Second Life – Page 252

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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August 20, 2011August 20, 2011

New Region Setting To Allow Or Disable Mesh Creation

Happy days are here again, Aston Villa are top of the league for at least few more hours until the Sunday games are over, order is restored with the greatest team the world has ever seen at the top of English football, as they should be! I enjoyed my afternoon at Villa Park today and shall shortly be off to watch match of the day to relive it. However this has nothing to do with Second Life, Mesh however does have something to do with Second Life so let’s talk about that and the new region setting to allow Mesh on your sim or not.

If you are using a Mesh enabled viewer, such as Second Life beta 3.01, and if you’re on a sim that is on a channel that supports Mesh, and if you’re an estate owner (a lot of ands there) then you can get to a screen like this:

The only problem is, it doesn’t work!

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August 17, 2011August 17, 2011

NPC’S, Blog Comments And Pictures, Oh My!

Good grief what in the name of all things holy is going on, the official blog is allowing comments, this won’t end well! Such has been the sorry state of affairs with the official blog that I’d largely stopped looking there for information and it’s still not a good place for information, however they have unveiled a some interesting concepts, blog posts about resident blogs, such as this post about Honour McMillan’s post about Raven’s Mist, then there are posts about places, such as this one about The Crossword Gallery and they have also been running these flickr pic of the day posts, it would be better if they tagged them all but still, there’s life being breathed into the blog.

However when it comes to information and news, that’s still thin on the ground, Hamlet Au to the rescue then with a couple of interesting posts, one about content speciality roles and one about the product team. There are some potentially exciting developments here, but there’s also going to be an issue of communication and it’s not really clear what channels are going to be open here.

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August 15, 2011August 15, 2011

SLCC On The Future Of Second Life Commerce

I haven’t been following SLCC at all this year, it all seemed a lot lower key than in past years, although maybe I just wasn’t paying attention and we do have to remember that it’s a community convention not a Linden Lab convention. Inara Pey has covered Rodvik’s speech here where Inara covers the general gist and here, where Delicia Whipsnaps questions what was meant by Linden Lab diversifiyng, I haven’t got around to listening to his speech yet but Rodvik generally comes across very well when talking of Second Life.

However there were further talks regarding commerce in Second Life, with Brooke Linden and Thor Linden at the fore on commerce and advertising, with Collosus making an appearance too. The presentation can be listened to here, at Ustream, I guess if you’re lucky you can watch it too but the video froze for me, although I could listen to the talk. First up, some comedy gold when I went to that page came in the shape and form of the advert on that page:

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August 5, 2011August 5, 2011

Useful Blender Tutorials

Mesh is on the grid, although not officially released, so getting ready for Mesh is an important step, although as I’ve said before the prim is far from dead and Mesh will have problems, especially early doors, with viewer compatibility. I’ve been looking at Mesh and settled on Blender as my tool of choice, which you can read more about here. I’ve chosen Blender because Autodesk Maya, which is a fantastic 3D Modelling tool, is expensive for a noob to 3D modelling like me, it is of course aimed at professionals, which I’m not. Another popular tool is Google Sketchup, but from what I can see the free version is for personal use only, so Blender is the tool that gives me the most options at the best price, in this case nothing but donations should be forthcoming.

First things first, anyone who tells you 3D modelling is easy is talking cack, trust me on this, it’s not easy, inworld building with prims is definitely easier to learn, however Blender is a powerful piece of software from what I can tell, now you may be like me and rush head first in and then bang your head on the wall and then follow a process like this:

Excitedly download the program.
Open it up and stare at a cube.
Look at the menus and think “WTF”.
Read some tutorials and think “WTF”
UV Mapping? “WTF”

However fear not, because I have fearlessly sought out some half decent tutorials which have allowed me to upload a mesh cube with a texture on it … it’s a start! I will share some of the useful tutorials with you.

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