Second Life

[Brian Healy]

I have not subscribed to Second Life but a few weeks ago I was looking at their website and there was a video prepared by some members which featured a pretty nice piece of guitar music and while the music was playing there was video content showing the construction of a guitar with strings, fretboard, etc. It was interesting to watch and apparently the guitar was constructed by one of the more artistically talented Second Life members using 3D software available to subscribers to the site. The process looked kind of fun.

Does anyone know if the 3D software used by Second Life is proprietary to them or is it a third party game package of some sort they've picked up and incorporated into their system? I'd like to look at it but I don't want to join Second Life.

[lemonnado]

Check out CannedMushrooms tutorial on how to transport stuff into second life.
And I also have no inclination to join second life either as I am not done with Life 1.0 yet. I rather go play outside.
Lemo

[Brian Healy]

Lemo,

I don't really want to transfer anything into Second Life, I just enjoyed seeing how they constructed the guitar. The 3D software looked simple and quick and I thought it would be fun to use as a modeling tool just for something different. So what I'm really looking for is to see if that software is available as freeware or shareware.

[Frenchy Pilou]

...Sketchup 6 (http://sketchup.google.com/) it's free ;)
And surely more easy than your Guitare making :)

[Brian Healy]

Frenchy,

I already have Sketchup Pro. I'm just trying to see if there is a "simple" modeler similar to the one in Second Life.

BTW I've enjoyed all of your contributions over the years.

[Frenchy Pilou]

...Cosmics Blobs (http://www.cosmicblobs.com/getting_started/index.html) ...i dont know very "funny" modeler :D

You must wait Spore (http://www.spore.com/) who has crazzy funny modelers inside ! :eek:

And with Robin Willams it's super fun (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5TXEUiR1Xk) :lol: :lol: :lol:
Many more than the Suzanne's Guitar ;)

[lemonnado]

Shrooms Tutorial is not depending on a specific modeler. I thought it might give you an idea what that other app might be.
Lemo

PS:Frenchy... Robin Williams playing spore is very funny.

[Brian Healy]

Frenchy, that spore game looks great. Thanks for pointing it out.

Lemo, I agree Shroom has some great tuts I've recently been checking out his Zsphere tuts. Still amazed at your Zeeble thread.

Brian

[Lead Balloon]

I am tempted to check out cannedmushrooms tuts if im ever gonna get back into second life for profit. I tried it out for a month and spent most of the time playing bingo. Then I realised I was being a sad freak and went outside instead. The modeller in second life sucks big time.

[Trent The thief]

Second Life's modeling tools are atrocious.

Also, there is no way to move obj in and out of SL. The characters are based on Poser2 figures.

You can, however, make some spectacular skins/textures for characters and objects in SL using Zbrush.

[lemonnado]

After Second Life being mentioned a few times I had to try and take a closer look. Now I want 3 hours of my life back. The graphics are terrible, the performance abysmal. I ramped up all the graphic settings I could find and it still looked like Kings Quest II. I can't think of any reason someone really wants to 'play' or better said 'endure' this.
Lemo

[Lead Balloon]

Lol lemo, thats exactly what I thought, unfortunately it took me longer..... I cant believe I was drawn in by bingo..... I am such a sad case lol

[lemonnado]

Na, thanks to your warning I did not expect betterment of my initial experience 8). And I stayed away from the Bingo 8))))))).
L

[flerndip]

The video you described is actually Second Life resident and designer Robby Dingo, constructing the guitar that was used by Suzanne Vega's (yes the musician) Second Life avatar for a virtual streaming concert.

Second Life's modeller uses "prims", essentially primitives that can be transformed, cut, twisted, tapered, etc. In fact, it *is* very easy to use, but you cannot export objects created in SL for use in other applications. It is intended for users to create content (to which the creator owns the intellectual property rights) for use inside SL, usually sold to other SL residents for actual money. Many people make a living designing content for that purpose. Users can create and upload textures, audio, animation, and write scripts that make SL objects actually *do things*, in addition to the primitive building tools provided.

Second Life does not support the upload of geometry created in other applications, however today marks the release of a new SL update that includes a new feature: "sculpties". These are essentially displacement maps used to "sculpt" SL's simple primitives into unique geometry- a first for Second Life. Many designers are already using a plugin written for Maya to export these baked textures, which can then be uploaded to SL and used to sculpt primitives into specific shapes, usually for use in creating larger more complex linked objects.

As you might imagine, ZBrush has got to be the very best starting point for creating these sculpt textures, and it has been reported that an exporter for ZBrush is "coming soon". Frankly, it could not come soon enough to satisfy me. I'm investigating ZMapper to see if it has this capability. If anyone has information about using ZBrush to create sculpt textures without first exporting to Maya, I would very much like to know about it.

Those of you who so easily dismiss Second Life for not being ZBrush should understand that the content is user-created, and varies from good to bad to ugly. Some really gorgeous work has been created with its admittedly limited (but intuitive) toolset, and that toolset is about to get a lot more powerful. This means big money for SL content designers.

As for its performance being abysmal, you're right about that, but that's largely because they've gone from a few hundred thousand subscribers to 7 million in the course of the past year alone. PayPal even accepts the L$ (Linden Dollar), Second Life's form of currency, as legal tender.

Don't be so quick to knock what you don't comprehend. Besides, if you were so keen to play outside, you wouldn't be sitting in your parent's basement posting to this thread.

For those interested in "sculpties", here is a link to the wiki on the subject:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims:_3d_Software_Guide

And here is a link to the aforementioned guitar-building video:

http://secondlife.com/showcase/

Happy sculpting!

[dargelos]

I think it must be posible make sculpties for second life.. ii just dont knwo how.. could anybody help?

[lemonnado]

Cmon, send me some Lemo Dollars and I send you a primitive with exquisite 256x256 wood texture (hand made!). Very affordable I promise! Haha

You can try and paint second life nice, it's still second life. Second to real life! I don't want to be second. Period. Who wants to be second... has found the right place to be. Good thing!

Lemo

[dargelos]

I was just wondering about the 3d files they use there.. I dont know anything about the game itself but, as you suggested, it seems there are lots of people willing to spend their money in something for his second life.. We can think its stupid but money is money jjeje
They use something called "sculpted prims",something very similar to a normal map .. just wanted to know if anybody has any idea

[AngelJ]

Lemo- lmao yeah it does sound silly but seriously if you could make a "good selling item" and make those linden.. err lemo dollars while you weren't even there from those that happen to like what your selling, could end up making some $'s. Like this person Ailin Graef
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2005/12/01/8364581/index.htm

[pixelsoul]

I was just wondering about the 3d files they use there.. I dont know anything about the game itself but, as you suggested, it seems there are lots of people willing to spend their money in something for his second life.. We can think its stupid but money is money jjeje
They use something called "sculpted prims",something very similar to a normal map .. just wanted to know if anybody has any ideaThey use ingame modeller and they only use prim's or Primitives :) it's pretty much all texture little model ;)

[bijou]

actually no - you can use Zbrush for both model texturing and for making models to import to Second Life.

I use Zbrush a lot for these things, and it would be nice if there was a plugin to import sculpted prims directly from Zbrush rather than my having to use the Wings exporter or bake textures in Carrara Pro for it.

This is something new that's been done with Maya for example - the developer who has created sculpted prims implemented the technology from what he learned when working on the Matrix films. (also the author of the wiki page linked below)

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Advanced_Sculptie_Exporter_From_Maya

Sure would be nice for Zbrush to do it too. ;)

[bijou]

Cmon, send me some Lemo Dollars and I send you a primitive with exquisite 256x256 wood texture (hand made!). Very affordable I promise! Haha

You can try and paint second life nice, it's still second life. Second to real life! I don't want to be second. Period. Who wants to be second... has found the right place to be. Good thing!

Lemo
Second Life is just another game development platform. If you don't like working on games - that's cool. But don't diss game developers. They're just as respected as any other developer in 3d. Plus the fellow who brought the sculpted prim tech was one of the 3d artists on the Matrix films - I doubt you have that in your resume :)

[bijou]

I was just wondering about the 3d files they use there.. I dont know anything about the game itself but, as you suggested, it seems there are lots of people willing to spend their money in something for his second life.. We can think its stupid but money is money jjeje
They use something called "sculpted prims",something very similar to a normal map .. just wanted to know if anybody has any ideait is very easy to bake a sculpted prim map in a 3d program which can bake textures to the UV maps - I've done it already in Carrara Pro, and others have done it for Maya, Blender, Modo, Max, and Lightwave. Wings 3d and Max both have a vertex position exporter plugin which will translate the model to a texture map - I've personally uvmapped the models for the Wings plugin to be compatible with Zbrush and other 3d programs that currently do not have exporters.

To try and make a long story short, a sculpted prim is a spherical prim in SL which at highest LOD is a sphere with 32x32 vertices, which then can reduce LOD as you move away from the object. Due to the complications of Second Life being a streaming platform rather than having the game art precompiled into the game - they use a texture map to encode the displacement of this sphere to create more complex models - these can be modelled in a 3d program and then using a plugin or a baked texture to create the RGB displacement map that Second Life requires.

There are plans in the works to create other topologies for sculpted prims - namely a torus, cube, and plane primitive. Currently just the sphere topology is available.

[dargelos]

I have baked some sculpties and I started from a sphere, a plane or a cilinder.. as long as you have a regular grid uvmap it works..

[Ctrl-Z]

And I also have no inclination to join second life either as I am not done with Life 1.0 yet. I rather go play outside.
Lemoyou should appreciate this (http://www.getafirstlife.com/)



...Cosmics Blobs (http://www.cosmicblobs.com/getting_started/index.html) ...i dont know very "funny" modeler :DThat's awesome!

Long before ZBrush, I bought a program called Organica (http://www.thing-z.com/home2/film&ani/data/organica-1.htm) (from a company who has long since gone out of business). Cosmic Blobs reminds me of that.

(I recently came across it again on an old hard drive. Organica runs mighty fast on today's hardware! And if I could find my original CD, it apparently came with a Mac version as well. I'd probably still use that for the occasional base mesh, but it doesn't export to anything useful -- only .3ds and .dxf)