Archive for April, 2008
Second Life web resources for April 26th 2008 through April 29th 2008
April 30, 2008 1:30 amUpperdedate
April 27, 2008 3:43 pmWhy I sometimes postpone blogging during the week, which leads to ‘oh well, it’s not that important any more after all’, if I’m rather busy on - amongst others - :
Crimson Shadow and Carnie ads
Rather happy with these two. The one for Carnival of Doom was shot with no anti-aliasing and no high resolution snapshotting available in the RC. So we made the best of it. The Crimson Shadow one was re-shot using RC 1.30 - I think, or RC 1.23 - which the bugs above mentioned fixed. I think it turned out pretty nice, although I should have positioned model Lokum 90° degrees to her left for the main avatar in view. Ah well… . Still like them. =)
The Triptych of the Rezzable Garden of NPIRL Delights
What happens when you touch Hell? Or Heaven, for those lucky souls amongst us? Will you end up in virtual purgatory - or get wings, a cute little halo and the power to throw lightning?
Rezzable is constructing the heavens, earth and hell for you together with ‘Not Possible In Real Life’ and a great team of fabulous builders. We couldn’t wait to give you a preview of what it looks like when art gets more interactive than it could ever be in a museum (don’t touch the exhibits!) or a book (who spilled coffee over the underworld?!!) With all due respect and a friendly wink to the great artist Mr. Bosch, we beg you to touch his art.
Want to find out what exactly happens when you touch it? Heard rumours about that utterly cute flying flash light? Saw the Godsent Wings and Godsent Lightning Bolt Thrower on someone and want one yourself? Always wanted an interactive piece of art in your virtual bedroom? You can test and pick up a copy of the Rezzable Garden of NPIRL triptych at the Garden HQ at The Dump sim (SLURL). For people who prefer to do their shopping off the internet, you can pick up one for free at OnRez.
And various other Garden of NPIRL Delights stuff. More information at garden.rezzable.com. And yes, this includes meeting very hansom avatars. *grins*
Greenies Staff Meeting
Aren’t we cute? Somehow it reminded me of Real life photograph by Lewis Hine.
Digging up RL art in a virtual world
Just when you though you had a desk job, you end up with your hands in the dirt in a graveyard, shovelling up photographs at Rezzable 09 where the ‘Kill All Artists’ exhibition is being held. Ah well, Mr Danone’s photographs are definitively worth the effort and sour virtual muscles! ;)
I - and my client’s camera - are ok now when doing the basic stuff: travelling, building, some exploring, talking 1-on-1, or even 1-on-5. But when things get really busy it tends to lag behind: I tell it to go up twice, notice it does not react, and 5 minutes later end up with my camera in the roof somewhere.
Luckily Ganymedes Costagravas found an excellent solution to stop the camera from lagging behind: twiddle with the debug menu setting ‘Camera Position Smoothing’. Not needed in normal circumstances, bit it works miracles when in a crowded sim!
With the latest Second Life® Clients (the 1.20 series) I noticed the camera tends to “sway around” when you turn. Other people might also refer to it as “the camera is lagging behind”.
Of course this depends on how good your computer is, and your Graphics Card and whatever. I have to admit I need a better computer to run Second Life® more properly (I am saving up for one, but we all know they don’t come cheap).
Nevertheless, if you are like me, and truly are not finding a camera that keeps “swaying” whenever you turn a lot of fun, I suggest you do the following:
- go to the Advanced menu (formerly known as “Client menu”)
- scroll down the list and open up the Debug Settings.
- type: CameraPositionSmoothing
- the default time there is 1.000 seconds, I lowered mine to 0.200
Like I said, it’s just a tip, and a lot depends on how well Second Life® runs on your computer.
Hugz & Greetz
Gany
10 000L$ Bounty for Best Trademark Parody - Winners
April 26, 2008 1:59 am
Sculpties…. or sculpted prims… they will always stay a no-go for me, I’m afraid. I understand how they work - a Sculpt Texture or Sculpt Map is a standard RGB texture where the R (red), G (green) and B (blue) channels are mapped onto X, Y, and Z space - but can’t create a good looking sculptie myself, I fear I think I think to much in 2D still.
But that I can’t build, should not stop me from learning and experimenting! *grins*
Thanks to Miss Kryptonia Paperdoll, I’ve discovered Mr. Mango Splash’s in-world sculpted prim generator. It’s an incredible thing that allows you to create sculpt maps in Second Life, without using external 3D software such as Maya, Blender, … . You do need some basic Second Life building skills to select prims, move them, …. .
The Second Life Sculpted Prim Generator Mr Splash build works as follows:
- The Sculptie Generator rezzes the basic shape for you: be it a cylinder or a sphere, and with a level of detail you can choose yourself. That basic shape exists of ‘nodes’ which are represented by little white spheres.
- By moving those white spheres, you change the shape of the sculptie. You can edit multiple spheres at the same time, by selecting them all and than using the resize tool. Handy if you want to work on something symmetric.
- Just to be safe, tell the Sculptie Generator to safe your work in a box.
- Then you tell the Sculpted Prim Generator to rezz a sculpt map - the texture you need for sculpties - based on the object you just created. It’s marvellous to see the Sculpt Map Generator do it’s work. It figures out the place of the white spheres, takes it coordinates and reverts that to a RGB value. In a minute’s time, you have a sculpt texture rezzed before you in Second Life.
- Allow the Sculptie Generator to lock your camera by sitting on it. Now you only need to snapshot the texture (made out of a whole lot of colour coded prims) and upload the snapshot.
- Rez a box, set it to sculptie and drag the snapshot you just took where the sculpt texture should go. Et voila: a very ugly mushroom. (See the ‘Vint can’t build’ disclaimer.)
Nifty, no? More demonstrating in this video:
And more detailed photographs of the Sculptie Generator on Miss Kryptonia Paperdoll’s blog.
Second Life web resources for April 24th 2008
April 25, 2008 1:30 amSecond Life web resources for April 15th 2008 through April 21st 2008
April 22, 2008 1:30 amSecond Life Bloggers meeting at Tymmerie’s
April 21, 2008 10:13 am
Some of my fellow bloggers seem to have thought it was midnight, but for me it was a lovely summer day’s afternoon:
The monthly Blogmeet at Tymmerie Thorne’s place! Yeey!
The turn up was awesome, the music stream rumoured to be good, my crashes were frequent and the grilled mouse with some left overs from the chocolate wrestling pit tasted well.
I kicked Mr. Mariner’s ass chocolate-wrestling - thank you Miss Diva for chairing your great strategy: “Just hit the UP arrow a lot”, I finally got to meet Rosie Barthelmess, hung out with Timothy at the camp fire, saw Crap defeat gravity on a dear - poor dear - … . Shortly summarized: it was a whole lot of
More photographs in my SL Bloggers meeting at Tymmerie Thorne’s flickr fotoset, machinima by Niki Dreamscape, a write up by mister ArminasX and I’m sure there are more to come. See you next month?
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5000 comments on vintfalken.com
April 20, 2008 3:22 pmYeeeey! We have reached a dazzling 5000 comments - that does include track- and pingbacks, but not the 30.000 spam comments Askimet caught for me - here at vintfalken.com. Yes, I know, vintfalken.com is not a group blog, so why am I saying ‘we’? Well, none of those ‘conversations’ on my blog posts could have taken place without YOUR input, so thank you so very much! ;) Yes of course, some might say I just like to listen to myself speak, but I must point out that is not the case, and I utterly love people commenting here, sharing their thoughts and opinions, tips, solutions, complaints, dreams, hopes, good and bad jokes, … .
So as a big ‘thank you’ I’ve asked some kick ass Second Life creators, if they were willing to hand out some merchandise to the persons who made comment 5000 - 5005. As both Stephen Venkman and Kailie Quinn could not keep their mouths shut at the time I reached 5k - hey, I’m not complaining, please continue commenting here! ;) - and I got more than 5 things to give away, I’m just going to give something to everybody featured in the top 5000 to 5010, minus myself.
This means that:
Stephen Venkman - known for his Second Life photography - gets Miss Juliet Ceres’ beautifully created ‘Fitz’ avatar. Fitz was my favourite avatar to run around in during the last week. I just could not stop looking at myself walking when wearing Fitz and I would just *smile*. I’m sure Mr. Venkman will look dazzling as a mechanical steam-powered kitty! *purrrrsss* Read more on the Fitz avatar on the NPIRL blog. If you want one of your own, Miss Ceres has more of them available in-world.
Kailie Quinn - aka Katarina Malthus - gets Miss Ceres’ skilfully sculpted Wastelands Armour, an all time favourite of me. Perfect for wearing when you are in an hostile environment, or just want to look ‘though’. Maybe she can use it to collar Mister Venkman in ‘Fitz mode’ and take him for a walk? ;) As said before, Miss Juliet’s stuff can be found in-world at Virago.
Wordfromthe Wise - who participated in the ‘10000L$ bounty for best trademark parody’ contest - will receive CodeBastard Redgrave’s marvellous Machinimacam, which enables you to make better, more interesting machinima. You don’t have to limit yourself to filming your own avatar walking anymore! ;) I wonder if his - or her - next entry for a contest will be a machinima now?
Kanomi Pikajuna - ‘Kanomi is important. Kanomi is special. Kanomi matters. She is the friend to all. Everybody likes her! Everybody likes the nice girl who is the friend to all. She is nice and important and she is special and important and the nice special important friend to all! Kanomi is important! Kanomi matters!‘ - receives not one, but three different prizes, all created by virtual fashion designer Sofia London. Soon Kanomi will be the proud owner of a lurveBite after glow dress, a guy beater tank top and the black ink dress.
Notorious clothing collector Veyron Supercharge - well, as long as the clothing does not reveal to much, that is - has won famous designer Rebel Hope’s awesome Cleopatra outfit: ‘Cleopatra is a 23 piece costume including bodice, pants, skirt wrap, two options of snake arm bands, prim shoes with jewels w/base, jeweled ankle bands, scarab jeweled bracelets, ankh and jeweled staffs (one with a crossed arm pose), lighting system to cast a beautiful light on her upper body, crown of jewels with sculpted prims, sculpted jewelled necklace, Cleopatra cross arm pose separately also, and the box is Cleopatra’s Needle and is included in the package.‘ The throne she will have to buy herself, though. Or… does anybody feel like being her Marcus Antonius? ;)
Last but not least, Mister Tao Takashi will receive a an exclusive beta version of ‘The Ordinal Wilks&Co Vertical Clock-Loading Pistol’, created and donated by steampunk creator Miss Ordinal Malaprop. Rumours go that the pistol refusing services, or misbehaving occasionally is intentional. As this is an exclusive beta, I do not own one of myself, nor could I supply a photograph. So I’m very curious at seeing the ‘Ordinal Wilks&Co Vertical Clock-Loading Pistol’ depicted and tested. Mr Takashi, fire away! ;)
(As all winners were unaware they were entering a contest, they will be notified by email and asked if they want to receive the gift before they are being shipped.)
Amongst the JIRA issues that make me *grin* is this practical excuse for not being decently dressed in public: when worn, a system skirt layer, will for numerous avatars just vanish when it’s texture is fully loaded, leaving them in their underwear. It is the virtual edition of the ‘hey, shit, I left for school/work but forgot to put clothes on‘ nightmare.
System skirts are important for an estimated 50% of Second Life outfits - even for males if they wish to wear long coats. No wonder this is a very annoying bug for both fashionistas and fashion creators as well as normal residents and upcoming brides. This shows from the high number of votes to fix this ASAP - 204 already - and the broad range of duplicates, such as there are: ‘Clothing bug - Skirts not showing’, ‘Clothing worn but not visible’ (did someone finally manage to make those glasses after all? ;)), ‘Skirt clothing layer transparent/not showing’, … .
I can *grin* about this one, as I’m personally not infected with the ’system skirt layer does not render’ bug. As far as I know that is: I have been running around in pants, armour or as a cute mechanical kitty the last few weeks. Luckily, this issue is already assinged - WorkingOnIt Linden - and Lindens were able to reproduce this bug. Now let’s hope they can solve this too.
If you want to see this issue fixed - I assume some prefer underwear as dress code - you can vote for this issue at ‘System skirt textures turn invisible on wearing‘ originally created by DBDigital Episilon.
