Four Years of Soror Nishi

It was four years ago, while showing some of my oil paintings in Lostwithiel, Cornwall, that I got to hear about Second Life and how I could try and sell my paintings online. I soon found out that, better than that I could actually create some of my attempts at portraying archetypal Jungian images, in 3D.

..and so began a long process of learning...

This first image, by the talented photographer Lem Skall shows the build I did for Orange, French Telecom..





...and his image of a sea stack I made on my own beach in Lifstaen...




...and the floating shop I built there where my trees and plants were for sale.





Mab gave me the first chance to do a whole sim of my work.. at Magoo





..filmed by the talented ColeMarie Soleil





At IBM I had an exhibition, called Tree of Trees....and made this slide show...




Then, earlier this year I made my first real machinima of the work that I had done in InWorldz...

I have been helping out with content on a proper film, Vlogger, but that will not be edited before June ... and it's NDA stuff, so I'll have to wait to tell about that...

My machinima of Transubstantiation is still awaiting some music, so, until then, for those who haven't seen it (it closes tonight, Saturday)...




..a few images...




...and now, courtesy of Jeri Rahja, Twisted Isle is my current work in progress over on InWorldz...




...this is the first glimpse...

You'll be seeing a lot more of this build when it gets somewhat nearer completion.

The future, well, I could do with better software, Final Cut X Pro comes out in June at a much more reasonable price.... and zBrush, well, I would need a little windfall for that. If the current worlds we create in don't provide a better resolution in the coming years, I may seriously consider Eve Online, even if I'm not BattleStar Hero material .... we need better graphics for the next step ... maybe .... old fashioned paper and paint work for me too.

I'm not gonna wax lyrical about Content Creation, the hours and energy I have put into 3D worlds more than eloquently expresses my love for the medium ...

...and the help, support and love my friends have provided goes without saying.

:)))

The Wedding

Coffee and philosophy don't mix.

I nearly put my socks in the dishwasher this morning while making coffee as I was mulling over the Alchemical significance of The Wedding, specifically Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz....

On a more mundane scale I was pleased to see that Kate wasn't wearing a terrible creation like Diana's wedding dress, an outfit so poorly designed it could only have been worn in the 80's, but the Principle Bridesmaid Pippa was the best dressed person there... well, it's all a matter of taste [I feel strange agreeing with The mail on this]. My fashion sense isn't mainstream enough for me to even blog about it .... I'll leave that to the Normal People.

Nor was I musing about why Harry hadn't got a decent AO and walked like a noob ... I was musing on the trees.

For those of you who have escaped seeing the TV or newspaper images, the Abbey was decorated, in part, with trees...[eight 20 foot maple trees] to very good effect. The Tree, both Philosophical and natural was inspirational, instrumental, in the design of the load-bearing columns of this, and probably most, buildings..... but introducing them again into this most prim-heavy of structures was a triumph of the subconscious.



No matter what conscious reasons we have for employing an archetype in our everyday existence, the subconscious which is both older and wiser than the conscious mind is the instigator of design inspiration ("making decisions").

The act of bringing the Tree into the House has it's origins in pagan tradition, even preceding the Alchemical era, as the Tree housed gods in a pantheistic world view ..... still maintained by many to this day.




So, the whole effect was to stir both pagan and Alchemical images in a day devoted to the synthesis of prince and princess, watched by millions. The universal power of this archetype (the Royal Wedding) is confirmed factually by the number of people who watched it, by the power this still holds in the collective unconscious, and always will do.

It wasn't a day to explore the problem with the institution of marriage, namely that the Individual can get smothered by the needs/demands of The Couple.

The need for Antithesis to balance the Synthesis on the path to self-knowledge is a chat to be had after the Great Romantic Love PR machine is finished and gone to bed.

:))

Linden Lab Shake It Up.

In an effort to convince the world that Second Life is a great place for intellectuals, artists and builders alike, Linden Lab today makes it possible for your thighs to wobble as much in SL as they might do in RL.

“We figured you don’t really need Chat or Search if you have great tits” said a spokesman.

Anticipating an influx of noobs with boobs the Welcome Areas were awash with thugs, as usual, and bloggers waiting to get this fresh flesh as it arrived.

Said one noob “now I have real boobs I will stay here forever and spend loads of money”, so that just goes to show... the Lab was right.

Nipple manufacturers, however, were not happy bunnies...” This is another business LL has wrecked” said one. [prim nipples won’t stay in the right place from now on].

Both concurrency, the economy, and and lag are expected to now improve, and the Labs share price took a bounce today as market sentiment greeted this latest technological innovation.

A Wall Street analyst put it this way..”well, it seems like the Boys have taken the technological lead again, no more second place for Second Life. This is a game-changer.”




Both the MarketPlace and transactions were off-line today for a few hours, after the latest rolling restart, while the tech guys played with their tits, an insider told me.....




....and I guess a boob joke is in order....

...but I really can’t be bothered.



:))

Pictures from a Party InWorldz.

Well, I didn't manage to get good shots of everyone, some just turned out crap...sorry...



Mera, Birthday Girl, did manage better with her snaps...here..











I really enjoy going to spontaneous things like that. It was a great night. Witty banter, the stuff dance floors used to be filled with before people drowned out chat with those annoying gestures and sounds like farting whales..... [who thinks any tune is improved by the sound of a bullhorn ... (maybe a few exceptions)]... it was a great gang of people...

Thanks to Jim for the music.

Great way to spend a Fertility Festival night..... tho the rumours are unsubstantiated.....

:))

Blogosphere round-up....

This is a Bunny Free Zone..... [is Bunny Jam actually a Terrine au Lapins?]
Just a little compilation of some stuff you may not have caught this week.


The ongoing testing of Phlox, InWorldz new script engine continues. 67 avatars dancing around on a sim is a sort of record as far as I have heard apart from a one-off University experiment last year sometime. ...more details here.
...and that sort of got me thinking about the new ARC board that Indigo posted about (via Chestnut).
This new scripted board gives a list of local avatars and the number of prims (basically) they are wearing. It strikes me, however, that this is just another DIY system. By that I mean that instead of me being able to wear what I want in SL, the lag being the responsibility of the Boys to sort out, the inference is, like Hamlet's post, that it is us that are responsible.
Don't get me wrong, I am happy to help to un-sabotage the platform/sim, but isn't it down to the Boys to make it possible for me to wear what I want??

...like improve the script engine..??

Anyway, it does seem that the Advertising Revenue is starting to flow, as seen below....



This arrived in my email....[I love this bit..."By accepting our ToS you have agreed to accept emails...etc]



Well, I have always said that Viewer 2 is all about advertising... good luck to them.

I would imagine it will be a long time before their viewer is as popular as Phoenix, and my personal favourite, Imprudence which has just released the latest/last upgrade, 1.4.0 and one I hope to be using for a very long time, in InWorldz if not in SL.
Featuring...

Full sim radar. That’s right, not just the radar in the mini-map. Changes to the mini-map are forthcoming, but in the meantime you can access the new radar window from the Advanced menu > Full Radar

Login and passwords now saved for each grid. No more having to re-enter your first/last/username and password when you login to a different grid! Usernames are also now stored in the grid manager (grids that want to support usernames can enable their entry by adding the boolean “username_compat” to their grid info).

Inspect now shows last owner as well as script and object count (depending upon server performance, this can tricky).

Imprudence now supports SOCKS 5 proxies.

Set your Imprudence tag color. You can change your tag color in Preferences > Advanced. (Only affects what you see on your computer, not what other people see.)

New preferences for color and behavior of particle clouds in Preferences > Advanced > Eye Candy.

Debug Settings are now searchable.


In other news...well, the Cloud had a bit of a thunderstorm.... Amazons Cloud thingy was down and all the eggs that had been put in one basket were offline... for two days, so far, which must have cheesed off more than a few peeps. Full report here.


My own Soror News involves a very nice photo on Karro Lean's blog, here.... and Koinup announcing, in conjunction with MondiVirtuali, that I am Graphic Dreamer of the Week. Thank you all for your kind words.


I had a visit at Transubstantiation (closes on the 30th) of Hexx from Born Again Pagans who may well do a piece of music for my upcoming machinima of the build... Great news.



..and I popped over to Tesco's new Grid, which I believe is gonna be a gambling grid (as the USA won't allow anything so awful to happen online they will probably clean up). It's on OS with Hypergrid enabled, but although they offered me a sim (no money) I am not sure how much I wanna do for free on a grid where there is no security....so, not very impressed.. (no mod skin and shape too, which really annoys me as you may have gathered from earlier posts).



So I took my few items back.... I have started on a new build on one of Jeri's sims in InWorldz at Twisted Isle and it is more than enough to keep me going for now ... and will probably show a few things at Raglan Shire.

Last, but not least, announcement by ColeMarie's new group of a competition for artists...here... Excellent, except for theme, (in my opinion, "The Human Condition" cliche makes me wanna throw up) ... and the cash is real dollars, not Linden Peanuts.


..and remember... "Always look on the bright side of death, even when you draw your terminal breath..".....you'll have that tune stuck in your head now....

So....Happy Spring Festival....

...and Dr. Who!!!

:)))

Blender is Easy ... how to....

...make a mushroom.

Well, as I have said before, a lot of Blender tutorials are far too complicated. In this following video I am going to show you not how Blender works, but how to make something.

No hot keys, no shortcuts, no explanation of techniques you will never use.

Watch the video, pause it when you need to...

First START HERE.

Then watch this video. [I seem to have managed to undelete a bit at the beginning, so it starts a bit messy...sorry. I'm not re-doing it cos it took ages to upload thanks to my ISP which works with steampunk efficiency]



It is 10 minutes long, but, obviously it might take you longer to do. I did, however, forget to tell you to save your work every 10 minutes or so...just in case. If it all goes wrong,...just start again....

Then...this next video shows you how to upload a sculpt map to a Virtual World, many of you already know how to do that.....its a short little clip.



Now, for the texturing, I will do a short video (below)...I have already done a series of workshops for texturing sculpties on this blog..... but none of them fit exaclty what you will need for these mushrooms.....

one... basic advice about textures
two... this is more about putting several textures on one prim, altho...if you don't have Photoshop or Gimp, you could photograph this and use it as a texture...I guess.. and the results of that texture...here.
three this one is about using a test pattern, and also...how to manipulate a sculptie map to use it as a texture....
four all about the colour orange and the spectrum
five is about making a texture seemless, and some messing about in Gimp.

Well, it turned out to be 7 minutes, not that short....you can see the cogs of my brain working at times...but then .. that is how I work.



I would, if I was going to show this mushroom, print off the texture and paint it with water colour paints before I actually showed it to anyone, but this is a tutorial.... the idea is that you get the basics...refinement takes a few years..:))

I am very happy to do a bit of individual tuition inworld for anyone that gets stuck on any of the bits...or..maybe a class if there are enough people who want to go further with it.

have a good Easter...

:)))

Blog stuff..... Negativity and Positivity

Now, it's easy for people, it seems, to mistake criticism for negativity.... and I hate to see naivety heralded as a virtue, or blind acceptance as being superior to a healthy cynicism.

As has been said often enough before, (Brinda comes to mind) "those that are the most critical of Second Life are often is greatest advocates"... or words to that effect. Miso is a case in point in her recent, eloquent post....but...her next post, which we have been discussing will turn all that on its head, being positive and constructive. This doesn't mean that she has had a change of heart, it simply means that the good and the bad of any situation are obvious if you look.

Things are Really Bad in a relationship when you can't even be bothered to criticise, that's The End. Like with Blue M'arse.... I have zero interest in who is CEO, it is dead. Period. Buried. and App'ed. Yawn.

There are things which have happened recently in SL which are crap, in my opinion, and nothing anyone can say will change my mind, poor noobs being called Resident is one (and Despair Names messing up Search even more), and the retrograde steps taken toward 2D interaction (FB and Marketplace) are two that spring to mind.

The mindlessness of voice morphing (being about the last thing anyone I know would put on their wish list when so much else is broken) and the wobbling about of 'bingo wings' (UK slang) and flabby thighs being another...BUT.. I am not the standard user...sooo...I accept that these do nothing to spoil my enjoyment of SL, and ignore them. Rodvik didn't use "chat repair time" for this, another team did it.....

I am, however, very pleased by two things this week, maybe more... coming from the Boys.





This is one....and, although it is missing a black guy, a furry and a dragon, oh, and a robot, it is without doubt a long awaited improvement..... let's hope they are all fully mod, unlike SpotOn3D which was a bit crap.... see blogpost....somewhere...

Now, the second piece of news is...Rodvik. He has actually been talking to people. ...people I know, not the FIC, just Tweeps. That is a sea change. ...as I pointed out before 10,000 people who have spent 3 years in SL have a common knowledge base of 30,000 years... not to be sniffed at....thats a lot of hours.

Now, as Jim reported... here.... if there is one subject that could really, really do with a rethink by the Boys and a U-turn, its the mentor programme, again, often clearly promoted by Brinda, and discussed on Twitter by Rod et al. Some very good comments and more than a little connected to my post... "Can You Save SL?"

LadySakai: @rodvik @InaraPey Good Luck on that one Rodvik. May I recomend mentors? They are amazing in InWorldz. Makes ppl feel right at home
rodvik: @LadySakai @InaraPey Thanks, I will go look see how it works.

Now, I assume that the Boys know exactly what needs to be done in terms of repairing the damage... they know how many patches have patches which are patched, and how threadbare some parts of the code are. Some of the Boys are more aware of it than their bosses, thats why the more modern companies look to, and award, employees for useful suggestions. This has not been the case with LL if Glassdoor is to be believed. That has to change, or they'll end up as a phone app too..... but according to one Linden I spoke to there is the common LL belief that Rod can do it..

What the Boys don't know, and have no way of finding out except thro their user base is how much the other grids are improving the facilities for builders and creators... because most of them can't build a rock.

Hence my ongoing nagging.

That there is a whole range of NPISL (not possible in second life) builds which will draw people to other grids is frankly stoopid.
I detailed ... here ... the details, or some of them in a straight up InWorldz vs. Second Life list. Now, even assuming that the Boys are still lost in their mental trauma of Megaphobia, the ability to hollow a prim to 99%, or size it to 0.001m could be very easily acheived. The limit on linking prims, currently 32 meters is gonna be useless when mesh comes out (the max size is likely to be 64 meters meaning you won't be able to link it to anything...) ...in IWz I can link up to 256 meters, and thousands of prims, not the 256 SL limit.

Anyway....I'll keep plugging away.

The desire to see YadNi's new Mont St Michel took me to Reaction Grid.... so I went...



Unfortunately I couldn't find it. 8 people online and no search, no map, no nothing... I gave up. Made me realise how far InWorldz has come...and again, why a single mentor would have been great. YadNi didn't choose Reaction, he was commissioned. It has a high enough prim count to make it possible, but its buggy to say the least.

Luckily YadNi is building the famous Sagrada Familia by Gaudi on InWorldz, so I'll just have to be patient, and get a guide next time I go to Reaction.

Now, in other news, and slightly at odds with the above talk of better building tools for SL, is a great post by Ener Hax who, as usual has cut through the fog to a clear comment regarding Diva Canto's blog... namely...

"Everything in Unity3D seems designed to support professional scene creations, whereas everything in SL seems designed to support amateur content." [Diva Canto]

Ener rightly points out that it's not the tools, but the content that matters... so...... tools are a minor thing in the Boys eyes, I understand most people come to SL for sex, but my wish list is none the less a relevant topic, and one I must add to..... and you are welcome to, too. If SL don't use it, maybe another grid will.

In other, totally unrelated news.....I had heard, ages ago, about IBM closing grids, so that came as no surprise... the only other bit of news that you might be interested in, seeing how much I have ranted about privacy is this piece on Ars. Maybe the tide is turning for privacy issues.... well, we can but live in hope...

The cynic in me says 'don't hold your breath'...

Have a great week.


:))