Adult Content News Week 41

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I like to write positive and informative articles. Adult Content should be fun. I also think Adult Content is a popular …item?… in Second Life. After all sex sells and meeting people is a major recreational activity. Just look at the online dating sites. I’ve long thought SL could be a new level in the Facebook and eHarmony type dating game. But, I have yet to see the Lab get a handle on Adult Content and take the sexual aspects of SL in a positive direction. They have yet to figure out how to move from escorts and hookers to matchmaking, casual hookups, and romance. So, I am rather negative when it comes to the Lab’s management of Adult Content.

It seems no agenda items found their way to Viale Linden, the Adult Content User Group (ACUG) facilitator, this week. You may or may not know agenda items are now handled by Viale via email now. The email address is on the Ault Content User Group’s agenda page…

Meeting Schedule Changes

The meeting time shifted from 11 AM to 10 AM SLT/PDT. Also this was the last weekly meeting. Meetings will now be bi-weekly. The next meeting is 10/24.

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#SL Commerce News

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It is never easy to know what is going on with the SL Commerce Team. One logs into their merchant’s dashboard and finds changes… That may be changing.

CommerceTeam Linden, a new Linden personality that is supposedly the team rep, posted that new release notes are being published in the SL Wiki. I suppose that means we won’t see updates in the forum. See Release Notes/Marketplace Current. This is supposed to be an ongoing thing. The updates there now have been made by Brooke Linden.

CommerceTeam Linden also posted this comment: Best ways to contact the Commerce Team. For those of us that have been around SL for some time it sounds familiar. Basically what is said is: post in the forum, we may notice and do something, but don’t count on it. Otherwise, file a support ticket or a JIRA. Well… isn’t that reassuring? We have a way to get something done… right.

Updated 10/12

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#SL Mesh News Week 41

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Deformer Project

The big topic in mesh is the Deformers issue… an obvious spinoff from the Transformers movies… not. Maxwell Graf is leading an effort to get mesh deformers for SL clothes. As you probably know mesh clothes will not fit to our avatar shape, which is overly simplified but conveys the idea. Deformers will make the clothes fit our shapes.

Mesh Meeting Oct 10, 2011

The Lindens were caught by surprise in this issue. The entire mesh project was geared toward using mesh for things other than clothes. During the closed beta period those helping were apparently oriented toward building mesh things, not clothes. So, clothes were a secondary concern for Lindens. In hindsight a good case can be made for seeing clothes as a secondary priority being a blunder. But, that is in hindsight and we know how that works, unfairly.

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Halloween in Second Life 2011

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In Second Life we have traditional events that the Lab has put on to show off content. One of the spontaneous events that residents build for is Halloween, which is a big and growing holiday in America. Residents create hunts with hundreds of search locations. Some places create hunts within a single region. It is way big fun.

Halloween Fun via Farthington Whetmore's Portal

Finding all those participating with spooky Halloween builds and hunts has never been easier. The Destination Guide and What’s Hot Now are both helping expose fun places to residents. Plus Farthington Whetmore has created an in-world portal to Halloween builds. Contact him in world via IM or the new Send Message to add your location.

New Send Message

Also, there is a neat thread in the SL Forum. The Haunted Halloween season is just around the corner — how will you celebrate? There are shops and haunted houses listed in the thread. Everything from tattoos to bodies and funny to gruesome monsters are listed. As of now there are about 3 pages of stuff listed.

Blender 2.5 Exporting Height Maps Tutorial – Part 2

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The previous part of this tutorial is OpenSim Terrain Tutorial via Blender – Part 1. The previous part is about getting terrain from Second Life and OpenSim into Blender. This part is about exporting  the terrain from Blender 2.59 as a height map image.

Height Maps via Blender Nodes

Terrain

By the time you start this tutorial you should have a completed terrain or at least have a test terrain to try.

Also, you should have a backup of your region. Loading the tutorial can mess up your region. So, a backup is a good idea. In OpenSim I make OAR file backups. (save oar [filename.oar] – save to OpenSim’s working folder. You can specify a path.)

Now is a good time to back up your Blender file too. It is a great idea to work in a copy of the file.

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OpenSim Terrain Tutorial via Blender – Part 1

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Updates: Includes minor updates for use with Blender 2.63.

Blender 2.5 has a new import feature that can be used for making terrain in Blender. Most terrain tutorials are about getting terrain into Blender and little if anything about getting it out. Those that are about exporting terrain are mostly for Blender 2.49. There are enough changes between 2.49 and 2.59 that it is hard to figure how to accomplish 2.49 tasks in 2.59. This article is about importing terrain to Blender and exporting for use in Second Life and OpenSim. Part 1 is about getting terrain into Blender and Part 2 about getting terrain out.

Terrain Imported from OpenSim

I’ll be working with Blender 2.59 and OpenSim 0.7.2 Dev. The height maps can be used in either SL or OpenSim.

Terrain Vertices Count

First I need to know what I’ll need to export for use in OpenSim. Plus I have a terrain in OpenSim (OSGrid) which I’ve worked on for some time that I want to get into Blender and start from there. So, I need to import and export terrain to and from Blender.

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