Category Archives: Community Tools

How to find Cheap, Good Stuff in the SL Marketplace…

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Ryan Schultz has published a little tutorial on his site, Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: How to Find Free and Inexpensive Items on the SL Marketplace. I think it is a handy tutorial on how the SL Marketplace search features works… I use the word ‘works’ loosely.

The Search

The Search

Using the left-column of filters makes finding stuff a bit easier. But, one has to know to make the search using the top ITEMS – Merchant/Store search setting ‘Search In’, ‘Show Maturity Levels’, and ‘Keywords’ before adding the left-column filters.

The ‘Sort By’ in the mid-upper right of the page just below the ITEMS search is also a big help. The sort can be changed at any time in your searches.

You can also search for a store or merchant. Once you select a merchant/store you have the option to ‘Search this store’. Then follow with left-column filters.

Things in the marketplace do not age out. Also, when merchants stop using Second Life, their stuff remains in the market place. Even if it requires a third-party server to work and that server is taken offline. All of which is a BIG gotcha for new SL users.

So, the sort order can be important search criteria.

Better Skies Are Here

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Skies – Hamlet has been following Stevie Davros’ development of improved sky textures for Second Life’s Windlight™. Today Hamlet is writing about their release. Seems they are now available in the SL Marketplace.

Below is the installation tutorial for Mac and the Linden viewer. I highly recommend using the package with Firestorm. But, while tedious they are usable with the Linden viewer.

This installation information for the viewers will be good until the release of EEP, Enhanced Environment Project, a Linden developed enhancement. There is no ETA for the release. I definitely expect it to release in the first half of 2018. But, I could be wrong.

You’ll find some free cartoon clouds. Other artistic clouds sell from L$99 to L$599. The Natural Clouds package sells for L$599 and has 8 cloud textures and comes with 60 Windlight settings files. You can see the effect of the package in a Flickr collection. Very awesome. A more organized collection showing the clouds in the various packages is here.

Warning: Changing the cloud textures requires some basic file handling. Also, clouds must be chosen before the viewer is launched. For the Linden viewer, this means going in and renaming a couple of files each time you change clouds. With Firestorm, it is a matter of a one time install and a menu selection before logging in. (Preferences->Firestorm->Windlight (tab)->Cloud Texture (drop))

Also, see my earlier article New Skies for Firestorm for a bit more information. There is a link to Juicy Bomb’s 2013 tutorial there too.

Second Life’s Helping Haven Gateway

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In the forum, someone was asking about DJ classes. The name Timothy Scarborough and Helping Haven came up.

Helping Haven Gateway is a region in Second Life™. As a gateway, it has a website: Helping Haven. People can open a Second Life account and log into SL on the website. When they use the website they land in the Helping Haven reception area.

Helping Haven Gateway Avatar Selection

When I went there 3 or 4 people were on ‘duty’? They had the answers to my questions on who was doing the DJ classes. They didn’t know the when nor did I find that answer in my exploring.

The region very much reminds me of Second Life in 2008 when I came in. There used to be places with helpers… mentors hanging out that you could ask questions. They were usually circular areas and people landed in the middle with helpers scattered around the edges. One asked a question local chat and someone would chime in with an answer. Continue reading →

Second Life: Introduction/Beginner Tutorials

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I like to have a collection of tutorials to which I can send new Second Life™ users. Every so often I update my in-world note card list. I give that to new players I meet.

Strawberry Singh has a series of introductory(?) videos and she is adding to and updating her collection. Her post Introduction to Second Life is pretty much an outline of those videos. She has done a good job of answering questions new users have. Including signup, downloading, and installing the viewer, something often missed by tutorial makers.

I find 1 or 2 posts a month in the Second Life Forum asking how to get into SL. These are people that signed up but somehow didn’t realize they needed to download the viewer. It has been a while since I signed up a new avatar. So, I don’t really understand how they miss understanding they need to download the ‘game’. I just know they do. And these are people that write well when posing their question. So, they aren’t mentally handicapped or simpletons. Continue reading →

Second Life: Animation Tool – Free

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Tapple Gao is providing a free tool for those doing movement animations, e.g., walking. You’ll find a copy in the marketplace here: Walking and Turning Test Treadmill. It is free.

Animation Tool

Animation Tool

The idea for the tool was to provide a way to eliminate skate from animations you create. With some walking and running animations my avatar appears to skate across the floor/ground.

With this tool you can play the animation, as opposed to wearing and having to ‘move’ to play it, stand in place, start the treadmill, and see if your feet and the treadmill are in sync. If not you’ll need to adjust the time scale of your animation.

Handy.

I’m  into math. So, I think it would be nice to have a control that would let me speed up or slow down the treadmill by a known percentage. While there aren’t any buttons for that. Apparently I could do that via the chat interface.

By knowing how much to speed up or slow down my animation I would be able to eliminate a lot of trial and error testing.

How to: AvaStar Following & Vimeo

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Gaia Clary has been putting more of the Machinimatrix/AvaStar videos on Vimeo™. There are good reasons for doing that. Vimeo offers better monetization and distribution control. Unfortunately Vimeo has to compete with YouTube.

Vimeo Following

Vimeo Following

As best I can tell, not that many of the Second Life™ community use Vimeo. If I search on ‘secondlife’ at Vimeo, I find 6,373 videos. Doing the same at YouTube I get 572,000 hits or about 90 times more videos.*  Continue reading →