Month: May 2012

Kitely adds more features

Posted on by Inara Pey

Kitely, the on-demand grid, and effectively my second virtual world home, today adds several new features that increase the grid’s appeal and capabilities.

Profiles

Kitely now has full profile capabilities, allowing you to supply information on yourself and your interests, set picks, and so on, a-la other grid-based VWs.

Profiles now available in Kitely

Groups

Groups are now also featured within Kitely, with all the capabilities you’d expect: Group chat / IMs, Notices, Roles, etc. Kitely follows the OpenSim standard for Groups, so I’m unclear on what the upper number of allowable Groups per avatar is (42 being the maximum number a person can join in Second Life).

Doubtless Ilan or Oren will drop by and overcome my ignorance in this :). Creating and participating in Groups follows the usual process, but if you’re new to the whole thing, the Kitely blog post provides a link to some instructions.

The arrival of Groups also adds further granularity to controlling who can access your world(s) in Kitely. Until now, the levels of access have been based on Facebook and / or Twitter. However, you can now additionally define access in terms of the Groups you create / join, again using the through the Settings for each of your Worlds.

Setting Avatar Group access to worlds (Credit: Kitely Ltd)

Kitely offers significant flexibility here, as you can assign access to multiple Group of which you are a member / you create, including defining how the time Group members spend in your world is paid for.

Security and Other Updates

Alongside these updates, Kitely has also:

  • Implemented off-line messaging for the receipt of IMs while not in-world
  • Updated world security settings so that only the world manager to build in them. “Pushing” is also now disabled by default. Worlds can still be opened for anyone to build, but the recommended practice is to enable build rights via a trusted Group
  • OAR export format has been updated to save a world’s telehub, if one is set.

Finally, this update also sees an optional (but recommended) update to the Kitely web browser plug-in. You’ll be prompter to update (if you haven’t done so) when you click ENTER WORLD from any World Page.

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The Piano Guys

Posted on by Inara Pey

Nothing to do with Second Life, but for a while now I’ve been raving about Stephen Sharp Nelson and Jon Schmidt, who together form  the core element of “The Piano Guys” – and their work is just amazing. While I’ve linked to them a couple of times in blog pieces here, I’ve not really mentioned them in detail.

They release a piece almost weekly on YouTube, and each one is a musical treasure, stunningly arranged and beautifully filmed.

Some are original compositions, such as Desert Symphony:

Others are cover versions of popular songs:

While some are simply great fun:

For me their best pieces are wonderful fusions, such as last week’s Bourne Vivaldi, bringing together the fast-paced refrain from the Bourne films and (as the name suggests) Vivaldi in a wonderful piece:

Although overall, this stunning combination of One Republic’s Secrets with Beethoven still remains my personal favourite, and one I play daily. The piece is layered emotions and the segue from Secrets to Beethoven’s 5th is inspired:

You can find The Piano Guys on their own channel on YouTube, or at ThePianoGuys.com.

Listen, enjoy – become a Founder!

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Metareality podcasts

Posted on by Inara Pey

Metareality is a weekly podcast by Kimberly Winnington of Sand Castle Studios, whom is perhaps better known in-world as Gianna Borgnine. Each week the show covers a range of topics, mostly focused on SL. The show is a mix of conversation, comments, insight and humour which features regular guests as sounding boards for topics Gianna has selected for discussion (although some come from the guests themselves).

I’ve been a semi-regular listener to the podcasts for a while now, and can recommend them as generally being a good listen.

This week’s podcast features Qarl Fizz (formerly Linden) of the Parametric Deformer fame, and Crap Mariner, adroit and wryly-humoured observer of SL who should be featured a whole lot more; so if you haven’t tuned in before … go – listen!

Mesh Deformer update: release from Qarl, request from Oz

Posted on by Inara Pey

Qarl has updated the mesh deformer. speaking in the Metareality podcast today, he states:

[57:15] I’ve pushed another version of the deformer today. It does male and female avatars; so that answers people’s questions who are upset about that. And I would say that we’re getting pretty close to the final product. If you … haven’t been following it closely, waiting for it you should check it out. 

He goes on to comment, in response to a question about what people should be looking for in using the deformer, “I don’t think regular people should check it out. Content creators should check it out, I should say that …. Because in order to use it you need to mark the mesh as being deformed, and the only way to do that is to create your own mesh and upload it.”

The update is available in a Linden Lab test build.

This may sound like, “Well, duh!” information, but the fact that the deformer is still in development and at this point really only applicable to content creators, is worth pointing out. It also leads-in nicely to the next piece of news.

At the same time, OZ has updated the mesh JIRA with the following request:

If you are a clothing designer interested in getting the mesh deformer integrated into all SL viewers, you can help both make it better and get it integrated more quickly:

We need a collection of test garments that we can use to evaluate this feature, and to form the basis of an ongoing regression test of it once it is integrated. These need not be “good looking”, and in some cases should not be (so we’re not asking you to give away your best commercial work). What we need is deformable mesh garments, based on either the unaltered “new shape” (female), or that shape changed to male; the garments should be designed to explore the limits of the technology as well as to showcase the normal easy cases.

Some examples I can think of (but I expect that you as designers and fashionistas can think of more and better):
a full length garment (ball gown, trenchcoat, kaftan)

  • garments designed to be close fitting around problem areas like the shoulders, breasts, and butt (or whatever areas you think are problems)
  • garments designed to stand away from the body in some areas (capes, high collars, flared or puffed sleeves and pants, hoop skirts)
  • very small garments that cover limited areas (gloves, shoes, scarves, shin and thigh pads)
  • garments designed to layer with each other (a close fitting shirt with a jacket to wear over it)

It would probably be useful for these test garments not to be textured for normal use — instead, give them simple high contrast patterns like checks or stripes that make it easy to evaluate how textures are altered by the deformations.

If you’d like to contribute items for this effort, please:

  • Upload them with the current version of the official Project Viewer for the Deformer. You can find a download link on the test build wiki page, and record the full version number of the viewer you used (from the Help > About Second Life floater).
  • Put a copy of the garment (no-modify is fine, but please allow copy and transfer) into a Notecard that describes what the garment is intended to demonstrate or test. Links to images of what you think it should look like would be useful; be sure to include the version number from the viewer in the Notecard.
  • Send the Notecard to Oz Linden
  • Optionally, attach the mesh file to this issue

I’d like to get Contribution Agreements from anyone submitting garments; contact me for details on that if you need them.

I will establish a way anyone can pick up copies of the test garments that we incorporate into the test suite.

The deformer itself has given rise to much debate on the current SL avatar – Nalates Urriah provides some solid insight into this; which has also lead to debates on “standard” sizing I’ve touched upon here. Part of this debate has also ranged on the JIRA – although there is a JIRA dedicated to matter of the avatar itself (STORM 1800) and Oz has requested that discussions pertinent to that aspect of things be carried out on that JIRA.

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With thanks to Pete Linden & Gianne Borgnine.

Whither Exodus? Why, heads down and busy!

Posted on by Inara Pey

There have been questions and comments on Exodus floating around in various places, with people wondering what is happening and when the next release might come out. As an Exodus user myself, I fired-off an e-mail to Clix and the team recently to see if they’d be willing to shed a little light on what’s going on.

While the reply was a little shorter than I’d hoped – but then I did ask a couple of questions on releases that the team may not want to commit to, date-wise – Clix did provide a little update:

The team has been busy with personal projects and real life commitments. Naturally this has slowed down production. In addition we have been submitting code upstream to Linden Lab that has been accepted and rolled out in the most recent official viewer release.

Exodus is being actively worked on and will feature a wide range of fixes, performance improvements as well as some neat new features. Our next release will address any and all license concerns. We will continue to produce the best TPV for gamers and visual artists in Second Life. Stay tuned for new feature announcements!

The license concerns mentioned potentially refer to J2C / KDU usage issues. Whether or not this is the case, it is fairly clear from comments passed elsewhere that there has been strong cooperation between LL and the Exodus team in sorting any problems out, which has to be seen as being a good indicator when it comes to LL / TPV cooperation in general, something that has been grumbled about by some commentators following changes to the TPV Policy recently.

One thing is very certain: given the popularity of Exodus amongst users, that the Viewer is being actively worked on will come a good news to many, so keep an eye on the Exodus blog page.

Cerridwen’s Cauldron: brewing-up a region of delights

Posted on by Inara Pey

I will confess that, until Fantasy Faire, I was unaware of Elicio’s Ember’s work in Second Life – much to my shame. However, his builds at Nu Orne and Siren’s Secret completely enthralled me, for reasons I’ve touch upon elsewhere. Following the Faire, I decided to make Elicio’s own sim the focus of a Virtual Destinations visit, eager to see what lay there.

It was more than worth the visit.

Cerridwen’s Cauldron is both the location of Elicio’s main store, and a beautiful sim to explore and see a range of his creations in a very natural location. The store itself is located up in the sky, so as not to intrude on the sim itself – although though be told, the store is as much a work of art as the sim itself: a marvellous floating palace-like structure, complete with nearby ivory tower.

Elicio’s store: floating palace

Walkways around the build encourage you to explore, and vendor boards are all tastefully displayed to blend with the overall build. You can spend an hour here alone, just exploring and admiring the glorious attention to detail.

The Dragon centrepiece in the main store “lobby”

I really do encourage you to wander here; you never know what you’ll find that will look perfect in your home or garden, or might fit the theme of your parcel / sim. Not only that, but there are real treasures here simply to enjoy.

Beautiful hanging garden

The teleport itself – located at the main arrival point – will help in getting you around. This will take you up to the art exhibit (among other destinations), featuring Elicio’s own artwork, and which has walkways leading to the very upper levels of the main structure. There are many reasons why I’m enamoured of Elicio’s builds. One is the care with which they have been constructed to look glorious almost any time of day – or night. The texturing / lighting is just a joy.

By night

Another reason for my infatuation is that – again as I’ve mentioned during my explorations of Nu Orne and Siren’s Secret – is that I find strong, but very subtle resonances within Elicio’s builds. At Nu Orne, for example, I was put in mind of my visits to Sri Lanka – although, truth be told, there was little direct resemblance between the two. Down on the ground, Cerridwen’s Cauldron is the same.

The sim

Again, there is no obvious reason for this; if anything, the styling of the sim should put me more in mind of, say Thailand or Malaysia; and it did take me a while to work out why the resonance is so strong (outside of my abiding love for Sri Lanka); It wasn’t until I started the climb from the beach to the Earth Temple that I realised why, and I’m sure anyone who has climb Sigiriya will pick-up on the similarities as they climb the stairs up the rock-face here.

Memories of Sigiriya

As with the sky store, there is a lot to explore and discover here, and teleports abound to help you get around, although I personally found it a lot more interesting to explore on foot – you’ll be surprised as to what you might find. Nor are you limited to just feet and teleports when exploring – there is another mode of transport (which is another reason I love Elicio’s builds).

The sim does appear to have some Windlight presets of its own, but I admit that I found it preferable to use my own client-side presets; this may actually have encouraged my feelings that the sim reminds me of Sri Lanka, as I do opt for setting that give a tropical-like feel to places. I don’t recommend the one over the other, but I do recommend that you pay the sim a visit – and don’t miss out on the sky store.

Here are some of my highlights.

 

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