Animesh Arrives in Second Life

On Wednesday, Linden Lab announced that their "Project Animesh" was now part of the main Grid. For those whom are unfamiliar with Animesh, it offers content creators to allow "independent objects," or NPC creatures that are not "bots" or accounts left along by their owners and controlled by scripts, to be fitted with mesh and animations.

Animesh, first announced a year ago (!), allows independent objects to use rigged mesh and animations, just as you see today with mesh avatars. This means that you can now have wild animals, pets, vehicles, hair, zombies …. The possibilities are in your hands! We’ve created a Wiki which outlines how you can begin playing with Animesh. If you are a Premium Account, you will be able to attach two Animesh attachments instead of one.  Note: You will need to be on an Animesh Enabled Viewer to see Animesh objects work correctly; if you are using a third party viewer they can let you know when support will be available.

Linden Lab does have a User Guide page for Animesh. It also mentions five locations where you see and test it, four Moderate sims, Animesh1, Animesh2, Animesh3and Animesh4, and one adult sim, Animesh Adult. They have an "Animesh Freebie Package," with three moving characters (with pathfinder scripts), a human named "Aditya," a teddy bear, and a raptor. When rezzed on the sims, they will move about, sometimes heading back to where they were rezzed. If someone wears the "raptor steak hat" included in the package, any raptors nearby may become curious and try to pounce.

There's also a new category on Marketplace intended for Animesh objects, though not limited to them: Animated Objects.

Comments in VirtualVerse (the successor to SL Universe) are somewhat light, at least at the time of the writing of this article. In the SL forums, there's nothing in the General Discussion threads yet (though that  may soon change), but there is an Animesh category with several threads.

Inara Pey stated one advantage of Animesh was for the ability to make moving objects without "alpha flipping," or a series of objects combined and scripted so only one is visible at a time to give the appearance of movement, "like a set of flip book drawings." As alpha flipping "can be render intensive, impacting viewer performance," it is hoped that Animesh objects will be a way to make objects that will be less laggy for residents.



Hamlet Au found this video by Medue about animesh in action. He commented that he'd been told by builders that they haven't been selling as much as they've been in the past and thought "Animesh is just the thing to boost the virtual world marketplace." He also commented on what it would likely lead to, "Multiplayer FPS games in SL where enemies no longer look like herky jerky puppets, mini-RPGs with highly detailed character interactions.... and, of course, inevitably, much virtual sex with NPCs."

What do you the readers think Animesh will lead to? Feel free to leave comments.

Source: Linden Lab, Modem World, New World Notes

Bixyl Shuftan

Lindens Launch 100 Pathfinding Sims

Any1 Gynoid, the spunky neko freelance reporter, is back in business with a look on Pathfinding. She takes a closer view at Linden Lab's touted new technology, how it works, whether it adds to lag or not, and one of the bugs.

Read Any1's report in Design.

Eye on the Blog: “CEO Rodvik Humble Shares What's New in Second Life”

On Monday, Linden Lab’s CEO Rod Humble/Rodvik Linden personally posted on the official blog, “It’s been a little while since I last updated folks on Second Life. Earlier this year, I noted several areas we would be focusing on. Let me update you on each area and share with you our plans for the remainder of the year. But first, we’d like to give a warm welcome to our newbies! August was the biggest growth month for Second Life in nearly four years! I hope you all take the time to try out the many different activities in Second Life — there’s everything from clubbing to boating. You might even to want to try your hand at making something new. As a side note, one of the easiest ways to find new things is to check out the Destination Guide in the log-in screen of the viewer.”

Rod then brought up Viewer 2’s Basic mode, which he called really helpful in “getting newbies up and running.“ But recognizing its limits, such as being unable to buy & sell and build, stated the Lab would soon “merge the Basic and Advanced modes.” He also stated there would be “continued investment and focus” in response times to problems including more support staffing.

Rod also mentioned “over the next few months,” there would be new advanced features that would allow for easier and better “creation of artificial life and artificial people.” Among other things, the creatures and beings would be able to navigate about more intelligently, “Imagine being able to create advanced pets, creatures or even a living town where non-player characters are walking about. Combined with the experience tools I mentioned above, it should soon be possible to create more advanced MMORPG’s or interactive experiences which use AI right within Second Life.”

Hamlet Au wrote some about the last set of improvements. He felt they would soon lead to “upheavals” in the virtual pet industry as old scripting systems are taken offline and the companies rush to keep their creatures and other goods updated. He also predicted Second Life’s gaming areas, or “mini MMOs” ae he called them, would both become more advanced and more popular. Finally, he called these upcoming developments a solution to the Grid’s “crowded empty” problem, lots of residents inworld, but most sims empty or nearly so, “Adding NPC features will be an easy way to fix that problem, giving land owners easy tools to make their place seem less empty.”

Checking the thread on the forums, many people posting were looking forward to these developments. This included Jo Yardley of “The 1920’s Berlin Project,” who felt the use of these “robots” would make a lot of difference in making her sim more lifelike, “Yes I'd rather have 100 real avatars running around my city 24 hours a day, but it won't happen and if it did the server would blow up with lag overdose.” There were however some dissenting opinions, “So one CEO gets rid of the bots, numbers plummet, lag doesn't get any better, and the next CEO decides to bring the things back.”

Sources: Linden Blog, New World Notes

Bixyl Shuftan