Attached Link: http://secondlife.com

Somebody mentioned SecondLife to me and it was something I had not heard of. The description I was given was that Poser and Bryce were used to create the worlds, but I cannot find anything at their website to indicate that those programs are tied in. The only mention of Poser is in relation to importing Poser Bvh animations. The virtual community does sell clothing, props, and other items, but the program seems to have it's own 3D building program rather than being something that can readily import objects from more familiar 3D content creation programs. I'm not a member, so I don't know whether it's remotely lucrative or how much effort is involved in creating things for the virtual environment. It does make me wonder when Poser content will become importable into a virtual world. Can you imagine a virtual world where all the Poser content you own can be used to interact with the Poser community and the rest of the world?

Hm... as far as i know, second life is a vrml community. They sometimes import Poser content but they have a hard time with it : it's low-polygon. For vrml, better building directly with the vrml tools...

Attached Link: http://www.activeworlds.com/

Looks like a knockoff of ActiveWorlds which has been around for quite some time as well.

Theres a post here in the copyright forum about this... http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12395&Form.ShowMessage=2374630

USA Today had an article about this recently. They interviewed one guy who makes $1,000 a month selling skins (character textures) for Second Life.

And someone posted here awhile back, asking for help with P6. She eventually admitted that she didn't really want to learn Poser at all. She just saw other Second Life merchants converting Poser clothing and hair to Second Life format, and making big bucks. She wanted to do the same.

Second life sucks. Seriously. If you want a laggy, low-poly chatroom with perverted furries running amuck, go play it. Just don't say I didn't warn you.

This all confirms what I found with the available literature on the site that it's not using Poser or Bryce. SecondLife does seem to be another avenue that Poser merchants can use to supplement their income even though that work isn't directly translatable between the two programs. Somebody, comfortable with creating textures, can easily make low-res textures that could be used in the program. If somebody can make $1000/month selling content there, it may be worth looking into porting their textures and meshes to that world. It may not be that far off when high-speed connections and ever more powerful computers will allow a virtual community to exist based on Poser. I wouldn't be too surprised if CL or DAZ wouldn't want to invest in something like that someday. Poser use is still a relatively small community compared to something like Sims and SecondLife. After all, how many people continue to draw when they reach adulthood? Of those, how many use a computer versus more traditional media? And then, how many less use Poser versus 2D or other 3D programs.

I can confirm that Second Life uses its own core software. Although it is technically possible to import geometry, in practice it is not worthwhile; Second Life is entirely based around what they call "prims," platonic objects that act much like C4D primitives (plus additional modifiers). It isn't low-poly, per se; the stuff is converted to tri's on the user-side client. But it is very specialized and automated importing seems unlikely to ever be efficient. Second Life users do go through a LOT of textures, and there is much buying and selling of same. I should perhaps warn that their take on IP issues is similar to that of eBay's. Another possible entry into Second Life is that they go through a lot of animations. Unlike the specialized geometry, Second Life's avatars will import standard BVH files -- I have heard talk that the programmers went out of their way to make export from Poser and import into Second Life as seamless as possible. I don't play, but I have a friend on the staff.

Residents in Second Life use Poser to create .bvh files for custom animations. The animations - which encompass everything from poses to roller skating to painting to ... well, whatever you can imagine - are bought and sold by Residents and unique animations fetch a pretty penny. Plus you can exchange your Linden dollars (the in-world currency) for US dollars at a couple different currency exchange sites.

The world is a 3D persistent universe which accounts for the sometimes less than lovely graphics but people own the content they create and there's no approval process for content creation so just about anything goes.

I, personally, have not seen any perverted furries running amuck! :)

Thanks for this thread. I have checked in on Second Life several times in the past, but I can never get their software to work with my graphics card (and I have tried it with three different, late-model graphics cards).

"It may not be that far off when high-speed connections and ever more powerful computers will allow a virtual community to exist based on Poser."

I hope not. the virtual worlds seem addictive to a kind of person who would never get involved with Poser or the other real 3D software which we work with. The market for textures and models would grow by orders of magntitude overnight, you would think.

Attached Link: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/games/2005-08-21-virtual-utopia_x.htm

Here's the USA Today article on Second Life.

"It may not be that far off when high-speed connections and ever more powerful computers will allow a virtual community to exist based on Poser." >I hope not. the virtual worlds seem addictive to a kind of person who would never get involved with Poser or the other real 3D software which we work with. I don't know. If there's a virtual world, compatible with Poser content, people will buy figures, clothing, environments, props, textures, etc. All that would make Poser content creators more capable of living off their work. It sounds as if SecondLife members are more willing to buy content than Sims players, so that could provide modelers and texture makers with another avenue to generate earnings from their skills. A member of the virtual world doesn't have to know how to use Poser. That person only wants access to content to create a virtual entity and world to their liking. If there is ever a Poser based virtual world, it would have to be designed in a fashion that does not require an understanding of Poser--the virtual world would simply be compatible with the program's content. I have no idea how many people have bought Poser, but Sims has sold over 6 million copies. That is potentially the number of customers that would be available to purchase Poser content if there were a virtual world that could incorporate Poser figures with minimal fuss. I frankly have no knowledge about the logistics or programming or bandwidth that would be consumed by such a venture. I only know that it would be an incredible experience to have a virtual world populated with the products that are already available to Poser. Exactly how it could ever be done is entirely up to somebody a lot more knowledgeable than me. The large Poser content marketplaces would have a lot of vested interest in having such a virtual world because they already have the capacity to sell Poser content.

rreynolds, Sorry, I was unclear. When I said "I hope not..." what I meant was "I hope it may not be far off." I agree with everything you said (that was my original intention, to agree). Other threads have tried to estimate the number of active Poser users. Maybe it is around 10-20,000. At the virtualworld-game Runescape there are about 80,000 users online at any one time! (and compare that with about 2000 users online at Rosity right now) It would be great if Poser had a passive audience as well as active users. That's where the big money will always be I think, 'broadcasting/publishing' content to an audience of 'passive' users.

Attached Link: http://secondlife.com/

You must apologise me, as an absolute addict to Second Life, if I seem too overexcited about that platform - that's one problem we addicts have. Things just seem to be too bright when you're on the "other side", and I'm afraid my judgement is completely biased and partial. So take all my words with a pinch of salt, and better still, install Second Life (the trial needs a credit card to join, but you may use it for 7 days for free and then cancel your account before you're charged the US$9.95 for a lifetime account...) and try it out for yourself to make your own judgement.

The first thing many people will notice is that Second Life is to overeagerly pushing both your CPU and GPU to the utter limits - causing performance to slow for almost any computer, except top-of-the-line double-CPU machines with super-fast buses, 1 GB of RAM and 128 MBytes of RAM. So the first thing to do before logging is to click on Preferences and greatly reduce all settings, and only after the first few days, tweak with the settings, one by one, until you get a good trade-off of performance vs. quality.

So, what exactly is Second Life? It's very, very hard to explain, because it's something completely different for everyBODY. It is a virtual world (and definitely not low-poly, as some have suggested - some views are rendered at 30 fps with 4-6 million polygons, and all content is streamed in real-time, so be prepared for a surprise...). All content has been developed by the users, not by the company, who basically charges the lifetime US 9.95 to give you a 3D client "browser" for either Windows or the Mac (a Linux version has long been promised as well) and runs about 1,000 servers where you can store your content in a persistent manner - by charging you for "disk & CPU space" (similar to a Web hosting provider). The only difference is that this "3D content hosting" is called "virtual land", and is traded just like land - it has a physical dimension in square meters, and the amount of land you own also decides how much content can be brought into Second Life and stored permanently (you can also store content for free, inside your own personal "inventory", which is not visible to anybody, until you drop it on the ground).

You may bet that content is traded in Second Life! According to the statistics (and they aren't much exaggerated), around US $40,000 switch hands every day. Don't be too surprised - there are around 43,000 users of Second Life, so this means that on average you're just exchanging one US$ per day, but that's fine.

Perhaps for Poser users this is not so interesting - all 3D content (as well as the programming language that enables people to interact with objects) is created using the 3D modelling tool inside Second Life (so, the 3D browser also doubles as a 3D modelling tool and a programming tool - as a matter of fac t, you can't use an external tool). Unlike any other platform I've seen so far (well, at least usable platforms - there are several "experiments" and "works in progress" and "academic developments", but they really don't have a "serious" user base), content is created collaboratively. Say that 3 or 4 users wish to build a castle and create several figures (avatars) dressed according to the setting. From an outsider visiting the place, you would watch, in real-time, the "construction team" working together. A few would create cubes and cylinders, change them dynamically, stick them together, move some sections here and there and join them, while others would be dropping textures over those building blocks, and a few would be standing around changing their clothes. It looks like watching a silly animation about people magically building castles :) In the mean time, this "outsider" can interact with the whole group, by talking to them, even offering some help...

Only textures, sounds, and animations are created outside Second Life. While most people will use Photoshop/PaintShop Pro/GIMP to do textures for walls and furnitures, Poser is used to do all animations, as well as often to do finishing touches on the clothes (you don't need Poser for that, but it helps). Some top-of-the-line creators, wishing perfectly textured environments, usually also use Poser or some other 3D modelling tool to create very complex lighting effects, cutting them out as textures, and then reproducing the same environment in Second Life, and uploading the textures. It's only for animations that Poser is a requirement - most people simply design clothes from Photoshop templates, and textures never get that degree of realism that you expect on other platforms. Remember, Second Life is not an environment for professional 3D designers, but willing, creative amateurs - like myself! - who enjoy creating content without needing a degree in graphical design and 5 years of professional experience. Creating content in/for Second Life is very easy and straightforward for amateurs, and it is also very rewarding to see your things working so well after such little investment of your time.

Now the next point is - where is money to be gained in Second Life? Through several money exchanges, you can exchange US$ for the in-world currency (as mentioned above). Although the richest people in Second Life, dedicating perhaps 60-80 hours per week (!) to the platform, are able to make around US$10,000-40,000 per month, most people are definitely not that successful. Myself, by giving classes and selling a few programmed items using Poser-uploaded animations, I just make US$ 4-5 per week, but I'm very lazy - success in Second Life is not just placing things for sale, but actively (and agressively) marketing them! The best content creators - very often doing buildings and clothes - easily earn US $1,000-2,000 per month, but it's not that they are the best designers, they are just the ones that can market their services best. You'll see that Second Life's economy is pretty much like our own - the key to success is being a good salesperson and having adequate skills.

This by far doesn't explain what Second life is and I'm aware of that. For some, it's an edutainment tool, used for teaching classes. For others, it's a virtual marketplace for content, where one million US$ is exchanged every month. Others simply look at it as a 3D chat room, where you meet people, go out with them to listen to music or watch a movie together, or simply hang around in each other's homes to chat - and once in a while, attend a discussion on any theme. Others still view it as a game, since you can build vehicles and weapons and shoot at each other (there is a separate "grid" just for teenagers, but there are young adults very eager to shoot people around in the "adult grid" as well). And of course, many use it for cybersex - not surprisingly, because beyond the chatting abilities, you can supplement it with attractive avatars, appealing (or revealing!) clothes, and Poser-created animations. :) So it's hard to say what exactly is the most striking feature of Second Life - every person you ask will give you a different answer.

While the world is based on "primitive objects" for buildings (it's the only way to deal with the physics engine, which make things like gravity, impulse and momentum work), avatars are fully meshed, and based on old Poser 2 figures. You can create all sorts of "attachments" to improve the style of your avatar - for instance, shoes are usually very detailed objects made of primitives and attached to your feet, since the only alternative is doing tricks with textures. All clothes (and the meshed hair) flow with the wind and with your movements, although, for you who are used to Poser 5 or even Poser 6 figures, even the very detailed textures you can apply as "skins" on the avatars, will certainly seem to be a return to the past. It's not unusual that many people recreate their avatars in Poser (using a Poser 5 figure, for instance) just for making impressive ads; although I have seen very amazing pictures taken from avatars inside Second Life where I needed to ask the creator if it was done in Poser or in Second Life. It really depends on the quality of your graphics card, the quality of the texture you've got, and the luck you have capturing a picture (or a short movie) in the proper lighting.

Second Life grows slowly (quadrupling size every year or so, but I guess it won't be able to do that for 2006), and it takes an enormous amount of time to get improvements (although bugs are fixed every other week or so; expect many updates and patches) - we expect a move to Poser 3 avatars just in 2006 or so.

Also, the ratio of content creators to avid consumers is perhaps 1:10, but among those content creators, the vast majority are just amateurs seeking niches where they can sell low-quality things before a professional moves in and does a product with superior quality. There aren't much more than a few hundred top quality content creators - and they're in great demand (specially on buildings, clothes, and animations - Second Life is really lacking in good animations, there are only a few thousand around, and most are simple poses that aren't even high quality. Contrast that to about 6 million items already developed!). So, yes, there is a market there for someone who is really interested in investing their free time in doing high quality content (the company behind Second Life, Linden Lab, routinely outsources several of their "commons" structures to the users - like the Welcome Area, the Job Office, some train stations, etc. And they also promote art festivals for people to show off their skills, creativity and imagination).

Actually, if it weren't for Second Life, I would have never started to use Poser or even notice the Renderosity site... :-)

While sadly most areas of the Second Life site are closed to non-users, there exist several third-party sites, like, for instance, http://www.sluniverse.com, where you can get a feeling on what people are currently doing with the platform.

Gwyneth, thanks for taking the time and trouble to write such an informative post. As I said above, I have tried several times to get into Second Life but it never wants to work on my graphics card (an ongoing problem for them I gather). Now after seeing the pics at http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/ I am sure I will try again. I probably shouldn't, the last thing I need is another 'addiction'.

My thanks also go to Gwyneth for providing a lot more info than I had before. I know somebody who might be very interested in the site. Is there anything that would show her the best places to visit? Are there any toon or furries places in SL?

Qualien - if the issue is just poor performance or too many crashes, you may set the Preferences for your card a bit lower. Sorry for the shameless plug, but you can get some ideas at my own blog. Sadly, most of the Second Life information is really only available once you create an account (I know this will change in the future, but right now, you only have access to 3rd party sites - fortunuately, there are many!).

Beware of addiction, though :-) As you will probably see, Second Life is not for "everybody" - some simply find it too boring for their taste. But the ones that like it, like it a lot. I think it's about as addictive as smoking, lol ;)

rreynolds - there is rather a large amount of information available on interesting places to visit when you arrive at the Welcome Area. Also, when you log in for the first time, you'll be able to choose one of the available volunteers to help you out with the first steps (you see who is available on the web site and can read their descriptions). Beyond that, well, the best thing is to ask around :)

As for toon and furry places, yes, there are quite a few furry communities, although I think that not so many toon places at the moment (although many people offer cartoonish avatars for sale, I haven't found an organised community of them - but then again, Second Life is big these days). The latest trend has been to create tiny furry animals as avatars (rabbits, squirrels) :-)

And enough "advertising" - I have been sometimes accused on other forums to be just spreading publicity & advertising for Second Life, hehe. Nothing of the sort, I'm just a very addicted user, as said. And I found it very interesting that Renderosity has included the option "Second Life" as one of the sources from visitors (it shows that there must be an overlap of both communities!). I've certainly made some efforts to point Second Life users to Renderosity since I started to use it last year or so (but alas, I have been mostly a lurker here!).

Just remembered - if you wish to have a sample of the kind of content that gets created in Second Life, you're able to visit and browse the following third-party sites for an idea:

• http://www.slexchange.com
• http://www.slboutique.com
• http://www.secondserver.net

These are e-Commerce sites run by users that will allow you to search & browse for creative items, and will deliver you the items directly to Second Life. The first one even allows you to pay either with the in-world currency (Linden dollars) or US$ through PayPal - so you can have an idea of the "real value" that people give to their content. Be warned, though, that these sites are not so popular as they may seem; they have just a few thousand items available (compared to the 6 millions that are in-world). People prefer to do their shopping in virtual malls in-world, and not on web sites :) If the slang becomes a bit confusing on those sites, and if you'll excuse me for more self-advertising, you can get a guide with some notes on slang on my guide to Second Life (read the second chapter of that guide). This guide and dozens of others are online at the Second Life Wiki, but again, you need to create an account to be able to view that :-( There are still few external sites that offer information on people interested in knowing more about Second Life and who wish to read a bit before testing it - most of the dozens of blogs, websites and wikis are meant for the users who have already joined.

Also, some indicators on the virtual economy of Second Life which you may find interesting:

• The Gaming Open Market is a money exchange - people place orders for buying and selling Linden dollars here (yes, the value is slowly dropping - the discussion over why this is happening occupies a large part of the time of the in-world economists and opinion makers :) ).
• The MetaAdverse, an agency selling billboard space in-world (it's meant to advertise content and events, not "real world companies").
• Second Life Solutions, a stock exchange selling shares on a Second Life company. Their assets are virtual land - so, if the company goes broke, you'll get a piece of land - not all is lost (land can be resold)
• Statistics on Second Life, like how many people are really logging in every day, based on independent analysis. The good news is that the total number of users seem to be similar to what Linden Lab claims :-)
• Snapzilla. While the quality varies a lot, these are pictures being shared by users of Second Life. They can give you a rough idea on what people are doing or building in Second Life.

Amazing. Though I really love technology, I also wonder at times if things are becoming a bit too attractive. We already have people who are truly addicted to gaming, chat rooms etc. Now of course people have always been addicted to something but for the most part, the addictions didn't so completely eliminate the need for real human contact. Even a junkie has to go out and score daily. In a few years, I'm sure we will have completely immersive 3D worlds that operate in near real-time and use VR goggles. If someone can design a workable force feedback system (maybe a suit with millions of nano-actuators) then you have a poor man's Star Trek holodeck. When you can work via the internet, shop, meet people etc., Is anyone going to leave their pods? If the power ever goes off, they'll find a bunch of dead shapeless lumps hunched over their Mickey D's delivery chutes. Of course, the servers will have backup power and the virtual Vickies, on autopilot) will live on. Some alien archaeologist is going to have a field day.

Have you ever read E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops"? It was written in 1909, and is now in the public domain, available online:

http://www.gre.ac.uk/~cm34/teaching/reading/machinestops.html

/me is waiting for neural connections. Really!

"me is waiting for neural connections"

I wonder if I will be alive when we can all jack-in ala Neuromancer and become nodes in the hive mind, the all-human neural net.

I wonder which is more directly on the evolutionary path to that, Second Life, or this Forum, where we share minds and my email tells me someone is sending me thoughts almost as if the thoughts were floating into my consciousness from my own unconscious?

"...Mickey D's delivery chutes..." I want my Quarter Pounder in pill form, or intravenously. Super-size the cyborgers!

"... in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh..." "The Machine Stops" E.M. Forster
(It should be in the public domain being written in 1909, but a copyright notice at the bottom of the page says, "Copyright 1947 E.M. Forster". Maybe he re-registered the copyright?)

the page says, "Copyright 1947 E.M. Forster". Maybe he re-registered the copyright?) If it had been renewed in 1975 (1947 + 28) then it would still be under copyright because of the changes in copyright law. If it wasn't, then it's in the public domain.

I wonder if anyone's truely insane enough to WANT to be "Jacked In". You think your lack of Privacy is bad these days. Just wait til they can get inside your head!

the page says, "Copyright 1947 E.M. Forster". Maybe he re-registered the copyright?)

If it had been renewed in 1975 (1947 + 28) then it would still be under copyright because of the changes in copyright law. If it wasn't, then it's in the public domain.

Geodesic250,
I still don't quite understand (but since It's a Wonderful Life fell into the public domain in the 1970's and NBC could somehow got exclusive rights to it in 1994, I have realized I have admitted that I undertand copyright and public domain anymore, so please excuse my obtuseness).

If the story was written and originally copyrighted in 1909, how does the "renewed in 1975 (1947 + 28)" equation fit in? Are you saying it was renewed in 1947, or 1975? And if 1975, what is the "Copyright 1947 E.M. Forster" doing there? I don't get it.

here's the resurrector again... out of everything in this thread, I'm just surprised that apparently the  number of only active Poser users in the world is only 20,000...

only 20K?? so, that means how many inactive Poser users?? 'cause I would seriously doubt e-Frontier could survive on sales of its software in that amount...  or can they?

I haven't given second life a chance yet... I did join Active worlds like 7 years ago?? or was it Worldz?? I don't remember, but the interface back then was so darn primitive, all avatars were blocky, it was just fun... comes to show how technology advances...

but a virtual world where people could use actual Poser content does sound somewhat complicated... we'd have to have REALLY powerful computers and connections to do something like that... something we're probably maybe 10 years away from??

anyway, sounds exciting.. I never plan on abandoning Poser ever (unless it is replaced by a better software), so I guess I'll be around when that happens...