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The winners of the Second Life Sci-Fi and Fantasy Snapshot Contest have been announced. The winners are: Sci Fi Scenes Sci Fi Avatars Fantasy Scenes Fantasy Avatars Here are the first place winners in each category. |
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Congratulations to the winners! |
Tag: virtual world
Make a video screen and watch videos on your Second Life land – part one
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Last week I posted a three part series (part one, part two, and part three) about making better Second Life snapshots. Today I’m beginning a series on showing videos on your Second Life land. It’s relatively easy to set up a simple, no-frills system. The biggest problem is finding videos to stream, but they are out there. Here’s a step-by-step guide. The first step is to have land on which you can change the media settings. Generally this can be done in one of three ways: |
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The next step is to create a screen. A simple screen is easy to make. When you’re on where you’ll be showing videos, move your cursor to a bare spot on your land and right click. A pie chart will open with the word “Create” in the upper right. Click “Create”. You’ll see two lines of shapes in the popup window. Click the cube on the left (directly below the word “Click”, then move your cursor to the spot on the ground where you want to "rez" your screen, then left click. A cube will appear on that spot. To shape the cube into a screen, left click the cube and in the popup pie chart, click “Edit” Click the “Object” tab in the popup window. Now we’ll set the thickness and dimensions of your screen. In the popup window, on the left side, you’ll see three sets of Z, Y, Z numbers. The sets are labeled “Position”, “Size”, and “Rotation”. We’ll change the Size numbers. Be very careful not to change the wrong numbers – if you change a position number instead of a size number, your screen could end up instantly on the other side of the sim! The middle number. The Y coordinate, is the thickness of your screen. Set it to .1 (point one). If you want your screen at standard 4:3 TV screen dimensions, then set the X coordinate to 4.0 and the Z coordinate to 3.0. (use other numbers if you want different dimensions). Your screen will now be 4:3, but it won’t look full size because part of it will be buried in the ground. To raise it, make sure your cursor is still in the Edit window and that the word “Position” near the top of the window has a dot to its left. Then look for the blue arrow on the screen. It points up. Move your cursor to one of the blue arrows, hold down your left mouse button, and use your mouse to drag the screen up until it’s the right height. |
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The next step is to put a media texture on the screen. To do this, move your cursor back into the Edit window and click the “Texture” tab. You will see two boxes. The left box looks like wood grain and is labeled “Texture” on the bottom. Left click it. The Pick-Texture window pops up. Where it says “Type here to search”, type “default media texture”. “Default Media Texture” should then appear in the list. Highlight it and then click “Select”. The last thing to do is to name your screen so you can find it in your inventory. In the Edit window, click the “General” tab and type the name of your screen in the white box after “Name:”. This is how you will find it in your inventory. You have now made a basic movie screen! Close the Edit window. In my next article in this series, I’ll tell you one place to find free videos you can show on your property and how to set up your property and profile settings so you can watch them. In the mean time, build your screen. |
Shakespeare Twelfth Night, Act 1 photography contest
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in Second Life
There’s a big photography contest going on now in Second Life, with over 100,000 Lindens in prizes. It is the SL Shakespeare Company’s Twelfth Night, Act 1 Photography Contest on Koinup, starting March 1 and lasting through June 15. For more information, visit the SL Shakespeare Company’s blog. If you want to visit Second Life’s Globe Theatre, you can teleport to slurl.com/secondlife/sLiterary/19/33/22.
The following is from the SL Shakespeare Company’s press release about the contest:
Shakespeare, Second Life and Brescia, Italy: The SL Shakespeare Company joins forces with Koinup to launch the world’s first major photography contest featuring a professional theatrical production based entirely in the virtual world of Second Life. Starting March 1, the contest invites participants to attend the SL Shakespeare Company’s open-ended run of Twelfth Night, Act 1 and take photos. Over L$100,000 in prizes will be awarded to the winners.
SL Shakespeare Company poster
The contest consists of a main contest whose final submissions deadline is June 15, 2009. Several mini-contests with weekly or bi-monthly deadlines and prizes will be held starting in April. These mini-contests will be held in conjunction with several “Variations” on the open-ended run, where, for example, an all-female or switched-genders cast interpretation is tried.
To give all participants a chance, the contest introduces a special “Unedited SL Photography” category with its own exclusive prize.
The contest also has a special Avatar Photography category for photography that focus particularly on actor avatars. To help facilitate this specialized component, the SL Shakespeare Company will be holding special actor avatar photography sessions starting in April.
The Globe Theatre stage seen from the second level seating
In efforts to recognize photography based not only on artistic merit but also on their appeal to different people, the contest will be judged by a panel of well-known Second Life residents from several different arenas. Judges include Ananda Valeeva, AM Radio, Beyers Sellers, Eshi Otawara, Frolic Mills, Ina Centaur, Jaymes Kjeller, Prad Prathivi, Rightasrain Rimbaud, Sarah Nerd, Tara05 Oh, Vint Falken, Verde Otaared, and others.
Shows occur weekly on Sundays at 1 PM PST and Tuesdays at 6 PM PST at the SL Globe Theatre. Performances are free except for shows on the last Tuesday and Sunday of each month. Donations are gratefully accepted.
Improving your Second Life Snapshots
This snapshot was enhanced using the Environment Editor
Last week I posted three articles about making better Second Life snapshots. This snapshot is an example of what can be done using those techniques. It was taken in Glendalough sim behind Lilly’s Pub, and was enhanced by using the techniques I described in those three articles. Among other things, I placed the moon at exactly the position where I wanted it, which required setting not only the moon position, but its azimuth (East Angle) as well.
This snapshot is how the scene looks without using the Environment Editor
This picture is a snapshot of the same scene as I found it, without using the Environment Editor to alter anything. The scene makes a quite nice snapshot, though not without the atmosphere of the first shot.
This is the same scene at night without using the Environment Editor
This picture is as a snapshot taken at night, without adjusting any of the Environment Editor settings. The reflections in the water are nice, but the foreground trees and the avatar are too dark, and of course there is no moon..
By taking the time to adjust the various Environment Editor settings, however, it’s possible to make an outstanding snapshot out of what would have been merely a pleasant snapshot.
If you want to make better Second Life snapshots, I suggest you bookmark those three articles I posted here last week and refer back to them.
Beam into the Star Trek Museum
Shuttle you can ride out of the shuttle bay
Whether you are like me, a fan of some Star Trek series, or you’re a diehard Trekkie, or you simply want to learn a little of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, you’ll find something to learn at Second Life’s Star Trek Museum. The sheer amount and scope of information available is amazing.
A few of the thousands of facts you can learn there:
- Star Trek’s Enterprise-D has a button on the engineering console marked "Infinite Improbability Drive"? (a reference to Douglas Adams‘ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
- The US Navy’s Aegis-class destroyers were influenced heavily by some design elements of the Enterprise bridge.
- The Enterprise appears in the Battlestar Galactica TV series, in the background of a shot featuring the rag tag fleet in the upper right of the scene.
Space Fleet’s dry dock
The Museum consists of several buildings containing the various parts of the Enterprise, along with a movie theater, art gallery, games, downloadable paper models, and hydroponics lab. There are also Orion, Ferengi, Borg, Andorian,Romulan, Klingon, Cardassian, Bajoran, Maquis, Chameloid, and Betazoid “embassies”, When you enter the Sick Bay, the Doctor’s disembodied voice inquires, “Please state the nature of your medical emergency.” The Astrometrics Lab and 3D Starmaps are particularly impressive. Be sure to check them out.
Nearly every object in the Museum can be clicked on to get a notecard or webpage for more information. Topics range from extreme trivia of Star Trek history to technical explanations of real world science.
Standing inside our solar system in the Astrometrics Lab
High in the sky over the museum, you’ll find a drydock and a Star Fleet station. You can travel between them either by teleporting or using a shuttle, which also gives an auto-pilot aerial tour of the area around the Museum.
If you’re a Second Life member, you can beam yourself onboard the Enterprise (actually into the Museum) by clicking slurl.com/secondlife/TovaDok%20II/25/211/35.
Learn to build nearly anything in Second Life
An Ivory Tower tutorial in Second Life building
The Ivory Tower Library of Primitives is a place where nearly everyone in Second Life, from complete noob to experienced builder, can learn something. Whether you simply want to apply a texture to an object or you want to construct an elaborate structure that will leave others in awe of your skills, this is an essential place to landmark and to visit.
The magnificent Ivory Tower and the well illustrated tutorials in its Library of Primitives were created by Lumiere Noire, in real life a Texas schoolteacher, who has devoted the last six years or so to building this indispensable reference to how to construct nearly anything you might want to build in Second Life. I first met Lumiere six years ago in the metaverse “There”, where he earned a reputation as a skilled and imaginative builder. In Second Life, he has gone way beyond being a master builder to being a master teacher of anyone who needs to learn to build.
An Ivory Tower tutorial in lighting
I first learned to build in Second Life by visiting Lumiere’s first Ivory Tower of Primitives. It’s grown tremendously in its offerings since then. When his current Ivory Tower today, I realized that I need to return to refresh my own building skills. I can’t overstate how much there is to learn there, or how well laid out it is, as only someone who knows how to teach could accomplish. Regardless whether you have just recently joined Second Life and just want to learn some basic building skills using a public sandbox, or you are an estate owner looking to build an edifice, you will find something here.
The Ivory Tower
If you are a Second Life member, you can teleport to the Ivory Tower Library of Primitives by clicking slurl.com/secondlife/Natoma/211/164/28.
For additional news stories about Second Life and virtual worlds in general, visit my website avatarplanet.com.
Dubai Womens College in Second Life
DWC mosque at night
When you think of Muslim women in the Arab world, what comes to mind? Probably not Second Life. Yet last year the United Arab Emirates‘ Dubai Womens College opened its second campus in Second Life, according to an article this week in the United Arab Emirates’ newspaper The National Most of their Second Life land is off limits to outsiders, but in 2008 Matt Kwong was given a tour of the virtual campus and wrote a fascinating article about the college and the activities of its students.
I visited the public part and found this little mosque, which according to a sign there is a typical residential area mosque. It’s positioned facing Mecca on the Second Life grid. If you are a Second Life member, you can teleport to it at slurl.com/secondlife/Dubai%20Womens%20College/209/61/30.
Making better Second Life snapshots using the environment editor, part three
Pagoda in Gaden Gardens at mighnight
Gaden Gardens is a Second Life location of classic Japanese architecture and a magnificant replica of Japan’s ninety-three ton Kamakura Bhudda. This pagoda is not far from the Bhudda and will serve as an excellent subject for learning about taking Second Life snapshots by available moonlight.
This is what the pagoda looks like at Second Life’s midnight. It’s certainly attractive, but changing the moon and the cloud cover will drastically improve the picture and alter the mood of the shot.
For the following exercises, please refer to the picture in yesterday’s article (part two of this series) of the Environment Editor and the Advanced Sky Editor’s Lighting tab. Today we’ll continue playing with the Lighting tab and also with the Clouds tab.
If you’re a Second Life member and you want to visit the exact location from which I made these snapshots, just click http://slurl.com/secondlife/Resnik/55/80/91
he pagoda after changing the moon position and cloud cover
You can see how much improved this picture is. To accomplish this, I made two changes:
- In the Advanced Sky Editor, Lighting tab, I changed the Sun/Moon Position slider to where the pagoda was lit the best
- In the Environment Editor, I moved the Cloud Cover slider to the max 1.00.
It’s still a night shot, using just moonlight, but the pagoda is much better lit than in the first shot.
You might be wondering how this shot would look if we could actually get the moon into the picture. Let’s find out.
The pagoda with the moon behind it.
For this shot, I did something we haven’t done before: I changed the moon’s East Angle, using the Advanced Sky Editor’s Lighting tab, which changes the moon’s azimuth. The moon was obscured by the thick cloud cover, so in the Environment Editor, I changed the Cloud Cover slider to the minimum.
However, moving the moon from behind us to behind the pagoda created a new problem: we’ve made a more interesting background, but the pagoda’s front is once again shrouded in midnight gloom. We’ll tackle that next.
The pagoda with maximum cloud cover
For this picture, I went back to the Advanced Sky Editor’s Lighting tab and changed the Scene Gamma. This caused the overall scene to brighten while retaining black sky of night.
The moon is still there, but is obscured by the much brighter clouds. There is one more trick we can try to make the moon more prominent
The pagoda with clouds removed
When clouds get in the way in our first lives, there’s not much we can do about it, but in Second Life it’s easily handled.
For this picture, with the clouds removed and the moon and stars showing clearly behind the pagoda, I once again used the Advanced Sky Editor, but this time I opened the Clouds tab. Under that tab, on the lower right corner, I unchecked the box next to "Draw Classic Clouds". This won’t always get rid of clouds, but it does get rid of the classic puffy clouds that were obscuring the moon in our previous shots.
Now it’s your turn to go out and play with the information you’ve learned from these three articles. You can dramatically change the appearance of your shots by using the Environment Editor and its sub-editors. They are powerful tools.
The Hugh Hefner of the digital millennium
Can you really make a six figure income from selling animations in Second Life? Fox 13 in Tampa Bay, Florida, reports on a local man who does. Married with two children in his first life, he uses a $40,000 full body sensor suit to create romantic animations that he sells in Second Life. This is the first of a series of reports I’ll be doing on how people are making money in Second Life, sometimes becoming wealthy.
Review of seven Second Life language translators
Recently I met a beautiful woman in Second Life. Ok, she was someone’s avatar, but still beautiful. When I tried talking with her, however, I learned she was Romanian and knew little English. I had similar experiences with two other avatars the same morning. One was Swiss and the other Brazilian, but none of us knew enough of the other’s language to speak.
About 54% of Second Life members live in non-English speaking countries. Most speak widely used languages like German, French, and Spanish, but others speak languages such as Portuguese, Turkish, and Korean. Many also speak English, but often not well. How do we communicate with them when we meet them? We can and should learn foreign languages, but no one can learn them all. Is there another way?
Yes. Over a half dozen automatic language translating HUD’s are available in Second Life. Some of them are free. Each of them translates at least 32 languages. The odds are that one of them will work for you. They only translate typed text at present – automatic translation of speech will be a major technical challenge – but they should allow you to hold a basic conversation in a wide variety of languages.
I’ve tested seven of the automatic translators that are most commonly available in Second Life They range in price from free to 500 Lindens. One of the free translators rivals the most expensive for quality in basic functionality.
The translators I tested are:
- Ferd’s Free Translator (free)
- Simbolic (free)
- AF Translator Basic (aka Translator Box) (180 Lindens)
- AF Translator Pro (340 Lindens)
- MH Translator (370 Lindens)
- Q-Translator (390 Lindens)
- X-Lang (500 Lindens)
Before buying any translator, be sure to test its HUD on your screen in ALL positions. I found this a particularly aggravating weakness of a few translators. For example, I might specify that I wanted it in the upper right, but some translators would either position it elsewhere on the screen, or not at all. Also be certain that the HUD isn’t partially covered by the side or bottom of the screen, as happens in a few translators. Check all screen positions.
Some other key features to look for:
- Toggling between automatic language detection and a specified language.
- Toggling object translation on and off.
- Spell checker
- Anti-spam filter to block repeating statements when you speak in the target language.
- Displaying your current language settings
- If you are not a native English speaker, does it offer a HUD or help in your native language?
X-Lang 6.0 (500 Lindens):
This is one of only two translators to position its HUD without any problems. Its features include:
- Translates 41 languages
- Help in 9 languages
- HUD interface in 15 languages
- Toggles object translation on and off
- Displays your current language selections
- Auto language detection.
Q-Translator 2.1 (390 Lindens):
This is the Cadillac of translators. The only HUD positioning problems were very minor and don’t affect usage. Its features include:
- Translates 41 languages
- Help in 34 languages
- HUD interface in eight languages
- Spellchecker in 17 languages (a really useful feature)
- Toggles object translation on and off
- Displays your current language selections
- Auto-detects languages
- Can search Wikipedia from the HUD
MH Translator 3.6 (370 Lindens)
I found MH Translator extremely frustrating. The HUD position was wrong or simply didn’t work for most positions, and I sometimes had trouble getting it to translate, probably because in certain positions, some HUD menu choices are hidden from view.
- Translates 42 languages
- HUD and help are English only
- Toggles object translation on and off
- Does not display current language selections
AF Pro 1.4 (340 Lindens)
AF Basic 2.4 (180 Lindens)
These both offer a very nice compromise between the more complex HUD of X-Lang and Q-Translator and the streamlined HUD of Ferd’s Free and Simbolic Translators. Of all the translators, this is the one that was easiest to use without experience and without reading help.
As much as I like these two translators, I do have two complaints. One is that when the HUD is placed on the left and center bottom of the screen, Second Life’s chat bar partially covers it. The other complaint is that neither version displays your current language selections. This is not a problem if you always use the same languages, but if you or the people you are listening to use more than one language, it can be a nuisance.
- Pro version has HUD in 6 languages
- Translates 34 languages (Pro version translates 41 languages)
- Help in 34 languages
- Toggles object translation on and off
- Auto-detection of languages
- Anti-spam option on Pro version.
- Does not display current language selections
Simbolic 2.0 (free)
This otherwise really nice free translator has one big problem: HUD positioning is terrible. For most positions I tried, the HUD either ended up in the wrong position or vanished completely. It’s compounded by the fact that when its position in the center or bottom of the screen, the drop down menu is cut off and several languages become impossible to select.
- Translates 32 languages
- Displays current language selection
- Does not toggle object translation on and off
Ferd’s Free Translator 7.3 (free)
If you don’t need non-English help or HUD, or other features of more full-featured translators, this one is for you. I was amazed by it. It’s intuitive to use, it toggles object translation, and it works in no-script areas. It’s the one I found most natural to use, and boasts some useful features not found on the others.
I found the automatic language detection reliable when its set to its default of detecting the language of the other speaker’s viewer. Currently SL has viewers in Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish, so these are the languages that Ferd will identify most reliably, as long as the speaker’s viewer is set to the language he/she is speaking.
- Detects 95 languages
- Allows 16-way chats in up to 34 languages
- Takes up the least screen space when you’re wearing it
Conclusion:
Everyone in Second Life should have a translator. If you don’t feel like paying for one, get Ferd’s Free Translator or the Simbolic Translator. They’ll both do a fine job.
Everyone in Second Life should have a translator. If you don’t feel like paying for one, get Ferd’s Free Translator or the Simbolic Translator. I had a problem with Simbolic HUD placement, but otherwise it worked fine. I loved Ferd’s. It’s the one I’ll be using most of the time myself. I’ll also use X-Lang for those occasions when its features are useful. But Q-Translator and AF Translator both deserve consideration. AF-Translator Basic was initially my favorite, but its inability to display the current lanugage settings became a nuisance for me. Still, for the price, it merits consideration. The Q-Translator’s numerous features make it a formidable competitor. Try all of them before making a decision.
Where can you get these translators? Here are the places where I got mine:
- X-Lang: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Olexandrovich/214/17/601
- Q-Translator: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Shipwreck%20Bay/239/234/24
- MH Translator: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Donohue/133/245/1030
- AF Translators (Pro and Basic): http://slurl.com/secondlife/Milaniovic/18/136/57
- Simbolic: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cupo/105/120/36
- Ferd’s Free: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Phaze%20Demesnes/218/209/24