Adventures and experiences in a virtual world

Portrait photography... next episodes in the HiQ photography series

2010-07-23T20:49:00.003+02:00

I really love to take photos in SL and to try to make them look as good as possible. There are some easy things to learn how to improve the quality of your photos. If you haven't read our old articles about high quality photography you find the links here to the left.

I mostly do landscapes and try to document the places I like the most in here. In future articles I will try to dig into how to make as good landscape photos as possible but before that I will dig into my favourite object for my photography passion.... portraits. Below you can see a few example of some of my portraits and in the upcoming article I will try to explain my best tips to be successful in making nice portraits in SL.

I have received a few IM:s with practical questions about photography and machinima in SL and I will write a special article were I try to answer those. But please don't hesitate to ask questions in world, by IM or email or in the comments here....

Happy snappings...

Relay for Life... about doing good in Second Life

2010-07-18T18:57:00.005+02:00

Right now there is an ongoing mission in Second Life called "Relay for Life". It is about raising money for the research in cancer treatment. Real life in Second Life! So great!

And the sailing community is of course also involved in this and that makes me a bit proud. Right now there are biding going on for a beta-version of the new upcoming version of the ACA33. But you can also bid on lots of other interesting stuff as well and all the money will of course be donated.

Please go there and support this: http://slurl.com/secondlife/RFL%20Give/60/192/24

Relay for Life has all kind of interesting things on a number of Sims there. This evening there will be fireworks at 10 AM... This is truly a very impressive effort, please go there and explore and we hope you would like to contribute to this.

Look at the map below and observe the incredible amount of visitors at the same time... how wonderful. You just don't want to miss this..

My building tools

2010-02-24T11:33:00.007+01:00

I like to create things in here but I didn't like that the paradise island looks like a junk yard between the building sessions and it is totally boring to clean it up all the time so I decided to do something about it.

This building platform is 100 * 50 meters and is made out of just 5 Megaprims. You cant link all that the normal way so I have used a Rez-Faux-mechanism for making it easy to move and build in new places. The textures on the walls are seamless and the building texture on the floor is great for fitting things together. IM me if you interested in a something like this platform.

Below the platform you can see the Art exhibition hall, and the Stardancer exhibit is still going on there and even further down are the islands.

This post will be about some of the tools I often use for building. Some of them comes from the amazing Skidz Tweak. On the first photo above you can see the very useful Robotic Land Laser. You can rez it at any hight and it shows you very precise the borders of your parcel below.... how useful.

Here you can see two of his other tools, The Skidz Primz and the TNT Primz. They are not cheap but so incredible useful. They are both intended for aligning different prims to each other but have a different twitch each of them. You rezz special prims with scripts inside or you can insert those scripts in regular prims. Skidz Primz works with both Mega and scuplty prims while TNT Primz (to the right here) only works on regular prims, but is on the other hand smoother and less prune to lag.

You use them just by clicking on those red dots and you get perfect alignment extremely fast. Every Saturday there is free of cost classes at the main shop en there are lots of great YouTube-videos showing you the usefulness of these tools. I don't build without them any more.

There is also another alternative called PrimDocker. That is very cheap compared to the Skidz tools and works also with Mega prims... but is not that sleek and fast. In PrimDocker you use a hud and click on that for the adjustments and not just but clicking on the prims them selfs. It is a bit less intuitive but when you have learned it you find that it is very fast and low demanding on resources.

Here you see the manual for PrimDocker on my building platform. On the photo you can also see the MegaPrim search tool even though I prefer http://megaprim.sl/ as it is possible to see the rotation and orientation of the Megas there and I find that extremely useful.

Behind that you can see the PrimFinder tool that lets you create normal prims but with an unusual shape very quickly.

And so... finally.... here is the gem! SculptCrafter! With sculptcrafter you have a reduced set of prims that you can use in a limited number of ways. To the right here you can see a buoy I have built with 29 of those prims. Then with a twist of the magic wand i can convert those into a single prim sculpt map. Totally incredible and extremely useful.

But it is a rather expensive tool and it has a number of limitation, but if you are aware of those it is the most valuable tool I have. If you accept some pointless script errors I have also discovered that it is possible to insert both PrimDocker and Skidz Primz scripts in the SculptCrafter prims and combine the tools. I just love it!

Go to the creators sandbox and play with the demo: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/3DBuildEasy/89/126/500

You can make real sculpty prims that you own with the demo. But you can only build them there in the sandbox and you are limited to 10 prims... but the resulting scultpy is real and can be used anywhere.

So... the new angle... my first post on shoes.

2010-02-16T20:17:00.001+01:00

A few days ago I wrote:

"Well now I think I will quit writing about the snobbish cultural side of it all... and start writing about..... looks, clothes, sex, shallow behaviour, intrigues, parties, tattoos and... and ... shoes?... SIGH.
Stupid, silly me..... ROFL"

So now is time for my first post about shoes.

Well maybe not the kind of shoes you though I would write about but I really like the detailed work at display here. Look at the engravement on the metal buttons, the stitches, the leather on the heels and beautiful folds. This is really supreme craftsmanship in SL.... how great!

This is the newest person on my friendslist.... Lemondrop! Yes, it is her shoes and tomorrow I will show you the incredible Sim she and her friend has created. If you also liked the shoes, just hold your breath!

Tradewinds 2010 Boat Builders Show

2010-02-16T11:30:00.006+01:00

Yesterday on february 15 the Tradewinds 2010 Boat Builders Show opened for the public. This is what they write about it on the web page:

"Fostering a friendly and helpful environment for sailboat builders and those who love them, to network and show off their boats. With the idea that together we will all improve.
1) these are boats YOU made or are making
2) they don't have to be finished
3) Although maybe not working yet, the idea is that you intended to get these sailable"

The great thing about this all is that this also marks the release of a totally FREE building kit from Becca Moulliez. How great! There are textures and scripts... all free that you can use for inclusion in your own masterpiece. And you are welcome to expose your creations here even if they are in a very early state.

and if you are a bit overwhelmed by the though, be aware of that even mothers with babies can find the time do this... so surely... it is worth a try.... ;o)

So just run over and get your free building kit... and while you are there... get a free Fizz as well and come sailing with us!

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dex/189/33/23

Fizz training with the Japanese sailors

2010-02-15T17:05:00.006+01:00

The sailing community here in SL is really a fabulous crowd. In my search to be a better sailor in here I have searched all over the place and to my surprise I have been welcomed everywhere. It is certainly not like that in all the groups...... ;o)

Soon after I got my Fizz somebody told me that the Japanese group of Fizz sailors are some of the very best and as they have weekly practice races I started to sail together with them. The best way of learning is to learn from the best.

I got to know them and Taku who is arranging these sailing (Liv is also one of the arrangers) took a lot of time to explain the rules and the different tactics to the group. He has tought me so many great things and is so incredible patient and friendly. Thanks a lot, mate! Without his N3 navigator I wouldn't had a chance in the Americas Cup.

The Tradewinds Yachtclub is the base for the Japanese sailors and after each day of practice the winner is celebrated there and the winners boat is exposed for all to see.

This day the winner the winner was Mihwa who also competed in the Americas Cup Trophy. The Fizz is very difficult to master as it is so realistic and much more precise to sail than for example the ACA33. I don't have a chance yet against the best ones in the Fizz...

After the races there is always a discussion about the tactical details that made the difference.

Now days the Fizz is totally free (used to cost 1250 Lindens) ... so just grab a boat and come sailing with us. Starboards shopping mall in Hollywood sailing sims.

Art galleries in Second Life

2010-02-14T22:41:00.007+01:00

This is a totally new experience... to look at art galleries. And it will keep you busy for a a while... the present number is 668 different galleries... ;o)

Here are just a few to get you started...

Freedom House of Arts - Gallery
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Triangulum/146/82/27

Feathers Bay - Gallery
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Esterhal/236/233/852

Avalon Art District
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Tabula%20rasa/224/83/27

Lawst Oaradise
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lawst%20Paradise/179/207/751

Pygmalion Art Glass Sculpture Garden
You need to go here to get some kind of overview: http://sasun.info/ArtGalleriesOfSL.aspx

Well now I think I will quit writing about the snobbish cultural side of it all... and start writing about..... looks, clothes, sex, shallow behaviour, intrigues, parties, tattoos and... and ... shoes?... SIGH.
Stupid, silly me..... ROFL

Art in Second Life

2010-02-12T23:19:00.003+01:00

A few weeks ago we opened up our first exhibition here in Second Life. The response has been overwhelming and so many nice people here have said so many nice things....

One tips was to join the group of Art Galleries in SL... what a great tip!

There are nearly 700 galleries in the group and you can even get a HUD to easy navigate among them. On the creators webpage there are different ways to find the ones that may interest you.

http://sasun.info/ArtGalleriesOfSL.aspx

So much fun to TP around and experience the incredible creativity in here:

The creator of this group also has a great blog where you can follow the art scene in SL.

http://sl-artgalleries.blogspot.com/

In just a few weeks our gallery has established itself rather well in that group. The current exhibition will go on for a few more weeks. Please come and have a look and dont forget to vote for it if you like what you see:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Biriba/65/222/301

The details makes the differance

2010-02-03T19:04:00.006+01:00

It has been a busy week! First the first round of the Americas cup challenge (that I will write about a bit later), then the opening of the gallery (and the signing up in the big group with 650 galleries... also in a later article)... and then all the ongoing projects. I am such a fanatic for the details that I have a a really tough time to decide when something is good enough and I should decide that it is finished....

Well this story is about buoys... the small stupid insignificant things that you see when you are out sailing in the beautiful oceans in Second Life. I wanted to have some buoys to mark the small canal between our islands so that people dare to sail there. You know if you are sailing in the main direction you shall have the red buoys on the left side and the greens on the right side (yes I have a skippers diploma in real life).

However those up for sale were either so ugly or consisted of a incredible amount of prims. I need 6 buoys for that canal and if each of them is up to 37 prims.... well there we go again... that ads up to 222 prims for some stupid buoys. No way... and even the low prim good looking buoys are like 17 prims = 102 prims.

So what will a handy man do? Right, build my own ones!!! You should say YAY to a challenge.... well a few weeks later I am not so sure.... ;-)

The resulting buoy itself is made in one sculpted prim and the flashing lamp is another prim. So 2 prims/buoy that makes 12 prims instead of 222 for the six buoys... Amazing. The buoy itself took me less then an hour to build and turn into a sculptie. The textures took me forever even though I have great tools. I have 13 green versions and 9 red versions before I am pleased with the worn look of them. They should look like they have been in the salt water for some time and not like they are newborn plastic ones.

Then there are the scripts. One for making the lamps flash in the right way and another one for making the buoys move in the water in a natural looking way. Those took me a few hours too.....

Then a fool never knows when to end.. ;o)

So I decided that it would be handy to be able to use them "out of Sim" as well.. so I added that functionality (2 more prims if you want to use that possibility) and lastly I had to learn how to make nice foam or wave around them (adds 1 prim if you decide to use that)

So the result is a nice looking moving and flashing buoy in 2 prims with foam for another one and "out of Sim" use for yet two more... the choice is yours.

My own joy lies in understanding all the detailed works at hand here and put together an object like this, were all is home made by my self.

Sure... a total waste of time as I can buy them on Xstreet for a few Lindens... ;o)

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

2010-01-24T12:39:00.009+01:00

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!!

2010-01-22T19:17:00.002+01:00

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

2010-01-20T12:46:00.001+01:00

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!

My first Machinima film!

2009-12-19T20:24:00.003+01:00

I have been wanting to try this for a long time and today I suddenly found the time.
I have read all that Torley wrote about Machinima and I have searched the web for proper information, more on that later. Well... here is my first try...

I used a Macbook Pro and as most instructions on the web are for Windows I will provide some here for useful information.

Machinima great tips

Using the Mac for Machinima

I used ultra resolution and was mostly in Mouselook...
However there are some interesting tools that I will examine later, and comment on them here. For example this tool looks great:
https://xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=368934

For now I used the Snapz Pro demo for the capturing and Imovie (included with every Mac) for the editing and posting on YouTube. This short film is edited from maybe 10 min in four different clips.

Well... this is my first try.... so be nice to me... will you.. ;o)

2009-12-03T09:24:00.006+01:00

Those of you that read my post this Monday is probably dying of curiosity on how to find this Smilla place. Well, just read on and you will discover that a bit further down.... and show some neat photos from that amazing place.

It was my friend Eta (from Poland) that introduced me to these people and for a period of my second life I was totally absorbed with what was going on in there. If it wasn't the art exhibition it might be a flying circus at high altitude or the the wonderful turtles in the incredible underwater world or a new film in the Star Trek cinema in the sky. It was definitely the most beautiful creation I had seen so far. Every day something new to explore and to learn from.

Coolzor (from Belgium) was the builder and Immersive (from UK) the scripter while Lena (from Switzerland and on the photo above) held an observant eye over the whole creation and was the final judge of what to be. When they had the photo competition the sim was fludded with people all day. One day Cool would introduce me to the holodeck principle and the next day Immy was scripting the elevators. I learned so much in those magic months....

Smilla is still there for you to enjoy, but now mostly empty of people. Dont miss the two tours and dont miss the underwater life. But I am a bit concerned for how long it will be here so please go there now and be amazed of all beauty and the incredible attention to details. Sometimes I miss the intensity of that period in my second life and i hope to find it somewhere else...

Because THAT i do know! It is out there somewhere so I really need to explore more and get to know more people from all over.

I have posted some of my photos of Smilla from that period here. Even if my SL photographic skills have improved a bit since those early days... I still find it hard to find better motifs than in this beautiful gem.

Recently Coolzor and I had a chat late in the evening and somehow I think I could spot that he misses that period too... who knows maybe there will be a new project like this unique one some day to come... ;-)

Ohhh... I almost forgot... LOL
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Smilla/64/200/23

The secret world of Coolz0r Courier, avatar – conqueror of a virtual world.

2009-11-30T22:35:00.001+01:00

Please read this article from a friend of mine:
http://wavelab.be/blog/secondlife/

He has a great story to tell and we can learn so much from it!

Dont miss this oportunity to get the best sl sailboat for 1 Linden!!!

2009-11-22T14:20:00.002+01:00

At the Tradewind sim there is a big exhibition right now for seaplanes. The big opening was yesterday on November 21 and the show will go on for further two weeks.

Even if you don't fancy aircraft's there is a huge point in getting there as fast as possible. The big catch there is that you can get the amazing Flying Fizz dingie for just 1 Linden dollar there. Please do that as soon as possible and do also get some Fizz keys (you will find them in the small shop there) for also 1 Linden there... I will explain why really soon.... just read on.

The Flying Fizz is one of the most popular sailing dingies in SL and behaves very realistic. You can sail it in different modes from "Fun mode", "Novice mode", "competition mode" all the way up to "Expert mode" so it is perfect for learning advanced sailing in SL.

Every week there are a number of Fizz races around the different sailing sims in SL and world championships are arranged.

Home in Tangelo we have set up a practice racetrack for us to practice, learn the rules and learn how to handle the Fizz in easy going circumstances. We will invite those of you who are interested in learning more about sailing in SL... to come and learn in your own pace and get ready for friendly races with us.

Later maybe we can compete in the weekly races.

Hmmm... well now is the time to introduce the long term big plan..... ;o)
If enough people are interested and gets to a certain skill level within time..... maybe... maybe

maybe we can put together an entry for making a challenge of the Americas Cup in 2010. I also hope to put together a Team for the J-class competitions with those wonderful big wooden yachts.

But one step at the time so lets start with the Flying Fizz! So... anybody interested?

Sailing: Part 2

2009-11-16T11:57:00.001+01:00

In the first sailing post I showed two boats from Trudeau and I must point out that there are so many different kinds of sailing dingies and yachts here in SL. One favourite for many are the Flying Fizz 3, because of the very realistic sailing experience with it.

You dont need a hud for sailing this as you can see on the photo above. The round instrument in the middle of the dingie is all you need. There you can see wind direction and speed. This is an extremely fun boat to sail and as it very weak you have to balance it with your body weight.

The trick is to sail it as upright as possible to get maximum speed. But you better be careful or...

it might end in a bath that you had not planned for. Great animations for that to though!

If you both put you weight on the centerboard you might be able to fix the situation.

If you want to try a demo of the Fizz 3 or even buy it, the builder Mothgirl is just selling through other channels and the one she recommends is Starboards shopping mall in Hollywood sailing sims.

On good thing about the Fizz is that you can start at a newbie level and work your way up to competition level but setting the boats different mods. Two days ago Marlia had never held in a rudder now she is the skipper when we are sailing together, thanks to the Fizz.

Another great thing with the Fizz 3 is that you can adopt the look to your own taste. So of course my dingie have a bird motif on the genacker sail.

Well, I think my love got inspired a bit.... but maybe let the it all go overboard..... juust a tiiiiny little bit. ROFL!!!

She argues that she will win the races because either the competition will be hanging over board throwing up or they will laugh to death. LOL

Yes, I know she is just teasing me... (look at the genacker here) and if that was not enough that crazy woman really took the full step into madness.... I just love her!

What can I say... she is at least not a coward.. LOL

Later that night we went dancing at the Icehotel with Jesper and Ewa. Marlia was persistent and arrived like this and strangely enough they started talking to us.

Songs from the woods... where I live

2009-11-11T22:24:00.006+01:00

I had a long trainride back home tonight and I spent most on the time on Youtube.... ;o)
I cant keep this clip from you from one of my favourite bands. I have played in band most of my life and cheated on lots of different instruments, so I know a bit about how hard this piece is to handle...

I really love this album "Songs from the Woods" and this is maybe not the best song from it... but I cant help admiring the talent and the skill of these incredible musicians on display here.

Hmm.. now I got an idea... I get back to that in the morning... I really need a good nights sleep. While waiting for that.... think about the tunes that has been most important for you, not necessary the best ones, but the most important ones in your life.

Hmmm, maybe I need to balance that old stuff with some more modern things... with Gordian Knot.

If you think it is a bit hard at the beginning please just wait... this music is full of contrasts, emotions, panic, romance, hysteria and just fantastic music...

This music is perfect form me in my current chaotic condition... one moment relaxed and in harmony and the next in total panic.

Well no photage here so you just better close your eyes and turn up the volume.... kisses

Sailing in Fruit Islands

2009-11-10T12:01:00.001+01:00

I am on the train at the moment and as the bandwidth is rather low I cant do anything more useful then to write another post here.... ;o)

Sailing is one of the great things I enjoy in SL. OK... I have to many boats and yachts I admit that. Most of them are nothing to write home about, but the masterpieces from Trudeau Yacht or the more fantastic.

The creator is Jacqueline Trudeau and she has a wonderful blog at http://trudeauyachts.wordpress.com/ go there and read more about her amazing creations. I have two of them the Trudeau Twenty that is very easy to use as it is below the magic limit of 31 prims. This is what she writes about this in the Q&A section of her blog:

Q: Ride??? Attach??? What’s the deal with all these parts? Why can’t I just rez a boat, climb in and sail it?
A: Currently SL limits physics enabled objects, like vehicles, to a maximum of 31 linked prims. On top of that, each riding avatar counts as one linked prim so that pretty much limits the detail a modeler is able to put into their vehicle. However, prims that are worn by an avatar do not count against that limit. So we made the vehicle part (including the scripts, sails and avatar riding positions) of the boat well under 31 prims and the appearance part well over. Just think of that part of the boat like any other avatar attachment, such as shoes or prim hair. If you really just want a one piece vehicle, we make and sell those as well.

Here Marlia is doing her first tour at the rudder in our Trudeau Twenty. Just by the motor on the first tour to get a feeling for whats happening. The sails can be the next step. You can let anybody be the skipper and change a lot of settings by command, a hud or by editing a notecard. Just read the instruction notecard, wear the hud and sit at the rudder and of you go. The finer details you can learn as you go.... ;o)

We also have the much bigger Trudeau Trucordia that is 217 prims. It is more complicated to use as you have too wear one part and sit on the other part because of that 31-prim limit. It is a really beautiful yacht but I find that I tend to use the smaller one because of that problem. There are some yachts in between in size but still below that limit and I think I will get one of those in due time.

Out here in the archipelago of Fruit Islands they have regular free sailing courses for total newbies every week. So it is very easy to get over the first steep steps out here. New is also the Mango Yacht club that is arranging competitions and regattas.

Just a while ago the big J-Classic competition was in Fruit Islands for a regatta. So great!

There are all kinds of sailing competitions in SL and for very different boat types and I will cover that in a future post here as a plan a small series of posts about sailing in SL.

Totally exhausted after the first attempt.... Nice to relax in the wonderful waters of Tangelo ;o)

Bentham forest

2009-11-08T11:41:00.006+01:00

We went for a photosession in the amazing Bentham forest. A bit late you might think.... well concerning Halloween you are right... but if you you dont want people in every image the timing is right ;-)

(please just click on the photos if you want to see them in their full glory)

I love the attention to details here. For me it is just beautiful and reminds me of some of the wilder places home in Sweden. The scary thing I don't get at all... I just love woods!

Everywhere you have all these beautiful sceneries.

Ok... I have changed the environment settings a bit... just to get a a little better lights.

Suddenly my favourite witch sneaks up on me from behind.... scary huh?

This is a bit more scary though. It is from the crystal cave and this Japanese woman have a really nice hat in my opinion... ;-) How funny... LOL.

Oh... I almost forgot... I found a way here to improve my photos a bit further... curious are you? Well you have to learn be patient my friend... because that will be the next chapter in my series about High quality photography in Second Life. Ahh... yes... I know it is hard to wait... ;-)

Best love song

2009-11-07T23:09:00.005+01:00

Well this is my love song.... to love and to life..

This is so strong for me that I will either cry or crack..... no other way for a sensible man ;-)

HiQ photography in SL, Part 4: Edit with Gimp, the cheap way

2009-10-29T21:22:00.010+01:00

Many people don't have the funds necessary for buying Photoshop and end up using a cracked (and possibly infected) illegal copy or some really bad editing solutions.

However there is a completely legal and really good quality alternative available for you. This article tries to recreate the workflow I showed in an earlier article about working with Photoshop but with this alternative instead.

The Gimp is a free (as in no cost) open source tool very similar to Photoshop and you can do almost anything you can with Photoshop in in a similar way. It also has the same kind of tools and is organized in the same way. With the proper training you can achieve the same quality with a program that costs...... nothing more than your effort.

There are versions for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux and translations exists for many languages... like my native Swedish (and that you will see in the screenshots below). You can download it here:
http://www.gimp.org/

If you are used to Photoshop you will find the the default shortcuts rather different. However that is no problem as you can set your own shortcuts for almost anything in the program. Look above to see the menu for that. I find it easy to search for a tool in that settings instead of digging for it. I have set my most used Photoshop shortcuts to be the same in The Gimp like:

Resize: alt + cmd + S
Layers: cmd + L
Contrast: cmd + K
Saturation: cmd + U
Brush tool: B
Crop tool: C
and so on......

In the rest of the article I will use those shortcuts above, but if you do not change them they will be completely different.

My workflow is like this:

1. Open the file in The Gimp.

Never make a photo bigger without special tools for that, because it will degrade horrible. There are plugins and other tools to do that because it needs to interpolate the new pixels, but these tools are rather expensive. So best is only to keep pictures at the original size or to make them smaller.

2. Start with crop. Shortcut = C. Hold down and drag with the mouse to get an even square if you plan to post at flickr, because square photos looks best there. Press enter when you have the right size of your crop.

If you plan to use them in your profile... have a look at this page for details: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Limits

3.Look under Textures on that page, for the correct proportions for picks and profile. There is video for showing how to do that in photoshop. Look at the video a bit down on that page.

4. Set the levels if the important part are too dark. Ctrl-L (CMD-L on Mac) opens the Levels tool. Often there is no info staples at the rightmost part like in this image. The photo is badly exposed in photo language. If so drag the rightmost handle to the left until it touches the staples of black.

I hope you see the difference between those two images. I happens quite often that SL photos gets this way and are wrongly exposed in my opinion. Now you know the trick to fix that... ;-)

Sometimes you have staples to the right but it still looks to dark, then you can try to move the middle handle to get it to look right.

5. I think it is almost always necessary to increase saturation in the images from SL.
Ctrl-U (CMD-U on the Mac) opens the Saturation tool. For me it is often +15 increase or so.

As you see I have a Swedish version of The Gimp, but I think you will be able to find the right spot in your version of The Gimp despite that.

6. Make the final size. I normally choose 800 or 600 pixel at the longest size, that works good on Flickr and blog sites. If it is already smaller then that's so... just leave it. Never make a photo bigger without special tools. Use the shortcuts CMD-ALT-S on Mac (I think it is Ctrl-alt-S on PC).

Now be sure that the link tool (marked by the arrow here) is turned on so that the proportions dont gets changed. Then enter 700 in the example above in the field with the highest number).

7. Sharpen it. This is always the final step and must be done after the photo is in its final size. Use the built-in unsharp mask filter for this. There are also some more advanced and free plugins for The Gimp and you will find them on the links above.

Settings: Amount=0.50 (if you get white borders like sugar crust at hight contrast areas, then lower to 0.4), Radius= 5.0, Treshold= 0...... thats it.

8. Save as: PNG (Use only JPG if you have to make them smaller in filesize for some reasob).

Voila! You are done....

Now the next time you are using the free Gimp instead of expensive Photoshop or some really bad tool... think a nice thought about me... ;o)

Ben

Moving.... to a new paradise and escaping misery

2009-10-26T11:21:00.005+01:00

When real life is as miserable as it is right now for me, it is absolutely wonderful to be able to escape into the paradise we are creating for ourselves here in Tangelo. Things are really beginning to shape up and we have now done the waters and some planting. So much fun work still needs to be done...

Marlia bought us a new great spa instead of a normal house. I always have problems manoeuvring in small spaces so this kind of open places are perfect for me. If we want privacy we have the oriental palace in the sky.

There are so many great details in that palace, look at the frosted glass in the photo below... I am such a freak for details... ;-)

At the moment Marlia and I are participating in the great Fairy Tale hunt. That is so much fun as you get to see so many new places and receive so many nice gifts. Marlia is miles ahead of me... on one of the places she got this great drawing table. Just perfect for her..... she is a real drawing freak.

You can see the a part of the great Spa in the background here. The amazing woman there in the foreground is truly admirable for accepting moody me and my swings.

Another view of the spa... looks nice... huh?

Well... I couldnt let go of that thought...

2009-10-22T10:23:00.001+02:00

So we decided to move from Otherland to Fruit islands when we found the perfect place out there... ;o)
So perfect, no lag, lots of prims, great sailing, beautiful surroundings and some really wonderful people. I even met some people I knew when I lived in the New England sims out in Nantucket, back in the "old days". It seems people are moving from Nantucket to Fruit island....

This is what our islands looked like we we found them. Totally empty without any vegetation but lying in just the perfect place.

The islands needed almost no terraforming so the minor adjustments was done rather swiftly and then we can concentrate and what we would like the place out there to be like. Even if we have the palace in the sky we need a small house done here and the proper vegetation for all the animals and birds...

Here the terraforming is done and we just have the big yacht there for sailing around among those beautiful waters and participation in all the amazing events out there.

We will move out there rather gradual as we still have the old place in Otherland and need to figure out how to plan things. There we have three different layers in the sky. The oriental palace, the photo studio in a Holodeck and the building place and Xstreet shop. Maybe there is a better way to organize all that... ;-)

Exploring Fruit Island

2009-10-14T15:33:00.001+02:00

Fruit islands is an amazing part of the sailing world in SL

This amazing tropical world consists of more than 70 connected sims. There is over 250 islands for rent and as they are rather small there is lots of free water for sailing.

Fruit islands is one of the communities that arranges the big regattas in SL and as the sim crossing often are quite smooth, it is really perfect for sailing or flying out there.

But besides all that residential areas there is also more than 30 public open places that are just waiting for exploration.

Below this wonderful lighthouse a beautiful under water world unfolds. Take the sub there if you get tired of all the swimming because the reef is enormous and continues over several sims.

So many places to explore in this amazing creation. This is from one of the secret cave, with fishing Herons and all. I just love it!

But beware of the traps if you bring your beloved like I did.... ;-)

At least if your loved one are as playful as mine is...... LOL

HiQ photography in SL, Part 5: Environment settings

2009-10-14T08:14:00.004+02:00

In the three earlier parts I have tried to describe the things in a photo you can affect with settings in the SL client or in the afterwork in Photoshop. But sometimes you can also change the condition for a photo to make it look better.

1. The aspect, view of angle, composition are traditional photographic subjects that you can read about in any book or web site about photography. I will in a later post try to spread some lights over the SL specific things here.

2. Environment, lightning and so on. There are two different aspects to this. First you can add artificial lightning with lamps and other lightsources in world. The next post will cover that and some neat tools for making better portraits.

But now i will try to show how you can affect a photo by using the environment editor i the SL client. Have a look at the photo below:

It is a nice photo of an octopus from the great underwater world in the Fruit sims. However you cant se much of the surroundings because of the light of that time of SL day. That is an easy fix.. ;-).

Just bring up the environment editor in your SL client. Use the World menu -> Environment -> Environment editor, and you get the little windows in the top of these images.

The top left slider just changes the time of day. Just try to drag it and adjust so you get the right color and direction of light. In this example I also changed the Water fog slider to the lower right side of the window and the Water color. Just experiment until you get the right impression for your purpose.

First steps in scripting....

2009-10-12T14:04:00.003+02:00

I started out a few weeks ago to learn about scripting. I am an experienced programmer in RL even if it was a few years ago since i did any major work. I have experience with C, C++, PHP and so on so i guess that makes the understanding a bit more easy. But LSL works a bit different and I had some problems getting the hang of it until i found some great resources. That is why I thought somebody else might be interested in them.

First of all:

This is the College of scripting, music and science.... the best starting point for learning about scripting. They have the walls full of very pedagogic and instructive screens. Look at this for example:

Be prepared that the center is huge with many floors.... Marlia bought one of the books there and has rezzed it on our building platform for easy refeerence when we are experimenting, building and scripting. So nice of her... ;-)

I also found a few places with free and open scripts. For me it as been useful to try those scripts, try to understand them an maybe use them as a starting point for my own creations.

Free script library is maybe the best place to try.

But SL free script library is also useful. Some of the scripts are the same but some are unique.

Lastly I bought a PDF-book on Xstreet to read on all my travels. Here you find some info about it:

Introduction to Linden Scripting Language for Second Life

HiQ photography in SL, Part 3: Edit in Photoshop

2009-10-11T11:52:00.002+02:00

If you have read part 1 and 2 and then done some experimentation you do now have a lot of photos in your snapshot folder. If you followed my advise you have selected a few golden ones of them and move those to the folder named selected. For this workshop I will use one of my images from The lost garden of Apollo and first I will use Photoshop CS3 for demonstrating the workflow. But Photoshop is very expensive so I will soon show how all this can be done in the Open Source (and free of cost) tool called The Gimp.

1. Open the file in photoshop.

2. Never make a photo bigger without special tools for that, because it will degrade horrible. There are plugins for Photoshot to do that because it needs to interpolate the new pixels, but these tools are rather expensive. So best is only to keep pictures at the original size or to make them smaller.

3. Start with crop. Hold down the shift-key and drag with the mouse to get an even square if you plan to post at flickr, because square photos looks best there.

If you plan to use them in your profile... have a look at this page for details: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Limits

Look under Textures for the correct proportions for picks and profile. There is video for showing how to do that in photoshop. Look at the video a bit down on that page.

4. Set the levels if the importent part are too dark. Ctrl-L (CMD-L on Mac) opens the Levels tool. Often there is no info staples at the rightmost part like in this image. The photo is badly exposed in photo language. If so drag the rightmost handle to the left until it touches the staples of black.

I hope you see the difference between those two images. I happens quite often that SL photos gets this way and are wrongly exposed in my opinion. Now you know the trick to fix that... ;-)

Sometimes you have staples to the right but it still looks to dark, then you can try to move the middle handle to get it to look right.

5. I think it is almost always necessary to increase saturation in the images from SL.
Ctrl-U (CMD-U on the Mac) opens the Saturation tool. For me it is often +15 increase or so.

As you see I have a Swedish version of Photoshop, but I think you will be able to find the right spot in your version of Photoshop despite that.

6. Make the final size. I normally choose 800 pixel at the longest size, that works good on Flickr and blog sites. If it is already smaller then that's so... just leave it. Never make a photo bigger without special tools. Use the shortcuts CMD-ALT-S on Mac (I think it is Ctrl-alt-S on PC).

Now be sure that the link tool (marked by the arrow here) is turned on so that the proportions dont gets changed. Then enter 800 in the field with the highest number).

7. Sharpen it. This is always the final step and must be done after the photo is in its final size. I have a plugin for this. It is called Photokit sharpener but it is a bit expensive. For my RL photos i need this but for SL the built-in unsharp mask is good enough.

Settings: Amount=300 - 400 (if you get white borders like sugar crust at hight contrast areas, then lower to 300), Radius= 0,3, Treshold= 0...... thats it

8. Save as: PNG (Only use JPG if you have to make them smaller).

Voila! You are done....

Portraits is one of my favourite things...

2009-10-08T22:30:00.001+02:00

Well you know by now that I like taking photos in SL. The natural creations of landscapes, water, birds and flowers are one of my main objects, but I cant deny that portraits is a real passion too.

Marlia is my favourite model of course... it is impossible to fail with a portrait of her. In an upcoming post here I will try to explain how I take a photo like this, what inworld tools I have used and how I did the after work in Photoshop on this portrait of this amazingly beautiful woman. I am so happy she choose to be with me here!

But I also want to show some other portraits I have done in the past, as we plan to open a photo studio and do portraits as a job in SL. Both Marlia and I like this very much but it is just for fun and learning about that kind of things too ;-)

You can also see in this series of photos that my techniques has improved during these months.
The newest photos on top and then they get older further down the page.

If you want me to take your portrait just contact me inworld and I will be happy to try my best....

HiQ photography in SL, Part 2: File formats and saving

2009-10-08T17:59:00.002+02:00

In part 1 we looked at the settings in the client for getting the highest possible quality of the photos. Now we have to get them on the harddrive for further work. I take my photos using the shortcut shift-cmd-S on my Mac. On the PC you will use the shortcut Ctrl-Shift-S. Look in the image below how to set the default settings in the menu for what will happend when you take a new snapshot using this shortcuts.

The important part is in the red ring in the top "Save to your harddrive". Click on the down arrow to the right of the Save button and then click on the "Save as" button (marked with the lower red ring in the image above).

Here you want to select a unique folder for your SL snapshots. Believe or not but my folders are named Images -> SL -> Snapshots and here all my photos will end up when I take them. The important part here is to use a non-destructive non-compression format. OK your files will be bigger but so much better so DON'T USE JPG's. I have to stress how important this is for the quality of your photos as if you import then in Photoshop or the Gimp for example, edit them, and save them back in JPG the will be compressed (and partly destroyed) first when you save them form SL, then a second time when you save them from Photoshop or The Gimp, and lastly a third time when you upload them to SL, Flickr or your Blog. Every compression to jpg destroys your photo a little bit, how much is depending on the compression settings. So don't use a destructive compression format until the last action in your workflow. I prefer to use the png format. In the image below you can see this settings in the red ring.

You will probably think these files are a bit big, especially if you take lots of snapshots inworld. I am a photographer in RL too so I have the habit to take huge amount of photos. In RL they are in RAW format (huge) and in SL they are in png format (a lot bigger than jpg's). So the important thing here is to be decisive and select the few really great ones and be cold hearted enough to erase all the others. When I have done a photo session I move the few good ones to a folder named Selected and then erase all others in the Snapshot folder.

HiQ photography in SL, Part 1: Settings in SL

2009-10-07T17:43:00.003+02:00

I have been posting my in world photos on Flickr for quite some time now. I have received a few questions about how I get the quality that my photos show, so I will share my settings and workflow in a few posts here. Hopefully it can be of some help for somebody out there struggling with this.

Most of the knowledge about the in world settings in the client can be found in Torley Lindens superb article on the Wiki and in his instruction videos also on the Wiki. (search for advanced snapshot)

This first post on the subject will show how to do the settings in the client inworld and I will later post about how I treat the photos before posting them.

Below you will find some snapshots on how to do the settings in the client. Dont worry if my screen looks a little bit different than yours. I am using the Emerald client instead of Linden labs default client, mainly because I really like the short command in it like "gth 701" = go to hight 701 meters or "tph" = teleport home.

1. Enable the advanced menu if you have not done so already.
Press Ctrl-Alt-D on PC or Opt-Ctrl-D on Mac.

2. Turn on high resolution snapshot in the advanced menu (see image above). This saves the photos with 4 times higher resolution to your computer and gives you a lot more headroom for crop, sharpening and other adjustments in The Gimp or Photoshop for example

3. Open the graphics tab in the Preferences and set graphics settings to max (if your computer can handle it). See the red ring in the upper part in the image below. If you have problems with this try to lower the max drawing distance to lets say 128 meters. I normally use a Macbook Air and I can only use these setting in low lag Sims or when I have rezzed completely.

4. Change the hardware settings. In the image above you see a red ring in the lower part of the image. Click on the Hardware settings button to open the window below. Click in the Anistropic Filtering and change the Antialiasing to 16 times. Both these settings gives less jagged images and smother drawing at a distance. On my computer I can use these setting all the time in very low lag Sims, but normally i have to switch them on when I am about to take photos.

I have some very vague plans to implement a quick switch setting for these setting in my very own version of the Emerald or Slowglobe clients.... well the future will tell if that ever happend ;-)

Lost Garden of Apollo

2009-10-07T14:50:00.003+02:00

This is such a beautiful place we found recently. Marlia and I do a lot of exploring trying to find the most amazing places in here. We love to stroll around, take photos and publish them on Flickr. She is so talented at finding oneliners that makes her photos stand out while I am fixed on the beauty of things. I guess that's typical male... we are so much into the visual side of things. Just have a look at Marlia and you know what I mean... ;-)

All over Apollos Garden there are wonderful creations of biological objects like flowers, trees and birds. Below I just show two different flowers we found there. But you find so many more at the Lost Garden of Apollo.

Creating textures

2009-10-07T14:29:00.001+02:00

When you review creations people have done it is often the textures that gives the strongest first impression. It is possible to find all kinds of free textures in world but often they don't have that punch or uniqueness that distinguish your creation from others.

So when I set out to do my slideshow tool I was searching for nice free frames all over the place but without big success. I am sure they are there but I was not able to find them... ;-)
(Harbingers haven , see picture above, might be a good place to look)

Instead I discovered this magnificent tool for creating unique textures from texture settings in a great library. It is a tool called Filter Forge and you can run it on both Mac and PC for creating all those marvellous textures. Of course there is a tile mode for perfect and smooth big patterns.

It is not a free program even if you can run the demo for a month... but they offer large discount all the time and I could buy the basic version for about 25 $. I really recommend this tool and so does Mr Torley Linden. (You find his demo here just search for Filter forge)

I have used this programs for creating textures for armour, roofs, floors, frames, oriental carpets, bamboo walls, tiles and so on... you get it I guess.... ;-)

The first creation for sale

2009-10-06T22:40:00.005+02:00

I really like to learn about how things work here in SL. I needed a good viewer for all my photos so I could make slideshows and present them for others. When I didn't find what I was looking for I decided to try to make one myself... ;o)

I didn't realise how hard that would be in advance.... luckily... Two main obstacles. First to get the image on one side on a basic prim and not on all other sides and then to have it to fade smoothly into black. The second problem was to let the users make configuration without having to edit the script it self.

At last I was finished yesterday and decided to put it up on Xstreet for sale to others just to get experience form that side of SL as well. In due time we will set up a small shop at our home in Cousine just to get that experience as well....

However I doubt very strongly that anybody ever will buy this slideshow... but we sure had a alot of fun creating it... ;o)

And wait until you see Marlias chairs... they are just amazing.

My adventures

2009-10-06T17:53:00.001+02:00

I have decided to start this blog to share my adventures from the second life of mine. Since early spring I have posted al lot of my photos from SL on flickr (see them at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ben_byron/) and that is great experience for me as I am a keen photographer in real life and really like that in SL too. However I have missed the possibility of keeping a thread between the photos and a discussion of my thought's in Flickr. That is why I decided to try this format as a compliment to the Flickr postings.

A few words about me.... I am a Swedish man in my best years, not a teenager and not retired but somewhere in between. I live in the coutryside in southern Sweden since a long time but was born in the Swedish capital Stockholm.

Second life has totally fascinated me since I tried it for the first time almost a year ago. I am almost obsessed in trying to understand as much of it as possible. That understanding includes the techniques behind the creation, how to build and script things... but also to understand the social interaction at work here. I will be honest and say that totally I low the dark sides in there but that I am totally fascinated by the creativity at work an all the friendly humanistic spirit of so many more.

Even though I am Swedish and English is my second language I have decided to write this blog in English to support the international spirit in here. I support cultural differences and all thoses things, that is great, but I really hate nationalism and all the bad things that follows when you think you are superior in some way. We are all the same species, sharing just one planet, for the future of our kids and all other living beings...... that is a huge responsibility!!!

Well, I guess you think I am to serious..... but don't worry... I like to party and dance too... but if it comes to priorities... ;o)