Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Second Life™ is technically complicated. Fortunately, most users generally don’t have to deal with the technical issues. We can just cruse around enjoying SL. However, if we make clothes, we are going to suffer from what we don’t know.
DE Design has a new post up that appeared in Fab Free. See: Fitted Mesh. There is some good stuff and some tings I take exception to.
There is a new version of AvaStar coming that I think makes creating fitted mesh clothes for Second Life much easier. Check out this video:
Free Dove (SLURL) was one of the first freebie places I discovered. I got my first real hairdo from an offer presented there, GuRL 6 (MP Link – No In-World any more). Lots of my first clothes came from Free Dove. I still visit once in awhile. I send new people there.
Fab Free has a story up by Pru Rexroth about hunt going on at Free Dove during the month of May. See: Free Dove Hunt – Part 1.
Update: 2015-05-14 – Today I see Part 2 is out: Free Dove Hunt – Part 2.
Lildaria Resident started to do a tutorial on Masking in Second Life™. But, she found a good tutorial already exists. She reprinted that tutorial. See: Tutorial: Understanding Mask Mode.
(Image and user poofed…) Blackspot by dolletjes, on Flickr
In the tutorial it is talking about masking meaning alpha layers, hiding parts of the avatar or things in Second Life. If you aren’t clear on how this invisible, transparent, and translucent thing works, check it out. I think it will help.
If you are trying to understand how to implement ‘masking’… I think this tutorial falls a bit short. But, that may just be me not getting the ‘how to’ part of it.
We are getting closer to hands on. The Oculus Rift is to release in the first quarter of 2016. At this point I think the first round of pre-release technical challenges has been met. So, any possible delay would be from manufacturing and supply problems.
Now that the Samsung Galaxy S6 is in production the supply of display screens for the Oculus should be adequate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5XVq4NLnwk
Unity and Unreal, game engine platforms, are both announcing support of HTC RE Vive. This means game developers can move away from having to develop support for the various VR headsets and use the support provided by Unity and Unreal. This saves developer’s time and means new games will move through the development pipeline faster.
Looks like we have another mesh body out, EBody by ABAR. The Mesh Addicts blog has a review of the body. See: New Mesh Body Review – EBody by ABAR. The actual review is on another page, I’m not sure why they did that, unless it is the nude avatar…
They show the nude body, HUD, and list compatibilities. But, they include no ARC comparison, which is a shame. I got the demo so I could look to see how dense the polygon mesh of the body is.
I started with my nude base avatar with hair, ear rings, Slink hands and feet. It has an ARC of 54,127. Adding the EBody and alpha layer the ARC jumps to 131,391. In my article Second Life: Mesh Body Revolution I used a bas avatar with an ARC of 44,571 (9,556 less than the current base). A Slink body pushed that to 59,251. Maitreya’s mesh body pushed the ARC to 94,381. On this 44k avatar EBODY would come in at 121,835. So, EBody is the highest ARC of the four.