Proposal - EIAS User Meeting at Blue Mars

#1

Hi all,

i just was thinking about an online user meeting of EIAS users. Well, to be honest, i´m following for a while now the development of Blue Mars and thought how about sharing this online graphics technology with EIAS users. It might be open up also new horizons for professional EIAS users which like to explore new ways of current technologies and what´s possible in ways of content creating.

Here´s a screen shot from the new e frontiers Shade City where my Avatar is currently sitting.

I´m personally not playing online games nor doing virtual world stuff etc. but i must admit that Blue Mars from Avatar Reality has caught my attention.

Blue Mars

Here´s also an international meeting planner link in case we like to do an EIAS User Meeting:

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html

Hope that EIAS users find this meeting idea useful, fun and educational.

P.S. Blue Mars Clients are Windows only, but as you can see i used it successfully on my new Intel iMac via Boot Camp and Windows XP Professional SP3.

P.P.S Brian if you find this topic somehow not appropriate (Online Graphics Technology etc.) please feel free to delete this post.

In case we have an EIAS Users Meeting there you can find me as “SC Stefan” in Shade City .

Regards
Stefan

#2

No problems with the post. Looks interesting.

#3

Good stuff Stepan.

I have taken an interest in both an online user group meeting and 3D virtual avatars.
So a virtual user group makes a lot of sense to me, not to mentioned that I did moderate the usergroup meetings in NYC for a spell. Two night ago, I did two video for my YouTube that feel more like discussion and usergroup but without the participation of the audience. So, I was trying to think of how a usergroup and be done without the tedium of typing text.

This seems like a great idea. However, I am on a Mac and running bootcamp mean switching out of OSX and that’s something avoid. Even running a Virtual PC has it’s hang ups for me. I have at least 3 VPCs that have malfunctioned.

So I would as one suggestion to your great idea, which is to have a software that is both natively Mac and Pc. I recently joined Second Life because I am also recently taking an interest in gaming production and RT virtual worlds. Second Life is on both PC and Mac and well established engine. I am Alonzo MacPherson. We can could even take up dues and buy a building for an online meeting place. The nice thing is we can also look use our 3D skills to learn Avatars and RT game engines.

My other suggestion would be a online iChat with White board where we could share desktop screens and user can do presentation while having cordial vocal chats and discussion.

RT game production and EIAS is a subject I rarely broach in EIAS forums but this could open the door for development as well. I would like to hear more of your thoughts on this. thanks.

#4

Hi Alonzo and all,

your suggestion to use Second Life was great. I did not know about it. It´s all pretty new to me. What caught my attention with those virtual worlds was to create content for them in your 3D app and then make it available there and of course to meet nice people online which you already know from forums and have a nice meeting and chat with them. I think it opens up new ways of communicating over the net or displaying 3D content in the future (say for clients etc.).

I also downloaded the Second Life Client a view minutes ago and performance is great. The UI elements are also in german!

So, i deeply hope that we can schedule a 1st EIAS user meeting at SL and enjoy our first user meeting experience there…:slight_smile: It should be a lot of fun.

Regards
Stefan

#5

Hi Alonzo and all,

i did today a bit exploring the welcome area in SL. While The SL Client is very powerful and fast i´m not quite sure at what location to meet there. What makes me about thinking for a first meeting is, SL´s welcome area is quite informative but a bit crowded with people flying around there etc. and IMO it´s a to “busy” scene. I´m not sure if we old EIAS fellows would feel comfortable there for a first time meeting, in case this (hopefully) happens. On the other side Blue Mars´s client is beta (as the cities i assume) but the Cities there are in my opinion a better suited place for a first time meeting, because of their large size and they are currently not populated with much people (if at all) walking around etc. At Blue Mars for a first time experience we were under us and had big space to meet in beautiful areas. What do you think? Is it also possible for you to try out Blue Mars under Bootcamp to see the difference in what i mean? Just a suggestion.

Regards
Stefan

#6

Hey Stephan,

I’m glad you checked out SL. However, it was only a suggestion so that users can have workable client on both PC and Mac. As I mentioned, I have encounter the same problem with using the internet on Virtual PC, VMWare and Parallels. I always get a virus. So it’s on the blink and I can’t use it. I am going to install a new drive and use Window7 but it’s for Maya 64bit tests. I know I am not running the internet on it. Regardless, if you are running a usergroup with Blue Mars. Go ahead and get it going and I will join you once I have a solution. Usergroups always take time to grow I will support you any way I can.

As far as SL, you will probably need your own building. I don’t think it cost more than $10 a month to have your own. SL has a money system called Linden. For $8. it translates to $2,000L which can be purchase with paypal. So, if users donated $3 a meeting. You could contruct a nice building and get some other things with the money.

Again, it’s just a suggestion. I personally would like to sell mocap motion and 3D characters. I have seen interview where people have made notably money SL.

#7

Hi Alonzo,

man that was a busy day at SL, but finally i found a position which seems not busy. It´s Fishermans Cove 61/195/25. Maybe you can check this place out whenever your time allows and see if it would fit. It´s a beginner´s place.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Fishermans%20Cove/61/195/25

BTW. For ArchViz people i found this discussion topic at the Blue Mars Forum quite interesting.

http://dev.bluemars.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=980

Regards
Stefan

#8

Blue mars looks interesting. I know some companies have experimented with meetings in Second Life for remote users with limited succes. I’m not sure I’m totally onboard with such things but have had pretty good success with online meetings using Skype, Talkshoe, AIM/Ichat.

For large groups Talkshoe has worked for me, it also gives you the option of recording your meeting and making it available for people who couldn’t attend.

I’m mostly a Houdini guy these days but still use EIAS from time to time for quick stuff. If you guys schedule something I’d love to attend.

#9

I’m up for the idea.

#10

Good to hear Brian,

what would you suggest as a meeting place?

For ArchViz people i have here three more images from Beach City at Blue Mars as an IMHO nice example. I found it pretty impressive to walk through such a really big and nicely made areal. Maybe people did not replied yet due to the futuristic looking first image…

Regards
Stefan

#11

Well its all new to me. I don’t have any experience with this application/system. So, can you get us a list of requirements of what visitors would need?

#12

Hello Brian and all,

for Blue Mars you need a modern* PC or Mac with Boot Camp and Windows installed. Then you have to sign up for a User Account (free) at the Blue Mars site. There you choose your user name and the first and and last name of your Avatar. After you filled out all required informations you can choose the appearance of your Avatar. The free client package to download was, if i remember correctly, about 400MB. Once you start the client program you will be presented with a welcome screen were you can choose a City to visit. You will have to download a City (marked with a plus sign) first in order to use Blue Mars. This has to be done of course only once, and when cities get updated you download, as i have read, only the new content.

The Client: The client program is pretty easy to use, but you have only a chat option and no voice input option yet, like the Second Life has. Navigating your Avatar can be done via Keyboard or Mouse input. All in all quite easy to use and to understand. Interacting, like gestures etc. with another Avatar can be done with a right mouse click on that Avatar. Currently i can not say much more about the Client, like performance, functionality etc., because i would like to test this out should we meet there to interact with each other.

Due to the fact, that BM is a pretty new platform and lot´s of features will have to be implemented in the future, there are no maps or coordinate readouts in the client yet, like for example SL has. But this should definetely be no problem for a meeting, because the areas are there not populated yet and if we are waiting for each other at the arrival point in a city of choice, we should have no problem finding each other.

*Blue Mars uses the CryEngine2 which gamers i assume will know for it´s graphics quality.
On the Blue Mars site the system requirements says that you need a Graphics Card with 512MB, but my new iMac has only 256MB (Nvidia GT120) and it performs very well.

Regards
Stefan

#13

Stefan,
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of interest in this proposition. 392 views and no posting other than you, Brian and Alonzo. Users might shy away due to lack of information. I did a search on YouTube to check how it could be used in an innovative way as you suggest but could not find anything appealing.
Maybe you can develop the possibilities and advantages such meetings could bring in excess of what is already available with our forums. While setting up those accounts isn’t that complicated, Forums are readily available and people are used to it. We can access them from almost anywhere and are rarely blocked by Institutions. I cannot access SL nor BM from my workplace. So there must be some incentive to use these virtual worlds. What are the propositions?

#14

Hi Richard,

392 views is a pretty good result for an EIAS thread on CGTalk. Check out the EITG site with tons of EIAS users and lots of visitors over the day and you will see that even on EIAS specific posts there´s not much interest (if at all) in participating. Visitor traffic on the new site is also pretty low.

About Blue Mars or Second Life. I would simply recommend don´t be shy “come in and find out” and enjoy your first experience. :slight_smile:

It´s perfectly fine with me if there´s no interest in an EIAS user meeting. Like i said in my initial post it was only a proposal.

@Alonzo. Do you have a tip for previewing Sculpted Prims offline under OSX or is there a “sandbox mode” place on SL where i can check out a created model with textures applied?

Regards
Stefan

#15

Stefan, my post was meant to be positive. 487 views is good traffic, this is why I wonder why no one posted to show interest in the thread. To suggest a virtual meeting you must have seen advantages. Describe a few to get the discussion going and then the interest in a virtual meeting will increase. I find the proposal interesting and I suggest you “sell it”.
Virtual museum with images from users?
Virtual commerce with money transferable to real world?
Audio visual assets available online during meetings?
Possibility to walk through Arch models built by users?

#16

Ok Richard,

I´m no salesman but here´s the idea. We EIAS users know us from the forums now, i would say, relatively long. What would EIAS users say if we meet all there (once) for a group photo, which we could show our young kids, relatives or friends in a few years and say “yes i´ve been there long long time ago
.” We would simply touch “virgin snow” in case we do this. Like i said before, the area in Blue Mars is not populated yet.
We have enough meeting space, and like in real life everybody can move around were he/she wants to and can form individual small groups. Users can of course change later their Avatar names / appearance too, in case they felt uncomfortable for any reason.

Why to use a Virtual World anyways should be up to his/her own imagination, fantasy. Alonzo made a nice example IMHO with selling content to users. Others, like with my ArchViz example, may use it for simulations with clients. Then there might be lots of people who simply like to play online games in Virtual Worlds with each other.
There are probably lot´s of reason why one could use a virtual world

Regards
Stefan

P.S. Had yesterday a good laugh…(crazy world :-))
http://exporttoworld.plugimi.com/index.php?/how-to-export/

#17

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