Half Past Null

Given my earlier promise to bring this up, I’d like to go off the rails for a bit to discuss a guilty pleasure. Over the last several months, I’ve developed a bad habit of playing interactive fiction. Don’t panic; this addiction is entirely benign, and shouldn’t impact our regularly-scheduled posts on Second Life.

(However, other factors have impacted this a bit. More hopefully in the coming months. – Ed)



(Image via Usonian’s Flickr stream)


It may come as a shock to readers here, but in an age of increasing emphasis on visuals and 3D graphics, I feel we still have much to learn from the acetic forebears of MUDs, MOOs, and others. As true to its roots as its ever been, the IF genre has much to offer to creators in Second Life.


But don’t just take my word for it. Keep reading.

(more…)

Here’s a quick building tip I find particularly handy for mirroring sculpties along a desired axis or axes in bulk:

—–

* Along the X-axis:
- convert -channel Red -negate -flop <source> <destination>

* Along the Y-axis:
- convert -channel Green -negate -flop <source> <destination>

* Along the Z-axis:
- convert -channel Blue -negate -flop <source> <destination>

* Along the X- and Y-axes:
- convert -channel Red,Green -negate <source> <destination>

* Along the Y- and Z-axes:
- convert -channel Green,Blue -negate <source> <destination>

* Along the X- and Z-axes:
- convert -channel Red,Blue -negate <source> <destination>

* Along all axes:
- convert -channel Red,Green,Blue -negate -flop <source> <destination>


Example:
convert -channel Blue -negate -flop rook_source.png rook_dest.png

—–

This is a command-line operation for ImageMagick.

… and works in Cygwin for Windows, Terminal.app for OSX, and your favorite terminal for Linux/BSD.

—–

If you’re not comfortable with these options, the same effect can be emulated in Photoshop or The GIMP by flipping your image horizontally and inverting the Red (X), Green (Y), or Blue (Z) channels for the desired effect.

These operations may be combined, but you must flip the image horizontally each time you use an axis of rotation. (that is, once for X, Y, or Z, twice (no change) for XY, XZ, and YZ, and three times (once) for all three axes)

Anyway, I figured that’d be a handy little tip and timesaver.

—–

PS: Support the JIRA thread for mirroring sculpties in the viewer:
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-6682

Forum Link: http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=265631

This blog just received the royal treatment, getting a much-needed visual upgrade and a bit more content. This makes my sixth attempt at blogging, due in no small part to spending way too much time using IRC as my forum instead of public writing.

Hopefully that will change. We’ll see.

This also marks the change from just “Half Past Null” to “Half Past Null Engineering” — a much more interesting title. And if that’s not enough, this site will be becoming my repository for my work in virtual worlds: Second Life™ (natch), a few odds and ends from other worlds, and whatever comes next. We’ll see how it works out.