Friday, 8 July 2011

THE DEATH OF SL MESH

UPDATE:
Mesh has the power to transform Secondlife into something awesome and unbelievably beautiful but right now it's being crippled and choked by mesh PE.


A poem by Lilith Heart
I LOVE MESH
I am mesh’s number 1 fan
Give me an M …. Give me an E … Give me an S …. Give an H …. What have you got …. MESH !!!!! YAAAAAY MESH !! Go mesh Go !!
But …

For me mesh is already DEAD with the current PE
For me a prim count of 500 is no good for a pretty mesh tree
How I hate the horrid sculpty
I really want to make a gorgeous mesh tree

Nobody will pay money for a mesh tree that’s 500 PE
Nobody will want my beautiful mesh tree
OH NO! Mesh is dead for me
All because of the silly PE

Only 3 sculpty prims equal my 500 PE mesh tree
This seems very unfair to me
I’m begging on hands and knees, make mesh work for creators like me
And get rid of that cruel and restrictive PE

No need for physics on my lovely mesh tree
Damn the physics it’s killed mesh for me
All because I make a giant mesh tree!
Oh lovely mesh tree, why are you 500 PE ?

Oh Woe is me …. Curse the damn PE
Oh mesh I love you … you make a beautiful tree …
Much better than any sculpty !
Oh woe is me … curse the damn PE

-------------------------------------

The current mesh PE calculations are so expensive, prim-wise … MESH IS A NON STARTER… DOA .. Dead on Arrival ! Mesh as is, is only applicable for the avatar clothing and accessories market, which have no prim limits …. Crazy stuff !

For all land based products, all landscaping items …. plants trees, furniture, houses … anything you rez on land that has a prim limit … SL mesh is basically redundant, because it’s too expensive prim-wise compared to scultpy equivalents. We need mesh most for the LANDSCAPE and ARCHITECTURE of Secondlife, for the grid itself. How the world looks is most important for the next phase of SL.

Unfortunately mesh is not going to make any difference to how the world looks, as we won’t be able to use it in the world, on the land. We will only be able to wear mesh items because the PE for landscape items is too restrictive and expensive prim wise. MESH IS TOO PRIMMY FOR LAND PRODUCTS

The look of the Secondlife world is often compared to the latest 3D games and it doesn’t compare well. .We desperately need mesh to improve the look of the SL world to excite and retain new users.

Please, please Mesh Lindens …. take another look at mesh PE and find a more usable solution so we can all help to make the SL World more beautiful.

Summary .... PE outrageously high ..... mesh is dead … DOA ….. Dead on Arrival  :-(

Monday, 4 July 2011

THE WONDER OF SECOND LIFE - VIRTUAL MONEY = REAL FOOD

In the summer slump, amongst the weary and burnt out creators, fatigued and confused residents .... amazing wondrous things are happening in Second Life.

On Sunday 26th June we hosted a benefit concert at The Villa Bar on Heart 2 in aid of  'Live and Learn in Kenya's ..... Feed a Smile Project'. Live and Learn in Kenya .... Feed A Smile Project

Tukso Okey provided the most amazing 2 hour rock/blues type 'set' in his usual unique and incredible style.

During the two hour concert 100600 L$  ( approx 400 USD) was donated by the wonderful residents of Secondlife ..... who are far sighted, upwardly mobile, early adopting, brave pioneers of this strange, collective digital dream world.

The medium is virtual but the money raised is REAL and paid for real food ...... approx 1000 meals which included sweets, bananas and milk as a special treat ! 

A big thank you to Brique Topaz (Feed A Smile contact in SL), Tukso and to all our guests who made it happen.   See photos below.

See above the real food generated by Second Life's virtual currency and it's wonderful residents

Click photo to enlarge
The above photo includes a blackboard drawing created by one of the artistic and talented children in the Feed a Smile Project in Kenya. It shows a beautiful chalk interpretation of Dolly, Tukso and myself. I was particularly struck by the artists rendition of our dresses and bangles and hair, which really captured the essence of our current SL fashion look !  Fantastic ! 

Dolly and I were actually completely overwhelmed by the drawing .... what can one say.

Here are some pictures of the event taking place at The Villa Bar in Second Life. We peaked at 62 guests and then the sim crashed .... which was a real shame as Dolly had optimistically set the agent limit for the sim to 100 ! 



We crashed the sim at ONLY 62 guests .... such a shame .... as I'm sure we could have gathered 100 or more guests if the technology hadn't failed us. It's very distressing for the sim to crash in the middle of an event.

The momentum and flow of the event was seriously disrupted by the sim crash. but luckily many of the guests were patient and waited on the edges of the sim until The Villa Bar venue re-appeared about 5-6 mins later.

See pic of The Arcachon crew waiting for the Villa Bar @ Heart to re-appear
http://www.flickr.com/photos/evekazan/5874105815/in/photostream/

Why, Why Linden Lab .... is there not a 'Pay As you Go', 24 hour, EVENTS POWER SERVER option for larger get togethers and important gatherings, such as Live Music, Charity Events, anything that requires a professional level of stability during an event ?

It takes a lot of time and effort for event organisers to arange everything ' just so' and to create momentum and a buzz. It's a terrible shame to lose all that time, effort and energy and crash the sim with ONLY 62 avatars present. More is surely possible !

Intel Releasing Code for Putting 1000s of Avatars on a Single OpenSim Region This Month (With Cloud Deployment Too)!

Clearly, more IS possible !

Second Life is a compelling and unique experience as is. But if we could get hundreds of people to individual events .... parties, fund raisers, lectures, 'do's' of all kinds and especially Live Music events ..... that would be truly amazing and be the birth of a new phase of the virtual, shared experience.

There are so many people spending their real lives organising virtual events in Second Life it would be  prudent if Linden Lab recognised this activity and offered some kind of  'Pay As you Go', 24 hour, EVENTS POWER SERVER' option, so that organisers can guarantee a more stable event experience.

Tuesday, 21 June 2011

SECONDLIFE IS NOT A GAME ! TUKSO OKEY - FEED A SMILE BENEFIT GIG @ HEART


TUKSO CONCERT TONIGHT FROM 2pm - 4pm SLT / PST

Please help us support this worthy cause....... we'd love to see you. ALL WELCOME
Come as you are ..... ALL WELCOME

Secondlife is not a game.
It's an extension of the Human Community. Secondlife life is the best plugin for your real life and the vibrant Live Music Scene is a perfect example.

Here we have the astounding and brilliant Tukso Okey playing a benefit concert in aid of Live and Learn in Kenya's Feed A Smile Program ..... turning Linden Dollars L$ into Food and Smiles. Every 100L$ pays for a warm meal .... Remarkable !  Virtual currency into real food.

Secondlife is not a game, Secondlife is so much more .....  it's a unique, ONE OF A KIND means of communication and empowerment.

Live and Learn in Kenya finds sponsors to finance the education of needy children, which includes everything that the child needs in order to go to school — fees, uniform, shoes, textbooks, school supplies.
You can find more information about Live and Learn in Kenya and the marvellous work they do on their web site : http://www.llk-selb.de/  

Video - Make a donation-Make a change

or visit The Lavender Field in Secondlife on Tahono Island http://slurl.com/secondlife/Tohono%20Island/145/77/22/

Visit Tukso's web site - http://www.nimbitmusic.com/tuksookey

Thursday, 28 April 2011

BEACH LIVING IN SECONDLIFE - DESIGNER HAMMOCKS - HIGH DEF COCO PALMS

Romantic tropical beach rendevous. Featuring designer hammocks and the only pure artwork, high definition Coco palms in Secondlife.

Available in different sizes - giant coco palm clusters with 3 hammocks, smaller upright palm groves with 2 hammocks, individual leaning beach edge coco palms with 1 hammock.

The hammocks are specially made for loving couples - kisses and cuddles but also include solo sits for hanging out with friends or for quiet meditation moments alone.

5 different colour combinations - All original, daring textile designs and combo colour schemes.

Perfect for lover's, Secondlife beach living and an essential for any beach party location.

'LET YOUR DREAM EYES SEE'
Artwork plants for a truely immersive Secondlife experience.

Visit The Heart Garden Centre Now








All promo artworks are actual Secondlife screenshots - No touch up - Pure Secondlife rendering - Realtime Shadows and the beauty of Windlight PLUS ..... of course ..... High Definition Heart Botanicals 

Thursday, 7 April 2011

LILITH HEART - BIG FAKER OR GENUINE CONTENT CREATOR

Ok I have been ‘Called on to the carpet’ as Marie Resch put it. I'm assuming for a spot of digital blog wrestling. Let's hope the carpet is clean!

Also known as Marie Ravencrow of Fanciful_muse's Journal, who’s tag line is ….. ‘Come with me and you'll be In a world of pure imagination’
http://fanciful-muse.livejournal.com/74738.html
http://fanciful-muse.livejournal.com/75370.html

Please see Marie's blog above where she questions our integrity and challenges us to provide proof.

Well Marie your blog is perfectly titled, everything you said about us, is misinformed fanciful musings and pure imagination, which bares no relationship to reality and the true facts. It’s hurtful gossip and slander.

Marie, on your blog you are not only slandering Dolly and I, you are slandering a whole community of Secondlife creators. Just because there are 'fake' creators who steal content from the internet and call it their own, you must not falsely assume that real creators do not exist.

Marie, you are helping to propagate the absurd myth, lie, fabrication, that original creators DO NOT exist and that everything in Secondlife is up for grabs because it is somehow miraculously ‘birthed’ by the mother of all content … The Internet herself

It is often implied by the misinformed, that it’s ok to steal from content creators, because it is assumed they are not genuine creators .... nobody CREATES anything themselves, nobody creates anything original…. They found it, borrowed it, stole it from somewhere on the internet. So by implication it’s ok to take it.

Let's not forget the old saying ...'A thief believes everyone steals'

It's always the first thing copybotters say to me when I approach them ... they say ... 'It's not yours, I got it from the internet!' 'You don't own everything on the internet'.

True I don't own everything on the internet I agree ... but that exact plant I DO own, because I made it and that makes it mine.

I make no claim on ALL water lilies, or ALL palm trees. I only make claim to the ones Dolly and I created.

I make no claim on Ideas. Ideas are 10 cents a dozen.

From Marie’s Fanciful Musings :
'Okay Lilith, did you actually travel somewhere and photograph those trees and bushes, then crop the plants out for use in your products - or did you find the original photographs somewhere on the web, crop out the plants, and use them? Did you do the same for every pine tree, every maple, every birch - every single plant in your collection, or did you use someone else's photos as source?'


Nope, none of the above.
Get this Marie ….. Dolly and I are creators of original 3D mesh content which we use as assets to create digital artwork for our Secondlife plants, flowers and trees. We have EVERY single tree and plant that exists in our garden centre, in the form of a 3D mesh. 3D meshes which we created from scratch.

That means we have the IP rights to ALL our content and can prove it.

You are calling in to question whether Dolly and I are the original creators of the water lily arrangement (and questioning the origins of everything in our garden centre) plus you are demanding ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ 100% proof.

So for the unbelievers and those who are interested in the true facts rather than fanciful musings of the misinformed .... Here is the Heart of the matter.

The Heart 'MESH' Waterlily Pads, lily flowers and buds, Sword Reeds and the Waterlily Arrangements

Please note that the screenshots below are of the finished meshes. There is no magic 'make mesh lily pads now' button in Modo. We have all the stages of developement that were necessary to create the final 3D meshes you see below.

Screenshots from within Modo, of all the mesh components used, showing the mesh in wireframe and UV mapped versions

Close up of one of the Lily pad arrangements - See the mesh

Waterlily Flower and Buds - See the mesh

All 4 different mesh assets of the lily pad arrangements

Close up of the tiny pond weed - even that is mesh

SPECIAL NOTE TO MARIE :
On your blog you repeatedly mention our SWORD REEDS. Guess what Marie …. Sword Reeds don’t exist in real life. We made them up. There’s no such thing as Sword Reeds. We got the idea for the name from a Sufi fairy tale, where the hero kills a terrible genie with a magic sword made from a reed.

The giant XL versions of the mesh lily pad arrangement

The photo assets I used for UV mapping the Lily pad mesh. I took the photograph myself in my mum's garden pond

The original Waterlily arrangements inside the amazing virtual world Secondlife

The range of genuine Heart Waterlily products created from the above mesh assets and available from The Heart garden centre and the SL Marketplace. We can provide the same 100% proof for all the Heart products.


Dolly and I are not big fakers, we are genuine content creators.
Original creators are not a myth.
There are hundreds of ORIGINAL CREATORS working in the amazing Virtual World of Secondlife and also working in a hundred other areas outside of Secondlife.

In this rapidly growing digital culture, individual IP rights need to be recognised, respected and protected. It's always been a basic human right that people are not allowed to steal your stuff, from the stone age to the industrial age ...... In this The Digital Age, these fundemental rights are being eroded by the culture of FREE.

We have special words like copybotting and copyright infringement that diffuse and inaccurately describe this criminal activity. But really it’s just stealing.

The basics of civilisation are … we don’t kill each other and we don’t take each others stuff.

When someone steals something from you, you should stand up and be counted. If creators say nothing, nothing will change. I will continue to draw attention to the important issue of Intellectual Property rights for digital content creators.

Marie, I have proved beyond reasonable doubt that the waterlilies came from our own handiwork. So perhaps we can get off the carpet now. Because ...

It's game, set and match to Heart.


'He who holds the ladder is as bad as the thief'
Anglo Saxon Proverb

Thursday, 31 March 2011

NEW HARMONY SUMMER MEADOW FLOWERS AND GRASSES

We've created a new selection of sculpty, low prim summer meadow flowers and grasses. Long and short grasses, flowering grasses, a wide selection of wild flowers - Tulips, poppies, iris, daisies in several colours all colour matched and co-ordinated to work together in harmony.

No other meadow patches and grasses in Secondlife are able to produce a similar harmonious effect. Transform your land with the new Harmony meadow system only available from Heart.

Individual packs and mixed selection packs available.





Please use link below to visit the Heart Garden Centre and see all the Harmony Meadow Packs currently available : http://slurl.com/secondlife/Heart%205/140/200/21/?title=Heart%20Harmony%20Meadow%20Flowers%20and%20Grasses

Wednesday, 30 March 2011

KITELY BRINGS STOLEN CONTENT TO FACEBOOK IN AN INSTANT

I love the idea of Kitely it's a wonderful idea and I applaud the founders, but .....

Surprise, surprise ..... the first screenshots I see of a Kitely region includes copybot, stolen, IP infringing versions of my water lily arrangements - water lilies, lily pads and sword reed. They're right there, pride of place, main focus of the screenshot.



Acording to Maria Korolov of HypergridBusiness.com ... 'The new world was created faster than I could type this'. http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2011/03/kitely-brings-facebook-instant-regions-to-opensim/

The new world .. Trombly Company Region ... was imported as an OAR file that was previously stored on Maria Korolv's hard drive. This means Maria has aquired copybot/stolen versions of my content (water lily arrangements) from some Opensim region and has them on her hard drive without my permission, as I have not released these waterlily arrangements outside of the main SL grid.

How wonderfull to see Kitely getting such a glorious beginning. Copybot content in the first screenshots of some of the first Kitely worlds.

Is this the future of Kitely ?

Who should I sue ?

Should I sue Trombly Company for receiving and using stolen property ?

Perhaps I should sue Google Adsense department as HypergridBusiness.com is hosting Adsense ads and gaining entertainment and traffic values from their article and their pretty region pic ?

Perhaps I should sue Kitely for enabling the distribution of stolen content ?

Perhaps I should sue Facebook for enabling and hosting infringing content via Kitely ?

Interesting....
Perhaps there is more money in litigating virtual, IP theft and copybotted content than there is in creating the content in the first place.

Dolly and I are not a big company, so unfortunately but we can't provide a Freemium service.

We have no VC backing We both have to pay our electricity bills, put food in the fridge, feed the family, pay the mortgage and do all those things necessary to survive in a modern world.

Why are content creators so abused.

My content is being monetized by Open sim, Kitely, Google and Facebook.

How come these big, rich companies get to create value from my content for FREE I don't get free electricity, I don't get free food from the super market

When food and electricity become FREEMIUM ... then digital artists can work for free. Until then ... Cry Havok and let loose the dogs of war !!!!

blah, blah, blah ....... DMCA .... blah, blah, blah



If you are interested to see the original Waterlily arrangements you can see them at the SL Marketplace https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Flowers-Water-Lilies-with-Sword-Reeds-For-Ponds-and-Lakes-Sculpty/1379527?preview=true

or you can visit our Secondlife garden centre and see them for real with your pixel eyes. Seeing is believing
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Heart%201/124/124/29/?title=The%20Heart%20Garden%20Centre