Category: Second Life

Animal Instinct at Glinka Gallery in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Ginka Gallery: Lash VV – Animal Instinct

Currently open at The Glinka Gallery, operated and curated by Wolfgang Glinka, is an exhibition of original paintings by Serbian painter and digital artist, Lash VV. Entitled Animal Instinct, it marks his fourth show at the gallery, and focuses on one of his core interests as an artist: the natural world.

Located within one of the gallery’s halls, Animal Instinct is a collection of some 25 paintings of animals in the wild. It’s a selection that offers insight into Lash’s range as an artist, the pieces representing original works produced in oil, acrylics, watercolours, charcoal and ink drawings, drypoint, his skills with digital post-processing techniques and more.

The Ginka Gallery: Lash VV – Animal Instinct

These are pieces also representing their subjects in a similarly broad range of genres – still-life, impressionist, minimalist, abstracted – with each approach clearly balanced to best reflect the motion of its subject or captures the manner in which we tend to picture them in the mind’s eye.  This gives each picture a depth and sense of life that can so easily capture the eyes – and also offer a hint of a story.

Take Dance of Love, for example. It captures two Japanese cranes in courtship, but more than this, though the the style, the minimalist use of colour, the piece offers a broader suggestion of the country itself.  close by, Antelopes similarly captures the alertness of their subject while the light hatching of lines beyond them as all we need to see in order to be transported to the Serengeti.

The Ginka Gallery: Lash VV – Animal Instinct

Standing just inside the hall on the right is Fight, a beautifully raw piece, accompanied by a poem by Wolfgang entitled Rutting that equally captures the rawness of animal life in the wild.

Watched over by a 3D salamander also created by Lash, this is a wonderfully evocative selection of art guaranteed to capture the hearts of wildlife lowers.

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Seanchai Library: October 16th-21st 2022

Posted on by Inara Pey
Seanchai Library

It’s time to highlight another week of storytelling in Voice by the staff and volunteers at the Seanchai Library – and this week previews the launch of a very special event.

As always, all times SLT, and events are held at the Library’s home in Nowhereville, unless otherwise indicated. Note that the schedule below may be subject to change during the week, please refer to the Seanchai Library website for the latest information through the week.

Sunday. October 16th,  13:30: The Halloween Tree, Part 1

On All Hallows Eve, young Pipkin is due to meet his eight friends outside a haunted house on the edge of town. But as he runs through the gathering gloom, Something sweep him away.

Arriving at the house in expectation of meeting Pipkin, his eight friends instead encounter the mystical Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud, who informs them that Pipkin has been taken on a journey that could determine if he lives or dies.

Aided by Moundshroud and using the tail of a kite, the eight friends pursue Pipkin through time and space, passing through the past civilisations – Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Celts – witnessing all that has given rise to the day they know as “Halloween”, and the role things like ghosts and the dead play in it.

Then, at length they come to the Halloween Tree itself, laden with jack-o’-lanterns, its branches representing the confluence of all these traditions, legends and tales, drawing them together into itself.

With David Abbott, Faerie Maven-Pralou and Caledonia Skytower at Haunted Hollow in Chestnut Hills.

Monday, October 17th, 19:00: The Wolfen

Gyro Muggins reads Whitley Strieber’s 1978 debut novel.

Two New York Police Department detectives investigate a series of suspicious deaths across New York City. These are revealed to be the work of a race of intelligent beings descended from canids, called the Wolfen.

The novel is told from the point of view of the human characters as well from the Wolfen themselves. The savage killing of two New York City policemen leads two detectives, a man and a woman bound together by a strange, tough passion, to hunt down the wolfen – once called werewolves.

Tuesday, October 18th

12:00 Noon: Russell Eponym

With music, and poetry in Ceiluradh Glen.

19:00: Howl’s Moving Castle

Sophie has the great misfortune of being the eldest of three daughters, destined to fail miserably should she ever leave home to seek her fate. But when she unwittingly attracts the ire of the Witch of the Waste, Sophie finds herself under a horrid spell that transforms her into an old lady. Her only chance at breaking it lies in the ever-moving castle in the hills: the Wizard Howl’s castle.

To untangle the enchantment, Sophie must handle the heartless Howl, strike a bargain with a fire demon, and meet the Witch of the Waste head-on. Along the way, she discovers that there’s far more to Howl—and herself—than first meets the eye.

Caledonia Skytower reads Diana Wynne Jones novel.

Wednesday, October 19th, 19:00: Seanchai Flicks – Spooky Edition

The Seanchai cinema space shares Halloween-themed video adventures.

Thursday, October 20th,

19:00: Be Spooky! Be Brief!

100-word spooky tales with R. Dismantled in Ceiluradh Glen.

21:00: Seanchai Late Night

Late night contemporary Sci-Fi-Fantasy with Finn Zeddmore.

Art on the edge of dreams in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Kondor Art Centre: Hermes Kondor – In The Edge Of The Dream

Now open at the Kondor Art Centre is the most engaging and fascinating series of digital art, presented by the Centre’s owner / curator (and exceptionally talented photographer artist in his own right), Hermes Kondor.

Located within the Centre’s Art Square, In The Edge Of The Dream is a collection of 20 images that combine themes of fantasy, flights of the imagination, the free thinking of childhood, and the freedom all of them can give us. Each and every one of these pieces carries an artistic and narrative richness that is completely stunning and captivating. More than paintings, these 16 works are portals to worlds of wonder, places of mystery and magic, halls of wonder and the marvels of the imagination unlocked when the mind – both in childhood and adulthood – is given the fullest freedom of thought and expression.

Kondor Art Centre: Hermes Kondor – In The Edge Of The Dream

The introduction to the exhibition can be found within a 17th image in the square in words from Hermes himself which are perfectly written and frame the exhibition beautifully. As such, rather than ramble on myself, I’m simply going to quote them here in the hope that in doing so, I can also help visitors frame their mindset in readiness for a visit.

Live the dream, transform yourself into it and discover the Reality of Fantasy.
The Magic is right there, living by your side and inside you. Let yourself be carried away by the Dream of Existing. Be enchanted, play with what you think is real and try to transform Life into Magic. 

– Hermes Kondor

Kondor Art Centre: Hermes Kondor – In The Edge Of The Dream
Delight yourself with the Fantasy that dwells inside the Dream. Discover yourself, finding the other side of the Real. Complete yourself with your inner side and find the supreme Happiness that is right there with you, in the deepest dimension of Life. 
Transform the Dream into Art and join me in the search for who we deeply are.

– Hermes Kondor

In addition to being presented in large format images, the painting in this collection are also available gathered into an in-world coffee table book – perfect for keeping the entire collection at home and being able to enjoy it even if you don’t have sufficient wall space for copies of the individual paintings. The book can be obtained from a table just a short walk from the exhibition’s introduction board – which I’m also using the landing point SLurl for the exhibition in this piece.

Kondor Art Centre: Hermes Kondor – In The Edge Of The Dream

A beautiful exhibition of digital art that really should not be missed.

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RFL Sci-Fi Expo 2022 in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
2022 RFL Sci-Fi Expo

The 2022 Second Life Sci-Fi Expo launched on Friday, October 14th, 2022, and will remain in orbit through until Sunday, October 23rd, in aid of The American Cancer Society and the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer (MSABC) campaign.

Active across four regions located alongside the American Cancer Society Island, this year’s even carries the theme of Voyage Through the Stars. These four regions are arranged as a single structure representing The Nexus, a massive space vessel and “crowning jewel of the United Earth Council fleet as it explores the vast reaches of interstellar space.”

The core of the build appears to be the vessel’s propulsion system, around which the almost spherical ship is constructed. Level with the mid-point in this vertical core is a broad deck ring running around the the circumference of the ship, which serves as the shopping precinct and home to the main event locations.

2022 RFL Sci-Fi Expo

The latter form a set of four smaller domes, comprising the the main landing point and information centre; the Raffle and Silent Auction, the ACS information hub and Memory Crystal garden, and the entertainment dome. All of the domes are connected via the shopping precinct, while the landing point dome has a set of teleport portals that can deliver visitors directly to any of the other three domes or to the main ACS island.

As with previous years, the expo presents a broad range of science-fiction related merchandise and daily entertainment and activities. The website sees a change in approach this year, with some information coming in the form of re-directs to Facebook pages, however, for ease of reference, here are the core links:

2022 RFL Sci-Fi Expo

The website is perhaps a little light on specifics in places – a list of SLurls on the home page would be nice, as would actual details on the Quest – I can tell you it is called The Captain, the Governor and the Greslock, but little else other than you can join this in-world via the Quest vendors and point you to the list of prizes on Facebook, per above. Similarly, while events in the calendar can be clicked on for more details, a SLurl to the entertainment dome is sadly absent. But that said, the best way to appreciate the Expo is to pay it a visit, and I encourage all sci-fi fans do so!

About Making Strides Against Breast Cancer

Making Strides Against Breast Cancer is the American Cancer Society’s premier event to raise awareness and funds to fight breast cancer. But it’s more than just the name of a walk – it describes the amazing progress we’re making together to defeat this disease. Since 1993, four million walkers have raised more than US $280 million through Making Strides. Learn More.

2022 RFL Sci-Fi Expo

SLurls and Information

2022 Puppetry project week #41 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Puppetry demonstration via Linden Lab – see below.  Demos video with the LL comment “We have some basic things working with a webcam and Second Life but there’s more to do before it’s as animated as we want.”

The following notes have been taken from chat logs and audio recording of the Thursday, October 13th Puppetry Project meetings held at the Castelet Puppetry Theatre on Aditi. These meetings are generally held on alternate weeks to the Content Creation User Group (CCUG), on same day / time (Thursdays at 13:00 SLT).

Notes in these summaries are not intended to be a full transcript of every meeting, but to highlight project progress / major topics of discussion.

Project Summary

  • Previously referred to as “avatar expressiveness”, Puppetry is intended to provide a means by which avatars can mimic physical world actions by their owners (e.g. head, hand, arm movements) through tools such as a webcam and using technologies like inverse kinematics (IK) and the  LLSD Event API Plug-in (LEAP) system.
    • Note that facial expressions and finger movements are not currently enabled.
    • Most movement is in the 2D plain (e.g., hand movements from side-to-side but not forward / back), due to limitations with things like depth of field tracking through a webcam, which has yet to be addressed.
  • The back-end support for the capability is only available on Aditi (the Beta grid) and within the following regions: Bunraku, Marionette, and Castelet.
  • Puppetry requires the use of a dedicated viewer, the Project Puppetry viewer, available through the official Second Life Alternate Viewers page.
  • No other special needs beyond the project viewer are required to “see” Puppetry animations. However, to use the capability to animate your own avatar and broadcast the results, requires additional work – refer to the links below.
  • There is now a Puppetry Discord channel – those wishing to join it should contact members of LL’s puppetry team, e.g. Aura Linden, Simon Linden, Rider Linden, Leviathan Linden (not a full list of names at this time – my apologies to those involved whom I have missed).

Bugs, Feature Requests and Code Submissions

  • For those experimenting with Puppetry, Jiras (bug reports / fixes or feature requests) should be filed with “[Puppetry]” at the start of the Jira title.
  • There is also a public facing Kanban board with public issues – those experiencing issues can also contact Wulf Linden.
  • Those wishing to submit code (plug-ins or other) or who wish to offer a specific feature that might be used with Puppetry should:

Further Information

Meeting Notes

New Viewer Version – 6.6.3.575529 Dated October 12th

  • This viewer uses a different, more efficient data format sending updates up to the region, and from the region to viewers.
    • The new and old formats and viewers are not compatible; someone on the new project viewer will be unable to see puppetry rendered for someone using the older viewer version, and vice-versa.
    • It is hoped that severe breakages between viewer versions like this will be avoided going forward, but this change was deemed necessary
  • This viewer also a crash (deadlock) fix, and puppetry animations should fade in/out when starting or explicitly stopping (animations may stop abruptly should the LEAP plugin crash, or the data stream is lost, etc.).
  •  Those self-compiling viewers with the puppetry code should ensure they are pulling the updated code from the  6.6.3.575529 (or later as new versions appear) repositories.

Protocol Overhaul

Leviathan Linden Linden noted the project team is going to overhaul the Puppetry/LEAP protocol.

  • The intent is to replace all the current LEAP commands (“move”, “set_this”, “set_that”, etc.), and replace with just two commands: “set” and “get”.
  • On the “set” side:
    • It will be possible set avatar joint transforms, or specify IK targets, and also set various configuration settings as necessary.
    • These set commands will be “incremental” in nature (so that changes can be made to reach the final state), and once set, they stay at the defined value until modified, cleared, or the plug-in “goes away”.
  • On the “get” side:
    • get_skeleton and any other get_foo commands (if used) will be replaced with {get: [skeleton, foo, …]}.
    • A message will be generated and set back to the viewer making the Get request, but the form of the message is still TBD.
  • Meanwhile, the viewer will only do IK for your own avatar, and will transmit the full parent-relative joint transforms of all puppeted joints through the server to other viewers, and LL will make it possible for a plug-in to just supply full parent-relative joint transforms if desired (e.g. no IK, just play the data)
  • This overhaul will also provide:
    • A way to move the Pelvis. This will include both a pre-IK transform (which is just setting the Pelvis transform) and also a post-IK transform, in case the avatar is to be moved after setting all the joints.
    • A “terse” format for the LEAP/Puppetry protocol to simplify some “set” commands to reduce data going over the LEAP data channel. It will be possible to mix these “terse” command with long-form explicit commands.
  • Leviathan plans to break all of this work down into a set of Jira issues and place them on the kanban board for ease of viewing.

The overall aim of this overhaul is to make the protocol more easily extendible in the future.

To the above, Simon Linden added:

The data stream is radically different than what we started with. Essentially your viewer will do the work for your avatar: send[ing] all data needed for your puppetry animations [so] the people seeing you just have to use those positions – no IK or significant processing. That should help out in the long run with crowds 

Example Script

Simon Linden has produced a simple example script that is pushed to the Leap repository:

  • It reads a JSON file and sends that puppetry data to the viewer.
  • Using it, is is possible to edit some values, save the JSON text file, and see bones move as an example of doing so.

In Brief

  • BUG-232764 “[PUPPETRY] [LEAP] Puppetry should be able to ‘Get’ and ‘Set’ avatar camera angle” has been raised to go with the protocol overhaul, and while it has yet to be formally accepted, has been viewed as a good idea by the Puppetry team.
  • Puppetry does not support physics feedback or collisions as yet, and work for it to do so is not on the short list of “things to do next”
  • There is currently an issue of “near-clipping” within a a first-person (e.g. Mouselook) view and using puppetry (so, for example, holding a hand up in front of your avatar’s face in Mouselook results in the hand being clipped and now fully rendering). This is believed to by an artefact of the viewer still rendering the head (even though unseen when in first-person view), and this interfering with rendering near-point objects like hands. The solution for this is still TBD.

Date of Next Meeting

  • Thursday, October 27th, 2022, 13:00 SLT.

Cherishville in Autumn in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Cherishville, October 2022 – click any image for full size

Lam Erin has redressed his Cherishville for the autumn, prompting me to hop over and have a wander before winter edges its way into the the setting.

As with the spring iteration of the region (see: Cherishville’s 2022 Spring in Second Life), the autumn design is decidedly rural in intent, the landscape rich with trees, winding single-track roads and a scattering of buildings. However, rather than carrying the promise of warmer days, sunshine and clear skies, this autumnal Cherishville offers a foreshadowing of colder, harder weather to come.  Caught under a lowering sky from which rain steadily falls, it sits surrounding by mountains painted in snow which seems to be slowly making its way down their rocky faces, ready to creep across the region as winter throws her cold cloak over the land.

Cherishville, October 2022

Also given the time of year, the setting in places seems to hold a sense of ghostly desertion or foreboding about it.  For example, the little arc of houses and shops huddled around the loop of road to the west of the landing point have perhaps seen better days, with the detritus of life in places piled into yards as if forgotten, whilst pigs and geese wander unattended, other than by a Saint Bernard who seems more interested in watching the road than keeping his charges in place – if indeed that is his purpose.

That said, the interiors of the houses offer a complete contrast, being warm and inviting; whilst the pub clearly has a welcome for all. So perhaps its just the lowering weather and the local apothecary which give rise to the odd sense of October menace lying about the land; something falsely added to by the arc of buildings all facing the one direction across the narrow road, as if huddled together in expectation of something rising from the waters of the inlet that sits just beyond the trees and downslope from the road.

Cherishville, October 2022

It is on the stony shore of this inlet that the region’s landing point resides, presenting a pleasant view across the finger of water that belies any reason for the houses above to the so huddled. On the far bank sits an old boat shack somewhat dilapidated in appearance, but still sturdy enough to hold up a large rowing boat on the davits extending from the water side of its aging form.

A smaller cabin sits close by the landing point, this one raised on stilts which suggest the inlet might be tidal in nature. If so, this would explain why the boat raised against the side of the far shack appears to have rocks waiting to receive it should it be lowered, rather than lapping water – at least until the tide returns. Just behind the little stilt cabin a path climbs the slope away from the inlet and up to where the road commences its loop past the little hamlet.

Cherishville, October 2022

Eastward along the meandering road lay and old railway station sat at the end of the single track line. It appears to be oddly cut-off from both hamlet and road, almost as if it wants nothing to do with them, thus bringing forth more thoughts that this might be a place where there is more going on than meets the eye.

This feeling is further added to as the road dips southward, passing a deserted house of some size and with a tall tower that appears to look menacingly down on those passing by. After this, the road hooks its way around old and gnarled trees to reach the grounds of a house suggesting shades of the one that stood above the Bates Motel. However, a glimpse inside will reveal that, unlike the house it resembles, this one isn’t hiding a dark secret – but is a comely family home.

Cherishville, October 2022
There are one or two little niggles within the setting – the humpbacked bridge sitting at the mouth of the inlet looks to have been plonked into place without regard for natural foundations under it, for example, and the tunnel into which the railway track vanished could perhaps do with a darkened backing block to hide the hill slope within it. however, these can mostly be ignored by eye and camera and the rest of the setting appreciated for its ability to offer a rainy autumnal setting with a lot of opportunities or photography.

Cherishville, October 2022

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