Final Blog: Time Gentlemen Please…

Right, final roundup of what I have done. Overall, I am happy with what I created, but then I’m always seeing things I want to tweak and make for it. I have all my scripts working finally, and everything looks pretty much in proportion. If I wanted it perfect, it would all be done in mesh, but then that wouldn’t fill the project requirements, so hey ho. I can’t be unhappy with what I’ve done, but as a friend Sam pointed out to me, I am the creator and I am always looking for the bits that are bad and look wrong. I never focus on what looks nice. To someone else, it may look completely different. I just hope it looks ok to that person…

One of the final things I did was get my surroundings done. I figured I could make a marquee tent thingy to cover the bike, with the roof being all flexible. The kinda thing I always see at race meetings. That finally got me filling the need for a flexible prim, and keeping it on the same theme as the build. On top of that, I made a paddock stand for the bike to sit on and lift the rear. The floor was covered in asphalt texture too. I just went around polishing a few bits, finding a few small things to sort out. One of the odd things I did was make the radiator out of chain link armour…it looked great when tiled properly haha.

As always, what I would change is my starting time. I keep saying this all the time, but it is something that is so hard to do. My time management has been better than previous semesters, but it’s still not good. If I had immediately started on day 1, then I could have probably got a heap more detail in. This along with NET200 has given me a good understanding of how I work with a long deadline, which might help prepare for PRJ300 a bit better.

The crash certainly mucked me up with a couple of my assignments. As of yet it still isn’t sorted out. That though is something I can’t really dwell on though, as it was pretty much unavoidable. Short of not riding, but then that’s no fun. This ties in with starting earlier too, as it may have left me with a bit more of a buffer for the unexpected.

The biggest gripe is the side fairing bits. I would dearly have loved to get a nice smooth 3d shape to apply my texture on, but that didn’t work out sadly. It leaves the bike looking a bit odd from certain angles, but I tried to work round that as best I could. As an afterthought, I put in a couple of reference shots behind the bike, so people can see what a real one looks like…or they can use it to pick out the flaws…:P

At the end too, I wondered about copyright on the textures I had used. The metal textures I got off a free texture database, but am I allowed to use the name Suzuki, like is on the textures? I figured that this isn’t going to be for sale in the marketplace and I am using it academic purposes, so all should be good. Besides, I took the photos of the bike, and it is my bike sooo…

So yeh, mixed feelings but for the most part, I’m happy. The purpose was to make a version of my motorbike in second life, and I think I have done that. Sort of like a static tribute to it. It looks like one and sounds like one so that’s good.

Time to get my mesh skills honed and make a properly detailed version XD

Here are a couple of shots of the build. It sits on my workspace platform if you want to go have a wander round it.

 

Assignment 3: Blog 6

24/6/12

Well, getting quite far into it now. All of the frame is done, with footpegs, rear brake with mounts and torque arm, swingarm bracing is all done nicely. I have the tail area and seat done too, and that also looks quite good. I’m not sure how I can go about texturing the sculpty though, with each thing I try failing. I reckon that I can fill in the colour changing script part though, by letting the body panels alternate between blue and white when they are touched. I tested a way of getting the side panels done too, which is just using a photo of the panel which is then put onto a flat prim. For the most part it looks ok, except when you look at it front on. There is obviously no curve to them, as that would break the texture up. I then made a copy of the texture and filled the colour in with grey. Trusty old Photoshop CS2 came to play there, saved as .PNG which let me keep the transparency and made the side panels work well.

My fuel tank was a bit of trouble too, I’m still not happy with it, but every time I go to tweak it, I ruin what I had and make it look worse. As usual, it looks ok, but it’s not perfect. I was quite happy with the headlights though. I used one of the textures in the library, called “steel plate” and with a bit of repeating, it looked very much like the reflectors. That coupled with the glow light coming from the bulbs looks rather snazzy if I may say so…heehee

Just got to get my scripts going and my exhaust sound working. Following that, I need to get the front panel done. I have the windshield in Wings 3d ready to go, so yeah. Getting some smaller things like the dials done would be a nice touch too, I already have the photos for them XD

Assignment 3: Blog 5

15/6/12

Right, I’m finally getting into the building now. Bike is still out of action, and insurance are being tardy, as they always will be when it comes to claiming.

It has gone pretty smoothly, the only major ones that are troubling me are when I build parts away from the main structure of the bike. Getting proportion right I’m finding very hard. For the most part it looks good though, and it is easy enough to modify if I get it wrong. It is annoying after building a rear wheel and swingarm which matches nicely with the frame, but then the front end with the forks and front wheel looks way off. After having the entire frame together though, everything looks quite plain. I know it is just aluminium, but I only have 2 textures to use. One for the rough cast parts and another for the shiny brushed parts. Besides that, it’s all just silver/grey.

I’ve got working with my 3d program, and had a go at the iconic tail hump bit. I think it came out well, but my modelling skills aren’t the best by a long shot. They way it matches up with the seat mount body panel looks a bit odd to me. I know I can’t get it exactly like my source picture, but I certainly want to. I also see what they mean with the templates I have regarding them appearing all messed up if I mod them. Mine didn’t work anyway, not sure why exactly that is. Not sure how I can work the side panels into the build and make them look ok.

Assignment 3: Blog 4

4/6/12

Well I had an eventful week. I was heading over to Blenheim on the 31st for the long weekend. I was debating whether to go over the next morning, but I decided to leave at 4pm-ish. Got into the Whangamoas and there was a nice large diesel spill covering the whole left lane, probably left by a logging truck, as they had a spill outside their depot only a couple of months back. Not sure how fast I was going, maybe around 40-50kph round a left hander, and the bike just immediately dropped hard. There was a guy behind me who helped me get the bike up and off the road. Sadly it had worn through one of the engine cases and oil was leaking everywhere. Thank goodness for the AA roadside rescue! 😀 First crash over, I’m now a true member of the club…

I landed on my left knee and left arm, which has left them both a bit munched. Just muscle damage in my shoulder, but my knee feels a bit odd. Should be right though. The protective gear worked well…hahaha

Dealing with insurance and the mechanics now, which is going to hurt my wallet one way or another. As such, I haven’t gone anywhere with my build, or any other assignment. Save from getting my 3d program sorted, everything’s pretty static. Hopefully more to come soon.

Assignment 3: Blog 3

25/5/12

Still haven’t progressed much further from my previous entry in terms of in world progress. My goal for the weekend is to figure out getting a good sculpty and 3d design program. I’ve got a set of Autodesk student programs, which are the full blown CAD systems. Sadly enough I was using them to build yes, bike parts a couple of years ago… >.>

I went through the marketplace again looking for sports bikes that people had made, and it left me a bit grumpy. People were making all sorts of fancy looking bikes, but managing to stay around 12 prims through some clever mesh work. I don’t think I’ll get to their stage though. I grabbed an idea off one of the bikes though, as he had an exhaust system with particles and sound activated on touch. I filmed a clip at the start of the year showing my clutch dragging on my bike, which gives me a perfect sound bite to use for it. I’m sure the particle lab will sort my exhaust smoke out too

The clip if you are curious http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfGZVWOaudQ

One thing I can’t think of is how to incorporate a flexible prim into the bike. I thought of making the seat flexible, but that doesn’t really make much sense. Other than that, the bike is all made from solid bits. Hrrngggh.

 

 

This is in addition to the above. I found a decent 3d modelling program to use over the weekend. I tried Blender, but was having trouble with their tutorials. In going through the second life wiki, I found Wings 3D was rated as a good easy to use program for making sculpties. I had to grab some plugins so I could export files though. I also grabbed some templates to help too. What I read though, is that I can’t modify the actual amount of faces on the template or something. It said they would appear all messed up in second life when imported. I’ll see how that works out when I come to do the actual modelling. I also got my particles sorted for the exhaust and clipped my sound down so it can loop nicely.

Assignment 3: Blog 2

21/5/12

Right, in following from my last blog, and a rather large hiatus, I decided with content creation, looking to build a second life version of my motorbike. I couldn’t think of a decent video to shoot that would be interesting, and they always tell me to enjoy my work, so a bike it is XD.

One thing I have started to do is get some clear shots of the bike, from all sides. That of course started with giving the bike a final cleanup and polish hahaha. I’m not sure how I am going to go about getting the body panels done, but at least I have good shots to base whatever I do off.

That’s pretty much all I have done so far, but I’m getting a pretty good image in my head of what I want to finish up with. There is going to be a fair bit of time spent with the prims making all the pieces of aluminium that make up the frame and forks. I had a go at making a rear wheel just for kicks, and I think it came out ok. Trying to get all the small details was hard though, and made it look a bit odd IMO. I hope it’s not me being picky 😛

Assignment 3: Blog 1

MUV601 Assignment 3 Planning

 

Right off the bat, I need to say I am not actually sure what I want to do at this stage. I’m sure there are other people in the same situation. Either I will be looking at the Machinima, or the content creation focussing on visual complexity. I discussed doing the infrastructure topic with Matt, who I worked with in my previously, but we both thought that it was a bit too big and carry too much hassle.

I have had a bit of experience with video editing, and a small bit of experience with uploading to YouTube. It’s also good that the laptops we get come with the full Adobe suite. The trouble with creating machinima is finding a topic and subjects that I WANT to cover. Tutorials are great to do, and technically check all the boxes, but it just feels a bit lacklustre. I don’t know.

 For the content creation, I already have a vague outline of what I would hope to build. There is a 95% chance that it will be connected to motorbikes in some way…how anyone would ever guess that is beyond me 😛 The other 5% would be a massive Gundam, probably Deathscythe XD

I would be looking at making a second life representation of my motorbike, a 1998 Suzuki GSXR-750. Commonly referred to as a SRAD (Suzuki Ram Air Induction). This model is characterised by the rather fat tail bit on the bike

 In terms of machinima, I usually make remixes of videos called “YouTube Poops”. Not sure whether that would qualify for the assignment though, unless I have actually filmed the source video myself. On top of that, most of them are usually quite rude, or make no sense…that might hurt the grades a bit…

In terms of what I need for content creation, I can only see textures of my bike and a lot of build time. I was wondering about making a ride able bike, but then I talked to Aaron about it and the scripts involved. He mentioned it would be good to see that we had written code in the scripts, so that left me a bit uncertain. In browsing the marketplace, I also saw some kind of prim limit for ride able bikes. Certainly has me leaning towards a static display.

The only other thing which worries me is how much detail I can actually pack in to the model, and what it will look like. The bike had large curvy and odd shaped body panels all over it, so how it will turn out is something I can’t really figure out now.

Other than that, I just need to make my mind up and have a think about it. I have to say though, what a brilliant assignment. Getting to choose what we want to do…amazing hehe

6 Shooter

The 6 big community standards for second life can pretty much be summed up with the following statement. Don’t be a silly bugger…if everyone would read the guidelines supplied in each sim, the second life world would be a better place…maybe.

The 6 guidelines are as follows

·  Intolerance

Users should be mindful of others in their actions and words. It is basically summed up by anything that may be derogatory or demeaning in any way is to be avoided, e.g. Racism, sexism, etc.

Also touched on by Linden is the idea of “Actions that marginalize, belittle, or defame individuals or groups inhibit the satisfying exchange of ideas and diminish the Second Life community as a whole.” Linden wants second life to be thriving arena for creative ideas. If you don’t like what someone is doing, be it design work, or a theme you don’t like, do not view those opinions.

·  Harassment

Harassment is always a big problem within communities, and can take many forms. It could be that someone is following you around the virtual world, and won’t seem to leave you alone. Other times, it could be sexual in nature. I tried to do some searching for a Second Life cyber restraining order, but I had no such luck. It could be an idea for combating harassment, but then again it would be hard to implement.

“Given the myriad capabilities of Second Life, harassment can take many forms. Communicating or behaving in a manner which is offensively coarse, intimidating or threatening, constitutes unwelcome sexual advances or requests for sexual favours, or is otherwise likely to cause annoyance or alarm is Harassment.”

·  Assault

Assault in second life is so different to assault in real life, although the effects it can have are just as bad. Shooting someone with a gun made in second life, using an orbiter to shoot them into the sky, or even just shunting a person around by walking into them. They can all be considered assault.

During our first few lessons, I saw a few players shunting people around. It was all fun and games, we were all in class together. Once I got out into the more main areas of second life, I soon saw that it was not a good idea to do that. Even if someone accidentally bumped into someone, there would be a flurry of apologys.

·  Disclosure

Disclosure of personal details was one topic that Clare really made sure we were clear on. Many people want to remain anonymous in their online life. The sharing of someone’s details is a big no-no. The ability to save chat logs can also be an issue. Full disclosure is meant to be given to all the people involved in the chat, and if someone objects, it shouldn’t be saved. However, many people disregard this.

Sometimes you can do it by accident too, such as referring to someone by their real name while in game. Yet again, its fine for us when we are all together as a class, but not when in the company of strangers…

·  Adult Regions, Groups, and Listings

“Adult” content is not to be shown on “normal” regions. That could be considered to cover “suggestive” items and actions, and obviously nudity.  To display adult content properly, you must designate your sim to be private. As it is private, you then have control over who visits. Yet again, this covers actions, text chat and content.

·  Disturbing the Peace

Disturbing the peace, aka creating lag…

Repetitive trolling, spamming someone or someplace with items, and broadcasting loud, continuous sounds is not tolerated. This is to try and keep the players enjoying the sim, and also to stop any potential issues with the server. Multiple items being spawned will affect everyone in view of them, and in severe cases can cripple the server. This can also tie in with harassment to some extent, in that you may be continually annoying someone on purpose, hence disturbing the peace.

Why have these standards been created?

These 6 community standards have been outlined by Linden for the users in Second Life. These have been established to give users the best possible environment to enjoy second life in. Everyone is unique, therefore there are always going to be trouble makers in any group of people. There always will be.

Dealing with these trouble makers is the hard part. Getting the balance right so that you are not a push over and the trouble makers run free, but also not being too harsh and restrictive which can take the fun out of a community. People want the issues to be dealt with, but they don’t want to feel like they are under scrutiny for their actions 24/7.

How you would make sure you do not violate the standards?

It can simply be answered with this. “Think about your actions before executing them”. Always refer to someone by their screen name. Do your best not to bump into anyone, and apologise if you do. This can even go down to “remembering your please’s and thank you’s”, if you want to be pedantic.

If the sim I am in has a rules/guidelines list at the welcome area, then I will defiantly read it. They can also explain some of the oddities in certain builds, such as in Astarii, where you can’t fly.

Basically, I try to not act like a idiot…XD

What to do if…

If you do have issues with someone’s actions in the game world, you should report it. If you think they are breaching any of the standards, you can use the “Report Abuse” function in second life. It is located under the help toolbar in your viewer. You can then compile a rather detailed report on the abuse. The more detail that you can include, the easier it will be for the person investigating. It is also written that incomplete forms will not be followed up, so make sure you do it right.

The page for reporting abuse.

Something interesting to note, is that there is a log for “Bumps, Pushes and Hits”. It does exactly as its labelled, records bumps, pushes and hits that you receive in a session. This would be handy in any harassment or assault complaint. I am not sure whether it keeps a log of previous sessions, and I would assume not as I could not find any function to recall the log…pretty sure I was shot by someone a few times…

There is no reason accept any abuse in real life. There are always guidelines for any community on what is right and wrong. There are also channels that can be used to report and deal with any abuse.

You Have The Right To Remain Litigious…

Linden has seen fit to enable the following options on a persons work ingame in second life. They all revolve around the permissions of what a user may do with a persons work. From complete restriction, to letting someone have free will with your work. The list is as follows.

 

Modify

The modify permission allows the user to tweak the item however they see fit. It covers the item size and shape, textures on the item and the colours. They can also rename the item if they want. It can be used for nasty reasons though, where someone can changed the colours, textures and try to palm it off as their own work. Copybot can make doing that even easier…more on that later…

Copy

This option can give the next owner of the item the ability to create copies of the item. When allowed to copy, there is no limit to the number of copies they can make. The original creator of the item is always listed when the copy function is used. That’s very handy, as if you create an item, you will always get the recognition.

Resell/Give away

This is if you want to allow the item holder to sell copies or to give copies of your item away. It can be a handy permission in conjunction with no copying, as it will only allow the owner to sell or give away that single item. They can’t go and spam the copy button and then go sell all the extra ones. In selling or giving away their item, they then lose the item too.

 

On top of the 3 “main” permission groups, there are 4 other “extra” ones. They are as follows.

Share With Group

This allows the item to be used by a certain group, which you can set. This is handy when you have an object that you want to show to your group or let them have a look at how it all works as a complete item.

Allow Anyone To Move

This lets anyone move the object around. For obvious reasons, it is sometimes not desirable to have your items wandering off mid build…

Allow Anyone To Copy

Allows anyone to come over and take a copy of the item. I’ve seen that being used in Kowhai, such as the lamp texturing exercise where we could take a copy of the lamp being used.

Show In Search

This option will display the item in searches. The coordinates, name, and its price will be shown

The list of permissions in Phoenix

Where might you use these permissions?

The permission would obviously be used on items that we create, setting what it can and can’t do. This is especially true if they actually have some form of value associated with them. If I created a complex object with lots of time and effort being put into modelling, scripting and animating the object, I don’t want someone coming along and stealing it to sell on for their own profits, or even worse, passing it round for free. Stealing seems far too common in our society, and this trend seems to continue into the virtual arena, where copyright laws get a little bit hazy and distorted…

They are just a small safeguard to try and stop the “casual” stealing of ideas. As always, nothing will deter a proper theif…

Insilico in the Brain

I have probably made it reasonably well known on this blog that I like robots…in case you didn’t know, I do. Oddly enough, one of my favourite films is the cult classic, Blade Runner. Harrison Ford (Rick Deckard) hunting down “replicant” beings in a dystopian future world. How Awesome.

Damn cool…

Something about the bleak look of the city and the constant pouring rain in Blade Runner struck a chord with me. This led me to finding some kind of similar world in second Life. Sure enough, I found Insilico. While it is a Steampunk based sim, nothing I had found previously had the sheer scale of building and community involved. The atmosphere of the area was just perfect too in relation to Blade Runner.

It’s Blade Runner…oh wait…

Insilico the one oddity I had experienced before was that Insilico is a Role Playing Sim. A read through the guidelines when I first arrived showed that they expect a bit of work to be put into your avatar to at least blend in a bit. They also want players to really role play their time in game, stating that if you are just wandering round for a look and someone bothers you, to just say that “you are on the phone or are walking to work”. The only other Role Playing I had ever done was pen and paper D&D, so it’s not entirely new, but role playing in a virtual world to this extent certainly was.

Insilico

Players are there to technically live a proper second life, to chat, make friends both in game and IRL and just to have fun living in a rundown futuristic city. While having fun is key, they are obviously serious about what they do. There are apartments, various marketplaces, and many suburbs, clubs, a power plant as well as an outskirts area.

I saw the usual clothes shops, hover car yards, gadget sellers and even an Insilico Private Security firm. This is a proper living, breathing society. I saw groups of ravers prancing around in the clubs, laser lights flying everywhere. I even spied a hover bike parked outside the security firm…oh how perfect 😉

One of the multitude of shops. A bit basic…even then it still took 5 minutes to load…

A hoverbike I spotted…heh

My first foray into Insilico was rather odd. Having read the guidelines, I knew that my avatar Robot Jim was a bit out of place. When I TP’ed in, I was standing in a group of other players…players with a lot of “stuff” and Steampunk items on their avatars…one of those players casually mentioned to me that the sim was Steampunk themed. Talk about sticking out like a sore thumb. I had a look through the preset avatars to try and blend in as best as possible. While a gladiator isn’t Steampunk, he does have shoulder pads…that has to count for something. We had a little chat about what I was doing there, especially with the MUV601 tag above my name. They seemed quite intrigued about the whole MUV class idea too. In the end, I was told that if I was going to spend a lot of time in the sim, I should create a proper avatar. I shall…;)

My name is Gladiator…
You can clearly see the issues I had with rezzing…rah.

Wandering is where the trouble started though…this sim is so complex that I don’t think my computer and connection ever once fully finished loading an area. This is where I must apologise for my screenshots. No matter how long I waited, it would never fully rez, even after cutting my draw distance right down. It took on average 5 minutes to fully rez a shop, and if I would look up at the skyscrapers, my FPS would drop to 2. This was running on a pretty powerful desktop PC, where not even Crysis drops below 30fps… Anyway, the point of saying this is that it is huge. My previous experiences in Second Life were totally blown out of the water…with a hydrogen bomb.

The transport system in Insilico. A menu pops up to choose your option and sends the TP link to your chat.

Other times when wandering round, I was looking out for all the small details that had been put into the sim. I could hear lots of ambient sounds, some of which were quite creepy and ominous. Off in a dark corner of the outskirts,  I could heard the drunk ramblings of a homeless man…everything was so brilliantly done to give as little chance of your immersion breaking. That is the key with roleplaying, and indeed any video game. I also loved the signs regarding violence that were scattered all over the sim, it just added that perfect touch of government oppression and control to the whole mix…:D

Do as we say.

It may seem odd, having your second life existing in a dank, rain soaked mess of a city, but I found the sim highly entertaining, and the players very accommodating of Russell Crowe. Much like the other players in second life I’ve encountered, everyone was friendly. Even though role playing a life in the city is the main idea, people still seemed nice and relaxed. I certainly think I found a good place to explore, so now some work (and money probably) will be going into an alt avatar. Home, sweet junky home.