Making Videos in Second Life

There are lots of tutorials on this subject. This article isn’t a tutorial. It is a collection of tutorials and information about making video using Second Life or any virtual world. I saw that Hypergrid Business has an article up titled: 5 tips for video tutorials and 3D simulations. The article is written by Ann Cudworth.

Image by Honour

Image by Honour

She manages to write the whole article without using the word Machinima. I’m not that much into Machinima so, there may be some nuanced difference between the terms machinima and video tutorials. But, I don’t see it.  Continue reading

Flat Berry

Last Thursday Strawberry Singh did a tutorial on how to make a cutout for making Flat Whoevers. See: Making a Flat Cutout for Second Life using Photoshop.  The tutorial is simple and straight forward. You get everything you need to know to make a decent cutout. But, there are some Photoshop tools that make the process much easier and provide a much better result.

The new Photoshop CC and CS6 (think it is in CS5.5 too) have a feature called Refine Edge. If you are trying to trim hair or fur out of a background, you have to learn about this tool. Check out the 10 minute video.

The video is made by Howard Pinsky. It is on the pro side, which for me means no rambling, tangents, or umm-haa’s. It is to the point, clear, and crisp. I subscribed to his channel. If you use Photoshop and are still learning, and who isn’t still learning, then this is a good channel for you.  Continue reading

Second Life Most Popular Regions

One of my readers asked about where I got the list of top 50 regions in Second Life™. Fortunately they included a link to what they were asking about, because I was like, OMG! I did that? Well, as the picture shows I got the list from Hamlet over at New World Notes. I didn’t do it.

SL Forum Post

SL Forum Post

Here is Hamlet’s latest list: Top 50 Popular Second Life Sims. This is from August 2012. Hamlet gets it from Metaverse Business.

I was wondering if the list is available online. It does not seem to be. I suspect it is part of a commercial subscription service they may offer.

Continue reading

Second Life Materials Experiments

Toysoldier Thor has a blog post that went up a couple of weeks ago. I missed his email telling me about it, an overactive spam filter, until today. For those that are new to 3D modeling and texturing of models, Toy’s article is a good starting place. Check out the 8+ minute video for a quick overview.

Toy’s blog has more information in a post: My Experiments with New SecondLife® Materials System. If you are new to this, it is worth your time to read the article and watch the video. The video is somewhat a quick summary of the blog post.

 

Matching Skin Color – Second Life

This tutorial is intended for those people using RedPoly kits. But, anyone can learn some basic ideas on how to match skin color. Like starting with changing Windlight to eliminate extraneous color and shadows. (7:40 min)

I usually run my viewers on DEFAULT Windlight or local region settings. So, I haven’t needed to change my Windlight for some time. I had forgotten how few Windlight settings come with the new viewers: 36. The CalWL setting was not in my current viewer.

Continue reading

Moving Your Avatar

Strawberry Singh is well known for her personality and gorgeous pictures. She has a talent for posing an avatar and composing a great image. In the blog post Moving your own Avatar! she explains how to position your avatar. I mean to actually move the avatar.

Singh Logo

Singh Logo

One of the ways to move an avatar into just the right position for a photo is to sit it on a prim, play the pose, and make the prim invisible. You can edit the prim and move it wherever you want. Of course the avatar goes with it. But, things get much more complicated when you are in a no rez region.

That is when Strawberry’s tips will come in way handy.