Linden Lab – Page 33 – Ciaran Laval

December 18, 2015

Snow Wars Episode I’ve Lost Count – The Snowball Awakens

A long time ago in a virtual world far, far away ……

Linden Lab have announced the date and the time of the annual Linden & Resident Snowball Fight. The date and time for those who may not be paying as close attention as they should is Monday December 21st at 10am SLT.

The blog post bills this as :

Come one – come all to the Snowball Arena for a friendly ice battle of epic proportions! We’re bringing back the Official Snowball Showdown – where you’re free to pelt your fellow Second Life Residents and Lindens with a bevy of sparkling snowballs!

These battles can indeed be epic.

Do not fear if you think you will be walking into a trap, there’s no need to be unarmed and not very dangerous because there is free weaponry available from the vendors in Winter Wonderland.

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December 18, 2015

Project Bento Greeted Enthusiastically

On Wednesday December 16th Linden Lab announced; Introducing Project Bento – New Bones Added to Second Life Avatar Skeleton. The project is designed to add extensions to the Second Life skeleton in terms of bones, these bones :

11 extra limb bones for wings, additional arms, or extra legs.
6 tail bones.
30 bones in the hands (all 10 fingers!).
30 bones for facial expressions.
2 other new bones in the head for animating ears or antennae.
13 new attachment points associated with the new bones.

The blog post describes this as :

While we want to make improvements, we also want to maximize backward compatibility. Get ready for the biggest thing that’s happened to avatars in years …

Ever wish you could incorporate a tail, wings, or second set of arms into your avatar? How about having animations for facial expressions and finger movements? Yes, we know that there are some incredibly creative workarounds that give you some of these, but they can’t leverage skeletal animation, so they have been very complex, often fragile, and very expensive in performance and resources both in your Viewer and the Simulator.

The biggest thing that has happened to Second Life avatars in years is a bold claim but looking at the reaction from Second Life content creators, it seems that this bold claim has some merit.

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December 11, 2015

The Drax Files: World Makers Episode 34 – Cheeky Pea And A Virtual World Love Story

Episode 34 of the Linden Lab sponsored Drax Files: World Makers, features the Cheeky Pea brand and the people behind it, Isla Gealach and Ewan Mureaux. This is the age old tale of virtual world scripter meets virtual world home and garden decor creator, they fall in love and live happily ever after. This of course isn’t the story the media often highlight regarding virtual world romance turned real, but it’s a story beautifully told in this edition of The Drax Files : World Makers.

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Don’t panic, it’s not a mushy love story, it’s a tale of the benefits of virtual world collaboration and physical world realism making up the whole. The episode opens with Isla talking about the beauty of immersion in a virtual world, how the space can be manipulated to create something you can feel.

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Where this episode really hits the button is in terms of the footage outside the virtual world. Isla using Maya to create items, her daughter taking an interest and even wanting to create her own items firmly makes the point that behind the 3D avatars are real people, doing real things.

There’s also an excellent section where we see how the physical world that we all live in, is an inspiration for the items created for a virtual world.

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December 8, 2015December 8, 2015

Second Life Special Offer Of Marvelous Designer Training Is On The Right Track

Back in June 2012 I blogged about Blender version 2.64 having Second Life related options. I also mentioned that there were opportunities for the Second Life and 3D creation communities to cross promote their wares :

I’ve often wondered why Adobe aren’t advertising on the Second Life forums, after all Photoshop is a popular tool for Second Life creators. Then there’s Autodesk Maya which can be used to make Mesh.

Blender and Gimp are open source tools that can be used for Second Life content creation, how about some adverts for them in the forum in exchange for links to Second Life from their sites, or Linden Lab talk to the guys at Blender Cookie about linking to some of their training materials, some of their content is free to use and some require a subscription fee. Linden Lab could even enquire if they could sell training subscriptions on behalf of Blender Cookie and bundle it with a new premium plus membership package for Second Life, which would be aimed at content creators.

I returned to this area in March 2014 when I blogged about missed opportunities for cross promotion between Second Life and Adobe :

However with Adobe charging a monthly fee, and with Linden Lab charging a monthly fee and taking into account that Adobe have products that are very suitable for Second Life content creation, I feel there’s a massive cross promotion opportunity here. A new premium membership plan could be introduced that includes a subscription to Adobe Photoshop CC and Lightroom 5, obviously this would be more expensive than the current Second Life Premium plan but with sensible negotiation between Linden Lab and Adobe, it would work out roughly the same or cheaper, than subscribing to both, on the Second Life end you’d lose some of the current premium perks to compensate for this.

Whereas this still hasn’t happened, we are seeing a step in the right direction with Linden Lab’s blog informing us of an offer; 50% Off Marvelous Designer Online Training from CG Elves – Limited Time!

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December 4, 2015December 4, 2015

Exclusive – There Is No Secret Second Life Bloggers Club

Picture the scene, Daniel Voyager, Draxtor Despres, Inara Pey, Loki Eliot, Jo Yardley, Nalates Uriah, Canary Beck, Strawberry Singh, Hamlet Au and myself are all in a darkened room somewhere in Second Life, quite possibly Linden World, which is a top secret bunker. A door opens, the creak echoes in the room and we hear footsteps. Fire lights the room, a wooden torch held up to reveal that Gray of the Lab from San Francisco (AKA Pete Linden, AKA Peter Gray), Ebbe Altberg and Xiola Linden have entered the room.

They look at us, suspiciously, there’s a hush and then we are all asked to swear an oath of secrecy before being handed a dossier entitled “Top Secret”. This dossier contains secret plans from the evil empire with regards to taking over the virtual world under the banner of “Project ~~Sanasr~~ Sansar”. *See comments for explanation of the strike through.

“At least one of you will betray us .. three times to be precise,” Xiola Linden tells us.

“Three of you may betray us once each”, ponders Gray of the Lab from San Francisco.

“All of you belong to us,” cackles Ebbe Altberg and with that they leave the room. The bloggers stand there, cold and in silence.

I look at the dossier in front of me, this is gold. I’ll have countless blogs on this subject. At that point, Strawberry Singh elbows me in the ribs and glares at me “You swore an oath!”

So I’m here to tell you that I can’t tell you about the top secret dossier. What I can exclusively tell you is that Secret Second Life Bloggers Club doesn’t exist. The last person you would entrust with secret plans for virtual world domination is a blogger, seriously.

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