HatHead in Google’s slick, easy-to-use, new Lively 3D virtual world!

If you have downloaded the Lively plugin, please visit!

Lessons Learned
A couple of months ago I produced around 20 minutes or so of animation for a client. A little on the project experience later as the most striking aspect of this project was, to me, in this seemingly ubiquitous age of the internet, the near impossibility of getting high quality images of First Nations peoples - Canada’s indigenous population - for use in creating 3D facial models.

Of course I could find some images but they were mostly antique frontier photographs from the turn of the previous century. My search went on for several weeks until, at one point, a First Nations production team member volunteered to provide some portraits but these too ended up being sepia prints from the turn of the previous century.

The Government of Canada recently apologized to the First Nations for its blatant policies of cultural genocide (”assimilation”) that created our country’s forgotten generations. However, my internet image searches were not constrained by geography and the global results always tragically empty - a seeming Social Darwinist style trend.

(With hindsight - and budget - we could hired some real life models/actors but we did not suspect for moment how little image documentation of First Nations peoples there is…or isn’t.)

Video Production Notes
Firstly, there is no such thing as “final approval” and revisions to creative previously approved were requested right up to the last possible moment. Par for the course when dealing with clients and a fixed budget. As a result though production and post-production time got super squeezed and I was basically left with a month to film and edit it all (script written by client).

Here is a video of some early concept footage to show some of the traditional designs I created for the project as well as my animation style. I shot this in Second Life as this was the quickest way to gather content and express my ideas. Except for one shot, the production animations were then done in iClone as iClone uses a timeline and I knew there would be client revisions so the ability to exactly recreate a shot and only change one thing about it (face, prop, hair, etc) was essential.

Burning the final files to DVD for the client with literally 5 minutes to spare, I managed to deliver my final animations as part of a larger online educational and training manual. The concept behind using machinima here is to provide engaging case studies for people to consider in the larger context of the training manual.

Here is a direct link to the 3 ‘web plays’.
1. Introduction
2. John’s Story
3. Mary’s Story

Discovered on YouTube: rare live footage of HatHead Rickenbacker performing live on Hammond organ with his most favorite band ever!

Talk To Me (Like You Talk To Your Brother)

Reefer Smoking Blues

*Breezin’

* it is true, the entire place was full of almost entirely women that night, which is of course awesome! So come on down every Wednesday night from 9pm-1am!!

The second annual Online Machinima Film Festival awards were held yesterday and it all went off quite well with some machinimators even performing some live music this year. The stand-out award winner this year was Faith, Hope and Charity by Wingman Productions. Joe90 picked up the awards for the film as well as documenting the experience which gives a great represtentation of attending the event in Second Life - not the standard style machinima, this really captures the user experience well I think.

Got my first plot of land, planted a tree and made my HatHead hat in the Chinese virtual world of Hipihi today. Hipihi just entered public beta yesterday.

Feel free to give it a try: sign up here, download here.

The interface is a little confusing since some of it is still in Mandarin. You can hack the client to display a mostly English GUI by changing the following entry in the following file:

…your install directory/UIData/LocalSetting/LocalSetting.xml -> change the ‘0′ to a ‘1′.

An outdated English version pdf to help translate various GUI elements can be found here. While the screens have changed quite a bit, you can still match up the Mandarin labels to the new GUI.

Hipihi resident openid has also translated some of the screens - JurinJuran has posted them here.

The english hipihi forums are here.

This is a video of a real-time blues performance taking place in Second Life featuring Komuso Tokugawa on vocals, guitar, harmonica and intelligent back tracks (which follow him) from Tokyo, Japan and myself on piano, excited yelps and groaning from Toronto, Canada. This is a regular weekly show so keep your eye on the event listings. The video was filmed and edited by Osprey Therian.

In a world where a mobile phone ring costs more than a real song, I am convinced that virtual music performances are the future for musicians.

I had the pleasure to perform at a virtual Darfur refugee camp in Second Life today to help raise awareness for children and refugees of a genocide still going on there.

This is perhaps one of the most effective uses of Second Life I have seen, a project of Un Toit pour le Darfur, enabling people to get a small idea of what life in a UN refugee camp might like.

The camp and school are extremely well done, include ambient sound effects and create a complete immersive experience with impact. If nothing else, it also delivers some much needed marketing value for the cause in a novel and engaging way.

Although I was only scheduled to perform for an hour, more people kept arriving so I played for another hour to help build some Second Life traffic and keep people in the camp to look around. They have asked me back and I hope to be performing there again in the new year.

Please visit Virtual Darfur in Second Life!

Grace McDunnough and her MUSIMMERSION is genius. Using the strongest elements of SL and live music performance, Grace takes you on a musical journey into the heart of each song as the crowd is literally transported into a new environment reflecting the story and imagery of each tune. Add to that that her performances are super strong, a great selection of songs, beautifully detailed sets and you have a winner.

What’s more, no ‘new’ SL technology was required to make this happen, and though there many details to think through, especially from an event perspective, the idea is basic enough. Indeed there have been holodecks - self-assembling rooms - for quite a while. (Although there more advantages I think to Grace’s approach of moving avatars and not relying on SL to reconstruct whole sets from script every time).

The ZeroG Sky Dancers in SL is another experience that plays on the strengths of SL for expression - more on that in another post.

The Courtyard.

Great photo by CabsavLane

Though the HatHead Island simulators have been quietly opened to public access, there is still tons to do but it is still nice to get some notice.

The Courtyard, which you may recall was in development, following some scale conceptual modeling.

The main space of the the Courtyard is built and spans the intersection of 3 simulators, allowing for 150 avatars. It is currently undergoing some quick renovations to utilize newly available technologies in order to help optimize performance.

When events are not happening in the Courtyard, visitors can do tai chi, meditate, play instruments or share a special moment together. el Salsa Picquante, a great salsa dance patio, has been added too.

There are also animals to ride, but as Prokofy Neva at The Second Life Record notes, they have a tendency to stalk off. Indeed, one of my daily tasks is to wander around my sims and literally herd my animals home as people ride them into the oddest places.

Still in the works for this space are freebies in the basement and automated swan ride tour through the islands (edit: I am thinking that hang gliders are the way to go instead of river swan boats)