Blaze Nielsen

Any high end iMac will run sl just fine. If you're on a budget you might consider the smaller 21.5" screen you can get without the retina monitor. I would go for the 16gb memory. The 27" version lets you get into a better AMD Radeon R9 M395X with 4GB video memory which will let you run at maximum settings in sl. However, no matter what puter you use, you'll always have some of the waiting period for stuff to rez. SL has a very very slow bandwidth thru their servers and unless its all cached in your hard drive, you have to download it fresh. good luck and enjoy your mac

wonderful project Agiala. be sure to set your green background on bright. also, feels like your avatar appears a bit yellow. you might work with that when you shoot it to sync colors a bit more. but overall a really fun result. congrats. Blaze

https://vimeo.com/161539922

Heres what I do. The following is for Macs. Use a green screen set to bright. Record with Quicktime. Assemble video and audio with iMovie. For such an inexpensive editing tool iMovie is amazingly feature rich. Im still weighing the pros and cons of green screen versus playing video behind your avatar in sl. Hope this helps. Blaze

Very artistic, a beautiful film. Nice to see a filmaker in sl with both talent and skills

combining avatar green screen in sl and rl footage allows my alien avatar to escape into the real world. - Blaze Nielsen https://vimeo.com/160562498

In order to remove the avatars without a background you would need to isolate them with a blue screen filming technique. But then you will need a more professional type video editor capable of dealing with blue screen.

Im still trying to figure a way to sync audio to video. I just stream the background video into sl and project with a screen behind the avatar. Then take a video screen grab. For the Mac, I use snapz pro to capture images. when you import video into sl its much smoother if you strip out the audio. I use iMovie to edit all the pieces together.

exploring new worlds with combined video Blaze Nielsen with Charlee Anthony https://vimeo.com/159654489

Another experiment showing avatars escaping into the real world, this time, Bollywood. Starring Blaze Nielsen and Charlee Anthony https://vimeo.com/159620407

(since we are silly impractical dreamers with our heads -- um, in the clouds -- not unlike Mac users) I think you should speak for yourself regarding the head in the clouds comment Pamela. In the world of content creation Mac has always ruled and still does for quite practical reasons. The preference of Mac among professional content creators is extremely high. I agree it is something Linden Lab should consider very seriously.

Might be interesting to qualify content creators as hobbyists versus professionals. I think the pros are more likely to convert their products for Sansar. Might give you a clearer picture of the platform more high end content creators are using.

My avatar visits the New York streets for some fun music and dancing. Enjoy! https://vimeo.com/158966809

Granted this IMac has pretty hi specs, it runs SL at high levels day in and day out without a flaw. I don't even remember the last time I crashed Firestorm. The macbook pro 15" runs sl better than I would have imagined. At medium levels it actually runs quite smoothly. I also have a mac mini, hooked up to a big tv screen. I've tried sl on it, but its specs are not great and not really an adequate machine for sl.

Firestorm version 4.7.5.47975 64 bit runs like an absolute dream for me at the highest performance levels (with some degradation in overworked sim venues with many avatars present. OS X El Capitan Version 10.11.3 3.5 GHz Intel Core i7, 16GB Memory 1600 MHz DDR3, NIVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4096 MB ( not Retina Display) Note: Also have a newish 15" Mac Pro laptop with retina Display that gets excellent framerates at medium settings.

I opened chrome to check and found this mp4 file wont play on it. Dont see any plugin options for chrome for video files. I'm surprised it wont play a very standard format like this mp4. (Mine is the Mac version). I use safari, it works fine. Others using different browsers and platforms havent had any problems, but I might look at outputting the file in a format chrome can play in the future. PS: fixed so firefox and chrome can see it, changed to .mov format https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/72954412/Christmas%20Card%20Video.mov

Wondering if anyone else has experienced download issues? I use dropbox for all my videos and have been extremely happy with the performance. Havent heard of anyone having problems with my videos before.

Been developing a lot of skybox concepts using looped video domes lately and find them rather involving. Here's an example developed as a video christmas card, enjoy: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/72954412/Christmas%20Card%20Video.mp4 Ive discovered firefox and chrome don't like mp4 video files, so Ive converted it into a .mov which works but will open a video application to see it. Safari is muuuuuuuuch faster and views the movie from within Safari. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/72954412/Christmas%20Card%20Video.mov

Consider all the fees associated with a resident purchase of $100 USD converted into lindens and spent in marketplace: Fee to buy items in the marketplace (5%), Add extra fee for merchants to convert lindens into USD (either for tier payments or to cash out to paypal), Linden lab makes $12.28 USD. Bottom line, Linden Lab earns over $12% on most marketplace transactions. So, if you assume marketplace sales to be $75 million, Linden Lab would be making in the vicinity of $9.2 million USD per year.

Welcome to the weekly Marketplace staff meeting. First on the agenda, how do we increase marketplace purchases to boost income from our 5% cut? Have a big sale! the marketing hipster suggests. But we don’t sell anything No problem, we’ll select a few popular merchants and announce marketplace sales for them. Won't that piss off the other merchants? Naaaa, all merchants will benefit by increased marketplace shopping. So, won’t this shifting purchase pattern mean more merchants getting rid of their inworld stores and reduce rental overall income for the Lab? Look, don’t think about the big picture, get with the program, all we care about here in the Marketplace is Marketplace income.

This is clearly anti competitive activity conducted by Linden Lab to offer a few "select" merchants a tremenduous boost in sales leading up to christmas. Gaming search is strictly forbidden by the TOS, yet in this case it is being perperated by Linden Lab.This is unacceptable.

Giving "select" merchants this kind of overwhelming advantage in the marketplace is clearly anti competitive behavior and prohibited by the TOS. I guess Linden Lab doesnt have to follow their own marketplace regulations. I think whoever came up with this idea deserves to be abuse reported and should be reprimanded sternly. Linden Lab has put themselves in a position to be marketing/promotion agents for the "select" group of merchants while hurting sales of competing merchants. Its no wonder merchants are furious.

This is the most outrageous example of Linden Lab helping "select" merchants game the system that I can imagine. Clearly a violation of TOS for marketplace! Gaming the search results to an extent we've never seen before, Shame on you Linden Lab.

If you're a hotel conniseur take a look at this one https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/VENICE-HOTEL-SKYBOX-900-Couple-animations-bed-bath-fully-furnished/3335341

Lets face it, regardless of whether your products are copy or no copy, being a merchant in SL is a headache None of my products are copy (exept vehicles). When a customer claims nondelivery I ask them for due diligence in recovering (clear cache, rebuild inventory, search). If they do that and still no product, I will replace it. I figure a small percentage are scammers, but for the most part people are honest. I think the positive reaction to getting great customer service outweighs the negatives of a few cheaters.