I was very busy being very bored and waiting for someone at the Convention Center when my IM window went *bling bling* and said this: ‘Well well well small world’. Loki?!

I’ve met Loki Clifton at the Paradise Lost back in those days when I was still dangling down my dancing pole and I had not the slightest clue what he did in Second Life, so I was a bit surprised seeing him here. But even more surprised that he even remembered me. Willing to safe me from utter boredom, he gave me the TP I asked for.

Hmmm. An empty room? Let’s see. There’s an aquarium sim lag meter, but that’s about it? When I found the guts to ask what it actually was that he was showing or selling, he pointed out to me that I should press the screen. ‘The aquarium?’ I asked very confused. ‘No, beneath that.’ And so I did. And all of a sudden, I found myself inside a beautiful Oriental Palace, 10 seconds later it looked like I was on a very fun camping trip and yet another click later there was a romantic scene with a table for two. Wow! Just utter ‘wow’!! Holodeck kicks (meta) ass!

One click in the menu and it’s like you’ve TP to another sim. Or at least spend ten hours redecorating your room. Everything changes/rezzes very quickly and within seconds you’re in a total different environment. Although still in the same room. You just wouldn’t tell. Amazing(ly fun)!

So what’s a holodeck? A Holodeck stores Second Life scenes and lets you load them from a menu whenever you want. The old scene is cleared and the new one appears. Scenes can include any prim objects including furniture, pose balls and particle generators and I quote Loki:

[10:39] Loki Clifton: btw vint we now have the option of adding sex anims to holodecks
[10:39] Loki Clifton: lol

I did mention we first met at an auction in the Paradise Lost, no? :D

Of course that made me curious and ask more questions. First thing I did was inquiring after the prize as the holodeck would be an awesome thing to add to my skybox. The number he told me made me faint, as first life me can buy a very nice pair of shoes for that. Luckily you can get the simple ones already starting from L$500. If you want both the interior (interior Holodeck) and the exterior (exterior Holodeck) to change, you pay more, and there are other options too like retail Holodecks and production Holodecks.

No payment plans, I’ve asked, but they found a great solution for if you are good at building content, but do not have the money to pay for the holodeck: ‘Build a scene in Holodeck proportions; 15m wide x 20 deep x 10 high and get us to approve it (IM Biscuit Carroll). Make another 4 scenes and get us to approve them. We will then give you a Production Holodeck in return for full rights to sell the scenes.’

Next thing to ask was who made the Holodeck. Loki scripted the system and handles all support and made ‘like 2 rooms’, as most of the rooms are made by holodeck users and then resold by InsideThisWorld at a commission.

And the uses of the Holodeck? They seem endless! Amongst others: for photographic scenes, as a convention boot, as a meeting room annex living room annex bedroom, for building portfolios, for renting out, … and I especially like their idea about ‘giving complete 3D scenes away‘. Neat! You’ve surely impressed me!

If you want to read more about the Holodeck, check out it’s website at insidethisworld.com or get your own free version at their main store in Kenora. And up to the 6th of May you can check it out at the Joysko Convention Center too. Say ‘Hi’ to Loki from me!

And will you all remind me of not buying any guns or clothes anymore until I’ve saved enough for a 2in1 Production Holodeck?

I’ve just been given a production Holodeck with in it all the rooms created up to now, so the next two weeks I’ll be way to busy experimenting with that to go shopping for clothes and arms.

I certainly see the benefits for SL photography. Amongst others:

1. Instantly save scenes you’ve created for later use.
   
2. Not having to excuse myself to people because my skybox is still messy with a photoshoot setup.
   
3. Making your own light set-ups, cleaning them up and getting them back with on click in the menu.
   
4. A way to sort furniture and other primmy thingies by scene in stead it being a total mess in my inventory.

*drewls*

What Loki forgot to tell me: one of the rooms is a working photography studio with posestand with over 200 poses (yeah! new poses!), over 70 backdrops (yeah! new backdrops!) and working studio lights. Make that three weeks. :d

Tags: gadgets, holodeck, SL photography gear, SLinovation
Categories: Building, Exploring, Photography, Second Life
3 Comments »

My ‘b’ was broken. And going alt+098 all the time is not really my style, thus I did one of the things I vouched I would never do:

When I returned home and wanted to work on the _actuall_ post, I decided upon fixing the ‘b’. At all cost. But I still find this lousy attempt at a podcast rather funny, so I added some sound effects… et voila! ;)

So, what’s new? Well, we now have signalisation at the hospital: reception, shop, cafetaria, room 1-8, teleporter, nurses classroom, OP1 and OP2 signs. I offered making a ‘elevator out of order’ sign too, but Hele promised it will work. Eventually. And thanks to the great Rejeanne Connoli, my STD’s coming on fine. :p

In the past few days I’ve had some problems with SLBoutique not listing the items I’ve added into my vendor in my seller’s account on their site, despite that I’ve tried everything: adding them again, adding them with different names, adding them with different permissions, resetting the scripts and even rezzing a new, second vendor. Which doesn’t list either. I went to help.slboutique.com to see how my ticket was doing, only to find that help was down. I now have a sellers account at SLExchange too. (Although I still prefer SLBoutique and hope they’ll respond to my ticket soon and things will get solved.)

A stranger abandoned his cat in my skybox. I’m rather sure it was not an accident, as the cute little animal looks like it’s carefuly positioned. I understand one would take a weekend off from SL with this fine weather, but I can’t understand people leaving their pets behind like this. :(

If anybody knows the owner, Woody Mills, please tell him to pick up his cat because - I’ve said so before - I am not willing to take responsability for a pet. Not even if it’s male and has cat’s ears. This cutie goes by the name of ‘Little Brown Cat’ and has lovely fur texture.

And if somebody else wants to adopt it, that’s fine by me too, but you have to figure out a way to take it home with you then. The poor, little, feline creature is still a bit afraid, I guess, as it doesn’t let me move it to a safer spot then on the stairs where everyone stumbles over it. :(

I’ve tagged along with Veyron to the Relay For Life Benefit Car Show where there were some great builds on display. An example: we’ve met this fine young man called ‘Vincent’ - sorry, last name slipped my mind, notecards and .txt files (edit: Vincent Serrurier) - who I think build the hawt car Veyron and I used as a background for the shoot. Well, he could open en close the doors. And insisted I’d include the car’s sexy butt in the snapshots. So I’m rather sure he has build it. Watch out for ‘Girls with Cars (and Guns)’ photographs on this blog during the following weeks! ;)

After Kilara Balnarring showed it to me, I’ve gotten myself a ‘Primfinder’ (from Crystal Gadgets). A very helpfull tool for building n00bs like me. It ensures a lot of ‘ow, yes I could do it that way so I need less prims’ moments and is also neat to browse through, just thinking about what you could do with all those lovely prims. How does the Primfinder work? You rezz the box it gives to you to the ground, click the prim you want on the Primfinder’s screen, et voila… the prim you chose is rezzed above the box, with you set as owner and creator. Neat! No? Everybody can get a primfinder-box from it and thus use it. If you want to try it out, feel free to drop by at my skybox where it’s set up. The route descriptin is still: take the teleporter at the Paradise Lost (slurl) terrace. Above the teleporter I have now put up a - pink - sign saying ‘VintLabs’ and with a huuuuge arrow pointing the right way upon it, as certain persons claimed it is hard to find.

Talking about building, there is so much still to learn for me and the Linden Gods are about to introduce something new and very exciting: Sculpted prims which I don’t understand anything about (yet), but I do think I’ve crossed another milestone in my Vint-learns-to-build-epos. Behold: the wrapping for my Paw’ed Neko Eyes. A bit primmy, I know, but still… it’s ok? No? If you don’t like them, blame it on Hele, as she has put the shelves in the hospital shop in the first place. If we still had the old rating system, someone would have voted my building rating 1 up so it would say ‘+3′ for this, no? :/

*pfffiew* *more later* *whipes sweat from the front of her head*

Tags: audio file, building, eyes, neko, STD, vincent serrurier, vintlabs
Categories: Building, Exploring, Laughter, Portrait, Rant, Second Life, Vint Falken
3 Comments »

Yesterday I stumbled over this build by Muratus Losangeles. It’s his new home, totals at 499 prims and has (real rotating) fans, a lot of slots, a CPU, some hard disks, …

Mr. Losangelus figures that as he lives his SecondLife from his home computer, he might as well live inside that same PC in SL. Nice way to show you accept you’re ‘only virtual’. ^^

But you did make me curious, Mr. Losangelus. What’s that other, longer story about SL and your computer?

Anyway, you can visit the computer build at the Toroge sim visit the computer at his new home. Do check it out, it’s kinda neat! ;)

Categories: Building, Exploring
7 Comments »

Update: ‘VOTING BOARD CRASHED!! NEW VOTING!  Easter Egg Contest! Voting from 1 AM SLT on April 11 untill 1 AM SLT April 12th. We are very sorry, but it has to be honest! So please go back to the display box in Club Paradise Lost and enter and/or vote again!’ => And what if it crashes this time again? And again? And again?

Apparently which egg wins the contest is decided on by voting, so I guess the Egg Building Contest just turned into a popularity contest. :(

After sitting on the egg for a while drinking coffee and sobbing about the fact that I might as well had rezzed a sphere with the standard wooden texture, I decided to play along.

So please all of you, do TP to the Paradise Lost, take the teleporter to the first level, walk up to the voting board and press on ‘Vint Falken’. I’m on page one. Feel free to bring your friends, partners and meta-fans. If I win, the 2k will be invested in a Neko outfit for Vint. *grins, purrrs and wiggles her - still imaginary - awesome tail*

Categories: Building, Contests, Paradise Lost, Rant, Vint Falken
15 Comments »

For a building n00b like me this timelapse building video is really impressive. But I’m sure it’s still impressive if you know how to build too. Mr LordFly summarizes this awesome show off very well at the end of his machinima: 4 days, 16 acres, 6000 prims. My hands hurt.

Click To Play

Categories: Building, Links, Second Life
3 Comments »

Project ‘Easter Egg’ is closed. All Eggs are due tomorrow and subtracting first-life-time-need from 24h-minus- sleep didn’t leave much for secondlife- learning- on- building- texturizing- and- scripting- eggs. I thank all the people that gave me good advice on scripting, texturizing, etc. but my engagement with eggs ends _here_.

The egg is no where near what I had in mind when I rezzed my first sphere, but will have to do. Vint’s Easter Egg 2008 will be more 19th century-like, will include music and will feature a naked Helena! ;) You can check out my egg (and the others) at Scheherazade (direct SLurl). The picture features my egg in opened state, if you click the top it will close.

Categories: Building, Contests, Paradise Lost
5 Comments »

Ok, I have the top of the egg (3 linked prims) opening on click with this script:

default
{
touch_start(integer total_number)
{
rotation rot = llGetLocalRot();

if (rot.z = -0.012325)
{
rot.x = 0.315091;
rot.y = 0.644241;
rot.z = 0.293651;
rot.s = 0.632013;
}
else
{
rot.x = 0.012357;
rot.y = 0.707909;
rot.z = -0.012325;
rot.s = 0.706088;
}

llSetLocalRot(rot);

}
}

and another two prims linked together rotating inside the egg with the standard rotation script.

Which works great… until I try to link the whole egg together (top, base and rotating middle part).

Then all scripts die and my egg goes all haywire… Everything moves when clicked, and only one of the two prims that were originally affected by the rotating script still rotates.

What am I doing wrong? How do I declare the script to only target some prims (prim groups)? *very sad look*

Categories: Building
5 Comments »

An Easter Egg building contest at the Paradise Lost! *cheers* The problem is I’m not that good at building. Or scripting, as a matter of fact. And not even at texturizing it seems. I now even dream about wrapping textures around eggs. I fail miserably at that in first-life-dream-world too. :( So if anybody could give me a hint how I get a decent 2*1 texture that doesn’t look silly on an egg by using any program of the Adobe Creative Suite, my gratitude would be enormous. That and I’m looking for a teammate that can do some scripting. In the mean time, I’ll just continue to turn myself into a poor avie by uploading tons of useless egg-textures. (<- This is one frustrated Vint speaking.  But at least I now understand why that many things in SecondLife are square(d).)

We wish you all a happy Easter!! You might want to participate the Easter Egg Contest and win 1500 L!!!! Let’s see who is the most creative!!!

Rules of the Contest:

• a maximum of 15 prims
  
• maximum height: 2m
  
• maximum width: 2m
• 2 m maximum length: 2m
• scripts are allowed, but don’t exagerate!
• the original egg (no copy/mod) should be sent to Helena Kirkorian (allways send an IM to notify, also in case she is in Busy or Offline)

Start of the contest: hummm, ehr.. like now!
End of the contest: Tuesday, April 10th (at 3 PM SLT)

The Eggs will be displayed in a skybox (destination in the teleporter on the terrace of Club Paradise Lost).

Categories: Building, Contests, Paradise Lost, Vint Falken
No Comments »

In my eyes, you’ll see
The way it used to be
Take a look and see
The light still shines at me

I always considered these Milk Inc. lyrics great pillow talk. Staring into someone’s eyes and seeying yourself reflected in them as a total proof that you’re on his mind (or at least in his eyes ;)) is hawt, and sexy, … and absolutely tendering.

So I’ve decided to make a custom reflecting-Vint eye texture. Every Avie who wants me to stare deep into his or hers eyes needs to wear this from now on. I asked two gorgeous male Avies to model them for me, but as it’s hard to decide who looks best with my reflection in their eyes - like I said, they both are gorgeous - you’ll have to do with a photograph of me modelling them off until I’ve made up my mind.

A bonus to the whole thing is that the strong reflection makes the eyes look more ‘real’, ’sparkling’ and ‘vivid’ then a normal eye texture. Even when you look at them from a rather large distance as shown in this picture.

If you want your own pair of reflecting eyes, be it to hand them out to your lovers or to wear it yourself to flatter your sweetheart on a romantic date, contact me in-world or drop me an email. ;)

Update: Upon request ‘my eyes’ are now available at slboutique.com for 0L$. And don’t bug me for getting an extra discount! I treat all people Avies alike. ;)

Categories: Building, Fashion, Photoshop, Second Life, Vint Falken, Work
1 Comment »

I love shooting outdoors in first life as well in second. In both my worlds I also *heart* harsh shadows and contrast. A pity Second Life available light being shitty is a huge disappointment. Even if you mouselook-move-sun.

So you’ve found the perfect graphics card (and figured out you can’t afford it), the perfect location and a more-than- perfect model but because the lightning sucks, your picture looks terribly dull. Yes, you can use PS, but you can’t enhance shadows and highlights that don’t exist at all and dodging and burning is a rather boring job. Rezzing a box for lightning purposes, as the Watermelon God has taught us all to do, is a great solution, but to often beautiful land doesn’t allow you to rez objects.

You can of course wear the softbox lightning-box, but as you need to get out of sight/the way to get a good 300mm equivalent zoom in on your model and the distance you can move the objects from you is limited, that’s not very practical. Obviously, too, the focus is on your model, not you. Thus the idea of an ‘external flash wear on model’ was born.

At the moment the prototype looks like this, but still lacks all functionality. I can hardly build, let alone script. Luckily Icarus Ducasse is willing to help me out with that. If only it were a car, then it even would have gotten priority. ;)

Functionalities I’d love to see for the external flash unit:

1. Listen on channel: autoposition at 0, 45, 90, … 270, 315 degrees on all three the boxes as a whole.
2. Listen on channel: autoposition distance from model varying from 2 to 15 meters on all three the boxes as a whole.
3. Listen on channel: no light / soft light / normal light / harsh light on each box seperate.
4. Listen on channel: hide box on each box separate.
5. The boxes should be accessible for more fine tuning using ‘edit’.
6. Set to default position/reset.

What is still puzzling me about it:

1. Where to attach it to? Spine works great. That is, as long as the model stands up strait, but are there parts in the body that allow stuff to be attached to it that move along with the poses less? And which are often used for attaching prim clothing and which are not?
2. Permissions? Although the model is wearing it, the photographer will be the one moving the boxes around. Change owner permissions on sale maybe? But can you sell things for 0L$ in-world? Or does a SLboutique sale triggers that on-event (or whatever it’s called in l33t scripter’s language ;) too?
3. I’m rather happy with the flash’ texture, it’s speedlite-genuine :D, but puzzled over the texture of the box that actually contains the flash. It doesn’t look very first-world-real (yet).
4. I know for sure other problems will occur before the ‘external flash wear on model’ works, but I am puzzled about what kind of problems. Anything that I/we didn’t think about yet? It’s better to anticipate. :d

Yes, I can look into the puzzling thingies 1 to 3 myself, but it saves me time if someone else knows the answer already. *Points towards the comment linkie.*

PS. Yes, I always where silks when building.
PPS. The (quick) sketch I mailed to Icarus:

Categories: Building, Photography, Second Life
14 Comments »