today on the show = linden ceo ebbe altberg reveals next gen vw secrets & director of sl engineering oz linden [at 35:25] confidently addresses educators at vwbpe.
exciting times:
detailed reading linkage below as per usual:
– daniel voyager summarizes the main points of ebbe linden’s keynote
– inara pey transcribes ebbe’s speech [how does she do it?]
– marxent labs has the holodeck [trademarked?]
– apple might bring style to ar wearables
– new ctrlaltstudio viewer [with oculus support] out now!
– conceptual artist or troll? you be the judge!
– hitbox vs twitch = where do you stand?
– birth and vr = yes it is for real!
– no more linden $ on other grids
– our musical guest jordan reyne
– play this weekend: “free wilma” by estelle piennar
– water you can rez in a skybox! [yes indeed you can!]
– intellectual reading material if you dare – from jeremy bailenson from stanford vhil lab
the drax files radio hour [with jo yardley] is a weekly production of basicdrax entertainment.
the show is supported by leap motion, sl go [by onlive], stitcher, fatewear by damien fate, gizza creations, aeros avatars, maven homes, madpea productions, botgirl’s identity circus, ison, kahruvel design, vika creations, humanoid animations, loki eliot, botanical, death row designs, angel red cotoure, fallen gods incorporated, {what’s next}, abranimations, blue moon enterprises, avacon and landscapes unlimited!
special thanks to justin esparza [and kelvin draconia + marianne mccann] for the show thumbnail!
music by bd.
contact the show via skype draxfiles, avatar draxfiles or email radio@draxfiles.com.
the drax files radio hour 
Reblogged this on Jo Yardley's Second Life and commented:
A new Draxfiles radio hour episode;
Just a thought about content being multiplatform. It would depend on file format. If someone came up with a 3D file format that that held the textures and physics and maybe even scripts, then you would see content that could be downloaded from one Virtual World platform and uploaded to another, this could be applied to avatars.
Lokie, an FBX file hold all weight data, mesh data, material data, texture data, rig data, and animation data. You can already sell the same character, using FBX, on the Unity platform, Unreal, and CryEngine, as well as quite a few more obscure platforms. Coding, although becoming more standardized, is still not universal across platforms. The fact that Ebbe says their is not standard for content, kind of leaves me wondering if LL knows what they are doing. Yeah, they have chosen FBX, but how will they handle those FBX files. Seriously, if the elephant that I just finished doesn’t fully work in the new world, then LL is doing something wrong, cause it works in all the other major engine out there.
It was a great speech by Ebbe this week at VWBPE 2015 and the future sounds promising.
No offense to Ebbe, but he doesn’t know what he is talking about when it comes to Maya or Blender. Why would alpha users have to know Maya? There is nothing that Maya does special. During the alpha period, there will be nothing that Blender can’t do.
That said, what can happen is that LL can create a rig in Maya that isn’t compatible with anything else. If they do this, which is EXACTLY what Cloud Party did, then they will be screwing themselves, just like Cloud Party did. Everything centers around the rig. If the rig is bad, then nothing can be good. This is why it is flat out RETARDED, to say only Maya users will be let into the new world. Their own ignorance will create all their problems for them. They don’t see the bubble they are putting themselves in. I’ve seen it. Many times. Every single virtual world that has made themselves Maya or 3Ds Max centric from the start, has failed, and the reasons are obvious. They could never get enough users to test out their system, and there weren’t enough creators to even create a marketplace with. Blender, on the other hand, has millions of users.
Unity is not Maya centric at all. You can actually drag a Blend file into Unity, and Unity will automatically convert it to an FBX. Unreal Engine totally understands how important the Blender community is, and they are doing tutorials to help Blender users make things for UE. The elephant that I just finished, works both in Unity and Unreal. In theory, if LL’s new world uses FBX, my elephant should also work there. See what I mean tho. Ebbe, or LL, is confused that somehow only Maya users can test things in the new world. Just the fact that Ebbe said that only Maya users will be let in, makes me very worried about how this new world will turn out, cause it shows me how little LL actually knows about 3D.
Apologize for the glitch at end of Oz Linden interview. Uploading replacement in a minute!~
Medhue, there are specific reasons why we chose Maya as a starting point for ourselves. In order to be able to stress our engine in the fullest (including physics) there are things we can do with Maya we could not do with Blender. But this has nothing to do with what options users will have when we get closer to general availability. We want to support a lot of third party tools and formats, including Blender, as well as our own creation tools.
Oh, if you are listening Ebbe, you might want to think about utilizing Blend Shapes. If you are thinking of adding cloth physics, a 3D artist can fake cloth physics with blend shapes. That’s how many games do it. It’s actually pretty easy. A blend shape is simple the mesh topology morphed for altered in some way. The SL default avatar does this to alter it’s shape. A creator could easily make blend shapes in their mesh, and they would simulated physics by changing the blend shape with animation. IMHO, blend shapes are a must in the new world. We’d be able to upload characters much like the SL default, with many different morphs to make your avatar unique.
Well, I do not agree that somehow Maya can stress your engine more than Blender. If you had any Blenderheads on your team, you’d likely implement Blender types of solutions, which IMHO, are far superior to how Maya does things. I didn’t choose Blender over Maya because of the price. I chose it because it is a better program. It can do alot more, and I don’t have to worry about licenses. Mark my words too, cause I would be willing to bet that Blender eventually makes Maya obsolete, if it is not there now.
I was about to ask about learning C# and then developing on Mac but I found the answer = do it in Mono right? Now in the Drax family we have decided to go from MIT’s Scratch to Java Script for a few reasons {High Fidelity} being one = any comments out there pro/con C# & for Lindens reading this: why C# and not any other language?
Of course, not a coder here, but Unity uses both C# and Javascript. Unreal has a node coding system, but I’m pretty sure it is C# based. So, maybe they chose C# to conform to both of them.
just a thought on avatars traveling to other locations. right now, there is a method developed to move between grids. Hypergrid is active in open sim now. I have a parcel on Kitely and can teleport to OSGrid with out having to log off and log in. Also, the kitely market has the ability to deliver to any grid that is hypergrid enabled and even closed grids, if the grids allow the delivery. So now, I do not have to load all my items into separate grids. Even though SL has advanced far more in its coding, Open Sim and even Inworlds, both run a version based on the original source code released by linden years ago. So the statement that travel between worlds is not going to happen is a bit miss leading, considering its being done at this point and time. It is far from universal connectivity, but it does allow you to attach your grid to a broader community. In my humble opinion, it is the rise in grids similar to SL that have caused them to rethink some things.
great show as always..:)
I hope that the Next Generation Virtual World is empowering the normal person and not just the 3d professionals. The unique thing about SL is that everyone can become creators without knowing complex 3D software.
Also, something I have especially noticed with game creation (and the reason we are choosing SL over UNITY or Unreal Engine) is that there is real time creation with others from all over the world. When one person is adding textures another one is scripting etc. This is truly unique to Second Life and really essential.
I for one hope that the next gen platform is not like The Sims where most of us are just allowed to shift furniture around and a small minority is making $$$ with content. Kinda like IKEA customers who are told to “create” but essentially consume. SL concept is revolutionary with the barrier of entry to creation [despite what many say] very very low! I do trust LL to understand that the secret sauce of SL is that theoretically EVERYONE can become a creator. Yes, most folks DO play Barbie and Ken in an IKEA home but that does not mean they don’t aspire to more 🙂
Of course, I have no idea what LL has planned, but it is probably good to point out that almost every 3D program, and virtual world has a set of primitives. Besides actual building, they are useful for many things.
Along the lines of creation and pros vs hobbiest, I’m an example of someone who knew almost nothing about 3D 9 years ago, but because of SL, I am now leading development on my own game, as well as working on many other games, and helping people with rigs and animation in the SL forums, Unity forums, and recently in the Unreal forums. Before SL, I played around with the original CryEngine, but other than that, I had no experience with 3D.