BLENDER again

This process continues all the time:
new BLENDER installed. (Super: it has a python script for sculpties for Second Life)
BUT
it says "Python not found", but i have installed Python
ok, i installed the latest version....it must be a former version
there is a link to the apropriate page
ok i download that version (although it is not the version wanted, the link points to another version again)
ok, reinstall python, reinstall blender
Blender says "sorry no Python found"
repeat this process again....
the link pointed to a wrong version as i already mentioned....
ok found this version....
and eventually, after about four times downloading and installing Python versions, BLENDER has the version it apparently needs...

the same thing happens for the DEVKITPRO, to program homebrew for the nds....

and while we are trained to do nice and well-ordered OO programming, we drown in versions, updates, patches...
but we are happy nonetheless with these free programmes!!!

i did not include the version numbers, with intent of course, these numbers (version 2.5.2) will change all the time, although this lessons stays the same: patience and carefull reading of the hints, not believing theses hints and links, and expecting to search again yourself.

Exciting sculpties!

One year ago i made lots of sculpty using the former version of BLENDER.
All kinds of difficulties, and always small inconveniences in the results.

For a new laptop i had to reinstall BLENDER, and discovered that the UV editing mode was skipped. Then a bit of searching resulted in a big surprise:
The sculpty for Second Life plugin!
it can be found here:

http://slost.net/2007/12/19/blender-for-second-life-added-to-on-123107/

here some nice demonstration video's:

http://pkpounceworks.sljoint.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=28&func=fileinfo&id=130

and here for other connections, Papervision for instance:

http://www.rozengain.com/blog/2008/01/02/export-your-blender-objects-straight-to-away3d-papervision3d-and-sandy/

now the world of sculpties is made much more accessable!
some people have done some hard work here, thx!

(of course knowing a bit of BLENDER helps, but in fact it is only up to editing shapes now)

Also in the LSL wikii the sculpty parameters are published, not the least of which is: mirror sculpty! (PRIM_SCULPT_FLAG_INVERT)

(I got a lot of mirrored sculpties in the beginning, not checking it in the upload sculpty check.)

llSetPrimitiveParams:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlSetPrimitiveParams

The sculpty type can be set, so i want too discover soon what this exactly means:
PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_TORUS
it has all to do with the stitching of the UV plane.

Also the BLENDER plugin is just a Python script, so from this script you can learn how these wonderfull UV images are made.

Also the BLENDER plugin lets you load an UV image, and you can even edit this.

Of course getting the texture right on a sculpty (for instance a face on a head) has to be doen manually, and will always cost a lot of time.....

Alternative SL viewers

Making a video in Second Life poses some problems:
how to get interaction between two avatars without bothering your friends?
One solution is to run two viewers at the same time, but at the current state of the art of computers, this could be too heavy for your machine. It is for mine!
So i looked at some other viewers, which could be « lighter ».
This was quite interesting!

The main list is given in the Second Life wiki, but not all are listed.
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Alternate_viewers

You can of course run 2 SL viewers (see the Torley tutorial on this)

Well, most of these viewers are not lighter.
There are the alternatives on the « normal » level:
OnRez for instance is quite the same as the normal latest viewer. A steady viewer, never posed any problems for me.
The Dale Glass Edition, was buggy.

Then there is the interesting « textual » viewer, this is really something else:
The Metabolt.
This is really light weight, you can connect and chat, and tp, and sit, but you don't get the image.
For making video's Metabolt is unusable, because in your main viewer the avatar, connected in Metabolt is only rendered in a primitive way. I cannot guess why. Sometimes the face stays gray, sometimes the skirt. Also, although you can touch objects (from a list) around you, i could not get it to do an animation, dancing for instance. (Always checking what happens in the « main » normal browser, because from Metabolt, you cannot see what is occurring « in world ».)
Maybe this will change in newer releases.

I also tried the RealXtend Edition
Looks cool: possibility to connect to « other » grids then SL only.
Unfortunately it was buggy. Most of the time, and pretty soon after connecting, it disconnected and disappeared without a trace.

Unofficial Viewer: AjaxLife
Then I ran across a browser viewer: running Second Life from an internet browser!
This last option seemed perfect to me:
View Second Life in the Firefox Browser
http://ajaxlife.net

the only things is: giving in my password on this browser viewer: can this be hacked easily. But ok, logging in the first time took so much time that i gave up trying to enter.
The second time i discovered you had to click on the grid button in the second screen???
And instantly it gives you your money, and inventory, avatars nearby.
It is a bit like the Metabolt.
I went in through the main SL to viewer to look at my alt there...
you can talk to each other and the one with the real viewer can see the Browser-viewer person.
But again this browser-viewer connection is not totally rendered.

The fact that you can connect without having a view yourself is suggesting possibilities, a bit in the direction of the actorbot, which lives on an external server.

I tried to have another browser opened and send in another avatar...
Yes, succeeded, this way one can finally make a small party of avatars on one computer.

Later on with Lolito Larkham we danced and I gathered my friends around us. But as already remarked, from these lightweight viewers I could not get these other avatars to dance. Chatting was possible, so making jokes coming from these “unknown” intruders in Five's tete a tete with Lolito was great!

Some people ask Five: why don't you make your own viewer? Haha, one cannot do it all!!!

Inspire Space Park

Five was wandering around in the oracle garden of Tangerine Anatine, Five wrote an oracle script for her she is putting to good use:
See her gardens Tangerine's Dreams: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Nimue/208/168/75
It is really a nice garden and tells a lot about cards and numbers which is interesting, even if you are not a devotee of predictions! I don't want to reveal much more, since the real fun is to discover it yourself!
Five happened to look at the profile Tangerine Anatine and there was this Space Destination. Interesting people tend to have interesting profiles, and yes! Tangerine referred me to something I hadn't seen before:

the Inspire Space Park!

This is a really funny place, situated high above the surface on the huge sculpty prims made by Gene Replacement (wasn't he banned , haha, we see his prims everywhere!!! Is he back now, his profile works again! )

Anyway, although called a park, this is a sort of meteor belt like situation, all kinds of planets and stones and rocks tumbling around each other, you can go on a « sleep orbit » which is really a great feeling!

There are floating zen tables, and tai chi exercises.....you can go from one meteor to the other crossing all kinds of small rocks, don't fall down between these smaller rocks!

And the funny thing is: there are lots of people around! They like this place, it is not a boring shopping mall, nothing to be sold, there is just the feeling of the future! When avatars can cross space without needing a space ship. Really this is what being avatar is all about!

The orbital park is made by the group Virtual Life Media, real virtual artists apparently with bright ideas!
This is the inventive art you are looking for when visiting worlds like Second Life, not copied images of Michelangelo or Leonardo or Rembrandt. I like Michelangelo, think he is great among the very best artists, but it has nothing to do with this world...

And this place has a goal: relax from the hustle and bustle of SL! It is not even copying nature, to get this feeling across. Nature parks in virtual worlds, although I like them, always give me a queer feeling: why am I in a nature park, behind the screen, while real nature is just around the corner?

Ok, so a great place to relax, to think about future possibilities, to wonder about what was, is and comes!

Oh just a last remark: you can go on orbital embrace!!! That just seems heaven to me!

Inspire Space Park Ultra Natural Space Destination in Shinda
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Shinda/28/213/218

Oh, all my pictures are in daylight, you should see it by night!

Teaching in Second Life.

From our special correspondent Nugget Kidd:

Giving a workshop in several techniques to combine media, I decided to introduce the participants also to Second Life. SL is a superb environment to sketch, to develop ideas, using images, constructing, scripting, sound, animations, and possibly video. SL, as a 3D world is intuitive not to be compared to a real architectural 3D program, but at the same time it has extensive possibilities to express ideas and feelings.
Participants were “forced” into Second Life, and Swann Jie joined the class of her own free will!
So there were eight avatars in total doing the exercises.
All was done on a basic plot of land of 512 m2, and 117 prims.

A great thing about Second Life is that it needs no tutorial:
The examples of what can be done in SL can be found everywhere around, and good ideas have been well developed. The workshop approach to this world was more building and designing than chatting. Chatting and looking at each others results “in-world” is considered a bonus. Social interaction was not a goal.
To get a taste of the virtual possibilities the participants had to make three things: a basic chair, a design chair and a poster. (all within 20 prims, each chair under 10 prim max, hpoing that it would all fit in the 117 prims...)

The basic chair cannot be a chair without having some references to the RL idea of a chair.
The second version of the chair should express some emotion through design, texture or construction.
The tension between the properties of virtual reality and the idea “chair” became too much for two of the participants, they proposed a “world with a moon” or an “ice cream” as chair, Swann Jie and ActionHenk Winkl. This is very possible given poseballs, but is a bit outside of the purpose of this small assignment.

The poster is a way to use Second Life as a 3D drawing machine. Given some text lines and an emoter (SL facial expression tool) you can make a few snapshots of your avatar and using photoshop you have a comic strip.
This idea is elaborated in a very sophisticated way in http://encoreseraphine.com/
The poster exercise became partially a reaction on the SL experience, but also some glimmers of RL popped up in these text-images. Real experience crept in, which was unexpected. Second Life seems to mirror immediately the real life behind it.
This combination of exercises told a lot about the participants, a lot more than you could possibly be expected from such a basic try out of possibilities.
Also you could spot that some participants have a real feeling for SL like worlds, making without any practice maximum use of the medium, others were hopelessly lost and could not construct much more then a cube...
In between these extremes were some people with fast and clear ideas, which also produced good results, ActionHenk Winkl and poohbeermikey Donahue as main examples. poohbeermikey Donahue clearly shows his technical mind with one chair in between a tanning bed and a toaster and the other a toilet with running water!

The try-out was connected to a contest: enormous prizes (25L$) were promised for the best basic chair, the best design chair and the best poster.
I decided to give one participant, the fish in the virtual water the first prize for all of his ideas. This is Net4z Kawanishi, he could have a bright future in Second Life worlds! His poster is of excellent quality and both his chairs are real virtual sweeties!
The prize for the chair in its most basic form is given to Yope Phelps. He also managed to sell his hair even on his first day in SL, and made some fine wings!
Deciding who will receive the prize for the expressive chair is very difficult. Apart from Net4z Kawanishi all the chairs lack either “chair-idea” or real expressiveness. Ok, this prize is for Thomas Paige, who has made a very sweet “fakir” chair, with points.
Then the poster. (Again apart from Net4z Kawanishi, he already got a prize)
Indeed all posters have something to say. Swann Jie even told the whole story of her SL life in one poster!The most powerful are the posters which manage to tell something more then just a pun. These are the posters of GaarAH Heillman and Fluffy2000 Trenc
The prize is for Fluffy Trenc also because he had such a trouble doing something with the virtual medium.
I think the SL introduction will not easily be forgotten even if the participants don't actually engage in an active virtual life.


Teaching totally in SL, fro avatar to avatar can pose a problem: the chat is a poor medium to convey precise ideas, but also to elaborate around ideas. Voice could be added, but I was glad the class was gathered in Real Life to comment on the things thats happened and were produced.
If I look back at this tiny piece of land and see all the things which were made it has became a happy coming together of avatars!

Japanese!

It all started with the tiny avatars in the shops of Saitot Tammas. Saitot specializes in small avatars of all sorts: animals, pets, robots…shop: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pelinor/236/11/66

You can become a cat with a hat, or have a few on your shoulders, or you can have a bird flying around your head…..
Five followed this tiny avatar trail from one Japanese sim to another.
The Japanese are everywhere!

Remember the Tokyo addict Taka Teatime? He had a quiz about Tokyo and this idea of a quiz was so funny that also the virtual museum Schielandhuis got a quiz!






Then there is Salmaru Masala, this is a extremely funny and very inventive person, making all kinds of very hilarious things, like snoring animations, silly taxies, and sushi eating animations put in a plate with sushi’s. He gives away his jokes, which certainly cost him a lot of work, practically all for free!








But there are also many Japanese sims to be explored. Little Kyoto is very funny and well worth a visit, but Japanese design and fantasies have moved on. The strip figures have become very important.
This is an example of such a modern Japanese sim:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/sugamo/69/22/21, selling tiny avatars again!














Nearby I found this, it looks gigantic! 5 is completely dwarfed. But actually if you try to enter the skyscrapers, it is miniature! Great gag!














Here a book shop of the brightest colors, probably an ordinary sight in Japan, in SL it is a labyrinth!





From the large spaces to the individual encounters again:
One of the shops: Sculpted work – and more, of Arrshu Dagger.
In her profile: I'm Japanese. Ispeak engrish very small.XD.
Well my Japanese is only: Domo! (Which means hello, I think, I hope) I cannot even say in Japanese: I don't speak Japanese...:-(

But we could talk! Really great. Using a translator. You must take care to formulate basic and simple sentences. But it works!
The shop: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Balenissa%20Grove/193/146/80

Her sculpties shown here are really masterpieces. The sculpty has its limitations, due to the limited resolution. The sculptor has to know these limitations. In principle sculpties are transformations of the sphere. So with a bit of pinching and pulling you can get chairs, parasols, bones. Arrshu shows how to be creative to the last square of the 32 x 32 grid.
Arrshu does the sculpties not in BLENDER but in ROKKAKU DAIOU, which means HEXA SUPER (Hexagone!)
This software cannot be found outside of Japan, search only gives craks and key generators!
An english version available is METASEQ, freeware and shareware.

The second problem of the sculpties is the image you use for its surface. To minimize distortion you have to stay on the 32 x 32 grid.
But there is a last detail, as explained by Arrshu. The holes in the sculpty. The sculpty is not only like an apple, but also like a banana! The poles of the sphere have to be left open, because of the coordinate knot which happens to be in these special points. Apparently the combination of Second Life and BLENDER does not treat the poles or the holes very precise: the holes disrupt the exact 32 x 32 grid, spoiling colours over the edges. ROKKAKU, as told by Arrshu has solved this problem and is exact.

Nearby the shop is a “rose bed”, also a sculpty work, this time of Draceina Pinion.
This was really an experience! In the flower there are two positions to lie down. And you are totally surrounded by the red petals, giving an incredibly warm feeling. 5 invited Swann Jie to come around and we got a few marvellous silly pictures of the two of us….
Literally 5 could not stop taking pictures because 5 was totally drunk because of the colours!



Oooouh, 5 has written too long a story!



Will be continued! Sooo much to tell!

Camera fun

An avatar walks around with a camera.
Folks new to SL always have to get used to this.
But many peculiarities of this camera even experienced users don’t know about.
Even 5 discovered some new possibilities after a year!

Basic camera facts:
Walking and flying: the camera follows from behind, so how to see your face?
Using the arrow keys makes the camera swing, but the avatar too.
Using the mouse wheel zooms in and out.

Swinging the camera around:
Now for this you have to become a virtuoso on the keyboard! Press ALT and click on something, the terrain or an object or an avatar. Then while mouse pressed, move the mouse: the camera swings around in a horizontal plane. The vertical mouse movement gives zoom, for instance to see your own make-up or nose or beard.
To get it moving more freely (but without zoom), also press ALT CTRL, click on object, keep mouse pressed and move mouse! Freely means here in a sphere around the object.

Now to get further away from the avatar, you have to realize the camera is bound to the avatar, but it can escape quite a distance.
You can liberate the camera more using: Second Life menu-> client -> Disable Camera Constraint.
(Found no “client” in menu: press CTRL ALT D)
Then your camera can really roam through space.

Sitting Camera movement:
Sitting on an object gives other freedom. There are the same possibilities as before. But clicking an object somewhere and then using just the arrow keys makes your camera turn around this distant object! Quite fun!
Arrows up down, zoom
Arrows right left circle around chosen object or the avatar.
Page up and down (normally flying) give space up and down!
And then: ALT CTRL and SHIFT (in that order) and arrows gives parallel movement!

What I seldomly use is the Mouselook, Movements in Mouselook mode are somehow not convenient for me.

This sitting – arrow steering possibility is interesting.
The problem sometimes is that you want to show people something in Second Life in a public environment. But then they should have an avatar, most of them have no avatar nor experience moving around flying etc. It would actually be undesirable to have them roam the whole of Second Life. This sitting avatar is a solution for this problem. A Joystick can steer the arrow buttons, a wii remote control might do the same (bluetooth connection and GlovePie for instance). If the rest of the keyboard and computer is hidden, the public can fiddle with the view and the joystick and everything can be done, clicking, etc, without fear of the avatar drifting of!
5 can show the whole of the virtual museum like that!

Tele and Wide angle camera.
As written about before:
You can get quite nice shots for stills using different camera angles. Shortcuts CTRL 8 CTRL 9 CTRL 0
This picture 5 got by going to the limits (or over the limits...)

















Scripted camera.
This is fun too, you can script the camera to follow you in all kind of positions, an example is given here: http://slhomepage.com/lsl/FollowCam.htm
In this script the camera is not really free, which is for me: steerable by the keyboard. This is possible too!
I found a nice script: a "scan camera" script of ArianeB:
http://arianeb.com/secondlife.htm (bottom of this long and usefull page)
I turned this around in a camera steering from the keyboard,
for steering camera from arrows on keyboard mind the control permissions: http://slhomepage.com/lsl/llTakeControls.htm
but combining controls and camera parameters, the camera is freed and can follow a path, or steered by the keyboard, letting 5 take a break!
You can get away pretty far steering this free camera, the problem is: the drawing distance of your avatar! The world gets empty behind this limit.

Video
For making video’s, knowing the different possibilities of the camera is great. The walking avatar gives quite an instable image.
A problem is the speed of the normal camera. More convenient for good video making would be the possibility to slow the camera movement, resulting from using the arrows in sitting position. Maybe there is a shortcut for that too? Yes, deep down in the player:
Client (CTRL ALT D) -> Debug Settings ->in the textbox type Zoomtime.
Default is .4, but making this higher (10 – 20 sec) you get a very slow moving camera, great for nice steady zooming. You can let the buttons go and the camera stays on moving, slowly, comfortably, it is like sailing! But there are disadvantages too, the camera moves on and on sometimes, so for normal living, quickly reset it to the default of .4 sec!

Have fun, explore! I imagine even more can be discovered!