Thursday, October 30, 2008

Consiga una Segunda Vida en Case

One of our language instructors, Carolina Pererra, has been meeting with her Spanish students in Second Life. This semester her students were able to create machinima involving a Spanish Plaza and coffee shop for a class project.

Students come in as avatars and, using voice chat, practice Spanish with each other in an informal setting. Avatars can stroll around the beautiful fountain at the center of the plaza and sit down to drink coffee and eat tapas either outside or inside the coffee shop. Lively Salsa music plays in the background and you can even dance with other avatars in front of the stage in the Café. In the near future I hope to share the student projects here.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Case students invited to Virtual Challenge


Leave your real life behind and join us for a week of virtual gaming on Case’s Second Life campus. Try your luck or show off your skills. . . the more points you win, the more entries you get in the raffle. Grand prize is a $250 gift certificate for Amazon.com!

How it works: You receive 100 tokens each day when you log in to play your choice of a variety of games of skill and chance. For each point won, you get 1 chance for the raffle. Three names will be drawn to win Amazon.com gift cards.

Who: Case undergraduate, graduate and professional students
Begins: Friday September 5 at noon
Ends: Friday September 12, with the raffle at 4pm
What’s in it for you: Amazon gift certificates worth $250 for 1st pick, $150 for 2nd pick, $100 for 3rd pick

New to Second Life?
No problem! Membership is free at http://www.secondlife.com/. See these Basic Instructions on getting started in SL. Be sure to leave yourself enough time to personalize your avatar and learn how to move around.
Contact: Amy Marino, adm14@case.edu

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Creating Skins


Tired with the plain skin editor Second Life lets you modify as default? Then make your own skins as textures and slap 'em on your avatar. It's easy and pretty fun. Through some experimentation, this reptile skin was made in photoshop using a free face template found on the Second Life website. You can also change the design of your eyes entirely. The changes don't just stop at the face either; you can modify the skin of your avatar's entire body!
Follow the link, http://secondlife.com/community/templates.php and download free templates to be used in photoshop.

Friday, August 1, 2008

CCPL's sci-fi display is out of this world!

The Cuyahoga County Public Library is running a display of books on its sci-fi summer reading list. See the likes of Dune, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and XTL: Extraterrestrial Life and How to Find It built out in interactive displays with videos, links to sims and web sites, and freebies. You can visit the land of Arrakis, help UC Berkeley search for extraterrestrial life, take home a light saber of your very own - and of course - put your favorite on hold for pick-up at your nearest CCPL branch!

Monday, June 30, 2008

A Greeter for the Library Exhibits

Buildings can be rather lonely, and very intimidating when they are large and full of strange, foreign and unexplained objects. Thanks to the llSensorRepeat() function that comes packaged with Second Life's Linden Scripting Language (LSL) anyone can make a custom greeter. The Second Life Exchange website has several different greeter models, all available for a reasonable price (averaging around 200L depending on how complicated the model is), and all offering slightly different feature sets. However, with a little patience, some scripting skills and a few test subjects, a homemade greeter script is a free and rewarding way to add a little comfort to an otherwise inauspicious parcel of land.

And that's exactly what has been done for the Cuyahoga County Public Library (CCPL) building in ClevelandPlus II. The CCPL greeter has different settings for new and returning visitors, and keeps track of some basic statistics. One innovative feature is the greeter's ability to recognize multiple allowed users. This feature is useful for public places where more than one person administrates the land (or when one person makes the object and another needs control, but the first person needs to be able to fix bugs or add features). Another feature is the use of a configuration notecard, which allows for giving clear instructions and for the script to be kept private.

Though the script for the CCPL greeter is homemade, its contents are proprietary and secret. For the sake of education though, the basic code needed to make a greeter script is included below.

default
{
state_entry()
{
llSensorRepeat("", "", AGENT, 36.0, PI, 5.0);
}

sensor(integer detected)
{
integer i;
for(i = 0; i < detected; i++)
{
llInstantMessage(llDetectedKey(i), "Welcome! " + llDetectedName(i));
}
}
}


The llSensorRepeat() function is comprised of six arguments, the first two of which identify the name and key of the person/object to look for, and when left blank allow for sensing all objects and avatars. The third argument, however, describes what to look for, in this instance AVATAR. The remaining three arguments describe how the sensing radius, shape and how often to fire the sensor event.

Given the basics for a greeter script, it should be fairly simple to add features and to customize it to fit the needs of a particular space. And if not, the greeters available commercially are very good... who knows, the one currently in use at the CCPL might eventually make its way to SL Exchange.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Custom Animations

Have you ever wondered if you can make your own animations in Second Life? Perhaps you wanted to make a custom walk, or wanted your avatar to realistically interact with an object you made. Luckily, there is an open source (free) program called QAvimator that lets you make your own animations! It was designed specifically for Second Life avatar animations,

Qavimator.jpg
QAvimator Screenshot


If you've worked with any 3D animation software before, the interface should be self-explanatory. For those new to animation, Torley Linden made a nice tutorial explaining all the basics.



I created a dance (the Macarena) using QAvimator, uploaded it, and added it to a poseball. I then made a speaker system to play the Macarena. It is a very simple demonstration, but it shows the creative potential that this program has.



We are working with the Cleveland Clinic on a project to help train doctors who will be interacting with patients. We hope to recreate these meetings in Second Life to help them prepare for the real thing. In order to do this, we need to create animations that make avatars behave the way real patients do. For example, a patient with schizophrenia could "exhibit purposeless agitation" (Wikipedia).

QAvimator can be downloaded here.

Friday, November 30, 2007

It's Digital Story Time at Case

Fifteen students from Case Western Reserve University will present their digital stories on Friday, November 30th and Tuesday, December 4th in Second Life on the ClevelandPlus Island. These projects represent a semester-long effort in writing, recording, creating and producing personal digital stories.
The presentations are the culminating experience of a writing intensive seminar entitled “Digital Storytelling: Creating Meaning with Sight, Sound & Language”. Students will be in Second Life alongside their digital stories explaining what they did, how they did it and its educational value.

When: Friday, November 30th 7:30am - 10:00am SLT/PST (check local time) and 12:00pm - 2:00pm SLT/PST (check local time) and Tuesday, December 4th 11:00am – 1:00pm SLT/PST (check local time)

Where: ClevelandPlus (121, 21, 35)

The digital stories will remain up through December 7, 2007.