Day: September 9, 2017

Pick of the Day: The Urban Art Experience

Urban Art 1 9 September 2017

Sansar is a natural environment for art. The Urban Art Experience by Charmarley Nightfire bills itself as “a hand-picked collection of works from the world’s very best urban artists”, and it certainly delivers.

Urban Art 3 9 September 2017

I was a little confused at first because I visited this experience twice to take these pictures, and I started off in two different spots! The second time, I spawned in a small park where you walk into a venerable red British telephone booth which teleports you to Art Street.

Urban Art 2 9 September 2017

In Art Street, the houses are literally plastered with fine examples of urban art! It’s quite enjoyable to walk around and experience works by Banksy and other street artists.

Urban Art 4 9 September 2017

There’s also a “contest” by the experience creator, Charmarley Nightfire:

Come and try the INVADER CHALLENGE…here’s how it works: There are 10 Invader pieces hidden around the experience. Simply find the odd one out and email me why it’s the odd one out to charmarleynightfire@maiL.com FOR EVERY CORRECT ANSWER RECEIVED, I WILL DONATE S$50 TO THE PALESTINIANS CHILDRENS RELIEF FUND!! (only one entry per user, per week)

Testing the New Terrain Editor

One of the most eagerly-awaited new features of the September 8th Sansar software release was the ability to use an interactive Terrain Editor to sculpt land, much as you can do in Second Life! Today I tested this feature out, and despite a few bugs it worked well.

Here’s what the Terrain Editor looks like in Sculpt mode, where you can create hills and valleys:

My First Terrain 2 9 Sept 2017

The smallest size of land that you can sculpt at one time is 32 by 32 metres square, and the largest is 256 by 256 metres. You can set the size of your sculpting tool anywhere from 1 up to 32. You can also set the strength, hardness, and noise of your sculpting. All of these features are described fully in the Terrain Editor documentation.

It’s possible to soften or sharpen the peaks and valleys you create, and even flatten it all out if you want to start over! Here’s what I got after only a few minutes of sculpting. You can see where I smoothed out one of the hills. You can also “paint” the land using one of the preset textures (stone, grass, soil, etc.). You cannot yet add your own textures, but that feature is promised for a future release.

My First Terrain 9 Sept 2017

Everything is not yet perfect. Using the Terrain Editor did crash the Sansar software for me three times in a row, and I did come across a screen display problem when in Paint mode. I reported these bugs to the Bug Reports section of the Sansar Community website. This sort of thing is to be expected when beta testing software. Overall, I am extremely pleased with the Terrain Editor! It is a powerful new tool for Sansar creators.