„The 13 most beautiful avatars“

Bartholomew Gallacher 23. März 2007 0 Kommentare

There’s an art exhibition right now in New York City with relevance to Second Life. They’re featuring the "13 most beautiful avatars" there on big, big prints.

They’re featuring only portrait shots of them, digitally printed out on 36×48 inch canvas (that’s 91,4 x 121,9 cm, folks). So the things are quite big, you could buy it and hang it over your fireplace, bed, whatever.

Frankly, I don’t know how they were chosen, it seems the taste of the photographers was the judge on it. Some of the avatars, like Aimee Weber, are really well known and I think it’s at least for her more about branding herself and her name than anything else. I also know more beautiful avatars than those on the exhibition, but that’s just my taste, of course and YMMV, like always.

Frankly said, I would not buy such a portrait and hang it anywhere; instead I would try to spot them and make a photo of them myself (haha, just kidding). Well, I spotted Aimee Weber a while ago in the Avastar building, in which she was evolved – whatever.

No, but really I would buy – if so – or print something from the IRTC instead. For example, something like this picture here. They all have a more aesthetic value than anything that can be taken on SL at all, since it’s about raytracing there.

„What’s so outstanding about SL that so many people are criticizing it?“

Bartholomew Gallacher 23. März 2007 0 Kommentare

Pham Neutra is asking in one of his blog post what’s so outstanding about Second Life that so many people are criticizing it right now. He only knows one another thing where the discussion about it is equally emotionally heated – nuclear plants.

Well, so why are so many people criticizing it? Because it’s new, it’s hip to criticize it, they don’t have a clue. Just take a look at earlier things like Rock’n’Roll, Skateboards, whatever – when they first became mainstream, many criticized them, there’s a thick, red line of such debates in history. Period.

SL Herald, Plastic Duck and so on

Bartholomew Gallacher 23. März 2007 0 Kommentare

The Second Life Herald is running an article about Plastic Duck’s job inquiry at LL and how the CEO responded. Well, beside the obvious commentary from Prokofy Neva (gna… if he’s so horrible, just shut up and sue him!) it’s a rather heated debate.

Well, from the point of view of Lindenlabs Plastic Duck must be somewhat hard to come by. He’s caused much trouble all over, but also seems to be a very good programmer who knows, what he’s doing. But would it be wise to hire him from LLs point of view, if he really wanted to join LL? I guess not. Therefore it seems he’s done too much in the past to be accepted by the community. Period.

Another terrain editor: Bailiwick

Bartholomew Gallacher 23. März 2007 0 Kommentare

I’ve found by chance another terrain editor, this here works under Windows and its name is Bailiwick. It’s being used to postprocess terrains made with Photoshop or Terragen, you can define parcels, permissions and so on with it. Looks also very interesting to me.

Two buildings utilities

Bartholomew Gallacher 23. März 2007 0 Kommentare

I’ve found two tools which can help you in the respect of building things in SL:

• A terrain file editor for OS X only named Backhoe. Looks pretty good and snappy to me on the screenshots and if you ever get your own island it looks like a very good way to make a terrain file to give to the Lindens.
• A script to be able to rez objects made in Maya in Second Life called „Maya -> Second Life: Beta version.“ Maya is one of the best professional 3d editors around there, for many in the industry the 1st choice actually. So how does itwork? It gives you in Maya a new tool box with the prims of SL and the same options. You basically built your shapes in Maya, when you’re finished with it, you export it to your clipboard. Then you login to SL, equip one object with the rezzing script, load the clipboard’s content on a notecard into that object and let it rez the imported structure for you. Then you can texture it and so on and on. That’s it, basically.