New Statue - Adoration

Took me a few hrs on this one, had to learn a few new tricks and develop my skills in some areas but here it is... I call it Adoration (am open to suggestions for a better name tho')....

Here's a better image taken in situ at Garden World...You can see it in Second Life in a few places...in the Relics store, at Garden World , or the Dead Center. Let me know what you think of it please - good or bad ;)

ART Christmas Shows

Had our second to last rehearsal today of the ART Christmas shows... things seem to be running smoothly so here a bit of publicity about it for those interested. :)

The REAL Christmas Story

3 original Christmas Plays by Avatar Repertory Theatre

Does your Christmas look less like Norman Rockwell and more like Norman Bates? Does your family put the "Diss" in "Dysfunctional"? Does your Uncle Fred use the Andy Williams' Christmas Albums for target practice? Well, welcome home Buckaroo! The actors of the Avatar Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) invite you to "The Real Christmas Story", starring Y.A.D.F. (your average dysfunctional family). These original Christmas stories will premiere on Friday, December 11, at 5 pm pst at the Dove Theater at Rockcliffe.

Two other performances will be presented on Saturday, December 12 at 3 pm pst, and Sunday, December 13 at 2 pm pst.

Written by three members of the A.R.T., "The Real Christmas Story" presents three views of the pain and pleasure of the holiday season. Sodovan Torok, Kayden Oconnell and Rowan Shamroy have googled their internal computers and found stories that embrace the past, endure the present and anticipate the future. Scrooge may have survived the spirits, but Tiny Tim might need counseling after spending time with these ghosts.

In his "The Xmas I Met Santa", Sodovan Torok brings us a sweeter tale of how Santa made an unexpected entrance and a somewhat painful exit. Rowan Shamroy shows us how old family dynamics are magnified and amplified during the requisite holiday gathering. And Kayden Oconnell shatters some Christmas myths when a hotshot reporter visits a young old man who knew Santa before Santa was cool.

Directed by Em Jannings and produced by AvaJean Westland, the Christmas shows include A.R.T. actors Prospero Frobozz, Thundergas Menges, Mickie Nikolaidis, Kayden Oconnell, Persephone Phoenix, Ada Radius, Rowan Shamroy, MadameThespian Underhill and Dolgoruky Umarov. The sets have been built by JubJub Forder, with costumes and animations assembled by Ada Radius, Joff Fassnacht and Rowan Shamroy. We are also introducing the new A.R.T. English Sub-titler for the hearing impaired designed by Prospero Frobozz and managed by JudyArx Scribe.

Admission to the event is free - click here for SLurl

Groups of Romantic Candles

Latest Release for the Custom Love Shop - a group of 8 candles with click for on and off flames and light - but only 4 prims !
Carefully crafted sculpties with good LOD and realistic flame effects plus a built in prim light adjusted to replicate a candles flame lighting (not too bright and not too big an area).

2 different Copyable sets - fill a room with candles!

Great as mood lighting for romantic evenings, scattering around for celebrations, Christmas settings, altars, etc etc.

See and test the candles at our Custom Love shop - a shop for gifts for Lovers or buy them at Xstreet.

We can customize many of the gifts there with your friends/lovers names or messages.

Winter Tree Textures

Yet another in my line of Tree Textures. These are bare trees with a light load of snow on the branches. All crisp and clean at either 1024x1024 or 512x1024 px each.Get them at the Xstreet listing, or the Sculpts Only Mall

Creepy Tree Textures

Another in my line of textures especially suited to my One Prim Plant sculptie shapeThese are very clean 1024 sized textures specially made to look creepy but real.

Get em at the Sculpts Only Mall - click here

Better Bullets

Another in my line of Full Permission BUILDERS PACKS. Great looking Bullets with baked textures.These bullets are carefully crafted to meet my exacting standards. With full perm textures baked on (lighting, shine, and shadowing) these bullets look great and are bound to attract the eye. Use them for bullet belts, weapons, decoration and much more.

See them at the Sculpts Only Mall - click here

Copper Bottoms

Ok ok, I know this is a weird one ...but this is my latest Full Perm sculptie pack...Now you wouldn't think they would be useful for anyone would you? But surprised me... I sold 2 packs in the first 8 hours! Maybe they'll use the frypan as a weapon?

Why even make these? They are kitchen props in another upcoming Avatar Repertory Theater production - our Xmas show - 3 short plays... details coming soon.

See this pack and its contents at Sculpts Only Mall - click here for SLurl

Beautiful Sculptie Roses

New Releases into the Custom Love store last week... carefully crafted sculptie Roses.

Designed to be gifted as singles (either by themselves or in a vase), we also have them in half dozen packs at a discounted price. Available in Apricot, White, Black, and of course Red.

Click here for SLurl to CUSTOM LOVE - Gifts for Lovers

Snake Charmers Necklaces

New releases into my PrimEvil store yesterday... the Snake Charmers Necklaces and Armbands for Men and Women.

Available in Gold and Silver baked textures these beautiful items are only 3 prims each! One for the sculptie snake, one for each of the eyes.

Click here for SLurl to PrimEvil @ GARDEN WORLD

Sculpties and LOD

So many people have asked me about sculptie tricks i have decided to start revealing some...first up Sculpties and LOD!

LOD = Level Of Detail
The Lindens in their infinite wisdom decided to treat sculpties with the same ideals as they do textures... that is to reduce the level of detail on a sculptie with distance. The further you are from a sculptie - the less detail it will have. They do this by reducing the detail in the sculpties mesh. It is calculated by how much area the sculptie takes up on your screen. So a big sculptie will still look ok from a long distance, a small sculptie may look bad from a close distance.
There are two basic ways to counter this issue - people generally call the problem fixes Sculptie LOD or Nano Sculpties. And another that is a fix for your personal viewer but doesn't help others when viewing the same sculpties.

Personal fix: Find the advanced menu in your SL viewer - if it doesn't show at the top of your screen beside the Help menu...press Ctrl + Alt + D simultaneously on your keyboard to activate it. Scroll down the Advanced menu to "Debug settings", enter "renderVolumeLODFactor" and change the value to "4" then close that popup. It may reset each time you relog :/

Sculptie Fix No 1 (for builders): Tricky to do depending on the sculptie shape... but is basically doubling the mesh points at the important places. Move your mesh points/vertices or segment lines so they almost overlap. This can counter the removal of detail by the SL viewer software by leaving mesh points in place when a line of them is removed. Has a bad side effect tho'... texture mapping is very hard. This is not my favourite method but can be useful in some cases.

Sculptie Fix No 2 (RECOMMENDED for builders): This is by far the simplest method - it works by fooling the SL software into thinking the sculptie is larger on screen than it appears visually. Has the side effect of producing a larger invisible bounding/collision box - so it's best to set such sculpties to phantom. Take your sculptie map/texture into Photoshop ... go to Image menu/Adjustments/Levels and adjust its Levels as per pic below ( is almost the same dialog in GIMP)

Play around with the slider settings to achieve a result that best suits you - the settings above are my favourite. Hit OK to close the dialog..and your sculptie rainbow will appear to dim a little. Import into Second Life to see the results. It will help the sculptie keep its detail at a longer distance - but please bear in mind it is not a perfect fix.

False accusations suck

A recent SL blog post accusing me of stealing meshes from 3d sites has made me think how i have badly neglected my blog and how i can use it for good.

I can post how i work, and progress shots from recent works to showcase my skills and hopefully provide helpful hints for people who are interested.

So.... below are some screenshots from a statue project i am working on currently. Sadly the statue that the accusing blog post from Vryl Valkrie refers to is on another computer that lies in pieces atm - but i can show you my latest project :)

A Toltec warrior statue (i love statues) modelled using techniques i learned from this tutorial many many moons ago.

First i find suitable front and profile piccies from good ol Google image search, like these (slightly edited for alignment and size)...

The trick is in finding good side and front profiles , then i add them onto planes at right angles in 3dsmax for using as reference to build a basic mesh with.

Then i go about making a basic mesh... by creating a single Plane object, converting it to a editable Poly, and then laboriously copying, positioning, and linking multiple Plane objects to form a basic half face as below...

It takes a bit of time and effort to create a suitable starting mesh like this...for instance this one took me about 6 hrs, however 3dsmax has some great time saving aspects...you may be wondering why only half a face... well Max has a function called "Symmetry" which allows a mesh like this to be easily reflected thusly...

Then I apply another built in function called "TurboSmooth" which has the effect of adding heaps of vertices/lines and smoothing all the hard lines out. You can see the added Vertices and Edges the function creates...

Then its just a matter of Rendering with suitable lighting and shadow settings to get a good look at how everything is falling together so far.As you can see it is far from perfect...the mouth is a little small..some of the crisper detail around the eyes is not quite so good... and of course its lacking a suitable texture (and the rest of the body and head). I will tweak and move and add detail and Vertices/Edges where necessary til it meets my standards. So far its about 6 hrs work and has a long way to go. Previous statues have sometimes taken a couple of weeks off and on - i get distracted easily :P

After its finished i will use similar methods to make a lower resolution Sculptie version for importing into SL. However I will take a 'baked' texture from this version because of its superior detailing/shadows/texturing. This way i get the best of both worlds..a high resolution mesh i can sell on 3d model sites , potentially a suitable mesh for the future in Second Life..and a sculptie version i can start selling in SL straight away.

Here's a quick perspective rendering with some simple texturing noise on the bump map... normally i would create a special bump map in Photoshop and use that instead for getting as close as possible to the original statues texture.

After a lot of work and tweaking.. hopefully i can get a statue that closely reproduces the originals. I wouldn't want to offend a culture with a crass imitation... so i put a lot of effort and time into getting what i think is a pretty good reproduction for people to display with pride. As you can see below it will take some considerable time to finish, however i love what i do and others seem to appreciate the extra effort i put... even if they have no idea of the actual process.

A piccie of the original statues for ya :)

Welcome to our Robotic Overlords, or is that Overladies?

I love robots.

Ever since i was 12 and cut a small pic of C-3po and R2D2 out of Time magazine and pinned it to my wall I have watched their progress closely, and from time to time buy one of the more advanced ones out of toy/electronic shops to keep my neices and nephews amused (well thats my excuse).

Anyways..they took a step closer to what I, and others, have imagined for years when i saw this news release...

A cyber sensation: World's first robotic model to star in her own fashion show

Robots could soon be gracing the catwalk, thanks to a black-haired cybernetic beauty who is preparing to make her debut at a fashion show in Japan.

Fetchingly named HRP-4C, the humanoid has 30 motors in her body that allows her to walk and move her arms as well as eight motors on its face to create expressions like anger and surprise.

In a demonstration the robot tottered out, blinking, and said, 'Hello, everyone,' in a tiny feminine voice while its mouth moved.

Weighing just 6st and 9pounds she is light enough to fit into the size 0 crowd. However, the robot's developers are doubtful HRP-4C currently makes the grade as a fashionista.

During the display she kept looking surprised, opening its mouth and eyes in a stunned expression, when the demonstrator had asked it to smile or look angry.

The developers said the big challenge in creating the robot was making the small 'feminine' parts.

HRP-4C is 5ft2" and was designed to look like an average Japanese woman, although she is clothed in what appears to be a silver and black space-suit.

Slowly the landscape changes

Living on the mainland in Second Life has certainly had it's ups and downs over the last two years. I started with a 512 sq metre and have slowly build it into a medium size set of connected parcels spread over 4 sims.One of the major problems with buying and building on mainland is "ad plots". Their are some valid uses for the tiny ad plots, but mostly they are used to extort large sums of money out of residents. An ad plot is a 16 metre sq of land... if priced at average pricing of land they would cost $60 linden or less (about 20 US cents). A few notorious people buy them cheap and sell them for prices up to $15000 LD (about $55 US Dollars!). And these extortionists are quite happy to hold these tiny parcels for several years cause the payback is sooo good.

Typical of these extortionists is their practice of "checkerboarding"..buying a plot of land..dividing it into ad plots squares and selling them. The picture at left shows a typical scenario..my land is in blue... 'for sale' land in orange.. red land is not for sale. This checkerboard prevents my land from being joined - which means i cannot build a large building there, or have a path from one of plots to another.

Recently the Lindens decided to do something about this practice of checkerboarding... however in typical Linden fashion it amounted to all hot air and bluster.

First they put a forum up for residents to air their views on what should be done about checkerboarding.. then after 65 pages of irate residents outpourings they decided 3 things.

1. Checkboarding is no longer allowed..report it as an Abuse Report (ARs are a joke system)
2. They realised the top 10 ad plot owners were responsible for over 40% of ad plots (duh) and will have a 'word' with them
3. They understood that it is the extortion aspects that pain the most people. They will address that sometime in the future.

Then closed the forum!

What a joke... a mere tip of the hat to the actual problem of extortion..forum feedback was ignored (people wanted price cap on small parcels), and they could have easily talked to the top ten ad plot owners at the start... and used their rule of "things that affect SL negatively" to stop the practice.

But they won't do anything like banning extortion on these ad plots - that would lower the average land price to probably less than $1 linden per sq metre and they already stated they want it at $8 LD per sq (currently 3.6 per).

SO... in the last 6 months the Lindens have;

• Limited advertising networks to 50 ads per person - which were mainly used by extortionists to force quicker sales - but also used by valid advertisers (like me) to advertise our sales and shops. Tough luck valid users!
  
• Tightened the rules on bullying a faster sale by use of ban lines or large glowing rotating prims, and instigated a rule where land set for sale cannot have advertising on it (extortionists already work around that one).
  
• Pushed the price of one very popular type of private island (openspaces) up 60% to force people back to the mainland.
  
• And now... Banned checkerboarding of land.
  

They do this to try and keep mainland alive...as they repeatedly state they see a thriving mainland as essential to a healthy Second Life (i agree).

None of the Linden new rules has addressed the core problem... all they have to do is make people want to live on the mainland ..and they never will while bullying extortionists are allowed to do their 'thing'.

Cap prices on small parcels and then there is no value in the extortion.. a very simple solution

Not a morning person

Most days i get up, spring from my bed, and welcome the world with a grrrr. I have always somewhat envied those who spring from their bed and can smile and welcome the fresh day. Even though i live in paradise and have the best job i can imagine - it seems i am just not a morning person.
To make up for it... i work til very late at night... well actually early morning - 3-4am is the norm, and try to skip much of the morning (i never do succeed - arising usually 5 hrs later).

Some days something will happen to change my mood... yesterday my first IM of the day was a person accusing me of being a texture thief :(
 I do not know why i bothered to waste my time attempting to prove i wasn't. It was obvious the person did not know, had not done their homework, and was full of less than complimentary accusations and lies. Even trying to get him/her to tell me the name of the tree they were looking at (accusing me of stealing) was 20 lines of back n forth..and of course they were hiding behind an alt. 30 mins later i had asked the person to do the right thing and report their suspicions to the people who they claimed owned the texture (they were completely wrong) and then muted so he/she could not ruin my day completely

Then there is this morning... My first emails of the day inform me someone has posted a review of my buddha statue... so being a dutiful creator, i venture onto the wild world wide web to check it out and read this...

"I love this sculpture! It was in Nemmers whenI moved there and was the reason I bought my lot there. When the owner of the statue left, I bought one myself and made a park for it. Many visitors come and is is a major attraction at Nemmers .. I really believe it inspired other residents of the neighborhood to make their places beautiful too. You can rez this very large if you like, and very easy on the prim count!"

and a 5 star rating too!

So now i am sitting in their very pretty and relaxing park at Nemmers, admiring Butterpaw's beautiful  handiwork and drinking my first coffee of the day (a necessity to ease my mornings).

In moments like this I know with certainty i have the best job in the world :)

To go see Butterpaw's Garden click here

The Tempest finishes it's run

:( Sadly the A.R.T's production of the Tempest has finished it's run. I had to increase the sim limit to fit all the audience in.. and IMHO it was our best performance yet - although some of the others were very close. Our audience seemed very enthused at the end, and again many donated large tips.

I have mixed feelings about the demise... a lot of hardwork over almost 3 months went into 6 performances, however we have all the sets and practiced actors and can always perform it again :)

Sad to see it go... and yet glad to move on to other things.

MadameThespian posted some images from the show - great pics!

A.R.T. The Tempest Second Life by MadameThespian Underhill Screen shots from Avatar Repertory Theater's production of "The Tempest" in Second Life. View Album

Remember the building blocks of childhood?

Check this amazing new way to see and manipulate information...it's a bit boring for 30 secs...then wow. They're calling em Siftables

Shakespeare in Second Life

One of the many projects i am involved in is the Avatar Repertory Theatre… basically a company of actors/performers/enthusiasts pushing the boundaries of performances in Second Life. Our latest production is Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

ART presents Shakespeare's The Tempest

Now i know what you’re thinking…it’s either amateur dramatics ewwwwww…or (very rarely) Shakespeare yayyyy. To be honest, if you had said to me “you’re gonna be doing amateur dramatics in a year” i woulda laughed you outta the room. Long story how i got involved but essentially i started by creating a couple of props for a couple of plays ( a car and some seating)..and it escalated from there. Now i find myself doing Shakespeare

Well not ‘doing’, so much as set and props design, effects, lighting and doing a lot of click to trigger effects during the performance. Also some ticketing, marketing, etc etc.

The set of The Tempest performances

Now i know i should be concentrating on raising my income in SL, however its a chance to take time out from the purely commercial, give something back to SL, and meet some really great/cool people. We number among our troupe, professional actors, an ex-opera singer, writers, producers, professors, musicians, DJs, a senior Linden (in his alt disguise), and lil ol me

Trinculo	Caliban	Arial in one of her costumes	Antonio
Alonso	Prospero	Stephano	Miranda
	Ferdinand	Gonzalo

Did i mention we decided to do it in Steampunk theme?
Or that we have a Dragon and a Furry as well? In an off-the-cuff moment i described it as “pre-apocolyptic post-victorian furry steampunk” a quote which has been used since on all press releases and a few blogs :/

I’m not that into Shakespeare (although i recognise the role he has played in our literary history) however, watching this play over and over for a couple of months now (rehearsals and this weeks performances) has been extremely interesting. I have learnt many things, including that a good actors performance can really transcend the wordiness and obscure terms that are Shakespeare, and really make the story come alive. And we have some terrific actors…
(in alphabetical order): Ada Radius, Dolgoruky Umarov, Em Jannings, Joff Fassnacht, JubJub Forder, Kayden Oconnell, MadameThespian Underhill, Mickie Nickolaidis, Persephone Phoenix, Prospero Frobozz, Rowan Shamroy, Sodovan Torok, Suzy Yue, and Thundergas Menges.

The Figurehead on the ship

And then there’s the technical aspects that fascinate me.
We bring actors and audience together from all over the world, we put then in one place, we do a live performance complete with special effects (usually reserved for post production on movies ) and we cope with the vagaries of technology like..actors computers crashing.. suddenly slow internet connections..voice dropping out… the challenges of set design with limited textures and objects to lower risk of the dreaded ‘lag’… audience doing the unexpected (like triggering doors on the set or suddenly flying right between actors) and many more aspects too numerous to mention.

The Tempest Ship - We break and sink it in the opening scene

A lot of work, a lot of testing, a lot of time, and a lot of thought go into making it work…but we do… and judging from the audience comments - we do it very well.

Warning: Marketing blurb ahead!

The Tempest, is a story of love, deceit and redemption… come witness this classic tale brought to life - Steampunk Shakespeare like you have never seen before!!!
If you are interested in attending the last performances ..contact JubJub Forder, or Ada Radius inside SecondLife

Follow up to the DMCA - a reply from the Lindens

Yesterday i sent a reply to the lindens regarding their comment on the DMCA which contained the following…

…my DMCA contained the specific name and location co-ordinates and i also supplied screenshot via AR the same Hour.These are the lines in my DMCA faxed to you…
—————-
The allegedly infringing work/s I am referring to has/have the following
details (name followed by co-ordinates )

Js Buddha - Rusty    at Utopia Islands North (81, 222, 21)

The AV mentioned was removed (i presume for other reasons) and the buddha statue sat there for 4 days for sale… and after filing another AR as well and getting no response…  i asked the owners of the rented plot to remove it to prevent it continuing to be sold.

 today they replied..

“In addition to identifying the allegedly infringing material, your DMCA notification must also identify the material that you own.
Please submit an updated DMCA notification that includes a region name, coordinates, image, or other information sufficient to locate the material that you own.”

Its now obvious they don’t bother reading the emails or DMCA’s  they receive.
I had Ared the item - clearly indicating the stolen content (its part of the AR popup to click and ID the object).
I had identified the name of the object, region and co-ordinates in the faxed DMCA
I had again AR’ed the object 4 days later
I had again identified the object in my reply email (see text above) 
AND i had told them the object had been removed!!!

Dunno what’s going on in Linden land..perhaps they employ people that cannot read english 

Yet another DMCA

Got IM’ed a few days ago by a couple of guys letting me know that my rusty buddha had been copybotted and was displayed on one of their renters land. How did they know to IM me? They had bought the same buddha a few weeks earlier and the renters version did not have me as the creator.

Judge for yourself - do you think they copied from mine?

It was the most obvious copy i have ever seen, more fool me for thinking that such an obvious item would not be copied

So… i follow the Lindens DMCA process… filed an Abuse Report and then faxed off my DMCA claim to them within the hour with details of the thiefs names, position and name of item etc.
Day One: nothing done
Day Two: nothing done
Day Three: nothing done, but i look up the names and they are no longer in the database.
Day Four: nothing done - buddha still there …BUT..the guys who told me originally of the theft, IM me again saying the thief has returned under a new alt..and asked them to return anything on the land to him cheeky bs’td. So i filed another Abuse Report indicating the banned person had reappeared under a new alt = Matthias Dexler (not that it will acoomplish anything).

So now it’s SIX days later, and the Lindens Email me this…

“After having reviewed your notification, Linden Lab was unable to act on your notification because: You did not provide information reasonably sufficient to identify the copyrighted work(s) that you claim to have been infringed. Specifically, you did not provide a region name, coordinates, images, or other information sufficient to locate the material that you claim to be infringed upon.”

Ok, so i provide name of thief, thiefs alt, region, co-ordinates, name of object and its not enough! WTF???
I go back to the land..buddha gone…i IM the land owners (the guys who told me) they had removed it yesterday to re-rent the land to someone else and ’cause they didn’t like the buddha being stolen and for sale. Why didn’t we do that in that first place i hear you ask? Cause to get rid of thieves in Second Life… you must provide evidence.

The DIGITAL MILLENNIUM COPYRIGHT ACT OF 1998 states that “Upon receiving proper notification of claimed infringement, the provider must expeditiously take down or block access to the material.”

6 days is expeditiously? since when?

And i have one more point to make…. i asked for the following…

“I wish all instances of the infringing sculpt maps, textures and the Buddha statue be removed from the sim named above and from Badkill Heron’s, Mattis Sparta’s, suppe Burnstein’s, and Erich23 Kaestner’s inventories”….

basically ’cause while those people still have the buddha..they can still sell my stolen property. The Lindens don’t do that..they simply remove the displayed item..leaving the thief to just rezz it again if they choose..and then i have to track it and file again.

BUT i believe the Lindens violate the DMCA act by not removing it from inventories..it clearly says “..block access..” and they fail to do that. People have pointed this out to them before..but it will take someone suing them to force them into it I suspect…but when someone sues, and eventually they will..it will open a huge can of worms for them..and may result in the whole system being sued out of existence. There is so much copyright theft in there its just not funny..just no-one has seriously forced the issue thus far. Personally if i was the Lindens i would cover my ass anyway i could.

Oh and the names of the AVs?… Matti Sparta owner, Badkill Heron creator (thief) have both been banned (but not due to my DMCA) and now he has returned as Matthias Dexler.

Keep Matthias Dexler off your land..he has copybot and will use it.

First Post :)

tis my first blog ever…funny you’d think with 8 yrs as pro website designer and being a full time virtual content creator (in Second Life) i would have done this sooner.