Over the last few months, it is has been my pleasure to re-launch Art at the Park at Holly Kai Park, work on the development of Holly Kai Art Garden. and together with Caitlyn, launch Caitinara Bar with a weekly programme of music.
Now, I’m very pleased to announce that on Sunday, April 3rd and 15:00 SLT, a new monthly series will be launching at the Park, courtesy of Seanchai Library.
Stories at the Park, presented by Seanchai Library will coincide with the Art at the Park exhibitions at Holly Kai Park. Each month, members of Seanchai Library will select pieces of art by the artists participating in the current Art in the Park exhibition, and write either a 100-word work of fiction (referred to as a “drabble”) or a 100-word poem about each piece, which will be read live in Voice during Stories at the Park events.
Stories at the Park will take place at the stone gazebo located in the heart of Holly Kai Park’s hilltop art display area (walk up the hill from the waterside arrival point), and will feature stories and poems by Caledonia Skytower and Kayden Oconnell, based on the works of our current Invited Artists, Io Bechir, Goodcross, Hana Hoo, Mistero Hifeng and Sisse Singh.
A poem by Kayden Oconnell, inspired by Hano Hoo’s “Alice is Watching”, and produced for Stories at the Park
“I know, for me, looking at the work of visual art gives me an inspiration to let out thoughts of my own. I suspect the same is true of Kayden,” Caledonia Skytower said of the new series. “We have written 100 word stories and poetry, which could be either haiku or free verse as long as it did not exceed 100 words, and we have deliberately both written about a few select works because we believe that a really good work of visual art (and there are plenty here) speaks to each person uniquely.”
For my part, I’m thrilled to see this launch of this new series at Holly Kai Park, and look forward to seeing it grow alongside our Art at the Park and Art at the Garden events, and hope that you will join us.
Should you plan to attend, you might want to visit the park ahead of the start time (or over the weekend) and enjoy the exhibits by our artists prior to listening to the stories and poems by Caledonia and Kayden.
We look forward to welcoming you to this new event at Holly Kai Park on Sunday, April 3rd.
Linden Lab Town Hall Island – focus for a special message (image: Linden Lab)
The start of the month is always a good time to make important announcements, so it should come as no surprise that on Friday, April 1st, the Lab are making am exclusive announcement. You may have already heard about it, but I thought I’m help spread the word, just in case 😉 .
Because of the nature of the announcement, which features a special message featuring guest announcer Rick Astley, it is only available in-world, so the Lab have opened the 4-region Town Hall Island to ensure as many people as possible can get to hear it.
You may have heard that in addition to continued work to improve Second Life, Linden Lab is developing a new platform for user-created virtual experiences, code-named Project Sansar. (If you’d like to learn more about it, check out some of the recent press in our media archive.)
Project Sansar is not a sequel to nor a replacement for Second Life, and that the two will run in parallel. Although different from Second Life in a number of respects, Project Sansar has understandably aroused the interest and curiosity of many Second Life Residents. We’re very grateful for that enthusiasm! While it’s still very early for Project Sansar, today we have a special message to share in-world – exclusively with Second Life Residents.
When visiting the regions, do make sure you have media enabled, in order to hear Mr. Astley and the message. And remember, as the official blog post states – this message is only available for today, April 1st, 2016.
Addendum: as some appear to be having issues with the message, it is also available here.
The following notes and audio were taken from the weekly Bento User Group meeting, held on Thursday, March 31st at 13:00 SLT on Aditi. For details on each meeting and the location, please refer to the Bento User Group wiki page.
Note that this update is not intended to offer a full transcript of the meeting, nor does it present the discussion points in chronological order. Rather, it represents the core points of discussion to Project Bento, grouped together by subject matter were relevant / possible.
Viewer Status
A new version of the Bento project viewer was released on Tuesday, March 29th. Version 5.0.0.313150 includes the latest updates to the Bento skeleton and the work that has been undertaken to hook-up some of the Bento bones to respond to the appearance sliders in the viewer. The skeleton changes are:
Some renaming and position tweaks for the face joints
New face joints to allow better slider support, including teeth, eye corners
The EyeAlt bones are no longer children of mFaceRoot
4th joint added to the hind limbs.
The slider updates mean that many of the face sliders will now work for suitably rigged mesh heads.
The focus now is very much on finalising the skeleton, and subject to possible show stoppers turning up as more work is done on hooking bones into the appearance sliders, the hope is that the skeleton will not now undergo further significant change. This should allow for in-depth testing of the skeleton without risk of further updates breaking content.
In particular, the Lab is looking to get feedback on any problems encountered with the skeleton, and whether some of the new additional bones are actually useful in achieving what has been hoped in requesting them – such as the additional joints requested for hexapods, etc.
Should it turn out that these joints are not useful, then the Lab needs to know sooner rather than later so that they can be tweaked, if possible. Also, if the joints are seen as not useful at all, than the Lab would also like to know, so that some might be removed to help reduce the overall complexity of the skeleton.
The areas the Lab are keen to see feedback on comprise:
The new “hind” limbs
The four additional spine joints
The additional branch in the wings to allow for wing folding
Testing the face sliders with animations – there is a concern that animations may conflict with slider settings used to reposition the facial bones.
There are also new .dae models which work with the new skeleton available on the Bento test page on the wiki.
Next Steps: Viewer and Sliders
From the Lab’s perspective, the immediate next steps in the projects are:
Have a final skeleton and slider configuration by the end of week #14 (week commencing Monday April 4th (allowing a few more days for the Avastar team to complete work on linking facial bones, etc., to the appearance sliders
Issue an updated project viewer ASAP after next week, which will include the finalised skeleton and sliders, together with available bug fixes (see below)
Once the updated project viewer is out, the Lab will be focused on the remaining bug fixes and collecting feedback based on creators’ experiences in using the new skeleton, testing the sliders with and without animations, etc.
To help people with this, the Lab encourage anyone working on content exercising elements of the new skeleton they are comfortable in sharing to the common pool of work on the wiki (link above)
There are also some additional attachment points to be added to allow for things like the “hind” limbs. However as noted in my week #8 report, there are a number of limiting factors in adding attachment points, one of which is presenting them through the viewer UI, which has certain limitations. Another issue is that there is a hard limit to the total number of attachment points, which makes it difficult to accommodate every which might logically require attachment points associated with it.
Slider Work
It should be made clear that no new appearance sliders are being added to the viewer’s appearance controls for Bento. Rather, as noted in my week #9 update, a slider parameter has been identified which allows some of the existing sliders to work with bone rotations / translations (for Bento) as well as with the morphs used to animate the default avatar skeleton.
There are some sliders in the head which don’t currently seem to work, although this may be due to further work waiting to be carried out in hooking things up. A suggestion has been made to add a new chin joint to make the chin more mobile and allow for versatile jaw shapes, but it’s not clear if further joints will be added at this point in time due to the growing complexity of the skeleton.
Teager shows a WIP set of bird wings designed to utilises the Bento skeleton extensions
In addition to the facial slider support means that things like increasing height should allow wings to increase proportionally. However, documentation on what has been hooked-up to the sliders has yet to be written, mainly because the work is still ongoing, so currently the only way to get the information is via the avatar.lad XML file.
A couple of discussion points on bones and sliders revolve around the wings and “hind” leg bones. On the one hand, there are instances where having these hooked into sliders makes sense – such as having the “hind” leg bones for quadruped avatars, so that if the avatar’s height is increased, the hind legs adjust as well.
However, as things like the “hind” leg bones and the wing bones are designed to be re-tasked, there are potential use cases where this linking could be undesirable, and tends to steer various bones to only be used for certain types of content, rather than leaving things more open for content creators to determine how to just the bones. One potential work-around for things like the “hind” bones would be to provide an additional set of sliders specifically for them; however, due to the amount of work involved in developing and implementing the necessary viewer updates, including the UI changes that would be required, this is currently out-of-scope for Bento.
MadPea games open the doors on their latest grid-wide mystery puzzle game, The Interview on Sunday, April 3rd. Details on what it is all about have yet to be revealed – but there is a clue in the title, and it involves an organisation called the Goliathus Society. This appears to be a very secret society (one no doubt with a very dark secret!), everyone want to join – and a rare opportunity to be a part of the organisation has arisen.
Ahead of the official opening, the lucky winners the recent Interview Photo Contest and Interview Writing Contest will have 24 hours access to the game before the doors open to the public, as well as access to the MadPea team for help and support. You can read about the winners and see their entries on the MadPea result pages for the photo contest and the writing contest – and I have to say, the winning entry in the latter makes for entertaining reading 🙂 .
To further whet appetites, Kess Crystal from MadPea e-mails with a short note to say the trailer for The Interview is now out, and I’m embedding it below.
So, if you’ve always wanted to be a part of a secret society, and gain a benefits package (aka prizes) for some of SL’s popular designers, get ready to take part in the Interview.
Photographers Io Bechir and Fanny Vermont recently opened their own studio and gallery space in Second Life. Called Clockwork Skimmer, the space has a distinctively steampunk feel to it, and offers a cosy space for both Io and Fanny to display their work.
The lower floor of the space, where visitors arrive, presents the looks and feel of a basement space, with bare brick walls and small windows placed high in the walls, close to the wood ceiling. A rough wooden floor, a bare iron supporting frame for the floor above, and exposed copper pipes complete the basic room décor. Into this Io has added various furnishings – free-standing spotlights, a wine rack, easy chairs and a large leather sofa, before which lays a great big bear rug. “I am a big Steam fan,” Io informed me as we chatted about the design, “I think it’s a nice motif for a gallery space.”
I couldn’t agree more, as the entire effect creates a beautifully intimate space ideal for presenting her work, which has a wonderful ability to project so much to the observer: strength, fragility, vulnerability, beauty, vitality, and more. In all nine of Io’s pieces are displayed here, the casual manner in which they are placed on or against walls or sit on easels very much promoting the feeling one has been invited into her personal work space, rather than attending a formal exhibit.
The upper floor, reached via an open staircase, is home to a more formal exhibition space, which might be imagined as being on the ground floor of the building. It is here that Fanny has her exhibition, entitled Balance. In it, she presents nine nude images in three sets of three, all in black and white. Each image is exquisitely posed and presented, and as with Io’s pieces, they each individually, and in their collective trios, present a narrative.
“Balance is my second series based on a concept. As the name implies I developed and photographed some of my ideas referring to the theme but still with enough room for personal interpretations,” Fanny notes of the exhibit, “taken in my studio which is not much more than an ample, empty hall. I wanted to be able to use a tele lens and also to get more possibilities where to place the light projector. For six images I used a large, white backdrop with a rather wide dimensioned cove which creates nice results in combination with the spotlight.”
As well as describing he means of creating her images, Fanny also divulges her approach to framing and presenting them in-world in order to preserve their 16:10 aspect ratio. While this may sound a dry description, in actual fact, it is quite the reverse. While the image sets themselves are enthralling as seen, being invited into the complete creative process which brought them from idea to finished displayed piece, draws one deeper into them; so we become less observers and more partners sharing in Fanny’s work.
I’ve been a fervent admirer of Io’s work since first encountering it, and I’ve become an instant admirer of Fanny’s work as well, as a result of this first expose to it. As such, I’m very much looking forward to future exhibitions at Clockwork Skimmer.
I first wrote about Asphyxiation Point, the free-form role-play region, back in February of 2016, after being invited to explore the region by one of region’s Admins and a prime mover in the region’s development, Charles Newton Kuluk (kuluk). At the time I noted that the town is host to a range of activities,most of which are reported through the associated website, and Thursday, March 31st through to Sunday April 3rd inclusive will see the town engage in one of those activities, as it faces the ravages of a hurricane.
“Hurricane is one of the most visually striking events in Second Life,” Charles said in his invitation. “I would like to invite you to Asphyxiation Point to view the event in person and hopefully capture it through your lens.”
The storm is intended to unfold – as storms in the physical world so often do – over a period of days, rising to a peak, then ebbing away. As such, the time frame for the event is currently as follows:
Thursday, March 31st 2016 – The Rain: It starts with rain, materials-enabled rain in this case, which allows local lighting to be reflected in the water on the ground and in the splashes of raindrops when you have the Advanced Lighting Model active. The rain is region-wide, but playing with different windlights and time settings in the viewer can create some interesting results, particularly at night.
Friday, April 1st 2016 – The Wind: As Friday arrives, so does the wind, driving the rain and pushing against the trees, whilst lightning flickers across the sky, followed by thunder’s inevitable booming, as the townsfolk batten down and prepare for the hurricane’s anger.
Saturday April 2nd 2016 – Hurricane: the storm proper strikes, the sea rages, flooding much of the town, breaching defences around noon SLT and rising steadily through until 18:00 SLT.
Sunday April 3rd 2016 – The waters recede: the storm has passed, and with nature’s fury abated, the waters slowly recede through the early morning hours (SLT), leaving some debris left in its wake as the people of Asphyxiation Point clean-up and return to normal life.
As noted in Charles’ invitation, visitors are encouraged to drop into the region over the course of the storm and take photos as events unfold. All the folk at Asphyxiation Point ask is that those taking pictures consider sharing them on the Asphyxiation Point Flickr group, to help record the event for posterity.
Should you visit to see the storm for yourself, do keep in mind that Asphyxiation Point is a free-form role-play environment in which most of the residents interact “in character” in open chat conversation. Visitors are welcome to give it a go as well; however, if you are approached in local chat by someone wanting to role-play, but would prefer not to, just IM them to let them know you are visiting and / or taking photos.
As we’re talking storms, I’ll wrap this piece with a little musical interlude from Chris de Burgh.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 