Medhue Simoni

Aethelwine wrote: We will have to see what the new product they are working on will be like, but from what has been said I can't see much excitement going there from the sailing and piloting community if there is no mainland to explore and to cross between regions you need to find a "gateway". 1024m regions would be great for car and bike racing and by building roads up in to the sky like is done already could be great for exploring and cruising... but all the same the loss of continuity between regions is a major downside. It might be big enough to make warbug dogfights fun, or pirate naval battles. But really this is two steps forwards and one step back. Alot of the money that goes in to SL is for coastal sims. Loss of mainland and proper crossing between sims will have a huge impact on interest in taking up the new platform. I really haven't thought a whole lot about land and stuff. To me, more is better. I do own a sim, and IMHO, it is fricken tiny. Hardly worth $195/month. I think the big problem with mainland, is that it can't really work like in real life, which is why the mainlands are all hollowed out. If it worked like RL, the inner parts of each continent would be alot less money. In SL, that is hard to do, cause LL is charging us the same price, not evaluating it's value. You know, that does bring up a solution to LL's known problem of the service being too expensive. LL could make the land in the mainland reflect it's value, in relation to location. So, they would keep beach front properties at the normal $195, then maybe drop the road side property, that are not beach fronts, to $180. Then they could drop the next inner sets of land, maybe $160, and the last, most inner pieces of land, $150. I almost guarantee they would not lose money, and they could really fill the mainland to where we were a few years ago. Personally, I'd go even lower, but that is just me.

Sorry, but I'm compelled to expand on this, as I think I can bring this full circle, and back around to the topic at hand. The slavery issue, especially here in the states, is a very interesting 1. What I find very telling, is what happened after slavery. See, my real point is, that force doesn't bring good outcomes for all people. When you reject the use of force, then real solutions, that benefit everyone, can be found. When those plantations were no longer able to use force, we saw a massive gain in productivity and invention. Our open minds allows us to think of way to be more productive without using force. Imagine if those plantation made the argument that we could never produce enough without slaves? Ignoring the moral arguments. We do this all the time by thinking that government can only run the police, or the utilities, or whatever. I'd say tho, that the moral argument is the most important, as it was with slavery. When force is used, then you can't even imagine an alternative. Imagine telling a plantation owner to give up his slaves because in the near future we'd have robots combing his fields picking thousands of times more crops that any human could. He would just laugh at you, but this is what happens when you reject force. Now, in the case of LL and their proposed tax hike, they are just like the plantation owner. They have accepted force as a solution, and aren't really considering other options. If they rejected force, then the possibilities would be endless, and whatever they would make, would benefit both us and them. Now, of course, they aren't really using force, cause we can just choose not to participate, but it is still the same concept, when looked at purely from an economic stantpoint.

TheMoreYouKnow wrote: I did select bone joint position though. Using the base shape actually made it worse, http://puu.sh/gNj8j/2bd12b7fb1.jpg The bones I mentioned http://puu.sh/gNjuq/f5117304e4.png Should any of these be rigged / might be the reason it is messed up at the shoulders. I used the female skelleton By the way. Are you sure you are using the proper shape. What rig did you use? It's been a very long time since i've rigged in 3ds Max, especially for SL, so I can't really say much more.

Theresa Tennyson wrote: Please define "government" as you're using it. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries it was routine for large companies to run their own communities around their factories/companies - they had their own company stores, security forces, etc. They could function largely independently of the legal government of the areas they were located in. Were these companies simply highly successful in the market (good), or were they controlling, oppressive governments (bad)? Government is basically whomever has the power to legally use force, and aggression against people in a geographic area. The distinction between what is good or bad, at least to me, is whether or not force is being used. The difference between rape and loving sex, is force. The difference between theft and charity, is force. Using force, is the opposite to convincing someone, and having good debates. Every tax, regulation, license, and so on, is 1 side using force, instead of reasoned debate to convince people to give willingly for something. If all government taxes and regulations were voluntary, then they would not be evil. Just cause they are voluntary, doesn't mean there will be chaos. If your government regulates that business, and it was voluntary, then that business would get a government seal of approval, and people would know that this business is complying with government regulations. If a business deems that a regulation is unwarranted, they could just ignore it and not get that government approval. People could make up their own minds. This already goes on in many areas, by private businesses like the UL sticker on most appliances.

TheMoreYouKnow wrote: Actually this would probably be a good time to ask if the bones labled something like R_Upper_Arm Should be weighted and would that be my problem. My guess is that you aren't selecting bone joint positions in the uploader. Also, I would make sure your SL shape is set to default, for the rig you rigged him to. So, if you use the female rig, then you need a default female shape, or your mesh won't look right.

Ok, I feel like you missed a big step. 3ds Max can do a good job rigging a character automatically, with it's tools, but you still have to go in and adjust weights, especially in the shoulders and probably the crotch too. I do a number of videos on weighting characters, but they are all for Blender.

irihapeti wrote: like if go back a few years to create say a animation then had to write a script to do this. Now there are visual tools that allow you to do this. Is same for mesh creation. Visual tools now instead of scripting. Same printing text documents. Once upon a time used to have to write a script to print even the simplest document That is a great point! irihapeti wrote: what you envisage is coming to 3D as well. Hopefully LL is going to the company that makes it real. If only so that SL will not be swept away SL will be around for quite a few more years, at the very least. Given the vague timeline LL has given, even basic functionality seems to be over a year away. To get anything close to what is now possible, outside of content creation, will be a few years, at best. I kind of feel like people have forgotten the major problems we've had over the years. At 1 point, we had to almost demand that LL not update code on thrusdays or fridays, because they could not figure this out on their own, despite the millions of dollars they were losing every time they ruined a full weekend of sales with their buggy code.

irihapeti wrote: i pick up on this part the goal of a coder is to make themself obsolete to reach a point where scripting (as we know and practise it today) is redundant Ebbe Linden mentioned this in his speech. He was talking about wizards the most wizard-like thing in SL currently is a gesture. Is a description list (a order of actions) that the creator of the gesture wants to happen + in the new world is going to be lots of these kinds of things. Each object will have properties that can be set at designtime. That can be triggered to change by Touch/sit/bump,teleport etc. Action lists of property changes that can be triggered also. Triggered even by other actions and interactions with other objects edit typo I think obsolete is the wrong word, cause I think that is almost impossible. There is always new code to be created. To me tho, it doesn't make sense for thousands of people to all write the same code, constantly recreating the wheel. Really tho, I'm just dreaming. That's all we can do with a company that thinks secrets benefit them. Who does LL think cares what they are doing, besides us, their customers? You know, the funny thing is, everyone else, I know what's going on a year in advance. You almost can't keep track, as they give us so much info. I knew all about the changes to Unity's new Mecanim animations system way before they implemented it. Even the massive upgrade we just got, I knew all about it 8 months ago. I can find out what they are working on next too. Same goes for Unreal. Blender always has a roadmap. To a creator, running a business, this is a must. When the company tells you nothing at all, why even think about them? How can any of us plan ahead at all? Ebbe gave us some vague dates, and admit outright that all their friends that use this specific software will have a huge advantage, and possibly the only software that will work at all, at least for some other vague amount of time. I think for me, I have to just ignore LL, and concentrate on the companies that actually understand what it's like to truly be partners with their community.

irihapeti wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: A true capitalist knows that only voluntary exchange can produce wealth. is not quite true this. I can produce wealth by enslaving you you the slave just dont get any share of it other than enough food to get you thru the day. Except for when slaves are cheaper to obtain than the cost of the food needed to sustain them Maybe I should have said, "wealth for all people involved". Plus, you are only maginally right. Slaves don't have much of an incentive to work, and the only way you can have slaves, is if it is support by the state. The extra cost to catch runaways, diminishes any profit. If government catches the slaves for you, and the slave have no hope for escape, then there can be marginal wealth creation.

irihapeti wrote: about tax on online services generally + within the next decade all income cashed out of online sites will pretty much be subject to Withholding Tax So minus Commission to siteholder 30-50%. Then at least 25% of the 70-50% remainder be withheld and given direct to the RL taxman. Then will have to fill in the forms to be able to include this in your RL tax return. Same like you do with other income subject to withholding unless you a tax-registered business then the Withholding tax dont apply. However RL sales tax (VAT/GST/etc) on top of the siteholder commission payments will then apply most likely edit add: or both even maybe + This is also why selling on your own site is preferable. I've actually registered last year, just cause there is no benefit anymore to not register your business. It's sad that people have forgotten what freedom is, and continue to think that using force and stealing from people can bring prosperity. The higher LL makes the tax, the less economic activity will go on. LL's tax will literally take money out of the economy, when leaving it in the economy would generate much more value than the tax ever could. Anybody that knows me, knows that I'm a very hardcore Anarcho-Capitalist. I'm very much for people or companies making money, but not when force is used. A true capitalist knows that only voluntary exchange can produce wealth. Taxes are not a capitalist tool, it's a totalitarian tool. Taxes are what simple minded people with no creativity use, because they convince themselve, it is the only way. The reality is, it's just the easiest way. The rulers don't consider that the tax is counter productive. LL, being the creators of these world, has many options for making money. Why, or how, they can't think these things up, is totally baffling to me. What about supplying us with a server farm to hold all our game data, when we do make games? HELLO! What about better Marketing tools we could pay for? What about letting us make commercials and post them on their Youtube channel. LL really doesn't even use it. With apps, like LL talked about, LL could provide all kinds of services, beyond what the users make. Personally, after looking at how so many of these worlds, and even engines work, and the supply of different specialized skilled people, I think LL should make and sell code for the new world. Yeah, I know I'm likely pissing off a bunch of coders, but IMHO, if you want fast growth, and clean code, then that is the avenue they should take. Look around in SL. We have, literally, 10s of thousands of artists, but only maybe a thousand competent coders. Yes, many people have learned to code on their own, but those people aren't going to be making super complex code. Every world has this problem too, and all are trying to devise ways to make coding easier. Microsoft's Sparks project is using this symbol node like system for kids to make games. Unreal has a node system for creating code, and even Unity has node systems for code. Coding is the bottleneck. So, if I were LL, I would dedicate a small group of coders at LL to actually write game code for the new world. If I were LL, I would create full games, with network support, and then charge creators to use the system to create their own games. With the core of the game system created by LL, we can then alter or add to that code to customize our games. This is kind of already going on in Unity and Unreal. People are writing full game code, putting it on the marketplace, and people just take that and make their own game.

I have to correct myself. I was just on Unreal's Marketplace and reading the info and they are charging 30% on their website. So, I will not even attempt to sell on there. My website does very well, and all I really have to do is just tag things with UE or Unreal for people to find me. Plus, Unreal is very open about allowing anyone to post links to their UE products on their forums. Unity is the same way, and when I post on the Unity forums, I do get a very good amount of traffic from it, so I can probably assume the same for Unreal, given their numbers. Like I said too tho, it doesn't hurt me, cause I can charge less, and still make more than I would have on their Marketplaces. On their Marketplaces, they have a system, much like Youtube, where you only get paid at the end of the month, and only if you made over $100. So, selling on my own site is another bonus, cause I get paid right away. At the most, some purchases take 3 days.

Just in case LL is listening, I'll talk more about why I don't spend much time making things for SL anymore. Don't get me wrong, if everything worked, I'd rather create for SL over any other platform. I can't tho, cause everything is broken. You basically can't make anything in SL without working around numerous bugs, all of which have been a problem in SL for a good 7 years. Being primarily an animator, it's the many bugs in the animation system that frustrate me more than anything. Outside of the bugs, even today, SL probably has the best animation system out there, which says alot when you compare it to Unity, Unreal and whatnot. The bugs make it useless tho. Technically, every single looping animation uploaded is destroyed by the uploader. Most people just don't notice because the bug isn't as visible on human rigs. On animals tho, or any animation that puts your avatar near the ground, the bug is glaringly obvious. LL has allowed this bug to go on for over 7 years. Oh, I have tried, many, many, many times to get these bugs fixed, but LL just doesn't give a crap. It's like banging my head against a wall. This is why I'm very skeptical about the new world. If LL takes this same approach with bugs, the new world will fail. Why would any creator put up with that? Over at Unity, if I do a bug report, it gets addressed, and really there aren't many bugs in their animation system. In the 2 years I've been creating for their platform, I have only seen 2 obscure bugs in the animation system, both of which have been addressed. Over at Unreal, I have yet to see any major bugs in the animation system. I forget if it was Oz or Ebbe who mentioned this, but 1 of them said something about adding bones to the SL rig. I don't remember exactly, but it had to do with the SL skeleton. So, we have Oz and the CEO talking about advancing a rig, which is littered with bugs. Yeah, don't fix the bugs, just add more bones and call it a day. Just like Fitted mesh was half-a$$ed, now LL will half-a$$edly just add bones. Yes, I am insulting, but this is a product of bugs being ignored for 7 years. I never need to insult any other programmers, because they see the error of their ways and understand that I am their customer. They understand that I am trying to help them. Last week, I even had a Unity dev mention me in a forum post as someone who might be able to help the person, which I did. LL thinks we are just here to annoy them, and we make jiras for imaginary things. This is why I create for Unity and Unreal more now, and I'm very skeptical about LL's new world.

My max limit is 15%, but that is as high as I will go. If LL goes higher than that, I will not be selling in the new world, at least, not thru LL. This is why I set up my website. Daz charges 50%. Unity charges 30%, Renderosity charges 50%. Unreal is really the only 3D marketplace that doesn't charge, so I will likely try to get on their Marketplace, which is only a few months old. I don't think Sketchfab charges, besides their pro feature, but those are just models. I don't mind LL's 5%, but really, anything more is abusive, and not productive for anyone. Really, LL needs to hire a real economist. They seriously do everything backwards. Listen to Ebbe. He knows his product is outrageously expensive and over priced, yet he does nothing about that. Everyone knows SL is over priced. LL doesn't even consider lowering the price. Here is a clue to LL. When you lower the price of something, people will generally buy more of it. So, you don't usually lose much, if any, and most of the time, you gain.

LlazarusLlong wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: Ebbe has yet to tell us how much they are going to tax the consumers for buying our stuff. What makes you think he is going to tax the consumers? It's much more efficient to collect value added tax from suppliers. A tax is always a tax on the consumer. It doesn't matter where they collect it from. It is always the consumer that actually pays the tax, not the suppliers. What will likely happen is that LL will tax at the time of purchase tho, in which the tax is obviously paid by the consumer. This is why taxes are dumb. They are a con. If LL wants or needs to make more money, then I can literally think of thousands of things they could do, that benefit merchants, which they and I would gladly pay for. The sad part, is that nobody at LL is creative enough to think up these things, or they are too lazy to make them. Taxing the consumers is just easier than offering services that people will gladly pay for.

Innula Zenovka wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: Plus, LL still has the same TOS, which is completely incompatible with professional creators, and they don't seem to care much about it. Unity and Unreal do not claim to own anything I made. Why does LL need a new TOS now, in order to accommodate a new platform that is some months from going into alpha testing and will probably not be rolled out until, at the very earliest, the end of the year? Well, I don't assume that I know things that others do not. If I'm doing something, it's likely that others saw the same thing, and are doing it also. Ever since the initial TOS change, I've not made much of anything in SL, nor have I encouraged many creators to build in SL. Why should I do any of that, when I can just create for Unity, Daz, Unreal, CryEngine, IMVU, or any of the other places I can create for, that don't claim ownership of items I made? Heck, just the contract jobs alone that I get for Unity, Daz, and Unreal are far more than what I make in SL, and those people sign a mutual contract that we both agreed on, or I have total say in the contract. Never does the other side tell me what my rights will be. Well, unless it's huge money. Most of the time, they pay me very well, and I can immediately put what I made them on my website to sell to others.

Caitlin Tobias wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: Caitlin Tobias wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: Really, unless LL pays me, I have no intention to give feedback, other than "your crap doesn't work". I rest my case. And it's my whole point. I don't care if I get in there. I have a very full plate. That said, I'm very confident that others will be able to point out LL's mistakes to them. I wasn't the only person telling CP their rig was screwed up. But..... if all LL has is 5 people testing their crap, then I have no hope for the new platform. Mhm..sure. Heck, I don't even know if I will sell items in the new world. Ebbe has yet to tell us how much they are going to tax the consumers for buying our stuff. If it is too high, I'll just sell everything from my website and only full perm items. Other platforms, like Unreal, understand that putting a tax on consumption will only produce less things for people to buy, equating to less profits, and less exposure. The creators and merchants are a platforms best friend, not another source to squeeze money out of. And seriously, Ebbe says in the transcript that the new avatar skeleton is complex. Why is it complex? Rigs aren't really complex. They are just bones. I'm hoping he said complex because he has never dealt with a rig. Plus, LL still has the same TOS, which is completely incompatible with professional creators, and they don't seem to care much about it. Unity and Unreal do not claim to own anything I made.

Caitlin Tobias wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: Really, unless LL pays me, I have no intention to give feedback, other than "your crap doesn't work". I rest my case. And it's my whole point. I don't care if I get in there. I have a very full plate. That said, I'm very confident that others will be able to point out LL's mistakes to them. I wasn't the only person telling CP their rig was screwed up. But..... if all LL has is 5 people testing their crap, then I have no hope for the new platform.

Caitlin Tobias wrote: So basically, you choose to ignore the actual texts as Innula has pointed out - in which Ebbe makes it clear Maya is just in the first rounds of testing for reasons LL will know and later they will incorporate A LOT of other softwares - I get the feeling you are just ranting about because you do not like or ..maybe, want or //gasp, maybe you cannot!, use Maya and so you focus on that specific alpha-testing phase and love to skip the rest. Good story. I can use Maya just fine. I would never want to tho. Blender will ALWAYS be supported. That isn't even in question here. To even ask shows a lack of understanding of 3D. This is my point. There is no reason to restrict alpha testers to Maya users. It's arbitrary, if you understand 3D. It's like saying you can only take pictures with a canon. The end result, the FBX files, is exactly the same. Few would even be able to tell what software you used to make the FBX. The part that worries me, is LL is setting themselves up to fail, because the rig is probably the most important element in the 3D world. The rig is the first thing you want to get right, not the last thing. I'm the lead developer on a game right now, and we won't be doing anything until we get the rig sorted out. Really, unless LL pays me, I have no intention to give feedback, other than "your crap doesn't work". If I was in the alpha, I would simply test the items I've already made for Unity, and if they don't work, I would just come back later and test it again. At least, that is my attitude now. I'm really done fighting to get LL to fix things. It's not worth my time. I can be much more productive doing other things.

LlazarusLlong wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote You'd be lucky to find 10 Maya users in SL. That's probably because the Mayans thought the world was going to end in 2012. Out of interest, are there any Maya users here in GD? [Yeah, I know, that question should really be asked in the Technical Forum.] PS Anyone that claims to be will have to prove that they are neither a Linden alt nor a shill. PPS Is it coincidence that one of the meanings of the original Sanskrit word Maya is "Unreal"? PPPS All of the other meanings imply something that doesn't, and will not exist except as a figment of someone's imagination. PPPPS Do you think LL's codename for SL V2 is Maya? Funny stuff! Cathy Foil is the only dedicated Maya user in the forums that I know of. Chosen Few is another Maya user, more like a fanboy, that was on the forums alot. Him and I have worked together on a few projects outside of SL, and we argue over Maya and Blender quite a bit. Chosen has pretty much left SL tho, mostly because of the TOS, but I know he does do work for some SL merchants. I just worked with him on 2 games in the last 2 months, so I know he's around. It wouldn't surprise me if LL gets him to be in the alpha, cause he has actually done work for them before.

Innula Zenovka wrote: It sounds as if they've already identified their "expert users to create the most variety of content and stress our engine to the maximum with the least amount of effort" during the alpha testing stage, and they want to use Maya (or are content so to do). From what he says, people will be able to use Blender or whatever else they like by the time it goes live, so I don't see what the problem is supposed to be. Unless someone is very anxious to participate in the early alpha testing, what does it matter? Isn't the important thing that it supports a wide variety of content creation tools, including Blender, doubtless all tested in the beta testing stages, by the time it goes live? Did you miss the part where I talk about Cloud Party? See, to say only Maya users will be the only 1's able to be in the alpha, shows a serious lack of understanding of 3D. A mesh is just a mesh, in every single software. A rigged mesh is a rigged mesh. Maya does nothing special at all. There is no reason to only allow Maya users in. What you are doing when you do only allow Maya users in, is you are creating your own little bubble, which will allow you to ignore everyone else. This is what Cloud Party did. Within a week of Cloud Party opening up to the public, I told them their rig won't work in neither my mocap software, nor in Blender. They gave some lame excuse and told me to use 3ds Max, cause I also can use that. Of course, their files would not import into my old 3ds Max 8. In Blender, I could kind of see what was wrong with the rig, and I pointed it out to them, which they again ignored. Finally, I got a trial version of Maya, brought in their rig, and figured out that had some utility bone rotated 180 degrees, which was screwing up the rig in everything else. Of course, I told CP this, and they ignored me again. Finally, months later, and CP had been open for almost a year, they realized that if they didn't make their rig Blender compatible, they would have no people selling stuff, besides the 1 animator that was a Maya user. They started changing the rig, and then they were bought out. It is extremely likely, that LL will make the same exact mistake. It won't be able to be caught by a Maya user, cause it will work fine in Maya. And technically, I've already changed over to making content almost exclusively for Unity and Unreal. Part of the reason I did this was to get things ready for the new world, because if LL does things correctly, then all content from Unity and Unreal, could be used in the new world. If LL doesn't make things compatible, then they are the only 1's losing out, not me. Unity and Unreal have more than enough customers to fill LL's void.

Pussycat Catnap wrote: For now I will say I agree with you that Maya is the wrong path for anything that is meant to be community developed. Sure, a LOT of people have Maya out there, a lot of people also have 3DS. But... I was originally a 3Ds Max users, before I became a Blender user. I was using an old version of Max, so I wanted to upgrade. I thought seriously about Maya, but went with Blender because of the community. It's easy to find a tutorial for Blender on just about any topic. When Cloud Party openned up, and they were so Maya centric, I decided that I would seriously give Maya a try. Initially, I just wanted to figure out what Cloud Party was doing with the rig, and see if I could change it to get it to work in my mocap software, which can import and export any format and works for every single game engine and skeleton there is, except Cloud Party's rig. So, I got the trial version of Maya and figured I'd give it the full month and decide whether to buy it after that. IMHO, compared to Blender, Maya is a mess. It's a mish mash of tools and whatever the F, seemingly trying to squeeze every last dollar out of the user for essential plugins and whatnot. Remember, I was a Max user, and picking up Blender was fairly easy for me. Maya tho, without a crapload of plugins and other programs, it's useless. The reason I'm a Blenderhead fanboy, has nothing at all to do with price, in the end. I have the money for Maya. Blender is really the only free software that I use, and I'm not hesitant to buy addons for it. It's comes down to what is the better product, and which program I see standing after another 5 years.

Innula Zenovka wrote: On the subject of Maya, what he actually says is, [08:39 / 39:59 ] And Maya is just a starting point; ultimately, we want to be able to support a huge array of third-party tools: Maya, 3D Max, Sketchup – any tool that any creator is comfortable with using, we want to make it possible for them to take content from there directly into this next generation platform, and then basically just instantly walk into that content, and easily invite people into that content and start to socialise in and around that content. [50:30] Why do we start with Maya as opposed to something open-source like Blender? Why did we choose something that’s so expensive versus something that’s free or cheap? [52:52] Like I said, this is very early. We started with the most sophisticated tool that allows us to create the most sophisticated content possible. Not just 3D content, but also animation, where we can get a full stress of almost every use case that we can think of, so it’s almost for our convenience. It’s not the intent that this is going to be the starting point for you guys. By the time most of you would find it worthwhile to start working in this platform, I would expect for us to have support for many other tools. [53:34] but it was the tool that we could get our expert users to create the most variety of content and stress our engine to the maximum with the least amount of effort. So it was basically the fastest path for us to get the most complex content created as soon as possible without have to build a lot of tools to do that. [54:04] By the time it’s more generally available, we’ll be having support for many other tools, including Blender, and ultimately, whatever tool you choose. This just shows you how little Ebbe and his team knows about 3D. Blender is many times better than Maya. Heck, with a simply spline, you can have instant boob and butt physics in Blender. Ebbe has no idea what he is talking about. Blender can make far more sophisticated content than Maya can. Convenience? Well, almost no Maya users have the latest version. So, what you are getting when you use Maya users, is inconsistency. No 2 Maya users will be using the same version. Every single Blender user can use the exact same version, at any time. When I get contracted to work on a team, I never know what to expect when everyone is not a Blender users. When we are all Blender users, it's easy, cause we can all trade the blend files. And my last point is, Blender has millions of users. You'd be lucky to find 10 Maya users in SL. Just look at the forums when someone askes a Maya centric question. Ebbe, and LL, are using Maya, cause they don't know any better. It's because of ignorance. My prediction! LL's new world will bomb massively. Nothing will work for any who is not a Maya user. The animation system will be a complete and total mess, because they are using Maya. 6 months after they open the doors, they will be lucky to have 1 or 2 animators selling stuff. This is not something I just made up. This is EXACTLY what happened with Cloud Party. Until I see LL make some major changes to how they interact with us, and how they are creating this new world. I'm just going to write it off. Ebbe has shown me LL's attitude, and that is all I need to know.

In case some has not seen this, I'll post the video. I've also posted this in the other thread, but I want to talk about what he said, not the conference, hence why I'm posting a new thread. First let me talk about the Maya centric attitude in silicon valley. Why? Why? Why? I swear, they never learn. Every single platform that started out Maya or 3ds Max centric in their tools, ended up failing or having to redo their whole mindset around it. Why? Because they could not get enough feed back. Cloud Party, which was the latest example, was completely Maya centric, and the whole time they were open, only 1 big animator in SL had any decent amount of products available. Why? Because their rig was a mess, and didn't work in Blender, in which 90+% of SL creators use. The Blender community has ALWAYS supported the SL creators, and actually built extensive tools around SL. It is ridiculous that LL doesn't have a dedicate set of Blender users on their team that is creating this new world. Again, RIDICULOUS! Heck, what they should be doing, is working with the Blender devs to make sure there are dedicated tools for the new world in Blender. That would be thinking ahead. No offense to Maya users, but....... Screw Maya! And yes, I am a total Blenderhead fanboy, but there are endless reasons why. Unity is not Maya centric. You can actually just drop a blend file into Unity and it automatically converts it to FBX. That fricken rocks! UnReal has a dedicated Blenderhead on their team, and they have promised to make Unreal more Blender friendly and to do more tutorials centered around Blender. 2nd, Ebbe is totally wrong about content, or he needs to catch up. I can't get too angy about this tho, as they do seem to be adopting the standards. Those standards are FBX and Csharp. Where Ebbe is wrong, is that you can today swamp fully animated characters between many different game engines. In the last week, I finished the elephant I've been working on. I'm specifically making this elephant for the Unity engine, but it will work in the Unreal Engine, and it should also work in the CryEngine, but I haven't tested that 1 yet. I just tested it yesterday in Unreal tho. I've been concentrating more on Unity, specifically because I know they are using a standard format that should be able to work in most engines, and Ebbe has specifically said they will support it. So, he is wrong. There is a standard, and it is fbx. The questions is, how will LL handle those FBX files. My fricken elephant better work, or they are doing something wrong. Now, I'm open to handling things like animation differently, from the fbx, but LL's goal should be to make sure their platform can accept all fbx files that are compatible with Unity and Unreal. Don't make us do extra work, or choose between engines.

I'll just mention, that every single virtual world that has focused their tools around MAYA, have run into major problems, besides very few people to actually test their tools properly. The Blender community has always been a big supporter of the SL creators, and it is flat out ridiculous that LL doesn't have a team of dedicated Blender users testing out their new platform. I'm increasingly dissappointed by the lack of communication between the creators in SL and the LL devs.