The New Gallery again

Wow, I haven’t posted here since April? At least it was April of this year. :)

So the other night a friend and I wandered downslope from the Rise into Mooter, where Gee Blackadder has some nice stuff, and in the nice stuff we discovered this piece of art for sale (“Afrodita”, by Kyra) that I thought I would buy a copy of and put up in the Gallery, so I did; here it is up in the New Gallery:

I really ought to put a little TP to the gallery somewhere, or even list it in Art Galleries of Second Life or something, as it’s kind of as nice little place (I say modestly) with a slowly-evolving set of pieces by various people, mostly not me.

And then at the top you can sit on the viewing blocks and just bliss out staring into the ThingMaker (which is by me) and listening to the SomaFM music on the stream (assuming I haven’t changed it to something else).

Some random Thingmaker-as-art snapshots, with Shadows on, taken just at sunset. Or perhaps sunrise.

That LM again! :)

(Hm, I really ought to install some instructions in the little ball-controlling game that’s outside the gallery, if I’m going to tempt people to go there. Or maybe it’s sufficiently intuitive…)

The secret is out! “Placemaker: Plazas” released to worldwide acclaim!

Well, I’m sure there will be worldwide acclaim soon, anyway. Probably!

There is the publicity shot for Placemaker: Plazas (Basic Edition), just released onto the SL Marketplace.

For a mere 400 Linden-dollars, you can own a device capable of producing literally a whole lot of different and sometimes even interesting (and in any case full-perm) plaza-like structures!

I have no doubt if that price-point makes any sense :) but I thought I’d give it a try.

So buy it if it sounds interesting! Let me know if it works for you, if the instructions were confusing, or anything else. If I continue to find the general idea interesting, maybe someday there will be a “Placemaker: Houses”. That was actually my original thought, but that turned out to be a little grandiose to code from scratch, so I started smaller…

Another random Thingmaker video

Just ’cause I was playing around with it the other night. Enjoy!

Yet another new Thingmaker! An’ Video!

As you know if you watched the video :) version 3e of the ThingMaker is out. It’s basically the version that was in the box at Ten Thousand Things Camp; it has a few new thing-making patterns, and it’s the first released version that puts textures on prims.

As usual, it’s available in the Store for a mere 175L, and all previous purchasers should have gotten the automatic update (via my dead-clever update distributor script). Don’t hesitate to IM me if somehow you didn’t.

Although I still love staring at it for hours while listening to trippy music :) I’m wishing that it had even more thingmaking patterns. I think I will teach it some more less-round one next…

Thingmaker news, and another video!

Funnest part first (I recommend one of the HD versions, if you got the bandwidth):

That’s a video from the special Burn2 version of the Thingmaker, currently experiencable (experienceable?) only at Ten Thousand Things Camp, my Burn2 build.

(The kinda neat one-prim-at-a-time pace of the action is thanks to Burn2 lag; I think Time Dilation was somewhere around 0.8 when I took this.)

Once Burn2 is over and I find some time somewhere, I will add various of the new features of this version of the Thingmaker to the commercial (“commercial”) version, and update it in my SL Marketplace store, to which I don’t think I’ve ever linked before because of the whole confusingness of XL Street L or whatever it was going away, and stuff being automatically copied over to the SL Marketplace, which at least I can spell.

If you buy the Thingmaker in its current version from the SL Marketplace, I will send you the new post-Burn2 version as soon as it comes out.

Unless I forget, in which case I will do so as soon as you remind me. :)

Thingmaker 3c: Now, in a box!

Version 3c of the Thingmaker is out (and existing customers updated via my brand-new Update distributor, freely available for public edification).

No new videos this time (’cause I am off at the end of a slow connection this week), but here’s a picture of the box! :)

From the brand-new accompanying notecard:

The Thingmaker has had a number of improvements since version 3b.

In particular:

1) It comes in an attractive box!

2) It includes a notecard, with notes and things!

3) Naturally, the double-secret thing-making algorithms have been even further improved, so it makes potentially even more different things.

4) The Easter Egg for “endless” mode (suitable for display as ‘artwork’), previously documented only in an obscure weblog, is now revealed to all (see below).

5) As well as the usual one-shot version of the Thingmaker, a Menu version is now also included. In the box! (See below also.)

ENDLESS MODE

To enable Endless Mode in the Thingmaker, in which it will change shape into thing after thing after thing forever (all the while rotating in a mesmerizing fashion), simply rez a Thingmaker as usual (not the Menu version, just the normal one), go into edit mode on it, and add the word “endless” to the object description (the text-box below the one that is the object name). Then exit edit mode, and touch it.

THE MENU VERSION

The brand-new Menu-driven version of the Thingmaker allows you to find good things without having to rez quite so many Thingmakers one after the other. When you rez the Menu version, you should get a menu asking if you want a new one, or if you want to save the current one. Every time you press “new”, the Thingmaker will reshape itself into a new Thing. Only when you finally press “save” will it do the usual thing of removing itself, leaving behind the full-perm Thing for your future use. (Once you press “new”, you will still have to rez a new one to create the next; someday I may figure out a way to rez make multiple things from a single rezzing without hitting the Grey Goo Fence…) If you press “ignore” on the menu and then want to get the menu back again, just touch the object.

Those Annoying Prompts

If you find that any of the Thingmakers prompt you with a message about linking and de-linking objects every time you rez one, here is what you do: rez one, answer the linking-and-delinking question, and then take that same one back into inventory. When you later rez a copy of that one, you shouldn’t get the prompt anymore. I hope.

Isn’t that exciting? :) The menu version, in particular, is something that various people have asked for, and should be a useful time an’ effort saver for people who actually use the Thingmaker to make things (as opposed to just watching it in Endless mode and going “oooo”, like I do).

As always, a mere 175L on “X-Street-SL”.

New Thingmaker version (and an Easter Egg!)

Version 3b of the Thingmaker is now out; huzzah!

(Buyers of version 3a should already have received their automatic free-type updates.)

And here is a secret weblog-only Easter Egg: if you rez a copy of 3b, go into Edit mode on it, and put the word “endless” anywhere in the description field (the one right under the name there), and then touch it, you’ll get the endless version, that constantly shapes itself into new shapes (like in the video), and also spins mesmerically around an’ around.

(You’ll have to supply your own black background tho :) .)

ThingMaker — endless

Yes, I have been having far too much fun. :) A pre-release version of the upcoming 3b version of the ThingMaker, a little hack to the code to make it produce things endlessly, a spinning camera-platform, brand-new copies of FRAPS and Windows Media Player, a brand-new YouTube account, good old Soma FM on the land-stream, and there we are!

And you weblog readers get a special behind-the-scenes picture:

(Your cameraperson there is wearing the wunnerful OrKa outfit from alpha.tribe.)

I iz a merchant!

Brief self-plug (unlike all the other postings here hahahaha): having finally been sufficiently assured by various friends that the Thingmaker is a thing that could be sold, and that selling things on xlstreet slstreet xstreet SL is easy, and having in a burst of realization figured out how to set the perms so that the Thingmaker can be no-transfer but the Things that it Makes end up full-perm, I have put it up on there for the utterly random price of 175L.

And three people I don’t know have already bought it!

How cool is that?

Selling stuff is really easy (although I hear xslstreetlsx is soon going to be replaced by some entirely different thing, so who knows). What else should I sell?

I have some Amusing “Tee” shirts I made once…

:)

Synergy

If you’re reading this sufficiently close to (or distant from) the time I’m posting it, you’ll see that there’s a new header on the ol’ weblog here, involving two of my more common forms wearing some wild and rather npirl hairs, or hats, or headdresses, or something.

I’m very fond of this banner, first because it fits so cleanly into the rest of the weblog design and I just like the image, and second and vaster because of the story behind those headgears.

I posted the other week about an amazing outfit that I’d gotten at alpha.tribe, and about the alpha.tribe line itself and how refreshingly different it is from the run of the SL mill. I also linked to the alpha.tribe weblog.

Well, I’m guessing that Alpha Auer followed the referer links back to here, and looked around and came upon various posts about the Thingmaker, ’cause I got a very nice communication wondering if a copy might be available. Being utterly flattered, I said sure and sent one along.

Well! While I’ve never seen much of anything but sometimes-diverting abstract shapes in what the Thingmaker makes, the content creators at alpha.tribe apparently looked at the same things and saw… content!

That’s me, in the alpha.tribe store, wearing a new alpha.tribe headpiece that uses a bunch of Thingmaker-arranged prims! How cool is that?

That one above is “Array”. Here is “Magnolia”:

And here is (probably my favorite) “Pillow”:

(I don’t have it positioned quite right on my head; when positioned right, the forehead is even awesomer.)

All of them come in like four different colors; here’s the opposite color of Pillow:

I am bouncing up and down and squeeing constantly since I first saw them. :)

Here’s the Alpha Tribe post about them (which says very generous things about the Thingmaker), and here’s the Alpha Tribe store where you yourself can buy some. (Disclaimer: if you do so, I will probably get some of the money, because they are wonderfully generous.)

Now ppl are encouraging me to sell Thingmakers on xstreet SL or whatever that thing is. And I might do that! If I can figure out how to get the permissions right. And if I don’t get distracted by something shiny!

Random collisions and ad hoc collaborations like this are one of the big things I love about SL…

More things!

I’ve been neglecting the Thingmaker lately, out of frustration about how it kept hitting the Grey Goo Fence (i.e. getting “rapid or recursive rez” errors, even though it does only slow and non-recursive rezzing), but then the other night it dawned on me how to modify the script and the object so that it needs do no rezzing at all.

The new Thingmaker is faster, and doesn’t hit the fence. So here are some of its creations that I liked the most so far…

Yet more made things!

I taught the ThingMaker about cylinders (hence the PacMan shapes, from cutting cylinders) and about sort of vaguely monochromatic color schemes (hence the orange one upper-left, the first time that code got exercised).

Woot yay. :)

A next thing to work on: teach it about things that aren’t quite so circularly symmetrical…

Thingmaker!

I made an SL thing that makes other things! I call it “the Thingmaker”. ’cause it makes things.

Here is a picture of it:

(It doesn’t actually matter what it looks like, it could even be just a plywood box but then it would be hard to tell from all of the other plywood boxes.)

Here’s a picture of the first interesting thing that it made while I was working on it:

Here’s a picture of the Thingmaker making a thing:

(It rezzes the prims of the thing above it, one by one, links them, positions and colors them, and when it’s all done unlinks itself from them.)

Here’s (a picture of) the thing that the Thingmaker was making in the previous picture:

Thing-like, eh?

Here’s a picture of another thing it made:

Lower-prim! Shiny!

And also:

Higher-prim! Colorful!

An’ here you’re probably thinking, an’ you’d be right, that the Thingmaker can only make a pretty small set of things, mostly made of these shiny overlapping eggshaped prims. But! Now that the basic Thinkmaker is working, I’m gonna teach it to make a whole bunch other more kinds of things. If I don’t get distracted…

Oh look! Ants!

:)