Second Life releases new Fantasy themed starter avatars

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"second life", avatars, newbies, noobs, starter

Linden Lab just announced (click) a new set of starter avatars with themes such as “steampunk, vampires, sci-fi, post-apocalyptic… and beyond!”
Not a theme I have much affinity with, perhaps next time we can have Time Travellers as a theme for starter avatars?
Victorian, Medieval, Roman… and oh I don’t know… 1920s! 😉

They have the normal good old fashioned system bodies, which is a good decision as mesh avatars are something for more experienced users.

If only we could now also find an easier way to deal with alpha layers, can’t we connect them to the clothes so you wear them automatically?

Anyway, more choice of new avatars is a good thing although I still think it would be even better to have some sort of avatar creation tool on the SL website as part of the signup process.
Let new users play with how they want their avatar to look before they even start Second Life.

This is what the 10 new avatars look like;

Linden Lab made an internal video to introduce these new avatars, you can see it here;

Second Life avatars get their biggest change in years

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anouncement, avatars, improvements

Today Linden Lab announced ‘Project Bento’, the biggest change in Second Life avatars in years.

One of the things Second Life offers like almost nobody else is the freedom to change and personalise your avatar pretty much without limits, now they are making this easier and are going us even more options.

I quote from the Second Life website announcement;

We are introducing extensions to the standard Second Life Avatar Skeleton that give you dozens of new bones to support both rigging and animation, and accompanying new attachment points! This extended skeleton, which is fully backward compatible with existing avatars, rigging and animation, gives creators the power to build more sophisticated avatars than ever before. The skeleton extensions include:

• 11 extra limb bones for wings, additional arms, or extra legs.
• 6 tail bones
• 30 bones in the hands (all 10 fingers!)
• 30 bones for facial expressions
• 2 other new bones in the head for animating ears or antennae
• 13 new attachment points associated with the new bones

We’ve developed all this in collaboration with many expert Resident content creators and with the developers of the most popular tools for creating avatars and animations, so there will quickly be versions of those tools you can use to help take advantage of these changes. There is also some demo content already available.

I think this is interesting news, quite a few people seem to think Second Life will be neglected now Linden Lab is working on Project Sansar, but this clearly shows they are still putting a lot of work into improving their first-born.

Another thing I like is that they aren’t releasing this yet, but first want us to testrun these new features and let them know what we think.

I quote again;

The avatar skeleton changes introduced by Project Bento are not yet final because we want your feedback, either in the Creation Forum or in JIRA. To experience the changes, you’ll need to download the Project Viewer and upload any content using the new skeleton extensions to the Aditi Beta Test Grid (most regions on the Beta Test Grid will allow this; some may be in use for other testing and not yet have these updates). Once we have finalized the skeleton extensions, we will enable uploads using them to the main Second Life grid and the real fun can begin!

You can read the entire announcement by clicking here.

And check out this enticing video made by Gaia Clary;

Free Realistic avatar kit updated, now also with tools for kids

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avatars, free, kit, measurements, proportions, realism, realistic proportioned avatar kit, scale, tools

As soon as I rezzed my first prim an realised it was 50 by 50 by 50 centimeters, I realised I could use this scale to make things but to also make my avatar the same height as I am in real life.
And I’ve always been interested in trying to mimic realism in virtual reality.

So when I started building the 1920s Berlin Project, I soon decided to use the so called “Prim scale” and now pretty much everything in that sim has a 1:1 scale compared to RL.

But having such a sim made things difficult for visitors.
Making your avatar realistic is not easy in Second Life, the avatar editor is a bit wonky and the measurements not always reliable.

So I created a realistic proportioned avatar kit for visitors, filled with lots of goodies and gadgets to help you make your avatar look more realistic.

Today I’ve updated the kit, tweaked it a little and also added information and measurement prims that can help children find their right size.
You can get this kit for free at our Teleport area or simply test out the Loomis figures to see if you’re much too tall or short for your age.

Visitors to 1920s Berlin don’t have to make their avatar realistically proportioned, but doing so will help the immersive experience and keep them from bumping their heads.

We also think that it is a good thing to at least know what a realistically proportioned avatar looks like, once you know that you can of course always decide to change your look in whatever way you want.
If most avatars are realistic, someone who is small or large will have more fun standing out.

There are many devices available in SL that claim to help you measure your height but in my experience there is only one way to be completely sure; Rez a simple prim and making it as tall as you want your avatar to be and then stand right next to it, or even inside the prim.

In the free realistic proportioned avatar kit you will find;

• The two Vitruvian shapes made by Penny Patton
• Ideal Loomis proportion female 66″ / 167.6 cm
• Ideal Loomis proportion Adult male 72 inches / 182 cm tall
• Ideal Loomis proportion male 15 yrs 67.5″ / 171 cm
• Ideal Loomis proportion male 10 yrs 52.5 inches / 133.3 cm
• Ideal Loomis proportion male 5 yrs 42 inches / 106.6 cm
• Ideal Loomis proportion male 3 yrs 32.5 inches / 82.55 cm
• Ideal Loomis proportion male 1 yr 24 inches / 61 cm
• TMT Professional Pose Stand

About the Loomis figures:
Andrew Loomis made excellent drawings that explain how the human body is put together.
Of course these shapes are idealistic, but the proportions regarding height, length of arms, legs, etc, are correct.

Good luck working on your avatar.
Please remember that we do NOT demand you to have a realistically proportioned avatar in 1920s Berlin, it is just a suggestion.

Thank you Penny Patton, Tikuf Arun and Andrew Loomis.

The free kit can be found at;
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/1920s%20Berlin/251/214/751

Interesting article about avatars and Second Life in Wall Street Journal

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"second life", article, avatars, media, press, Psychology, wall street journal

The renowned Wall Street Journal has published an interesting and positive article about the use of avatars and what how they look and act says about the people behind them.

Although more common lately, it is still nice to read something positive about virtual worlds, avatars and Second Life.

The article mentions quite a few very interesting things, such as;

When people add extra inches to their self-image by making their avatars taller than they really are, the people can become more confident and aggressive in real-world negotiations. And when people make their avatars more attractive online, they tend to share personal information with strangers more readily, the researchers reported in the journal Human Communication Research.

I made my avatar the same height and as attractive (or not) as I am in real life.
But I am still rather confident and aggressive and share way too much personal information, but I guess that is because I have little choice, being all famous and such 😉

But I am very much like my avatar, or she is like me.
If you met me in SL and then in RL, you would probably recognize me but you would also recognize my character.

You can read the article on the Wall Street Journal page by clicking here.

Petition to get Facebook to allow Second Life avatars

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"second life", avatars, facebook, petition

A petition has popped up that asks Facebook to allow Second Life avatars to have a page, they however mean to ask Facebook for Second Life avatars to have a Facebook profile, because we’re already allowed to have Facebook pages, as long as they are managed by our RL profiles.

Will this make an impression on the Facebook people?

Probably not, I am not saying that because I am cynical but because Facebook only cares about publicity and numbers.

When cross dressers got upset about being forced to use their RL names, they caused quite a bit of fuss, demonstrated at FB HQ and received a lot of media attention.
Facebook listened to that.

Most people who have a profile on Facebook for their Second Life avatar are not going to demonstrate, we’re not going to get much media attention and to be fair, not that many of us are probably going to bother even signing the petition.

BUT… it can’t hurt to try, right?

After all, this will only work if a LOT of us sign it, if Facebook receives thousands of signatures, they will at least pay attention.

So why not give it a go and sign it.

Follow the link below and leave a signature;

https://www.change.org/p/mark-elliot-zuckerberg-facebook-allow-second-life-avatars-to-have-a-facebook-page