June 29, 2008
Getting Started in Second Life
The Getting Started in Second Life slideset from last year has been redone with the original audio as a podcast. You can see the slides and listen to the audio here.
Available to download to your iPod device from this page.
UM School of Dentistry: IT Bootcamps: http://www.dent.umich.edu/informatics/bootcamp/bootcamp_archive_07.html
Posted by pfa at 09:19 AM | Comments (0)
June 28, 2008
Second Life Teacher's Toolkit
The Teacher's Toolkit class from Enriching Scholarship has been redone (in part) as a podcast. You can see the slides and listen to the audio here.
Available to download to your iPod device from this page.
UM School of Dentistry: IT Bootcamps: http://www.dent.umich.edu/informatics/bootcamp/
Posted by pfa at 09:15 AM | Comments (0)
January 28, 2008
Why Work and Teach in Second Life?
I was asked to share the slides and content from earlier classes and presentations about Second Life with this group. Here is the first one, a slide presentation about the "WHY" of Second Life. There is a sound track with this (audio) so you can turn up the sound. Beware -- the Slideshare system seems to want to make the podcasts move along faster, so the audio is much higher pitched than a real voice.
Posted by pfa at 03:53 PM | Comments (0)
January 27, 2008
How to ... Make Basic Clothing
This blog entry contains the content of the brown bag session for January 11th, taught by Perplexity Peccable, based loosely on the NCI Class on Making Basic Clothing taught by Afon Shepherd. Afon's class is class is recommended, and is offered by New Citizens Inc - join the group for more information.
Please note, all images will enlarge when clicked.
STEP 1:
Right+Click on yourself. Choose "Appearance" from the pie menu.
STEP 2:
Look at the APPEARANCE menu.
Clothing items listed that you can create are:
Shirt
Pants
Shoes
Socks
Jacket
Gloves
Undershirt
Underpants
Skirt
These are worn in layers, which are important in the garment design process.
* Torso & Arms:
Inner Layer (by the skin) - Undershirt
Middle Layer - Shirt
Outer Layer (arms) - Gloves
Outer Layer - Jacket
(NOTE: Jacket will cover Gloves)
* Hips and Legs
Inner Layer (hips) - Underpants
Inner Layer (legs & feet) - Socks
Middle Layer - Pants
Outer Layer - Skirt
(NOTE: The Jacket is the only item which may sometimes cross the waist and appear on both halves of the body. If wearing a long Jacket, the bottom of the jacket will cover the top of pants, but may not show if worn with a skirt.)
These can be used in layers to create the effect of a single complicated garment, when really it is a combination of several basic garments. The layers for various body regions works like this, from the head down and the skin out.
STEP 3:
Make new underpants.
a. Click the Underpants tab
b. If you are wearing underwear, click the "Take Off" Button. (bottom of Appearance menu)
c. Click the "Make New Underpants" button. (near top of menu)
d. When asked in a pop-up dialog window if you want to wear the garment being created, choose YES.
Make a new undershirt.
a. Repeat steps a-d above, only starting by clicking on the Undershirt tab.
STEP 4:
Now that you are wearing new sets of default underwear (which are quite modest), you may remove your other clothes.
For this class, remove the following items:
Shirt
Pants
Socks
Jacket
Gloves
We will not be making shoes in this class, so you can leave those on. While we won't be discussing each of these individually, you may wish to use any of these layers in designing your outfit.
Now that you have removed your outer clothes, this is what we should look like.
STEP 5:
Let's start with the undershirt we are already wearing. Let's tint it a different color so that as we move on to the shirt we can see the difference between the two.
a. Click on the Undershirt tab.
b. Click on the Color/Tint square (This is the bottom of the two squares that are white when starting a default new garment.
c. Choose a color
d. Click the SELECT button
STEP 6:
Now let's make a shirt. You should have the general idea by this point - Click the "Shirt" tab, and make and wear the shirt.
You've probably noticed the small pictures or images that fill the right side of the appearance menu . Beneath each pair of images is a slider. Start with the sleeves, and try moving the slider from one end to the other. Watch your avatar and notice what happens.
Stop at a point where the sleeves on the shirt are shorter than the sleeves on the undershirt. Afon pointed out that if you stop the slider at 2% the shirt appears like a two layer dress blouse, with a bustier and sheer upper layer. This is appropriate for evening wear and dressier ladies garb.
Choose a new color for the shirt - different than the color you chose for the undershirt. Your screen might now look something like this.
This is a good example of the layering mentioned earlier. Now, please set your shirt color back to white before we go on. If you really like the color combination you have, you may save your shirt and make another new white shirt before going to the next step. If you particularly like your colored shirt, you may wish to save it. If so, be sure to give it a distinctive name.
STEP 7:
For part 2 of designing your shirt, let's choose a texture.
You start just like for choosing a color, but click instead on the top white square that is labeled "Fabric."
This opens a dialog box to allow you to navigate your inventory to find the texture you want. You will already have textures in your inventory. In "My Inventory", you should have a folder named "Textures", and you will also have one in your "Library" folder.
If you choose light colored textures, you may also wish to tint them by choosing a color.
Now you can experiment with the various choices and options, textures and tints, until the garment looks the way you want. At this point, always SAVE the garment with a name that describes it so you can find it again.
STEP 8:
Following a similar process, click on the other tabs and make other garments, remembering to experiment by combining layers for special effects.
STEP 9:
When you have made at least a shirt and a pair of pants, or have combined a number of garments into a look you like, and have saved each garment with its own name, you are ready to make an outfit.
a. Click the button "Make Outfit"
b. Check the boxes for the garments you made and included in your new look.
c. Change the name of the Outfit to something distinctive. I like to start mine with the first name of my avatar to make them easier to find in my inventory.
d. Click SAVE.
e. The clothes will appear in your inventory in a folder with the name you chose.
You can wear your new outfit easily and quickly, even if you have changed into other clothes. Find the folder in your inventory. Right+Click on the folder. Choose either "Add to Outfit" or "Replace Outfit".
WARNING:
1. If you choose "Replace Outfit", this will probably remove your hair, any jewelry you are wearing, your shoes and socks, etcetera.
2. If you choose "Add to Outfit", it will not remove all of these other items, but you may find what you were wearing doesn't look very good with the rest of your outfit, and you may need to take off pieces of your old outfit.
MORE IDEAS:
Here are some pictures showing garments made with layering, tinting a texture, and other techniques. See if you can figure out how the outfit was made and assembled. Make up your own ideas and outfits, and have fun!
Posted by pfa at 08:30 PM | Comments (0)
January 26, 2008
Why ... Make a Notecard
A dozen things you might do with a notecard. Can you think of more?
1. Capture a chatlog for future reference.
2. Share a poem with a friend.
3. Turn in an assignment to a teacher.
4. Give instructions or notes to students.
5. Write a letter to a vendor to explain about a purchase that went wrong, drop the notecard in their inventory slot.
6. Chapter X of a public domain book.
7. Collect notecards with various chapters of a book all into one place.
8. Create a tour with text and pictures.
9. Organize a section of your inventory that you don't use much.
10. Create a photo journal.
11. Tell a story with illustrations.
12. Create a mini-tutorial combining instructions and pictures.
Posted by pfa at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)
How to ... Make a Notecard
1. Open your inventory. (Click on the button in the lower right corner of the browser.)
2. Across the top menubar of the Inventory window, click on CREATE. Go down the pop-up menu to "New Note".
3. A blank note window will appear.
NOTICE that in your inventory, there will be selected an item with the name "New Note". If you move quickly, you can type in the name you want while it is still selected. Otherwise ...
4. Name your note: Right-click on the "New Note" item listing. From the pop-up menu, select RENAME. Type the desired name. Hit return. If you make a typo, repeat this process.
5. Edit your note: You can type into the note editing window, or you can drag certain types of items from your inventory into the note editing window. Most common types of items to be included in a note are Landmarks, Snapshots and Textures, although you can include Objects (small ones, please), Garments and other Notecards! Basically, you can stuff just about any SL object or item into a notecard. Suggestion: you could use this to organize and store items in your inventory that you don't need often.
6. SAVE OFTEN!!!!!! The Save button is at the bottom of the note editing window.
Posted by pfa at 08:06 AM | Comments (0)