Evan Smith

Portfolio and Thoughts

[smithevan]

First ever clothing item by Ada Labs!

A button style dress for the UTI Kemono body available now on the Marketplace for L$250!

Modeled to fit the Rei’s Stuff Chest.

[adasyd]

NEW! 241 (2 for 1) by Ada Labs!

Check out the entire Ada Labs store!

Each only L$50 on the Marketplace!

[smithevan]

Latest set of items created in Second Life using Blender for Valentines Day.

7pc set of unique cards, a box of chocolates fully scripted, a curtain of hearts and hearts & stars with my lighting script and a box of heart candies to throw around.

Marketplace Here

[paranolives]

[adasyd]

doodleloser:

kittydakitsune:

marasbazaar:

Arg I feel so guilty.

cantbedescribed:

washingtub:

emilylikesaliens:

cirrusdark:

lou0:

paranolives:

Yes. Thank you, Batman.

 Quit picking on me batman! 8U

okay batman… u   u

no batman you aren’t the boss of me

Okay fine Batman, god!

You’re right Batman!!

SHUT UP BATMAN! >:( I’M STORY-WRITING TODAY!

WELL SHIT.

Saw this image and felt compelled to vectorize it in Adobe Illustrator CS4: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3484439/tumblr/batman02.svg

[smithevan]

Reminding people that I vectored this for use.

Wish I knew the original source.

[smithevan]

A simple mesh Sleeping Sheepie that I created in Blender and sell on Second Life for L$50.

As it slumbers, it emits a "Z" particle, indicating it's sleeping.

Recently used at http://meshinima.com/ with permission for a project.

[smithevan]

Easy Piano v.1.3 Made a little piano in Second Life. Just a little project to see if I could do it. First three buttons are octaves, orange button is on/off for tempo and yellow pad is volume (up/down) and tempo speed (left/right) control. The keys are mesh while the rest is made of regular prims. The single script is rather elegant in its simplicity. Since the only major work on it was copying and pasting sound UUID's, I set the price to L$50. Copy/Mod/NoTrans

[smithevan]

Playing with App Inventor Again

This time it's through MIT and not Google. I'm making a sort of, barcode game. So far, so good.

[smithevan]

Real-world train station that I virtualized for work back in 2010.

[smithevan]

The second item release for the Gatchapon craze in Second Life that I've completed.

Brass knuckles that when you and another wear, allow you to knock each other's teeth out. The teeth will jump around and chatter until you crouch near them to pick the teeth back up. These and many more great gatchapon items can be obtained at the Gatchapon Palace in Yankari Island in Second Life.

[smithevan]

So I've taken the plunge into the whole Gatchapon craze in Second Life.

I've created bottle caps and a bottle opener with mesh using Blender.

People can collect and trade any of these and wear the bottle caps as a hat.

If you're lucky enough to get a bottle opener, then you can use it to pop the caps off of people with a single click while facing them and there's a light fizz sound.

The person whose cap was popped could then retrieve the cap by standing near it and crouching.

Initial sales are decent and I hope that they will get better when the GatchaPon Palace store in Yankari Island opens fully.

[smithevan]

Avatars

I was just thinking that we have trouble with realistic avatars of ourselves because we never actually see ourselves aside from a mirror. We haven't a problem seeing anyone else's avatar if it looks like their real life selves. But that's because we're not seeing them from their perspective.

Does this mean that a first person viewing experience would be optimal if one were to say, scan in a picture of themselves and apply it to their avatar and modify the avatar so that it's nearly perfect to their real life self?

That is even just a small step. What happens when avatars and modifying becomes so advanced that a photo is not required? Heck, I'm sure there's a way to turn on a web cam and get an avatars features to closely match that of your real life self; aside from scars and blemishes.

But back to the main point. Why do we go so far to make our avatars not look like ourselves? I don't mean for casually play, I mean for something like business or education. Why does a virtual clone creep us out so much?

I'm sure I have a reason for asking this. Let me come back to it.

[smithevan]

Personal Reminder

For now it seems I'll be using OpenSim, but there are a few things I need to find out more about it for future use.

Look to see if OpenSim supports module creation.

What is OpenSim programmed in?

How hard is it to work in the OpenSim source code.

[smithevan]

Aurora-Sim

So with everything that's been happening with me working on virtual environments, I return to Aurora-Sim.

Several months ago, the group working on Aurora-Sim were busy redeveloping the OpenSim server software in a way that works closely with the OpenSim/SecondLife and other third party clients. At the time they didn't have much of what I was looking for especially in extensibility. But going to the site again today and reading up and visiting their IRC chat via their website, I was able to discover that modules can be programmed and added to the server.

Everyone on the team is quite busy with the software or life to really focus on one thing, but I'm sure someone with knowledge of C# and a bit of help from the IRC could create a wrap for Python or Java for even better extensibility.

At least what I'd love to see added is some sort of VNC viewer, and from what people in the chat were telling me, it would probably work best added to the MOAP (Media on a Prim) functionality.

This group seems to have the same dream RealXtend did in the early days of Tiaga and Naali, but have kept with it and are making something that will work well for education and business virtual models.

[smithevan]

RealXtend Update

So after posting a question to the RealXtend Google Groups forum about OpenSim and Naali because Tundra just really isn't yet up to doing what I need, I get this response: http://groups.google.com/group/realxtend/browse_thread/thread/61cc550442bea0a8

Here's a snippet that pretty much covers the post.

The bottom line is that for the purposes that the realXtend companies wanted to develop realXtend technologies towards, OpenSim/Second Life, and therefore Naali and Taiga were deemed inadequate. The way that system was architected, it became clear that OS/SL is not the platform that solves the challenges realXtend developers are facing.

Currently, every developer inside realXtend has migrated to the Tundra platform, which is a ground-up development that does not share any legacy or history with OpenSim or Second Life. It it a completely separate platform for different purposes, and should not be compared 1:1 against SL/OS.

Tundra is not an application intended directly to be consumed by end-users, but it is a development platform for content creators.

Please visit the above link for full update details of RealXtend.

I'll go back to working with Tundra and hopefully get voice put in at least, since there's not currently text chat.

[smithevan]

Here's a screen shot of OpenSim through a regular Second Life third party client.

Compared to the previous post with the RealXtend Naali client, it's pretty darn good.

I wonder if the people at RealXtend gave up on Naali, or figured it was good enough? Perhaps there's some sort of switch I need to flip on the OpenSim server?

Hopefully I can get it all figured out.

[smithevan]

Playing around with RealXtend's Naali OpenSim viewer a bit. Was easy to connect to the server with the client. Not everything renders, but mostly everything has. Doesn't seem to support sculpted objects, not an issue since it seems that it supports Mesh. Avatar is basic, though working with the Evolver.com site to see if I can create a new avatar for myself. Hopefully the rendering issue can be resolved, and hopefully it won't be like getting teeth pulled.

Ultimately the what I want to see is the extensibility of Naali for OpenSim, meaning collaboration tools such as a web cam and VNC.

[smithevan]

Reposting the link to the RIG app for Android here: http://bit.ly/gKVFrg

RIG means Random Item Generator. Originally it was just a Random Food Generator and a Random Job Generator, but I was able to combine them. As it's name suggests, it randomly gives you an item. However, it also gives you the choice to post the item to Twitter.

I made this with Google's AppInventor. Nice little tool, but somewhat limited.