Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
Mars Simulation for distribution
This is the quick-and-dirty version of this tutorial for creating a 3D simulation of the Mars crater Tharsis Tholus from scratch. Actually it's really long, but this is a big project, at least an hour's worth if all goes well. I'll do something more extensive soon in some form, but I just finished making the distributables (OAR and IAR files) so I wanted to get it out there. No previous OpenSimulator experience is required, but some command line stuff will be necessary and there are many opportunities for getting stuck, which I may or may not be able to help with.
This is a standalone 2x2 sim run on Windows XP SP2 that one would connect with using a client viewer like Second Life that is configured to connect over a wired LAN to the IP address of the computer running the sim. All this is detailed below, but there are many other configurations you could have, so I just wanna make that clear. One thing, for the client computers using the viewer app, you MUST use computers with high end video cards. Desktop PCs will tend to have them, as will all (in my experience) newer Macs, from MacBook Pros to iMacs. If you don't have a good video card, the orange sky effect created in step 26 just won't happen, which almost makes it not worth it in my opinion. The space station is set up for 7 astronauts, or a class of 14 students working in pairs to direct the avatars. The lesson I've implemented is documented here. So let's go!
Permissions: "One or more textures on this 3D model have been created with images from CGTextures.com. These images may not be redistributed by default, please visit www.cgtextures.com for more information."
This is a standalone 2x2 sim run on Windows XP SP2 that one would connect with using a client viewer like Second Life that is configured to connect over a wired LAN to the IP address of the computer running the sim. All this is detailed below, but there are many other configurations you could have, so I just wanna make that clear. One thing, for the client computers using the viewer app, you MUST use computers with high end video cards. Desktop PCs will tend to have them, as will all (in my experience) newer Macs, from MacBook Pros to iMacs. If you don't have a good video card, the orange sky effect created in step 26 just won't happen, which almost makes it not worth it in my opinion. The space station is set up for 7 astronauts, or a class of 14 students working in pairs to direct the avatars. The lesson I've implemented is documented here. So let's go!
Permissions: "One or more textures on this 3D model have been created with images from CGTextures.com. These images may not be redistributed by default, please visit www.cgtextures.com for more information."
- Choose a host computer for the sim. Preferably a desktop, definitely wired to your LAN. Assign--or have your network administrator assign--a static IP to that computer.
- Download .NET framework 3.5. OpenSimulator requires this on a PC to compile and run. Install it (takes a while, requires a restart). If you're running this on Windows 7 skip this step as .NET 3.5 is included in the OS.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Cool Tool
Paraphrasing, The most important tool of industrial designers is the factory.
-Masamichi Udagawa of Antenna Design
-Masamichi Udagawa of Antenna Design
Thursday, June 03, 2010
Machinema with Students in OpenSim
Our virtual drama project is wrapping up. Towards the end I need to make machinema recordings of the students' rehearsals of their 2- and 3-person scenes that they watch and use to improve their in-world performances and in the final class I make recordings of their performances. It's taken me a year, but I finally have an optimal recipe for making the machinema recordings:
- Voice: Rehearse with 3rd party voice app and final performance with onboard voice. Teamspeak was the best option for students to rehearse simultaneously in their own groups as it offers spatial voice by virtue of separate channels. For the final performances we drop that and use the FreeSWITCH module because the rest of the students are being audience members and need to hear the actors.
- Hide the UI: It takes practice and seems to work better on a PC than a Mac, but looks so much better. Elsewhere on this link there are some other great tips, worthy of another year of practice, but this is the most important.
- Drop the SLViewer, get Imprudence: Hiding the UI in the Second Life Viewer has the unfortunate effect of filling the space around avatars with swirlies, a problem documented here. Linden Labs has let this annoying feature persist despite its being outdated. Imprudence lets the swirlies decay quickly and has a host of other improvements that I've only begun to discover. The beta installers are here, but it's reported that the weekly updates are actually more stable and my experience bears that out, with the beta 1.3.0 beta 4 crashing pretty frequently for no reason I can see.
- Getting FreeSWITCH voice in Imprudence: Imprudence can't be distributed with the proprietary SLVoice app so you'll have to drop it in yourself. Fortunately, it's an easy fix.
- Finally, the setup is complete! But wait, you need something to record it. Fraps is the standard on PC. Fraps is excellent as long as you have a good enough sound card to get the "Stereo Mix" or "What U Hear" settings and don't use a USB headset as there is a little documented but known issue with them. I haven't found anything for Mac that successfully records the voice when using a separate app, like the Teamspeak/Imprudence combo for rehearsals.
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