The Upcoming Episode Of Life On Line (Read more...)

Life On Line will launch their new episode on March 1. This is what our partner says that you'll see in this chapter:

"Holograms, the trouble with Twitter, Twinity machinima contest, Australian bushfires plus more music and news – Life On Line, March 1st.

Steve Cropper’s interview guests include co-founder of the virtual world Twinity, Jeremy Snyder, about the exciting new gothic machinima contest there and plans for more virtual cities to be released onto the internet in 2009.

Social Networks guru Andrew Peters looks at the changing face of Twitter and reports on US Military plans to use holograms to keep service personnel in touch with their families while stationed overseas.

Newsman Sigmund Leominster reports on a new virtual world, based on European Football, how Manchester Business School is using virtual worlds to train their senior executives, how Everquest can trigger depression - and the safest way to experience the running of the bulls in Spain - virtually.

On a more serious note, we take a look at a moving tribute in music and pictures by some Second Lifers to the victims of the devastating bush fires in Australia with their song, 'Too Many Tears'.

And American singer/song writer Dann Russo performs 'Parking Lot Kings'."

Remember that you can watch Life On Line from our right sidebar, and that it automatically updates when the new chapters are online.

Carrara, Poser 7, DAZ3D Platinum Club 40-60% Off (Read more...)

DAZ3D is offering high savings on the render and building tool Carrara, and Poser7, for Platinum Club Members.

The following explanations are mostly as simplification, but I think that this is the best way to understand if you're not deeply in these issues.

DAZ3D is a big community site and marketplace to sell and buy 3D models of high quality. With them, people can make renders, digital art, games, and other 3D stuff. You can buy through Paypal.

These products are mainly for hobbyists and professionals of 3D art and animation.

Most of their users use DAZ Studio, a freeware program to pose and render 3D models and environments. Others use Poser, that is a commercial solution for the same things.

The DAZ Platinum Club is a special membership. You don't have to belong to the Platinum Club to buy at DAZ, but if you join you get thousands of products for only $1.99 each. Every week, new products from the enormous marketplace are added to this offer.

Now the yearly membership has been reduced to $69.95. So now it's a good time to join the Platinum Club.

And in addition, now, the members of the Platinum Club can buy Carrara for half the price, and Poser7 for only $99.20. This is a very limited time offer.

In DAZ3D there are also free models, and new ones are added from time to time.

Freeware: Texturize Your 3D Models With LithUnwrap (Read more...)

LithUnwrap is a freeware application that can help you to develop professional 3D models. With it, you can adjust a texture to the faces of your models. This is called UV mapping, and that's what LithUnwrap is for.

It has automatic adjustment of textures to faces, a preview, and very easy to use tools. Simply read the tutorial/manual at the beginning, and you'll be in the way to texture your works.

LithUnwrap is abandoned, because now it is a commercial application called Ultimate Unwrap 3D, which has many added features. The most obvious is that the preview can appear in the same window and not floating, and it can export to many formats via plugins (that are free), including VRML and X3D too, and of course all the usual formats (3DS, LWO, OBJ...) and some specific of games and 3D applications.

LithUnwrap can still be found here:

http://www.sharecg.com/v/5169/software-and-tools/LithUnwrap---Free-UV-Mapper-for-Windows

Ultimate Unwrap 3D is a cheap software, so if you feel comfortable using LithUnwrap, go and test the demo of Ultimate Unwrap. You may like it.

Koinup's Machinima Of The Week: Two Videos (Read more...)

Here comes the machinima video of the week, offered by our partner, Koinup.

This week I couldn't choose only one, so here you are two videos. One is a dance video (Super Dancers In Second Life, by Ai_Miles) and the other is a fun car robbery with an unexpected ending (Carjacker, by AmiBeattie).

Torley Linden's Video: Flickr Set Manager Video Tutorial (Read more...)

Torley Linden has posted a video tutorial that explains how Flickr Set Manager works: the application auto-generates sets based on criteria like tags. If you upload new pictures that fit the criteria, they'll automatically be added to the set on the next daily refresh.

This may be helpful for many users that have a frequent use of Flickr.

Life On Line Partners With Hiperia3D News (Read more...)

Hiperia3D News has partnered with Life On Line to offer you the latest episodes as they appear.

If you look in our sidebar, you'll find the Life On Line latest episode. When a new episode is launched, it will be automatically updated and you'll be able to watch it here in your favorite 3D site, Hiperia3D News.

This way, Hiperia3D News partners in the same week with two top sites of virtual worlds, Koinup and Life On Line. Its my desire to offer you the best contents online centered in 3D and virtual worlds, make easy what is complex, and be a quick guide for all that happens in this scope.

If you don't know what Life On Line is, read this article.

Maps Of Second Life (Read more...)

Maps Of  Second Life is a new Flickr group created by Olivia Hotshot. Its purpose is to gather maps of Second Life of all kinds.

If you have an interesting map of SL, you can go there, join and share it. If you're looking for maps, join and watch all the ones that are added constantly since the creation of this group.

One of the maps. Photo by Olivia Hotshot 

This is a very useful initiative. There are not only maps of regions and islands, but also close-up maps of places and others that show some features of Second Life, like servers and other things.

The group has been just created, and in this moment has 26 members and 10 maps available. Go, join, spread the word and grow this resource with your own Second Life maps.

Visit Maps Of Second Life on Flickr.

The VRML Works (Read more...)

Bob Crispen is the author of The VRML Works. This is an huge portal that is really worth reading, as he recopilated a big amount of tutorials, historical information, etc about VRML.

"The sacred head of Bob"

The tutorials about VRML Scripts that Crispen wrote are simply excellent to understand the basics of the scripting mechanisms in that language. In addition, Bob Crispen has a very good sense of humor that appears in most of his documents and tutorials.

Bob Crispen maintains the VRML FAQ at the comp.lang.vrml USENet group, and his contribution through The VRML Works has been enormous.

Although many of the links are dead, it is a must-see for all those curious about the story of VRML, what is the concept of cyberspace, etc, and has links to some good resources that are still alive.

If you still use VRML or are interested in knowing the beginning of all this Web3D adventure, The VRML Works is still your place.

Windows Live Writer 2009: Tool For Bloggers (Read more...)

Most of you may have a blog. For some it may be a profession, or a valuable tool for communication with your public or customers. In this article I introduce you to Windows Live Writer, that is now approaching its final release. It is one of the best FREE Microsoft products out there, and can boost your productivity enormously.

Windows Live Writer 2009 is compatible with Windows Live, Wordpress, Blogger, Live Journal, TypePad, SharePoint, Community Server, and many more. I use it, and in my opinion, it's the best article editor that there's been.

You may be asking yourself why would you need an external blogging tool, when Wordpress, Blogger and the others already have their web tools for this.
Well, because WLW can increase your productivity, because of these reasons:

• It loads your blog template, and you edit and see all that you write as it will appear in your blog, in real time. No need to toggle between edit and preview mode. 
  
• No needs to edit the source code of your posts.
  
• There's a preview tab that loads not only your post, but your entire blog page with the post that you're writing, so you have a real preview, that shows your articles as they'll appear when published.
  
• You can add plugins to insert and deal with many kinds of contents, and to perform many common tasks that you do while writing.
  
• Sometimes you link to some sites quite often, and you may find yourself linking to them constantly. WLW does this easier, as it includes an auto-link feature, that will link to whatever url you want every time that you write some text. This can be chosen whenever you create a new hyperlink, and the list of auto-links can be edited. For example, you write Google, and WLW automatically inserts the link to www.google.com
  
• If you write an url, the link to it is automatically added.
  
• The editor space is as tall as your screen, and as wide as defined in your blog's template. This is a great advantage for people that use Blogger, that has a really small edition space for posts.
  
• You edit your posts using a WYSIWYG editor, similar to Word but greatly simplified, just with the buttons that you need.
  
• Inserting a video (from YouTube or others) is as simple as pasting the code in the editor, and you see the video as it will appear, and not the code.
  
• When you insert images, you can beautify them with built-in effects like Sepia, color correction, borders with shadows, and many more. 
  
• You can download your drafts to your local drive, save them, or post them to your site as drafts. When publishing an article, WLW can automatically open its url so you see it live as soon as published.
  
• You have also a list of recently posted articles and open drafts in the right sidebar of the application.
  
• Word count as you write, something very useful when you write a sponsored review that asks you to write certain minimum number of words.
  
• If you own more than one blog, even if they're in different platforms (Blogger, Wordpress,...) you can switch between them easily, just from a drop-down menu on the top right.

These are only some of the productivity advantages of WLW, a tool that you may not believe that it's free. Free, really easy to use (no need to read a tutorial, as it is very similar to MS Word or other programs), and you can even customize the color of the application menus.

Just one recommendation when you install it: you don't need to install the other applications that come with the installer, so uncheck them during the install. I specially discourage the installation of Messenger (there are better alternatives, like Trillian). You can also uncheck the options to change your home url, and default search engine.

 
The configuration of your blog starts as soon as you install WLW. After that, I recommend you to download these plugins:

• Twitter Notify: Sends a message to Twitter when you publish a new post.
  
• Text Template: Allows you to define blocks of text or code, so you can insert them with a pair of clicks, really speeding your work.
  
• Small Tag Plugin: Inserts the small tag so you can make a small text, useful for example for image footers.

Download more plugins from here.

That's all for now. I hope that Windows Live Writer becomes a boost for your writing activity, and makes your work easier!

http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/

Machinima Of The Week: Atmosphere, by Tagalas (Read more...)

Koinup, our partner, brings you the machinima video of the week. This time it's "Atmosphere", by Tagalas, a machinima of Oriental inspiration, made with Kingdom of Sand (Second Life), Assasins Creed and Gothic 3.

Freeware: Find Your Images By Color With ImageSorter (Read more...)

ImageSorter is a freeware application that can do something useful for you, specially if you have lots of images in your folders: sort them by color.

For example, I have lots of textures. I need a texture in blue, but I'm not sure what one. I go to my textures folder with ImageSorter, and it groups them by color in its interface. So I can compare all my blue textures and pick what I like most.

The advantage for 3D is big, then. Here you can see a video that shows how it works:

It also has very attractive 3D effects for browsing the images.

http://mmk1.f4.fhtw-berlin.de/Projekte/ImageSorter

Live On Line: New Internet TV Show About Our Lives Online (Read more...)

Live On Line is a new internet TV program that has launched in these days and is about how people spend their lives online.

This TV show is a project of Steve Cropper, who in 2008 was 'Angelico Babii', host of the LATE SHOW on Metaverse-TV (www.metaverse-tv.com) and the creator of My-Metaverse (www.my-metaverse.com) a social network for people involved in the new media arts on the web.

It wants to reflect all the diversity of what people do online, including virtual arts and virtual worlds.

Here's the first episode:

You are invited to join the life-on-line viewers' group website at www.life-on-line.ning.com.

News Machine Gun: Chrome For Mac, AR, CityPixel, SmallWorlds In Facebook, and more (Read more...)

Google Chrome For Mac
Google Chrome will be soon available for Mac. Read it here.

Hiperia3D News Partners With Koinup
Hiperia3D News partnered with Koinup to offer you the best machinima videos. Read it here. Here's a very fun machinima as an example:

Augmented Reality
AnnieOK features the works of the label AntiVJ in her site. Here's one of the  videos, as an example. Read the full article and watch the rest here.

3D For Learning And Meetings
Gaby K. Benkwitz has published two interesting articles, about the advantages of 3D for learning and for virtual meetings. Both are worth reading, if you're considering these.

SmallWorlds In Facebook
Worlds In Motion recently announced that SmallWorlds is now embeddable in Facebook. Read it here.

CityPixel: Visit Pixel York
If you like pixel art, Worlds In Motion reviews CityPixel, a replica of a big town made in mixel art, that is also a social virtual world, with a very neat appearance. It also has a Facebook application, as you can read here. You can have a look without having to register.

Taranis Back Online
Taranis VRML worlds are back online. Check it in WBandD.

OpenLife Grid Client
Now, to visit OpenLife, you must use the standard viewer, and not others. Download it here.

Saint Valentine In Virtual Worlds: Scenecaster, Vivaty, Second Life, OpenLife... (Read more...)

Here's a quick note of what you can do in virtual worlds that has to do with Saint Valentine's day.

• SceneCaster has prepared a special scene that you can customize and send it as digital postcard.

• You can go to Openlife Xchange and participate in the party today February 14, 2009 at 8pm to February 15, 2009 at 12am in Orbitz @ Otherwhere. This event is organized by Osiris Indigo. See it here.

• If you're in WeeWorld, you can also send Saint Valentine gifts. Check it here.
  
   
• In Second Life, you can participate in the events that will take place there. Check this one, and also this contest.

• Go to Vivaty and show your love by giving a Valentine’s Day gift, including a special heart picture frame, and Valentine’s Day puppy.
  

Hiperia3D News Partners With Koinup To Show You The Best Machinima Videos (Read more...)

I have excellent news for all our readers. In answer to my call for suggestions on machinima videos, I was contacted by Pierluigi Casolari (owner and founder of Koinup).

As a result of our communications, Hiperia3D News has partnered with Koinup to offer you the best machinima videos.

As you may know, Koinup is a social network and online community for virtual worlds' people and contents, with a strong focus on art in all its shapes.
In Koinup you can find a huge community with examples of the greatest machinima videos, avatar art, photo shots and other works done or exhibited in virtual worlds like Second Life, There.com, IMVU, Kaneva, and many more.

As a first example and to celebrate the collaboration between Koinup and Hiperia3D, here's a machinima video that was recorded in IMVU:

Join Your SL Account With Myrl Using Myrl Connect (Read more...)

Myrl Connect is a lightweight application that allows you to link up your avatar with your Myrl web profile.

What will it do? This;

• It will track how much time have you been online.
  
• It will display where you are inworld.
  
• It will also display where you are on your profile, so your Myrl friends will find you more easily.
  
• It will tell other Myrl users when you are inworld.
  
• You can be connected to Myrl and to a group at the same time.

There's a Myrl Connect application in project for every virtual worlds platform. For now, the ones for Second Life and There.com are available here:

http://www.myrl.com/myrl/virtual-world/connect

It is important for us to provide enough feedback for the Myrl Connect application by using it, as it will have more exciting features as time passes.

In Second Life, you just have to go here:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Kiha/ 67/154/27

Once there, click the central pyramid table, and take the Myrl Gadget. Wear it in your avatar.

 
Once worn, it will be seen as a pin in your clothes:

This picture shows one of the advantages of this gadget: you can be connected to another group and still be connected to Myrl. Here I am connected to Sun Developers Network and to Myrl.

And in your Myrl profile you can see it tracks you and links to where you are:

 

This may be very simple, but allows some people that visit your Myrl profile to track you inworld so you can get good opportunities to meet people that may be of your interest, both for professional or personal life.

Also, your friends can locate you even if they don't have the SL client software running.

And there are more features to come, that will surprise us as Myrl's developers work on these interesting gadgets.

New Contents: Machinima. Send Your Suggestions. (Read more...)

As the presence of machinima movies between virtual worlds and 3D fan is enormous, Hiperia3D News will feature machinima videos that reach a decent quality.

For those who don't know, machinima are, in simple words, animation videos that use game characters, 3d models or virtual world avatars as actors. A plot is not always present, but most of them have elaborated stories behind them.

The tools used to make them are varied, sometimes the tools are provided by the built-in video recorders of these games or virtual worlds, and later editing the video adding music or sounds and voice.

A machinima can be built by a single person or a team.

Feel free to suggest your favorite machinima videos in Hiperia3D News to this email: info@hiperia3d.com

Here I show you the first featured machinima video. Let's start with a little of pure action, that will prepare you to your daily routine of Mondays.

In addition to these contents, I will also feature good software, that sometimes is free, and other times it's not but is worth spending the money it costs. Other exciting contents will be added to Hiperia3D News, that will be of the taste of all the lovers of 3D and virtual worlds.

Interview: Rick Kimball, Developer Of ABNet (Read more...)

Rick Kimball is the developer of ABNet, a free platform for VRML/X3D multiuser worlds. On February 6 MixED organizes a meeting there, so now it's time to meet this formidable programmer and read in his own words how is ABNet from inside.

http://vrmlworld.net/

- What are the improvements of the latest version of ABNet?
- The ABNet user interface has been upgraded by Vitor Cardoso who is one of our most active users. Vitor took the standard javascript user interface and added many features to make it feel more like the old bxx multi-user. I liked the changes so much that it is now the default interface.

- In what operating systems can the server be run?
- ABNet is written in Java. You can host the ABNet server on any operating system that is running java 1.4 or above. VRMLWorld.net is running on Linux using Java 6.0 from Sun. However, I do most of my testing on windows vista running the latest java from Sun. At one point, I was running VRMLWorld.net on a vmware partition in Windows 2000 that was hosting Linux using IBM java on my home computer. The server itself consumes very little resources. On VRMLWorld.net, it rarely uses more than 3 percent of the total CPU even with many clients. On a windows computer you wouldn't even notice it running. For windows, there is a systray icon to control the starting and stopping.

- On what programming languages or technologies is ABNet built?
- I developed ABNet to showcase my skill set to future employers. I've used a little bit of every technology that someone might use to support web development in today's Web 2.0 environment. ABNet has 3 main components. The client side user interface, the multi user server, and a web server. They communicate with each other using a combination of network technologies and scripting interfaces.
The client side is an ActiveX control written in C++. The user interface itself is written in DHTML. It uses javascript to route data from the ABNet client to 3d player. There is a javascript abstraction layer that allows different 3d plugins to be selected. Currently, the BS Contact control is the default however in the past I had it working with Flux ( now Vivaty ), Cortona, and Shout3d. However the client doesn't have to be 3d. ABNet is really just a low latency communication system that could be used for chat, games, document sharing and even co-browsing.
The server is written in java. Its main purpose is to route messages from the client to each user in the 3d scene. The client and the server communicate over TCP/IP using an XML protocol that is compatible with Flash sockets. So in theory, you could replace the client side of ABNet with a flash swf object. The ABNet server uses simple http requests to keep the count of online worlds and users. It communicates that information to VRMLWorld.net. The abnet server is actually running on a different host than the web server.
VRMLWorld.net uses MySQL to keep track of all the worlds that are online and how many users are in them. PHP is used to update and provide access to the database information in a variety of formats. You can query the list and get json, XML and html output.

- What are the virtues of ABNet compared to other VRML/X3D-based 3D chat systems?
- ABNet makes it easy to host any VRML or X3D world without a lot of setup. You don't have to login, you don't have to modify the world to share it. One of its prime objectives is to make it easy to find out which worlds are popular and make it easy to join other 3d users.
From a network standpoint, ABNet is very network friendly. Data is only sent
back and forth when required unlike AJAX style polling servers. The data doesn't encounter any delay because it doesn't poll. Each client maintains a TCP/IP connection that receives data asynchronously. It only uses outbound connections so you don't have to poke holes in your firewall unlike some UDP based multi-user servers.
From a modification standpoint, ABNet is completely customizable. If you don't
like the way the user interface looks, you can just change it. Want a new feature? There is nothing stopping you from adding a new cool whiz-bang widget. Want to support some new 3d player, just add support in the javascript user interface.
From a 3d technology standpoint, ABNet is very low impact. It doesn't force
you to type in 3d which tends to slow down your frame rate. All chat interaction is done in a separate thread using standard HTML controls. You can easily cut and paste information in the chat. When you are chatting, there is a "composing mode" It lets you know someone is typing. This is common in most IM clients but is missing from many 3d chat systems.
Because the ABNet client is written in C++ as a dll, it communicates as fast as possible with the 3d scene. It doesn't have to marshal data in and out of the browser as would be required with a java based client. Unique to ABNet is its ability to flash the title bar of MSIE to alert you of new users or conversations
in a 3d scene.
VRMLWorld acts as a gateway to store all this information. The information about which worlds are online and how many users are in them is available to other chat servers.
The information is updated using simple HTTP requests. The details are available on the forums.

- Are Blaxxun avatars supported?
- ABNet supports the Blaxxun style Avatar Proto. If you build your avatar
using H-Anim and wrap it in an Avatar Proto, you can use them. You can trigger gestures from a drop down selection that is created dynamically for each avatar. It supports up to 70 gestures. If you need more than that you could
change the user interface to have as many as you desire.

- How can worldbuilders use ABNet with their own worlds?
- There are different levels of integration with ABNet. You can just go to http://vrmlworld.net/abnet2/ and share it. You don't have to setup a server you are just using the one at VRML.net You can take advantage of the ABNet shared events by modifying the 3d content. ABNet shared events are very similar to the livingworlds specification.
An ABNet Shared Zone proto must be added and wired up to the triggers in
the 3d scene using routes. There are several examples of this on the front page of VRML.net. The world "bespace lecture" uses shared events to change
the displays. The buttons in "The Mantis's Secret Lab" are wired to shared events so that when one users pushes them, all other users see the results. The "Shared Event Test" world on the front page uses all the available shared event types in a very simple world.
If you want to create a custom user interface that is specific to your world you can use the base user interface and change it completely. Someone might want to do this if their 3d world was more gamelike and they wanted to put some of the game elements in a 2d interface.
If you want to have a custom home page, you can use the chat server at VRMLworld.net without having to setup your own. Examples of that can be seen at http://66.7.210.142/~virtualh/VHLbase/VHL_Front_Page.htm or http://www.int3d.com/3dscenes/pesaro3d-chat/pesaro3d-chat.html

- What are your future plans for ABNet?
- In my limited amount of spare time, I've been working on an easier to modify user interface. This will make it easier to for users who customize the user interface to upgrade when the standard interface changes. We might add a firefox addin that would work with FF 3.0 and Chrome. Support for persistent shared events and objects is also being considered.

Poser World 10th Anniversary: Free Poser And Texture DVDs Through February 28 (Read more...)

Poser World celebrates its 10th year anniversary and has interesting offers and freebies for this occasion. These may be interesting for many 3D artists, worldbuilders and 3D modelers.

Free Poser Content DVD's
This offer is valid on volume 1 (2.4 gigabytes - 930 items), volume 2 (2.5
gigabytes, 164 items) and the 2 Disc Combo DVD set (both DVD's with 1,094
items).
Details are available here.

Big Offers On Memberships
They are also offering 1/2 on memberships to celebrate their 10th year, prices
likes it's 1999 anniversary. The members have unlimited download membership
including access to our merchant resources. The promo/coupon code is: PWHALF09
See it here.

New Merchant Resources Section
Poser World has also opened a merchant resources section as well.

Free 3D Photo Textures DVD
Their sister site Stock 3D is giving away a Stock 3D Photo Textures DVD for free, that contains 277 photo textures (789 megabytes) including: Building Materials (79 items), Cloth & Fabric (21 items), Metal (20 items), Nature (34 items), Scenes and Backdrops (20 items), Seamless (101 items), Signs (7 items) and Textiles (2 item). All items included on the disc are REAL photo objects (no digital textures).
More details here.

Chisel: Optimize Your VRML Code (Read more...)

Chisel is a Java application that can optimize your VRML code. Optimizing is modifying the code so it runs faster and size of file is reduced without loosing quality.
For example, an unoptimized file can load 200 KB before Chisel acts, and 18 KB after, having the same visual appearance and running faster.

To do that, it removes unnecessary information, default fields, comments, merges shapes that are in fact together, etc.

Trapezium was the owner of Chisel, but they donated its source code, so now it's an opensource project. Chisel can be downloaded here:

http://www2.hrp.no/vr/tools/chisel/

A serious optimization of a VRML model should combine a code optimizer like Chisel, a geometry optimizer, hand code edition, and a careful and correct modeling of the shapes from the beginning.
This is too long to explain here, but I will publish an article with the technique I use in the future, so all the process is explained.

Don't forget to have a look to its manuals. At the beginning Chisel may seem hard, but it's easy once you know how it works. Of course, it has many options, but you only have to use some of them.