Update: Sometimes working on multiple posts to your blog isn’t a good idea. Between drafting and pushing this one, Qarl updated his code, as Cinders points out. Sorry Qarl! Correct link is here.

Slightly later than he’d hoped, but keeping to his promise, Qarl has released version 0.3 of the Mesh deformer, stating:

Quick announcement – I’m releasing version 0.3 of the deformer code. Primary changes: 1) should now apply cleanly to recent linden viewer code, 2) deformation tables are computed in the background on another thread, so no frame stalls.

There appear to be a couple of elements missing from the patch – as spotted by Henri Beauchamp in a comment following Qarl’s post, so developers may want to hold-off grabbing the code for a bit.

I’ll be watching the various Viewer blogs for updates to see when the patch is incorporated. It’s likely to make an appearance in the likes of Cool VL and Dolphin very rapidly, providing the code is stable. Niran V Dean is planning to make a Full release of Niran’s Viewer 1.33 in the next couple of days, so this might also see the code included – we’ll have to wait and see.

Linden Lab had a Development Viewer in the offing for the deformer. This actually dates back to January, but didn’t get any further than an optional development Viewer due to assorted issues. Marine Kelley, who uses the V.3.2 reported that she’d removed the deformer from her last release due to crash issues, which may be related to reasons why LL never moved the code further along their Development cycle. However, as Qarl appears to have specifically addressed some (or all) of the issues, we may yet see the deformer appearing in something like an official Project Viewer sooner rather than later.