choreographers to hand off control of the same mover to each other, or the same choreographer to create animation sequences of an hour or longer.
  • When designing movement paths, the movers have new features to help smooth out travel speeds between waypoints.
  • Movers, Performance Engines, and Camera HUDs are now ‘Experience Aware’! They can be configured so that users will not be bothered my pop-up permission requests when sitting on movers or clicking for dance invites. Additionally, the scripted camera design tool will no longer bother the user with popup camera permissions requests.

If you are interested in using one or more of the above features in your up coming live performances and have the time to allow for learning some new tricks and providing feedback, I’d love to hear from you!

I have some other projects current in active development but they are not ready for testing. These include:

  • Adding ‘macro’ or ‘hot button’ capabilities to ChoreoHUD
  • Adding the capability for ChoreoHUD to show organized subsets of animations
  • Adding the ability to pull a full sim of audience members into choreography, using mover/animations

Is there something that you don’t see on this list? Please let me know. I hope to see you all on stage!

-Arrehn

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Message from Arrehn- A Sincere Thank You to Pioneers

Once upon a time I created the MetaHarper Show Tools for myself, to help manage a complex show that had outgrown my ability to frantically click buttons. Later, the tools helped a circle of friends with their own artistic performance pursuits. When we fast-forward to today, many users are people I have never met before, drawn together only by a common interest to see live multimedia performances flourish in Second Life.

As our list of creative users expands, the features and capabilities of MST and ChoreoHUD and even Immersive Theater have outgrown my ability to use every feature myself. As a result, I now depend on fearless people to tell me what is working well, what could use some additional layers of loving polish, and what might need to be a future feature.

I know that the people who send this feedback do this tread a more difficult path.  We all have a choice in what tools we use. When faced with the unknown, it is often far easier to quietly use another tool, or find private workarounds, rather than go back to me and invest the time to dive deep into the technical details and pursue improvements. This is not in any way surprising, it is expected. Most people want to focus on sharing their art and choreography and not focusing too hard on where their technical tools came from, and there’s nothing wrong with this.

Having said that, there are some of you that do take the time and effort to choose MST and push me with feedback when you need improvements. Maybe you like our non-commercial roots, or you like our interoperability, or perhaps you  had a positive experience with myself or someone else who helped develop MetaHarper tools. Regardless of the reason, I cannot overstate how important this is for our success. I and all the MST users owe a debt to the people who have gone out of their way to help troubleshoot complex issues, contribute documentation, share ideas for improvements, and commit to trying new features during high  stakes, live performance on regions overloaded with eager audiences who might not be seen again for another week or even month.

If you are one of these fearless pioneers, know that you make working on show technology rewarding. We’re part of a community of people pushing the boundaries of what is safe, prudent, and possible. This is a fine place to be.

I want to recognize some of the people who have especially helped our Show Tools evolve over the last year. In no particular order:

  • Blaze DeVivre
  • Meegan Danitz
  • P0rsche3000
  • Sho Kyong
  • Jenna Dirval
  • Subversive Vavoom
  • Gloriana Maertens
  • Honey Heart
  • Cherryblonde Scribe
  • Kareen Magic
  • Fifi Oh
  • Diawa Bellic
  • Chewie Quixote

If I’ve left anyone out please do let me know! I can only hope the list will be as long next year. Thank You!

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MST Choreo HUD Credits

Design and Programming:

  • Arrehn Oberlander

Artwork:

  • Joseph Wain
  • Sho Kyong
  • Sammie Benoir
  • Fifi MetaHarper Oh

Design Partners:

  • Deb Heron
  • Jenna Dirval
  • Meegan Danitz
  • Sho Kyong
  • Diawa Bellic

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Experiments Zapping Script Lag #1

Over the weekend I experimented with yet another method for avoiding script lag from rezzed, scripted objects.

Does this effect you?

You may not realize your region suffers from rezzed object script lag. This is a large topic but for a quick test, do this: Wait till your region has only a few avatars on it. Open up the performance monitor in your viewer with control-shift-1. Scroll down about 2/3rd of the window, and find the line that says ‘Scripts Run”.  If this number is lower than 80%, Your region likely suffers unduly from rezzed object script lag.

Ok, so what’s the news?

I’ve been experimenting injecting a script into rezzed objects. The idea is that this script that can stop and stop the other scripts inside that object, on demand.

This would allow you to do things like stop all non-essential scripts in the sim during the hours it was hosting a performance.

I tested pausing and resuming scripts within objects managed this way, as well as setting up exclusion zones, so you could say “I want to pause all scripted objects more than 100m away from my theater”. This would allow all your performance objects to continue to run.

The starting and stopping mechanism is more like a “pause” and is not destructive like a script reset is. When the managed objects are resumed, they pick up processing where they left off.

One drawback to this method is that it can only be used for objects where the owner has MOD rights, and is only efficient for managing objects with 2 or more scripts inside them. Even so, early research is that it could make a significant impact on script lag from rezzed objects.

What might be next?

At this point I’m like to hear from you if you’re a region owner who might be interested in using this method to control script lag. If there’s interest there is some advanced potential, for example building a system that pauses some kinds of low-priority scripted objects when their owners are away and unable to notice.

Until Soon, -Arrehn

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Coming to a Theater Near You… MST Templates

If you look backstage at your favourite performance theater you might see a mesh logo like the one in the picture to the left, the MetaHarper harp-mermaid.

If you click this object, you will be given a notecard containing useful information for show creators. Some of this information will be of interest to MetaHarper Show Tools (MST) users, and some of this notecard will be of interest to anyone who creates acts for this theater regardless of the tools they use. You will find:

  • The Theater’s official MST Centerpoint name.
  • The Theater’s official centerpoint owner.

These pieces of information are useful to configure your MST Performance Engine (aka, the ‘newAct’ object) . You do not have to use the above pieces of information– you are free to rez your own MST centerpoints if you have access to do so, but using the official centerpoint will help keep the theater decluttered.

In addition to centerpoint info above, you will find a full permission, color-coded theater template, for anyone who wishes to make acts for this theater. An example of one is shown in the image below.


White areas show walls that your audience will see. You may wish to cover these with your props or retexture them.

Black areas represent obstructions that are built into the theater, such as columns, walls, stairs, etc. Avoid any movement in your act that would cross into black areas. It is also recommended not to cover these up with props or retexture them- leave them alone. Additionally, there is often a black prim near the lower-front of the stage to provide an indicator of how high above the theater floor the stage begins.

Grey areas represent backstage space where other performers or props can be safely out of sight of the theater audience. It is recommended that you use the grey areas to temporarily hold props or avatars that move in and out of your act scene.

Blue areas represent ‘thrusts’ in front of the main stage curtain that are visible to the audience. The blue areas can be safely retextured or covered to fit your scene, but be aware that it will be visible before the curtain opens.

How do I use these new Theater Templates?

You may use these templates by travelling to your build area of choice, opening the ‘MST Theater Template Instructions‘ notecard you received from the theater’s backstage harp-mermaid object, and clicking the embedded object icon next to the template’s name. You will be presented with a dialog asking if you wish to copy the template to your inventory. Confirm ‘Yes.’

From there, drag the template from your inventory to your build area.

If you are using the MST suite, navigate your camera under the template’s floor and find the bright white ‘centerpoint marker’. Edit this object in your viewer’s build window. Take a note of the marker’s position coordinates and rotation values. You may which to copy these values to your clipboard by clicking the lowercase ‘c’ button next to each section, then pasting the values into a temporary scratch space such as a notecard, chat window, or external editor.

Next rez your MST Venue Centerpoint, and set its position and rotation to the values you have recorded above. You may click the lowercase ‘p’ button to paste in the values from the clipboard directly, saving time. When you are finished, your red centerpoint should be lined up with the white marker under the stage floor. Give your red centerpoint a name that matches the suggested one in the template’s notecard.

Now, when you build acts on in your workspace, you will have confidence they will line up perfectly with your target theater!

Special Note: The white sections of the template are spaced out a little in front of the target theater so they can accept your own textures without “z-fighting” graphical interference you would normally get if you place two objects too close together.

If you wish to retexture the white or blue surfaces, unlink these prims from the template, retexture them as you like, and then pack them into your MST performance engine’s rezzer similar to any other prop. When you unpack them at the actual theater they will be in the correct location and look just as you would expect.

If your favourite theater does not have a backstage MST informational notecard giver like this, and you would like one, I’m happy to work with the theater owner to set one up.

Happy Show Creating!

-Arrehn Oberlander

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MetaHarpers Immersive Theater Experience: 2019

Located in the Eyefliez region of Second Life, we’ve created a new kind of live theater and act gallery that explores some new types of show formats and stage technology.

We use the SL “Experience” System to give the illusion of a seamless experience where you are transported away to different lands to become part of a scene.

This area is under construction but will soon contain a gallery of interactive scenes as well as hosting occasional live scenic events. Further technical details about the experience are described in the comments below.