Directional Change
I thought I would make a little directional change with my blog here. I am still pretty much interested in Second Life but I noticed that I can´t be into this subject for twelve months a year, if you know what I mean. This means that the blog here is somewhat dead in case I am not active in Second Life for a while. But there are so many other subjects I would like to write about. Mostly technology subjects but also some other stories from life.
I am not sure if I will be a super active blogger or so but I mean just in case I would like to write down some things. It might happen that it is not only Second Life related. but if I am active in Second Life, then you might also find Second Life related stories here. I just wanted to say this.
Uploaded my first Meshproduct to the Maingrid
Last few days I was often online on the Second Life Beta Grid. Just to check out all about mesh import. To get a little feeling for it. I made a spiral staircase but had a lot trouble with to much polygons. In fact I never did take care about polygons when I did work with my 3d application called Cinema 4d. I did not because my system is fast enough to handle those renderings I made. I did not create animations anyway.. just static pictures from objects I made.
OK but we talk about mesh import for Second Life now. Its now all over the main grid and as objects should rather be low poly for games, I had to learn a new workflow then. So my first spiral staircase had 10k polygons which is pretty much if we talk about Second Life. Some friendly peoples in the forums gave me much feedback and many ideas. I reduced the staircase to 5k polys then. Thought its still much. Finaly I reduced it to round about 1k polys but I changed my first idea of the staircase… the whole thing changed a lot in that time. But 1k polys.. I thought this was now good enough to try a test upload. I just had the feeling that I made a good compromise between quality of the object but also poly count and later prim equivs.
But then I had a next mission. What the heck is all that about physics? Gave me some headache.. no no.. I really do understand physics but my target was to learn how I can reduce PE. Friendly peoples told me about the solution to make own and hard poly reducs physic shapes to lower the PE. I made many trys for that solution but tose who told me about that all… they were a great help. I think thats what I like in Second Life. The community is mostly helpful and friendly. So.. Still on the beta grid I made tons of test uploads to understand that all. Its crazy how hard the PE value can vary depending on the physical quality and the LOD (Level of Detail). Much much trys but then I was happy.. all my tests and I had all values.. yea a PE of 100.. a PE of 80… ohhh PE of 50.. but then.. look! Finaly I got a PE of 17! I was now pretty much motivated and happy. I think PE 17 means this mesh is equal to 17 prims. Im not sure how others would judge at this point. But I reduced the PE from 100 to 17 and that made me happy.
I just was so happy that I uploaded it to the main grid then. I know there are sculpy staircases out there with maybe 2 – 4 prims or so. I still wonder how to make these with sculptys. But at least sculting is anyway not my favorite art. I always liked mesh applications.. IN fact I dont know how to make a staircase with a sculpty software but instead of that I know how to do it with my 3d application.. So yes! I am happy with 17 prims for this kind of spiral staircase and I probably will use it in many new projects. Im not new to mesh but I am new to mesh import to second life.. so who knows.. maybe I can still improbe that PE someday.
I am just happy that mesh has finaly arrived and that I now have a new playground and new posibiltys. Even if I need to improve my workflow 🙂 Hope some of you have also fun and some excited hours with Second Life. Greetings 😉
Second Life new Community Platform arrived!
Today the new Community Platform of Second Life is arrived.
Here is the Introduction by Torley Linden on YouTube:
You can read the complete news on the Second Life Webpage here: Welcome to the New Second Life Community Platform
SL Collada Mesh Import Beta coming soon.. huh? Alarming?
Linden Lab announced in a new Blogpost “Next steps for Mesh Import” that Mesh Import is soon in the Open Beta. As I own a 3d application called Macon Cinema 4d wich supports Collada Files, I first would say “Woow great news! Mesh Import is not far away”. But on the other side I think this all this is pretty alarming. But why do I think so?
Well..
I could imagine if Mesh Import is going live that lots of peoples will grap some Files from TurboSquid or any other Website where you can buy or get free objects. This could mean that many mesh creators who did offer there stuff on any other website could get ripped off. And I think that it is safe to say that Linden Lab will get lot of more work because a real big bunch of DMCA troubles.
So from this angel its a bad news. Sure for mesh designers its a great news. But the “grab some mesh and import it” will bring much trouble this is safe to say. Its a great news for fair designers who did create the mesh them self.. but criminal peoples will exploit “Mesh Import”.. they just need to attend any mesh and upload it to Second Life.
Im sure the Future will bring much more trouble. And if you ask me.. why is Linden Lab working on these improvements? Shouldn´t they rather improve the Grid first and all the Grid Performance Problems? Im not a technical and dont know much about the technic behind the Grid but anyhow I guess that Mesh Import will bring more lag then we have already.
So.. yea.. I´m pretty unsure about this news. Yea.. I think it is fine but also alarming.
My SL Marketplace Sales are still poor
I noticed that my SL Marketplace Store sales are still very bad compared to my Xstreet SL Store sales. Even if I am still not happy enought with the fact that we soon have to use the new Marketplace it will be better anyway for us. At the moment we merchants have our customers splitted on two platforms. When Xstreet will close all peoples go over to the new Marketplace and then we dont have to monitor both platforms anymore. Lets hope that these changes dont affect our sales negative. At the moment I dont notice much sales on the new one but because Xstreet is still available, that could be the reasons as many peoples maybe still buy there and not on the new Marketplace.
Second Life Marketplace – Transition Plans Announced
The Commerce Team announced now the transitions Plans for the Second Life Marketplace:
Transition Plans
Here is a quick overview of what to expect in the next few months while we move toward retiring XStreetSL and launching SL Marketplace. Dates are supplied where available.
- XStreetSL Feature Enhancements suspended – Tomorrow, September 1st, will be the last day to purchase either homepage or category feature enhancements on XStreetSL Please check out the offerings on the SL Marketplace site, As there are even more options for feature enhancement. Feature enhancements on XstreetSL will not be migrated to the new marketplace.
- XStreetSL banner ad sales retired – Soon, you will no longer be able to purchase banner ad subscriptions on XStreetSL.
- In October: XStreetSL Linden dollar exchange trading suspended. – All market trades that are not filled will be closed and the funds returned.
- XStreetSL new listing creation closed – As of 9/5/2010, XstreetSL will no longer allow for new listings to be created, and the Commerce Team will focus on migrating all remaining content to the new marketplace.
- XStreetSL will have links added for customer to choose if they want to buy the item on the new marketplace.
- XStreetSL Items will no longer be available for purchases on October 6th 2010. – If there are links to Xstreet SL detail pages on blogs or articles those links will automatically refresh to the linked product on the new marketplace.
- XStreetSL sales history, account history will no longer be available after December 1st 2010.
- XStreetSL RSS feeds will be replaced by Marketplace feeds
- XStreetSL links in SecondLife.com changed to Marketplace – The links in the Second Life web site will be updated so they point to the SL Marketplace.
- SL Marketplace is out of beta!
Read the full announcement here: Second Life Marketplace is coming soon – Transition Plans
Chamber of Commerce Election Weekend
Today me and a friend went to the Chamber of Commerce Election Weekend. The Chamber of Commerce is a Association of all Merchants who are Owners of Land on the Lionheart Virtual Real Estates. It is a free Group for us Merchants where we can discuss Second Life related business questions. Like they write on there homepage it is also the Place to get involved with other merchants in inside of the community to arrange common promotion events like continentwide hunts etc. The Idea behind is pretty good. The Goal is improving the Business of us all Community-Members. So thats why you can say that this Estate and the Community of it is not unorganized. You rather should know it is pretty well organized. And here it goes to the question why holding an Election? What is the Chamber of Commerce Election Weekend for?
Organized things are in need of someone who can organize and manage things. So this is the reasons for the Election-Weekend. Finding a new Chairman of the Chamber for a 6 month term. The latest Chairmen was “Jezzy” and now we did need to find a new Candidate. There were two Candidates called “Sookie” and “Clover”. Both did introduce them self and later we had the chance to ask and get answers about what there targets will be if they become Chairmen. It was a pretty interesting round. Later then we talked about some Business related ideas and so. Again to set some goals and improve our all business. For sure it was not only serious.. Indeed we also did make some jokes and had a lot of fun. It was a nice round, yes.
So after all discussion we had to create a Notecard with the Name of the Person we want to elect. Everyone had to vote for one of the Candidates only. Then we did put this Notecard in a Election-Box. We will hear on next Monday who is the new Chairmen as some peoples still have to vote. So its great to meet all the peoples and improving our all Business. This is something I really admire on this community. Its not only a Estate where you rent some virtual Land. No its more then this. You can get involved if you like. Its something I dont know from other Estates. Im nosy what kind of Events we will hold in the Future. I am nosy what kind of plans and ideas we bring on the table. I am happy to meet those peoples soon again. This is defenetly a Table where I like to sit. Hope this Article was interesting for you too. 🙂
I moved from Blogger to WordPress
I wasnt happy with Blogger anyhow. I did try WordPress and I must say that I like the Backend much more. I like how I can manage the blog with WordPress. Im sure its a matter of taste. But here I am on my new Blog at WordPress. Yes now I am happy. Finished most importend stuff and imported already all the old Posts from Blogspot. Did create a Header and did setup some Widges. I know there can be done more. But give me some time.. let me see what I can setup next days. For now I am happy.
I think I need to inform all the Blogs who linked back to me. I did add already there blogs in my Blogroll.
So here is the new Place where I will write about my Second Life in the future.
SL Marketplace, do we need to do the math of "Sales History" in the future?
If you are merchant you know it was easy to get the value of xstreet sales you had in a exact time range.. How I said.. when you did use xstreet.
Under “My Marketplace” we just had to click “Today´s Sales” and then we´ve got a Sales History where we could find everything we want to know. Monthly earnings… weekly earnings.. maybe a whole year? Indeed all was possible so no more math needed. Just copy and paste the values to our Calculation Software (OpenOffice or Excel) and thats what was ok. Pretty simple but enough to monitor the income we have.
Now for sure I asked my self how it will be with the new Marketplace instead of Xstreet. Checked out the new Second Life Marketplace Beta to see if I can find anything. Under “Merchant home” I found a Link called “Reports” and “Product Sales” on the left side. Clicked it and was shocked how simple this report is. Didnt see much more then a list which tells me how much visits and sales differend of my objects had. Ok so far.. but.. I did see more numbers on the buttom which I could use to browse all my objects… yea to get all the info about my other product visits and sales. And here is my problem. Should I now browse all pages and then do the math by my own to get the amount I´ve sold? And how about time range? I couldnt see the complete addition of all sales.. I also couldnt find anything which let me define a time range. This cant be true and I hope it is because it is still in a beta.
This is not complexy and there must be more.. I hope there will be more. Im not happy with a simple list of my product sales. I need to define the time of sales.. I need to have the possibility to setup more then this. And I defenetly wont browse 10 Pages of over 100 Items and do the math by my own.
This cant be all. And please lets all hope we get more then this after the beta.
Greetings
Emerald Viewer.. denial-of-service attack? WTF?
Got this email right now…
Dear Second Life Resident,
Late last week, we discovered a denial-of-service attack that was being served through the widely distributed Emerald third-party viewer. This is in direct violation of our third-party viewer policy (part 2, section d, paragraph iii).
We have removed Emerald from the list of third-party viewers, and are now in touch with the Emerald team to discuss what can happen next. We did this to do our best to protect the safety and security of Second Life users. We will not tolerate a viewer that includes malicious code, nor will we tolerate development teams with a history of violating users’ trust or disrupting their lives.
We take privacy, safety, and security very seriously, and we will act to the best of our abilities to protect it. We have not yet disabled logins via the Emerald viewer, but will do so if we feel the software and the team behind it is not able to meet the standards we’ve set. While Emerald is currently the focus of our attention because of what happened recently, all third-party viewers are held to the same standard, and must comply with the third-party viewer policy. Read more >>
If you have been using the Emerald viewer, for now we would encourage you to consider either one of the Linden Lab viewers, or an alternative third-party viewer.
Philip Linden
denial-of-service attack that was being served through the widely distributed Emerald third-party viewer? Emerald?
Im not sure why I cant believe this.. but it seems I have to.
I hope all will be ok soon.. If they shut down Emerald Viewer.. what should I use then to login Second Life? Oh my GOD! Horror-Scenario..
I hope I dont have to use the Viewer 2.0 for the future. 😦
I like it, I like it not..? New SL Marketplace.. my thoughts.
Usually I am one of these persons who dislike everything that is affected by changes. Or in short: I hate changes.
In almost the same manner it was pretty sure why I did freak out when heard that Xstreet SL will be transformed to something which is called Second Life Marketplace. Yea New Second Life Marketplace.
Indeed I was one person of many who worried about that. I thought why there is need for so much changes?
But..
Today I updated some of my core products on the new marketplace. And after editing 3 products I started to acclimatize with the new way how to manage products there and so.
I must say that I now start to like the new design.. Yes me! The evil hater of all changes.. I like it now!?
Yea the way how I can edit all the products is pretty good. Guess its just a matter of habituation.
I like that you can link one product to another. Or link to a demo. This is good I thought and I use it now.
What makes me sad is the fact that they did remove this “Peoples who bought this product, bought these products too…” Feature. Im not sure but this was another good way to get some visitors.. yea visitors other creators as well.
But at least I am overall much more happy with it then in the past. Had already some sales but not much. Main sales still come from Xstreet SL. But when they close it down.. I hope those sales will be on the new Market too.
Just my “changed” thoughts on that.
Emerald Viewer and the new Website.. looking cool!
Just downloaded a new Version of the Emerald Viewer.. no I dont know if there is a new Version. I just wasnt up to date because the SL brake I had.
Ok then I did notice that they have a new Website here:
And I must say I like the style of the Website. Its so minimalistic but fine. I like this style. I mean what else should you see on this website? Right.. Most peoples first look for a new Emerald Version. And the first thing you see on this website is the “Download Button”. Easy .. and sweet!
You may wonder why I write about this.. I just dont like the trend that new Websites have to be overcrowded.. Its a trend I dont like.. Lots of Websites outthere which are overcrowded even if they just offer one single product. Yea on some Websites you wont find this single Product with the first hit.
So.. Great Emerald.. I love the new Website.. keep it simple but fine 🙂
AdBoards available at -DD-Mall for 50L$ weekly!
AdBoards available at -DD-Mall for 50L$ weekly!
AdBoards at -DD-Mall in Second Life
The AdBoards are direclty near a slapt.me terminal, eldex terminal, midnight mania board, lucky chair.
So just check out our place and if you like, just rent a board and advertice your service in my Mall. Greetings.
A lot of changes in my Mall
So yesterday I just wanted to make some changes in my Mall in Second Life.
The first idea was to build a third etage. But I didnt want to build in the high again. So i thought about the solution to build a cellar in the mall.
First it wasnt easy because the Second Life terraforming tools are horrible in my opinion. But then the estate owner told me about a tool which is way more effective.
But what did I place in the new room? Well i´ve got some new and great alexandre fashion skins and shapes. So I wanted to place them in my mall. I am alexandre affiliate and I am sure I will sell a lot of those skins because they are very realistic. And if i dont sell much.. however SL is fun and not only business. But SL keeps me creative and this is the main point why i like to spend time for it. But anyway let me please place the SURL to the skin and shapes:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lionheart%20Pumbaa/146/68/18
This is another view of the new mall space.. I like to work with blue windows and the idea was to see sim water on the ground. Im not sure if its ok to be proud about the own work.. but in this case I am. I had a lot of fun while redesign. When I finished the room, i still did need some friendly admosphere.. so i thought it would be great to buy some plants. I did place some of them in differend spots of the mall. Now I am happy!
Miyo´s General Blog 