Using a 3D virtual world is not often the first impulse of building designers and architects, but maybe it should be. Here’s one snapshot of a house that was designed in about four hours, right down to the hanging plants on the loggia. Clicking the image will download a presentation (PDF, about 11.5 MB) with [...]

Posted in 3D, Design, Models, SecondLife, Virtual Worlds, iPad 3 Comments »

Working on a forthcoming review of vReveal video enhancment software (for Windows®) has led me to learn more about both Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) and virtual machine (VM) applications …

Posted in 3D, Computers, Hardware, Linux, Models, OpenSolaris, Software, Video editing, Virtual Machines, Virtual Worlds, Windows 7, emulator, video card No Comments »

LSL, or Linden Scripting Language, was originated by Linden Lab, the creators and owners of SecondLife™. It is remarkably easy to use, and can allow “residents” of SecondLife and OpenSim based virtual worlds to do many marvelous things in these 3D environments. (OpenSim is the open source version of SecondLife’s server software.) One of the [...]

Posted in 3D, Darkstar, Debian, Java, LSL, Linux, Models, OSGrid, OpenSIM, SecondLife, Virtual Worlds, Wonderland No Comments »

The Virtual Worlds preservation workshop at Stanford, funded by the Library of Congress’ NDIIPP, is over now. Partner institutions besides Stanford are University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Maryland and Rochester Institute of Technology. I attended via Skype conference call with text chat on the side, augmented with a dynamically-updated Google Doc page where [...]

Posted in 3D, Archives, Conference, Models, SecondLife, Virtual Worlds No Comments »

After the Metaverse U conference for the past two days you’d think I was ready to take a rest or maybe get some real work done, but no! Today and tomorrow I’m participating (remotely, via Skype conference call) in a workshop with some of the same people at Stanford. This time, we’re working with the [...]

Posted in 3D, Archives, Conference, Metaverse, Models, SecondLife, Virtual Worlds No Comments »

One step forward, two steps back. Both iClone2 and 3DXchange are easy to use, and have lots of useful features. But their export formats are pretty limited, at least they don’t export into x3d which is what I am looking for right now. iClone2 uses 2D formats, while 3DXchange only outputs to .vns format, which [...]

Posted in 3D, Format, Models, Software No Comments »

Before starting on Project Wonderland, I thought I’d boot up WindowsXP (on my Mac’s Parallels virtual machine) to look at iClone2 and see if I can find out what kinds of formats it exports things to. Here’s what I’ve discovered so far. Export Formats bmp 24 bit 32 bit jpg sliding scale 0-100% quality tga [...]

Posted in 3D, Avatar, Design, Format, Machinima, Models, Software, Wonderland No Comments »

Welcome to new media on the go. Exactly what that means will be developed as we go (which is part of the self-referential meaning in itself), but for now I want to talk more about the new media aspect than the on the go part. I just received a couple of new products from Reallusion® [...]

Posted in 3D, Design, Metaverse, Models, Qwaq, SecondLife, Software No Comments »