The details makes the differance

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

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!

My first Machinima film!

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)

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