My second Storify attempt...what do you think?
Showing posts with label Second Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Second Life. Show all posts
Friday, October 07, 2011
Sunday, October 02, 2011
Our Camp Got Finished for Burn2
We got finished. Whoo. Three levels with graphics and some freebies
Problems...there are a few
1. lag lag lag...takes a while for the textures to load, it's hard to move around, and music streams can't be heard by everyone at the party. SL has got to do something so events can attract more than a couple of people without everyone being stuck in lag soup.
2. Most people so far have been paying attention to the artists and scheduled music. I understand that attention..the art is gorgeous and well worth seeing. We had fun building...and that's all that's really important.
The second level is rites of commendation...items and images of things we do to help the dead move on to or have a happier afterlife. There is voodoo and a senet game and images of the weighing of the souls by Anubis.
The third level is rites of commemoration...celebrations in honour of the dead. We have a family ancestor altar and images from the Day of the Dead and Asian festivals honouring the dead, including the Japanese Obon festival's ceremony with lit floating lanterns. There's a reincarnation wheel - click on it to see what you will come back as.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Brewery Build-Off
Today was the second annual Build-Off at the Builder's Brewery in SecondLife and I did the first heat (out of four). They judge on MOnday & Tuesday and (hopefully) the winner is announced on Wednesday. And all the entries will be featured on http://primbusters.com/
Here are some pictures from my heat. I took them...so mostly my stuff *chuckles*
Here's a big overview of all the building platforms. I had the platform at the bottom of the picture. I like not having people too close as I zoom around checking out the build
And this is the basic sculpty shape they gave us. Each heat gets a different shape so it's always a surprise. Last time mine looked like a vertebrae. This year...it's like a twisted column, twisted piece of toffy...twisted something or other.
See the clock...i was mostly done with an hour to go...and it took me an hour to finish up - dinking with textures and adding the "park"...and I came up with the idea for the "puddles"
The mostly finished product..long view and closer view. The time zoomed by..it's amazing how fast 2 hours disappears. I called it Puddles in the Park.
I popped over to look at Heat 2 - here's a pic of the sculpty they got..kind of looks like a fireplace. I like the sculpty we got in the first heat better. This is the same platform I used...hopefully their project won't be as cool as mine.
Here are some pictures from my heat. I took them...so mostly my stuff *chuckles*
Here's a big overview of all the building platforms. I had the platform at the bottom of the picture. I like not having people too close as I zoom around checking out the build
And this is the basic sculpty shape they gave us. Each heat gets a different shape so it's always a surprise. Last time mine looked like a vertebrae. This year...it's like a twisted column, twisted piece of toffy...twisted something or other.
This was the second or third idea...I threw out those ideas and went with a sort of prim fountain. At one point I tried adding water like a regular fountain..but it looked kind of silly and in the time I had I didn't want to dink around with it.
See the clock...i was mostly done with an hour to go...and it took me an hour to finish up - dinking with textures and adding the "park"...and I came up with the idea for the "puddles"
The mostly finished product..long view and closer view. The time zoomed by..it's amazing how fast 2 hours disappears. I called it Puddles in the Park.
I popped over to look at Heat 2 - here's a pic of the sculpty they got..kind of looks like a fireplace. I like the sculpty we got in the first heat better. This is the same platform I used...hopefully their project won't be as cool as mine.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Playa Aesthetics
Burning Man takes up a big chunk of the playa. 50,000+ people, trucks, supplies, porta-potties, stages, radio station...it's a town..a city. That can be seen from space! Check out this image from the GeoEye satellite. Volunteers lay out roads, camp boundaries. They put up lantern stands for night time illumination. They lay cable for sound systems. They set up generators for electricity to keep the ice cold and the coffee hot.They have this concept at Burning Man - MOOP which stands for Matter Out Of Place. I love that word. We've been playing around with it in between building cars and finding images for our camp. And we came up with the phrase..don't be a party mooper. Mostly because I always forget to clean up after myself when I'm building - bits of cars, stray prims with images are always left laying around when I am working. Would ya believe...I'm an artiste? hmmm..no didn't think you would. I'm just messy.
I found these entries on the Burning Man blog - their Moop Map - so you can check out their efforts to control/eliminate MOOP - http://blog.burningman.com/2011/09/news/moop-map-live-2011/
and
http://blog.burningman.com/2011/09/news/moop-map-live-how-the-map-is-made/
Turns out the playa gets inspected by the Bureau of Land Management and if it isn't MOOP-free, there will be problems with getting permits in the future.
So clean up after yourselves people. No party moopers allowed.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Got Distracted
I'm supposed to be researching ideas about the afterlife and death in different cultures, looking for images and artifacts. I found a Senet Table in SL (whooo...Thanks Rowena) which the Egyptians used as sort of a model for their afterlife. Marc took some pictures of a tomb and some marble memorials in England. But I need some ideas for what to put in the 2 levels above our tomb cave. Any ideas you can pass along?
But..I got distracted making bikes. Marc had an idea for a rocket car and made a great sculpty before he went on vacation. So I made a texture for it, added some sparks shooting out the back, and made a pose that makes ya look like you're hanging on tight to the rocket. Then I made one that's a surfboard. I put one of our Elvis poses (yes we made poses based on famous photos of Elvis) on it for the driver. They are a hoot to make and I have to admit that they look pretty cool too. I will clean them up, double check all the permissions this weekend and pass them on to the Dept of Mutant Vehicles, the DMV.
Here are a couple of pictures
Check out the galaxy tires..they spin as you ride the bike.
This bike holds two people..the standing driver and a passenger who sits all stretched out on the rear of the bike. It just has regular bike tires...maybe a little retro?
But..I got distracted making bikes. Marc had an idea for a rocket car and made a great sculpty before he went on vacation. So I made a texture for it, added some sparks shooting out the back, and made a pose that makes ya look like you're hanging on tight to the rocket. Then I made one that's a surfboard. I put one of our Elvis poses (yes we made poses based on famous photos of Elvis) on it for the driver. They are a hoot to make and I have to admit that they look pretty cool too. I will clean them up, double check all the permissions this weekend and pass them on to the Dept of Mutant Vehicles, the DMV.
Here are a couple of pictures
Check out the galaxy tires..they spin as you ride the bike.
This bike holds two people..the standing driver and a passenger who sits all stretched out on the rear of the bike. It just has regular bike tires...maybe a little retro?
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
One Last ArtCar
Image by Michael Holden via FlickrThe theme of Burning Man in 2011 is "Rites of Passage"I made a coffin car, because our camp is looking at death as a rite of passage.
We were joking about cars and i wanted to make a merry go round..then realized that could also be "marry-go-round"...since marriage is a rite of passage
I wanted to build a car where the driver stood still in the middle and the passengers rotated around them.. Well......that made driving tough because the car didn't want to turn to the right when it was rotating to the left.
So..a few adjustments, some tweaking..and here is the latest and greatest version of the Marry-Go-Round. The driver and passengers stand still and the church wall rotates around everybody. I still need to make a veil for the bride
Want to see some cars from Burns past? Check out these pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmom2k_darwin/tags/dmv/
Slide show of DMV pics
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
Sunday, September 04, 2011
The temple burns tonight in RL
Here's some pics of the real temple as it burned. It was spectacular...i can't imagine what accelerants they put on that wood. It looked like the gas fields on fire in the middle east during the Gulf Wars. (for some pictures of the Man statue burning - because i forgot to take pictures - check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelholden/6111738368/in/set-72157627529205924)
So in SL we're partying on DeepHole..the burning man "administrative"sim. that piece of plywood was a media player if you were using LL's viewer 2 which I wasn't.
So in SL we're partying on DeepHole..the burning man "administrative"sim. that piece of plywood was a media player if you were using LL's viewer 2 which I wasn't.
Art Cars for Burning Man in SecondLife
Well, it might be a little presumptuous to call my efforts art cars, but there ya go..that's what i'm going to call them. They are art cars for the SecondLife Burning Man (http://www.burn2.org). I hope they will be anyway; I have to submit them to be checked for script errors and terms of service violations.
I built 2 so far...The first, the coffin car, goes with the theme of our camp..death as a rite of passage. My machinima and research buddy, Marc, built a coffin car too; his looks like a 50s souped up drag car with some cool chrome exhaust.
Here are some pictures of my coffin car..that's me laying inside it. There's no steering wheel ..guess you're just "thinking" it around the playa.
My second car is a big teapot on a tray with 2 cushions for passengers to sit on. I got the teapot sculpty files the other day from a Midnight Mania board give away..whoo hoo. I used textures from Chipaholic and Sick Bubblegum. Think about it - a person size teapot = the ultimate never ending cup of tea. And instead of steam (which looked pretty cool), big yellow daisies come out of the spout occasionally.
Here are some pics of this car - i have got to learn to take close up..but check out that playa texture, with dusty car tracks to follow.
I built 2 so far...The first, the coffin car, goes with the theme of our camp..death as a rite of passage. My machinima and research buddy, Marc, built a coffin car too; his looks like a 50s souped up drag car with some cool chrome exhaust.
Here are some pictures of my coffin car..that's me laying inside it. There's no steering wheel ..guess you're just "thinking" it around the playa.
My second car is a big teapot on a tray with 2 cushions for passengers to sit on. I got the teapot sculpty files the other day from a Midnight Mania board give away..whoo hoo. I used textures from Chipaholic and Sick Bubblegum. Think about it - a person size teapot = the ultimate never ending cup of tea. And instead of steam (which looked pretty cool), big yellow daisies come out of the spout occasionally.
Here are some pics of this car - i have got to learn to take close up..but check out that playa texture, with dusty car tracks to follow.
Monday, June 13, 2011
scary new hair
Not related to machinima or my teaching...I just got a gift of some crazy scary big hair and was moved to take a picture.
and to share it with you all.
and to share it with you all.
Burning Man in SL
I bought a plot with my machinima buddy, Marc, on the playa for the SecondLife version of Burning Man. We're also in the lottery to win a couple of additional plots. You can check out their webpage at http://www.burn2.org. The image is from their blog to announce the theme...Rites of Passage.
Marc & I previously discussed studying memorials in SL - so one idea for our camp is to look at rites of passage involving death. This idea, of course, put new life in the machinima I was making about death of the human behind the avatar. If we can finish it, we hope to show it at our camp. It depends on how the plots are set up...we might not be able to control the media settings, especially on a little plot. It's a good idea tho.
For me, being in this event is kind of a rite of passage. I've been moving from content consumer to content creator in SL.
- I used to make sculptures for me; now I have a store where I put them up for sale along with houses that I build. I'm learning about communicating in different ways in world.
- I used to watch machinima, laughing at the Divas and marveling at the art. Now I'm acting in them, recording voices, and writing and directing.
- Last year we visited the camps, watched them burn the man - we went as spectators. This year we will be part of the action. This camp will be something we create. We will make things to give away. We will share the "death machinima" , as we call it.
It's still a long time till the event. We don't even get our plots assigned till the end of August! Arggghhh. We need to decide if we're going to volunteer for one of the departments to help during the event. It depends on our plot idea develops. One involves a lot of updating throughout the day and interacting with the people who walk by - that might cut down on the volunteering.
We also discussed making some machinima there at the SL Burning Man. It would be interesting to see what you could record in one take with no editing. Or play around with a news format and have "man on the street" interviews. There will be live performers and street theatre and avatars dressed in their best weird outfits. So a lot of opportunities to shoot and practice editing (for me...Marc is already experienced)
Friday, April 15, 2011
Learning to make poses and Animations
We bought the Animare HUD the other day to play around with in SecondLife. Hopefully now when we need certain poses for our machinima, I can whip them out fairly quickly...well faster than I edit video since that seems to be taking me forever.
I spent some time today making poses and trying my hand at animations. The HUD is easy to use, tho not easy to understand sometimes. The HUD has a picture of the body with the joints. You click on a joint, then you can rotate it, move it forward or back, move it in or out...in a range of set increments that aren't always as small as you'd like for some tiny refinements. Here are pics of two static poses I made for a standing avatar and a lounge position that i'm pretty happy with.
Lounging poolside..that's me. The lounger is ugly as sin I know...it's 2 prims i pushed together quickly to put the pose into to test. I need to look for some modifiable full perm furniture I guess. I was actually thinking this would be good in a window seat. But now I really want to see it in a pool side beach chair. ANd I want to make it into an animation...with tapping foot, maybe an arm waving away a bug.
I called this one Whooops...since it looks like the avie is falling
I called this one Happy to See You...it kind of looked like someone jumping into the arms of another person they were happy to see.
A note added on Saturday evening
It is really tough to find info on animations and poses for SL. I'm trying to figure out the layout of the data in teh .bvh file that gets imported into SL. I found one source that said it starts with the hip..but not sure what is the order of the other joints. I want to be able to tweak the .bvh file in case i mess up the animare pose or in case i want a little finer movements.
I spent some time today making poses and trying my hand at animations. The HUD is easy to use, tho not easy to understand sometimes. The HUD has a picture of the body with the joints. You click on a joint, then you can rotate it, move it forward or back, move it in or out...in a range of set increments that aren't always as small as you'd like for some tiny refinements. Here are pics of two static poses I made for a standing avatar and a lounge position that i'm pretty happy with.
Lounging poolside..that's me. The lounger is ugly as sin I know...it's 2 prims i pushed together quickly to put the pose into to test. I need to look for some modifiable full perm furniture I guess. I was actually thinking this would be good in a window seat. But now I really want to see it in a pool side beach chair. ANd I want to make it into an animation...with tapping foot, maybe an arm waving away a bug.
I called this one Whooops...since it looks like the avie is falling
I called this one Happy to See You...it kind of looked like someone jumping into the arms of another person they were happy to see.
A note added on Saturday evening
It is really tough to find info on animations and poses for SL. I'm trying to figure out the layout of the data in teh .bvh file that gets imported into SL. I found one source that said it starts with the hip..but not sure what is the order of the other joints. I want to be able to tweak the .bvh file in case i mess up the animare pose or in case i want a little finer movements.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Places to see some SL machinima
Image via WikipediaTHere are several "television networks" for programming made in SecondLife. All these networks have scheduled shows, live feeds, websites, and ways to talk about the shows. And many of them have ways for you to share your machinima with the world too.Metaverse TV - http://metaversetv.com/
They have a variety of programming - news, fashion shows, comedy. They just started a new show called Claim the Fame that seems to be for fashion designers. You can watch on their web site or on YouTube and Blip.tv. I was watching an episode of the Stylist of the Year contest. The production values are really high on these shows, good sound, interesting visuals. They have a news program, MBC News, about many virtual worlds that I am going to start watching regularly. I made a post with one of their programs embedded from YouTube.
Treet.tv - http://treet.tv/
They have 2 "channels" - entertainment and business, with a variety of programs on each channel. I go to the Metanomics presentations in world. Treet.tv shows those on the business channel along with tech news programming. On entertainment they have a variety of SL sports including giant snail races, dirt bike races, sailing and hockey. There are arts and literature programs as well as a weekly fashion program and a trivia program, The 1st Question, hosted by Pooky Amsterdam . You can watch on their website or in SecondLife using a special tv viewer they created. Their shows have ads.
Metamix TV - http://metamixtv.com/
THis group is new/old. They took over an existing network (rezzed.tv) and are building a new sim, putting together a new show lineup. It's headed up by Flimsey Freenote, Chantal Harvey, Toxic Menges, Kit2Kat, and Phaylen Fairchild. SL wrestling will be on this network as is coverage of Simball matches. They host "The Phoenix Hour" with developers of the Phoenix third party viewer. They have a variety of talk, opinion, and reality programming. They plan to broadcast in HD. They interrupt their programming with advertisements. Here is one of their shows.
spoton3d on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free
Virtual World Network VNW1 - http://www.virtualworldnetwork.tv/
This network has shows on fashion and art, and sports like automobile racing and wrestling.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Sound Ideas
So I"m working on my machinima with Marc, my machinima buddy. I gave it a title..a working title, but one I like...It's called "Till Death Do Us Part"
It's not a comedy...duh!
Anyway..all machinima needs sound effects and voices and background music.
Here are some resources. Some I found, some Marc found, and some were suggested by the people at Machinima Monday. BTW, If you're making movies in SecondLIfe, you should join this group and come to the meetings on Mondays, usually at 2pm SLT and 7pm SLT.
Wikipedia page about copyleft and out of copyright music - mostly classical music. On the Mac, you ALT left click on the file name to download it. Not sure what you PC folks do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sound/list
Freesound.org - database of Creative Commons licensed sounds/sound effects (not music). You enter keywords and get lists of sounds so tagged. You can see the other keywords used to help you find what you want. Then ALT left click to download
http://www.freesound.org/
ccmixter.org - database of Creative Commons licensed music remixes.
http://www.ccmixter.org/
Music Discovery Center - the search tool for ccmixter. I don't see keywords listed on selected songs like i did for freesound.org so it's a little tougher to find what ya want. Maybe just a matter of me playing with it some more.
http://dig.ccmixter.org/
Free Music Archive - you can sort by genre and then listen to selected tracks. Be sure to check the licenses but it seems that most are free to use for non-commercial projects
http://freemusicarchive.org/
Actors' Sandbox - voice actors hang out here. They're running a workshop for voice actors. If you need people to speak in your movie, this might be a group/place to check out. I just found out about this at today's Machinima Monday. As I find out more, I'll update this.
https://sites.google.com/a/schoolhouseearth.org/tutorial--sites/Home/actors-sandbox
It's not a comedy...duh!
Anyway..all machinima needs sound effects and voices and background music.
Here are some resources. Some I found, some Marc found, and some were suggested by the people at Machinima Monday. BTW, If you're making movies in SecondLIfe, you should join this group and come to the meetings on Mondays, usually at 2pm SLT and 7pm SLT.
Wikipedia page about copyleft and out of copyright music - mostly classical music. On the Mac, you ALT left click on the file name to download it. Not sure what you PC folks do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sound/list
Freesound.org - database of Creative Commons licensed sounds/sound effects (not music). You enter keywords and get lists of sounds so tagged. You can see the other keywords used to help you find what you want. Then ALT left click to download
http://www.freesound.org/
ccmixter.org - database of Creative Commons licensed music remixes.
http://www.ccmixter.org/
Music Discovery Center - the search tool for ccmixter. I don't see keywords listed on selected songs like i did for freesound.org so it's a little tougher to find what ya want. Maybe just a matter of me playing with it some more.
http://dig.ccmixter.org/
Free Music Archive - you can sort by genre and then listen to selected tracks. Be sure to check the licenses but it seems that most are free to use for non-commercial projects
http://freemusicarchive.org/
Actors' Sandbox - voice actors hang out here. They're running a workshop for voice actors. If you need people to speak in your movie, this might be a group/place to check out. I just found out about this at today's Machinima Monday. As I find out more, I'll update this.
https://sites.google.com/a/schoolhouseearth.org/tutorial--sites/Home/actors-sandbox
Thursday, April 07, 2011
My turn as Director
We - my machinima buddy and I - started a new project today, one based on a story idea I had. This is the first time I"ve been the editor and director. I made a lot of mistakes but fortunately my buddy was patient while i got the software working. He was trying to be nice when he said my project was ambitious. I'm sure he was thinking...that girl is nuts...gonna crash and burn...but he didn't say it. Thanks!
Anyone in RL will tell you..i am a slow still photograph taker. I like to line things up just so and try different angles and amounts of zoom..all before I take a picture. Maybe why i take so few people pictures in RL...trees and rocks and the sky sit around and wait for me. I digress.
I laid out a list of the scenes I want in my video, in 2 column format. And we started shooting...and my well thought out scenes fell apart. I needed some transitions. Some scenes needed changes to be more logical in the flow of the movie.
I've been trying to pick out places to film. One was a plaza with an awesome fountain. When I'm places normally, i don't notice things like advertisements and tip jars and store windows. It took time today to lay out the camera angles and think where the actor could move. At the Machinima Monday meeting the other day someone mentioned putting up transparent walls to keep the actors in the shot; now I see what they were saying. It's difficult to explain what you're seeing on your screen to the actors; walls would stop them before they got out of the shot.
Here's some footage i started editing. It's from an early scene. There's no audio yet. Just to give you an idea of what i did today
Mistakes I made today
- filming away..and then noticed i was in the shot in the background
- managed to make the filming window in Snapz not as big as the window of Secondlife
- managed to move the SecondLife window but not the edit window, so i filmed some windows that were under SecondLife...that is really irritating because I got a good shot..and don't think i can trim that line of garbage off the left edge
- filmed things before they were completely rezzed
- realized without an external mic, I can't do voice to give directions to my actors when i have the SecondLife interface turned off
- realized i need to think more about motion...moving the actors, moving the camera.
Anyone in RL will tell you..i am a slow still photograph taker. I like to line things up just so and try different angles and amounts of zoom..all before I take a picture. Maybe why i take so few people pictures in RL...trees and rocks and the sky sit around and wait for me. I digress.
I laid out a list of the scenes I want in my video, in 2 column format. And we started shooting...and my well thought out scenes fell apart. I needed some transitions. Some scenes needed changes to be more logical in the flow of the movie.
I've been trying to pick out places to film. One was a plaza with an awesome fountain. When I'm places normally, i don't notice things like advertisements and tip jars and store windows. It took time today to lay out the camera angles and think where the actor could move. At the Machinima Monday meeting the other day someone mentioned putting up transparent walls to keep the actors in the shot; now I see what they were saying. It's difficult to explain what you're seeing on your screen to the actors; walls would stop them before they got out of the shot.
Here's some footage i started editing. It's from an early scene. There's no audio yet. Just to give you an idea of what i did today
Mistakes I made today
- filming away..and then noticed i was in the shot in the background
- managed to make the filming window in Snapz not as big as the window of Secondlife
- managed to move the SecondLife window but not the edit window, so i filmed some windows that were under SecondLife...that is really irritating because I got a good shot..and don't think i can trim that line of garbage off the left edge
- filmed things before they were completely rezzed
- realized without an external mic, I can't do voice to give directions to my actors when i have the SecondLife interface turned off
- realized i need to think more about motion...moving the actors, moving the camera.
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
Poses for machinima
Working with avatars has some advantages over working with people...hair always looks good, avatars often have amazingly varied inventories to draw on for props, and they can stand without fidgeting (if you take off their AOs of course) while you set up your shot.
There is one drawback though that I've run into so far...you can't just tell your actor/avatar..oh move your hand higher..or grab them around the neck. Well, technically you CAN tell them..they just can't do it. Without poses and animations that is
The pose fair is going on now till the 15th of April on a sim called Postura. There must be a hundred stores here. You can buy loaded AOs, individual poses and pose packs for singles and couples, furniture with poses built in, and cool things to pose with for photos. For instance {what next} has a rowboat with poses in it - photographers must love those things. Here's their SLURL at the pose fair - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Postura/153/241/26 and a picture of their little space showing the rowboat.
Here's a pic of another cool prop..a brick wall to lean on. It's from Glitterati - they have a huge real world store with poses and props. Here's the slurl to their store at the fair - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Postura/125/242/26
As a new machinima maker, I"m trying to decide what kinds of poses I need. And looking hard for animations. Probably need to invest in some specialty HUDS.
Then there's the problem of getting your actors to have the right animations..because a lot of them are no transfer...grrrrr.
There is one drawback though that I've run into so far...you can't just tell your actor/avatar..oh move your hand higher..or grab them around the neck. Well, technically you CAN tell them..they just can't do it. Without poses and animations that is
The pose fair is going on now till the 15th of April on a sim called Postura. There must be a hundred stores here. You can buy loaded AOs, individual poses and pose packs for singles and couples, furniture with poses built in, and cool things to pose with for photos. For instance {what next} has a rowboat with poses in it - photographers must love those things. Here's their SLURL at the pose fair - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Postura/153/241/26 and a picture of their little space showing the rowboat.
Here's a pic of another cool prop..a brick wall to lean on. It's from Glitterati - they have a huge real world store with poses and props. Here's the slurl to their store at the fair - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Postura/125/242/26
As a new machinima maker, I"m trying to decide what kinds of poses I need. And looking hard for animations. Probably need to invest in some specialty HUDS.
Then there's the problem of getting your actors to have the right animations..because a lot of them are no transfer...grrrrr.
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