Life in TSL

Well, on May 25th at 10am LL opened the new support portal. What does that mean? If your not premium and you have a problem…good luck. This is how it works (from secondlife.com)

 

* Support Availability by Account Type

Billing (outworld currency transactions) support is available for all account types. You will be provided with contact information after going through the Solution Finder. (9am-6pm PST Monday-Friday)

Basic Accounts: If you are a Basic account holder, you have access to our in-depth Knowledge Base and Solution Finder. You do not have access to our Inworld or Outworld support teams. However, we’re constantly improving our Knowledge Base and Solution Finder to assist Residents who are Basic account holders with resolving your issues independently. There are also a few Special Questions** for which we DO provide Basic account holders with ticket access.

Premium Accounts: If you have a premium account with Second Life, you have the ability to submit a support ticket or engage in a text chat session with our Billing, Inworld and Outworld Support teams through the Solution Finder. Live text chat is available for you from 9am-6pm PST Monday-Friday. Please note that we also offer premium support to Lifetime, Beta, Teen Basic, and Basic accounts with LindeX trading tiers.

Concierge Accounts: If you are a Concierge client (with $125 per month or greater in Land fees, mainland or private estate), you have access to all Basic and Premium services (see above) plus a dedicated support team that can be reached by phone, support ticket, and live text chat from 1am-6pm PST Monday-Friday.

 

So now that is one more reason to be premium! Yay.  

 

 Second Life viewer 1.16.0(6) was released as an optional update at approximately 6:30pm SLT. Now unless you speak Korean, you would be better off just skipping the update as there is nothing worthwhile for you in the updates, as nothing, but chnaged Korean files is listed under the release notes.

Heretic Linden in response to my question about equality on the TG in response to the contest on the MG replied they will start one in Dougall! Contact Heretic Linden if you would like to apply!

 

Let’s have a parallel Teen Grid contest! Dougall will host the sculpted prim display. Rules apply universally, so IM me if you want to participate in the Teen Grid Sculpted Prim Contest.

We have a new writer on the blog, although it is mine, Steven Fermi who is one of my close friends, has been allowed to post news here. Just in case he finds it out before me. Just to let everyone know and give a semi-formal introduction to our new writer.

 

At 7.06 pm SLT LL posted the following:

"As you can imagine the coordination involved in the release of a feature as big as Voice is complex and we want to make sure to release it with the least possible complications. Our current plan is to release a First Look version of the voice client within the next few weeks. Then, after we’ve gathered good feedback on the First Look release and fixed any remaining bugs, we’ll release Voice as a required viewer. When we do release Voice, we plan to do it right and in a way that incorporates as much of the Beta feedback we’ve received as possible."

 

Again no word on when…about the First Look, nor the full required version release date. Seems they love to never give full details about anything at all. Anyways, at least we can start using it, even if it is buggy, in our day to day Second Lives. Just to give everyone a heads up on the upcoming viewer! 

 

 

Inter arts is offering about $160,000 to 3 artists(including a writer, musician/sound artist and digital visual media practitioner) who have a sill in the arts and "necessary artform experience". Again, not for those on the TG, but intresting to know how the media is beginning to get more involved in the world. In fact as I was writing this blog two teachers saud "Your on SL?! So am I." I asked where they found out about it…same response from both.."News."

 

 

There is a contest for sculpted prims where you display your prims and they pick 5 entries for the prizes. T-shirts valued at $25…you can’t enter. It is only for the MG and the Lindens have showed no intrest in hosting one on the TG. I am going to be contacting Blue to get info on this subject and post his reply here. The rules for the MG contest are:

 

"
Official Contest Rules

Any questions related to the above rules should be directed to Heretic Linden.

Good luck!"

 

Mitch Wagner has confirmed that LL will not be implicating voice for another month or so. According to the wonderful LL who uses great words: According to LL: "Linden Lab’s plan is to continue to develop additional voice features on the beta grid for a few weeks still." With no official date, but a few residents got a few words out of the Lindens, like Wagner, and were told that it will be another month. The Pro- Probably less bugs than if they had released it now. Con-…we don’t get it now .

From: http://bentha.net/sculpted-tuto/Blender-export-template-tut.html

 Very useful!

— 

 

This is a little tuto about how to export shapes to sculpted prims textures using blender, with a minimum efforts,even if you have no clue how to manage uv maps and all the odd stiff behind ^_^

I made the template and tuto quick and dirty, but this works, even if it has the limitation that you can only MOVE the existing vertices of the default sphere, so its more a sculpting method than real modelling.  Perfect candidate for blender’s sculpt tool btw.

First of all you need minimum a blender 2.43 version, available here.
If you are unfamiliar with blender, I suggest you first take a tour on http://www.blender.org/tutorials-help/

Once you have it running, download and open the template blender file which you can find:  here

The screen layout should turn into this : a default sphere to start your sculpting work from :

For those who want to get deeper into it and see how to make the sphere and its UV projection, follow this link.
If you just want to play with shapes and have fun, just read further ^_^

Now right click on the sphere to select it , enter EDIT MODE with TAB key, and play with the vertices to create a nice shape.
Again, don’t add or remove vertices, only MOVE these, don’t change edges or faces. Think modeling clay

Beware ! The poles of the sphere are in fact a ring , sized to very very small, keep these grouped in a small point, or I think you would get odd results when rezzing the prim. Don’t try to size them too small or to unify these too a single vertice either, this gets the exported texture weird. In fact, try to move these  always together, without modifying their shape. Heh, this is a crappy hacky exporter, remember ? ^_^

             

Ok, you have created a nice shape, now time to export it. Return to OBJECT MODE with TAB KEY.

First generate a render with F12 key:

Make sure you are in OBJECT MODE , and you have your object selected and active.

In the bottom subwindow ( Buttons window, Scene Panel ), click the  ‘BAKE’ button:

This will actually replace the default texture by a newly generated displacement map, as you can see in the image editor subwindow:

Last, save your image, still in the image editor :

Thats it

Ok, it needs improvements, but, waiting for someone to write something more friendly, you have everything needed to start creating sculpted prims without spending thousand $ in expensive 3D software.

Hope this helps ! A big Thanks to all of you that gave the info on the discussion page ^_^

Camilla

Now I have had a chat with TomHa Zymurgy , who had an excellent idea to create a much better mesh than a sphere !
I’ll update this page tomorrow with a link here to a tutorial to what is the best method I saw so far for blender to sculpted export.

The grid is back up, and as I said there are aftermath problems with group voting so that is shut down…wow…I am physic. Anyways here are the release notes:

Release Notes for Second Life 1.16.0(5) May 23, 2007
=====================================
New Features:
* Sculpted Prims
** Sculpted Prims are a new primitive type that uses a texture to control its 3D shape
** See http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims for FAQ and detailed information
* Add “Mute” button to block unwanted notecards, landmarks, and textures

Changes:
* Improved muting of particle systems

LSL Changes:
* New function: llRegionSay()
** Allows object to communicate region-wide
** Does not allow communication on channel 0
** This is intended to reduce simulator load by eliminating the need for relay objects

Bug fixes:
* Text for several alert messages has been updated
* Fixed positioning of maximize button when minimizing both script and lsl window
* Fixed positioning of LSL help window after minimizing/maximizing main script window
* Fixed group chat IM showing sender as the only participant until someone responds
* Fixed group chat IM reopening with an error when sending a message after user closes group chat
* Fixed ‘… has left the session’ when leaving group chat after talking
* Fixed failed email when no subject is included
* Fixed object loss occuring when taking an item
* VWR-657: Beta -> Linux -> Startup -> Crash

Still no voice, and with the bi-weekly updates we now know that we won’t be having it before 2 weeks from now…during summer for me. Hopefully, there won’t be any further aftermath problems with the update.