Face Making Robot

産総研オープンラボ2010でのアクトロイド-Fの操作の様子など

Importing Sketchup to 3ds Max

The new SketchUp import capabilities are part of the Connection Extension available to 3ds Max 2010 and 3ds Max Design 2010 Subscription members.

CloakWorks Cloth Tech Preview

Shroud offers advanced real-time cloth and hair simulation with industry-leading performance, as well as powerful authoring tools for tailoring and attaching cloth to your animated characters.

OMG, Karl Stiefvater (formerly Qarl Linden) Improves the SL Build Tools

Clipped from his blog: http://www.qarl.com/qLab/?p=66

it makes me completely crazy that there’s no alignment tool in the second life viewer.

so i made one.

third party viewers (imprudence, Kirsten’s, etc, etc, etc) please feel free to include this code into yours. linden lab? well… my rates are very reasonable.

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Visit to the Mesh Beta Grid

I visited the Second Life Mesh Beta Grid today after a number of problems.

1. I was not able to get past a missing TofS Screen, and found the answer in the SL Blog - Mesh Forum.

"I had the same problem. It's the Media Webkit plugin problem, it must not be fixed in the project viewer. The old fix was go to your program files for the project viewer, right click the slplugin select Properties and on the Compatibility tab check the box for "Run this program in compatibility mode for:" and select Windows 95 and hit apply.......it should work then." Thanks to Emee Dyrssen

2. I repeatedly kept logging into the Production Grid, I needed to change the destination to The mesh enabled SIMs "Mesh Sandbox 1". Thanks Ashasekayi Ra

I hope this helps someone if they have the same problems. above is my snapshot with shadows on. I am jazzed.

Ray Ozzie, Chief Architect & Original SL Investor to leave Microsoft

The Associated Press reported Monday, October 18, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO -- Bill Gates' successor as Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie, is leaving the company after five years.

In an e-mail sent to Microsoft Corp. employees Monday, CEO Steve Ballmer announced the change, saying Ozzie will stay with Microsoft for an undefined transition period.

Ballmer said the company is not looking for a replacement.

He said Ozzie - whose title translated into the company's top technical thinker - plans to concentrate on "the broader area of entertainment where Microsoft has many ongoing investments" before he leaves. As for his post-Microsoft employment, Ballmer said Ozzie has "no plans at this time."

Mesh Possible on OSGrid

Uploaded by ArminWeatherwax | October 14, 2010

short test of the new SecondLife(tm) client on OSGrid beta (dangergrid) --loginuri http://login.danger.osgrid.org

Cloud Based CAD, Rendering & Immersive Environments

Image is from:venturebeat.com - circa 2009

I recommend that those following technology trends in regards to Architecture and Immersive Environments the post @ Develop 3D:

Design forecast: CAD in the cloud

"While talking with Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk, he explained how he sees the move to cloud-based applications as a possible ‘extinction level event’ in computing. Looking back many large software firms that were big in the days of DOS fell from grace when we moved to Windows and new firms came to the fore. Bass noted that Autodesk was almost one of those, producing R13, a disastrous first true Windows version of AutoCAD.

He is convinced that the increasing prevalence of cloud applications will again be a hurdle for CAD developers to jump and not all are guaranteed to make it. Bass isn’t alone in this thinking, the same mindset has been exposed in conversations with Jeff Ray, CEO of SolidWorks and Bernard Charlès, CEO of Dassault Systèmes. All of which are actively porting their well-known brands into the cloud. There is a belief that the company to get there first, with the right technology, will have commercial advantage.

As an engineer or architect reading all this, I would not blame you for wondering what any of this has to do with benefiting the real world? In fact, it’s worrying as the necessity of having a fat internet connection to do your job sounds completely unappealing and a retrograde step. This is like back to the future, 1970s client-server architectures, but instead of LAN you’ll be relying on public networks"

Also check out: Autodesk's Project Twitch, which uses onlive’s video compression technology (Autodesk is an investor) to deliver live sessions of AutoCAD, Maya, 3ds Max, Revit Architecture and Inventor over the Internet.

Again I have been posting snips and clips and will be stitching it all together in the coming weeks - stay tuned

Has Second Lifes Time Past ? Here come the Big Boys

On stage at GTC2010, Ken Pimental (Autodesk), Micheal Kaplan (mental images) and Jen-Hsun Huang (NVidia) stood together to announce the next generation rendering technology they’ve integrated.

They showed the “cloud rendering” capabilities on stage, run by Peer 1 hosting, showing how the iray rendering (on 32 GPUs) offers interactive real-time rendering. In addition to simply rendering the image faster, it enables the user to actually “walk” around the scene and see it rendered interactively as they use it. Via a custom web interface, they could then place furniture and art within the room, all rendered realtime. In addition, since there was no direct lighting they could change the time of day to see completely different lighting environments.

The above was clipped from a recap of CTC2010 by Randall Hand, a visualization scientist working for a federal research lab. The story can be found at his blog www.vizworld.com

A Quick though on Microsoft and Linden Lab

With Microsoft releasing platforms like Windows Phone 7 and some form of Windows slate tablet, one cannot help but think having SL play on phones, tablets and Xbox 360 with Kinect would be worth something to Microsoft & Linden Lab alike, leaving open source viewers in the dust.

You don't have to buy a company to pwn it.

Simplygon - Mesh AutoLOD

With meshes coming to Second Life, there are a number of challenges and opportunities in front of Linden Lab. One will be to differentiate there offering/platform from OpenSim & competing platforms. By licensing proprietary and expensive middleweight technologies on the server side, they can distance themselves from under-capitalized competition, They have done this before, why not now?

We have looked at a number of these technologies here like Nimble, Windmard Mark Interactive's 3D Cloud simulation system (note: LL bought Windmark aka Windlight) Endorphin, SpeedTree & Havoc Cloth, but lets stay with meshes for now. Here is one example of what Linden Lab could use on their servers, either as is or with SSR (Server Side Rendering).

Simplygon is a complete pipeline toolkit for automatically optimizing 3D content for different platforms, generating LOD models and creating game-ready content from source assets – all with the speed and quality required in professional game development.

Simplygon Licensing

Donya Labs licenses its patented and patent-pending technologies in the Simplygon® SDK to companies all over the world for professional and academic use.

Title License
Donya offers all professional game developers to license Simplygon on a per-game project basis with a varying price range to suit projects over different budgets and publishing platforms; high-budget multi-SKU projects; download-only value games; MMO projects; mobile & social media games etc.

Studio License
For certain studios an annual license can be arranged to cover several projects in the same studio.

Prototype License
To facilitate testing and integration in pre-production the Simplygon prototype license is a good alternative for unfunded projects and prototyping.

OSGrid will be upgrading to OpenSim 0.7 with Hypergrid 1.5. October 17th

Hypergrid Business, has reported that OSGrid will be upgrading to OpenSim 0.7 with Hypergrid 1.5.

"The largest grid on the hypergrid will upgrade to the new version of OpenSim on Sunday, October 17. The new version supports media-on-a-prim as well as a more secure hypergrid teleport standard.

The new version is OpenSim version 0.7. OSGrid is currently running version 0.6.9.

The new 0.7 version of OpenSim will allow residents to use the same media-on-a-prim feature that Second Life rolled out this past spring, OSGrid administrator Dave Coyle told Hypergrid Business.

Residents will need to use Second Life Viewer 2 to use the feature, however, until third-party viewers roll out their support for it.

In addition, the grid will be compatible with Hypergrid 1.5, a more secure version of the protocol that allows free and easy teleportation between grids. Previously it was theoretically possible for rogue grid owners to hack into the inventories of visiting avatars. With the new release, this security hole has been closed."

At the time of this post the following OSGrid Statistics were reported:

* 50,781 Registered Accounts
* 5,612 Unique Logins (30 Days)
* 98 In-world Right Now
* 6,468 Regions

Talent Abounds - Second Life as an Art Form

Google Sketchup & 3DVIA from Dassault Systemes

The video above shows you the few steps it takes to take your Google Sketchup (or other common 3D Architecture models) and create a virtual world (or room) using 3DVIA Scenes, with five steps:

• 1. Upload your Sketchup Model free to 3dvia.com (.kmz or .dae format)
• 2. Send uploaded design to a scene (click the “SEND TO” button on the 3D model view page)
• 3. Adjust the scale of the model within Scenes
• 4. (Optional) Add other 3D models (i.e. plants, furniture, people
• 5. Walk through your design online…AND share with others via email, or embed the scene within your own site like a YouTube Video

http://www.3dvia.com/

Coming Soon - Twinmotion®2

Our experience in architecture and 3D has shown us that moving about inside a project, in real-time, changes the way we perceive things and therefore the way we create.

We are not seeking ‘absolute’ image realism (though GPU technology is getting us there slowly) but we do want to uncover the ‘truth’.

It’s a new tool which we hope will present you with a new perspective and a broader view of project possibilities.

Raphaël Pierrat, Architect – CEO Twinmotion

" Twinmotion®2 is a 3D real-time studio for architects and designers

We, at KA-RA are like all architects, we expect a lot from our digital tools but have little hope for the results: often realising that the tool isn't suitable for what we want to do, or realising that we aren't able to leverage its full capabilities.
So, when we developed Twinmotion®2, we felt it was important for us to be able to communicate our most wild ideas with the greatest simplicity, we went for a tool which not only saved precious time on every project but also permitted us to express ourselves better, more easily, more naturally.

Twinmotion®2 has numerous advantages, it would be difficult to describe them all here in just a few words, but you will be able to discover more about them in this video and if you visit our blog, for more videos, interviews and features: www.therendering killer.com
"

See: http://www.therenderingkiller.com/Twinmotion - Renderkiller