Month: August 2019

UPDATED! Xaos Princess Checks Out Sansar

You might be surprised to hear that, amid all the doom and gloom over at High Fidelity, people are still pressing ahead with events. Just recently, DrFran hosted a pub trivia quiz in HiFi which I attended (I’m the one in the wizard’s hat):

Pub Quiz Night in High Fidelity

DrFran also hosts a conversational salon every Sunday where people gather to discuss a pre-set topic. The one I attended recently was on sex and gambling in virtual worlds, and it was a fabulous discussion. It’s due to hard-working people like DrFran that there is still a strong sense of community in High Fidelity.

However, there is no hiding the fact that High Fidelity has made a sharp pivot away from consumers towards the business market. Many HiFi users are looking at other social VR platforms such as Sansar. Well-known High Fidelity user Xaos Princess (whom I have profiled before on my blog) has recorded a video of her recent visit to Sansar, where she talks with Draxtor Despres and Theanine at 114 Harvest and then visits four of Theanine’s experiences: Synthwave, A House on the Hill, Stereopixel Arcade, and an in-progress, not-yet-public experience containing his photogrammetric scans of Chinese sculptures and virtual recreations of buildings and bridges he saw while he was living in China.

The video concludes with a point-by-point evaluation of Sansar, done on a interactive whiteboard in High Fidelity:

I noticed that the only thing that Xaos Princess didn’t like was the complete lack of in-world building tools, compared to High Fidelity. Personally, I don’t see this as much of a problem since everybody uses external content creation tools like Blender, Maya and 3ds Max anyway (even in High Fidelity, where she comes from).

Unfortunately, I can’t embed Xaos’ livestream (which was done using Periscope), but you can view it at this link. Please note that Xaos’ audio is very low and you will probably need to use headphones or earphones to hear what she is saying, although it does get better later on in the video. Also, the livestream video is three hours long! Despite this, I’d still encourage all users interested in social VR platforms to set aside the time to watch this; it’s always illuminating to get an “outsider’s” perspective on a platform you already know.

UPDATE Aug. 5th: Xaos Princess has now put a version of her Periscope video up on YouTube:

Note that this is actually episode two of a series titled Xaos Tours the Metaverse. Episode one, of course, was about High Fidelity, and it is available on YouTube:

By the way, Xaos also did a point-by-point evaluation of High Fidelity at the end of her tour, and she does not pull any punches:

It’s interesting to compare the two whiteboards. Xaos (who is obviously an expert at High Fidelity!) feels that HiFi is lacking in three areas: learning curve, gamification, and user concurrency (?!). I’m kind of surprised at the latter, but according to Xaos’ video, she gave it a red frowning face because of High Fidelity’s sudden shift in direction leading to doubt and insecurity among its users, which is understandable. Perhaps “user concurrency” would better be termed “level of usage”.

I look forward to future episodes of Xaos Tours the Metaverse!

Autodesk, Feeling Pressure from Blender, Offers “Indie” Versions of Maya and 3ds Max Software

The overwhelming majority of people who create mesh content for virtual worlds use one of the following three software packages instead of the rather limited in-world “prim building” tools provided by products such as Second Life and High Fidelity:

  • Blender (which is free to use and always will be);
  • Maya by Autodesk (which costs US$1,545 per year); and
  • 3ds Max by Autodesk (which is also US$1,545 per year).

Given the choices, it is not surprising that Blender is extremely popular, especially among those indie creators who are not associated with major game design companies that can afford the outrageously expensive Autodesk software costs. A vibrant and supportive user community has sprung up around Blender over the years since it was first released as freeware in 1998:

In May 2002, Roosendaal started the non-profit Blender Foundation, with the first goal to find a way to continue developing and promoting Blender as a community-based open-source project. On July 18th, 2002, Roosendaal started the “Free Blender” campaign, a crowdfunding precursor. The campaign aimed for open-sourcing Blender for a one-time payment of €100,000 (US$100,670 at the time) collected from the community. On September 7, 2002, it was announced that they had collected enough funds and would release the Blender source code. Today, Blender is free and open-source software largely developed by its community, alongside two full-time and two part-time employees employed by the Blender Institute.

—Wikipedia

Recently, Blender has released an updated version of their software (Blender 2.80), which includes a new user interface and many new features. And major game development companies such as Ubisoft (Assassin’s Creed) and Epic Games (Fortnite) have thrown their support behind Blender:

Assassin’s Creed maker Ubisoft has followed Epic Games in supporting open source 3D creation tool Blender by joining the Blender Foundation’s Development Fund as a corporate Gold member. The move will see Ubisoft fund online support for Blender developers, while Ubisoft Animation Studio — a division of Ubisoft Film and Television — has also committed to using the tool in-house and contributing to various open source Blender projects. 

The news comes a week after Epic Games donated $1.2 million to the Blender Foundation through its MegaGrants program, with company CEO Tim Sweeney praising the tool as an “enduring recourse within the artistic community.” Those remarks were echoed by Pierrot Jacquet, head of production at Ubisoft Animation Stdio, who also saluted the “strong and engaged” Blender community.

Obviously, Autodesk is feeling the heat. Today I learned that the company is now trying to entice content creators with new, “indie” versions of their flagship products, Maya and 3ds Max. The restrictions for Maya Indie are:

  • Your annual gross revenue from design work must be less than USD$100,000 per year
  • Only one license can be used per user or organization
  • Offer is only available to users in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. or the U.S.

The cost? US$250 per year (only 16% of the full-price version). The website also announces:

Autodesk Maya Indie is the same industry-standard product used by professional studios, at a price point accessible to those who are just starting out. If you are a recent graduate or freelancer with less than USD$100,000/year in revenue, you can get started now. Please note that this is a limited-time offer.

“Act now, supplies are limited!” This is a standard come-on. I seriously doubt that Autodesk is going to rescind its offer in the face of competition from the popular, similarly featured, and totally free Blender software. The same offer, with the same terms, applies to 3ds Max. CGPress reports:

Comments by Chip Weatherman suggest the limited time disclaimer refers to the fact that this is a pilot program to “determine how and where we expand it. Much like when the telecom companies offer a new channel in select areas to see how to roll it out, this is similar.”

The Indie versions of Max and Maya are fully featured with no restrictions on render size, file format, plugins etc. There is a limit of only one indie license per business in addition to the income cap mentioned above. Users should also be aware that the license will auto-renew at full price, but this can be avoided by disabling automatic renewal and resubscribing to the Indie license once it expires.

True fact: when I was learning how to create avatar clothing for Cloud Party (a nascent virtual world bought out by Yahoo! and closed in 2014), I used the free student version of Maya (mainly because my teacher used Maya in her tutorial videos at the time). However, I doubt that I will shell out US$250 a year (which works out to $330 Canadian) when I can use the equally powerful and well-supported Blender. I would rather put that money towards the upgrade fees for Marvelous Designer, which I still plan to use to create my avatar fashion empire 😉

Competition in markets is a good thing; it drives down prices while it encourages software makers to add features and improve quality. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out!

How You Can Prepare for the Upcoming Switch to Avatar 2.0 in Sansar

As you probably already know, Sansar is upgrading its default, dressable human avatars to a new version soon. This update, called Avatar 2.0, means that existing human avatars and any items rigged for them will be discontinued. Earlier I wrote:

Linden Lab is working on the next version of the default human avatar in Sansar, dubbed Avatar 2.0, which should arrive sometime in August or September 2019. Unfortunately, first-edition avatars will be discontinued, and any items rigged for them (such as clothing, shoes, and hair) will break and not be useable by the next-generation avatars. However, clothing made using Marvelous Designer should still work with Avatar 2.0 avatars.

Here’s a FAQ by Linden Lab explaining all the upcoming changes in more detail, as well as an official blogpost. Inara Pey has also blogged extensively about Avatar 2.0 here, here, here and here.

Today, Linden Lab sent out more information about this upcoming major change to Sansar:

We’re just a month away from the official launch of Avatar 2.0, and we want to make sure creators like you have ample time to prepare.That’s why we’re releasing our Avatar 2.0 skeleton early – to give you all of August to optimize your content… Starting today, you’ll also be able to submit any avatar items you create against the new skeleton to the Sansar team for an official review. These include: full avatars, rigged clothing, hair, MD clothing, emotes, and accessories. 

You can download the new avatar reference files here. And here are step-by-step instructions on how to submit your created items to Linden Lab for review.

And, as a sneak peek of what we can expect with Avatar 2.0, here is a YouTube video (taken from a weekly Sansar Product Meetup livestream) that shows how you can adjust the facial features on the new human avatars:

This reminds me strongly of how you adjust your face in The Sims 4. I’m really looking forward to seeing this roll out!

Coming Soon: Explore the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel in Virtual Reality

This is a blog devoted to social VR, virtual worlds, and the metaverse, so I usually don’t cover non-social VR experiences (i.e. those you visit alone). But I’m going to make an exception for an experience showcased at the SIGGRAPH 2019 conference in Los Angeles.

VentureBeat reports:

There’s no shortage of sophisticated mixed reality hardware at Siggraph, but I was most impressed by a piece of software that really demonstrated VR’s educational and experiential potential. Christopher Evans, Paul Huston, Wes Bunn, and Elijah Dixson exhibited Il Divino: Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling in VR, an app that recreates the world-famous Sistine Chapel within the Unreal Engine, then lets you experience all of its artwork in ways that are impossible for tourists at the real site.

Il Divino: Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling in VR is described by its creators as follows:

The demo was created exclusively for the SIGGRAPH 2019 Immersive Pavilion, by the team behind the previous SIGGRAPH 2017 VR piece: Il Gigante: Michelangelo’s David in VR. Debuting at SIGGRAPH on Valve’s INDEX headset, Il Divino delivers an experience of the highest fidelity –you can see individual cracks and brush strokes in the plaster!

Attendees can step onto Michelangelo’s own scaffold to learn about how he painted the ceiling, or enter a Vatican conservator’s mobile aerial platform to see the ceiling up close, and learn about the controversial cleaning. In all, there are over 100 clickable elements connected to an hour of commentary talking about Michelangelo’s monumental work.

Later this year, it will be released to all as a freely downloadable experience, and it will continue to be added to and improved in the future.

This reminds me of a virtual recreation of the Sistine Chapel in Second Life, which I visited sometime in 2007 or 2008 (unfortunately, it is no longer available to visit):

My angel avatar visit the Sistine Chapel in Second Life (circa 2007)

If you are curious about how this VR experience was constructed, here is more information on the techniques used. There’s even some suggestions as to how you can help improve the project.

Here’s a video of the experience:

And here’s an interview with one of the creators, Chris Evans.