Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Penny Patton is one of those people that think, which usually gets me in trouble. She has an article out titled Virtual Space/Infinite Space. Her paradigm for conceptualizing land in Second Life™ is different from how I suspect most people think of SL land.
If you are looking for land or feeling confined by borders or just looking to reduce the cost of tier then her article is something you will be happy to have found.
Virtually free land…
When we upload mesh items, clothes or other things, one of the questions is how many polygons can I use? An alternative of that one, how many should I use, is also common.
For the second there is no ‘numeric’ answer for the ‘should’ version. The common answer is: as few as will do the job. But, how many can we use? Is there a limit?
Blender has some safety nets. If you have ever lost work from a crash, forgetting to save, or saving over a file you wanted to keep… then this video is for you.
Hamlet came across a video by Beev Beev that shows how to make reflective surfaces in Second Life™.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhqhZDd_33Q
Pretty neat.
Hamlet has more details here: How to Simulate Environmental Reflections in Second Life.
With the release if the Maintenance Viewer (4.0.2.312269) in week #11, invisiprims pretty much died their final death. Support ended for these critters in 2011. The code that renders them invisible has been in viewers up to this release. But, with this release something changed.
Inviziprims were prims with a special texture that caused things behind the texture to become transparent. Rendering-wise this was nightmare and problematic. The Lindens took advantage of a happenstance of the render pipeline to get them to work. I understand Crazy Mole once built a dry dock using invisiprims (the picture). Many boat builders used them to make the water inside their boats disappear.
Hamlet has a guest blogger, Brookston Holiday, that wrote a great article on doing lighting in Second Life™. See: SL Building Tutorial: Seven Lighting Tips for Stunning Results.
PS: There is a thread about Hamlet’s post on SLUniverse: Guest NWN post.