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!

skin fun

First some basic facts:
Basically a skin is the deepest texture layer of an avatar. Clothes, like shirts and trousers are covering this basic layer. T-shirts for instance are easy to make and cover the upper body.
Clothes can be taken off; the basic skin can never be pulled of. Skin is the most fundamental layer.
Even when a skin is replaced, it replaces the last one. No avatar is without skin; also this skin cannot be transparent. The most simple is the Linden skin layer.
So skins you can choose to wear are replacements of this basic layer.
Does everyone need a skin? Every avatar has a skin to start with. It is a basic model. Other free skins with features, make-up, tattoos, are easily found and freebies. “Opium” -skins are found everywhere, and are not bad.
When do you really need a skin: actually only if you plan to show it, that is if you don’t want to wear too much clothes! What is the point of buying an expensive skin, and then covering it with clothes?

Skins are different form “shape”, and the added features like eyebrows, beards and whiskers.

Normal skins: drawing and painted (by computer), abstractions of skins. Some skins are only partial, for instance upper body. These skins can be altered, in darkness lightness or color.
Photoskins: photoskins are based on real photos. This leaves the abstraction of an avatar a bit behind. Photo skins can be too real. Photoskins can have very convincing shiny effects, only turning around such a skin reveals that these gleams are fixed and parts of the skin, not reflection effects.
The third category: fantasy…try throwing a texture in the texture boxes for upper and lower body parts, this is great fun!


Colors:
When do you see the color of a skin: well, when you don’t have much on as clothes.
So with good prim hair (can be found free) and make-up (make-up too, it comes often as a part of free skins) a basic skin can be very sufficient, because you don’t see much of it.
But then showing yourself (haha what is yourself here?)
Going around in shorts or in tops which leave the shoulders free can already be embarrassing in a basic skin. The area of the neck and the décolleté are rather poorly represented. The subtle play of shadows fails quickly and gives nasty effects.

Adjusting the color. Trying to get “black”.
Going around tanned can be done by adjusting the top slider in the appearance menu of skins.
Some skins give the possibility of going really dark, but then there appears to be a problem: the whole detailing fails and the avatar looks like a dark blob on the screen: see the picture.

That might be the reason why the black African skin is not too much around in Second Life. Is Second Life an all white affair? That would be terrible! Asian skins are around, but these are mainly fair skins too. (The Asian effect resides also very much in the “shape” of course, the way the eyes are placed and the detailing of the face.)

So what about the African skin?
This idea of finding out about the darker colored skin became a small obsession. It is very difficult to find these dark African skins doing “normal” shopping. Also the Second Life finder doesn’t help much. The SLExchange finder neither.
White skins seem to be “normal”…???

Searching the internet gave me 2 clues, which were linked. Two blogs in which the same question was posed: what is wrong with wearing a dark skin?

Two problems: the first the one is already stated; the screen colors go very well with fair colored skins, the darker have this problem of becoming dull. (This is the same for movies and television.)

The second seems to be pure discrimination! Here are the blogs referred to:

http://secondlife.blogs.com/nwn/2006/02/the_skin_youre_.html
http://brace-coral.livejournal.com/50040.html

Avery good reason to try to buy such a skin!
In the blogs there were references to shops. Only two shops offer well made real dark African black skins. (Although pretty good abstract skins are freely available too, but you have to search quite a bit for these darker skins.)

In the end 5 bought such a skin. A photoskin of Midnight at 1500 L$, wow!

The face is realy realistic, in contrast with the absract SL head. Ears for instance, hmmm maybe even too realistic. The specials are the shining surfaces, quite a lot of work for the designer to get this right! The features cannot be changed in the appearance menu, not darker lighter, etc. The shape can be changed of course, this textures always fits around.


Then 5 had a nice skin, what a problem!
5 always went around in a gothic outfit, which covered all of the body! As stated above, if you have a skin like that, you have to show it, wearing only a few well chosen articles…so the whole habit of clothing is changed by a skin!

Worse: a good, nice skin (real beauty) wants to show itself, it seems to have a will of its own. 5 never knew this before!

Actually, as could be foreseen, other things attached to the avatar, for instance the prim hair can make quite a difference too. As seen in the images a black skin becomes really African, when the head isn’t covered by a fancy hair piece.

To accompany this blog a difficult question had to be answered: how to show the differences between the skins? Well, not by showing only the face. Ok that is the reason for this general striptease!

5 is showing of in different skins, the names are covering some all to intimate parts (5 hopes) You can see clearly the difference between the skins, abstract, basic and photo. And then the influence of the hair and eyes can be appreciated. This being able to feel “a bit” in other persons skin is one of the most fabulous features of Second Life for me.

Last question: walking around in a black skin: is 5 discriminated? Not at all! Friends walking out on 5? Not at all!










Shops:
Offering the photo skin, also a couple of good male skins (see the upper part of the picture):
Chip Midnight: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Freelon/50/62/23
Offering an abstract, but very good skin: (below in picture)
Ayesha Bisiani: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Skin%20Within/120/139/28


















Bojana Vella showed me Allessandra Island,
with two great dark skins (1200 L$)

Later i found this shop: Archan, 990 L$ with shape included...

All black void

Black, all black, void black.
That was the status of my avatar.
Sometimes the eyes were visible, only.
Clothes I changed, sometimes they got visible, most turned black too.
Reinstalling Second Life doesn’t help.
Rebaking textures doesn’t help.
Logging out and in doesn’t help.

Something good came out of it though:
I decided to make my own head, of a pumpkin…, in reality it was a fox avatar I rebuilt. I took so many features away it looked like a pumpkin with too eyes on it in the end. Then I made a script moving these eyes around, and I made the pumpkin open up a bit and changing this opening at the back. This opening revealed my “brains”. It was fun, I have put a book inside and a few pictures. Just to get an idea of my brains.
Later on I added a compass structure (script and object) and could steer a robot in RL, just moving my brains! (My brains sent http request to a server and these were detected by a prog on my laptop, which sent signals through Bluetooth to a Lego NXT robot.)











But that did not resolve my all black void status. I decided to check on internet. I had happened to me before, but it went away, now this all black thing was persistent. Somehow somebody told something about two screens? Yes I am using two screens, yes I remember having had problems with beamers, trying to display shockwave animations on the second screen….it didn’t work out.
Ok let’s try this, one screen, black, other, main screen, shift Second Life, rebake textures. Behold! My colors are back. Shift back again, change clothing: all black, a void again. SO this is resolved! Working with two screens, depending on graphical cards, an avatar can go in the all black status.
By the way, my preview on importing pictures: sculpties was gone too in the all black status. Very annoying, because sculpties tend to come in wrong! So that problem is tackled to.

I must keep on to the idea of creating my own brains though. It was fun putting all kind of things into it, and showing it so now and then by a script which opens randomly my pumpkin – skull …

SL connects to RL (scripting)

Second Life is a world in itself. A world, what is a world? Something which exists in itself and provides the means for its inhabitants to exist like humans. A world has to have enough variety, being a whole, being “closed” in itself. Being closed means here that things in “the world” stay in this world, it is more or less self contained.
Stay ''mainly'' into itself, because only RL is in this sense a world: we cannot get outside of reality, example: the world of music.
All worlds we make up finally reside in reality somehow. Also Second Life!

Unlike Real Life, this Second Life has connections to another world, outside of it, which is, of course Real Life. Quite a few! Besides its own structure, of rendering, objects and avatars here is input of images, sounds, even video, and on the constructive level of course input of ideas and energy of its residents. What would be SL if there were not any avatars having their proper behaviour, well, we see that sometimes: emptiness, void, silence!
Avatars in this world have motives and are independent of each other.
A drive for a lot of people is the money; Linden money can be exchanged in real money and the other way around, this is a connection too! But for some, money is not everything! Some avatars like to program.
Using the Linden script you can enter information in this 3D world, and get it out again. Not as thoughts or memories, but as real hard data!
Linden script has a special function for this, the httprequest. It is a call to a page on the internet, or a page connected to a server. This is it:

key llHTTPRequest(string url, list parameters, string body)

where url is the web address, parameters can simple be [HTTP_METHOD,"GET"], and the body left empty, that is to say the empty string “”.

This request gives a reply, being the text of the web or php page called back into Second Life as a string, a text, and this response can be monitored by the method

http_response(key request_id, integer status, list metadata, string body)

Well and this server can be connected to other “worlds”. The world of internet for instance. Doing statistics of visitors can be stored on a server. Also a microphone can be installed in SL, recording what has been said in its neighbourhood. This microphone can store the recordings on a server.
Connections to servers can be made from a PC, using progs made for instance in C# (or whatever language also allows to make a http-request, say, FLASH, DIRECTOR). So information retrieved from the server can be stored and used on the PC.
This same PC program can make a Bluetooth connection. These connections have two directions. So a cell-phone can tell something to this PC program, telling it the server, and an object in Second Life can ask the server what happened, so through Bluetooth, PC, and server a Second Life object can be commanded.
The other way around is the second direction:
Some object give information on movement, speed and angle to the server, the server is asked for speed and angle by a PC prog and this prog provides a small robot for motor speed and steering angle using a Bluetooth connection. The small robot being for instance a NXT, the Lego robot. And this all works!



Five March was flying around with a sender and this flying around caused the robot to move!
Very funny, but imagine, sometimes it doesn’t work! What can be the reason? In the end it turned out that quite a few owners of land don’t give permission to run scripts! So the http request doesn’t work, and the robot bumps into a wall!
This robot can be steered also using an in between script called GlovePie with a wii remote control. So this means again that the wii remote control can easily get information into Second Life, moving object.
Connecting worlds is wonderful. It is where the cold technical world becomes social.

Big fun also is: I am writing two blogs, one about the NXT and the other is about Second Life. Now these two blogs have met!