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.