Sculptured prims

I don't think this is going to have such a dramatic impact on the usefulness of Second Life as the addition of voice, but the addition of sculptured prims will certainly change the way the world looks quite significantly.

Personally though, I'd prefer Linden Lab to spend their development time improving the ability to dynamically integrate content from external Web 2.0 services into SL.

More LoopRez building

Here's a second attempt at using LoopRez to build... I'm not sure I like this one as much as the first, but I wanted something smaller and which could be chained together easily (as shown here).

I note that a Deluxe version of LoopRez looks to be available (or nearly available?). Interesting. Definitely looks worth having... see the tutorial for details.

SL, Blender and SketchUp

I overheard a chat conversation between two people at the Berkman Sandbox the other day while playing some more with LoopRez. The conversation was in German so I couldn't understand it. But I followed up a couple of the URLs they were talking about (just being nosy I guess!), here, here and here.

These pages talk about using Blender, Google SketchUp and even MS Powerpoint as tools for building SL objects. Very interesting... not that I've tried any of this yet. But it seems to me to be indicative, in a very positive way, of the powerful ways in which SL can be interfaced to other software and systems.

Coincidentally, I was interviewed by someone from the museum community the other night (for me) in SL - part of some background research for a paper for the Museums and the Web conference. The interview was primarily about my experiences of developing ArtsPlace SL. In passing I was asked if I'd tried other 3-D virtual worlds. I responded that I'd tried There.com briefly, but didn't like it - largely because the camera handling disagrees with me slightly. But it's also interesting to note that the growth of the porn and gambling industry in SL which, while somewhat unsavory in some respects, can be viewed in quite a positive light from a purely technical view. As with the early days of the Web, the porn industry in particular is very quick and innovative in the way it adopts new technologies and generally leads the way where others follow (at least in technical terms).

LoopRez and buildings

I've been messing around a little with LoopRez over the weekend, seeing what it can do with buildings.

LoopRez is a neat little SL script which takes an object (any object) and repeats it in a circular or elliptical pattern. It's very easy to use, though tweaking the parameters to get the right results can take some time.

Here's what I came up with by repeating the object above ten times in a circle...

Note that by removing the roof prims from the resulting building, it is easy to build up multiple-floors...

By the way, this is the kind of thing that happens when you get the LoopRez parameters wrong! :-)

As an aside, I did nearly all the building for this in the Berkman Sandbox. I, and a few others round me, suffered a brief interlude of griefing (pushing and barging with sparks!) which was quite entertaining, at least at first. :-)

New ArtsPlace SL building

One of the things I had to do over the Christmas break was to redesign ArtsPlace SL from the ground up. My previous design was very inefficient in its use of prims, which meant that there were very few left over for actually building the exhibitions.

In the new design I was much more careful about slotting prims together carefully, in order to minimise the number used. Basically, I've come up with a modular design, three same shape building blocks fitting together to create the new overall shape - two downstairs, one up.

Before building I also re-landscaped the ground, giving a nicer sloping area, meaning that the new building is at ground level on one side, but raised up on the other.

I also had an issue with lighting in the old building. I tried (and failed) to use lots of small light blocks, each one over one of the exhibits. In the new ArtsPlace SL, I've simply resorted to making the whole of the upstairs ceiling into a light source. This gives ample light on both floors after dark.