Jacek Lives

What: a presentation of my UI design contest entry.
When: Thursday, July 17 at 3PM SLT (PDT)
Where: Benjamin Linden’s office in SL

Grant Linden has invited me to present my UI design at the SL User Experience Office Hour (SLUXOH) this Thursday at 3PM SLT. Not being one to turn down an invitation from a Linden to show off my goods to the world, I’ll be explaining the design rationale, answering questions from the audience, and waving a laser pointer around and making spaceship sounds with my mouth while we wait for my slide images to rez. I can guarantee it will be a hoot and/or holler. BYOF (bring your own feedback).

By the way, if you’re into this sort of SLUXy stuff, I recommend subscribing to the SL-UX mailing list. There are a bunch of neat people who put forward interesting UI ideas and feedback at sporadic intervals… lots of good times to be had!

P.S. Does this make my butt look FIC?

I commissioned this sketch from Jun Kuroda (SL name), aka rotemu on Plurk, starving artist extraordinaire. She also made a semi-nude of CodeBastard Redgrave and other cool commisioned sketches!

If you want to commission a sketch to call your own, check out her Livejournal page or IM her (Jun Kuroda) in-world. They’re awesome, not at all expensive, and you’ll be helping out a really cool artist! ^_^

Check out the full set, and check out the Kids5B event!

Attention, readers: I’m looking for an enterprising geek to OGLE my avatar — that is, to capture the 3D mesh of my avatar shape.

I will pay L$ or USD$ for a mesh capture of my avatar. I have the following modest requirements:

1. The final result must be in Wavefront OBJ format.
2. Will pay extra if it has UV texture coordinates intact.
3. Attachments and skin textures not needed.

If you can do this for me, please leave a comment, IM in-world (Jacek Antonelli), or email (jacek.antonelli ~ gmail.com).

[Update: The ever-cutetastic Patchouli Woollahra very kindly OGLE’d my avatar. Thanks, Patchi!]

Let’s have some lists. Everybody loves lists!

Awesome news from LL:

• 3. Sculpty prims. Everyone celebrates with new fruit, genitals, and fruit-shaped genitals.
• 2. Open sourcing of the client. 2007 starts off with a bang. Nicholaz consistently kicks ass throughout the year.
• 1. Windlight Firstlook. Ooh, so smexy. *licks*

Lame news from LL:

• 3. Exit Cory Linden, stage left. Second Life’s already-shakey backend tech hangs in the balance.
• 2. Gamblers and ageplayers begone! Linden Lab clamps down on sinners, but hides true motives (which are probably more about business than morality). Residents asked to spy on and report their neighbors.
• 1. Age-verification and new login system. Your RL personal information and SL login details put at risk by ill-conceived, shoddily-implemented systems. Linden Lab shrugs and says, “Quit worrying so much.”

Personal events of note:

• 4. 2007 is the year of the chibi! (I made a handful in 2006, but their popularity rose dramatically this year.)
• 3. Sold out adorable cartoon character, opened my own SL store. My days as shrewd business mogul start. (Yeah, right.)
• 2. Submitted a dozen patches to the viewer client, most of them UI-related.
• 1. Drifted away from some old friends, bumped into some new ones.

Back in May of this year, I posted about my work on a script to export animations from Blender to SL-compatible BVH files. Well, as you can see from the comparison screenshot below (click to enlarge), I’ve made a lot of progress since then.

(Mind you there’s some difference between the camera angle in the two shots, and possibly some slight mis-rotation of the hands from SL’s rather zealous animation ‘optimizing’ algorithm.)

Some difficulties I’ve encountered:

• As mentioned in my earlier post, the axes of rotation for the bones in the SL skeleton differ from the Blender skeleton. That is, in the Blender skeleton, the Y axis always points along the length of the bone. In the SL skeleton, it varies between bones.
• Furthermore, the order of rotation for the Euler angles varies from bone to bone in the SL skeleton. I have had to employ code to convert from one order to another to correct for this. It seems to have done the trick.
• SL has a bug which duplicates the first frame of an animation. (VWR-3783)
• Using IK on the Blender skeleton, especially in the legs, tends to cause jittering in the SL skeleton — that is, wobbly knees and ankles. My best guess at the moment as to the cause of this is SL’s insistence on converting all joint angles to integer degrees. Subtlety, be banished!
• Certain rotations result in a significant difference in the appearance of the animation. I’m pinning the blame for this one on Gimbal Lock. That’s right, I’m looking at you, Mr. Lock.

Nevertheless, my animation exporter script is a very significant step up from Qavimator: smooth blending between keyframes (controlled by my most-beloved Bézier curves); custom rigs for different types of animations; inverse kinematics to provide that extra stick in the feet; layering and blending single actions to create longer animations; and all the rest.

And as it happens, I’m currently in a trial period as animator for one ChronoForge 4D, a manufacturer and purveyor of sharp, pointy things with which to poke and jab at other similarly-minded avatars. So next time you stab someone through the heart and then kick their body to the ground (in SL), you might say a little thanks to the kindly, peace-loving artist who made it all possible.

After much ribbing and prodding by my friends, I have yielded to their demands and decided to open up a store in SL.

Cuddlefish Junction will be opening for business Saturday, December 15 at 8PM SLT! I will cut the metaphorical ribbon and set everything for sale at that time. And then there will much dancing, laughter, and merriment until everybody gets tired and goes home! Yay!

I’ll post more pictures, SLURLs, and other awesomness as we approach that date.

Hope to see you there!

Ack! I’ve been tagged! *shakes her tiny fist*

Oh well. Let’s see… 8 random things about me…

1. I like sailing. In SL, anyway. I haven’t had an opportunity to try in in RL. My new favorite SL sailboat right now is the Flying Fizz, although the Flying Tako has a dear spot in my heart. (Squidmobile isn’t a sailboat yet, so it doesn’t count.)
2. I don’t smoke, drink alcohol, or use controlled substances. I don’t even drink caffeinated beverages anymore! My dark, twisted mind is 100% natural, baby.
3. I run Gentoo Linux on my desktop box. I think there’s a Windows XP install buried on some partition somewhere, but I haven’t touched it in years. On a side note, ‘XP’ looks like an emoticon for blowing a raspberry with your face scrunched up in disgust, which is quite apropos.
4. I’ve made (at least) 14 patches to the SL client since it became open-source. I haven’t been keeping track, but 14 is my guess based on scanning my svn logs. Not all of the patches have been applied by LL yet, though.
5. I keep my fingernails trimmed extremely short. Toenails too, but I’m less obsessive about them as I don’t see them as often.
6. I have a degree in 3D computer animation. But, my interests there more generally span the intersection of art, programming, and human interface. Also tentacles.
7. A cat lives with me. She sticks around out of gratitude for rescuing her from the Humane Society. Also, in recognition of our humble offerings of kitty chow and warm blankets. (Really, though, she’s very sweet and attention-needy.)
8. While travelling around the country, I once met a grizzly bear by the riverside. I wrestled him to the ground and bound his paws with my bootstraps. After he had calmed down, I untied him and taught him to read and write English (he already knew Canadian French, naturally, so it wasn’t too difficult). He then joined me in my travels for several years, and we had many adventures together.

Now then… victims. *giggles maniacally*

1. Chryso!
2. Mera!
3. Reina! (whose blog is BROKEN, NEGLECTED, and GERMAN. For shame!)
4. Alex!
5. Torley!
6. I can’t think of any more!

5 builders × 3 prims/day + 0 plan = ???

Want to see it up close and personal? You’d better hurry, because it’s coming down in a week to make room for the next one!

I made a Chibi Jacek avatar for Halloween, and had a… tiny adventure in-world!

And there’s more pictures!