Lucid Dreams.... come and see our photo exhibition

Photography in Second Life is a big thing for us. It is so much fun to try to document all explorations and discoveries in here. We have been posting photos in Flickr, Koinup, in Blogs and in other places but have all along been thinking about a more dedicated approach for the photos.

A few months ago we decided to try to do a coherent exhibition as a way of keeping focus on the creative side of the photography. So Marlia has developed that side of her photography and I have been somewhat busy trying to build a place for an exhibition.

The goal was to make a place that looks nice but is neutral enough not to draw the attention away from the exhibitions. We wanted it to be light and have a positive feel about it.

The result is two rather big halls combined into one structure with 100 * 50 meters in all. It is mainly made out of mega prims and all the objects (except the plants) and all textures are created by us.

The problematic thing is that with a construction of this size you cant link together everything into one piece. But I have found something similar to fauxrez that lets me pack it all together in one box and rezz it somewhere else with just a few clicks. How fantastic! I just love the creativity in here!

So even the exhibition hall is up for sale and there is also an option of a hall half the size and other sizes can be made on requests. It is just around 25 prims in all. IM me if you are interested in something like this.

The first exhibition is totally from from the amazing Marlia Looming. It is called the "Stardancer Series" and is a part from Marlias brand the "Magical Virtual Life art". Part of the photos have already been exposed in another exhibition in Second Life.

This exhibition is for trigging the imagination and shows the creative side of her photography. If there is any of images you particularly like, it is good to know that all of her photos are also for sale at a very decent price. In every package there are a couple of sizes and if you right click on them you will find the prices and a buy option.

You will find the exhibition hall here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Biriba/65/222/301

And please...... let us know what you think..... that is the best way for us to develop further.

I have just two small slideshows in a corner there, showing some of my portraits and landscapes. The purpose of this is to show my slideshow frames. They are for sale there... ;o)

If you should want me or Marlia to take your portraits for your profile or any other purpose, you are welcome to IM us in world. We prefer to do portraits in natural surroundings but have of course also the possibility of studio work.

My first commersial sculptie!!

During the last few months I have been trying hard to learn to build and script. I have been trying all kinds of tools and also mad some things for sale on Xstreet... no big hit yet I can tell you...  LOL.

I have been nosing around that sculptie things for some times and tried some of the tools out there. Both for use in world and of line tools like Blender, SculptiePaint and so on. Then I stumbled upon this amazing tool that made some sculpted prim creations incredible easy. My first atempt was to replace the old bridge I made in traditional building technique with a sculptie one. I am so pleased with the result that i have decided tp put it up for sale.

Here you have it in the proper place at home. It is 3 segments about 10 meters long each of them. With normal building technique this bridge demanded 29 prims for each section. That is  if the wooden floor consists of planks and not just a board with a plank texture and that looks really awful.

Now each section consists of only 2 prims (in opensim it could have been just 1 prim but the way Second life treats sculpties until now make it necessary to use a ghost prim). So instead of 87 prims this bridge is now 6 prims... Wow!!!

On the image above you can see that it is real (well virtual real) planks and that you see through like you do in real life. I have also made the texture for the bridge... more on that another day.

Now the million dollar question is what tool did I use for creating this? This is the cliffhanger and the answer will be in my next blog post.

So now I will start selling this with copy rights... and hope that this will be my breakthrough on Xstreet...   ;o)    (Ohhhh yes... you can call me naive)

Americas Cup in Second Life

Americas Cup in Second Life!! Yes, you read correctly... about the same time the event is ongoing in real life in Valencia in Spain (http://www.americascup.com/en/index.php) there will also be an 33:rd Americas Cup in SL on two saturdays on January 30 and February 6 in the Pacific start line close to Santa Barbara in the Blake sea.

Read more about the event here http://acaracer.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/aca-trophy-2010/ 

Today (January 20) there are 39 ACA33 yachts registered for the event and that must be some kind of record in SL. Yes, you guessed right, of course am I one of the 39.

Initially I had planned to start a Swedish challenge as Sweden had a number of yacht competing in last few RL Americas Cup.  I made some clumsy attempts to find some interest for that in the Swedish community, but as I failed I decided to go with the Mango yacht club in Fruit Islands instead. The beautiful sails Isis made for us was the final deciding factor....   ;o)

The registration is still open for a few more days if you are interested......

Close to the start line you will also find the Sailing Academy where you can learn all the rules and finer details about sailing competitions in SL. Fantastic useful place....

In the different halls there you will find pedagogic sideshows that explains the different aspects of sailing competitions.

Bea Woodgets has also written some amazing articles on the slsailing site about using the winds and finding the optimal course when racing in SL:
http://slsailing.com/?p=1908 

and then adopting the theory to one of the competition courses in the ACA33 2010 Trophy:
http://slsailing.com/?p=1999

Whenever I go to the startline now, there are lots of ACA33 yacht swarming the  place looking to find the perfect way to do those courses in the fastes way possible. So much fun!