So welcome to office hours, it's 4 p.m. We'll get started. If you have any questions, please drop them in the office hours text chat thread
I will just @tag office hours again, let them know that we're starting and then we'll see if there's any questions
I can't there are can't be that
There aren't any currently, but we'll see what happens once I @tag
That's @tag
Prime time that's fine. We've only got like six people here. Come on guys. Tell your friends. It's it's prime time
We're gonna talk about cheese. Um, I
I'm just gonna wait for people to join. I think we'll give them a few minutes simply because you know
All the people here are like people that are aware of
What I was gonna say to start with whilst I was waiting for questions, which is like hey check the announcements channel
We have another build. Yeah
But cool does anyone
Does anyone else get really bothered by socks? Not the user like actual socks, right? So my legs just don't don't like socks
I don't know if I'm like buying the wrong socks or something. But like
Hank was always itchy if I wear socks and sometimes like I'll put them on because I'm leaving the house and I'll forget to take
Them off. Yeah, it's like irritation. But it's also like I don't know. It feels like the socks are like clamping my legs too much
Anyway, guess we're talking about socks for a bit. There are no questions if you type in the question, we'll stop talking about socks
I promise. Oh, we have a natural question. Hell yeah, we can stop talking about socks
Although it is a quick question. Yes, the mentor program is open. You can find out more information about it on the wiki
I'm preparing the link for you right now. We can find out everything that you'd like to know about that
So weird like page break that shouldn't be there in in the wiki there. Let me see if I can get rid of that
It's logged me out. Great. I'll have to go to the login page
So wiki text which is
Similar to I guess like other forms of mark mark up etc. It's a little bit like mark down in the
It is what's called white space sensitive. So in some cases we just see like random line breaks that shouldn't be there
There we go. I fixed it
So yeah, if you're editing the wiki
Make sure that you add random line breaks in various places. Right moving forwards to actual questions
So Lou says
Maybe not need specific, but what's heavier on an on a per item basis material orbs or material slots?
So they're technically the same thing, right? So a
Material orb in Neos just refers back to the material that exists inside memory
This actually occurs a lot more in Neos than you realize
So in a lot of cases what we do is we create a 3d representation of an object to help you out
Another example might be like a sound file or in some cases a picture as well
That isn't the actual picture, but it's a reference to the picture within memory
And then you can sort of you know
Drag it around put it inside all the boxes and stuff that you need to make it work
So that's all a material orb is but a material orb
represents a material that is in memory and it will stay in memory in the world if it's being used and isn't cleaned up with
the the various cleanup options that we have
So then it goes on to your answer about slots versus orbs so by material slots
I think you're probably referring to the number of materials and mesh has in the mesh renderer component within the inspector now
I don't quite know how rendering is handled
But let's say you have an object that has two material slots and in each of those materials slots
There is a completely different material
What that means is in the rendering logic of whatever shade you're using and the engine itself, etc
It has to do two calculations for that object rather than one
I'm not it's thousands of calculations because you know light and the shit like that
But like we know I mean, it's like two sets of calculations
once for let's say the red material once for let's say the blue material and so that will
double the
Sets of calculations that will do it depending on what type of material means the number of calculations, right?
So there'll be two of them rather than one of them. So of course, that's that's worse in terms of performance
I don't know what happens if you put the same material in
in both slots
Let's say you know
like a door where the door frame is one material and the door itself is another material like a
White door frame with like a wood colored door because you haven't painted it or whatever
If that was two materials and then suddenly like well what if I did paint the door white, right?
So then you put the white wood material in the in the wood material door slot
I don't know what that would do to the draw calls because it still is technically two separate
What's called like sub missions within the within the mesh?
Yeah, they're also so spec says it would still incur a call
I think that's the way it works as well because it's still there like it's still a separate
Unit of work, I guess would be the term there is a button that says combine
Slots of the same materials as a button there that will do that
So Lou has expanded on their question by asking
Mostly wondering because VRC's performance stats only count slots
So having three slots of materials counts the same as having three slots and nine materials
I would have to like go take a look at VR chats like calculation to figure that one out. I don't know
What they're doing compared to what we're doing. All I know is that
VRChat with like high safety settings and high performance
Is not a fun place to be I was in a few worlds at the end of last week and
It's crazy. It's like guys
90% of the avatars in this world have been turned off because they were not like very poor
They're poor right and they've been turned up like it's just crazy
Atlitius stuff bake your blend shapes
Atlitius textures, you know, okay. Let's move over to the next question here from rampur
There is some giggles because I've answered this question like three or four times but it always comes up when a new device appears so
rampur
Alex via rampur via like basically the entire community wants to know will Neos come on to pick Pico Neo
If you want Neos supported on a device
Make github issue for that device and then all updates about that device will be on that issue
so there is an issue already for the quest pro there's one I think for the
Five I forget what it's called like not the like sunglasses one where you look like that guy from that film. I don't remember
But the one where it's actually a headset that's got an issue
I think the vajra has got an issue
Like basically if you want a device supported make a github issue and then the gap issue will help you
Sort of collate stuff
The other thing it does of course is it means that if you're unsure or you don't know anything
There's any updates in that you can just go to that issue. It's a little bit like, you know
The whole check announcements thing but for devices specifically what it means is that we are
Standardizing what we're saying about various devices by making sure that there is an issue there which we can then update
So if you are wanting that device supported you can subscribe to that issue
Make sure you get email notifications on if that issue is resolved
Generically speaking, of course would like to be on every device
But there's various reasons why that's not possible
If you do make an issue make sure you get people that have that device or want to see that device supported to thumbs up
And that will allow you to show support, you know as an example
Let's say where we have budget in our development roadmap for one additional device to be supported and we see that one headset has
100 thumbs up and one headset has one thumbs up
You can probably guess what the conversation would be there
Of course, we could overwrite that depending on technical specifics the complexity difficulty etc
But hey a hundred people the community want this headset and one person wants this headset. It's kind of like, you know
The other thing to remind people as well
Is that like if you message any team member about any objective that you want them to achieve?
They'll probably forget it. They don't intend to they're just like busy
So it's very important that you make sure that it is locked somewhere
I log everything that people talk to me about because I know that they're lazy and that they won't make issues
But we're all human we're gonna forget the best way to ensure that your answer is question
Sorry, the feature is answered is to put in a geometry moving forwards
Jackal says does the renderer prioritize based on what order the materials thoughts are in
No, that would be based on the render queue setting
Or is it render offset saying it's the one that's always negative one like that determines what's going on there
So if it's negative one, it basically means like hey use your own best judgment and it will it'll slot in based on its attributes
If you set a number there
Then it will make sure that it is rendered there at a particular number set if that doesn't make sense
I want you to think about transparency. So let's say that you had a
let's just say like a
Glass box, right?
and so the the front of the box has got a piece of glass on it with a glass material and then the back of
The box of the inside of the box is like I don't know that like plush velvet stuff. You see jewelry put in if
it were to render the
Transparent glass first it wouldn't know what's behind the glass. So it wouldn't be able to be like, oh, but what's behind the glass?
So it usually will render the inside first and then the glass second because the glass has transparency it gets rendered
After everything else in front of it or behind it
Sharky and ask a question which says is there any
Expressions built in some of the public avis are missing something lots of the public avatars will have expressions and gestures built into them
I wouldn't know specifically unless you had one in mind and if you did have one in mind
It's probably community made at which point it's like go ask the community member that made it
We do have official avatars, of course in Neos Essentials
They are just sort of
Collections of avatars that we have the appropriate licenses to have in Neos Essentials some of those have gestures some of them don't again
It's not something I can answer sort of
Globally in a global level I can only answer it locally
Okay, we go so Jackal asks, I know that we shouldn't use local timer local use of the timer node
But could you direct local user?
Info into timer by the way of a button and have the timer node just applied to just the user press the button and all
for the local system
Do that with a variable
So on button push write local user to a variable like whatever type of variable you want and then pass that into time
I do that all the time
funny pun
I have lots of things that need to sort of have a
particular user involved and
You know, they need to what's the word I'm trying to look for? I'm lost on English for a second
when running scientific experiments data gathering or even sometimes games or experiences or even sometimes like just an
Object you want to make sure that the user that is running the timer node the updates the rights the web requests, etc
Is a specific user so I'm often making gadgets tools worlds, etc
Where there is a dynamic variable that is used every single time you need a user. It's just like world
The user world the user that matters world boss person
You know and then that way everything runs based on them
Nitra says our new github issues actually being looked at by linear's team. Basically, none of them are getting official responses
I look at every single issue
Yeah, I look every single issue because it's cool
It's like it's it's bad when you like say it's not bad bad wrong word
It's like it's confusing when people say that they don't have official responses because it's like the official responses
We can give to an issue are we are going to work on this. We are working on this
We are not going to work on this. We have done this all questions, right?
And so because of the current situation see the announcements channel blah blah blah. I don't talk about it
It's difficult to respond to any of those they get looked at though
But beyond that even if they were not looked at it's better that they're written down
Because the team will forget if they're not written down
So it's not like it's not the best case scenario, of course, you know
It gets implemented immediately when you have an issue, but it's better than your issue being forgotten
So it's the better of of like two evils is the wrong word
But it's the better occurrence compared to it being forgotten. It is better to put it in an issue. I need to vacuum anyway, um
Shrikey says the valleys are the main ones I use and here's some PLC and some tablet computers. I'm sure they are licensed
Um, I can't keep up with the valley community. There are so many different bases models
adjustments
Kit bashes rips copy pasters politics and drama etc
I'm not like I said, I'm not up-to-date on this but at one point
I think that there was a creator annoyed because another creator had made a novalli base and was releasing it for free and it was
better than the one that was paid previously or something and it's just like
the only thing that can be charged for money in the sort of world of avatar creation is
uniqueness or
Like customized work so talking like test textures clothing, etc
If someone comes along and makes like a very similar, but of course not identical
Inspired version of that character then I don't think you have license to it. The only exception there would be if the
Licensing to the original character the original of Ali was locked down which I believe at one point it was
But then you can sort of say like well, it's not an avali
It's like this other space bird and if you don't agree with that
I just want you to look at every single video game has a pig in it and wonder if a furry had decided that the pig
Avatar base was theirs and no one else could use a pig then
Minecraft would be on the hook any other video game that has a pig would be on the hook because you know
It's it's a pig
You want a simpler version of that if I tell you to imagine an apple and you imagine a nice apple in your head
The original like owner of the Apple doesn't isn't doesn't own that right?
You can't it's just weird
anyway
Not legal advice. Please seek legal advice in a jurisdiction of your choosing
but if you would like to
Figure out which of the avali bases you can use or has gestures or something like that
I would encourage you to ask a mentor the mentors have a bunch of resources which will
They're basically sort of various avatars that are set up have the appropriate licenses to be shared and some of them might have
Gestures or etc so Lord buckethead asks when can you see new six manning popularity only once our current issues are fixed?
Yeah, moving forwards to
Jackals question. What is your next tutorial going to be about well? I don't know
I'm a bit busy with life right now
I need to get a new employment set up, and I'm also changing apartments funny thing about this right so
I live on a big apartment communities. That's like really expensive and
If I move like it's literally the building next door
It's like a grand cheaper and pretty much the same thing
I don't know what's happening with this like area
I live in but like it might be where I like I ring up a mover and I go like hey
Hey, hey guys. I need a you know a one-bed apartment move. They're like oh how far you go number three steps
They're just like what?
You might as well not bring like a truck you might as well
Just like bring some dollies and help me like the couch would probably be the couch of the bed would probably be the most awkward ones
To move everything else is just gonna be like put it in a box put it on a dolly
We'll it three steps out the back door and into the front door of the other place. Let's go
but yeah, that will save like a grander month, which is
Anyway um
Hence why that'll probably be my next tutorial is how to how to contact a moving company and explain that you want to move
two meters to the left
Moving on to Rob's question Rob who says does need to support custom mesh to form as a bend to form for example
I'd like to create a machine learning to form with the estimates custom character deformations for a different 3d package
No, we don't support any of that you might be able to add something like that with a plugin
But we don't support any of that currently
Yes, that is true. I mean like the plugin page
So ramp was saying that plugins will prevent you from connecting to sessions where users do not have that plugin
That is correct here is the plugins page
Rob also are saying ideas for implementing chat GPT agents into the world you need to use the HD
Sorry you need to use the HTTP nodes to get that sort of probably you probably also like to do something over web sockets because
It is chat, but I would probably
suggest
HTTP instead
Many people have done that you'd have to look around in the community. I'm sure someone can help you out. I haven't done it
I actually don't recommend it either
Not because it isn't cool or isn't applications for it. I just like
Personal take on chat GPT is completely overboard overblown and out of proportion it guesses the next letter or word in a sentence
That's it
so
It isn't accurate basically
It'll look like it is but then it isn't so it's crazy like that people are relying on it to write code and things like that
I just always feel that's weird like how much detail you're looking at and making sure that this is like the most optimal code or
The best secure code. I don't know anyway moving onwards to Risa's question
But doing a lot of baked blender animations, and I keep finding myself something in a strange rotation issue
That's new to appear in Neos but not in blender
I really don't know what the cause is but my something to do with interpolated quarter
Quaternion rotation I can't show any pointers on baking imported baked machines only in my correct having them animate correctly I
Don't know and now the reason I don't know is because periodically we will find a a quaternarian
Problem so there was this mop
Many years ago. He was like a year or so ago
There was a mop which I try to import from sketchfab and the mop would just look wrong
It was just wrong like like bits were rotated weirdly
That got fixed and then earth mark was using an avatar where I can't reverse the left or right leg
But one of their legs was just sort of like rotated in such a way that it just didn't make any sense
And so now there's actually a test in
Our like test code for mathematics which is annotated as the flamingo leg test
And it's designed to sort of make sure that that leg problem never reoccurs I
Don't know about looking into into what's going on there. I haven't had that experience
We have baked animations that I've been doing, but I've only really been doing
Like character based animations from XMO and stuff like that so that might be why because I don't know like characters are like a known
Good path compared to maybe like you know other more complex animations like this is like mechanical stuff
I don't know. He always I know
Could always make a good issue
With you know a log file and a sample blender that we can take a look at
Shaky says what is the Neos coin going to be back in my builds and it came back at suspended, okay?
It is in live builds. It is in the standalone light bill. It cannot be in the steam build
It is not allowed to be in the steam build by steam if the Neos coin was in the steam build
Then we wouldn't have a steam build so there's your answer to that if you only use the Neos coin
You can use the standalone it's all the questions. I have on the list so
Any additional questions, please get them through always will be ending off in about three minutes or three minutes
Any additional questions? I always apologize like at some point like I know I'm basically saying like make stuff on the github a lot
But truly I will forget these questions at some point or if on the github
There's a lesser chance that I will forget. That's a good chatty question. Thanks Lord buckethead
So buckethead asks do you have any personal favorite worlds in Neos?
I like worlds which are break the norm and the reason why I say break the norm is we have a metaverse engine but
predominantly the largest category of worlds I see are social worlds followed by a game worlds and
While social worlds are great. There's only so many like cushions string lights
Soft lighting and mirrors that I can take before they all start looking the same for example over in in VR chat
There's I don't know like 500 or so
Club worlds there's the black cat which I can see here
They're the black cats sort of a more upmarket pub compared to the great pug
But functionally the great pug and the black cat are the same and then there's like cozy rooftop something something
There's about five of those are all named cozy rooftop something something the pattern there is just tons of cushions and string lights
So I get kind of like worn out on social worlds what I like in terms of worlds is anything
That is not a social world and in some cases in a game, but
What I mean in terms of games go to the game was I want something which is an experience
I see a lot of games where it feels a bit like an arcade machine, right you play the game
As though you're playing an arcade machine, but like we're in virtual reality
So I'd like to see game worlds where I feel like I am in that world like a higher sense of immersion or something like that
example might be the MMC folks who made the
Transfer and the one where you swapped bodies. I'm sorry. I don't remember the name
Transference transistence something like that that was transpose there we go. I knew it was trans something that was like an experience
That was an experience right which sort of like it went beyond the sort of
What I mean by arcade is let's think like murder for example
Murder is a round based game and when you get to the end of the round everything resets
And if you think of it like an arcade all right put another quarter in that machine whereas
Transpose it's like hey
This is a whole experience when you get to the end of that experience your life is
Better is the wrong word your life has been enriched by that experience
That comes from mostly my might my love of what I call like exploration based puzzle games
When I say I like puzzle games to people they're like oh like Sudoku, and I'm like I mean yeah
I could do Sudoku every now and again
But that's not what I mean what I mean is like the puzzle isn't Morse code
a
five-digit pin code on a door
I
Read blue or green involved please don't use colors in your puzzle maps
But it's like not only are you solving the puzzle of the puzzle that you're facing
But you're also solving the puzzle of the world like what is this world was this world want me to feel
What is this world want me to experience so you can look at games such as?
The mysteries for that
Quern is another good example
Duction as well, I'm just listening science at this point
If your game was made by cyan yes
No, there's a steam curator. I like when it comes to games
I know I've like drifted away from the actual topic which was you know worlds inside news, but like think about making an experience
Over making a place for an experience to occur in so social worlds
They're made for an experience to occur and that experience might be hanging out with friends and having a good time
Perfectly fine perfectly suitable. There's nothing wrong with them, but what I want to see is VR world that gives me an experience
By itself if that made any sense thumbs up. I'll now check other questions
Speaking of cyan their next game comes out in
About five days ish five six days. I'll be gone. I'll be playing that
Of course I'll still be doing any work. I need to be doing but
We've like that. It's it's it's a big. They would be amazing. I think it's got PR. I'm not sure I can't remember
Yeah, I've been waiting on that forever to the point where I forgot it existed and the something like it's releasing next week like okay
No need to yell moving on to a question which we have from Lou
They say is there a different reason KFC which from my listening is a useless currency without a real-world value is blocked on steam bills
It's just because it's built on the same part as in CR
KFC is what we call a canary so if you're not familiar with the terminology of canary
miners used to take canaries which are just small birds down into the coal mines with them and
The canary would die in a response to any sort of toxic gas before the miners would
This is before we had some things like gas detectors or health meters or even oxygen tanks or stuff like this
So they know if the canary died they should get out of the coal mine because it was dangerous
And they did that's to come forwards into the sort of software design world as if you want a canary
It's if the canary broke something is very very broken. So KFC is a canary for NCR. So
Its entire existence is just to test NCR related functionality
And so it is pretty much like a copy/paste of it's not a copy/paste if you think you know technology or programming
Well, you know, it's not a copy/paste its configuration and stuff like that. But for the layman's terms
It's a copy/paste of the NCR code. And so we have code which says if we are a steam belt
Disable NCR, but it's not disabled NCR. It's disabled any type of token
And so it just naturally kills KFC as well
And if it didn't kill KFC then KFC as a canary wouldn't work as a canary
So that's the reason why it's it's sort of linked. That was a long
Wibbly-wobbly explanation I apologize beyond that
It would be easy for KFC to be mistaken
So, you know a steam store review person for the policy could look at KFC and mistake it for NCR quite easily
And you know just how serious it was they were like, nope, we're taking you off steam. You've got crypto in you
We're taking you off steam. That's like how hard and fast they were about it
So we didn't want to give them any reason to say you still have crypto
Even though we don't in the steam boat, of course. Yeah, KFC is just testing right?
It's the exact same code the exact same flow the exact same UI. It's just got no real-world value
People have given it value
There's like casinos that use it. There's experiences that use it, etc. It's just testing with that
I believe we're gonna leave off as we're at 35 past
So let's go ahead and close off things and I will speak to you next week. I am very far behind on notes
I was having some issues with whisper which is our
thing that
transcribes them based on stuff which
Lexivr built so thank you much to them for their services and building the tooling
But sometimes it just I'll leave it running for like three hours and I'll tab back and it's broken
That's not Lex's fault. That's just whisper crashing or something. I've got to look into it. I have just finished
I just looked last week's was just transcribed in text
So that'll go up along with the one before the vacation I had and then I'll get this one transcribed me as soon as I can
I'll post here when I've got them up to date. I know it's a problem
I know I keep falling behind but I'll do my best and I will speak to you again soon