I have done some more experiments with Second Life sculpties from the archipelis exporter. This time I used me as a subject rather than poor old Roo đŸ™‚ This is all part of some tests about moving various types of things from place to place including into our internal metaverse.
Now I am no artist(I guess you noticed), but I felt quite intrigued by my results and the use of sculpties to do it. Bear in mind this was a very very quick experiment. In fact it too longer to process the video than it did to create and import the ‘head’.
As the object is made of multiple sculpties it opens up the options. I was going to script it to move around, thats the next little experiment.
Monthly Archives: January 2008
Australian Open Tennis and Fashion Cash Prize in Second Life
Our collegues and friends Gizzy Electricteeth, Pipe Hesse and their cat Linden down in Australia are running a public build of the Australian Open Tennis right now. Whilst British hopes are dashed alread with Andy Murray getting knocked out in the first round they are are still very high with respect to the Aus Open in SL. Regular readers will know the links between what we do and tennis. IBM sponsors and provides the sites for the major grand slam tennis events around the world.
Wimbledon 2 years ago was where we cut our teeth in seeing how we could represent the tennis data in a metaverse. This was done privately. Pipe and Gizzy then built a massive stadium for the Aus Open which very much expanded the ealry wimbledon proof of concept. Last year it was private though. Then this yeat in June we swapped places again. Taking and adding to Pipe and Gizzy’s work to create the public Wimbledon 07 event. This was an experiement in how people would repsond and we kept it small an intimate but staffed during the live event. So now we are back again with the Australian Open and they awesome stadium build on Slam1 is open.
In order to keep things fresh they are having an official fashion contest for all you couture experts out there in Second Life.
We dont often do things that are press releases, but in this case I am pasting this in here to help you all out there.
This year, in conjunction with its sponsorship of the Australian Open
tennis, IBM is holding a ‘Couture on the Court’ competition to find out
who can create the best avatar tennis outfit in Second Life.
The winner will be voted by the SL residents and the first prize is
$250,000 Linden Dollars.
The top 10 eligible entrants will be awarded prizes – which will be
amounts in Linden Dollars.
Entry is open to any avatar created before Jan 8 2008 however
eligibility to recieve the Linden Dollar prizes is restricted to those
who fill in the full details of the entry form.
Entry, voting, and the full terms and conditions of the competition are
on IBM’s Australian Open island in SL – which is public this year (for
the first time). SL URL is
http://slurl.com/secondlife/slam1/201/239/24/.
Entries close 12am Jan 21, 2008 AEDT. Voting is open between 12am Jan
22, 2008 and 12am Jan 24, 2008. The winner will be announced on Friday
Jan 25 2008 .
Molecules and supercomputers in Second Life
It is strange as we talk about this project all the time, yet as Ugotrade was looking for a link to it on eightbar it turns out we had not covered it well enought. So here we go.
We have said before about taking things from one place and regerenating them in another to find interesting ways to visualize data and system architectures and workflows in a business.
This project by our collegues in Watson took the result of some complex protein folding on a blue gene supercomputer and then injected the result of those calculations on the structure of a rhodopsin molecule into a scripted object in Second Life which then built a huge representation of that molecule.
The guys have an interview here over on SLNN.com Rez Tone and Zha Ewry are the main contacts.
The interesting thing is that as well as being a scientific visualization it has a place as an art installation and a though provoking place to gather. Inventiably when people gather there they tend to ask so what is this then? This leads to much deeper conversations about life sciences and supercomputing at IBM.
I tend to use this little clip of me sitting in the molecule to deomstrate the scale of this. Remember its all generated, not a manual build.
Data portability – 08 is the year?
Last year I kept using a “catchy” phrase Web 2 is Web Do which still stands. This year it would seem that data portability with all the talk of openid, Scoble and facebook, plaxo etc combined with the conversations in October about virtual world data interchange means that this year the phrase will have to be about migration and interoperability on social media of all sorts. Being able to have the stuff you own and need where you are when you need it.
“08 is about how to migrate” or migr8te or even…..
we may have to become Migr8tebar đŸ™‚
I suspect it will not happen to quite the level anyone expects though technically moving data around and providing services is not overly tricky the complexity lies in the social fabric too. If I move to a place, 2d, 3d, 4d etc. How do I determine what I need or would like with me. How does what I take with me alter those around me. e.g. friend links in one arena may not be appropriate in another. Equally I think we might surprise ourselves by what happens when/if things do become more portable.
This ability to access things we already have will need to spread to the virtual worlds, in particular when used in a business of consumer context. Being able to re-use existing web applications and sites within a virtual world adding the benefit of avatar interactions will make a huge difference in a mass market.
That is less about data portability, but does introduce data access. It does happen in some of the virtual worlds, but we tend not to see embedded web browsing the massive public worlds. There are some security implications obviously but ot use the Second Life Parlence “web of a prim” would make a massive difference if it can be solved safely.
And now a Rhino! This time a sculpty
It seems to be safari week here on eightbar. The guys over at archipelis told me about their new sculpty exporter for second life. They have some sample files here. I wrote about Archipelis a little while ago as it is such a simple way to draw and create complex objects I really enjoyed using it. Now that there is the potential to create sculpties, and quite complex ones at that it has got even better.
I created the rhino from the sample whilst I sort out my own models just to see it work. I think you will all agree it is very good.
UPDATE***** If you want to save the upload cost and own a sample rhino I have put one on ONREZ
I was showing it to a few people and Patchouli Woollahra asked me to rez a hippo. That of course reminded Roo and I of the Flight of the Conchords.Hiphopapottamus vs. Rhymenocerous
More metaverse animals, this time a zebra a clever one
This video by Nick Wilson is doing the rounds. A free open source enterprise style toolkit for creating a Second Life presence. Of course I have not seen it, I have no idea what it can do in any detail, but as Nick has been a rising force in virtual worlds he knows his stuff and what is missing. He has closed metaversed and moved onto Clever Zebra with Onder Skall and Lordfly Digeridoo
So, lets see how this one goes its an exciting prospect.
So we have electric sheep, a mysterious turtle with Wello Horld and now a Clever Zebra. Its all good
If you thought that was good look at this
The last post showed some of the work Johnny Lee is showing with wiimotes, this one is with projectors. Calibrating to a surface regardless of angle and in some case shape (watch it until the end).
It seems that the various URL’s including http://www.johnnylee.net are currently dead probably due to the insane amount of traffic generated by being in the top 30 on youtube!
The other thing to note is that IBM has its everywhere display a commercial way of targetting projection onto surfaces and dealing with scale etc.
The original research site is here, the brochure is here and a recent article in fortune, around retail is here
I have always wanted to be able to project things, it woudl be great to have a small device like a PDA or smartphone be able to project onto a table or wall to show someone something.
I know we have an everywhere display installation in Zurich, it is there with the other project I have a soft spot for, Blueeyes. This is a camera and sensors that senses your mood happy, sad etc. Back in 2000 we were trying to get that installed in out UK innovation centres as part of our time and emotion project. using clever sensors to help instrument buildings and capture the atmosphere in order to be able to represent it elsewhere. An ongoing theme as you will have noticed with the metaverse work and things like Wimbledon đŸ™‚
If I can find some everywhere display footage I will try and post it on Youtube or see if IBMtv have any
Using the Wiimote for tracking
For a little while I have been trying to find the time to give the wiimote a try as a PC interface. Roo had some things things running last year. Today as the first day back at work 2 people Gareth and Tim both pointed me to some youtube videos by Johnny Chung Lee.
His website has all the code and instructions you need, but I am putting this video on here because I think it is stunning.
1. Its a great idea, 2. its very well presented yet homebrew, 3. It gets the effect across so well.
So now if we combine ArtTag and the other camera based thing what on earth will we come up with?