Thanks for the Media Texture tutorial Torley

Torley Linden’s video tutorials have really been getting better recently, and he’s been posting lots more. I’m currently playing with the one on using png files to create transparencies, and that is superb. Here’s a quick post to show the result of my bash at following Torley’s three videos on making a media player for your land. I created a prim and used the default media texture – ace idea Linden Labs- and then created a simple frame. I linked my land’s media settings to my blog, and suddenly we have a player to show my SL blog.

My friend Siobhan Taylor helped solve how to make it give a URL, with the llsay (0,http://virtualanalise.wordpress.com”); thing. Simply, that script command makes it say the web address of my blog, when you click it. That means that someone who clicks the web address in chat can automaticlly load up the blog site in their web browser. I basically created a new script in the contents tab of the root prim, and then wrote over the default Hello Avatar statement. I don’t know if it needs the touch start statement still, but it works.

Here’s the script as it stands:

default
{
state_entry()
{
llSay(0, “http://virtualanalise.wordpress.com”);
}

touch_start(integer total_number)
{
llSay(0, “http://virtualanalise.wordpress.com”);
}
}

Once again, thanks for your excellent tutorials Torley, and I really think that you’re both up to speed now on doing more, and refining your skills at how to teach someone how to do stuff in SL. You rock!

1001 Nights becomes the Kingdom of Sands

Me and my friend Anna Zwiers went to see the wonderful 1001 Nights sim a while back, and I’ve lost the photos of that now. Yesterday I went there with a new friend who I got chatting to in the Violet Welcome Area, and we found places that I haven’t yet seen there. This is really one of the most sumptuous builds that I have seen on SL. I need to take more photos, so I’ll be adding to the set on my Flikr account. The only thing is, that it’s a role play area, so at some point I guess they will be enforcing a distinction between those that are part of the ‘game’ and those that are just observers.

When it was 1001 Nights, you had to wear a labeller, declaring you as 1001 Nights – Observer. Otherwise, if you were female, you were likely to be trapped and sold in a slave market. I don’t care if the guy who wrote the Gorean novels was a professor of philosophy or whatever, as Hitler had a bunch of very intelligent academics try to make out that Jews were inferior, that the master race had a history which proved arians were the master race, etc. Nowadays just look at the food industry or blooming Colgate getting some academic to do a study that tells you that you should use Colgate mouthwash with Colgate toothpaste, because the competitors’ stuff is incompatible. Nuts to that – an intelligent sexist, chauvanistic pig is an intelligent ignorant person who chooses to paint his own reality onto the world and give it credence with his academic background.

I’m kind of curious to read about the psychology of the BDSM thing and master/slave relationships, but fundamentally it’s not my cup of tea.  All of that said, I have friends who do BDSM, and well, they’re free to do that. I just dissaprove of the opression of women, and the fact that the Gorean sims’ are based on roleplay doesn’t really change the fact that people are roleplaying the opression of women.

As I say, this is a beautiful build that has to be explored, as it’s really one of the best builds in Second Life. But as for the slave nonsense, I’ll just stay an observer and stay out of it. Smash the patriarchy, ra ra ra!

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Purgatorio/178/236/35

Free Drunkard Animation Overrider at Stand Studio

 

Free drunkard animation overrider at Stand Studio.  Nuff said!

http://slurl.com/secondlife/JPL%20KANAGAWA/55/181/44

When Windlight Goes Wrong!

After reinstalling my system and generally being a bit bewildered at all of the things to set up, I had to experience this! My friend Anna Zwiers here, thankfully gave the tip that it was best to turn up the gamma setting a little in Windlight. I did so and it’s fixed now, but this lighting was a bit hideous.

Cool new lighting effects at Neptune Lighting

I’m not the first to find this place but here’s a couple of photos from a little bar that is showing off another approach to texturing with baked-in shadows and lighting in SL. The approach to baking-in shadows and lighting has generally been that you make a texture with a shadow based on the shape of a stool or such, or a beam of light that matches the size or pattern of a window; then you apply this texture to a prim that goes next to the object that casts the shadow or gives off that light. It just adds that bit more feeling of reality to the ambience of a place, as SL doesn’t cast shadows or beams of light in it’s own lighting system – yet.  Here, they build the lighting and shadows into the textures themselves.

I went to have a look yesterday, and the place is really nice. It’s basically intended to show off their approach, and to offer their services to other builders in SL. They basically export the build to an external programme, using it’s textures and then use procedural textures to recreate the textures with baked in lighting and shadows. I say basically, but it’s pretty darned advanced stuff!

I bumped into one of the creators, Tories Canetti – well I saw him on my radar about 90 metres away and shouted over to him – and he was nice enough to chat about it. Thanks to not copying and pasting the conversation straight away, and SL crashing, I didn’t keep the notes of this. He said that it wasn’t so hard, but was time consuming. They are working on a diner now to demonstrate this approach, and hopefully we’ll see some gleaming chrome there along the lines of one of my favourite album covers. If so, I’ll be there looking for the heart of Saturday night.

Here’s a couple of other blog references, and I heard about it on the New World Notes blog:

Jean-Ricard Broek

On New World Notes

And here’s the SLRUL, to teleport to the bar:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Iron%20Fist/213/42/26

A psychographic not a demographic!!

I was reading the fashion supplement for yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph, and came across this article called Virtual Vogue: Second Life Wardrobes.  It notes a few places of interest for expressing and experimenting with one’s sense of fashion in online environments, starting off with an old favourite Stardoll (which I used to know as Liisa’s Paperdoll Heaven), SL and a couple of other fashion sites with virtual wardrobes – in 2D yuck!  What’s interesting are the observations on why people do this online, and I like to read about SL as a cultural phenomenen.

The people that ponder on SL fashion go through the old thing of why people would spend real money on virtual goods, but  I would ask another question.  Why drool over fashion magazines and Sunday newspaper supplements, looking at skirts that cost £1,000 and Jimmy Choo shoes that we could never afford?  Basically because we admire style and the difference for me between these things is that on SL I can wear the thing.  OK, I’m wearing that fabulous style in a virtual way, but it still feels good and is still an expression of self.

My favourite bit of the article was this quote from a trendspotter for an advertising firm:

‘I think it’s extraordinary spending real dollars in virtual worlds,’ says Ann Mack, the director of trendspotting at JWT, the advertising powerhouse in New York. ‘But it’s a “psycho-graphic” rather than a demographic, a certain mindset – people who feel very comfortable playing with their identities both online and offline and people looking for an escape from their daily lives.’

Psychographic, I like that.  I do feel very comfortable playing with my identity online, and heck I’m trying to change my sex offline! If the shoe fits, wear it! 

Oh goody, can I be an intelligence officer

According to this BBC article, the intelligence community is going to do more mooching around in virtual worlds, to protect against terrorists using them. Ace! I’ve already got a trench coat, what’s the salary? Make the pay right and I can go investigate SL ALL DAY BABY! I would particularly have to target the suspicous areas of Ivalde, Tres Blah, Ingenue, and Muse Jewelry. Of course, I’d have to make purchases so that I didn’t look suspicious, and maybe the government could pay out of expenses.  Also, you never know what secret hidden notecards are hidden in the skirt prims of Juliette (Osama) Westerburg’s So Mod outfits.