Virtual Worlds – Page 276

August 26, 2011August 26, 2011

Is Traffic About To Become Relevant Again?

Wade1 Jya over on The Merchants Roundtable (private forum so you may not have access) has pointed out that some new icons have appeared in search, that could well be an indicator that traffic may well gain some relevancy again. The icons have three symbols that seem to indicate whether a sim place is active, popular or busy, although I am yet to see any places with two out of the three icons lit up.

What are you talking about Ciaran? I hear you ask, well in search on the latest viewer you will see on some listings (a minority) things like this:

What qualifies a place as active, popular or busy? I have no idea!

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August 26, 2011August 26, 2011

The Trouble With Mesh – Texturing

Mesh is still making a lot of noise in Second Life circles, but Mesh won’t be for everyone and there are times when the good old prim, the lovely wonderful prim is far more useful for creators and consumers and here I’ll give an example, a door. I decided I’d make a Mesh door, now doors in Second Life generally require some path cutting so that they open nicely, objects rotate on their centre so a door has to be half invisible to work nicely.

Bearing this in mind I created the door in Blender, I decided to do a loop cut so I could have one half alpha textured and the other half with my door texture, so it would be able to perform the spinning on its centre door trick, this didn’t work well but one point regarding all this is texturing, I created my UV Map and ended up with this:

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August 25, 2011August 25, 2011

Second Life Roleplaying Could Do With More Oomph

I got an email from my chief Elf on my Roleplaying Sim:

“Dear Lord,

I’m going on holiday, so is the Potter and Human, all at the same time, see you in a week.

The Elf”

Now I must say that my first reaction was “Never trust a Hobbit” and then I remembered there are no Hobbits involved… although I still maintain that Hobbits are to be handled with caution, but this is an Elf, they’re supposed to be all sweetness and light…. which also probably means you should treat them with the caution.

Now the problem I have here is that as Evil Overlord of said sim, I may now have to speak to the inhabitants, in character! This could be a long week.

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August 25, 2011August 25, 2011

Blender Noob To Pro Has Handy Tips

What on earth is this shining project on the Jira? Alexa moved my Jira about the region setting that allows or disallows Mesh on a sim not working to the shining project …. a rather disturbing looking project complete with an icon of someone doing a “Here’s Johnny” impression!

Anyway Mesh is the talk of the Second Life related forum and blog crowd at the moment and I’ve been having a very slow dabble with Blender, seriously, can we have bigger days to go with these bigger prims. The tool of choice I’ve decided to use for Mesh is Blender, this is largely because as a hobbyist Blender gives me the most options, I’d love to have Autodesk Maya but unless Autodesk sponsor me that ain’t happening, there’s no way I’m buying such an expensive tool with my artistically challenged hands at the mouse and keyboard, maybe one day if I find I can utilise 3D builds nicely I will. However for those with large pockets and good skills, Maya is highly regarded but it’s not really suitable for noobs.

Anyway I’ve been looking at a few video tutorials on Blender, they are handy but I like to read instructions at times rather than pausing videos and I’ve gone back to a handy resource I looked at a while back when I was considering trying my hand at sculpties.

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August 23, 2011August 23, 2011

Never Mind Mesh, Trim Those Prims!

I’m playing around on my site with Google Affiliates, so things may look a bit wonky, Second Life has an affiliate program, I’ve signed up to the Linkshare deal on another blog of mine, I didn’t realise they’d started a Google affiliate program until I saw a post from Inara Pey that mentioned it, you need to get approved all over again so I don’t know how that will work out. Inara’s post also pointed out a very useful community resources portal too, which has plenty of information for communities. Linden Lab are posting lots of information on the forum and Wiki, I just wish more of it was being promoted via the blog.

However the blog is being used and today it annouced the Mesh rollout. I’ve played with some very basic Mesh creations and it’s not easy to get into, but for the patient it will be worth the effort. Full perm mesh objects are appearing for those who don’t have the patience but even then, you’re going to need to get your head around UV Mapping if you want to get into textures, although items that can be textured will in some cases come with a UV Map for you to texture. There are limitations on who can upload Mesh, although this is where full perm Mesh creations will get into that market, which may raise a few questions but anyway.

If Mesh seems all a bit overwhelming, there is something far more simple to get your head around, big prims!

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