Thanks to Raven Haalan, who has been spotlighted before, our Super Event Boards are going to be exposed to the visitors of one of Second Life’s largest, most infamous events, Burning Life. The boards are already up, even though the event itself won’t open until this fall. But a lot of activity is going on as the builders and event participants are gathering their resources and imaginations for another wonderful celebration of creativity in SL. They will know what is happening when thanks to our Super Event Boards, and just notice how nicely Raven has modified the boards to blend in the the media center’s motif!

[Update March 25, 2010: Raven sent along this notecard about current events at Burning Life!]

*****
Burners! Discard Winter at the Burning Life Spring Fling!
Friday, March 26 - Sunday March 28

Time to light lamps and drum drums! Time to dance the night and day away on two stages! Time to Burn!

Take the time to carpe three awesome diems packed with stuff to check out…

TWO PERFORMANCE STAGES! One features a schedule of great LIVE PERFORMERS, the other features SL’s HOTTEST DJs. Get your hud on and get moving! You can see the schedules as google calendars online (urls below ) or you can check out the event boards outside each of the stages or in the infocenter. New stage builds by Rails Baily (DJ Stage) and Nyx Breen (Live Stage).

• http://burning-life.org/calendar-live-stage
• http://burning-life.org/calendar-dj-stage

PORTA-POTTIES! Need we say more? A huge swath of the Playa has been set aside to display a huge collection of this long running BL tradition. No need to hold your nose, the ventilation is SL’s best.

*****
Some Websites to track:
Burning Life [updated on 3/25/10]
Burning Man

At ALA Island, where ALA=American Library Association, Oberon Octagon has installed a wide variety of MechanizedLIFE gadgets! They are about to host a conference called The Future Is Now: Libraries and Museums in Virtual Worlds, sponsored by LearningTimes. The island was designed by graduate students of the San Jose State University Library Sciences School under Oberon’s direction and launched in January 2008, hosting conferences and events like Banned Books Week and National Library Week. In 2009, he asked ML to be part of a hunt during NLW and Codie went along with it.

“I remember sitting with Alidar Moxie and Robyn … something … in their new store. I bought all the Cog stuff that connects with Google Calendars,” Oberon told me in January this year. “Then the StatsCollectors came out and I bought a six pack of those. We have them placed at various strategic spots on the island to track visitors. What is great about these collectors is they tie to a Website where we can look at charts and graphs interpreting the data for a 30-day period.”

He showed me how he retextured one of Ali’s old CogKiosks with the ALA logo. Pretty cool. Of course, we upgraded the kiosks and discountinued that shape, providing instead, ten different shapes and sizes that can be used. ALA is using those now, along with our Countdown Timer, RSS Screen, and the Super Event Board.

I jokingly suggested that he ought to place an affiliate vendor in their bookstore, and he mentioned that at one point, he had purchased 25 CogHUDs to give out to ALA members who joined the SL group for ALA members. Ali had it all set up but it got too complicated to support when she sold the business to Codie, so they dropped the arrangement and refunded the money.

I seem to recall that we had a booth at a Virtual Fair put on by the Librarians of Second Life one year and did fairly well. A very sizable number of librarians do volunteer work for their institutions in SL.

Visit inworld: ALA Island

You already know that I am a huge fan of the FilterCam HUD by MechanizedLife. I love anything that makes my life easier, and the FilterCam does just that by eliminating the need for post-processing my photos.  Considering my very limited Photoshop skills, this tool is invaluable to me.  This is a photo I took earlier this week and uploaded directly from in-world. I didn’t even have to crop it. All of the effects were provided by FilterCam and Windlight. What could be easier?

Now, we want to see how YOU use the FilterCam HUD, and we’re giving you some incentive. MechanizedLife is holding a FilterCam Photo Competition with support from the makers of the Avimote PoseMaker HUD. The prize packages total more than L$15,000 and everything you need to know to enter is listed below. Just be sure to get your entries in before the end of the month. And please, don’t hesitate to leave a comment here or drop me an IM in-world if you have any questions! Good Luck!

What: FilterCam Photo Contest

When: 6 February through 28 February 2010, Winners announced 1 March 2010

Prizes

1st Prize - L$5000 + Avimote PoseMaker Personal Edition (L$2450 value)

2nd Prize - L$2500 + Avimote PoseMaker Personal Edition (L$2450 value)

3rd Prize - L$1000 + Avimote PoseMaker Personal Edition (L$2450 value)

Prizes will also include: MechanizedLife gear and Tillie’s Posestands

Rules

• All entries must originate in Second Life and must be created using the FilterCam HUD by MechanizedLife
• Entries must be submitted to the FilterCam Flickr Group
• Entries must include the tag “FILTERCAM CONTEST”
• Post-processing is permitted, but should be used sparingly as the idea behind the FilterCam HUD is to create beautiful in-world snapshots that do not require extensive post work.
• A descripton of the filter/mask used and any post-processing applied should be included in the photo description.
• You may use any of the filters/masks included with the FilterCam HUD or you may create and use filters/masks of your own design.
• You may submit up to 3 entries.
• Entries can be submitted through 12:00am SLT on Sunday, 28 February 2010, at which time judging will begin.  Late entries will not be considered.
• Winners will be announced on Monday, 1 March 2010 at 5pm SLT and prizes will be distributed at that time.

Judges

The following individuals have agreed to participate as judges for this competition.

• CodeBastard Redgrave - Owner, MechanizedLife and Creator of the FilterCam HUD
• Gabby Panacek - PR Manager, MechanizedLife
• Ryker Beck - Second Life artist and designer, creator of many of the filters/masks included with the FilterCam HUD
• Stephen Venkman - Second Life Artist and Photographer
• Tillie Ariantho - Second Life Photographer and Creator of Tillie’s Posing Stand with HUD
• Jori Watler - Second Life Photographer and Jewelry Designer

About FilterCam HUD

FilterCam is a fantastic visual effects HUD system which makes it effortless to add a variety of high quality special effects to your pictures or when filming machinima. Over 80 high quality masks and filters are provided, including a picture frame and keyhole, as well as blood, cinema, circle, clear, grunge, iphone, nightvision, oval, postcard, scanlines, square, tryptic, and wanted.

FilterCam Tutorial:  Creating Masks & Adding Custom Filters to the HUD

Ryker’s Tutorial for making your own filters

About Avimote PoseMaker

The Avimote PoseMaker HUD allows Second Life residents to pose their avatars in any position they like, right where they are, without the need for external tools. It can be used to override part of an existing pose, such as when a hand is stuck in a skirt, or to create complete new poses.

Happy New Year!

We just wanted to take a few moments and share with you a couple of great reviews/tutorials that were blogged recently by Alicia Chenaux and SarahTheRed Aurbierre.

Follow the links to read these two fantastic posts:

From Ch’Know Style: FilterCam 2.0 is Ready!!

And from What? Another Fashion Blog?: Feature/Tutorial: MechanizedLife FilterCam

Thanks so much to Ali and Sarah for their support of FilterCam!

UPDATE:  And here’s another good one from Shyayn Lusch’s The Digital Doll: CodeBastard Redgrave is Such a  B!tch Thanks, Shy!

Raven Haalan uses our Calendar Cogs and therefore is the focus of this Spotlight. However, Raven is worth the spotlight for a number of other great reasons: he’s a great scripter in his own right, with the RavenScript product line (the store mentioned in this blog is closed, sad to say). He’s involved with the communications team for Burning Life in SL, which is the mega event of Second Life, entering its seventh year of infamy. He also participates in Step Up!, a special event day for creating awareness about content theft in SL. Raven is also a delightful resident of SL in any of his three forms: Jaime Kenin and Binary Rascon being his other avatars. Time spent with any of these people is well spent as my sister Pay can attest, and for whom I am indebted for all her notes and pix taken in service to this article. Of course, I wonder sometimes where he gets time for operating three avis and all the things he does when he also is a regular contributor to Prim Perfect!

SLers Ottawa Group clubhouse in the sky.

Raven has probably done the best job of ’splaining how Calendar Cogs work outside of this blog, of course (although the new upgrade now does away with the server components he describes). He is using the Superboard to handle events for his latest SL project, the “SLers of Ottawa, Canada” group, where he has created a clubhouse for fellow Canadians to meet and plot virtual domination of SL. (Doesn’t everyone belong to a group like that?) Sister Pay was there while Raven built the skybox for this group and came away impressed with the speed at which he worked.

Raven added a red bow for the holidays to the SuperBoard announcing SLers of Ottawa, Canada, events.

Thanks, Raven, for your continued support of MechanizedLIFE products!

Hi, I’m Paypabak Writer and I will be highlighting the people and places using MechanizedLIFE products on what I hope to be a weekly or at least three-times-a-month basis. The first person I thought of (and whom Codie also suggested) was Crap Mariner! Crap wrote about Calendar Cogs back in September 2008 and has been a great advocate of our products for even longer! Up until the most recent release of Cog Kiosks in a set of ten different types of prim displays, Crap had a habit of stripping the script out of the old kiosks and inserting them in shapes she thought best expressed her whimsical place in the SLuniverse. But the new configuration includes an invisible prim version that now suits her best. She’s placed them in bells, bridge signs, and large clocks among other things, displaying the events that occur on various sims in her community.

Here

As she told me during our tour: “Things have quieted down a bit around here since the heyday of the Clocktower, but there’s a few events a week at the Yak, Louis’ weekly improvs [reference to the Louis Volare Peace Center], storytelling on the beach, and so on. So if folks are wandering around or coming in, they can see at a glance that things do happen [and when]. And since everybody in the neighborhood has access to the Google calendar, they … use the same core calendar, and I deploy the kiosks for them if they want them. Cogs allow for people to cross-promote, etc. without being annoying during event and shouting or wasting group slots.”

They suck at math, which explains why they call themselves Five Islands when there are really ten sims involved. Craps describes their community as “half free-range loony-bin, half bunker from the real world.” Crap really appreciates how the Cog Kiosks are such a low-prim investment for alerting visitors to the events of Edloe Island, Nowhereville, and Blakslee World, relieving the community of building signs for events. For evil kicks, Crap readily admits placing sit-ball pillows under the main landing points in her sim: “yes, i intentionally put these pillows here so if people rest here, folks teleporting in land on them. I’m a total shit ;)” So underneath that lovely metal exterior is a rusty metal interior! Thanks, Crap for taking the time to show me around your wonderful sims and for using our products. Some of the best live music performers play Crap’s venue, so keep an eye out of those kiosks!!

This past Saturday, Codie presented part 1 of the MachinimaCam HUD Workshop series.  I had hoped to come away from that class ready to share with you my very first, completely amazing machinima.  I’m not quite there yet, but I will be soon! (This is where I demonstrate how well my positive self-talk exercises are coming along!)

I did, however, walk out of the workshop with some great information about what is required to make machinima.  I learned that it takes more than a great camera, like the MachinimaCam; the video capture and editing software you use will greatly impact the quality of your machinima and your options for customizing the final product.

Let’s start, then, with a rundown of what you will need, from a system and software point of view, in order to make machinima.

The Basics:

• A powerful machine.  This is pretty much mandatory if you want your final product to be smooth and seamless.  If you can run at 20-25 Frames Per Second (FPS), consistently, then you should have no issues.  If not, there are some tricks for bumping frame rate that I will be happy to share with you.  Just IM Codie or me in-world and we will gladly hand over the transcript of the workshop.
• Loads of disk space.  Again, this is non-negotiable.  When you are filming, you will be capturing the video to your hard drive, and it needs somewhere to go.  Additionally, you will need to have some space for your cut editing.  A normal capture session can easily use 2-5GB of disk space, depending on how “trigger-happy” you are.
• Capture software.  There are a few options.  FRAPS being the most common and widely used.  FRAPS is not free, but it is highly affordable, simple to use and performs flawlessly.  There are a couple of free capture software programs available, also: WeGame.com and CamStudio come to mind.  For Apple machines, the options are more limited, but SnapXPro is widely used and the upcoming Snow Leopard operating system will include a native video capture program.
• Video editing software.  There are several options out there, so the choice should be based on your needs and personal preferences.  A few to consider: Sony Vegas, ULead and Avid for PC users; Final Cut Pro or Final Cut Express for Macs.  Stay away from: Adobe Premier, After Effects and Windows movie maker.  None of these have proven to be stable enough for machinima.
• [ML] MachinimaCam HUD.  This is essential, of course!  It operates completely invisibly so that you never have to worry about the interface intruding on your video art.  Hot keys direct camera follow and movement effects, so you never have to worry about stopping to open a menu (though there is one if you want to use it) to change the style of filming.

So, we have our external software downloaded, we’ve maximized our framerate, and we have oodles of disk space to play with…what’s next?

Time to Play

First, you need to unpack your MachinimaCam HUD.  Just like any other package in SL, all you have to do is rez, right click, open and copy to your inventory.  Got it? Perfect! Let’s check out the cam.  Wait! Stop! I must tell you one very important thing…Never, ever, ever rez or drop your MachinimaCam on the ground. Ever. This will break every script, a giant hole will open in the sim and you will be sucked into oblivion.  Okay, so maybe that last part is a tiny bit of an exaggeration, but the scripts will break and you will need to find the transparent HUD that was dropped, take it back into your inventory, wear it and reset all of the scripts.  Instead, you need to wear the MachinimaCam, by default, it will attach to bottom center HUD position.  Once attached, you can read the cam’s start up messages in open chat.  You will be asked for, and must grant, permission for MachinimaCam to take over your camera view.  That’s it!

Next, we need to activate the hot keys.  The hot keys are simple gestures that allow the cam to operate without any visible interface.  They operate on the F2 through F7 keys, and on F11 and F12.  We need to make sure that there are no conflicting gestures assigned to these keys.  Take a moment to right click on your avatar, choose gestures, and note any gestures that are assigned to the above-mentioned keys.  Go into your inventory and make sure that any existing gestures on F2-7 and F11-12 are deactivated.  Alternatively, you can search for (Active) in your inventory and deactivate all of your gestures.  The choice is yours.  Once you’ve turned off conflicting gestures, open your MachinimaCam folder and activate the included gestures.

But, what do these hot keys do, exactly? Lets look at them individually:

• F2 - Hide / Show camera HUD toggle: Pressing F2 will make the camera invisible or visible on your screen.
• F3 - Previous effect selection: When you press F3, the name of the follow-cam or special effect will briefly appear above the HUD.  F3 advances through the list in reverse-alphabetical order
• F4 - Next effect selection: Just like F3, but advances through the list in the forward alphabetical order.  More on the follow-cam and special effects in a moment.
• F5 - Action / Repeat effect selection: Once you have selected your effect, press F5 to put it into action.  Remember to start your capture first!
• F6 - Set Default Cam Position: Focus your camera in the position you want and press F6 to set the default camera position.
• F7 - Reset Cam Position: Restores the camera to its original position.  The HUD will remember your last camera position and effect selection when you detach and reattach your MachinimaCam HUD.
• F11 - Speed Up effect: Special effects, which I’ll tell you more about in a minute, are limited-motion effects.  This means they have a beginning and an end.  Speeding up the effect makes your camera move faster, but the effect will be shorter in duration.  Pressing F11 speeds up your camera incrementally.
• F12 - Speed Down effect: When you press F12 you turn the speed down incrementally, slowing the effect, your camera will move more slowly and your effect will be longer in duration.

Finally, the Effects

This is the fun stuff!  The MachinimaCam HUD is preloaded with a set of follow-cam effects and special effects.  What is the difference?  Follow-Cam Effects position your camera in a specific place, and remain in effect until another effect is chosen.  Special Effects have a beginning and an end.  So the camera will stop in position once the effect has played out.  You can string Special Effects together as often as you’d like by using the F5 key to repeat the effect selection.  Here is a listing of the effects and their descriptions, separated by category.  In the HUD, when you use the F3 and F4 keys, the effects are displayed in alphabetical order, regardless the effect type.

Default - Resets to default follow cam, camera behind at hip level

Follow-Cams

• Trap Cam Toggle:  Imagine the avatar is trapped by the camera. The camera follows the avatar wherever it goes, cutting the scene and regaining focus on the avatar. Press Action hot key to activate and deactivate.
• Side Cam: The camera is siding the avatar. It follows every avatar runs and turns and is usually located at leg level. The avatar usually doesn’t show on the picture.
• Drive Cam: The camera is located at the back of the avatar but with a slight upper angle, usually to film moving vehicles.
• Front Cam:The camera is located a few meters in front of the avatar. Avatar usually doesnt show in the picture.
• Overhead Cam: The camera is hovering the avatar from the top.
• Worm Cam: The camera is under the avatar. Usually very cool for following flying avatars, or from underneath some translucent surface.
• Drop Cam: Like the drivecam but following the avatar at feet level.

Special effect cams:

• Spaz Cam: The camera randomly locates itself, always focusing on the avatar.
• Earthquake Cam: An effect simulating an earthquake. The camera shakes up and down for a more dramatic effect.
• Spin Cam: The camera focuses on the avatar and performs a few circular rotations around it.
• Spiral Cam:  The camera focuses on the avatar and performs a few circular rotations around it with constant added distance.
• Twister Cam: The camera focuses on the avatar and performs a few circular rotations around it with constant added distance, with incremental camera angle.
• TravelIn Cam:  Zoom in camera effect.
• TravelOut Cam: Zoom out camera effect.

Coming Up

Hopefully, you’ve got a good understanding of the basics of MachinimaCam operation.  This was just a synopsis of last week’s workshop, so if you would like a copy of the full transcript, please contact either Codie or me in-world and we will be happy to provide it.

This Saturday, May 9, 2009 at 10:00am SLT we will continue with part 2 of the MachinimaCam HUD workshop series.  Codie will share with you the ins and outs and more advanced tips and tricks for making machinima.  Time permitting, she will also demonstrate how the [ML] FilterCam HUD can be used in conjunction with MachinimaCam to create some spectacular effects in direct capture, minimizing, if not virtually eliminating, the need for spending hours upon hours in post-processing.

Spend a couple of hours with us this Saturday, learn more about the art of machinima, and meet some new friends.  I’ll bring the coffee!

A few months ago, Codie taught me a very important lession: all scripting tasks take “just ten more minutes, I promise.” I learned this lesson while she was building, tweaking and refining the tool that would eventually become the FilterCam HUD.  For hours on end she would change this, add that, pass test version after test version to me, all the while she would chant, as though it was her personal mantra, “just ten more minutes, I promise.”

The original FilterCam HUD was good.  You could change the tint, frame and opacity of your snapshot area with just a few simple keystrokes, and eventually, with an on-screen menu.  We experimented alot in those early days, layering tints and adding glow to create some really nice photographs.  But Codie was never satisfied with “good” or “really nice.”

Enter Ryker Beck.  A very close, long-time friend of Codie’s and an extraordinary artist.  Her photographs have been featured in the Avatrait Gallery, on DeviantArt.com, in RL at the Festival della Creatività in Florence, Italy, and on-going in the Rinascimento Virtuale exhibit on the art of virtual worlds at the Florence Museum of Natural History.  Ryker and Codie collaborated to create a series of filters and masks that would further enhance the creative application of the FilterCam HUD.  Ryker designed various frames, scenes and overlays that Codie was able to incorporate with her existing design and suddenly the FilterCam was no longer a “good” tool…it was Great!

This photo of Quaintly was taken using the Frame filter.

So, how does the FilterCam HUD work? It’s very simple.  You just wear it. Click on it to open the onscreen menu, choose your filter or mask, and watch the scene on your monitor transform into a work of art.  From there you can use your in-world snapshot tool to create unique and artistic snapshots without ever having to open Photoshop, The Gimp, or any other image editing software.  Just remember to check the “Show HUD Objects In Snapshot” option.

You can also use the FilterCam HUD to create machinima.  Take a look at the fantastic video work that Osiris Pfalz created using the FilterCam HUD:
Mechanized Life FilterCam from Osiris Pfalz on Vimeo

You will find the FilterCam HUD on Rouge in the MechanizedLife main store or on XstreetSL.  Just click the links in the right hand column.  Before I go, I have a small request, well, four requests, really.  Have fun. Be creative. Take some fantastic photos…then, share your works of art with the FilterCam Group on Flickr!  We can’t wait to see what you will create with FilterCam.