Second Life Dynamic Shadows

Not long ago I wrote about Second Life and Dynamic Shadows. They are a feature planned for the ‘next’ viewer. Well… that got pushed back because the Lindens had sex on their minds… well getting sex out of the viewer… mmm… how about eliminating sex from the viewer? Whatever, the Adult content filter has displaced shadows.

A Second Life resident, KIRSTENLEE.CINQUETTI, was tired of waiting and decided to mix up her own viewer form Linden Lab’s open source code. SL Photographers have been using her viewer to take some nice images in-world. Now that viewer 1.23 is coming as Release Candidate she has baked a new version.

Read more

Blender and Shrink Wrap for Second Life

If that title makes no sense to you and you make sculpties then pay attention. There are some great 3D models spread around the Internet. The problem with using them in SL is there is no easy way to get them into SL. The only meshes we can bring in, for now, are Sculpties (4/09).

Sculpties have strict limits on the number of vertices a mesh can have and the number of rows and columns of vertices. You can bring in almost any arrangement of vertices. The problem is it may look like vertex vomit (I heard that somewhere). One must get the numbers right for it to look good in Second Life. Shrink wrapping is a way to turn those models into sculpties. One can take a premade sculpty mesh and shrink wrap it over another model. Presto easy conforming mesh.

Read more