Extracting Sky and Water Settings assets from a Daycycle
tracked
Nyx Onyx
When having created a Daycycle, regardless of how you go about creating the keyframes, by importing Sky and / or Water Setting assets, importing from files, basing it on an existing Daycycle or just clicking "Add Sky" to create a new frame, and then modifying them straight in the Daycycle, there is today no way to extract them from the Daycycle to their respective Sky- and Water Settings assets. The only way to do so today is by copying number by number, colour by colour, and textures (sun, moon, water normal) manually. Having a "Save as Sky / Water Setting Asset" button on the keyframe would be great, this would also let us generate sky and water settings by extracting transitional states in the daycycle.
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OldVamp Resident
yes, please add a "Save Sky" and "Save Water" button to the list of options.
Atlas Linden
tracked
Hi Nyx!
This issue is now tracked here: https://github.com/secondlife/viewer/issues/2887. We have no estimate when it may be implemented. Please see future updates here.
Nyx Onyx
Atlas Linden Thank you so much =)
Gwyneth Llewelyn
Aye, the "old" Windlight setttings had this advantage of being XML files, so you could easily extract whatever you wished.
I believe that the "lock-in" option — making the EEP settings an asset, i.e. a transactional item inside the SL Grid — was a deliberate choice, to allow environment creators to sell copies of their environments without giving the owners of such environments to be able to copy all the settings in it and rebrand/resell these environments as their own.
But assuming that his is not the case, it would make sense least the owner/creator should be able to extract the data freely.
Nyx Onyx
Gwyneth Llewelyn That's what no-mod perms are for, isn't it? Both being unable to change, and unable to extract information. In this case though, it's my own asset, I'd very much like to be able to get my own data out into a new asset!
Gwyneth Llewelyn
Nyx Onyx you're totally and absolutely right! Now if I only could also extract my own data from my own animations, to try to upgrade them to Bento...
</sarcasm off>
. Even changing the anim's overall priority would be a huge plus!Seriously, what you describe is common with all kinds of things in SL: once they're committed to LL's asset servers, you can't get them back in non-asset form.
That said, I'm sure that the clever TPV programmers will be able to at least figure out how to export the EEP data to a XML or JSON file :) I mean, they do far more complex exports already. Just don't expect the official SL Viewer to support these...
Nyx Onyx
Hmmm.... Gwyneth Llewelyn I might be mistaken, but it seems to me that you have misunderstood my intentions here. My intention is not an extraction out of SL to get a copy in some way or form on my computer of an asset in SL. Instead, it's about getting the reverse of the "Load Sky" button functionality in the Daycycle asset editor window.
The way it works currently is that you create a Daycycle asset via the inventory, and you double-click it to open the editor. I will base this on the FS viewer, I can't say how it looks like in the SL viewer but I would assume it's similar enough. The daycycle can also be edited directly on the parcel land settings' environment tab, and the region's dito.
Then on the left side you pick a sky height for which you want to work on, for example "Ground Level". You will then have a timeline showing on the right side of the window.
On the timeline you can create key frames, by clicking on the timeline, and then clicking "Add Sky", then you can edit the sky settings for that keyframe right there in the window. You can also choose to import a Sky Setting from your inventory that you have set up before, bought, been given or whatever, it's an asset as any other in your inventory - not your computer's storage drive.
Now let's say you have set your daycycle up with some awesome sky settings. You might want to extract one or two of those Sky Settings from the timeline, so you can use them individually or so you can load them into other Daycycles. Perhaps just as a backup. Extracting would here mean, not get an XML file onto your harddrive, but rather the reverse of the Load Sky button. That is, it would create a Sky Setting asset in your -inventory-. See screenshot as a form of a quick demo.
Gwyneth Llewelyn
Nyx Onyx oh I'm sorry! Aye, I had totally misunderstood your intentions. I incorrectly
assumed
that you wanted something similar to the old Windlight settings, which were XML files placed in a directory on disk
.I see what you mean — the EEP panel (with which I humbly admit I'm not familiar on
any
viewer!) is missing half the functionality, so to speak, You can import
a "snapshot" of the sky as a frame, and work further on the cycle; but you cannot export
a specific frame (which could be reused in some form). It makes total sense to add that functionality then! Of course! Definitely upvoted!⇧The only thing that got me confused in your explanation was how one creates those Sky Settings, if you can't save them from the day cycle timeline... they must come from somewhere, since they're assets... anyway, as you can see, I'm really
not
familiar with the day cycle settings! Moving the sun around to get the shadows where I want them is as far as I know (and even so, barely).My apologies, I not only stand corrected, but I've learned something new! 🙏😅
Nyx Onyx
Gwyneth Llewelyn No problem, and thanks for the upvote! As for creating the various settings: right-click a folder in your inventory and New Settings > New Sky / Water / Day Cycle =)