Tag: My SL

Back in November I moved into a rock. This is SL after all, so why not? It’s been interesting, the house tucked away under a wooded garden, sekrit elevator and all. However, it did mean the wood and garden generally got ignored when I was home; the trees, campfire, gazebo and so on languishing without use.

So I decided it was time to return to a more normal style of living and try a few experiments to see what I could come up with. Essentially, I wanted to see what could be achieved using a new in-world tool I’d recently received and when using the convex hull physics shape to produce a reasonably detailed house build with a reasonably low Land Impact – preferably around the same as the house I was leaving (28).

The House

Given the house is in a wood…or copse, really….I wanted something that was fairly open-plan and which at least partially blended into the surroundings I also wanted something that allowed me to continue to enjoy SL sunsets when at home. The result is a west-facing, 2-room affair built on two sides of the small pond I already had in the middle of the copse, which also connects with my “dance floor rock” (what’s a house without it’s own dance floor?) via a stone patio whereon sits my beloved PrimPossible concert grand.

The lounge opens onto the patio, and provides enough room for sitting and conversation, focused on the view to the west (over the pond) or the fireplace (lifted and remodelled slightly from the “old” place. The bedroom sits to the north side of the pond, connect to the lounge, and provides enough room for a bed (not that I actually sleep in SL and pixel bonking is so passé!), and room for my cunningly disguised (and soon to be defunct) SLM Magic Box and not-so-cunningly disguised rental server.

I wanted the place to be fairly open to the surroundings – no doors or much in the way of windows between the “garden” and the house itself. This lead to a design that is relatively open-plan, with railings and open-slat wood panels as well as wood-framed windows to the back (east side), and stone walls and columns to add a little contrast to the place. In particularly, I wanted to have a roof, but not one that closed me off from the world or used skylights to give me a view of the stars.

The Build

The total prim count / Land Impact for the house is 30, which I think is a pretty good figure, given the relative complexity of elements within the build (particularly the railings, wooden wall panels, roof and window frames). Had these been prim items, then the total “cost” of the house would have been massively higher. But they’re not – nor are they simply sculpt maps I’ve created externally to SL (I actually wouldn’t have a clue as to where to begin) or purchased elsewhere for re-use. They were created almost entirely in-world, allowing me to have railings, window frames, panels and roof sections all for a Land Impact of just 12.

Sculpt Generator

I created the “wooden” elements of the house using the “NN Prim Generator” by Naonao Watanabe. For those not familiar with it, this is a clever piece of scripting that allows prim-built objects to be used as models to generate sculpt maps which can be imported into SL.It comes in three flavours: one that can use prims to generate “regular” , “natural” (for rocks, etc), and a plant generator. I have the “regular” unit, which can create shapes suitable for building, which came to me as an unexpected gift (*hugs Mika warmly*).

There are limitations to using this tool; the total number of vertices within the resultant sculpt map must not exceed 32, for example. This means that you’re effectively limited to a maximum of 32 prims per item from which you intend to generate a sculpt map, and the number may actually be a lot lower depending on the complexity of the shapes (prims) used to create the item. This may all sound complicated, but the Prim Generator itself makes it easy for you by displaying the vertices counts for all available prim types.

To create an object, you simply click on the required shape on the generator, which will rez the required object (pre-scripted), and start building, selecting  and sizing new shapes as required.

The documentation supplied with the unit, together with one of the supplied examples, suggests that it is possible to pre-texture items as well. However, I confess that I’ve yet to try this out – assuming I’m understanding things correctly – as for my purposes, it was enough to be able to texture my constructs post-build.

When you have created an object you wish to “convert” to a sculpt, click on the GENERATE button on the Prim Generator. This performs a series of confirmatory checks to ensure your item is within the tool’s overall constraints and then pops-up a menu allowing you to generate / scale-and-generate the required sculpt map, which you can then obtain from an external web page and save to your hard drive. All that’s then required is for you to generate a default sculpt in-world, upload the map, apply it to the sculpt and size the item accordingly.

One thing I would recommend, however, is that if your Viewer supports temporary uploads, you initially use this to check that everything is fine with the resultant sculpt map when imported and the sculp properly sized, just in case you’ve missed any overlaps or have unexpected gaps in joins, etc.

Using the Prim Generator enabled me to produce detailed roof, railings and window frames for a total Land Impact of 12.

Convex Hull

The other magical trick that people are starting to increasingly use in SL building, and which I employed in this house, is that of the convex hull physics shape. This was introduced as a part of the mesh roll-out, and in the right circumstances can dramatically reduce the Land Impact of a prim build / linkset.

Ciaran Laval has written an excellent piece on the use of the convex hull form, so I’m not going to repeat all the ins and outs here. Suffice it to say that so long as you are working with fairly simple prim shapes, and avoid the complexities of scripts, you can make some substantial savings on elements of the build.

In my case, the base, solid walls, fireplace, floors and “window glass” of the new house are all simple prims – 35 in all for a Land Impact of 35. However, by converting the linkset to a convex hull physics shape via the Build floater (by selecting CONVEX HULL from the drop-down menu in the FEATURES tab – see below), I could immediately reduce this to a Land Impact of 18.

Who said mesh wasn’t good for SL? :).

Obviously, prim-to-convex hull conversion will not work in every instance – it is possible for the Land Impact to go up as a result of such a conversion. However, with a judicious application of the option within a build, it is possible to bring about a reasonable reduction in Land Impact in a lot of situations. Some things that should be avoided are: linking complex shapes in the linkset to be converted (such as sculpts) or including scripts (if you use a rez faux system, for example, be sure to delete the rezzing script in the convex hull shape linkset once you’ve rezzed a new copy of your build).

I’m pretty pleased with what I’ve achieved; I think the new place suits its location among the trees, and gives me space to entertain friends and the freedom to make sure the garden and dance floor are more properly used. As to the prim generator – I’m liable to be using that for one or two other ideas as well, while the use of the convex hull shape is already helping me to lighten the load some of my other builds have on Land Impact.

Images captured using Exodus 12.01.03 with deferred render, shadows, ambient occlusion and DoF active, but no gamma correction.

Tuesday December 5th 2006; the day I logged in to Second Life for the first time as Inara Pey. Little did I know then how much that name would come to symbolise my on-line time.

I’d been active in SL prior to that date – although not for particularly long before wandering away again – and curiosity brought me back for a second look. As I wanted to do so unfettered by previous experiences, Inara was born.

A lot has changed in the intervening time; rather more than I care to remember, but which a flick through Google and the official blog archives brought to mind. Yet reading some of the blog entries and the comments that follow them, it’s interesting to see an old adage hold true: the more things change, the more they remain the same. So by way of saying “hippy yardbath” (any AA Milne readers out there?) to me, here’s a few random reminders of times gone by…

First, a little context: on the day I returned, Second Life had some 1,791,246 registered accounts of which 690,800 had been active over the previous 60 days. At one point during the day, 16,124 of those accounts were logged in, which was somewhat on the high side for the times, as we shall see (my thanks to the wonderful Wayback Machine for spitting out the data via a half-formed snapshot of the “old” SL website).

Back then, SL was not only in the media – it was the media darling, although some were then (as now) bemused and confused by its presence, while others were convinced it was The Next Big Thing (little did we know then how much that would come back to bite us in our collective bum…hello, Mr. Kapor!). Philip Rosedale was popping-up all over the place, as was Ashe Chung (who had yet to encounter flying penises – such things doth success bring, sadly).

Within Second Life itself, Windlight was still more than a year away and Mono  even further over the horizon. We did have skyhomes – but none that could be built or placed above 768 metres; we didn’t have sculpties (although they were coming, and were even LL’s darling for a while!), but we did have flexiprims. We also had Torley and his wonderful “tips of the week”…

..a reminder that actually makes the lack of his on-going video presence within the SL website that much sadder…

Back then, the Viewer log-in screen used to carry some interesting data; while concurrency was very different in terms of “high volumes” causing problems.

Also back then we didn’t have weekly roll-outs. Things were a lot more direct! Each and every Wednesday the gird would be shut for an average of 4-6 hours (and sometimes as many as 8-10) without any log-ins at all, while LL went and – as they put it – “banged on things”. Oh, the time spent waiting for the monkeys-and-monolith (that’s one image Google failed to find for me 😦 ) to vanish and log-ins to reopen….

We only had one Mainland continent (although a second was coming), but we did still have gambling (although not for very much longer).  We had Viewer updates causing video woes, but had yet to reach release 1.17 and the start of the introduction of a new “communicate” floater panel would get a lot of people all in a tizwas for bringing change to the UI.

And that’s without mentioning the major points in SL’s history such as the Adult Policy and age verification, the OpenSpace / Homestead fiasco, the arrival of Rivers Run Red and their thinly-veiled hostility towards the user base (whatever did happen to Justin Bovington? No, don’t answer that 🙂 ).

I was also very different back then. In 2006 I started off blonde and blue-eyed – about as far from the real me as I could get. Over the years, like many in SL, my look changed and evolved – and at times grew closer to my real life appearance before straying away again until I reached 2010 and the perfect expression of self-through-looks.

During the last five years, Second Life has given me so much. I’ve met many amazing people, some of whom have since left SL; others of whom are still on my Friends list to this day. I’ve learned to be creative, discovering the joy in taking pixelated bits of “plywood” and turning them into something delightful; I managed to get my head around simple scripting and experienced the joy of having my first door swing open and my first lamp illuminate.

I’ve had an entire world to discover and explore, made possible by amazing talents and featuring mind-boggling works of art.

I’ve also taken time to wag a finger and growl at LL over actions and decisions; but like everyone engaged in this marvellous platform, I’ve done so simply because I do love it so much. So I make no apologies for pointing the finger where I’ve felt it warranted, just as I make no apologies for the times I’ve supported LL at the times I’ve felt they’ve got it right or that they are being unduly chastised.

I’m not sure what my family and friends outside of SL would make of the time I devote to it – both in-world and in blogging about it. I’m pretty sure most would be at best bemused. The truth is that, five years on from the height of the hype about Second Life, we’ve still to reach that point where having a virtual extension of ourselves in a digital world is as accepted by society as a whole as going to work and paying taxes are.

But that’s also what makes being involved in Second Life attractive. While a lot of the hype has evaporated, and while we might not always appreciate it when we see things going wrong, the fact is that SL, in so many ways, still sits on the leading edge of a digital wave, riding waters both rough and smooth leading to who knows where.

All I can say is with certainty is that good or bad, high or low, it’s been fun. What’s more, it is still fun – and it’s very likely I’ll continue to be here for as long as that remains the case.