May-August period ends, a new one starts

So, another batch of students finished a Final Year Project period with 2 Second Life products:

1. A customized viewer with: Maya-to-sculpted-prim importer, ability to save snapshots as .jpeg, custom key binding system and a few more (more info later)
2. Another ARG (alternate reality game): "For a good cause"

We also appeared on tv! Channel News Asia's "That's IT" featured a segment on SL and interviewed us (video link coming soon)

We have new projects for the next 12 weeks... updates will be coming :)

NYP SIDM Second Life lab initial setup

Today, NYP's tech department finished the initial setup for the multi-user environments SIDM lab. Second Life is installed and running (thanks Jeremy!). A 1-week test period starts tomorrow Wednesday.

As mentioned in a previous comment, I have the video streaming encoder and server machines up and running so the team can start testing live video inside those fancy SL conference rooms they have already created.

/me is doing the Hokey Pokey in excitement. "Whoa-o!"

So all students will be working at school. It'll be interesting to see (if any) change of interaction among everybody... is it less fun when your SL friends are physically sitting next to you?

Building exercise

This is a short assignment about object creation
Due date: Friday 9/March, 6pm

Work with your team to create the following objects:

1. Sunglasses that will rotate to/from the top of your head to/from your face with a click ("touch")
2. A 3D NYP logo [ I'll be passing you an image to use as reference ]
3. A gigantic fortune cookie that tells you a fortune when you click on it
4. An animal that makes its sound when you click on it (it may be just a "meow I belong to Team xxx!" in the text chat)

• As usual, post pictures and comments on the blog
• Drop your items to me
• It not required that you spend any money uploading textures. use the free ones.

Have fun creating your toys!

Training sessions

This first week of the projects is for training. For this Wednesday 7/March and Thursday 8/March, students are required to attend the following training sessions:

1. NCI Class: Basic Building @ Usability Island. Instructor: Mera Pixel

   Sponsored by: Useful Technology
   Learn the basics of building in Second Life. Rez, shape, and texture prims.
   

2. The Tao of Torus. Instructor: Dorie Bernstein

   Variety of uses for the torus

3. Beginning Building (Building Basics). Instructor: Dorie Bernstein

   `` Turning an object physical
   `` Flexi-prim (flexible path)

4. NCI Class: Second Life 101 @ L Word1 Island. Instructor: Simone Stern

   This class will cover some of the basic knowledge that will keep you from saying 'Wow, if I'd only known that when I started!'

5. Simple Scripts. Instructor: Dorie Bernstein

   How to put a script in an object
   How to make minor changes to a script

6. Fireworks display. Host: Tommy Parrot

A notecard with instructions has been passed to everybody in Second Life. I'll join some of the sessions, my SL name is Chica Digital. See you all there!

Exercise 0

This first week will be for training and getting everybody comfortable inside Second Life. All teams will complete Exercise 0 which is pretty much the same we had for the Digital Entertainment and Society class last semester.

Projects kick off

Today was the official start date of Final Year Project. We have 2 Second Life-related projects; I will be the supervisor for both.

The first project is "SL island"; during Phase One of this project we'll setup a private island and create a conference facility for our client (a Singapore institution). The second phase of "SL island" will be creating interactive areas, yet to be confirmed.

The second project is "SL ARG"; its objective is to design and launch an alternate reality game with Second Life as the main platform.

SL-island will be developed by a team of DET students: Renhao Chen, Melissa Lim and Gabriel Tay

SL-ARG will be created by one DET team (Eng Siang Hao, Chian Song Lim and Jeremy Wong) and a DMD team (See Hui Ping, Tang Geok Yan Rena and Wang Weilong Jason)