Maker of flags, greenhorn machinamatographer, heart of an explorer, soul of a poet. I'm writing about interesting places, interesting faces, and killer media experiences.
I was feeling nostalgic for old SL happenings and remembered the psychodelia dance parties that Clames Clanger and plum Hartnell used to DJ. The stage and accompanying kinetic art would take up most of an entire sim. Most of the objects were textured to display video, so there would be video and explosions of light EVERYWHERE! The music was great and the video was trippy.
These were epic parties that didn’t depend on exploder balls or prizes. People would hear from friends what was going on and just show up. On a lark I looked up Clangers Invention and it’s still inworld! Visiting it reminds me of a ghost town or abandoned theme park.
Dedric Mauriac is at it again, this time morphing sculpted prims by streaming a series of sculpt maps via the parcel media URL. View his entire post here. This opens up some fun possibilities in animating sculpted prims….talking heads, anyone? What I mean is, if this is video-based morphing it can include audio as well. How about animating a sculpted face so that it’s mouthing and talking to you…perhaps explaining something. A media NPC, I guess it would be! Sweeet!
Someone in a group IM asked about playing video on their land. You can do it, and without spending thousands of lindens on a media player (although they are sweet and extremely worth the price!) I passed around a notecard with quick and dirty instructions, and here it is for the world.
Ok, playing simple video in SL requires a video file in Quicktime-compatible format, with either MP4 or MOV extentions.
Step 1: Upload your video to your own webspace or alternatively you can register at Blip.tv, a free video sharing service, and upload it there. This will give you a URL you can use.
Step 2: Rez a square prim and resize it to aproximately the proportion of your video (either 4:3 or 16:9.)
Step 3: Give one side of the prim a special texture. It can be anything and any size, but you’ll probably want it to fit in with your surroundings well. Note the location of the texture you chose.
Step 5: On your parcel choose the World menu -> About Land. Click the Media tab and you’ll see Media Texture: Replace this texture ____ with content from this URL ____. Click the gray texture box and again choose the texture you assigned to the prim side. In the URL text box insert the URL of the video file you uploaded to the net.
Step 6: Ensure you are configured to view video. Under Edit menu -> Preferences choose the Audio/Video tab and ensure the “Play Streaming Video When Available” box is checked.
And you’re all set. Now point your avatar at the prim with the special texture and hit the play button down on your media player controller. The SL client app will replace your special texture with the video. Voila!
The takeaway point here is that you’re telling SL to replace a texture of your choosing with video of your choosing. Beware, though, if you choose a texture that is commonly used on your land the video will show up wherever that texture is. It can make for a pretty trippy look, but it can also drag your framerate down and other laggy events.
If you care about the performance of the Second Life grid please lend your support to Cristiano Midnight’s Open Letter to Linden Lab. I’d post a link in-world as well, but ya know…I downloaded a client that doesn’t play nice with my fully-within-the-supported-hardware system and therefore cannot login.
