Google’s 3D virtual world Lively came and went in only 6 months. This is an extremely short lifespan for any technology, especially from a software maker who has a tradition of letting things develop organically. Google Labs is full of experiments that have outlasted 6 months, even Gmail is still officially in beta. Perhaps we will see Google’s 3D avatar technology pop up in Google Earth - after all, what is a 3D world with 3D buildings (Google Warehouse) without 3D people?

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I was inspired by the Lively virtual environment which, to me, was that old fashioned machinima opportunity. By ‘old fashioned’ I mean pre-Anymation, or maybe even pre-pre-Anymation, when making films was guerrilla by necessity, full of happy accident and not the newer generation of tools which we complain about today. I was attracted to Lively’s really smooth camera pans and pulls, awesome frame rate and the improv comedy element of it all: here is a limited set of things to use, go.

I wrote a script in short order but my schedule prevented me from finishing shooting before Google shut-down Lively on Dec 31/08. The film is called The Adventures of Captain Aqua and is about a lazy, bored superhero: no one ever invades the sea.

I really did like the idea that people could easily visit the set and the look of it although there are a couple of Second Life shots in the opening sequence and of course CrazyTalk. iClone to the rescue as well for a character to fill in a green screen for this render. First time with Fraps and Sony Vegas too. For obvious reasons, I won’t go into the details of making a Lively machinima but may post some screen captures later for historical record.

The film is just rough dialogue/audio/video mix but a look at the look of what could have been. Jamie Levack is the voice of Captain Aqua, he did an awesome job on the part. I would still like to make this film and so look out in the future.

[EDIT]: maybe I can finish it in Lively - here is NewLively!

Sorry to delay the rolling out of new content in Second Life - just finishing up an unexpected project. It has put me behind about 2 weeks but onward we roll. I was hoping to have a little sample ready at least but I am still in the process of over-engineering it. Will release this sample content properly in the next couple of days.

Also, as part of this change, I am going to rename the HatHead business side of the, well, business to more accurately reflect the company’s service and market offerings. (If that language doesn’t scare you, it may be too late for you.) That will mean a new website and other related stuff.

Lastly, got an email from the Google Lively team today and am now a Lively content developer - very exciting! Models are imported from 3D Studio Max or Maya currently (no Sketch-Up yet) and interactive objects are made using Google’s desktop gadget development kit.

Every week it seems a new virtual world is being released. Often they are really virtual rooms, connected through portals. Just Leap In is of this approach, letting you embed your world/room into your webpage

So I have opened the HatHead Dojo in this world. Just Leap In is super easy to install and use. Although it is first-person shooter perspective, you can still see other avatars. Performance off the top is excellent and my Dojo world is pretty large in comparison to other room-based virtual spaces.

Some snaps:

A confluence of both creative philosophy and emerging technologies have really inspired me over the past few months, marking a real shift in how I design and produce. Enough of a shift that stopping for a moment to frame this approach will help me to hopefully crystallize the new HatHead version 3.0 (version 1.0 being the first music web presence; v2.0 being the founding of HatHead Incubators).

In essence, the philosophy is that the experience of your audience - whether film, virtual worlds, music, web - has the most primacy. As an example, in Second Life there is something known as “lag“: essentially the bandwidth, graphics and CPU resources decrease the frame rate of display (FPS) of the virtual world, sometimes lower than 1 FPS. In contrast, video is around 30 FPS. While the digital pioneers in Second Life suffer through it, this quality of experience is very low, making it difficult to often perform even basic user operations.

While issues such as performance can always be improved, HatHead 3.0 is not about craftsmanship for any skilled craftsman best understands the strengths and limits of their craft, hopefully with some style. Rather, more and more I see that many of the projects I have wanted to do but did not because the were too expensive or impractical are now possible. This includes virtual installations, machinima and multimedia performances. While there will be more on individual projects in later posts, the underlying theme is the primacy of the user experience.

To leave you with a sense of scale of this shift, the content on both the 2 HatHead Second Life islands will totally change on Sept. 1/08.

Also, a HUGE shout-out to John Martin and Jason Lin at Reallusion for their mind-blowing release of iClone 3.0. I have been kicking the tires of the early release for a week or so and this product deserves its own post so stay tuned!

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

If you have downloaded the Lively plugin, please visit!

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.