Synopses & Reviews
Your second life is what you make itEnrich your virtual existence by mastering the techniques and tactics the experts use to create jaw-dropping SL content—everything from buildings and vehicles to clothing, landscapes, and animations. This official, exclusive guide from a team of Second Life content-creation experts was written with the full support of Linden Lab and features in-depth instructions for creating beautiful content and putting it to work in-world.
Start a new fashion trend with custom clothing featuring realistic buttons, pockets, patterns, and even wrinkles. Tour SL in the car of your dreams or in your own private jet. Create cool animations and scripts to communicate with other SL residents, and more. Both a practical, step-by-step guide and a creative session with some of the most artistic and talented minds in the Second Life community, this book will quickly build your skills and inspire you to join Second Life's elite ranks of content creators.
- Basic concepts: Understand movement, inventory, and client/server issues
Advanced building: Morph prims and design anything with these advanced techniques
SL scripting programs and third-party editors: Use a variety of tools to write, test, and debug scripts for vehicles, games, motion, and more
Become a virtual pioneer: Start terraforming with SL land tools
Dazzle visitors: Make an impact with textures, lighting, landscaping, and more
Go Hollywood: Storyboard, shoot film, add sound effects, and produce machinima
Real communication: Manage data, chat, and send e-mail—in-world and out
On the CD
The book's CD features tutorial files, textures, clothing and character templates, machinima, cool tools, and a host of other resources provided by Linden Lab to help Second Life content creators.
Review
"...Second Life hat seine Bibel! Was die Autoren rund um die SL-Berühmtheit Aimee Weber und mit freundlicher Unterstützung von Linden Lab hier mit diesem Werk der Community zur Verfügung stellen, lässt sich mit einem Wort zusammenfassen: göttlich! Auf 400 Seiten werden alle Geheimnisse der Grids optisch und technisch ansprechend hochwertig gelüftet, wobei die Autoren jederzeit darauf achten, dass sowohl Anfänger ohne jegliches Hintergrundwissen, als auch Profis, die ihre Kenntnisse vertiefen wollen, voll auf ihre Kosten kommen. Ein absolutes Highlight des Buches ist der Scripting-Kurs: Von den Basics der LSL (Linden Scripting Language) über das Erstellen von tollen Partikeleffekten bis hin zu einem selbst erstellten Flugzeug - selten bekommt man einen solch detaillierten Einblick in die Königsdisziplin des SL-Content-Creating wie in diesem Guide! Als Sahnebonbon liegt dem Buch eine rappelvolle CD-Rom mit frei verwendbaren Texturen, Templates und Scripten bei..."
(SLM, Nr. 2/2008/ Heft 3)
Synopsis
Creating Your World: The Official Guide to Advanced Content Creation for Second Life will explain in detail how to create and use Second Life content, covering such important skills as building, texturing, clothes making, scripting, animating, and terraforming. The reference and tutorial will feature a light-hearted, fun, conversational tone, and each chapter’ s discussions will be reinforced by tutorials to engage and empower the reader. An included CD will be packed with resources, including before-and-after files for the tutorials, clothing and character templates, machinima, relevant software demos, and other resources provided by Linden Lab.
Co-authored by noted residents and expert content creators Alyssa LaRoche (Aimee Weber in Second Life), Kimberly Rufer-Bach (Kim Anubis), and Richard Platel (Wednesday Grimm), this official, exclusive guide follows a logical progression that builds upon a reader’ s skills so that new and intermediate content creators will quickly become experts. The book begins with an overview of Second Life basics, including movement, inventory, and the client/server debug menu before discussing the basics of working with primitives, Second Life’ s building blocks. A chapter on advanced building techniques is followed by detailed information on the art of texturing and lighting. A clothing and accessories chapter then discusses everything from fabric and button choices to adding wrinkles and shadows for attaining a high level of realism. A scripting basics chapter is then followed by advanced scripting information so that readers will learn how to create scripts to communicate with residents and other scripts as well as managedata and interact with the world. Third-party editors, script testing and debugging, and specific scripts for vehicles, weapons, games, animators, particles, motion, and inventory are also discussed. The book then discusses global factors for creating a great user experience, including build scale, accessibility, Uis, and ease of use before discussing terraforming and land tools, estate tools and how to import terrain.Creating animations is covered next, including useful tools and their conventions as well as creating complex animations, including gestures. Dealing with performance issues and lag through efficient builds, scripts, and precaching techniques is discussed, and then the authors discuss everything needed to make movies (machinima) in Second Life, Finally, an uber tutorial (creating and texturing an airplane, scripting it, creating poses for pilots and passengers, and adding sound effects) reinforces everything learned in the book. Appendices include building, scripting, animating and miscellaneous resources, and the book’ s CD features tutorial files, textures, clothing templates, machinima, demo software, and resources and references provided by Linden Lab.
Synopsis
Details how to design and use Second Life content, covering such important skills as building, texturing, scripting, animating, and terraforming Follows a logical progression that builds upon a reader's skills so that new and intermediate content creators will quickly become experts Discusses how to create scripts to communicate and interact with the world and manage data Includes a CD with tutorial files, textures, clothing and character templates, machinima, demo software, and resources and references provided by Linden Lab
Synopsis
Enrich your virtual existence by mastering the techniques and tactics the experts use to create jaw-dropping SL content—everything from buildings and vehicles to clothing, landscapes, and animations. This official, exclusive guide from a team of Second Life content-creation experts was written with the full support of Linden Lab and features in-depth instructions for creating beautiful content and putting it to work in-world. It’s both a practical, step-by-step guide and a creative session with some of the most artistic and talented minds in the Second Life community. CD included.
About the Author
Aimee Weber is the founder and CEO of Aimee Weber Studio (www.AimeeWeber.com), one of the largest and most celebrated content creation companies in
Second Life.
Kimberly Rufer-Bach, a.k.a. Kim Anubis, is owner, designer, and producer of The Magicians (www.themagicians.us), one of the oldest and most innovative content development companies in Second Life.
Richard Platel, a.k.a. Wednesday Grimm, is a professional software developer. He has been a Second Life resident and LSL scripter since the public beta in 2004.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1:
Second Life 101.
Chapter 2: Mastering Second Life's Building Blocks.
Chapter 3: Advanced Building Techniques.
Chapter 4: Let There be Texture (and Light)!
Chapter 5: Working with Clothing and Accessories.
Chapter 6: Getting Your Feet Wet with Scripts.
Chapter 7: Advanced LSL Scripting.
Chapter 8: Scripting the Fun Stuff.
Chapter 9: Optimization—Creating a Comfortable User Experience.
Chapter 10: Terraforming.
Chapter 11: Animation—Breathing Life into Avatars.
Chapter 12: Performance and Fighting the Lag Monster.
Chapter 13: Action! Creating Machinima.
Chapter 14: Creating an Airplane.
Appendices.
Index.