Jokaydia’s New Outpost
October 11, 2009 by Cath · Leave a Comment
I am pleased to see that the community of Jokaydia have embraced and developed a new outpost on Reaction Grid, which is run on the OpenSimulator platform. Jo Kay reports on her blog that the community of educators will be meeting up on Sunday evenings;
To visit jokaydia @ Reaction Grid, simply sign up here and follow the instructions here. When you arrive, you’ll find us either by searching the map for jokaydia, or look for a blue landmark button that the Reaction Team have kindly added at Core 1 (the Reaction Grid landing point) t0 direct visitors to our new space.
Whilst Jokaydia will continue to have its main headquarters in second life, the plans to diversify will continue, spurred on by recent events which have caused a stir within the virtual world community.
Making sculpted chair for secondlife part 2
Following on from part 1, in this episode we finish modeling our chair, then bake the sculptmap, texture and preview them in opensim.
Watch it below or watch it on youtube.
Visit Archive.org and download the Ogg video or Avi.
Download Making sculpted chair for secondlife files (191) - 621.52 kB , it contains the blend file, sculptmap and texture used in the tutorial.
![[Attribution 2.5 Australia]](http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/2.5/au/88x31.png "[Attribution 2.5 Australia]")
All files and video released under CC-BY2.5-AU license.
Make sure you visit Teachers Without Borders space on Secondlife to check for upcoming events.
Makehuman and Blender using Ubuntu Hardy
August 26, 2008 by Chris · 3 Comments
MakeHuman is a software application that generates 3D humanoids; similar to Poser or DAZ Studio. It is written in C++ and Aqsis is necessary to produce a render. The MakeHuman team work towards correctness both in programming (using common file formats) and anatomy. MakeHuman makes extensive use of university research in accurately modelling the human form.
I’ve been learning character animation with Blender and found Makehuman. Here’s the MakeHuman to Blender Part I tutorial on Blender Underground, follow the links to part 2 and 3. Also check out the Blender Underground video tutorials. The videos and tutorials are awesome.
There was one problem I had installing Makehuman and that was with Aqsis.
The MakeHuman project uses Aqsis to produce realistic renderings of the human body.
I stuffed around trying to compile from source then found that the problem was a bug with Ubuntu Hardy, Aqsis fix on Ubuntu Hardy.
It is a lot of fun playing with settings. Watch this makehuman video on youtube.
What I found really interesting was when you import your model to blender, I did this using the collada import plugin. I’ll try to explain a little using the screenshot below.
By default the skeleton and armature are placed inside the body, I moved them out of the body to show you. Im sure having the armature already set up will save a lot of time, armature is kind of skeletal structure used for animation. Watch Super3boy’s 20th Blender Tutorial(Using Armatures) on youtube for a good introduction to armatures. The other at the back is the human skeleton. The other thing you can’t see here is the skin, I still have a lot to learn and texturing/skinning the meshes looks difficult. On top of all the 3d stuff theres so much I’m learning about the human body.
The other thing I’m enjoying about learning Blender this time around is the community at blenderartists.org. The way the more experienced guys explain things, the terminology they use is really helping me along and of course being able to use some of their source files is incredibly useful.
Checkout this forum post “Skin with multilayered sss experiments” by Pixelvore, he’s 16 and been using blender for around 3 years, look at all the things he knows and what he can do.
Another gem I found in the forums was “2008 Adelaide Uni Short Film Festival Entry *Winner*“.
I use Blender for making sculpties for secondlife, mainly my gnu head and horns and a few other things. Useful links:
I recently noticed Blender to SL BVH Animation Exporter. Looks really good. Read the tutorial, here’s the update.
I almost forgot, hopefully I can get one of my mates over so we can strap bra’s to our heads and create our perfect woman.
Open source scripts in Second Life
August 18, 2008 by Cath · Leave a Comment
Chris has found a couple of scripts which may be useful to educators and builders in Second Life.
The Linked Prim Animator Lite (LPAL) is a set of open source scripts which enable you to animate linked objects and attachments . LPAL is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation.
Open Babel Fish is an open source babbler, the scripts run on Google Translate and a php script that must be placed on your own web host.
Both scripts can be purchased free from SL exchange. Its really awesome to see such useful tools being released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, so that we can freely modify them to suit our needs and in doing so contribute to the project.
SL Grids Podcast – Adam / Teravus / ZATZAi
May 19, 2008 by Chris · Leave a Comment
Adam Zaius, Teravus Ousley, and ZATZAi discuss the future of the Second Life Grids. With a focus on third party grids like OpenSim, comparing past steps and future plans, capabilities and caveats of the Linden and OpenSim based grids.
Open source tools in Secondlife – Builders Buddy
May 18, 2008 by Chris · 2 Comments
I’ve been thinking about what other useful tools I can introduce to educators in secondlife. Builders Buddy is useful for people interested in building. I put together a small package with a tutorial, you can get a copy of builders buddy in sl. Watch the Builders Buddy video on youtube to see what it is. Probably one of the cool things I didn’t mention was wearing it as an attachment and using it to rez a few seats that would follow you around. Maybe I’ll make a part 2 video that also looks at the configuration options at the top of the main script. People used to proprietary products in sl would probably know of something like this that’s usually called a rez box.
Open source tools in Secondlife – Meta Presenter
I’ve been thinking about useful tools for educators in secondlife. Meta Presenter is a simple, really easy to use tool for giving presentations. Its free and open source. Watch my Meta Presenter demo video on Youtube.
Sculpted prims in Opensim more advanced than SL
May 13, 2008 by Chris · Leave a Comment
Sculptie Physics on OpenSim from Dahlia Trimble on Vimeo.
Teravus was teaching me about the internals of the meshing for physics on opensim when the topic came up about making a mesh out of a sculpted prim. I mentioned I would like to attempt to make one and try it out, and a few hours later he had it working! This video is Dahlia walking on a sculpted prim spaceship in OSGrid after updating to his new code.
In secondlife sculpties only collide on bounding boxes, which make them really only suitable for visuals, not for part of complex builds. Due to some early work done by Teravus this week, that’s no longer true for OpenSim. We’re now creating a tri-mesh collision surface for sculpties and passing that into our physics engine.