Sculpty - mania

After a couple of days, and the very tedious process of learning all shortcuts in Blender, the UV mappings started working. You have to read the few pages about making sculpties with Blender with extreme care. Simply overlooking one small button (Five forgot to put the texture on ADD, instead of MIX) makes your sculpty picture unusable.
Also you have to learn to work with the special but beautiful tool in Blender called ….very appropriate “Sculpt Mode”. In this mode, you can work on a model as if it is clay, adding and deleting material. Smoothing it again makes the shape beautifully organic. Then you have to get used to the way Blender throws this grids on the UV mapping which is without doubt very logical, but can be a bit strange too.


After saving the image, it is often inside out, and you have to deal with a negative texture color. Lately the UV image was saved at an angle of 90 degrees, so Five had to turn it back in Photoshop. You have to learn looking at the UV maps produced by Blender and know, if it is about right.


But well who cares, if the results are really fun!
First of all, Five March made the human shape, the torso. Then Five tried to pull out the arms as far as possible (discovering the in between tool for the grid steered by the mouse wheel – oh boy!), but the long arms were only partially represented in the shape of the torso inworld. Maybe the 3D centre can be arranged in a better way?
Then a mouse shape was sculpted, you can sculpt in a symmetrical way, so both sides are done at once, for two sided animals and humans a quick way to get a basic shape.
And how about these shapes, what a difference now with the ingenious but primitive shapes of many, many prims….what will all be possible? Indeed a lot! Not possible are shapes with holes, but then simple use two sculpties…
Five’s first try-outs look stupid now…..
All these try-outs can be found in the DevShed, on Virgin Island2.
The most beautiful sculpty, indeed it has got the first prize in the sculpty contest of a few months ago is of course the horse of Nomasha Syaka.
Below an image, which shows the sculpty-textures on the shapes. This is of course not necessary.
This horse even can be seen galloping around, but the sculpties take a long time to render so, sometimes balloons are seen instead of legs…..

Five guesses that the possibilities of the sculpties will really change the whole look of SL, an end of an era!

Sleeping around!

Second Life is a strange world! When you sleep, you cannot be there. When sleeping would be allowed, nothing would be possible anymore! The sims would be filled with avatars and their prim expensive clothing, all the processing power being consumed before even a really awake avatar could enter the sim and start moving around.

But beds and other places to sleep are found everywhere. Empty of course! Some are very inspiring.
A few examples. The first really appreciated bed Five found was in the Waste Land sim. (See blog: Five in "the Wastelands" )

Far down under the surface of this sim an abandoned railway tube was constructed. A railway carriage was put in and in this carriage a luxurious bed was placed behind transparent curtains. The contrast between the theme of this world and the sweet presentation of the bed was truly pleasing. The fact that this bed was really hidden contributed to the feeling of discovering something, which is always nice.

Then we continue with something Five thinks is far too simple for SL: the copying of the real world in Second Life. That is the rebuilding of a house on a piece of land, complete with kitchen, coaches fireplace and of course….the bedroom and the bed. The animations for the bedroom are sometimes directly visible, sometimes not even that. This urge to copy the real world, is unknown to Five, but well, who cares?
Then in the above mentioned desert a nice opportunity for Five to construct a sleeping place presented itself. An old railway carriage, dating from the time of the Wild West, lying around near an abandoned railway line, half tumbled on its side immediately fitted Five’s ideas for a nice unexpected hide-out. A camp bed was constructed, a candle for the night and some half withered images of Russian icons were fixed to the wall.

This way of a temporary refuge, a shelter, or even a sanctuary is a very nice metaphor for Second Life as a whole. Sl being a hide-out for real-life. A sanctuary, a place to experiment.
Later on this bolthole in the desert was abandoned and the bed was rebuilt in a cellar cave on Five’s land. Five left the champagne bottle on the bed, and put a flower from the flowershop ‘Five Daisies’ near the bed. The carriage was immediately occupied by another dweller of the desert. He put in hay, a pleasant warm colorful blanket, a nice book, very nice, Five is trying this out. Above an abandoned saloon Five found Nugget Kidd sleeping right on the floor and decided to join him on the floor, joined in dreaming……...

The text of the icon, in the first image is Da Ljoebietje drug druga, russian, means something like: let us love each other, super idea!

Space!

Five March about space perceptions comparing real space with the simulated space of Second Life.
When we are young we are told that our 3D space can be represented by drawing a nice renaissance perspective. Before this knowledge children tend to draw like old paintings of the Middle Ages or before, thinking in a sort of not logically ordered space. That this ‘not rational’ space is often more effectively telling its story is often forgotten….
No just as a calculation, space representation should be “right”.
This so-called Renaissance perspective is founded in a beautiful section of Mathematics called projective geometry. This is how we experience space and we tend to think that this method of representing space is the only possibility or the only way. This construction of lines is indeed space!
Small mistake!
When you study experience of space you quickly notice that there is more.
Our brain uses much more kinds of sensorial data from which information about space is gathered, putting all these data together in something which is far from logical, but very effective.
First of all, painters not only followed perspective but also introduced colors changes to indicate space, for instance changing to bluish or grayish in the distance, and bright colors are always used for objects near to us. Objects at a distance are of course also blurred more than objects nearby. These tricks of the trade doe not belong to “renaissance perspective”!
And then there is shadow. Nobody has ever included this in his theory of space perceptions!
(Except for probably Goethe.) It is never fundamentally included in the 3D programs. But shadow is so important for the positioning of a shape in space, in relation to surrounding objects. A table is only feebly standing in space without a subtle shadow on the floor.
All because we don’t have absolute information about the scaling of objects.
Even more important and nearly never realized in software are the reflections and the reflected light of objects being close to each other in space. Faces of people nearly always show signs of reflected light from things surrounding them.
Next:
Even sound and echo is used by the brain to add to our sensorial experience of space. That’s why sound is so important in the movies, defining space and at the same time conveying information about the emotional character and significance of a shot.
In Second Life we have a clear-cut almost too sharp perspective space. Reflected light is absent, being of course too complicated to be calculated. Sound is used, although on a simple level. Nice is the sound while flying, related to the speed.
Sound of steps, while walking and even a Doppler effect is sometimes heard. The typing on the keyboard, varying in volume depending on the distance of the ‘talk’ comes in handy from time to time, to find out if somebody is talking to us.
At the same time these effects can be so like caricatures that the user cannot stop making funny remarks about them….
On Virgin Island some interested examples of the use of shadow can be seen: not only the shadow on the ground under a tree, a parasol or a ‘shade’, but also the shadow as a transparent solid shape can be found for instance under a roof of a shed on the middle mountain.
The shade here is not only a blurred picture on the floor, but even a solid black rectangular block, put on a certain degree of transparency.
This solid shape, clear-cut as it is, adapts itself beautifully to the character of Second Life and the special theme of the sim, being dedicated to the Wild West desert. Added to this is “solid” light shining through windows of a deserted saloon.
Another phenomenon of space found in this desert is the abandoned railway track, giving a vanishing point in the distance and adding much to the experience of space in the sim.
Somehow the space of the plane is only really perceived when the eye is guided by this mathematically ordered and disappearing abandoned rail track. The last phenomenon is the component of the vanishing perspective we almost never experience: height and depth, making a hole in the sim is impossible, what is possible is making a very sharp cliff, with textures almost tearing apart….
And where do you think all these pictures are taken? In the desert of Virgin Island, of course, and the expert of shadows is Amiryu Hosoi!

Don’t pay too much!

Just after starting with Second Life, Five March discovered the ways to make money, like everyone else. Dancing and camping, brings in the first Linden dollars. The aim of camping is to attract avatars to special places. When searching on the map people tend to choose places where some people are around. So to attract people is to have people around. This is the aim of paying avatars to camp and dance. It results in a row of zombies in your place, because people are working on other things while letting their avatars earn Linden dollars.

The first thing Five bought was prim hair, for 1 L$! Later on Five found out that nearly all you need (on a material level) can be found in Second Life for free. The free things are called the freebies, really all can be discovered for no money at all: dresses, houses, animations, everything. Only for very special things you have to pay. Good shoes are not very often found free.
Nowadays, with a premium membership Five gets a weekly allowance and dancing and sitting on other premises is no longer necessary.

Five even bought expensive shoes, as you can read in another blog.
But every now and then Five goes shopping. Five is always looking for smaller shops, which appear to be try-outs, or starting designers. Here things can be found which are not common.

‘Shiny things’ is the name of a nicely built shop where Five found some jewellery, not too expensive, for instance a necklace for 35 L$. The necklace was really an exception, being worn on a very thin chain, not seen anywhere. With the prims it is impossible to construct a necklace like that. How is this made?
On another night Five was on the hunt again, and found a shop where everything costs only 1 L$.


- enkythings - L$1 SHOP is the name of this shop.
It was a surprise to find out that this same necklace costs only 1 L$ here! Other frivolous items are sold for 1 or even 0 L$! Roller skates, with a pleasant skating animation included and prime hair can be found here. Ok this prim hair is a bit stupid after a day or two, but who cares for 1 L$! Two times, you even get the 1 bug back, from a sploder!

But the price difference and the very thin shape of the necklace really still remain a mystery. Where does this necklace come from? How is it made, and what adventures has it seen? How did it lend in the hands of a 1 L$ shop?
This shop is high in the air. Down on the ground can be found a TP to a sky diving platform. Diving down, will be right through the shop, and boing on the ground: humorous signs are telling you to be carefull: falling newbies! LOL!

Help!

Stack Heap error!

Five March’s scripts were attacked by this Stack Heap error several times. Documentation is available but not readily found. But while searching the internet Five found the game ‘Fishing’, which was well worth the detour. At last documentation about this error can be found simply on the documentary site about Linden script. ( http://slhomepage.com/lsl/StackHeapCollision.htm )

Each (Linden or LSL-) script has 16 K of memory available, which is eaten on two sides: the stack, and the heap. When these two monsters meet, no memory is left and an error is produced. After the error the script is not running any more, it is halted. The problem is that it is not verifiable if a script is running or not, from the script itself.

Of course 16K is really not much, when compared to the memory of computers nowadays. But even compared to the old Commodore 64, with 64K of memory, this isn’t much. And furthermore the memory is eaten much faster than in the Commodore 64K.
One help is available, but only with a running script: llGetFreeMemory(). This function can communicate the free memory, the least free memory ever, after compiling the script.

For testing this function should be used to check how much memory is used.
So every script of Five, in danger of having no memory, must be tested with this function.
With simple scripts, one can see how much memory is occupied by example a string of a list.

Try it out, adding a global string, or list.
Apparently these strings and lists are really devouring the available space. When running out of memory, the solution is to split the functionality of the script in two (or more parts). One script sending a message to the second script, which also has 16K of memory at its disposition.
In case of the script communicating with an external dBase, the memory is further occupied.
Some testing shows this:
The default script, with llSay(0,(string)llGetFreeMemory()); in the touch_start: 16048 free,

With one global string only declared: 16030
testString = "hello avatar"; 15994
ten times this string: 15638
list, even only declared: 15617
myList = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]; mem = 15336
myList = [testString,testString,testString,testString,testString]; 14705
double the content of this list this list: 13230
adding a local list copying the global one: 12444

So playing around with a list and a string can eat 25% of the memory of a script.
On the other hand, the recording Microphone, which can be found in the DevShed, leaves about 13000 KB free, while doing HTTP request and returning 15 chatlines…..

When a script produces an error, it stops. No function is around to test if a script has stopped, so how to know this?
The solution is inserting a second script. The second script asks the first one: are you still awake? And when no answer is returned by the first script, the second script sends an email (or IM) to the owner: Help my brother has died!
So for instance in script one, the answer is seen to be sent, in the second, it is received...or not!!!

Champagne!

Five March needed a bottle of champagne to celebrate the first big project in Second Life. But unfortunately the search engine was down at that moment. So Five gathered some drinks from the Moulin Rouge of the sim of Paris 1900. Some drinks have texts included and when finished won’t show up again!
At the same time Five researched about the so called sculpted prims, or sculpties.
Documentation is available, and the software is free.
Here pages are given where to find software and documentation.

http://iramblesorry.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love_28.html

http://slnatalia.blogspot.com/2007/06/sculpted-prims-sculpties-second-life.html

http://amandalevitsky.googlepages.com/sculptedprims

ROKURO.exe is a very easy prog, giving a possibility of producing an axial symmetric shape, like a bottle. So the first bottle was made, just putting an image of a champagne bottle found on the web behind the points of the drawing section of this prog, and putting the points on the outline of the bottle. But then the real difficulty presented itself. The shape was appearing in the world of Second Life all right, but how to put the image on the bottle, the green color, the label, what kind of image is needed?
Putting a checkerboard pattern on the sculpty showed the way the texture is folded around the bottle. From seeing the pattern on the surface of the bottle Five could deduce what is needed and this was not really simple. The bottle had to be flattened out, like a cylinder being cut open along the length. But then there is the problem of the neck of the bottle, this upper part of the bottle, cut open should occupy the same width as the belly of the bottle. This means transforming the shape of the bottle rather radically. But at last the texture was ready and could be projected on the bottle shape. (Well after three tries it was ready….)
With the free program Blender more complicated shapes can be constructed, but this whole prog is much more complicated. Even following detailed descriptions of the way to construct a UV map of the 3D shape, it took several hours before Five could make the right UV image, comparable with the ROKURO prog.
Even long descriptions like the one of Amanda levitsky leave a lot to be guessed. On the other hand, Five discovered that Blender is a absolutely mind boggling program and that it has a lot of very beautiful and breathtaking possibilities.
Far more than only producing sculpties.
Blender can make for instance chairs. So complicated shapes of one prim are possible. Of course, even not thinking of the texture on this shape, you need to program the sit position and rotation!
This was not without trial and error either:









On the one hand sculpties are an enrichment of the possibilities of the prims in Second Life, on the other hand the possibilities are restricted. But for bottles, bananas, the sculpties are fine.
Sculpties and scripting examples of Five March can be found in the DevShed, a developers Hang Out.

Five goes fishing

How you can start with a head-ache and gradually become amused and end up with a date in Second Life!
Do you like fishing in RL, even if you don't, read this!

Mending a small problem with data transfer, the famous ‘Stack-Heap Collision’, Five was coming across a fishing game in Second Life.
http://fish.neorealms.com/index.php
Five decided to take a look there, and found a very funny game, fishing as expected. A few people were there, which was good, because all the equipment on show was rather daunting.
People around makes it easy to ask some basic things, and also encourages to start fishing. Talking is a big part of fishing!
Five bought a simple beginners rod, for 16 L$ and started fishing, the animations of casting are really good. You have to load bait to your rod and the game is on!
The scenery is well done, you start at a pier, nice in the sun and can sit or stand. Watch out for falling in the water! But well, Five did take a step too far and landed on the seafloor. This was quite an experience, because a lot of monsters are wandering down there. So Five could advise you to fall overboard form time to time…..
The catches are coming in regularly and your inventory fills with all kinds of frogs, lobsters, crabs, sun stars, marills, turtles…all amazing creatures! You can rezz them on the floor or in the air to take a good look on them…..and take a picture. Nothing to get a good meal form at the moment!
Other people are showing their catches, and really bragging about them!
Of course buying more expensive rods gives you the chance of winning bigger fish and monsters. You get points and enter a competition, all shown at the website. Also shown on the site are tournaments, where you can win real money. Levels are indicated from beginner to experienced; Five is still on amateur level of course, being always busy in the desert at Virgin Island.
It takes a bit of time, while you are fishing, to read all the possibilities of the game, there are quest collectors, and of course the big finds for the more expensive rods.
Oops, isn't there a smell in my inventory?
The site indicates other spots in Second Life where you can fish, and you rod stays ‘alive’ as long as you have bait.

People are not only fishing for seafood, but apparently also fishing for…..dates…..well this catch went ‘of the rod’, because……you know….. Nugget Kidd…….

Victim of Love

Being in the desert sim of Virgin Island, talking in the “Western Style” office with Hanz Eun and Amiryu Hosoi, Five heard somebody shooting outside. Five didn’t dive behind the counter but instead walked immediately to the spot where the shooting came from.

Normally the desert is peaceful and shooters are quickly banned. The desert is for the Gold Game, for Indians and cowboys on horseback. Coming outside, Five saw something very funny.

The person taking an aim at us was really an alien. Five approached him, although he was firing madly. Five looked at him and particularly liked his knees, saying so. He was a bit distracted, had probably expected a very nasty treatment, because of shooting at us, and suddenly he was getting compliments about his knees! And really his knees were worth attention as you can see.



Five kept on talking to him, he was surrounded by now. Five kept on telling him how beautiful his details were, overwhelming him with compliments and every so often again and again giving him other remarks about his knees. It was a kind of shooting back for which he had no defense. He was trying out new weapons, but nothing was helping him to get rid of Five who was constantly following him and making pictures for this blog. So he was changing into a very small avatar. He was shrinking totally and becoming sphere shaped.



Five said, hey guys, now this fellow is egging, he is making small children of his knees, which he didn’t liked at all, so he began to change again, this time a fox was produced, a very strange one, which was so white that it didn’t show much details. A cube was seen in the background so he was playing around with invisibility too, hiding parts of his body.



The transforming went on and on, all changes in appearance were accompanied by cheers from the crowd. But apparently the person wasn’t enjoying the show himself. He was put on the wrong knee by this sudden and unexpected ‘love’ of Five for his special design. Forgetting his weaponry his tried to run, but we were flying at his tail, which was rather long, at last he couldn’t stand all the niceties bestowed upon him and disappeared in a poof………. Another victim of love!

Clo@Yu-ki

Five happened to come across a small shop, which was particularly nice.

Above the shop is a sketch, in a childlike style. You can make out a name if you look at the right way and puzzle a bit (de-Chloe or de-clue)….

...makes....."Clothes for You"

Chloe Yue, seen in the drawing, apparently Chinese, making clothes "4 a yonug GRIL", for a young girl. The profile says Chloe Yue, which fits well with the puzzle. And in the text of the profile is written: 香港人,居於荷蘭, which I don’t understand at all…..

The shop itself is very simple, just a few transparent panels of bluish glass. You really have to look into it a bit to see the creative poetry of the clothes. Just what Fives likes to do….

The clothes on sale are obviously made by hand, not in a mechanical way, and the prices are very low, another sign that the person designing the clothes is not having a commercial goal, but is still having a lot of fun inventing and making them. Going back there from time to time you may see some items added, but not very often.


Five particularly liked the backpack for, well for only 10 L$. The design is very cute: flowers and cherries, but if you look closer, the flowers are interspersed with….skulls. This makes the thing more than just something nice. Also the hang-blouse is a thing Five has never seen. Your sweater, as worn on a day which suddenly became hotter than you thought, in a knot around your waist. Five wears it very often.


The flex mini-skirts are really very mini, and as with all Chloe‘s designs, having a sharp edge. Discover this on your own!
The name “sjallie” for another item, a free gift, gives away a strange clue, and looking further in the profile you discover that Chloe Yue doesn’t only speak Chinese, but also dutch!
The only negligible disadvantage of the “sjallie” as well as the “hang-blouse” are that they cannot be resized, which almost forces you to become a small person when wearing these items…..but the items are well worth it.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Boobero/154/172/23

World: a database!?

A database is a collection of information, put in a predefined form, so that it can be searched.
An address book is an example. You can connect numbers with words or phrases, even images. Searches can be done on numbers or bits of texts, names, dates. Different databases can be connected with each other. This gives a network of references and information. References: codes that refer to something else. An address is referring to a real street. A telephone number is giving the possibility to speak to a real person.
In Second Life all the forms and programmed movements are coming from the database, only the movements and initiatives and ideas of the avatars are coming from the real world. Five is really moving in a database. Five sees a house? Not really: the combination of objects or primitives forming the house are nothing more numbers in a database. Numbers to positions, numbers to images which cover the shapes. Shapes which are predefined codes form the rendering process. Codes which guide the way the screen is displaying its information.
The inventory, this beautiful invention can be filled practically at infinity. Is Five carrying everything around? Now of course not, Five is only carrying the references to other codes in the database.
So this world is a database. That gives Five something to think about. Is the real world also a database? Think about it: a database carries references, but the real world is what it is: itself, so: real. What Five thinks, ideas, dreams, worries, these “things” are references to possibilities in the real world. Indeed the brain of Five is working with references. Memories are not real, memories are references to events in the real world. Ideas are codes, for instance to put something together in the real world. Language itself, the words, are referential. Philosophy and poetry, or just talking about ideas, take these ideas as content, treating them as if ideas were comparable to real things. Many mistakes are just around the corner doing this!
So our brain is a database, well sort of, but not exactly. Databases are rigid things, the brain is flexible. Databases never forget, the brain does a complicated process of weighing, partly compacting, rearranging, and destroying our experience. Sometimes forgetting is a blessing!
But in principle the database and the brain are more comparable than the brain and reality.
So Second Life as a database, which it is, is more comparable to our brain, then the real world. In Second Life we are really more looking at our own brain, its structure, its functioning then the real world. But thinking about this hypothesis, it seems plainly wrong. We are looking at a stylized version of the world. We seem to go in circles. From database to brain to database to Second Life to brain to reality…..
But in fact this is also a great facility of the brain: the constant re-imaging of data, presenting and representing the idea of the world, transforming every image, over and over again. The brain must do so. It is this power which makes a difference. The brain is certainly not comparable to the rigid database. The reality is not to be captured in a single idea. Brain and reality are shaping each other. Brain being driven to reinforce itself by changing as fast as reality is changing. Brains were divided over humans. Brains could function independently, united back by language. This uniting of scattered brain is slowly gaining momentum. In Second Life the different brains are acting in a single structure given by a database. Trying to play in a common rhythm, and forming a world. Will the brain plunge into this world, rather than continue the fight with reality? Or will brain become bored with the limitations and let it rot like television nowadays?

Nugget has a horse too!

Rumors were spread that Nugget Kidd dreamt of a horse, the whole desert in Virgin Island was waiting for this horse, only Nugget Kidd was so busy with the new goldgame, he didn't even had time to dance in the disco. Nugget Kidd is a man of rocks and the sand, tornado's, height and sun. The sim Virgin Island is especially fit for riding a horse and all the time you see people enjoying themselves.
So Five was surprised when there was mail. Five received this mail from Nugget Kidd:

Hello Five, you never guess what happened to me! Armoe Lipo passed by in the testing bunker for the goldgame, and was in a very rich mood, he gave me money to buy a horse! Can you imagine? But between the moment of someone giving me the money and the actual buying can pass a lot of time. Although I am an experienced cowboy, buying a horse is very complicated, especially these virtual ones. So I asked Paula34 Benelli for advice. She was prepared to help me out, show her horses, and find the best one for me. We teleported ourselves to the ranch of MacLean. We didn’t even go there one horseback, a trip which would have cost us only a few weeks….
Ok arrived there it wasn't to easy at all. Paula34 demonstrated the menu. Did you know you have to wear a horse? No surely not, you didn't know it! Then riding the horse, it reacts to left mouse click and shows his menu. You can remove the saddle and let it stomp from time to time. Also the horse is willing to do poops on command. These poops lie around for some time, producing a perfect smell, as is even visible on the images. Then the actual riding! You can go so fast you’ll bump head-on into every mountain on the sim! You have to take a mood of the horse which is more quiet! Then you can stay in control. You told the people in your last blog that horses even have eight legs, well this is not true, they have actually 10 legs! Some are invisible for a time, which is quite lucky. If you think about it how many legs would a human being really possess? Think of the dancers and all their special movements!

The only problem were my boots. I had to ride barefoot! There is a walking animation in them, which cannot be removed. And the creator is not to be found, because the boots are apparently hacked. So I had to ride around without my beautiful boots.

The most mind boggling is the jumping around. With a small touch of the page up button the horses makes a beautiful jump, and the camera follows in a very elegant line. Then there is the pausing, you can put your horse close to your rocking armchair, put a bit of hay and a pitchfork in the ground and feel at home........

So far the letter of Nugget. Five thinks that that's enough about horses. As if the human being is not the most important thing in the world. Two blogs about horses! All that fuss, while we can teleport, don't have to carry things on our back, dance without becoming tired, and can fly around, Nugget Kidd, please behave as a responsible member of our modern society! Horses are nice, but first the work must be done!

And Thanks , Armoe Lipo, but you must not spoil my boy too much!