Cool VL Viewer forum

I just noticed today after upgrading from the 1.28.0.x branch to 1.28.2.1 that female SL hair is now messy looking, appearing to have large gaps or not appear at all.

I am using Atmospheric Shader (Windlight) rendering mode, not the Advanced Lighting Model.

I did notice that I am not able to turn off RenderDeferredInvisible when in EE rendering mode (it is always on regardless of True/False settings) - is it possible that this makes mesh hair and specific mesh objects attached to avatars either disappear, have large gaps, or not appear at all?

No log (and not repro steps), no diagnostic. But I am not seeing any rendering glitch with meshes here (hair or otherwise), whatever the rendering mode in force... If you got old mesh hair using an invisprim, you should remove the latter and use an Alpha layer instead, to hide part of the avatar head under the hair (if at all needed).

Henri,

Here's the log (apologies for not attaching it) along with a .gif of how specifically, female hair looks on 1.28.0.x vs. 1.28.2.x

Here is how to reproduce the issue (on Windows 10):
1) Install CoolVL 1.28.2.1 (current version)
2) Attach any hairstyle that uses a transparency to an avatar while using the legacy avatar head.

Graphics settings used are as follows:
Bump Mapping and Shiny: on
Atmospheric Shaders: on
Glow: on - strength 0.25
Advanced Lighting Model: off
Transparent water: on
Water reflections: on - Terrain and Trees
Rigged Mesh Skinning Shader: on
Avatar Cloth Shader: off
Extended Environment Shaders: on

If there is any other way I can help explain it, let me know.

Thanks.

I cannot reproduce this issue here, and I'm not seeing anything wrong in the log.

Beside, there is no reason for any rendering difference between v1.28.0 and v1.28.2 (*): they are both using the exact same set of shaders and the same rendering pipeline code. The only differences between the two are in mesh vertex optimization (but once optimized, the mesh is cached in the VFS that is shared by both versions, so if it was a bug in it, you'd see it in both viewers alike), mesh upload floater, and the removal of anything 32 bits in v1.28.2 (but since both were compiled for 64 bits, it won't make a single difference).

Try enabling the avatar cloth shaders (even if I doubt it will make a difference).

If it fails, then try clearing the NVIDIA OpenGL shader cache, and rename the user_settings\settings_coolvlviewer_1282.xml to something else, so to start with fresh settings.

---

(*) Of course, if we are speaking of v1.28.0.19 (last v1.28.0 release) and v1.28.2.0/1, since a bug could possibly have been introduced somewhere between v1.28.0.0 and 1.28.0.19... Must compare viewers released at the same time !

Henri,

Thank you for the reply.

I tried clearing the Nvidia OpenGL Shader cache and also started the viewer with the default settings (changing the "settings_coolvlviewer_1282.xml" to "settings_coolvlviewer_1282-old.xml") - it yielded the same result. I then tried turning on the avatar cloth shaders, although it made no difference. (see picture)

The version I was using when I posted the previous side by side comparison was 1.28.0.19 and 1.28.2.1.

To verify that it is not an Nvidia issue, I tried Cool VL 1.28.2.1 on a laptop with an Intel graphics accelerator (log files attached) and got the same result, which tells me something has changed in the rendering of mesh with alpha textures and/or invisiprims when attached to avatars in the 1.28.2.x branch.

I hope this helps!

NOTE: I split this thread into a new topic, since it had nothing to do with invisprims rendering (which was left totally untouched in the branching process and not even involved in the object rendering glitch, since there's no invisprim in that object in the first place).

I still CANNOT reproduce this issue and find it highly suspicious that it would be due a change between v1.28.0.19 and v1.28.2.0 (there is nothing in the diff that could produce such a glitch). I'd rather suspect a bug introduced somewhere in the v1.28.1 branch, but since you did not use it, I cannot know what change caused this !

I need to reproduce this issue to hope finding out what causes it. If you have any free hair causing it, please send me a copy.

Sure...you can really tell the difference with these styles:

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/DO ... O/17810455
https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Ex ... h/12938154

If I can find more, I will let you know.

Ah, these are rigged mesh hair objects, not just mesh attachments... OK, I could reproduce the issue.
It is a problem (or a simple algorithm difference) with the new mesh optimizer code (implemented in v1.28.1.5)...

You may work around it by disabling "Advanced" -> "Rendering" -> "Optimize vertex cache".

I will re-implement the old algorithm for next release. EDIT: it turns out that this also happens with v1.28.0 (and any other viewer) when "Optimize vertex cache" is enabled... Those mesh hair simply do not like being optimized (probably some flaw in the design with degenerate vertices or whatnot)... I'll keep the new code (since the old one does not perform any better with such mesh objects). I will however make the "Optimize vertex cache" setting off by default.

I set RenderOptimizeMeshVertexCache to FALSE in version 1.28.2 and it fixed the rendering issue.

Thanks, Henri, you are the best!