Open your JPG or other file.


and open the channels panel.

Use Magic Wand or Select by Color to select the portion to be transparent.

Inverse the selection to copy the foreground image.

Create a new channel – the Alpha channel.

Take the Defaults.

The Channels Panel

Copy the Image from the RGB to the Alpha Channel.

Use Levels to adjust the Brightness of the Alpha channel.

Save the TGA file with Alpha

Alpha Options.

Import the file into Second Life

Imported file with hatched pattern for the transparent portions.

Table of contents for POSER7_SL

1. Using Poser for Second Life
2. Animating for SL
3. Animating with Props
4. Poser Physics with SL

This is a set of hints for using Poser 7 to build animations for Second Life.


Caveats:

• I’m not connected with e-Frontier in any way.
• This is not a Poser or SL tutorial, but a set of hints for starting to use Poser with SL to make animations.
• The topics here may contain sexual or other explicit language and renderings. This is because the primary use of animations in Second Life is to build sexual animations. If you are not aware of this, then which rock have you been hiding under?
• I’m not an expert Poser user, but I have used Poser since V4.
• Maybe you know more than I do about this problem, and if so, I’ll be happy to incorporate your suggestions or updates to this information. Gee if you know more than this, why haven’t you written a book or this information down before? I sure could have used it.

Poser is not perfect. It has limitations, and a bunch of quirks that make it more difficult than it should be to do animations. But that said, at this time I know of no other tool to make animations for SL that can accommodate more than one character. With Poser you can build a whole set of dancing girls – each with a different and choreographed dance moves, or an orgy. So if you want to do animations of characters that behave together, for dancing, or for sex, or anything else, Poser 7 is a reasonable choice.

These comments assume you have installed Poser 7 with all the latest upgrades from the e-frontier website. The upgrades include: Poser7-CH1.zip, Poser7-CU1.zip, Poser7-HS1.zip, Poser7-SR2.zip.

Later in the topic, I will discuss my experience with Poser Physics, a plugin for $40 that can add some interesting effects to your animations.

Poser Setup

There are several things that you should set up as you start to work for Second Life. You may want to build a template file with these settings, and start each animation set from these:

• Turn off animations for the main camera and any other cameras that you are going to use. It will drive you nuts if you don’t do this.
  
• Set your animation time frames to no more than 300 frames and 30fps. These are the settings for SL. You can use fewer than 300 frames, 10 seconds, but no more than 300 frames.
• User Poser4 Lo Res figures. There is no reason to burden Poser and your computer with Hi Res characters to animate for SL. The Fingers, Face and Head animations are dropped anyway, which you need to watch out for, so there is no reason to animate them. You may want to animate hands to use props, which we will talk about later.
• Name your figures intelligently so you can keep track of them: In the timeline, and on the screen. If you have several characters of the same sex, then you should color them to avoid confusion. And don’t name them Boy1 and Boy2 and color them red and blue. Name them Boy Red or just Red and Blue. You will need to keep things straight when you export your BVH files and then import those into SL.
  

Next we’ll talk about animating the characters.

Table of contents for POSER7_SL

1. Using Poser for Second Life
2. Animating for SL
3. Animating with Props
4. Poser Physics with SL

So, you have Poser and your figures are created.


You named your figures intelligently, and colored them if you have characters of the same sex. Set the number of frames you want to have in the animation. You can change that later if you need to, but if you know now, then you should set it. Longer animations will look less boring because you can add more variations. So if you want just a simple rocking motion of say 1 second, and you make a 5 second animation, you can have 5 different variations of other parts of the bodies, so it will look more natural. Even for a simple pose, like a cuddle, the pose will look more inviting if you add some motion, like hands rubbing or faces looking toward and away from each other.

Now you are ready to set up the figure T-poses. Don’t forget to set the cameras to be non-animating for any cameras that you want to use.

• Lock the hand parts of your figures. They aren’t going to animate in SL anyway, and it’s a pain to move a finger when you want to move the hand. Save yourself a lot of grief and lock the hands.
• Open the timeline and set the marker to frame one.
• Pose each figure’s start position in the animation. Frame 1 is the T-pose for the character. It does not appear to be different, but apparently it is different. Experts that have used other tools that have better manuals may know precisely why the T-pose is different, but of course there is no SL documentation and Poser is very light in it’s books about what exactly is going on with such details.
• This frame 1 is important too because for a smooth loop, the last frame and the first frame must be identical. To make the two frames the same, you must select and copy, then paste the first key frame to the end of the animation. If you ever make a change to the frame 1, you need to do this again to avoid the annoying jerk as the animation loops. You need to be familiar with cutting and pasting keyframes in the timeline of Poser.
• You want to be using Spline Interpolation to do your animation. Sometimes you will be tempted to use linear, because it’s easy to get out of control with splines. But if you use linear, you will look more like a robot than a human when you play the animation. The problem is the saw-tooth or snap reversal when the limb changes direction. Spline animation smooths this out so that it looks natural. I’ll mention later how to watch for and fix out of control splines.
• Learn to use IK – Inverse Kinematics – when posing the limbs. IK has its problems to be sure. But the alternative is too time consuming to contemplate. You will need to have patience when you make a radical movement of a limb such as a wave or a slap, since this is likely to result in a wild rotation of the hand on that limb. Also you will notice that the Bend, Twist and Side2Side don’t mean the same thing with IK is enabled. Too bad! I think this is a Big time bug in Poser, but what do I know. I’m only a user over the last several years.

Animation Steps
This is not a detailed tutorial, but let’s go through some of the steps as you make an animation:

1. Set up your T-Pose.
2. Copy the T-Pose to another point along the timeline and change it slightly.
3. If the figure is going to do a rocking movement, you can then paste the T-Pose again along the timeline.
4. Select a range of frames and then copy them. Paste them further along the timeline to replicate the motion. Now you can make changes to some of these key frames to vary the motion. Your timeline may look like this after a while:
   
5. You will notice that the key frames are only marked for the body parts that you moved:
   
   This can be useful in several ways. After you add the basic motion based on the rocking motion from the T-Pose and second pose, you can add other motions in later iterations by editing those frames. You will need to expand the timeline view and then delete key frames for just those body parts that may interfere with the motion you are adding. For example, she is rocking back and forth on the floor, but now you want her head to move out of step with that rocking. So add a head motion to a few of the key frames out of synch with the rocking and then delete the key frames for the neck and shoulders that prevent this motion. You can cut and paste the keyframes for just the head and shoulders to rock them out of step with the hips and tummy if you like. The more variations the better. The only thing required to get a smooth loop is that the last frame and the T-pose be identical.
6. As you have been doing this, you have been using Spline interpolation. If not you can select a set of keyframes – when the figure is collapsed is easiest – and then click the to set spline interpolation over the range. You need to watch carefully as you animate since you may see the character wildly go out of control. Splines can do that. They are sort of like tossing the figure’s parts sometimes. If the body part goes out of control, just add a key frame or two to control it. This is better than using linear interpolation, which keeps the figure in control, but looks like a robot.
7. Learn to use Play Range markers.
   
   These can serve two purposes. Save you a lot of time when you are working on only a section of the animation and need to replay it several times. And also it can allow you to check the end part of an animation if you want only the end to loop. You may want to have an animation start in a certain way and then loop back to the middle. SL allows you to set a percent start and end point for the loop. Of course the start and end points that you will want to use are in frames in Poser, so you will need to do the conversion to percent. You have math skills, right? What percent is frame 150 of 300 frames? If you don’t know, get a good math course and come back to see me.

Bugga-Boos
Now for some of the bugga-boos between Poser and SL. Poser and SL both use a sort of “industry standard” file format called BVH files. But SL doesn’t bother to document how they use it. Not so that I could find anywhere anyway. And neither does Poser. So, we have two black boxes that use a common format, sort of. This leads to several problems when you import animations. It sure would be nice if the Lindens were more interested in actually providing some sort of tool chain to build things in their world, but they provide some sort of undocumented, or minimally documented [Yes, I've seen the Wiki.] solutions for tasks, and then leave it to the populace to figure out what is really going on. The Second Life book is just a marketing tool, IMHO, and contains no real information of any substance about how to do interesting things in Second Life.

• I already mentioned that head and finger animations are just ignored by Second Life. You can use express_xxx and express_xxx_emote animations to animate the face. The head is ignored – bend twist and side2side. If you head isn’t pointing the right way when you get the animation into SL, go back to poser and look at the head positions. The head and neck may offset each other, so zero out the head, and then adjust the neck to get the face pointing the right way again in Poser. This is especially frequent when using Poser Physics – which we will talk about later – since PP does not take any restrictions into account and is likely to animate both the head and neck in opposite ways.
• The finger animations are just fixed at the time you import the BVH file into SL. Just choose a hand pose. This does work. But the “expression” portion of the import dialog apparently does not work at all, so you will have to using scripting support to cause expressions during your animations. I’m not clear whether the Lindens think this is a bug, or they have removed the feature and just never changed the import dialog.
• Second Life does not do the same thing as Poser, apparently, when keyframes are missing from a body part. If you set a pose for a hand, foot or some other part in the T-Pose [frame 1], and then there are no keyframes for that part at all, even if there are settings for it in the last frame of the animation, then SL will not animate that part correctly. I don’t know if this is a poser or an SL problem, but you need to have key frames for every part. So, if your figure just rocks back and forth the whole time, then choose a keyframe in the middle of the timeline, and jiggle each hand and each foot, with IK on of course, and this will set a keyframe for these body parts and probably fix your problem.
• Which brings up the point of looking carefully at your animations before import them. Sure it’s only a nickel [L$10/250 is about $04] to upload an animation, but it’s a lot of wasted time too if you don’t figure out there is a problem until the bed is running. Remember, once you import, you cannot change the animation, so if you used the wrong settings, then you have to pay again.
• The animation priority in SL import does not appear to work. Setting it to either 2 or 4 [are these high or low? which is Greater?? I have no clue.] does not stop other animations such as mouse looking or chat typing from overriding your animations.
• Body sizes in SL vary, of course, so it’s pretty much impossible to make reliable animations that cause more than one body part to make contact at the same time. Each pair of AVs will cause one or the other body part to match up. This is a big pain of course since you cannot hold someone around the waist and kiss them at the same time. Someday someone will work out a target based animation scheme and this will all be fixed, but animation has apparently not advanced at all in the last dozen years, so we are stuck with this blind joint bending scheme.

Exporting BVH Files
So once you have your animation done you need to export it as a BVH file so that you can import it into SL.

You need to select the figure to export. There is no dialog or confirmation of the exported figure. I find the the easiest way to keep track of what is selected is to use the left hand column of the timeline. Collapse all the figures and then click on the figure to select it. All the names are unique, so you can keep track of which one you are saving and name the BVH file correctly.

Now choose Export BVH from the menu.

You will almost always want to choose Scale. I only have had one failure to import, and the problem did not have to do with using the Scale option.

Now upload into SL.

You will want to check the animation very carefully in the preview dialog before you upload it. There are several things to make sure of:

• Make sure your settings are correct. Priority – I have no clue, but I set 4 in the hopes that this will override some other animations to keep a cleaner view in SL. Loop. With the start and stop points if they aren’t the beginning and end. Any hand pose, such as a fist to grasp a prop. As I have said, I have never seen the Expression work.
• Move the camera in the preview around and look at the pose to see if it’s correct. You can catch missing poses for body parts here. A straight leg or a miss placed hand will show up and save you time and trouble later when you are trying to adjust the pose and it just doesn’t fit.
• Watch the loop point for any jerks. Sometimes you get a smooth motion in Poser, but a jerk in SL. This may indicate a body part that does not have a keyframe. So go back into poser and set a key frame for that body part and try again. Jerks are very annoying in loops.

Next we’ll talk about animating with props.

Table of contents for POSER7_SL

1. Using Poser for Second Life
2. Animating for SL
3. Animating with Props
4. Poser Physics with SL

Now that you are animating, you may want to use props to guide your animations.
Warning: The following contains explicit images of cartoon sex.

Here are a couple of examples of why you might like to use props:

As you can see, aligning figures to props, or aligning props when attached to figures can be interesting in a variety of situations.

Here’s how these situations look in Poser.

Let’s talk about each of these cases in detail. But first, let’s talk about another limitation of Poser.

Poser Does Not Understand Sizes
Poser does not understand a fixed size of anything. Or at least Poser does not expose the actual size of anything to the user. So you cannot control the fixed size of any prop or any figure. This may have been ok back in Poser 4 days, when Poser was used alone. But as soon as Poser can export things to an outside world, then size becomes important. The difficulty of size becomes apparent when we build a prop in Poser and then have to recreate that prop in SL to match the animation. Since you cannot set the size of anything, or know the size of anything in Poser, you don’t know how big to make anything in SL to match it. Making the dildo or vibrator props for these animations is a matter of try and adjust until you get something right.

Posing against a Fixed Prop.
The Vibrator is an example of posing against a fixed prop. The vibrator is a cylinder in Poser and just creates a surface against which the figure is posed as she moves. Another example is sex against a wall. The simplest example is posing against the floor, but the floor – ground plane – is always present in Poser, so this does not need to be created.

Use Poser to create the props, or create the props in another tool such as 3dsMAX and then import them. It should actually be possible to create a prop in 3dsmax using SLPrims and then change those to mesh and export them as a 3ds file, and then import that file into Poser. Quite complex props can be created in this way, with direct translation into Second Life. Except for size of course. You will still have to fiddle with size when you get into Second Life.

BTW, as you can see, the vibrator scene has two things that are unnecessary when using Poser for SL. (1) The figure is a high-rez figure, and (2) The face has been animated. I was just experimenting and my system is quite powerful, so this is not an issue, but it’s also not a feature. You don’t need to waste your time with either of these for working on animations for SL.

Posing with Attached Props
The Dildo scene uses attached props. Just to review how these work in Poser:

1. create the props in Poser and figures from the prop section. It will be good duplicate any copies you will need at this stage, and to name the prop to identify it with the figure that it will eventually attach to.
2. then size and position the prop next to the hand or other body part of the Poser figure. You need to adjust the position before you do the next step, since once you attach it to a hand, moving the prop will move the hand as well.
3. then open the Hierarchy panel in Poser and move the prop to a child of the appropriate body part of the figure.
4. At this point the prop should move along with the poser figure body part to which it is attached.

As you continue to pose the character, you don’t want to go back and move the prop. Once you bring the animation into SL and create and “wear” the prop, you will need to edit the prop so that the animations look correct in SL, and you don’t want a series of animations to require edits of the attachments.

As an example, in the series of Dildo animations, the attachment of the dildo props in poser did not change throughout the entire set of animations. This was accomplished by saving a template scene that was used to start each animation.

Next will talk about using Poser Physics.

Table of contents for POSER7_SL

1. Using Poser for Second Life
2. Animating for SL
3. Animating with Props
4. Poser Physics with SL

Now we’ll discuss some experience with Poser Physics when used to create animations for Second Life.
Warning: this article contains graphic images that may not be suitable for all viewers. [You have been warned.]
Also this page contains some large flash animations, so it may take some time to load.

Poser Physics is a plug-in which adds rag-doll behavior, as well as other physical behavior to Poser. This is not a tutorial on Poser Physics, but a few hints and experiences that may be helpful if you need physical behavior when building animations.

Falling Down

Having a figure fall down is the default simulation of poser physics. Any enabled figures are turned into Rag-Doll characters and then they just obey the force of gravity. Since falling down is not often seen in SL, it can be quite startling in an animation.

It is possible to have a figure fall out of a chair by enabling props in Poser Physics so that the body is constrained by a chair and table as they fall.

No script is needed to control Poser Physics, just start the simulation. There is a problem however to watch out for. You will need to start the simulation from frame 1. It is tempting to start the simulation after some other behaviour, like taking a drink or receiving a blow. However Poser physics is not kind with respect to the transition between normal poser keyframes and it’s keys. It changes the body center, and other parameters, so, you will probably find that the character jumps and rotates around in SL when you do this sort of thing. I have not experimented extensively with this problem. It may be that by doing a dummy physics simulation from frame 1, then animating the figure during the first frames, and then using physics again starting later, this problem may be eliminated.

Hanging from Body Parts

To accomplish this with Poser Physics takes a little trickery and a Python script.

1. First, position the body above the ground, and let it fall using poser physics. No script is required. You will want to position the body slightly off center and tilted so that when it hits the rope end in the next step, it swings rather than just stopping.
2. Next, use a script to animate the rest of the scene, so the body stops it’s fall and does not hit the ground.

Here is the script that I used:

if float(poser.Version()) >= 7:
import PhysicsToolsP7
from PhysicsToolsP7 import *
else:
import PhysicsToolsP6
from PhysicsToolsP6 import *
#import PhysicsMath
print
print "Sample of woman hanging from her neck..."
gPhysicsEngine = PhysicsTools.PoserPhysicsEngine()
gPhysicsEngine.importDefaults()
gPhysicsEngine.setupSimulation()
#gPhysicsEngine.createFixedJoint("woman/rHand", None)
gPhysicsEngine.createFixedJoint("woman/Neck", None)
gPhysicsEngine.runSimulation()
print "Finished"


A number of things are apparent as you use Poser Physics:

• The documentation is sketchy. And the example scripts are wrong. There have been incompatible changes that nobody bothers to mention. Check out the forum for recent examples that work.
• It’s hard to find the name of the body parts to refer to. I still don’t have a definitive list of the built in poser body parts to use in these scripts.
• Physics has a lot of undocumented behaviors and quirks that nobody bothers to mention, so you will have to do some experimenting to get your job done.
• The folks that make the plugin are either not home, or don’t bother watching their forums. I was unable to register for the forums to get support from the physics website.

- enjoy – sort of…
- windy

I found a google map of Second Life. The map is designed to help you find Voice Enabled SIMs [ areas of land that have the new voice feature.] But it’s not tremendously useful for that now, since almost all or all sims are voice enabled now. But the map is very cool, since it’s the only way I know to get an overview of the entire world of SL. The inworld map stops showing land icons beyond a certain zoom-out level.

The dense group of SIMS in the South of the map with the brown colored desert sims is an area called Azure Islands, which is an independent land owner in SL. I have had various properties in this area since I joined SL.

- windy

On 2 June, after knowing Megz for a few weeks, Windy asked her go steady with him. On 4 June, Windy presented Megz with a ring he made to commemorate their relationship. They wear matching gold rings with sapphire stones.

Megz has only been in SL for a short time, but she is an accomplished DJ and admits to being a geek. She is also a lovely person and we look forward to many wonderful times together.

Windy is a photographer in SL and they spend a recent evening taking couples pictures to share with their friends.

View from South East.


There are four levels.
(1) A Dungeon in dark stone blocks with a photo studio and a workshop for naughty toys.
(2) A lounge level for visiting guests to sit. This was going to be the dance floor, but now the dance floor is on the sundeck.
(3) A bedroom level.
(4) The sundeck with canopies and a few over the houses to the west and setting sun.

This is the Lounge, as yet unfurnished.

The front view from high up. Notice the highly reflective glass, which is private from outside, but affords a view from inside.

The highly polished glass can be seen from this sidewalk view.

The curved doors open to admit guests.

The dungeon with the N30 studio.

The dance floor on the sundeck, with bar and radio as well as a few of the finest dance balls in SL.

Contact me to stop by and see my home.

- windy

South View


North View

I didn’t keep the lot long enough to complete the furnishings or the surrounding gardens.
Front Door detail

Main Staircase

Upper staircase with dome over main staircase.

Window detail.

I purchased some beautiful FU dogs to grace the staircases on each end of the palace. One set was 5m and the other pair was 3m.

The tier [land taxes] were about $70/month for this lot and I decided that this was too expensive. I sold the land in May 2007, but have the palace. If you are interested, contact me.

- Windy

First of all we should mention that pictures that I have posted and that you post here are only available to you and our other Second Life friends that have registered with my gallery. In each case, I will need to allow them to be a member of the “SL Friends” group before they can see any of the pictures. The pictures, while they are accessible via the internet, are not publicly available.

To start, you must login with the username and password that you or we established for you on the gallery. Click on these images for a larger view so you can see the details.

As you can see, before you login, you cannot see the albums for SL Friends, although the names are visible. These photos are the ones that I have posted in the shared category for SL Friends. This is not where your “Personal Gallery” will go. There is a separate area for Personal Galleries.

I am a photographer and so there are many other photos on my site. To see the rest of the photos, choose Home from the menu.

To upload your photos, the first thing you need to do is create an album.

Choose Create / Order my albums from the menu.

To create a new album, click New and then select it above and change it’s name in the line below the list. The up and down arrow keys can be used to change the order of your albums, and then you must click Apply Modifications to save your changes.

Once you have one or more albums, you can upload photos:

I’m sure you have seen dialogs like this before. After you have filled in the file paths, click Continue and Continue on the next page. Next you have to choose an album for each of the pictures and possibly fill in some information about the picture.

After your photos are uploaded into your albums, you need to set the permissions and any other information about your albums. Choose Modify My Albums from the menu as below, and then choose the album from the pull down at the top right of the page.

You may enter information, and choose a default thumbnail for the album rather than the default of “last uploaded”.
THIS IS IMPORTANT: You need to set the “Albums can be viewed by” to SL Friends group only so that the photos are not public.

To find your personal gallery choose My Gallery from the menu.

This is possibly a little more complicated than other systems, but there are permissions and other features. But the images can be any size, you can have any number of photos and there is no spam or other nonsense that comes along with sites like Ringo.

Enjoy, and do not hesitate to contact me if you have concerns or questions.

WwV

And it goes like crazy… But Second Life servers can’t really deal with vehicles. They screw up, especially when you cross SIM boundaries. A sim is an area of SL run by a server and it is 256m on a side or 65K m2. So when you are ripping and tearing, it’s easy to cross sim boundaries. But the good news is that Azure Islands sets sims aside for watercraft – maybe not exclusively, but there are several all water sims for watercraft. Just next door as it turns out. The Nielsen windsurfer can be shared with friends, so everybody can come over and we can all go sailing. It comes, out of the box, in 4 sizes, so everybody can play not matter their size.

I’ve crashed twice so far. At one point, while crossing a SIM boundary, the windsurfer was taken from me and there I was – still apparently on it, but locked up. So I had to “relog” which means shut down the SL client, and start again. And the windsurfer that is returned in Lost and Found is still running, so if you start it out, you have to be ready to go go go… It’s best to start with a new copy of the windsurfer so you can start from scratch.

The second time, something got confused and I fell through the sea floor. I was at -12000 m and falling when I gave up and stopped the client. Even attempting to Teleport (TP) back home did not work.

Ahhhh Second Life… Eventually it will work.

But it’s fun all the same,
WWV

As you can see, the house appears to be supported by a trunk, but this is totally unnecessary, but it makes the house appear to be a tree-house of sorts. This side view shows the property lines. And as you can see, this design leaves most of the beach unobstructed for play and my building and scripting activities. That is me standing on top of the house to give it scale. And the little box floating above the house is the Rez Control device which is used to build the house. This could be removed once the house is placed on the property. But I may eventually sell the house and this is required to do any modifications before sale.

One of the problems with a house like this is how to get between floors. There are no stairs or elevators. Fortunately, SL has several ways to build Teleportation Devices and I designed the most common of these into the house. The Beach and each floor has a Teleport-Pad which can be programmed with a dialog to take you to the Studio, Lounge or Bedroom, and from there anywhere else. In an instant you arrive, refreshed at your destination.

The lower Studio floor is blacked out for better photographic control. The !N30 photo studio has lighting, backdrop and model posing controls and comes with 105 poses for the model.

You can’t party without a bar and some stools to sit on while talking and listening to good music.

The remaining floors are natural woven mats and bamboo motif with forest leaves outside. The lounge has a bar in bamboo and forest leaves motif and a comfi couch and chairs. The radio is the black object on the shelf. The TP pad is the circle on the floor with the control device red ball above it.

The windows have automatic controls for each floor. They can be transparent or black inside, and Private nearly opaque Ripple texture or a smoky texture outside. Eventually I will install lighting controls for each floor. The house control panels are designed to accommodate lighting.

The house is designed for partying. I’ve purchased and installed radio receivers – with 65 built-in streaming radio channels – in the Lounge and Studio floors, and a Laser Light Show on the Lounge Floor for dancing.

Party On!

wwv

This house is about 130 prims and was imported in 5 separate files – each file can contain no more than 64 prims. There was only one failure, or lost prim, during the import process. As you can see, the roofs are one of the more challenging parts of the construction. Due to the constraints of SL Prims, roofs of any shape are not possible. But I’ve figured a way to make very interesting roofs with a small number of prims as you can see. The entire roof complex is about a dozen prims. The house is about 24 x 20 m and this may be the smallest house that I build. This one only has a 2 car garage. I think I should plan 3 car garages for the rest of the houses. But there are other simplifications. While a master bath is likely to be interesting, it seems unreasonable to waste space for multiple bathrooms since avatars don’t need such facilities. A master bath is likely to be a place for entertainment rather than anything else, and I will probably leave out any provision for sanitary plumbing. The space will be more likely used as water-born recreation, shall we say…

This is the front view of the house as it is taking shape in SL. The garage doors are not yet in, but are completed in max. The garage will be deleted in SL and re-imported, and since none of the house has been moved, the additions will fit together perfectly with the house as it is being developed. This allows failed attempts to be easily fixed in max and brought in, without bringing the entire house in again. Texturing work is only lost for the portions that are replaced.

Stairs are a problem for avatars. I’m considering how to build an elevator for the turret. I’ll be mocking that on up in the next couple of days.

As you can see, I’m building the house out over the water. This allows access to the underside, and provides the proper clearance for delivery. I’ll use one of the rezzers, Rez-Faux, to deliver the house. Rez-Faux and the other Rezzer scripts allow large collections to be delivered and positioned by the customer after purchase.

As I develop the market, I’m considering offering optional landscaping customized for each house design. So far the house has taken about 4 days work and I expect to finish it in another 4 days or so. It will eventually sell for about USD$20 or about L$5000 [Linden $, the currency of Second Life].

wwv

Each grid has a script that receives the decoded time and reads its own description to find out which digit it is. And the base board sends all the grids a string of the time.

The objects were built entirely in SL. The textures were built in max since that was an easy way to get glowing text and alpha textures.

It is a pain in the butt to align objects in SL. Since you only have one view – perspective, which of course distorts alignment – and no alignment tools other than entering 6 digit positions, it is very hard to align things. Also it is impossible to select a prim that is inside of another prim. So, the tubes have to be moved to edit the grid objects. The grids change the texture on one of their sides to change the digit. But since there is no way to refer to texture files in the other objects, all the grids must have copies of the textures. Perhaps his could be saved by using the UUIDs of the textures. I may check into this. Perhaps no copies of the textures are required at all.

Still much to learn about the internals of SL.

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and of course since we just mentioned Wireframe mode. Here’s roughly the same view in Wireframe mode.

Here’s a view from further back so you can see the Christmas tree and the front of my house.

It’s posted in the forum here.

Two fixes:

• Fix size of sphere and check size of rest of the shapes between max and SL. All seem ok.
• Enhance exporter for better error handling and saving multiple files to control maximum size of the output file. The file size is limited to about 64 primitives so that the 64K notecard limit is not exceeded. Files are labeled _1, _2 etc.

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