Archive for the 'Movies & Machinima' Category

Mono Beta Refresh 8

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 by: babbagelinden

The Mono regions on the beta grid were updated with new binaries yesterday that resolve SVC-1421, but more importantly merge the Mono changes with Havok 4. There are now very few open issues remaining, so if you haven’t already, please recompile your scripts to Mono on the beta grid and test them. If you find any problems, please file them as JIRA issues here, or tell us about them at the Mono office hours held in Sandbox Goguen MONO on the beta grid on Wednesdays at 8AM and Fridays at 3PM.

The video above shows Blueman Steele’s LSL version of Conway’s Game of Life running side by side on the LSL and Mono virtual machines. The LSL version running on the left was recompiled to produce the Mono version on the right without making any changes to the LSL source code. Not only does the Mono virtual machine run the cellular automaton over 4 times faster than the LSL virtual machine, but it also uses less than 25% of the CPU time consumed by the LSL version. If you have any other good demonstrations of Mono in Second Life, please let me know.

Thanks again for your continued support throughout the Mono beta process.

The Machinima panel at the Second Life Community Convention (SLCC) concluded this year with a feedback session and inspired what some might call a machine animation Linden renaissance. As such, we have created the Machinimatographers of Second Life mailing list and have setup the Machinima portal on the Second Life wiki. From the Main Page of the Second Life wiki, click on the Creation portal (under Create!), which will direct you not only to valuable Machinima information, but will also link you to the Music portal, Video Tutorial portal, Feature portal, and more!

The Machinimatographers of Second Life mailing list is open to anyone interested in sharing their ideas with Lindens and with each other about how to better support the Second Life Machinima community. What are some best practices that are currently working well for Machinimatographers? What are the biggest challenges? What would you like to see Linden Lab provide to better support this community? These are the types of discussions we’d love to see as your ideas, feedback, and insights are invaluable to us.

To subscribe to the Machinimatographers of Second Life mailing list, click here!

 

Last Call for Machinima Entries

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 by: Robin Linden

The Machinima Europe Festival 07, taking place at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK is soon coming to a close (Sept. 01, 2007 is the deadline!).

If you’re a machinimator and still haven’t submitted your work (or know of others who haven’t), now’s the time to get cracking! Submission page is below along with the site itself.

Hope to see your work at the fest!

Festival site: http://www.machinimaeurope.co.uk/
Submit: http://www.dmu.ac.uk/machinima/awards_and_submitting/index.php

Newsletter Posted!

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 by: Iridium Linden

 

Have you got the downtime blues? View the latest installment of Second Opinion, the Second Life newsletter, on our website and coming soon, grab a newly updated copy from one of our in-world locations. (Don’t forget to sign up for automatic in-world delivery of upcoming issues!) This month in Second Opinion, find out what Sabin Linden says about Het-Grid, get information on SLCC, learn about AjaxLife in our interview with Katharine Berry, read up on Stephany Linden’s voice tips and tricks, check out our view on the new features vs. bug fixes debate … and more!

Also, as a reminder, we are no longer emailing the newsletter, but will instead continue to improve the online and in-world versions for everyone to enjoy. For example, you can now get the RSS feed directly delivered to your RSS reader du jour. Have any suggestions on how to make the newsletter better? Email them to the editor.

[UPDATE] Thank you for your comments. We greatly appreciate your continued patience during downtime. Please note that in the near future, and thanks to Het-Grid, downtime will occur less frequently. Don’t know about Het-Grid? Check out Breaking News in this month’s newsletter.

What is WindLight? How did this happen?
WindLight “simulates the ways that sunlight is scattered by the atmosphere under different climatic conditions, such as fog or haze”. Long story short: killer skies and kickass environments.

Linden Lab has teamed up with and acquired Windward Mark, who’s responsible for developing this visual excellency. We warmly welcome our new brethren!

For more details, including the history of Windward Mark and the story behind our acquisition, see our press release and the Boston Globe article, related to Cory Linden’s post about our Boston Recruiting Party.
 

What does this all look like?
You know what they say about pictures and 1,000s of words, so have a taste:

which_windlight_001WindLight_15WindLight+16WindLight+13
WindLight+08WindLight+05WindLight+02WindLight+01
Jeska-windLightJeremy+Windlight+6Jeremy+Windlight+2Jeremy+Windlight+10
Durl_Windlight_1Asi_WindLight_14Asi_WindLight_10Asi_WindLight_03
Asi_WindLight_06Anthony_windlight_2Anthony_windlight_1+Anthony_windlight_3

» view the full set

For an even more copious amount of droolage:

WindLight in Second Life

» watch our teaser video on YouTube
&
» download the hi-rez version
 

Who does this affect?
Everyone. (more…)

In an effort to provide new and existing residents more information about how to create things in Second Life, I have produced a trial video, “Introduction to Textures,” released today on Youtube.com

This is the first of what may become a series of videos produced by Linden Lab, aimed at improving everyone’s experience.  In this video, I cover some fundamentals on creating and using textures, and provide some ideas for texture optimization that should improve system performance.  It is available in both English and Japanese, with more language translations planned.

Each video in the series should run no more than 7 minutes, and future titles may include:

 

  • Modeling Efficiently
  • Alpha Channels
  • Scripting for Interactivity
  • Scripting for Effects
  • Avatar Customization
  • Advanced Texturing Techniques
  • Estate Management
  • …and many more

Resident feedback is welcome!

Amidst all the serious news on this Official Linden Blog and the hard work we do on critical problems because we love our community, we’d like to take a moment to share with you something fun, something useful, something good for making digital fruits + veggies… and much more.

Well what the hey is it? =^.^=

Some of ya may’ve followed the infectious intrigue @ Cubesque.com and CubeOverload.com… more info @ Second Life Insider and 3pointD. And leading up, like any good story, any well-crafted piece of narrative, after such SUSPENSE must come REZ-OLUTION!

*string cue plays* We’re proud to present to you…

SCULPTED PRIMS!
FOR THE DISCERNING TASTES
OF IMAGINATIVE AVATARS

» Read the FAQ (peruse finer details, ask questions on the Discussion page)

This fulfills a number of longtime content creation wishes. Curved corners on boxes? Yus! Better organic shapes? Yesiree.

And freakin’ booyeah, it’s the first new prim type (not counting flexis, we luv u too!) since the ring in 1.5.

Magic or sufficiently advanced technology? You be the judge —

Turn this:

Into this!

AWAKE! BE ORGANIC! EXCITE! AND go beyond cutting and twisting… SCULPT!

Words fail me, so watch this video, starring our very own Qarl Linden, artisan and kindly purveyor of ze sculpted prims:

» Download a higher-quality version (4.3 MB)

More details, documentation, and cool content by YOU — the Residents of Second Life! — to follow when this is available in the not-so-distant future.

Together we rez,

The Linden Family

Machinimasia!

Tuesday, October 24th, 2006 by: ryanlinden

Some Lindens are going to be in NYC for the Machinima Film Festival November 4th and 5t. We will be rooting for all of you who entered machinima into the festival - good luck!

Machinimasia (http://www.machinimasia.org) the Singapore chapter of the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences is having their own festival and offered a very generous prize to one lucky Second Life machinimist. Details are as follows:

Make machinima in Second Life, submit to the Machinimasia Festival, and you could win some cool prizes!

(more…)

Like most software companies Linden Lab uses promotional videos to showcase our product to business partners, customers, educators, and more. However, we face a unique challenge in that selling Second Life to the uninitiated is nothing like pitching a new soft drink, detergent, or cake mix to a generally disinterested public. The challenge here is how to convey such a protean and complex experience in a short, easily digestible format. To this end, we decided the visual grammar of the Hollywood Movie Trailer would be the best vehicle to ‘get the word out’ about Second Life to the world.

2006 Movie Trailer Contest

(more…)

On the eve of the Second Life Community Convention, here’s a present for the community.

While trying to generate some archival screen shots, Andrew and I managed to get a build running of Second Life circa August 2001. We called it “LindenWorld” back in those days. Here’s a video showing what we looked like back then. I apologize in advance for the movie quality - I’m an engineer, not an artist, and I shot and narrated this in one take.

Video: LindenWorld August 2001.mov (6 min, 160 MB, QuickTime 7 required)
Streaming version on YouTube

You’ll see our first human-like avatar (we called him “primitar”). Previous versions had used spaceships and flaming eyeballs as avatars. This was one of the first builds that allowed user-created objects. Of course, there was no inventory to put them in, and any other user could modify them. Remnants of our previous ecosystem are here, including rocks, birds, “ators” (snake-like creatures), rain and deformable water.

I think it’s nice to see the rudimentary pieces of Second Life coming together. We’ve come a long way since then: better chat, customizable avatars, gestures, better object editing, permissions, inventory, land parcels, terraforming, groups, etc. But the basic land and sky and boxes are much the same.