Virtually speaking

I've been looking into machinima making recently and I think one of the biggest SL limitations in this field is lack of avatar lips movement while speaking. So far I knew about CrazyTalk (as of programs improving this disadvantage), but just recently I came across this movie:



Does anyone know what program was used to create lips movement in this movie? It seems like the best choice at the moment.

I've been wondering about various alternatives for external programs too, and what I came up with is an idea of a typing overrider (or maybe just some kind of device), that would use built-in avatar face expressions to simulate speaking. This means no lip-sync, just lips movement, but it also means it would be widely available for other SL users, be inexpensive and would make the post-editing less time consuming (most likely). While simple lips movement might not be good enough for some people, I think it would still be more natural than no movement at all. I actually saw a movie that seems to use this technique and it looks pretty good (the movie itself is a pilot of a new promising Second Life TV show "NooB"):



I'm going to play a bit with the idea and see what I can achieve (seems like an interesting challenge). In the meanwhile, feel free to give any comments and suggestions.

1...2...3... of me

I've been tagged by Daedalus, so here are eight random facts about me:

1. I have very clean and legible handwriting. In fact, my RL friends often ask me "Can you print it for me?" instead of "Can you write it down?" :)

2. I read a lot. I'm a very fast reader and can read a whole book during one evening (and I often do if the book is interesting enough).

3. I love all things Japanese, which means music and rhythm games too. Particulary, I'm addicted to StepMania (example video), UltraStar (example video) and Frets On Fire (example video, but watch the tutorial too, it's hilarious). These games are great for parties... and believe me, they're fun!

4. I have way too much ideas in my mind and they come to me really fast. Tell me a concept and a few hours later I'll have a thousand suggestions and ideas for you. I have a txt file where I write down all my ideas for things I want to create in SL. The file is very messy and big. Once I checked and it turned out to be more than 40 A4 pages long.

5. I'm a perfectionist. I notice things (this needs to go on a t-shirt lol). If you make a spelling mistake, I notice it. If your shoe lace is untied, I notice it. I loose so much time because I make things perfect.

6. My favourite web comic is xkcd and it's absolutely the best web comic ever. My favs are the "my hobby" series and I can't help but call blogs their xkcd name - blags :P

7. I quickly get attached to people and places. I don't really like changes. Even if the change is for better, I still have a hard time giving up what I'm used to.

8. I don't like it when people use my computer. And I rarely let them do so. It's one of the very few things they're not supposed to touch.

I don't think there's any blog in SL left for me to tag. But since I should try at least, I tag the first 8 readers of this blog entry to post their random facts :) Post them either in the comments or on your blog if you have one (but please leave a link!).

SL'ang Life is here! [UPDATE]

[UPDATE: March 29, 2010] I removed all SL'ang Life links - they don't lead to SL'ang Life website anymore (since it doesn't exist), but to one you wouldn't want to go to ;)

Dear residents, we finally have a printed RL magazine about Second Life! And I'm proud to be a part of it (as a contributing journalist). Starting January 2008 SL'ang Life magazine will be delivered to subscribers all over the world by post for FREE (no delivery costs either).

The magazine will consist of four major sections: SL Life, SL Culture and Style, SL Economy and SL Entertainment. This means interviews, stories, events, business, music, fashion, art, travel, technical advice and much, much more. As Macciej Schumann (CEO) said during the opening ceremony - the aim is to present opinions and comments about SL expressed by avatars and journalists, both from SL and RL, in a wide international perspective.

If you want to receive a brand-spanking-new 48-page (A4 format) issue every month, visit SL'ang Life island and use one of the vendors there to subscribe. The first unique issue will have a limited distribution and it's filling up fast, so don't wait for the last moment. Subscribe and stay tuned for lots of great articles!

Back!

I've finally finished writing my master thesis, yay! I worked like crazy but it was worth it. I still have some small corrections to make before I hand the thesis in on 19th but this should go really fast. In the meanwhile I'm catching up with my real life, relaxing a lot (it was very hectic lately) and working on/preparing for some new projects. All this time I missed blogging here a lot. I've got thousands of things I want to share, so expect some posts coming up soon!

toothpastefordinner.com

Trick or treat?

Guess who was visiting various Halloween parties yesterday in Second Life? ...TrickOrTreat Linden :) I saw her for a second on one of the parties, but didn't get a chance to take a photo. But I did what everyone would do seeing this name - I asked for sweets. And guess what - I got them, together with some other goodies :) So I got candy and carmel apple, Halloween flashlight and three Linden bears, including the 2007 Halloween Wizard Bear. If you're collecting Linden Bears and you didn't get this one, it's surely a big miss, because it's the cutest Linden Bear I've seen so far. I absolutely love it:



By the way, I'm not going to blog much this month, since I need to work on my thesis and hand in the first draft by the end of the month. Just so you know why it's so quiet here lately ;)

What would Watson do? [UPDATE]

You know the little easter egg messages in Second Life client, right? So far I could get the meaning quickly. Bananas are the new plywood cubes - that's scultpties. Viva la Liberación! - that's message liberation and optional viewer updates. But what's with the Watson thing? The message in this SL release is:

Mr. Watson -- come here -- I want to see you.

Shall we expect some new features? Are they asking us to start looking for something new? /me is definitely too curious :P

Well, the other thing is that in the book Watson would always guess wrong.. If Lindens assume we're Watsons, not Sherlocks, we're not going to find out by ourselves anyway, eh? Oh well, I'll just wait until they blog it :P

Pssst... hey... pssst.. if you know something, post it in the comments ;)


[UPDATE: A few minutes later] We have the answer!

Daedalus posted the answer in the comments (take a look). As a way-too-curious person I started googling, and found that you can actually scroll through Bell's lab notebook. A bit more searching and I found the page in the notebook, where Bell describes this part of the experiment. It says (if I read correctly):

Mr. Watson was stationed in one room with the recieving instrument. He pushed one ear closely against S and closed his other ear with his hand. The transmitting instrument was placed in another room and the door of both rooms were closed.

I then shouted into M the following sentence: "Mr. Watson -- come here -- I want to see you." To my delight he came and declared that he had heard and understood what I said.

I asked him to repeat the words. He answered "You said 'Mr. Watson -- come here -- I want to see you'".

Yes, I actually read those little letters in the notebook :) In case you can't locate the text I quoted, it starts on the left, close to the middle of the page, and continues on the right page of the notebook. So.. I learned something new today. Yay! :)

On a golden autumn day

Autumn has officially started. It got cold and rainy (at least in Poland). We're going to adjust our clocks soon and prepare for autumn blues. But autumn can be fun, so I made a list of positive aspects for those of you who already feel sleepy and tired. Here we go:

• More sleep on the first day (just one hour, but still)
• Raspberry juice in your tea
• Evenings spent with calming sound of rain against the window
• Golden orange colour everywhere (so positive!)
• Warm blankets and good books on weekends
• Leaves rustling under your feet
• Chocolate eaten without any guilt (hey, you need nutritious food)
• Apple harvest time (and preparing the yummy yummy apple jam for winter)
• Chestnuts suddenly falling from the sky (it's funny, you have to admit)
• Drinking delicious self-made liqueur (you waited for that all summer, didn't you?)
• Hot cocoa with cream

See? It's not so gray now, is it? :) Maybe you got more of these...? Post them in the comments, the more the merrier!

falling leaves
hide the path
so quietly

John Bailey, "Autumn," a haiku year, 2001