MUV601 - Robin Le Couteur - 2018

Assignment 3 Final Result - Blog 5 This blog about the final result of my project was recorded as a video blog. You can watch it below:

Assignment 3 Reflection - Blog 6 In this blog I'll be reflecting on the project as a whole. This will include my thoughts on how I think the project went, any roadblocks I hit and how the project came together in the end. My initial goal for this project was to make a scripted keyboard that you could play, as well as other instruments to play alongside it. What I ended up with was a little bit more simple than I was expecting, but I think it managed to capture my initial inspiration quite well. The focus was to make a simple to use interactive environment that was fun. I wanted it to be able to be used by multiple people as a collaborative environment. The end result almost exactly reflected these goals. The result allowed multiple people to collaboratively enjoy my creation. Looking at what my learning goals were, I managed to achieve them all. The goals were the following: Learn how to create a model outside of SL and import it (I will use this to build the groundwor...

Assignment 3 Progress - Blog 4 In this blog I'll be talking about the progress with the general design of my project. My previous blogs talked mostly about the scripting and functional parts of the model, but never really the visuals. This blog is a bit late because I've been focusing more on other assignments, but here we go anyways. For the design of the environment that my piano would be in, I had quite a bit of difficulty thinking of something good. After wracking my brains I came up with something that was fairly interesting and would help fulfil some of the requirements of the build. Here's a bit of a prototype that I came up with in SketchUp: The idea was that I could go in the bottom and teleport up to the top, and when I'm done have a similar doorway to teleport back down. The curved shape could also be reproduced in SL with special prim manipulations which would fulfil some of the build requirements. Also as shown more here, I also decided on a ...

Assignment 3 Progress - Blog 3 -  Scripting the keys Over the last couple of weeks I've been making some progress on my scripting for the piano keys. I've done some other progress on other elements of the build, but I'll just talk about what I've done in the week 11(May 21). So into the key scripting!  Right, so my first idea for scripting the keys was to place the audio file for each note into each individual key, and have a script for each key that would play the note and perform additional effects for the key. The script that each key had looked something like this: -------------------------------------------------------------- string note = "note_00"; playsound()       {         llPlaySound(note,1.0);     }        default {      touch_start(integer total_number)     {         playsound();     }   ...

Assignment 3 Initial Progress - Blog 2 Model This project started with me testing SketchUp model imports. To do this I made a simple terrain feature in SketchUp, then exported it as a COLLADA .dae file. Here is the model in SketchUp: While exporting is was important to make sure that the settings were right. The notable ones are 'Export Two-Sided Faces' and 'Triangulate All Faces'. These were not enabled by default and meant that I got weird graphical glitches such as faces not being visible on both sides and additional faces appearing from the original faces not being triangulated. After importing successfully, this is how it appeared in Second Life: With confirmation that imports were working properly, I made a keyboard in SketchUp and imported it into Second Life. I had to make sure that on import, the LOD settings for it were set to be full LOD for any view distance. This is because the keys would distort at a distance and their sh...

Assignment 3 Initial Planning Chosen Option The option I chose for this assignment content creation with interactive complexity. I'll be making an interactive music display that involves a giant piano keyboard that people can walk on to make sounds and some other interactive elements. The purpose of this project is to create a fun, friendly environment where people can be creative with music and sounds. it can be enjoyed as an individual, or it can be used by a group to experiment with collaborative creativity and to just have fun. This project has possible educational uses as well to teach music concepts in a fun environment. The six interactive complexity requirements I will be including in this project are the following: A scanning system that will detect the presence of an avatar then interact with the avatar in some manner An instance of scripted communication with an avatar via main chat An appropriate particle system The presentation of a dialog menu with...

Join and participate in a community within a virtual world. The community I joined was The Velvet(Found here: http://secondlife.com/destination/the-velvet ), which is a music venue. I chose it because as a musician and music lover, I felt like it was a community I would appreciate. The purpose of this community is to provide entertainment in the form of music and dance. The Velvet hosts different performances by different DJs and always has some music playing for the enjoyment of its visitors.   Interaction 1 The first time I went to The Velvet, I was greeted by a dancing bot and a myriad of signs to let me know what was on. Lots of signs and information:   The dancing bot:     Something I immediately noticed was that there was no music playing event though there was a sign saying that the radio was playing music. I decided to work that out later as I didn't have much time for this visit before I had to go somewhere in real life. I the...

Demonstrate your understanding of the need and the means for protecting Intellectual Property in a virtual world. What is intellectual property(IP)? A definition from this site sums it up well: https://m.esa.int/About_Us/Law_at_ESA/Intellectual_Property_Rights/What_is_intellectual_property ”Intellectual Property (IP) refers to the protection of creations of the mind, which have both a moral and a commercial value.” Basically IP is anything intangible that someone has created that has some sort of value. Laws on IP give creators exclusive rights to financially exploit their creations or reap the benefits of their creations in any way. IP laws enable creators to control the use of their creations by only allowing people to use or sell them with their permission which can be granted at a cost or for free in some cases, but generally with some terms of use to protect from unintended use. How does the permissions system help protect IP? In one of my previous blogs I talked...

Second Life Community Standards In this blog I’ll be talking about the Second Life community standards. These standards are clearly explained in this post: https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/403539-community-standards/ The official document containing the SL community standards can be found at this link: https://www.lindenlab.com/legal/community-standards The purpose of these standards is to make sure that everyone treats each-other with respect and ensure that everyone has a safe and fun experience. The post linked above sums it up nicely:  " The goals of the Community Standards are simple: treat each other with respect and without harassment, adhere to local standards as indicated by simulator ratings, and refrain from any hate activity which slurs a real-world individual or real-world community."  If you violate these standards, you can be suspended, and even permanently banned from Second Life if you repeatedly offend. The six communi...

Second Life Permissions Second life has a permissions system to protect intellectual property. These permissions dictate who can do what with the things you make. The following description is from the SL wiki: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Permission “The system is designed to foster the best possible content and sanctify the best possible experience in Second Life. We track four basic permissions - move, modify, copy and transfer. The move, modify, and copy permissions can be applied to four categories - owner, group, everyone else, and next owner. As described above, these permissions can be applied to different groups of people. This means that you can change how your content gets distributed or not distributed. I’ll now explain the four basic permissions: Move This permission controls whether an object can be moved in the world. If a user has been given move permissions, they can drag the object around/change its position inworld. If the user does no have move...

Robin Le Couteur's Permissions Activity Blog In this blog I'll be giving my thoughts and answers for the Permissions Activity Activity 1.  In pairs What problems are you finding? Figuring out how to share to an individual How do you overcome them? By testing out different ways of sharing. What permissions do you need to use? You can go into someones profile and check the 'Edit, delete, or take my objects' box, and that person will be able to edit any of your objects, you can share to a group, so people in that group can edit the object, or you could drag the object to the chat with another person to give them the object. Changing the 'Next owner' settings will change what someone who takes the object can do with it Who owns the final object? Me Who shows as the creator of the final object? The original creator of the object. What permissions does the next owner of the object have? The permissions that the creator set for 'Next own...

MUV601 - Robin Le Couteur - Assignment 1, blog 4 -2018 Blog 4 MUVE Viewers - Alchemy The other viewer I investigated is the Alchemy viewer Alchemy is developed by the following team: Drake Arconis | Project Manager | Lead Developer Cryo  | Linux Developer | Server Administrator Cinder  | Mac Developer Lirusaito  | Feature Fox Electron  | Designer Alchemy has the base functionality of most viewers like Firestorm, and also has the option to log onto OpenSim grids. In fact, unlike Firestorm, Alchemy actively releases updates for OpenSim which is an advantage over Firestorm. When in world all the movement, build, and other controls are pretty much the same, so there's not really any learning curve. the difference is mainly in the menus and UI stuff After using both Alchemy and Firestorm, I felt like Alchemy was easier to use. The interface feels more modern and more comfortable; it's not too cluttered. I found that there was no issues using the in...

MUV601 - Robin Le Couteur - Assignment 1, blog 2 -2018 Blog 2 MUVE Platforms - Second Life The MUVE platform I’ll be talking about in this blog is the MUVE used for this course: Second Life(SL). Second Life was founded in 1999 by Linden Labs. It's a massive virtual world where you can go to a variety of different locations and do various activities.  SL provides a platform for creativity, education, socializing, work, gaming, just relaxing, and many other things.The amount of different things you can use SL for is up to the imagination of the user. Functionality Looking at the functionality of SL, it has a wide range of features.  Avatar First off, lets talk about your avatar. When you first join SL, you chose from a list of default avatars. Once in world, you can then create whatever avatar you want by making your own  body,  clothes, and other accessories. What you can do is almost limited to what you can create so you are free to design...