Second Life News 2013-18

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All the blogs are covering Fantasy Fair, the fund raiser for Relay for Life. So, I’m not saying much, figuring you are hearing plenty. But, if you haven’t been to Fantasy Fair, get over and check it out.

Other Events

There seems to be lots of things happening in Second Life. Daniel Voyager wrote about Tribute City Fashion Week 2013 that starts May 31. It looks fun.

SL10B is coming too. Important dates are:

  • May 20 Volunteer/Performer, Exhibitor Applications close
  • May 27 Sims open to builders
  • June 16 Grand Opening
  • June 23 Official Birthday day
  • June 23 Final day of performances
  • June 29 Sims close to the public
  • July 1 All builds to be dismantled – sims go offline

Viewers

Not much news. The SL Beta Viewer 3.5.1 (274588) is the Lindens’ test viewer for SSA. The Beta version has to pass before they can seriously think about rolling out SSA. Once we see the SSA code roll into the main viewer release, it will be some time before SSA goes live. How little or much time is dependent, in some measure, on how fast people upgrade to the SSA capable viewers.

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Resetting the Origin of an Armature in Blender

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The default Second Life animations have odd pivot points in the animations. If you are using them for import to SL then that is a good thing. If you are trying to use the animations for other purposes, like I am to pose the avatar for weighting clothes, it is a problem.

If you import the default SL animation into Blender, the feet are at the Blender 0,0,0 position. If you change to EDIT mode the hip is at the 0,0,0 position. In POSE more, again the feet are at the 0,0,0 position. See the image.

The problem with Default Sl Animations
The problem with Default SL Animations

That does not really matter for our use for making Second Life clothes. But the T-pose only being available in EDIT mode makes it hard to position the imported animation with our clothing avatar.

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Mixamo Promo

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I’m NOT promoting Mixamo… I am not using any of their products but, they do have a fun new promotional video out for their upcoming Webinar: Bring Your Game to Life. They sell animated characters and tools to help build them.

[youtube kH_LMyJIepw]

I think the illustration of a radically different user interface is great. I think that is something that could be done with LEAP Motion. It is something like what a new user interface for building with Oculus Rift might look like… or so I imagine.

Freedom of Information

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The two countries most active in asking Google to remove content are Brazil and the USA.

Google has expressed the sentiment: The United States, too, has its fair share of censorship requests. While Google can’t be specific about legal matters, it appears that at least some of the requests come from overly-reactive local authorities.

Governments’ Attempts To Censor Google Have Doubled Since 2011

More details: Google Transparency Report

The Transparency Report

If you think Google, Yahoo, and Bing are providing equal access across the planet, think again. There are videos on YouTube that can’t see seen in some countries. There are search results that are not shown in some countries. It is not always the countries we may think of that are censoring our information.