Watching Urban Digital's Applied Research

We watch Urban Digital closely since their work is aligned with ours. The Digital Urban blog is written by Dr Andrew Hudson-Smith, a Senior Research Fellow and Research Manager at CASA, .aimed at examining the latest techniques to visualize the city scape via digital media it covers a lot of the work going on at CASA, the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London.

Based in London England, they has been working on the new exhibition space for the city and agent based modeling work at CASA. The development path has changed in favor of SketchUp with LightUp plugin for the rooms layout and 3D Max for the agent based models. The video below shows progress so far running in Unity:

Live Concurrent Editing ~Google Wave~

1. Re twits
   
2. WorldSimTerraRT @poinky: @TishShute so are the devs going to integrate opensim and wave?8 minutes ago from TweetDeck

Google Wave Developer Preview presentation at the Day 2 Keynote of Google I/O. To learn more visit http://wave.google.com

via: May 28, 2009

Read:

• Will O3D Get Google Back Into Virtual Worlds?

• Google’s O3D and VW’s

  
  

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Metaverse U Live from Stanford

Starting today at 09:00am PST, there will be a direct feed from Stanford.

Be sure to check out the full agenda here.

Source: Metaverse U

Friday 29 May 2009
9:15 - 9:45 Jeffrey T. Schnapp, Stanford University
9:45 - 10:15 John Hurliman, Intel
10:15 - 10:45 Ewen Cheslack-Postava & Daniel Horn, Sirikata
11:15 - 11:45 Henry Lowood, Stanford University
11:45 - 12:15 Paul Byrne, Project Wonderland
12:15 - 12:45 Mic Bowman, Tom Murphy & Charlie Peck, ScienceSim
1:45 - 2:00 Seung Wook Kim, Virtual World Roadmap
2:00 - 2:30 Sheldon Brown, UCSD
2:30 - 3:00 Ryan McDougall, RealXtend
3:00 - 3:30 Google's O3D
3:45 - 4:15 Crista Lopes, Opensim
4:15 - 4:45 Keith Lee, Booyah

Saturday 30 May 2009
9:15 - 9:45 Sisse Siggaard Jensen, RUC
9:45 - 10:15 Kyle Machulis, Nonpolynomial Labs
10:15 - 10:45 Robert Hamilton & Juan-Pablo Caceres, Stanford
11:15 - 11:45 Remi Arnaud, COLLADA
11:45 - 12:15 Damon H, Web3D
12:15 - 12:45 Saki Bailey, Kira Institute

The question: Is this being rebroadcast?

• Mal Burns: replay starting now at http://www.livestream.com/metaworld2
• Mal Burns: is in ON DEMAND under Outworld section too
• JeanRicard.Broek in SL: your too cool

The Tail does not wag the Dog

A bit of reflection, a bitter one at that:

Q. What do Second Life, Twitter, Apple's App Store, Google Warehouse, Blogger & Facebook have in common?

A. Very long tails.

While the platform providers get fat, the providers of the content all dream to be the top 2%, with their products or something to say, but 98% are soon lost out in obscurity, out someplace on the set of the longest tails ever created.

I read about how the providers of these low cost of entry platforms are not responding to their "customers, citizens, partners?" or that they are acting like some form of totalitarian government. Ask yourself.. Can they really change the structure of a marketplaces or a dream factory? Face it.. They are selling their basic products or services using the free draw of something similar to a ponzi scheme, but without any payback at all, just selling dreams.

Phillip's Great Platform of Dreams is to real now. So if Linden Lab's new Management decides to make Second Life into an corporate 3rd party entrapment platform, a PG Barbe World or spin off it's Sexland that will only be to hype more dreams.

They have no real way to make more dreams come true for the 95% of those that buy into the pitch. Unfortunately for Linden Lab and all those residents that want a fatter tail, 95% of people that create an account figure it out within less then a month and leave SL behind, that's real life, that is the real marketplace at work.

Ref: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/25/the-app-store-hype-gets-a-dose-of-reality/

A look at TVnina, Composer and Shape 3.0 - Dassault Systèmes 3DVIA Technology

With Google's Sketchup and Linden Lab's Second Life now established, do not forget Autodesk (AutoCad, 3DS/Max, Maya) & Dassault Systèmes (3DVIA, Solidworks) have their futures solidly set on 3D. They obviously have the graphics, toolset & GUI programmers to develop high end 3D products for their government/military & Global Fortune 500 industrial customers and even a few webby toys. You just will not see much about them in the Web 2.0 hype reportage unless you are tuned in to their product pipelines. Here are a few samples from Dassault.

A quote from another one of Dassault's videos made me laugh

"Developing products for customers before they know they want them"

Ask for a Key on TVnima.com and try the TV Show generator & more primitive 3D avatar online engine capabilities.


3DVIA Composer



3DVIA Shape 3.0, the latest release of our free 3D modeling software, is now available for download. This new version extends powerful freeform modeling to everyone, allowing for the creation of smooth, curved surfaces for boats, planes, rockets or anything from the imagination. (Looks like Google SketchUp has gotten someones attention)


Microsoft Virtual Earth - 3DVIA

OH! lets not forget their old VR product VirTools, here is a 2008 MOCAP video from Poland.

Returning to Mars

After working with or looking at: Second Life, Vast Park, Sketchup, OpenSim & RealXtend i think Blue Mars, ( hate the name) may just have The platform. Time will tell.... Beta is scheduled for June, and developers are building now.

This image is from the Crysis Forum, but was found posted to the Blue Mars Forum, Blue Mars is a VW based on the Crysis 2.5 game engine. The Company claims it can scale to allow thousands of concurrent avatars, and virtually unlimited land and just look at the stunning graphics.

RMIT & VastPark

Virtual Worlds Down Under - Part 3 of 4 - RMIT Architecture from VastPark on Vimeo.

LightUp for SketchUp

LightUp for SketchUp is a SketchUp plugin that adds realistic, realtime lighting to your sketchup models. Add lights, add windows, and watch your SketchUp scenes glow with gorgeous reflected light, soft shadows, subtle shading. Gone are the flat, boring surfaces of old. The new release of LightUp (v1.5) is now available with a 30 day demo and retails for $149

Fast Lighting design using realtime Lux lightmeter and pseudo-color display to track down problem areas.
Note. You must have "Use hardware acceleration" checked in SketchUp OpenGL preferences to use LightUp.

via: http://www.light-up.co.uk/index.php
vai: http://www.digitalurban.blogspot.com/

Awaiting SL SexLand to Open --- Is Linden Lab looking to China?

China’s first sex theme park closes before it opens

Demolition team moves in after officials decide Love Land is an evil influence
阅读中文 | Read this in Chinese

A sculpture of a giant pair of legs wearing a red thong is dismantled by workers at Love Land, China’s first sexually explicit theme park, in Chongqing. Photograph: China Daily/Reuters

China’s first sex theme park has fallen to the wrecker’s ball before it even opened, after officials deemed it an “evil” influence.

Developers billed the attraction in Chongqing as tasteful and socially beneficial. But senior officials conducted an emergency tour of Love Land last weekend after it attracted worldwide publicity, state media reported today.

“The investigation determined the park’s content was vulgar and that it was neither healthy nor educational. It had had an evil influence on society and had to be torn down immediately,” a municipal publicity official told the Global Times newspaper.

She added that the owners of the attraction were “interested only in profiting from sensationalism”.

A demolition team moved in at once, toppling the giant revolving model of a pair of women’s legs which had stood over the gates.

The park, due to open in October, also included displays of giant genitalia and a photographic exhibition on the history of sex. It had promised workshops to help visitors improve their sexual technique and advise on safe sex.

“It’s a pity the park had to close, but we accept the decision,” Yang Xiaoyong, a project manager with Mexin Group, the developer of Yangrenjie, told the Global Times.

According to state media, the park was part of an entertainment development costing 1bn yuan (£100m).

“I’m glad the park was demolished because the displays were really rough and had no artistic quality,” a nearby resident told the Global Times.

But others argued that Chinese culture was too conservative and that the park would have improved sex education.

“The park was above board, so why was it pulled down? How can a country get powerful if it doesn’t open its mind?” read one website comment.

via: guardian.co.uk, Monday 18 May 2009 11.17 BST

Second Life - Talent Abounds

To view all 2000+ images from Best of the Best as a fullscreen slideshow click:
here. If using XP toggle fullscreen with the F11 key.

OpenSim & the Hippo Viewer continue to Grow

Statistics from The Hippo Viewer site

When the viewer is started, it automatically checks if a new version is available. For that purpose, it transfers the viewer product name, viewer version number, viewer channel, platform and MAC address to a web server. No other data is transferred.

Each MAC address is regarded as a unique user, which is not completely accurate, but should be close enough. The MAC address is transferred and stored only to enable the statistics shown on this page.

You may ask why.

• Open Sim now implements approximately 95% of Second Life functionality
• It is less expensive - Free to run on your own computer or server and on average grid providers charge about 20% the tier charged by Linden lab. ie: get a full sim for $60/m US versus $295/m US
  
• Improvements to imposed limits: The limits for building are established by the platform. In OpenSim, Hippo is capable of building prims as large as 256x256x256. However, SL supports prims only up to 10x10x10. Therefore, while using Hippo in SL, you will not be able to set prim dimensions beyond 10x10x10.

• 					OpenSim		Second Life
  	Max. Prim Scale				256x256x256		10x10x10
  	Max. Height				10,000 m		4096 m
  	Max. Transparency				100		100
  	Max. Hollow				95/99	(1)	95
  	Min. Hole Size				0.05/0.01	(1)	0.05
  	Max. Groups				100	(2)	25

  Notes
• As the extended range for hollow and minimum hole size is not properly rendered on other viewers, the Hippo OpenSim Viewer, by default, restricts editing to the range supported by all viewers. You can opt in to the extended range for each grid independently in the grid manager.
  The Hippo OpenSim Viewer always renders prims using the extended range properly, even if turned off for editing.
• The extended group limit is set only in the viewer. This will probably need to be adapted, once the details of group support in OpenSim get defined.

Congratulations to all the Open Source community that have worked so hard.

MakeHuman 1.0 alpha 2 ready!!

MakeHuman(TM) is an open source (so it's completely free), innovative and professional software for the modelling of 3-Dimensional humanoid characters. Features that make this software unique include a new, highly intuitive GUI and a high quality mesh, optimized to work in subdivision surface mode (for example, Zbrush). Using MakeHuman, a photorealistic character can be modeled in less than 2 minutes; MakeHuman is released under an Open Source Licence (GPL3.0) , and is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
Web site: http://www.makehuman.org/blog/index.php

Leadwerks 2.1 Game Engine & Editor - Imports Autodesk FBX Files

Leadwerks Engine now features integration with Autodesk FBX. Load FBX files directly, or convert them to the engine's Game Model Format (GMF). Hierarchical and skinned animated meshes are supported.



A few features:

LOD: Level of Detail
Leadwerks Engine allows up to 16 LOD meshes with automatic management and user-defined detail distances.

Pipeline
The Leadwerks Engine SDK includes a utility to convert Autodesk FBX files to Leadwerks Game Model Format (.gmf) files. Or just call LoadMesh("mymesh.fbx") and the FBX file will be silently converted in the background and loaded.

Web site: www.leadwerks.com

3D Search

My First Question is: How much of human search is done by visually looking and how much is based on reading text?

In daily life i find my keys, my hotel or a cab not by using Google but by looking around first. I know in the future we are expected to "look" at a screen to find everything but the richness is missing from a visual image. Second life, though 3D, uses 2D text based search, It queries the db and returns a title and a picture/snapshot based on our word input. We then "look" at to see if what matches our request in our minds eye. The result is generally terrible.

Now Google is The search company and they own Sketchup & Google Warehouse so one must think they have better ideas.

The Second Q is: Will Linden Lab work jointly with Google or will Google compete with inSL search & inXstreet search to provide better search of Virtual Worlds by crawling sites like SL. Could they, will they, send in a bot/spider and collect everything in 3D just like they crawl a web site for text.

The last Question is: Is collecting 3D geometry & textures a violation of the a "worlds" TofS or copyright and if so is Google itself not now in violation of my copyright when they snip text or an image from this blog. the AP, or anyone's web page?

What brought this all to mind? ---- I found this today clipped from The Official Google SketchUp Blog:

The 3D Warehouse, now in better shape

We launched an experimental new feature that lets you find similarly-shaped models in the Google 3D Warehouse. To try it out, go to a model details page and click on "See other models shaped like this". There, you'll see a bunch of models that are similarly shaped.



Not only is this generally interesting, but it'll also help you find stuff that you might miss with a text-only search. For example, this model is similar to this model, but they don't share any text; you might not find the first one, yet it might be exactly what you need. This feature also works well for finding things with a distinctive shape, like biplanes, swivel chairs, and 1960s muscle cars. Maybe the next time you're modeling an interior, you can use this feature to poke around for options when you're selecting furniture.

As fun as this feature is, it's also pretty cool that Google's culture leads to innovations like this. Last year, a few of us from Boulder visited Google's NYC office for an internal conference to see what new and exciting stuff our research crew had been cooking up. In a side conversation with one of the researchers there, I discovered that he'd done a lot of work in the past on 3D shape search. And as luck would have it, an intern who was just starting also had a ton of experience doing this. So a team was born! Following a good deal of work, we've got a new feature for you to play with.

Now From Yahoo:

Yahoo Wants to Move Web Search Beyond Links

from WSJ.com: Digits by Jessica E. Vascellaro

As it battles for a greater share of the search market, Yahoo on Tuesday described its plans to answer more Web search queries with specific data like addresses, photos, and other real-world information rather than links to Web pages.

It’s a quest that all its competitors — including Microsoft and Google, which has roughly three times Yahoo’s share of the search market — are also pursuing as they try to provide better answers for a broader array of queries. Yahoo has been taking steps in that direction for more than a year, blending more content like videos and news articles among the standard blue links that users are accustomed to seeing.

But at an event for reporters in San Francisco, Yahoo executives outlined a goal far broader than providing shortcuts to select content, like photos and videos, in search results. Their aim is to be able to build a search service that maps the words that appear on Web pages to real-word objects and concepts.

“We need to move from a Web of pages to a Web of objects,” said Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo Labs and Yahoo Search Strategy. “The technical battleground moves from how many pages can you index to how complete and reliable is your representation of your Web of objects.” Raghavan described the “Web of objects” as anything that is represented in the real world, like a place or thing.

Yahoo is tackling the problem, he said, through computer-analysis of Web pages and feeds of information that it gets from partners. A program called Search Monkey allows businesses to send Yahoo data they want to enhance their search results listings with, such as a relevant video or a photo of a business. Yahoo is now using that data and the structure around it to make its standard search engine smarter.

Some of the technology is already in effect in an early form. For instance, if a user searches for “Wyclef Jean,” Yahoo, determining that the query is for a musician, knows to surface audio clips of songs in addition to Web pages. Larry Cornett, a Yahoo vice president, showed off two other manifestations it is testing that it may roll out in the coming months. The first is an enhancement to its image search service that, for a search for a destination, like Paris, shows photos of other destinations, like Madrid. The other surfaces reviews for queries it determines are restaurants.

Yahoo executives declined to say what percentage of queries it can surface structured data – that is data based on the type of search — for. But he said the amount of structured data it understands has grown by more than 413% in the past year, thanks in large part to Search Monkey.

I Don't Want a Phone Bill, especially from Linden Lab

Hummmm.... Mark Kingdom shows his hand, finally!

Below clipped from Business Week:

Hello, an Avatar Is Calling You

Second Life, Sony, and Lenovo are adding Internet phone features to their virtual worlds as Web calling becomes a must-have for social sites

Internet phone calls aren't just for telecommuters and grandparents anymore. In the coming months online games and virtual worlds, including Linden Lab's Second Life and Sony's Star Wars, plan to start charging players to call one another over the Web—even when they're not immersed in a game.

The idea is to forge tighter bonds between the ~~ and the people who inhabit them by helping players make real-world connections from their phones. On May 20, Second Life operator Linden Lab will announce plans to introduce features to connect its 650,000 active members via land lines, cell phones, and PCs. One service, called "Dial an Avatar," lets players call other characters in the virtual world, or dial into a virtual meeting from their cell phone—even when they're not sitting in front of their browser. The company plans to roll out new features throughout the year and may charge subscriptions to make calls into Second Life.

Linden Lab isn't the only online world operator experimenting with paid Web calling. Sony (SNE) Online Entertainment plans to introduce new Internet calling services this summer for its online fantasy role-playing games, EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies. "It's a community-forming feature," says Russ Shanks, chief operating officer of Sony Online Entertainment. One service would let users talk with friends, no matter what Sony game they're playing.

Minting Revenues from Virtual Worlds

PC maker Lenovo has plans to launch a new virtual world called the "Lenovo eLounge," designed to boost sales of its machines. The lounge features Web phone calling software from Nortel.

For online worlds and games, such Internet phone features could provide new sources of revenue in a Web world whose users are increasingly being asked to shell out for virtual products. Facebook and MySpace (NWS) recently began testing virtual currencies that let users buy digital goods on their sites.

Second Life's users already spend an average of more than $100 a year on virtual clothes and property for their avatars, and make a billion minutes of free calls on the site every month, Linden Lab says. So why not paid calls? "I think it can be a very substantial revenue stream for us in 2010—one of the larger businesses in our portfolio," CEO Mark Kingdon says.

To be sure, Linden Lab and other sites will be competing in the Internet phone calling market with eBay (EBAY) unit Skype, which lets users call each others' computers and phones. Skype sales surged 44%, to $551 million, last year, and eBay plans to spin the unit off to harvest more of its value. Skype declined to comment.

Other links:

• http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2009/05/second-life-embraces-voice.html
• https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2009/05/20/over-15-billion-voice-minutes-served

Third Party Avatar Generator

after reading: Evolver web-based alpha launched......introducing an easy and fun way to build multi-platform avatars By Jani Pirkola on Maxping Quoting his conclusion:

Of course if Darwin Dimensions did decide to support the Second Life® skin template format as an export option their potential userbase would grow massively overnight :)

I went to take a look, I created this avatar in a few minutes.

The slow addoption of 3D in Architectural Practice

While this blog concentrates on cutting edge technologies for 3D visualization including Virtual Worlds, it is important not to loose track of the market and how fast it adopts new technologies. The below was clipped from A CAD Managers Journey into 3D: A deeper look into the numbers reveals probable reasons behind 3D's slow acceptance. from Cadalyst.com

Industry Breakdown
The industry segments I surveyed were AEC/construction, civil engineering, consumer goods design, and manufacturing/MCAD. I realize this doesn't give a detailed breakdown, but it is based on previous surveys, so these are the most accurate figures I can calculate. The following chart shows the comparative breakdown for each industry segment:

	Totally 2D	Evaluating 3D	Hybrid	Totally 3D
AEC/Construction	33%	51%	14%	2%
Civil Engineering	23%	45%	21%	11%
Consumer Goods Design	13%	51%	27%	9%
Manufacturing/MCAD	10%	45%	36%	9%

When viewing these results, please keep in mind that AEC/construction is roughly 65% of the survey sample, with manufacturing/MCAD, consumer goods, and civil engineering making up the rest. We can see from the industry breakdown that 3D has made far less progress in AEC/construction than it has in other areas, and because this segment represents almost two-thirds of the survey results, it drags down the overall totals.

Quick Conclusions
You'll note that 84% of the AEC/construction industry is 2D! Very few companies have brought 3D into their workflows, and almost none have made the full transition to 3D. Why so low? Most likely it is because most of the industry still uses a lot of paper and uses 2D DWG files as the primary project documents. It seems that even if you want to be fully 3D in the AEC industry, it is almost impossible to do so because of market factors.

Looking Beyond SL & Just Getting OpenSim/RealXtend Working - Collada & BIMserver

A major requirement of a serious Virtual Word platform for Architects is the ability to inter-operate with current CADD/BIM tools like Google Sketchup and Autodesk's Autocad and Revit. We are not just talking about importing and exporting meshes, models or 3D geometry, but datasets that now accompany these objects, for example the manufacturer, mass or cost of a building component or assembly.

One interesting open source application is BIMserver from Europe.


Screenshot of BimServer using Revit data

clipped from BIMserver.org:

Call for private beta testers for Revit plugin

Posted by Léon van Berlo in news on April 16th, 2009

You might have heard from the buzz that we have developed a Revit plugin for the open source bimserver. Actually it is a bimserver plugin for Revit. The plugin gives you a button in Revit to send and/or receive a model to and from a bimserver installation. The plugin is in a beta fase and we have only tested it in our own controlled environment (Revit 2009). To improve this plugin (and thereby make it more stable) we are now looking for Revit users that are willing to test the plugin. When you are one of those enthusiastic users that are willing to help better the world of BIM, please mail us at betatest@bimserver.org and you will receive the plugin on short notice. You do not have the install a bimserver.org distribution because you can also use the demo-server (http://demo.bimserver.org)

On another front I found this announcement:

Open File Formats Technology Working Group Meeting Agenda, 2009-05-15

Meeting details for this friday's Immersive Education meeting of the Open File Format Working Group. Project Wonderland will be announced as fully compatible with COLLADA for Create Once, Experience everywhere initiative.

WHAT: OFF.TWG UPDATE AND PROJECT OVERVIEW MEETING IN-WORLD

WHEN: Friday May 15th at 11am ET (Boston time; 9-10am Pacific / SL time)

WHERE: Second Life http://slurl.com/secondlife/Smithers%20Bluff/45/204/92

AGENDA:

1 hour meeting where Open File Formats Technology Working Group (OFF.TWG)
co-chairs will provide an overview of the current status of OFF.TWG off-list
activity and progress, along with an overview of the "OFF.TWG MESH RENDERING
PROJECT" that has been under development for the past five months.

During this meeting OFF.TWG members will see screenshots of the same 3D mesh
objects in both Wonderland and realXtend, and also in the OGRE rendering engine.
The ability to render the same 3D mesh objects (models) across all three
Immersive Education virtual worlds platforms is the overarching objective
of the "OFF.TWG MESH RENDERING PROJECT" that will be discussed next Friday.

What is the goal of the Open File Formats Technology Working Group (OFF.TWG):

The following set embodies baseline requirements for 3D/VR file formats specified by the Open File Formats Technology Working Group (OFF.TWG):

1. Open and Royalty-Free Standards. File formats must be open (i.e., non-proprietary and publicly available) and not conditioned on payment of royalties, fees or other financial consideration. Specifically, file formats must be available under a license compatible with the open and royalty-free terms defined by the Media Grid Intellectual Property Policy [REF3].
2. Modular design. File formats must be modular in design. That is, where aspects of the data (i.e., features and capabilities) can be separated or compartmentalized they should be in such a way that updates or changes within one modularized area cannot affect other areas. Examples of modular design include object-oriented architectures, componentization, profiles and levels.
3. Extensible. File formats must have an extensible architecture. The term extensible refers to the ability of a file format to have its features and capabilities expanded, enhanced, or added to.
4. Validatable. File formats must support the construction of documents (e.g., document files that represent 3D/VR objects, scenes, avatars, etc.) that can be testable in such a way as to guarantee the validity of the document for subsequent processing by target applications (e.g., virtual world applications and content development tools). The term validation refers to the process of verifying that a document follows the grammar, vocabulary and syntax rules for the language(s) used to construct the document. A document that passes this process with success is considered valid.
5. Wide support. File formats must be widely supported by content development tools. At a minimum the content development tools cited in Appendix A of this document should support the ability to export and import 3D/VR content in the target file format(s).
6. Polygon mesh support. File formats must support the ability to represent 3D/VR content (e.g., objects, scenes, avatars, etc.) using polygon meshes. The term polygon mesh refers to a collection of vertices, edges and faces that together define the shape (geometry) of a 3D/VR polyhedral object. To optimize the rendering process the faces in a polygon mesh are typically comprised of triangles, quadrilaterals or other simple convex polygons but may also consist of more complex polygonal structures.
7. XML-based (with support for compression and encryption). File formats must be based on the Extensible Markup Language (XML) [REF4]. XML document files constructed in accordance with the target format(s) must be representable using plain-text character sets compatible with Unicode standards [REF5] (i.e., file descriptors used to construct documents must support plain-text character sets compatible with Unicode encoding). Although file formats are not required to define specific compression and encryption capabilities directly, any text-based XML document constructed using the target format(s) should be capable of being compressed using general-purpose data compression techniques (e.g., ZIP, GZIP, etc.), and should further support encryption using well-known data protection techniques (e.g., DRM). Digital media assets (e.g., texture images, audio files, videos, etc.) are not required to be represented using XML.
8. Arbitrarily complex content. File formats must support arbitrarily complex and detailed 3D/VR content (i.e., complexity and detail arising from polygon count, primitive objects and groups, etc.) as well as very simple content. File formats must not constrain or restrict content complexity or level of detail; formats must support the creation of a wide spectrum of 3D/VR content, ranging from simplistic content (e.g., flat planes, cubes, spheres, cones, boxes, etc.) to highly complex and extremely detailed 3D/VR objects, avatars, scenes, and environments (i.e., high resolution cinematic quality content).
9. State-of-the-art rendering. File formats must support state-of-the-art rendering features and capabilities commonly exhibited by modern graphics rendering hardware (e.g., video game consoles and graphics workstations) and modern versions of mainstream computer graphics APIs (e.g., DirectX/Direct3D and OpenGL). Examples include shaders (pixel, vertex and geometry shaders), special effects, and advanced lighting techniques.
10. Animation. File formats must support animation. The term animation refers to the illusion of movement achieved by the perceived motion of an object over time. Specifically, animation refers to the temporal description of objects in a 3D/VR scene, such as how they are moved and deformed over time. Common techniques for animating 3D/VR computer graphics include: keyframing, motion capture, forward and inverse kinematics, morph targets (per-vertex animation), skeletal and facial animation, blend shapes, physical simulation, and so forth.
11. Physics. File formats must support physics. The term physics refers to the capacity to model in real-time the behavior of objects in three dimensional space. 3D/VR platforms (i.e., virtual worlds, video games and simulators) commonly rely on third-party physics engines to support real-time physical simulations such as: collision detection, rigid body dynamics, life-like character and avatar motion, cloth and hair motion, special effects (smoke, fog, dust, etc.), realistic object interactions, destructible objects and environments, vehicle motion and simulations, and so forth. 3D/VR file formats may provide bindings or APIs to common physics engines (e.g., Havok Physics, Open Dynamics Engine, NVIDIA PhysX, and Bullet) rather than define their own format-specific physics solutions.
12. Continuous Level of Detail (CLOD). File formats must support continuous rendering of content at varying levels of detail. The term Level of Detail (LOD) refers to the amount of detail or complexity that is displayed at any particular time for any particular object in a 3D/VR scene. The term Continuous Level of Detail (CLOD) refers to the ability to render an object at a desired level of detail in real-time and without interruption. Whereas switching between different resolutions of an object using traditional LoD (i.e., Discrete LoD) often results in "popping" or other obvious visual disruptions, Continuous LOD enables gradual and smooth transitions between object resolutions. Continuous LOD typically requires a 3D/VR data structure that is designed specifically for continuous extraction of object data at run time and progressive transmission of object data.
13. Metadata. File formats must support system-supplied and user-supplied metadata. The term metadata refers to information that characterizes data (“information about information”). Keywords, tags, labels, and descriptors are common forms of metadata. The term system-supplied metadata refers to metadata provided by system-level software tools or processes that are used to assign metadata during the content production or pre-production stage (i.e., before the content is available to end users). Automated data classification, taxonomy and ontology tools may, for example, assign metadata automatically and without human intervention at the time a document is entered into a content repository. The term user-supplied metadata refers to metadata that is provided by end users (e.g., teachers, trainers and students) through a process that is commonly referred to as tagging or labeling.
    

File: BIMserver under Metadata

More Peeks into Blue Mars Closed Beta

The Graphics

Shopping

Secondlife Nathalie auf dem Roller!

Great Sulptie

Populating SketchUp Mesh Components with ParaCloud Modeler

Sketchup is being used by more and more Architects along with complex 3D Modeling and CADD software. Plugins and third party applications like Paracloud now populate the toolbox.

If Linden Lab does not change direction Second Life® will become just toys for hobbyists and kids, a trademarked closed systems akin to LegoLand® or Tinker Toys® (for those of an older generation).

Google, Microsoft, Dassault Systèmes & Autodesk are all poised to enter the market and they all have development budgets larger then the whole of Linden Labs. What will be missed if they just stay with prims and M/C/T permissions.

To give an idea of how advanced software works here is a:
Video Tutorial by the ParaCloud Team ⋅ from July 13, 2008 ⋅

Learn how to create a PolyMesh components in SketchUp and populate it using ParaCloud Modeler

• Second Life® is a brand name and trademark of Linden lab
  
• LEGO, the LEGO logo, LEGOLAND, are trademarks of the LEGO Group.
  
• LEGOLAND California is a Merlin Entertainments Group Attraction.
• Hasbro owns the Tinkertoy brand and currently produces both Tinkertoy Plastic and Tinkertoy Classic (wood) sets and parts.

Tips & Traps - Moving Your Stuff to Open Sim

Clipped from: http://spoton3d.com/intro.html

Content Creation – Building on the Grid

Although building in the OpenSim platform is very much like building in SL, there are still a few rare bugs that need to be worked out. It is recommended to do some testing first and decide if it’s something you can work with until the rest of the bugs are ferreted out. We’ll be offering a limited area of sandbox work space in Second Life® for those who would need to continue to build there, while the bugs are worked out.

FlexScale Prims®

Larger builds can take advantage of what we call FlexScale Prims® that exist by default on OpenSim grids, if activated. FlexScale Prims® are fully scalable up to 256m in any direction, as opposed to Second Life’s® prims that stop as 10m. This eliminates the need for Megaprims on our grid. We highly recommend you look over any existing builds you plan on bringing to our grid, via Second Inventory, and removing all Megaprims from them, as they are not allowed on the SpotON3D™ grid. They were found them to be a possible causes of instability and lag, due to the nature of their creation.

Bringing in Backed-Up Second Inventory Items

Second Inventory has a Quick Start tutorial on their website that might be helpful for anyone new to using their backup tool. You can access that webpage and more video, text and forum help from the rest of their website. http://www.secondinventory.com/files/start.php

We’d recommend the Multi-User version of their program, as it will allows you to bring over items from multiple avatar accounts/names. If you only have one serious avatar you might question this idea, but if, in the future, you choose to bring your items over to a different grid, and your avatar’s name is already in use, you’ll be blocked from uploading them through the Second Inventory panel, strictly because the names won’t match.

We’ve done a bit of work bringing in our own content and have found some solutions to the whole problem of not being able to bring over nested or rez boxed items with Second Inventory and we have a few ideas we’d like to share.

Builds over 256 Prims

1. If you have a built that is over 256 prims in total, you’re going to have to resign yourself to rezzing them in pieces and puzzling them back together once they are uploaded in your inventory, so make sure they are named in such a way that you can know they belong together, i.e., Arabian Mosque-1a, Arabian Mosque-1b, etc.
2. You’ll want a way to bring them back together as close to perfectly as possible. If you’ve been around a while Second Life® long enough to remember how it was done before rezzers were a common thing you’ll recognize this next method.
1. Using our example, Arabian Mosque-1a and Arabian Mosque-1b, you create two post from either a cube or cylinder in the same exact spot.
2. Color each of them strikingly different hue, such as red and green
3. Name them Arabian Mosque Post-1a and Arabian Mosque Post-1b
4. Click on part one of the main build, Arabian Mosque-1a then, click on the corresponding post, Arabian Mosque Post-1a.
5. Repeat this with the second part, Arabian Mosque-1b and Arabian Mosque Post-1b, making sure the last thing you link to, are the posts, so that they are the root prim.
6. Now you can take them up as one object into your Second Life® inventory, but realize they won’t upload as one through Second Inventory®, (SI). SI manages to backup and upload your items by attaching them to your avatar’s body. This is why you’ll come back from a backup session and find you’re avatar has no hair or is missing one attachment of another. But, this also means that is can’t handle nested or multiple part builds, because you can only have one item attached to each avatar attachment point. The purpose of the two posts sharing the same exact location is so that, when you re-rez it on the SpotON3D™ grid, you’ll only have to match those two posts up again to make the build come back together perfectly, using the position XYZ tool on the Edit Menu.
3. If you have a build that is less than 256 prims, but you’re having trouble linking it up as one because of its spread too far apart, then we have an trick for that as well. The idea is to miniaturize your build, using the rescale all white cubes in the edit gizmo mode, to the point that you can link it all up together, but remember not to include anything that you don’t have full rights to, like furniture, visitor counters and other items you are not creator for or have limited rights to.
1. To do the miniaturization you’ll want to go over your build carefully, hunting down anything that might stall the rescaling down of your build, such as plants, glass windows, pictures, walls or anything less than .010m thick.
2. You’ll either want to remove those items, or thicken them to about .075m.
3. Next, you’ll want to link up your build in sections, trying to be as tidy and clean on the breaks as you can.
4. After that is done, go through and click on all the parts you’ve linked up, raise the build over the area they were placed in, and see if anything got left behind. If some pieces did. Let go of the build in hand, use the YELLOW BOX Mass Selection tool, and highlighting all those extra pieces, and link them together. Then go back to the parts hanging in the air, selecting them all, then going to EDIT on the top toolbar, and UNDO to force all those pieces to return to their original position, remembering to grab the leftovers too.
5. Now you should have all the build in hand. If you hold down SHIFT and CONTROL you’ll get the CUBED WIDGET. Using one of the WHITE corner cubes, drag your mouse in towards the center of the build. That should make all the pieces reduce their size together and in scale simultaneously, until they are close enough to re-link as one group. Then you can back them up as one object using SI.

If you have a trick or treat way of handling SI content, and would like to share that with the community, please feel free to write up your idea, and send an email to us titled ‘SI Tip’ care of suggestions@SpotON3D™.com, and we’ll share it with the community.

Other Links:

• http://www.secondinventory.com/files/start.php
• Use of CopyBot and Similar Tools a ToS Violation
• http://www.adamfrisby.com/blog/2008/07/creating-effective-fingerprints-from-primitive-groups/
  

The Singing, Ringing Tree

Looking like the wreckage of an Alien space craft, this Futuristic Sculpture is Art Jim, but not as we know it. Commissioned by a forward thinking Burnley Council, The collection of tubes makes the strangest sounds when the wind blows, which is often round the location at Crown Point, on the moorland overlooking Burnley.

Giselbrecht + Partners - Dynamic facade "Kiefer technic showroom"

This facade changes continuously; each day, each hour shows a new "face" - the facade is turning into a dynamic sculpture.

We wrote a dedicated choreography for the new Kiefer technic facades, which we would like to present to you in this video clip.

More Advancements - Silverlight and Unity 2.5

Sllverlight 3

Microsoft's Flash killer now features in pixel shaders, 3d planes (ability to create pseudo-3d engines like papervision3d), local saving, pixel operations/bitmap handling.

Unity 2.5

Unity is a multiplatform game development tool, designed from the start to ease creation. A fully integrated professional application, Unity just happens to contain the most powerful engine this side of a million dollars.

The snippet below clipped from drawlogic.com I believe sums up this and the previous posts:

The great news is we have all major companies about software, mobile and the web are focused on interactive development. If you are an interactive developer with programming skills and design skills, this is the time. Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, even Google with Chrome (javascript engine ineteractive focused), and others are all on development that suits needs and requires skills of people that know the interactive and web platforms and are able to develop the best solution with the best technology for that solution. The programming depth is getting deeper (Adobe’s Alchemy, Silverlight/Moonlight/Mono/C#/Unity3D) but the capabilities are growing exponentially with what you can do with these new markets.

There are so many new, emerging and re-newed market forces in interactive development that things are going to shake up a bit and there is plenty of opportunity no matter what platform you might be locked into. However I recommend not locking yourself into one platform and exploring, but specializing in what you do best. There has never been a better time for developers looking to take the web to the next level with cooler game development visuals, more immersive virtual spaces and applications that have usability and design in new ways and mimic the great usable design of the iphone; for developers going mobile or specializing in web game development this is a good time to be in the game.

Another 3D Flash Engine, this time based on OpenGL - Yogurt3D Alpha

Y3D The authors say Yogurt3D, is almost ready!

Check out the demo here.

It runs extremely slow with Firefox and almost not at all on Internet Explorer, so don’t use it, but this one has controllable avatars.

Graphic above is of what you will see in the demo. There is nothing to install if you have Flash, and they say the code is Open Source.

Other Flash 3D engines include: The alternativa platform

To see the "Non-existent neighbourhood" demo click on the Flash button below. It's an example of using Alternativa3D at construction companies' and real estate agencies' websites.

Even more demos and interesting work including Physics can also be found at: http://www.everydayflash.com/blog/

Another Player - This time 3D for Flash - Coppercube Beta

http://www.ambiera.com/coppercube/index.html

Below is a demo that shows the simple model viewer camera in CopperCube.

Controls: Click and drag the mouse to change the view angle.

(This CopperCube 3D application requires Flash Player 9)

Import your 3D models into the CopperCube editor and publish them directly as Flash .swf file for websites or as standalone windows .exe file.

CopperCube imports the following file formats: 3D Studio meshes (.3ds), Alias Wavefront Maya (.obj), B3D files (.b3d), Cartography shop 4 (.csm), COLLADA (.xml, .dae), DeleD (.dmf), FSRad oct (.oct), Irrlicht static meshes (.irrmesh), Lightwave 3D meshes (.lwo), Microsoft DirectX (.x), Milkshape (.ms3d), My3DTools 3 (.my3D), OGRE meshes (.mesh), Pulsar LMTools (.lmts), Quake 3 levels (.bsp), Quake 2 models (.md2), STL meshes (.stl).