Debug Me
After teasing us for a few days, Maitreya has finally released the adorable tunic and boots this morning. I love the casual, laid back style both have so I wanted to shoot them in or near a field of some sort. I found Abduction Alley which is on the Nestlefire sim on Koinup Places. I fell in love with this place immediately because it was so interesting. It has a mix of an old hometown feel but then of course a big gaping alien landing hole behind the diner. It’s really nicely done and definitely a fun explore.
Anyhow, I found this field of wheat with the scarecrow and the windmill and I just felt it was the perfect place to take a picture, however there was one issue. There was a huge amount of glow coming from the wheat so it was totally destroying the picture. So then I asked my friends on plurk because I couldn’t remember the debug setting to turn glow off again and of course, as always, they came through.
So that gave me the idea to share some of my favorite debug settings with you guys, figured it would help me remember them next time too. Debug settings include unsupported hidden features that are not exposed in the standard user interface, in addition to settings that are exposed through the PREFERENCES window. To access debug settings, go to the Advanced menu > Debug Settings.
These are the settings I always setup (or try and remember to anyways) whenever I install a new viewer.
- RenderGlow – Set that to false and it will disable glow. However I noticed it didn’t take ALL the glow away from the wheatfield. I also had to fiddle with RenderGlowResolutionPow. I knock that down from 9 to 5 and it got rid of glow completely.
- RenderVolumeLODFactor – This one makes all my prims and sculpts look 100 times better. The default is usually set to 2 and they say you should at least put it on 4, however I keep mine on 14, cuz that’s my lucky number. 😛
- RenderUnloadedAvatar – This one saves me every time I’m stuck as a cloud. Just set that one to true and it will show avatars which haven’t finished loading.
- The following are my three favorite mesh settings, I was having a lot of problems with mesh and I just set these and it fixed a lot of issues for me:
Meshbytespertriangle: 128
Meshmaxconcurrentrequests: 128
MeshminimumByteSize: 1 - YawFromMousePosition – This one helps a bit with photography when sometimes in certain poses if I’m moving my mouse around my head follows the mouse and I don’t necessarily want that. The default to this is 90.0 so if you set it to 0 it’ll fix that.
What are your favorite debug settings?
Click here for the Debug wiki page for a full list of all of the settings and what they do.
EDIT: Torley Linden has a great Photo checklist up on the SL wiki that also covers some debug settings.
» For more of my tutorials, check out my tutorials page.
Credits:
*Skin: [PXL] FAITH OLIVE RC.16 MEB by Hart Larsson (Not released yet)
*Hair: ::Exile::Quiet Dream:Brownie by Kavar Cleanslate
*Tunic: Maitreya Xarra Tunic – Flamingo S+ by Onyx LeShelle
*Boots: Maitreya Stagioni Boots * XS-S Sand by Onyx LeShelle
*Necklace: [ glow ] studio – Key to my Heart necklace (no bow) by Jocelyn Anatine
Wheat in mouth: Contreverse Epi de Ble For Mouth by Ameno Heron
*Pose: Geez by Grazia Horwitz
Location: Abduction Alley on the Nestlefire sim (Found on Koinup Places)
I love that dress and the boots are so great with it. I’ve got me some fresh Lindens and I’m heading inworld to get me some. (I might cheat and look at Marketplace though.) Love it.
Now for the debug settings. I know I want Glow turned off, can’t wait to checkout the others.
Ohh, that glow setting is going to be awesome to play with. But I will say, my favorite debug setting was NoInventoryLibrary, which elimated the SL library from my inventory – saves you a few thousand items that you don’t need. However, I think Firestorm forgot how to use this setting because it no longer works for me :\
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Are you using these settings all the time or just for shoots?
Thank you so much Berry!
@ Yordie, I see you posting your Maitreya mesh items all over facebook, looking good! 😛
@ Morgynn, oh that’s a good one! Definitely going to try that one and see if it works on Exodus.
@ pepys, Yes, I use those settings all the time, not just for shoots.
@ Sixx, my pleasure. <3 I updated my blogroll with your new blog link too. It looks awesome!
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Strawberry, thank you for yet another helpful round of visual tips! I had forgotten about adjusting those mesh settings until I saw yours, so I need to experiment with that.
Also, if anyone ends up getting weird vertical lines by lowering RenderGlowResolutionPow, leave that at 9 but decrease RenderGlowStrength gradually to 0 (the name makes sense as to what it does), or decrease RenderGlowIterations to 0. Both of these more directly affect the glow strength instead of how it’s divided across the screen.
(Setting RenderGlow = FALSE only seems to totally work when you have deferred rendering aka “shadows and all that good stuff” off.)
Torley, thank you! Great advice. It’s wonderful to get an explanation of the settings so I actually understand what they all do. I’ll bring back RenderGlowResolutionPow to 9 and lower Strength.
I really appreciate all your tips and helpful hints. They help my photography tremendously. <3
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Thanks a lot for these hints. Didn’t know the ones about meshes, gonna try them immediately !
I sent notices with the link to your post (as well as the French translation from Chloe) to a few groups that I think will find them most useful 🙂
Personal favorite debug setting : RenderTextureMemoryMultiple. Only useful for Mac-users, whose SL will be quite better after setting it to 1.0 instead of 0.5 (quite a weird setting, Linux and Windows users have it set at 1.0, only us Mac-users are supposed to give up half our graphics card memory. Maybe that made sense for some reason in 2004, but the setting never changed since then ^^)
And .. uh.. a bit sorry about that, especially after you shared such useful info with us, but.. as far as I really love this Maitreya tunic, and that I also cherish these boots.. they just don’t match ! I think the result is much beter when worn separately, or at least with the tunic over some jeans or cotton pants. (Sorry again, just can’t help being a pain)
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Miss Singh,
I just wanted to give you a new Thank You from myself. I am constantly trying to improve my photography skills for my blog, and your tutorials (both written and video) have proven invaluable in helping me get better and better.
I will continue to use your help for as long as it’s here for all of SL.
Very Kind Regards,
Kitty DeVaux
With RenderUnloadedAvatar: the Avatar will not show correctly! It’s Ruth or parts of Ruth, if some of the Avatarparts are available.
I’ve been out of sl for more than a year, for the most part. The other day I remembered, “omg, there are some great debug settings for mesh!” Alas, I couldn’t remember the name of a darn one of them. You’ve, once again, saved my life. <3
– Kake (Katelynn) Dastardly