Indigo Mertel

Well put, Aethelwine. Indeed, the ERC is a successful experiment to create a pleasant environment on Mainland open to everyone who wants to contribute, or just enjoy the place. If you feel like contributing please do ASAP. The deadline is the end of this month. If we don't get enough donations to at least reduce my tier by one region by the end of the month I'll be forced to pull the plug. Time is running short.

Indeed, it's tier donors we are asking for, not money. And, unfortunately, you are right about time. Some have a hard time to understand this, but there are people willing to contribute to a community for the sole purpose of creating a nice environment. Our community is on Mainland on purpose, our challenge is to prove that a nice and cohesive environment can be built on Mainland and we proved that for the past 9 years. Through all these years I have personally bought hundreds of parcels and removed junk in our area. What used to be a dump today is a nice community appreciated by many.

Thank you for your kind words. Unfortunately a fund raising event would not be enough to preserve the community in the long run. We need donors willing to contribute to the community. Tier donors can be members of our Steering Committee, so they would be involved in running the community.

>> In my own experience though, there often comes a time when losses have to be cut and life taken in another direction. << That is being considered, of course. Our purpose is to save what can be saved. If we won't have enough donors to save part of the community by the deadline I'll have to pull the plug.

>> I do enjoy the inherant hypocrisy based humor of asking people who are not part of your elite community, to fund your elite lifestyle, especially when many of those reading this will be people your 'federation' would almost certainly eject and ban on sight for daring to set foot there, "not our sort of people at all..." and all that. << Geezz... are you serious? You are making a lot of speculations there, considering that you have no idea what our community is. FYI, people who donate tier are part of our Steering Committee and have a right to vote on any decision concerning the community. Now, if you would excuse me, I have no time for such nonsense.

Alwyn, there have been a number of communities in Second Life where focus is not on business but on community buiding, of which the East River Community is a long standing one. In the case of the ERC the logic behind the community is to build a cohesive and aesthetically pleasing environment. In order to cover the full cost of such a vast community (ERC spans over about 8 regions) we would have to build and rent a massive number of rental units, and that would defeat the purpose of the community. While we do have rental units, the most of the costs are covered by land owners who have federated as a community. You may find that strange, but there are people willing to do so. So, again, our community is not business-oriented.

You got that wrong, Alwin. It's a community, not a business.

Hello folks, the ERC group is going through a tier crisis and we are looking for donors. Can you please help spread the word? I have been contributing to the East River Community with large swaths of land at a considerable monthly cost for years. Many things have changed in my RL these past months and I am now in the sad position to inform you that I am no longer able to contribute to the community. I have procrastinated this decision for a long time because I was very uncomfortable with the idea of dilapidating all the hard work we all put into building our beautiful community. But, eventually, I had to come to a decision. We all want the East River Community to survive, so rather than just pulling the plug, I'll hold off for a limited time in order to find donors willing to donate tier to the group. To anyone willing to donate tier to the East River Community, please contact Indigo Mertel. Thank you. Indigo Mertel East River Community - founder

Filter Forge creates procedural textures, that is textures are generated by using a node-based editor. There are a couple of alternatives out there. I recommend Allegorithmic Substance Designer. It is superior to Filter Forge and used by professionals. It's more expensive but Allegorithmic offers some very interesting buying options. You can qualify for the cheaper Indie license and can also pay with monthly payments. There are some things to consider before you buy such products: - Procedural texture editors have a steep learning curve and require a good understanding of the way filters work. It helps if you have experience with Photoshop and a good understanding of how its filters work. - Filter Forge is a Photoshop plugin. Substance Designer is a standalone program. You don't need Photoshop to create texture with Substance Designer. - There are a bunch of video tutorials on Substance Designer. Personally, I find that videos are good but not the best way to learn. I need more of a written reference I can go back when I have a doubt and that is not easy to do with videos. Unfortunately there are no books and not much as for written documentation. Time ago I suggested to start a community-driven wiki but none exists yet. - Don't be fooled by all the shiny stuff you see in demo videos. Not only for the Allegorithmic products but any product. You won't be able to reproduce the same effects in SL because SL doesn't support all the features required to get those results. If you want to try something different and paint directly on your models, then take a look at Allegorithmic Substance Painter. It's really good. You can also buy both products with an Indie license and convenient monthly payments. If you want to know more about Allegorithmic tools, I have created a community in Google+ where you can ask for info. Or, you can ask in the Allegorithmic forum. Disclaimer: I am not associated with Allegorithmic in any way. I am just a fan of their excellent products.

The East River Community is similar to Bay City but we work with a different model. We are a federation of groups, where each group is free to manage its own land property but all adhere to a community charter setting some common rules. Anyone can join the community but new admission requests must be approved by the community's steering committee. We also prefer to have a chat with prospective new members before they buy land and file an admission request, just to make sure that the expectations are right. You can find more information here and can contact me inworld if you need additional details.

Blue, I believe that Linden Lab's support to Allegorithmic Substance is a direct consequence of the rendering engine they have chosen to run Project Sansar on. Both Unity and the Unreal Engine support Substance by default. And the fact that Unity supports C# as a scripting language makes me guess that Unity is the engine picked by LL for Sansar...

Danger, actually I am surprised that you ask because it should be obvious. Well, ok... asking never hurts... As one of the founders of a community (East River) that is located on mainland by choice, I can tell you that there are several factors: history, geography, sense of community, identity, friendship, large contiguous land that doesn't restrict activities, room to expand an ever evolving community, cost. One of our initial motivation was to preserve the heritage of the previous community of sailors located in Mowry Bay. Another important factor is being part of a large contiguous area and the desire to improve the quality of the environment, and prove that it is possible to have a nice environment and avoid the typical chaos of mainland through the common effort of residents who join forces. Size of the community and the cost of tier are also important factors. The land owners/stakeholders that run the federation of groups that makes the East River Community own land in more than a dozen regions. It would be too expensive and too limiting having a community of that size on private islands. Last but not least, friendship, identity and sense of community are what makes us stick together and preserve our corner of mainland. Most of the people running our community are about 8 - 10 years old.

Indeed. I am a big fan of Allegorithmic products. So much that I have created a community on Google+

Ebbe, I read in interviews you gave to the press that Linden Lab is keeping an attentive eye on the development of VR devices and that you guys are talking to several companies in the field. I am sure you read that Improbable is attracting lots of interest for an innovative technology that allows to create immense virtual worlds in short time and little effort. Dave Hillier, a former Linden, works at Improbable. Not much is said about what this technology is and does, though some articles seem to imply that it allows the creation of massive procedural worlds. Is Improbable one of the companies Linden Lab is talking to and is there any sinergy that would let Linden Lab leverage Improbable's technology?

Wow! Project Sansar will support Alegorithmic's Subtance! This is big news!

Very good question, Phoebe. I'd love to see Alegorithmic's Substance supported by LL.

About a missing Mainland, I have the same concern, Marianne. At the East River Community we have always been supporters of a large continent. Being on mainland has always been our choice. It sounds as LL wants to follow the same approach taken by High Fidelity and other VWs in the past, that is some shared spaces with most of the virtual land provided by users. I am not too happy about this but I suppose communities may join forces to create a vast continent. Perhaps having a better control of that land may avoid the chaos we have in most of mainland today.

Hi Cecilia. One recommendation: when you write your story please don't fall for the usual sexual crap most so called journalists write about SL. There are plenty of cut-and-paste stories on the web about all the kinks of SL. There is a lot more than sex. You may want to watch some of the Draxtor Despres' videos to get an idea:

Building a prim mockup inworld to be exported is actually very useful when you need to build to measure for a building to fit in in an environment, mostly when the terrain is not flat. Trying to build a house on a hill or sloping ground is a hit-or-miss exercise which may lead to far more work. It also helps to get an idea of the scale of the building. There is no need to build the entire model down to the small details, just a simple mockup is enough.

I haven't exported a prim model to Collada in a long while so I don't remember all the details, but if I remember well the exporter lets you export all the objects you have selected. So, if you have a house made by several parts, all the parts you select will be exported as a coalesced model. All the linked prims will be exported as a single object, thus if your house is made by 2 or 3 linksets the exported model will be made or an equivalent number of objects. I suggest you link as many prims as possible into a number of linksets you are comfortable with. Any prim object that is not selected won't be exported, so unselected things inside your build won't be exported. Once you import your model into Blender you'll see that there is quite some optimization to do. Prims model have a number of faces that are not required in a well built mesh model. For texturing, you can do it either way. Texturing with an external tool will give the best results if you know how to do it. UPDATE: Oops! I see that Aquila just posted a much more extensive and detaiiled answer.

The fact that SP has the same features of other texturing tools is not surprising because at the end they all have one task to do. What makes a difference is how they do it. I suggest you look into SP's non-destructive workflow, which I believe is one of its strong point. As for the steep learning curve, it all depends on your previous experience with other tools. I have a very basic experience with Photoshop but I suppose those who have some may find the way SP works more familiar. An understanding of what filters do and how to applly them certainly helps. For the Photoshop export I can't say much. I have never seen any comment about it in the community I moderate. You may want to ask in the community if anyone had problems with it.

I have the program -- and Substance Designer as well -- but I had no chance to work with it yet because I am busy working on a long term project. I can only offer an opinion not backed with actual experience: based on what I see about the program and users' comments, Substance Painter is the 3D painting tool with the best quality, features and price ratio on the market. Allegorithmic has a very favorable pricing policy for hobbists and independent game developers and is on par with other tools which costs hundreds of dollars. It has features which greatly simplifies the workflow, its particles painting is a feature not available in any other 3D texturing tool and it allows to work on textures in a non destructive way. Painter essentially is the Photoshop of 3D texturing and is used by professionals. Painter can produce textures of excellent quality. That said, there are some things to consider: the learning curve is steep. There are many video tutorials not much written documentation. Previous experience with Photoshop can help a lot because you need to understand how filters can be used and how to work with channels and brushes. Also, Painter can create lots of maps and effects which can't be used in SL. Despite the fact that I do not actively use them, I am big fan of Allegorithmic tools. So much so that I have created a community on Google+ frequented by pros, hobbists and a few SL users: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/108955098539774060748 . There is also a good exchange of free Substance materials of excellent quality which can be used in Painter. You may also want to read this review for another opinion: http://bit.ly/1GVHYGd

I am absolutely elated! Not surprised because I expected this as well, but very happy to see this confirmed. I have 15 years of professional experience with .NET, most of them with C#. Developing for the new platform will be lots of fun!

Glad I could be of help. I own a copy of Painter but I am a total noob at it because I have not had the chance to really get into it. That said, I think that, if mastered, Painter is an exceptional tool. BTW, I recommend you check the Google+ community regurarly as there are some very skilled users who share their Substance materials for free. Most of them are extremely good.

Pamela, you may want to read this post on Substance Painter: Substance Painter Review - Visual Arts - Articles - Articles - GameDev.net http://bit.ly/1GVHYGd