Tomorrow’s Sandbox – Pregame

For a while now I’ve been intrigued ARG’s and Immersive Fiction, and I’ve always thought that Second Life is the perfect environment for this sort of thing. While I was really inspired by attempts I had seen so far such as Gary Bukowski’s “EVA Project” and Gigs Taggart’s “Shanti” – I’ve also always thought that there was so much more that could be done within SL itself (as opposed to via blogs, websites, ect.) So last week, while finishing up a little build for SL6B, I decided to take most of these ARG-style puzzles that I had been cultivating, add in an admittedly amateur and rushed story, mix them into the futuristic SL6B theme, and throw it all at the wall like spaghetti. Well, some of it stuck and became(or hopefully will become) the brief story of “Tomorrow’s Sandbox”, and it might even stick to the wall long enough to be an interesting distraction for a few people. At best, I hope it will inspire others to see why I think this type of medium is perfect for SL.

Since this evolved out of a build I was completing, I couldn’t really find a good way to “hide myself behind the PM’s curtain” so to speak – Anyone looking at the creator of most objects involved will see “Logan Bauer”, and it might even be painfully obvious that this isn’t REALLY the result of virtual time travel and a conspiracy of post-apocalyptic AI overlords. If this ruins your immersion I am sorry, but it is what it is. So, Please do not IM Logan Bauer asking for solutions or answers to any of the puzzles, this is not “Logan’s” story, but along the way you may encounter other avatars who ARE a part of the story, who you will need to interact with. This is not a promotion for anything or viral marketing of any kind, this is loosely tied to the SLB6 celebration only because that’s where the build started, and I am in no way affiliated with Linden Lab, ect.

So while I don’t really plan to discuss this as Logan until it’s over, I do welcome and appreciate any feedback in the meanwhile. This is my “test case” and I’m just getting my feet wet here – It’s been a dream of mine for a while now, and I had a lot of fun putting it together. If a puzzle seems frustrating or too hard, it’s probably meant to be hard so people will work together to find the solution. If a puzzle seems too easy, it’s because I wanted something that more people could participate in. But to reiterate, you can IM me and say “that (puzzle/plot element) (sucked/rocked), ect”, I’m fine with that – but don’t IM Logan to say “I want a hint” or “What do we do next?!?” – Logan won’t respond and there is already an in-game mechanism where hints will be broadcast if and when they’re necessary.

Good Luck, and most importantly, Have Fun!

SLURL to “Tomorrow’s Sandbox”, open June 24th 2009

 

The splitting of the blogs

You may have noticed the theme and some other details of this blog have changed – I was trying to make it output a full RSS feed with no luck. The end result is that my “personal” blog with maya tips will stay here, while anything related to the Arctic Greenhouse has a new address at blogspot:

http://arcticgreenhouse.blogspot.com/

 

New Lily Kit (6-petal Lilies)

New Arctic Greenhouse Full Perm Lily Kit! Not to be confused with the previous calla lilies – this kit will let you make 6-petal ones such as Tiger lilies, Easter lilies, ect.  Here’s the box cover! :

See this product page at XStreetSL

SLURL to Logan’s Virtual Showroom / Arctic Greenhouse

 

Sculpted Calla Lilies

Announcing the Arctic Greenhouse Full Perm Calla Lily Kit!

See this product page at XStreetSL

SLURL to Logan’s Virtual Showroom / Arctic Greenhouse

 

Maya NCloth for SL Sculpted Prims

Ok, here’s my first Maya for Second Life tutorial. This is very quick, very basic, and unedited even, but it does get the job done (hopefully).

When you import the sculpt into SL, you’ll want to use the “plane” type, and also notice that your object is one-sided – you can fix this by making a second copy with the sculpt set to “mirror”, and shrinking it down a little.

After finishing this tutorial, keep in mind that you can also use an oblong polygon plane(64×16, 128×8, ect) to make a longer curtain or draped cloth piece, if you have experience with using Maya for oblong sculpts.

Look at other NCloth tutorials and try to apply the things you learn there. Ncloth has a ton of variables (gravity, mass, friction, ect), and even more options (making just parts of the cloth itself passive to hold it in place, wind, ect)

Edit 4/18/09 – I got an IM from Colleen (sorry Colleen, I don’t remember your last name), who ran into an issue where the resulting sculpt map had black space. In other words, instead of looking like a multicolor gradient, 1/2 of it was a multicolor gradient and the other 1/2 was entirely black. Any time I run into this, I have been able to
fix it by one of the following 3 methods.

#1 – First, make sure you are freezing transformations, resetting transformations, and deleting history before trying to export your sculpt map.

#2 – Try making your sculpted shape again from scratch.

#3 – Export the sculpt map from maya at a much higher size (like 512×512), open in photoshop, crop down leaving just the gradient area and removing the black area, then resize your image back down to your target size (I.E. 64×64 or 128×128,ect). You will most likely need to do the same thing with the baked color texture. Of course, this only works when the sculpt is “broken” but still square – for example if you have black triangles along an edge you will need to try to solve it with #1 or #2 above.

 

Sculpted Rose Kit

Ok, since I’ve had people asking “Do you have a group I can subscribe to”,ect in SL, I’m going to (try to) make a habit of posting new products here under the “Arctic Greenhouse” category.  In-world groups can be problematic (Limit to the number of groups people can be in, and also the potential for spam).  So, if you want to know when I release new flower kits, just watch this blog. 

This is my first Second Life video attempt in a while, a demo of the new Arctic Greenhouse Sculpted Rose Kit:

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Higher Resolution Video at Wegame

See this product page at XStreetSL

SLURL to Logan’s Virtual Showroom / Arctic Greenhouse

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Hello Avatar!

This is my first post here.  I’m reluctantly getting a blog to post stuff like SL tutorials, maybe stuff I sell inworld, ect.