Second Life: Bento Dance

I thought this was neat. The hands are the only only Bento change I noticed. We are still a bit of distance from Bento facial animation.

This is pretty neat. I think it impressive animation. You’ll find the animation is from Abranimations (Map URL).

For more see:

Casting Call for Project Bento

Here’s your chance to be in the movies. The Lab has posted a Second Life casting call for a Drax machinima (1/14/16). If you are interested in showing off what you are working on, be at Bento Island, ADITI January 19 at noon (SLT – PST). The region won’t open until noon.

They'll change the avatar when pigs fly... WELL!?!

They’ll change the avatar when pigs fly… WELL!?!

While you cannot enter Bento Island early, I advise you to log into ADITI, the preview grid, early. The last few weeks have proven the log in process for ADITI is slow and flawed. I have yet to see my inventory update as the planned changes are supposed to. So, I’m pretty sure the new ADITI login process is not in place.

The notice advises those with avatars to show contact Draxtor Despres inworld. Provide him pictures and as much information about your creation as possible. I suspect he is looking for color and human interest and has less of an interest in the technical. What tools you are using will probably be pertinent.

Project Bento is one of the biggest changes to the Second Life avatar ever! More than 90 new bones have been added to accommodate features like subtle facial expressions, articulating fingers, smoothly-flapping wings, waving tails, and much more that was previously impossible or required complex workarounds.

If you’re a creator who’s testing out Project Bento, or one who’s eager to give it a try – now is the perfect time! We’re looking for creators to show off some of the possibilities of Project Bento for an upcoming episode of The Drax Files. There are detailed instructions on how to get started and how to get to the beta grid (aditi) on our wiki page. (TIP:Testing on Aditi does not cost you upload fees!)

Does FRAPS work on Windows 10?

I noticed a person in the Myst-Uru community mentioning that FRAPS is not working on their Windows 10 machine. I am on the verge of updating my main machine to 10. So, what is going on?

First: a visit to the FRAPS website. FRAPS is advertised for Windows up to version 7. The newest version is 3.5.99 released in February 2013… two five-plus years ago. (As of 11/24/2018 still no update.)  Are they going to update it for Windows 10? I can’t find any information to reliably answer that question. I did see some people commenting that the past update rate of several times a year stopped in Feb 2013. Queries using the contact form at FRAPS have mostly gone unanswered.

The June 2015 video shows FRAPS working in Win10 on older hardware. Some searching shows people are having problems with FRAPS on Win10. There is some discussion of the issue in the FRAPS Windows 10 Issues thread at the Microsoft forums.

Update 11/2018: No new FRAPS updates, 5+ years. I now consider FRAPS dead. Researching for ways to get FRAPS working on Win10… I find no good fixes or solutions. Tom’s Hardware Review and other tech sites have no answers.

Continue reading

Second Life’s Paradise Lost

If you haven’t heard… Paradise Lost is an artistic performance of Adam and Eve’s ejection from the Garden of Eden. It has been made into a movie, machinima. Canary Beck and Harvey Crabsticks are the movers and shakers behind the production and  Forren Ashford is the machinimist.

Huckleberry Hax has a good review of the movie and covers some of the back story. Check it out here: Paradise Lost: The Movie.

The news is there is a premier presentation of the movie this Friday, Sept 18 @ 4PM (presumably SLT) and it releases the 19th. Watching a machinima in Second Life™ may not seem that interesting. But, the production is about more than acting before a camera to present a movie. The use of sets, animation, and audience participation via RLV made it a unique experience in SL. The recording of the production into a movie is no less ambitious. Hax suspects the movie may make a new benchmark for SL machinima.

Basilique’s Performing Arts Company is the organization used to create the production and has its home in the region named Basilique (SLURL). Their blog is here. For Basilique news see: Regional news. For a calendar of events see: Basilique Events Calendar.

4 ways to watch Paradise Lost – The Movie – Limited seating. First come…

YouTube Gaming and Second Life

If you are wondering what YouTube Gaming is, click over to Ciaran Laval’s blog and see: YouTube Gaming Launches And Second Life Has Its Own Channel. The short explanation is this is Google’s answer to Amazon’s Twitch… and if you don’t know what Twitch is… well… you are hopelessly sheltered. To pop your bubble… Twitch is a site that allows gamers to stream their game play. People can watch a video stream of a person, in-game, playing in almost (?) real time.

The recent news is Jimmy Kimmel thought it was a funny idea and made fun of YouTube Gaming. As they point out, considering how poorly TV is doing these day he hasn’t much room to talk. But, I thought the video funny.  Continue reading

Second Life: Interesting Viewer Add-On

Inara Pey has an article about a program named Reshade that can be used with Second Life™. The author calls it a post-processing injector for games… Post processing simply means processing an image after it is initially rendered or captured. The injection part is about setting the software up to capture images from your game software, in Second Life’s case: the viewer, by adding software to the viewer.

Last Samurai

Last Samurai – (Not via Reshader)

If you Photoshop images (post-process), I do, then this add-on allows you to do much of what you would do with PS but to machinima/video. I’ll call this software a baby sister to Adobe’s After Effects. It is limited compared to After Effects. But, is a great tool for almost free.

See: Reshade: post-processing Second Life in real time  Continue reading

Second Life Week 32

WoW Losing Subscribers

For years I have heard how Second Life is losing subscribers. It is true, but the new users and returning users keep the number of people in SL about the same. SL has gone from 1 million plus to about 900,000 from 2007 to 2015.

Blizzcon – Official World of Warcraft Art // Illidan Stormrage

Blizzcon – Official World of Warcraft Art // Illidan Stormrage

Let’s try to put some perspective on that. Take a look at World of Warcraft’s numbers. In Q4-2014 there were 10 million subscribers. By the end of Q1-2015 it was down to 7.1 and now at the end of Q2-2015 it is 5.6. That is almost half the users in 6 months. (Reference – nice graph) In December 2005, 15 months after starting WoW, they passed 5.6 million. In October 2010 they were at 12.0 million, the peak I think.  Continue reading