Category Archives: Content Creation

Adobe Spark – Free

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Adobe has released a new free web tool, Spark. It is an editor/creative tool for those wanting to quickly put creative things on Instagram, Flickr, YouTube, and other social media. The video shows how it is used as a video editor.

From the video, this image shows that video is one of the three primary areas in which Spark is useful, Posts, Pages, and Video. Amy Landino, the video creator, points out the limits of Spark. It is not going to replace Adobe Premiere Pro.

Spark Options

But, this is may be handy for quick little things and those that can live within the restrictions of a template driven system.

Since it is all free, you may be wondering why it is free. The servers and programming all cost money. So, there must be some financial model behind what Adobe is offering. I think Adobe’s incentive is marketing for Adobe products. There are opportunities they take to promote Premiere and their other retail products. I can’t yet tell if that is the sole benefit to Adobe. But, they weren’t asking for an email address or log in during the parts I played with.

YouTube already has some Spark Tutorials. So, you aren’t solely on your own.

If you have ever wanted to show off your SL creations, avatar, pretty place… this is an opportunity to create with free tools from the premier maker of artistic software.

AvaStar: MakeHuman or Manuel Bastioni?

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I noticed Machinimatrix posting a video on how to integrate Manuel Bastioni with AvaStar. BElow is an image link to the video as it won’t display embedded here. Sheeesh..

So, what is Manuel Bastioni? It is an open source character generator for Blender. Seems it is competition for MakeHuman. The download is here: Manuel Bastioni.  Continue reading →

A New Universe with Procedural Worlds

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Massively has an article about a game named No Man’s Sky. In the article is a video by TheHappieCat explaining how the game’s makers created quintillions of worlds using fractals. The thing I find surprising is the worlds are never stored in a database. Yet when you come back to a world it is re-generated, but the same exact world is generated. TheHappieCat explains how she thinks it works.

The Massively Overpowered article Eve Evolved: No Man’s Sky vs Eve Online, by Brendan Drain explores what the differences between Eve and No Man’s may mean how Eve could be impacted. Continue reading →

Making Better Use of Facebook

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Many of us in Second Life™ run businesses and some of us also run RL businesses… ummm… that means businesses  not in SL. I suppose whether a business is in SL or not, the business is real. Whatever, I came across this article on making better use of Facebook to promote your ideas, products, services, whatever…

See: How to Improve Your Facebook News Feed Visibility

Embryonic-3 : Mecha-Amonite II

Embryonic-3 : Mecha-Amonite II by Nebraska Oddfish, on Flickr

For bloggers in Second Life, or anywhere I guess, there is the problem of how Facebook is reacting to comments on linked-to sites. Having comments on in my blog drops my points with Facebook.  They are less likely to extend my reach, or in simple words… they will show my stuff to fewer people.

As the article points out, you can have comments on your site. But, if you can encourage visitors to comment on Facebook, your reach will increase. It isn’t so much that you have comments that is the problem for Facebook. It is that Facebook responds positively to people commenting on your links on Facebook.

So, whether you are selling something or just trying to increase your popularity, there are good and bad ways to do that with social media.

Second Life News 2014-23 – Group Ban

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We have some actual news today!

Group Ban

This new feature is now running in the main grid in RC channel: Le Tigre. Many people have been looking forward to this feature coming out. If all goes well we could see it move to the entire grid next week.

Any group owner or manager with proper permissions can use the feature.  You need to visit a region in the Le Tigre channel to use the feature. Also you need to be using the Group Ban Project Viewer. Unfortunately the viewer is not showing on the RC/Project Viewers page. But, you can get the viewer here: Download: Windows, Mac, Linux.

You can find details on using the project feature here: Group Ban FAQ.

Be warned, the bans made in Le Tigre may not stick, meaning a banned person may be able to re-join from regions outside the Le Tigre channel. So, while the ban is server side older regions don’t know to check for a ban before allowing a join. But, the person will be in the ban list.

Once the project goes grid wide you may have to re-ban or eject the banned people one last time.

The server side code is at RC level, meaning it is working as planned and is expected to be the finished product. The viewer is just reaching ‘project viewer’ status, which we might consider the old beta version status.

Expect some changes to the viewer before it rolls out as the main viewer. When the server side code goes grid wide one can then use the Group Ban Viewer and ban people. Since the ban is enforced server-side and all the servers will then be running it, it won’t matter which viewer a banned person uses, they won’t be able to get in the group.

This should make life in group chat much better.

Servers

There was no roll to the main channel this morning. There was maintenance to the servers and logins were down for a time this morning.  Continue reading →

Second Life Normal Maps & UV

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There is an interesting discussion in the SL Forum about a problem some people have had making Normal Maps for Second Life™. Jake Koronikov opened the thread. Jake had a problem with the normal maps creating a visible seam in the model.

FlickrNormal

Normal Maps from Flickr Search

For instance, the seam between the front and back sides of the avatar leg. Of you were making a manikin and using a normal map on it that seem would become visible as a step on the surface rather than the smooth surface it is supposed to be.  You can see his images of the problem in the thread: Tangent spaced Normal Map seam visible in UV border area. (2017 – The images are gone.) Continue reading →

Adobe And Second Life

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Ciaran Laval has an article up: A Massive Cross Promotion Opportunity Stares Linden Lab And Adobe In The Face.

He makes some really good points for combining Second Life™ Premium accounts and an Adobe product subscription. I think the trigger for his thinking is the current Adobe off to provide Photoshop and Lightroom for US$9.99/month on a yearly basis. This is a deal.

Photoshop sold as a standalone package for about US$600. I’ve forgotten what Lightroom sold for. I think it was another $200 or $300.

I never paid much attention to it. I didn’t think I would use it. But, with the big CC package that has everything Lightroom is thrown in. I love it. Anyone that deals with large numbers of images, needs Lightroom. Continue reading →