Bungang-Isip ni Matangdilis

AO horse in Opensim

2012-01-01T08:59:00.001+08:00

I failed to create a horse as a vehicle in Opensim. So instead of riding a horse the avatar will wear one. Using the animated sculptie horse I made earlier I've added this animation overrider script from Catherine Pfeffer and Carn Iggle posted at the OSgrid forum.

Downloads

http://www.mediafire.com/file/xupwyneu88xbl2x/animkabayoAO.iar (190 KB)
http://www.mediafire.com/file/et4lk9hbdysuabc/riderao.lsl (2 KB)

http://www.mediafire.com/file/7e13tcafsds94kz/riderpose.bvh (19 KB)

http://www.mediafire.com/file/byvmwggb5uj12mw/ridertrot.bvh (19 KB)

QAvimator source file

http://www.mediafire.com/file/im6ribf75gybqtr/riderpose.avm (19 KB)
http://www.mediafire.com/file/csx0ois20vy0sl0/ridertrot.avm (19 KB)

The AO script may be improved by having separate animations play for standing and walking. Unfortunately I do not know how to modify it. In addition the animation needs to be modified to meet the height of the rezzed horse otherwise the horse would need to be scaled and may be too small for the avatar.

Secondlife and OpenSim on Kinect from the Network System Lab of TUIS

2011-12-23T10:04:00.000+08:00

Further info: http://www.nsl.tuis.ac.jp/xoops/modules/xpwiki/?SLKinect2

unofficial sloodleset 1.2b for SLOODLE 1.2

2011-04-17T08:48:00.000+08:00

SLOODLE 1.2 had been released last June. The new feature is the SLOODLE Tracker. See here for further information (Downloads, Installation and Documentation): https://www.sloodle.org/blog/?p=238

Developers who would like to test it under Opensim may want to look at the unofficial sloodleset for OpenSim (Updated Dec. 23, 2011 due to problems with permissions) below:

~~Warning: The quiz chair does not work yet in this sloodleset. It is still under investigation.~~ Update: quiz chair should work now.

IAR http://www.mediafire.com/file/sy3yj29vu29cb5e/unofficialSDLSET1.2c.iar (2.54 MB)

OAR http://www.mediafire.com/file/sts8uuqdwcc8dn9/unofficialSDLSET1.2c.oar (2.77 MB)

User Documentation for the Tracker
http://www.sloodle.org/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=2482

A journal article detailing the use of the tracker by Michael Callaghan et.al. entitled Engineering Education Island: Teaching Engineering in Virtual Worlds (2009) is available here http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/italics/vol8iss3/pdf/ItalicsVol8Iss3Nov2009Paper01.pdf.

For more info see these threads:
http://www.sloodle.org/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=3370 (Call for Beta Testers)
http://www.sloodle.org/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=3406 (Unofficial SLOODLESET 1.2 for OS discussion)
http://www.sloodle.org/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=3401 (Tracker installation problems)

Project Report: Exploratory Approaches to the Design and Development of a Game for a Distance Education Course in Philippine History

2011-04-08T10:39:00.004+08:00

by
Roel Cantada

I would like to share my project report for my master's degree in distance education at the University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU).

Downloads

Report
http://www.mediafire.com/file/ei3fb2b9haja388/CantadaProjectReportEbook.pdf (4.57 mb)

WIP OARs of the game
http://www.mediafire.com/file/qlew0zm3ws3v2pp/phgame1_2-8-2011.oar (15.22 mb)
http://www.mediafire.com/file/qb2377nriczm66s/phgame2_2-8-2011.oar (5 mb)
http://www.mediafire.com/file/cb7coc47ao29ydc/phgame3_2-8-2011.oar (10.44 mb)

Moodle backup (Updated Dec. 19, 2011)
http://www.mediafire.com/file/zj5155md34ml0ot/backup-19thcent-20111219-1452.zip (955 kb)

You may need to edit the presenter slides url after restoring this moodle backup. Click on the presenter link->edit tab->hand icon->paste new url. (The new url should come from the course files->briefing folder. Right click and copy link to get the url.) Then save.

Abstract

The project explores the design and development of a prototype video game for a distance education course in Philippine history. The project seeks to answer these questions:

What are the affordable learning actions and constraints of educational games in general and games for learning history in particular?
What production pipeline of design and development of educational games is appropriate for distance education teachers of Philippine history with meagre resources?

The rationale for the project is the following:

There is little study on courses as games in distance education.
In the context of connectivist learning theory there is no study of games as hubs for a personal learning environment (PLE).
There is no available off the shelf game for teaching Philippine history.

Open Simulator, a Multi-user Virtual Environment (MUVE) was used to create a prototype game. Formative research methods were adopted in the design and development of the game.

It has been found that the game affords the adoption of a wide range of learning theories and methods. As a PLE hub it has weak and strong affordances. In learning history it affords the following:

It affords the linking and finding of historical sources.
It affords role playing of historical characters.
It affords reconstruction of history in multimedia.
It affords the linking of game play with history.

It has also been found that teachers may impose a minimal amount of constraint on the learning path through quests and virtual objects that serve as obstacles. Items may be hidden from view (to delay use) or pointed out by Non-Player Characters. These constraints may help learners recognize affordable learning actions in the game. It may also scaffold the experience of novice players who are unfamiliar with the 3D environment.

In conclusion, series of steps and guidelines are suggested for developing educational games. It is recommended that teachers exploit the tools of the game for collaborative design and development as well as the production of reusable virtual world archives.

testing SL postcard

2011-02-27T09:18:00.002+08:00

testing SL postcard

testing SL postcard. This postcard was sent via posterous. When I tried to send the postcard directly to blogger via email, the images did not appear.

Visit Sloodle (214, 76, 26)

virtual (wannabe) escolta

2011-02-16T09:43:00.000+08:00

Port of my Philippine History game project

2011-02-11T10:49:00.000+08:00

My first virtual village for my Philippine History project.

2011-02-08T12:46:00.000+08:00

It's not dense enough for a Philippine pueblo but there is a need to limit the prims to conserve computer resources.

Sugarcane field for the sugar run quest of my Philippine history game project

2011-02-08T06:39:00.000+08:00

In the center of the field is a trapiche or sugarcane press. The sugar run quest is just a collecting game that will allow students to explore the world and learn about the economy of 19th century Philippines; that is based on crop export. There are no monsters to kill here.

Orientation area of my Philippine history game project

2011-02-08T06:35:00.001+08:00

I decided to go with an open area plaza instead of creating buildings so as to facilitate navigation for users who have yet to learn navigation in Open Simulator. At the same time having a single place with all the needed tools for playing and learning would prevent fragmentation especially for an expected low number of users such as a class. The tools here are hypergates, sloodle objects, graffiti board, forum rss and greeters that I turned into npcs for the quests.

The open areas are for students generated content and sandboxes.

Open Educational Tools: Building the orientation area of my Philippine His...

2011-01-31T17:26:00.000+08:00

Open Educational Tools: Building the orientation area of my Philippine His...: "The biggest problem that I have seen in the virtual worlds that I have visited is the emptiness of the world. It's not that there is nothing..."

Using Sloodle PrimDrop as a simple quest system for Open Simulator

2011-01-20T08:50:00.000+08:00

I set up three Sloodle PrimDrop boxes. The assignments are called Quest1, Quest2, and Quest3. Quest 1 has the description: Please bring me a cube. When you finish this quest go to quest 2. And the rest is the same.

I created a test student named Noob1 Student. When Noob1 touched the PrimDrop boxes they say in the public chat the description of the assignment. This could then be used for instructions to the quest. This description can be displayed again when you click 1: Assignment summary in the Open Simulator (OSim) menu as shown below.

When an assignment object is submitted, there is a feedback. The PrimDrop says in public chat: Item "submission name" appears OK. Thank you Noob1 Student.
Assignment submission successful. Thank you Noob1 Student.

This feedback is in feedback is in sloodle_translation_assignment_en.lsl in the scripts of the PrimDrop object in OSim. The last two lines is as follows:

"assignment:submissionok", "Assignment submission successful. Thank you {{0}}.", // Parameter: avatar name

This could be edited to reflect the next steps to take in the quest chain. But it would be better if the feedback from the Moodle grading is reflected instead.

The teacher can then take the objects and even grade the assignment in-world as shown below.

In addition to the above I installed the Activity Locking (AL) course format plugin in my Moodle server.

The AL format locks/unlocks succeeding activities based on prerequisites. It appears that PrimDrop is unaware of the locks because when I tried to submit to a locked assignment, it still accepted the submission. There is a need to hack the PrimDrop code for it to recognize locks and prerequisites.

In addition it would be great if the PrimDrop boxes could give an object in return as a reward or as an item for the next quest. Also it would be interesting to use llGiveMoney function in the OpenSim DTL Currency Server. Such that when the student completes the quest he/she can be given token OS money.

100 npc bots in opensim

2011-01-08T09:46:00.000+08:00

I need NPC bots as greeters, information providers, and quest givers. NPC bots are useful to reduce the loneliness of an empty virtual world (which is quite common). I was able to spawn 100 server side bots in OpenSimulator ver. 0.6.9 following Kenneth Rougeau's instructions. I could have gone higher but the server was getting laggy. My problem with this approach is that I would have to roll back my sim from 0.7.0.2 wherein the NPCModule is broken.

There are 104 avatars in this image, 3 failed to rezz and remain clouds

With respect to my current Philippine History game project, I could really use them as soldiers, shopkeepers, teachers, etc. I was able to use Radegast's aiml plugin for a chatbot but the resources needed for running multiple instances of Radegast is larger than a server side NPC bot. I can also spawn multiple bots using a single instance of Radegast by using File->New window. And then logging in a new avatar as shown in the following screenshot.

This means I'm keeping multiple Radegast viewers open. Another drawback of this approach is that the two bots in the screenshot share the same aiml brain. One could use a new brain by switching users in your computer, then running a Radegast viewer there. But then you'll have new xwindows instances and all the overhead of maintaining another account running in the desktop.

Creating a prim mannequin results in an ugly mannequin due to low level LOD at a distance, and the ceiling of 1024 verts per sculpty prim.

There's got to be a better solution out there, or hopefully someone will fix 0.7.x.x OpenSim's NPC Module.

Chatting with Antonio de Morga in OpenSimulator

2010-12-21T07:38:00.000+08:00

What are chatter robots?

Chatter robots (Chatbots) are computer programs that simulate a natural conversation with a machine. It applies low level artificial intelligence implementation basically using pattern matching.

Files with the list of patterns and responses are written by a botmaster. It is in XML format wherein the tags are predefined, in this case according to the Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML).

It is less sophisticated than natural language processing using cognitive architectures, but is lighter on a server.

In my project I am using the Radegast Metaverse client which has an ALICE bot plugin.

Here are some screenshots of the conversation in OpenSimulator using the Imprudence viewer.

conversation between my avatar and de Morga in public chat

conversation appearing as bubbles in imprudence

de Morga's views about Aetas clearly shows bias. Will the students recognize it?

Bubbles have a limit to the amount of text displayed unlike the default chat list. The bot's responses would have to formatted for this display.

In the public chat, you have to address the bot by first name in order for it to respond. In the private message box, no name is necessary.

PM with the chatbot

right click on bot's avatar and select Send IM in pie menu

How the chat is listed in the Radegast viewer. Radegast may also be used by people who do not have the computer hardware to run a 3d viewer like Imprudence.

Radegast listing of the chat, unfortunately picking up messages from unconfigured Sloodle objects

Below is a snippet of the modified history.aiml file listing. The brain is yet to be finished.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<aiml>








<category><pattern>DO YOU KNOW HISTORY</pattern>
<template><srai>WHAT IS HISTORY</srai></template></category>

<category><pattern>EXPLAIN HISTORY</pattern>
<template>History is a narrative of important events. It is a record of the deeds of great men.</template></category>

<category><pattern>HISTORY</pattern>
<template>I am very interested in history, too. What period do you like?</template></category>

<category><pattern>TELL ME ABOUT HISTORY</pattern>
<template><srai>WHAT IS HISTORY </srai></template></category>

<category><pattern>WHAT IS HISTORY</pattern>
<template>History: the course of political, economic and military events over time, from the Dawn of Man to 1609.</template></category>

<category><pattern>1609</pattern>
<template>1609 is the year I published my book Sucesos de las islas Filipinas.</template></category>

<category><pattern>WHAT IS SUCESOS</pattern><template>Sucesos means events.
</template></category>

<category><pattern>WHAT KIND OF HISTORY *</pattern><template>I like to talk about the history of the Philippines.</template></category>

<category><pattern>_ ITA</pattern>
<template><srai>AETA</srai></template></category>
<category><pattern>_ AGTA</pattern>
<template><srai>AETA</srai></template></category>
<category><pattern>_ NEGRITO</pattern>
<template><srai>AETA</srai></template></category>
<category><pattern>_ ITAS</pattern>
<template><srai>AETA</srai></template></category>
<category><pattern>_ AGTAS</pattern>
<template><srai>AETA</srai></template></category>
<category><pattern>_ NEGRITOS</pattern>
<template><srai>AETA</srai></template></category>
<category><pattern>_ AETAS</pattern>
<template><srai>AETA</srai></template></category>

<category><pattern>AETA</pattern>
<template><random>
<li>In various parts of this island of Luzon are found a number of natives black in color. Both men and women have woolly hair, and their stature is not very great, although they are strong and robust.</li>
<li>These people are barbarians, and have but little capacity. They possess no fixed houses or settlements, but wander in bands and hordes through the mountains and rough country, changing from one site to another according to the season.</li>
<li>They support themselves in certain clearings, and by planting rice, which they do temporarily, and by means of the game that they bring down with their bows, in the use of which they are very skilful and certain.</li> They live also on honey from the mountains, and roots produced by the ground.
<li>They are a barbarous people, in whom one cannot place confidence.</li>
<li>They are much given to killing and to attacking the settlements of the other natives, in which they commit many depredations; and there is nothing that can be done to stop them, or to subdue or pacify them, although this is always attempted by fair or foul means, as opportunity and necessity demand.</li>
</random></template></category>

</aiml>

References

Aimless, D. (2002). A tutorial for adding knowledge to your robot. Available at http://www.pandorabots.com/pandora/pics/aimless/tutorial.htm.

Ringate, T. (2001). AIML primer. Available at http://www.alicebot.org/documentation/aiml-primer.html.

Wallace, R.S. (n.d.). AIML overview. Available at http://www.pandorabots.com/pandora/pics./wallaceaimltutorial.html.

History from textbooks and history in a virtual world

2010-12-17T07:12:00.000+08:00

Building the virtual library made me realize certain things about teaching history in a virtual world such as OpenSimulator.

This first is that in building a library of virtual books one has to consider the role of the player. The student as student would have access to all sources of information. If the game world has a Spanish era theme then even books published after that era will be available to the student. On the other hand the student as role player would have different virtual books available to them depending on what roles they play. If they play the role of a 19th century student then they would have access to censored books because at the time the friars were censoring publication. Social class played will also be a factor in what books one possess. Ilustrados like Jose Rizal would have a private library. The new labor/white collar class of Andres Bonifacio will also have book collections. The general masses probably only has access to religious books like the Pasyon and popular literature like poems, romances etc. Underground or revolutionary material will not appear in libraries but would generaly be hidden. We can generalize this condition to all sources of information even word of mouth because the Spaniards have spies and according to some historians the abuse of the confession.

Place would then be related to sources of information. Censored books in school, private libraries in bahay na bato, religious material in bahay kubo, and propaganda/revolutionary material in hiding places.

The way history is unfolded to the student in a virtual world differs then to that in a textbook. The textbook (taught in lock step method) follows a linear path. The focus is on plot and characters or if in a social scientific way on concepts. The student is given a digest of the readings of the historian. This provides a god like knowledge of history wherein the student is witness to the public and private events. The actions, motivations, and musings of historical actors.

In a virtual world, parallel narratives may occur. And players may not know what is happening in the next room, or the next region. A good network will allow players to be updated with what is going on in the other room. He/she can chat with other players and find out what is happening in world.

And like in the real world, players who are not in the right place at the right time in the network will find themselves baffled when the game map (or the world) is changed or updated by the devs. The ground may literally be pulled under their feet as new terraforms are built. In real life ordinary people unconcerned with historical changes go through their ordinary business then they wake up next day without a job, a house and a pension. History (events beyond their comprehension and control) whacks them in the face.

Jesus said, "You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times."

Making dead historians come alive as chatbots in OpenSimulator 1

2010-12-15T15:34:00.003+08:00

One of the fundamental design problems of educational games is the embedding of school content that would not disrupt the game play. To embed history content in my Philippine History game project I am going to explore the use of chatbot avatars. My plan is to use the Radegast Metaverse client for this purpose. OpenSimulator does have code for NPCbots but it does not work in the current (0.7.0.2) version and I don't want to rollback my server.

I am going to try to create three chatbots for my demo of the concept. Three historians from the Spanish Colonial era, namely Antonio de Morga, Francisco Baranera, and Jose Burniol. De Morga was a liuetenant general of the Philippines in the 1595-1598. He wrote the book Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (1609) wherein he wrote about early colonial rule of the Philippines and more importantly a description of our ancestors at the time in a chapter. Rizal annotated and republished his work in the 1800s.

Baranera and Burniol are Jesuit priests who wrote history textbooks for Ateneo Municipal. Baranera wrote Compedio de la Historia de Filipinas (1884) while Burniol wrote A History of the Philippines for Class Use (1912). The former was during a time when Spain ruled the Phillipines while the latter was after Spain's defeat by the Americans.

From my reading of Rizal's curriculum in Ateneo and UST, it appears that Philippine history is taught only in Secondary school i.e. Ateneo Municipal and not in the university. Why it needs to be taught to 1st year high school students today and again to 1st year college students is baffling.

Why do I find it interesting to sample old history books (and by Spaniards even)? Well I grew up with history textbooks written by Filipinos. And most of these books were from a nationalist perspective. Almost all of them start justifying the need for a new history book written by Filipinos and for Filipinos. But I was wondering why? What was wrong with the histories written by the colonizers. What was this bias and prejudice that I heard so much about in these books? Just like any sources in history, these books are products of their time. I think students will benefit a lot from comparing these books from different periods of Spanish rule of the Philippines, with those from the American era, and the era of the Republic. It would be great to see how the historical context affect the histories themselves. What is the difference between a winner's history from a loser's perspective? What is the difference between Baranera and Burniol? I think there are more questions about history and historiography that we can generate through a comparative approach to the study of Philippine history books.

Of course reading one history book is difficult enough, why not bring all the authors in class and interview them about their histories? This is what I will use chatter bots for. To achieve this plan, the first step is to create an avatar. Here is my interpretation of de Morga.

compare with a painting of de Morga....:-)

Unfortunately I do not have paintings of Baranera and Burniol, so I'll just use some generic (to me at least) European looking teachers for them.

Next post will be about how the chat went... I'll need to hit the books and work on aiml files.

virtual 3d 19th century school building

2010-12-15T07:13:00.001+08:00

This prim object requires assembly. It is made up of object parts due to the difficulty of linking too many prims. It is divided into rooms, patios, roof, stairs and furniture. It is basically a bahay na bato with the lower floor whitewashed or plastered. For the second floor I reused the bahay na bato prims.

side view

front view

Download and load in OpenSimulator

http://www.mediafire.com/file/4i12x160qvaet9z/school19thcent.iar (2.98 MB)

Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0 Philippines.

Biblioteca for Open Simulator

2010-12-13T07:50:00.001+08:00

There is nothing surprising in these prim objects. Just a lot of shelves.

What is more important are the virtual books. Or the prim boxes with texture of the title pages of freely available online books. The boxes contain a script that open a browser to the website where the books can be read or downloaded.

I used Touch_Url-loader_1232.lsl script from http://www.free-lsl-scripts.com/freescripts.plx?ID=1208. It is licensed under GNU GPL.

Most of the books were published during the Spanish colonial rule over the Philippines. Some are from later periods, that look back at the Spanish colonial era. It is not possible to use prim flip books at this time for these books are very thick.

Preparing a list of books this way is satisfying for exploration by the user (reminded me of going to a real library; i can almost smell the musky books), but tedious for the designer. The books have to be manually built, textured, named, and scripted one by one. I currently have more than 160 links to books about and from the Spanish colonial era. The screenshot above shows only 12. And I have not ordered them properly in any way.

The idea of having a single notecard giver just provide a list of links to the books does not appeal to me, and seems to waste the value of the virtual experience.

Btw. This would be a good place to put a Sloodle metagloss. I'll look into that next time.

Assembly room of the virtual 19th century school in Open Simulator

2010-12-12T08:35:00.001+08:00

Carpet and curtain textures are from the "Blender Texture Disk" which was released in public domain by the Blender Foundation.

Virtual 19th century classroom for Open Simulator

2010-12-11T06:52:00.000+08:00

I'm building a prim 19th century school for my Philippine History game project. Here is the virtual classroom. One can write on the blackboard using chat. I used Justin Clark-Casey's Grafitti board 0.0.2 script for the board. It comes bundled in Opensim and is available under the BSD License. It can be found in Inventory->OpenSim Library->OpenSim Specific Scripts->GrafittiBoard.

I plan to create another classroom using Sloodle objects. The board will be a Sloodle presenter and there would be quiz chairs. I will release all items the when the entire school is complete.

Prim globe for Open Simulator

2010-12-09T17:21:00.002+08:00

Here are two globes that I will use in my virtual 19th century classroom. They appear to be ubiquitous in reference photos. The first globe is for decorative purposes only as I could not get the texture map to properly align with the UV texture of the prim. The second is anachronistic for the 19th century as it is a current day political map. I would need to find a 19th century map of the world compatible with the cc-by-sa license later on.

Download:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/1wn56qsu7cdfd12/globo_ccbysaph.iar (349.04 KB)
Copyright Roel Cantada 2010

Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0 Philippines.

World Map 1689.JPG retrieved from http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:World_Map_1689.JPG&oldid=46704629. In Public Domain

Political World Map.jpg retrieved from

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Political_World_Map.jpg&oldid=37459536. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Prim steamship for Open Simulator

2010-12-08T07:50:00.002+08:00

This prim steamship has 271 prims. It's very rough as I could not get the curved shapes to fit together properly. There is no furnishing and there is very little detail. This ship will not sail, because I could not get boat scripts to work in Open Simulator. It will remain anchored in a port in world.

In relation to teaching the history of the Philippines in the 19th century, I think the steamship is not only useful for discussing technology and transportation but social classes as well. Passengers in steamships are divided into 1st, 2nd and 3rd classes. Each having different amenities.

Doing research on steamships made me realize how little I know about ships and its history. For instance I used to think that these vessels used paddle wheels even in the late 19th century. I found out that they already used propellers. This prim steamship is not accurate. I could not fully comprehend the ship plans I have, and I could not find enough reference on the layout of the interior.

Btw. the word bapor came from the Spanish word vapor, which means steam. In fact there were vapor tranvias in Manila, and the tren can also be considered a bapor.

Download:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/cmhxkcmx9cm24j8/bapor_ccbysaph.iar (593.46)

Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0 Philippines.

WorldForge's virtual world on Cyphesis server

2010-12-06T19:01:00.000+08:00

Here are some screenshots of the demo Mason game in Ubuntu Lucid amd64. Mason is a game developed by The WorldForge Project. An older version of the server and client is in the Ubuntu repository. Install ember and cyphesis-cpp packages via Synaptic package manager. You would also need postgresql for the database backend.

Cyphesis is the server and Ember is the client. If you install the Lucid packages you will also need to consider this bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ember/+bug/678405, a missing package dependency called ogre-plugins-cgprogrammanager.

Have fun :-).

Open Ryzom on Ubuntu amd 64 Lucid

2010-11-24T17:46:00.000+08:00

I've been looking at other 3D worlds this past few days.

I managed to build the ryzom server on Ubuntu GNU/Linux and used the official Ryzom client for GNU/Linux to connect to it. I did not succeed in running the client from source.When I click on the Ryzom link on the applications menu a dialog box states the ff.

Could not launch 'Ryzom'
Failed to execute child process "/usr/local/bin/ryzom_client" (No such file or directory)

So I opened a terminal and typed ryzom_client but it merely said:

nel_drv_opengl not found

The ryzom official linux client worked but it's menu bar dissappears when the window is moved. The in game menus are at times unresponsive and sometimes freezes. But all in all this is a promising free software.

Ryzom is a full pleged mmorpg. I had never played the game before, but when the world rezzed I 'm impressed. For me the most important visual effect is the animated movement of the avatar. I think it has the same flexibility as the OpenSim avatar. The environment also has a strong visual impact. I think this would be a good platform to create history games. But the code is massive and would require a lot of study. The compiled code is around 11 gigabytes, and the official client is around 6 gig.

I think this is a project the free software community should support.

Beginning a prim steamship

2010-11-20T08:11:00.000+08:00

Prim casco (19th century river boat)

2010-11-20T06:34:00.001+08:00

This flat bottomed boat was quite common in 19th century Pasig river in Manila. It was used to transport goods across the river and along the canals that led to warehouses.

Too bad I couldn't get boat scripts to work properly. When I drop the script on the boat itself it would not move. It probably have something to do with parts of the boat exceeding 10m. When I use a test cube it functions, but when I stand up the cube sinks to the bottom. There must be something wrong with my setting of physics or the lsl script. I would need more study on boats in OpenSim to get this to work.

Downloads

http://www.mediafire.com/file/x88pmzr2iru6a00/casco_ccbysaph.iar (408.47 kb)

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ssbnjku478l4go0/casco_xml.zip (408.79 kb)

Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0 Philippines.

Prim basilica release

2010-11-19T12:04:00.019+08:00

This prim basilica for OpenSim has 1,390 prims. It's bell tower has 90 prims. I am releasing it as an oar file because the basilica is so big it will occupy an entire region/sim.

The basilica has no sculptures and no furniture. The bell tower has no bell. That's because I'm already exhausted doing this build.

Download

http://www.mediafire.com/file/y8aucdya27l0912/basilica_ccbysa.oar (2.43 MB)

Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0 Philippines.

Some lessons learned in building big prim objects

2010-11-18T11:48:00.021+08:00

The basilica prim object has 1,390 prims. I grouped the prims into the parts of the basilica. Facade, dome, nave, aisle, etc. Unfortunately I found out that I was short on sim space at the back and I have to move the entire basilica forward.

My immediate reaction was to link the entire basilica into one object and move it by hand. That worked, but when I have to edit it I could unlink individual prims probably because of nested children. So I unlinked it all again. It took a very long time and resulted in the entire basilica exploding, with 1,390 parts strewn all over the place. I was shocked.

Fortunately I have an oar back up and reloaded from the previous edit. Here are some of the lessons I've learned (which are probably obvious to professional builder).

Always backup with an oar or iar.
Don't link big builds into one object, it will take forever to copy into the inventory.
When moving parts of a big build use build math. That is use + or - the value on the build input boxes rather than manually moving parts. It's a precise way to move stuff around.
Use a test prim when using build math. Test first how much value is needed to move norht, south, etc.
Use prims as a ruler to measure stuff. You can divide it by build math / to get equal parts.
After using build math always select another prim to deselect the edited object. I frequently want to move my avatar to another place, forgetting that when I press the up/down arrow keys the value in the build menu goes up and down instead of the avatar moving.
Frequent editing mistakes are forgetting to enable/disable stretch both sides, and edit link parts.

Measuring prim for the basilica's bell tower. The cork screw sculpty are stairs.

Prim cathedral aisle and buttress

2010-11-17T13:58:00.003+08:00

I'm almost there, just need to work on the back and floor...

Some interior screenshots of the prim basilica

2010-11-17T12:35:00.000+08:00

Prim cathedral transept

2010-11-16T12:34:00.006+08:00

This prim basilica is beginning to take form...

Minor change in the prim basilica's dome texture

2010-11-15T13:13:00.000+08:00

References mention that the dome is covered by fluted red copper so I changed the texture to reflect corroded copper...

Prim cathedral clerestory

2010-11-15T11:11:00.012+08:00

Prim cathedral's nave ceiling and exedra

2010-11-14T06:45:00.002+08:00

ribbed barrel vault

apse

Working on the Prim Cathedral's Nave

2010-11-13T10:46:00.000+08:00

Mesh objects in Opensim Dev

2010-11-11T15:23:00.000+08:00

I tested the "mesh object" feature in OpenSim development version that allows the importation of collada (.dae) mesh files. I used meshes from Big Buck Bunny and the third stage of the Sintel mesh as test; without decimation. I did removed subsurf subdivision in the Sintel mesh due to its size. It was exported using Blender 2.49b as collada1.4 dae files. Here is a screenshot of the result.

It's still very early in development but hopefully by next year we'd have a stable mesh system. The viewer used is the Second Life ® Mesh Viewer for Linux.

Big Buck Bunny characters are copyright of Blender Foundation | www.blender.org and are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. Sintel character is copyright of Blender Foundation | www.sintel.org and is similarly licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.

Reference:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh

Prim cathedral facade - complete

2010-11-10T10:31:00.001+08:00

The complete structure of the cathedral facade. It is still missing statues.

Update on prim cathedral facade

2010-11-08T12:42:00.000+08:00

The facade has 252 prims already...

Beginning a prim object cathedral

2010-11-07T08:59:00.001+08:00

This cathedral is going to be a big build. The floor plan occupies a third of a region already. Seems to reflect how dominating the church was in the 19th century Philippines.

Minor update to mdl glossary/forum display lsl script

2010-11-06T09:43:00.000+08:00

mdl1.99_gloss_rss_feed_0.2.lsl

added time2refresh constant to make it easier to change llSetTimerEvent();

Download:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/hzparj2hgn6nj65/mdl1.99_gloss_rss_feed_0.2.zip (2.78)

Display Moodle 1.99 Glossary/Forum RSS Feed on a Prim in OpenSim

2010-11-05T08:24:00.003+08:00

I found out that there is no need to create a new script for the forum feeds of Moodle 1.99+. The current script below works just fine.

Glossary and Forum RSS feeds on a Prim

I updateD the script to make it easier to format on a prim.

mdl1.99_gloss_rss_feed_0.1.lsl

changes (November 5, 2010)

put constants to be manually changed at top of code (font type, size, color etc.)
put a title header for the glossary

Todo

I need help on the following

wrap long lines on the prim
select which item to display, so as to have multiple prims showing different items

Download:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/h2fu5iu49139bc2/mdl1.99_gloss_rss_feed_0.1.zip (2.94KB)

For a minor update to the script please click here

Display RSS feeds from Moodle Glossary to a prim in Opensim

2010-11-01T09:43:00.004+08:00

I have modified Cnn-rss-feed.lsl which was contributed by Wietse Cassini (but is not credited in the scripts' header) so as to display Moodle glossary RSS feeds on a prim in OpenSim.

Moodle Glossary RSS feed displayed on a single prim in OpenSim

The script was tested on OpenSim 0.7.0.2 and Moodle 1.9.9+ (Build: 20101006). It requires AllowOSFunctions to be enabled in OpenSim.ini. Moodle settings are default.

You need to change the rss url on the script. And also I set llSetTimerEvent to 1 second during testing. Please adjust according to the level of activity in your Moodle site. Generally it should be longer.

One problem I encountered is that the Moodle RSS feed for glossary contains ISO-8859-1 characters (e.g.  , &amp:, etc.) which garbage up the prim texture. It also results in the link to not work in the viewer browser. So the code cleans up the rss feed. But the drawback is that this is hardcoded, i.e. if the format of the rss changes then the display will be messed up. It appears that the Moodle 1.9.9 rss format is different from older versions. I have included another script in the zipped file below that will deal with that.

I'm going to look into doing another for Moodle Forums feed. Enjoy :-).

Downloads:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/3hc5d9q2wgqyhwq/mdl1.99_gloss_rss_feed.iar (121.09 KB)

http://www.mediafire.com/file/q3to35cafqp96v4/mdl_gloss_rss_feed.zip (4.23 KB) - this has two scripts, one for Moodle 1.9.9+ version and another for older versions. Check the RSS file format for deleted texts.

Unofficial sloodleset 1.1 iar for Opensim

2010-10-29T07:30:00.003+08:00

This is a sloodleset1.1 for developers and testers of Sloodle in Opensim. Please DO NOT send bug reports to the sloodle developers about this sloodleset. Post your comments here instead and I'll try to address them as best I can.

I am sharing this in the hope that it helps the development of Sloodle in Opensim.

This sloodleset1.1 is based on a comparison of Fumikazu Iseki's mod of sloodleset 1.0 and the sloodleset1.1 at Sloodle Island. The forum discussion on Fumi.Iseki's sloodleset 1.0 is at http://www.sloodle.org/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=2855.

How was it made?

I simply exported all the scripts in the Sloodle Island sloodleset1.1 and compared it with all the scripts in Fumi.Iseki's sloodleset1.0. Comparison was done with the Meld Diff Viewer which highlights differences in a side-by-side comparison.

Then I determine whether to update a script to 1.1 or retain Fumi.Iseki's mod. There is no modification of the textures, sounds and mesh. Except for the RegEnroll Booth which had the additional box object for hover text.

As of this post I have not tested all the sloodle objects yet. Please post a comment if you test this, on what works and what does not work.

Evaluation

Note that any reference to line numbers below are based on gedit which starts with 1 rather than 0.

Objects with Changes

Main Concern: WebIntercom

Changed Files:
sloodle_translation_webintercom_en
sloodle_mod_chat-1.0

Note: I have not retained the mod code in sloodle_mod_chat-1.0 by Fumi.Iseki because I cannot determine how to insert it in the new code. I replaced it with the 1.1 code. Please help evaluate and check this if it works.

RegEnrol Booth

Changed files:
sloodle_mod_regbooth-1.0
sloodle_setup_notecard

Note: The green hover text that says "Touch me to start web configuration" appears to no longer display.

Added:

hovertext box object

_setText script

Vending Machine

Changed files:
sloodle_translation_distributor
sloodle_mod_distributor-1.0

Removed:

SLOODLE 1.0 Vending Machine (Rev 1) README

Presenter

Changed files:

modified: sloodle_mod_presenter-2.0

sloodle_translation_presenter_en

Toolbar Giver

Changed file:

get a toolbar

Objects without Changes

Quiz Pile-On

Note: The following lines are not in Sloodle Island sloodleset1.1. It is not identified as "for OpenSim" in sloodleset1.0 but the file is listed as modified by Fumikazu Iseki in the forum above. I have decided to retain the 1.0 script. Please check.

Retained 1.0 script:
sloodle_quiz_pile_on_choice
line 46: llSetStatus(STATUS_PHANTOM, FALSE);
line 57: llSetStatus(STATUS_PHANTOM, TRUE);

Lite Toolbar

Retained script: sloodle_toolbar_menu_lite

Note: Lines 106, 107, 130, and 138 do not exist in 1.1 and not identified "for OpenSim". It is identified by Fumikazu Iseki as a mod file for OS in the forum above. Please check.

The following objects are retained without modification except changing the name to 1.1.

Sloodle Set (cellphone look alike main object)
PrimDrop
Quiz Chair
Choice (Horizontal)
Choice (Vertical)
LoginZone
MetaGloss
Password Reset
PictureGloss
Toolbar (Full)

If there is anything that I missed please inform me by leaving a comment here.

Download:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ejatscehdfiyaep/sloodleset1.1_unofficial.iar (2.29 MB)

Sloodle Forum tread: http://www.sloodle.org/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=3314

Bahay kubo prim object

2010-10-28T06:18:00.001+08:00

Everyone please sing the pinakbet song Bahay Kubo (Nipa Hut).

Downloads:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/wd344i9a9s41i8g/kubo.iar (425 KB)

http://www.mediafire.com/file/j44ca4wugko46am/kuboXML.zip (470.57 KB)

Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0 Philippines.

Unfurnished bahay na bato prim object

2010-10-27T06:42:00.002+08:00

This is a 544 prim bahay na bato.

Downloads:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/em1s2cgfem6v2ed/bahaynabato.iar (1.03 MB )

http://www.mediafire.com/file/1aysktd7uoms4jc/bnbXML.zip (1 MB )

Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0 Philippines.

comedor

azotea

sala

a cuarto

antesala

cocheria and cuadra

back

west side

front


east side

Monkey mesh complete

2010-10-24T06:08:00.000+08:00

I finally finished my monkey mesh. I would need to give it fur and materials later.

Bahay na bato second floor windows

2010-10-23T14:03:00.000+08:00

Update on matsing (monkey) head

2010-10-21T09:55:00.001+08:00

While working with sculpties in Blender I thought I update my matsing character in Blender 2.5. This use dummy materials for editing purposes.

A frustrating Opensim bug

2010-10-21T09:52:00.001+08:00

This probably the most frustrating bug in Opensim. There are times when I "Edit linked parts" the part just fly off in the distance, beyond the sim and I can't delete it. When I hit undo sometimes the other parts join the one that flew away. Grrrr.... I can locate the rogue prim object with Imprudence's Advanced-Area Object Search but it does not display asset id or have the ability to delete or take the object from the list.

I wish someone could solve this problem.

Beginning 2nd floor of bahay na bato

2010-10-21T09:49:00.001+08:00

The bahay na bato is real slow to build ....

a sculpty balustrade

Sculptie Shapes for the Primstar Library

2010-10-20T07:18:00.000+08:00

Here are four basic shapes that may be useful for people creating prim sculpties with Blender/Primstar. They are 32x32 with subdivision 0. I find them useful when creating shapes that need a lot of geometry on two dimensions only and no visible insides.

Download

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ej527x89wo7921o/myPRIMS.zip (26.77 KB)

Download and extract. Copy the folder to the primstar library folder which is usually ~/.blender/scripts/primstar/library/
You can rename the folder and the files with something you can remember. They will appear in the list of shapes in primstar.

Beggining bahay na bato prim object

2010-10-18T10:55:00.000+08:00

I am currently working on a bahay na bato. I'm still in the first floor as shown below.

How to compile VTBuilder in Ubuntu Lucid

2010-10-16T09:24:00.003+08:00

VTBuilder with ETOPO data on Ubuntu Lucid

I use VTBuilder as a GIS data converter and preprocessor for creating terrain for OpenSim. Unfortunately there is not Ubuntu package for it and I had to use the windows version. I really don't like to move to another computer or reboot in the middle of a creative experience so I want VTBuilder in my Ubuntu box. But the "General Unix Build Instructions for the VTP Software" at http://www.vterrain.org/Distrib/unix_build.html did not work for my Ubuntu Lucid. So after two sleepless nights I was able to hack the makefiles and successfully ran VTBuilder in Lucid. I still do not know how stable this is or what will work and not work.

Warning: The following information is for people who knows how to compile software from source files in Ubuntu GNU/Linux. It is for an amd64 flavor only. I have not tested it on a 32 bit flavor and anyone wanting to do so, may need to modify the Make.defs file in the vtp4lucid files I've included in this post.

I assume you have an amd64 Ubuntu Lucid box with all the developer files for compiling software e.g. gcc, make, patch, x11proto dev files, etc.

**Files needed**

Source code of the Virtual Terrain Project (VTP) http://www.vterrain.org/
VTBuilder is a tool in this suite.

Get it via svn from http://code.google.com/p/vtp/source/checkout

**Dependencies**

Most of the dependencies are in the repositories. Issue the following:

sudo apt-get install openscenegraph openscenegraph56 libgdal1-1.6.0 
libgdal1-dev libproj-dev proj proj-data zlib1g-dev zlib1g-dbg netcdf-bin 
libnetcdf-dev libnetcdf4 netcdf-dbg tcsh libwxgtk2.8-0 libwxgtk2.8-dev 
libwxgtk2.8-dbg bzip2 libbz2-dev libbz2-1.0 libtiff4-dev  libpng12-0 
libpng12-dev libjpeg62-dbg libjpeg62 libjpeg62-dev libglut3-dev libglut3 
freeglut3 freeglut3-dev freeglut3-dbg glutg3 glutg3-dev libcurl3-gnutls 
libcurl4-gnutls-dev

I may be missing something so check again if errors are encountered during compilation. Some of these files may not be needed but I really do not know, so I probably included more than necessary.

There are three libraries not in the repositories that needs to be built first. These are squish, libMini and Quikgrid. I failed to compile quikgrid so it is not included here.

**Squish**

Fortunately there is a ppa of the squish libraries here https://launchpad.net/~kervala/+archive/ppa. The list of files needed are the following.

libsquish1_1.10.26~lucid0_amd64.deb
libsquish-dev_1.10.26~lucid0_amd64.deb
libsquish1-dbg_1.10.26~lucid0_amd64.deb
squish-extra-dbg_1.10.26~lucid0_amd64.deb
squish-extra_1.10.26~lucid0_amd64.deb

I have included this in the vtp4lucid tools below. Install them with Gdebi starting with libsquish1_1.10.26~lucid0_amd64.deb. Or cd to the folder where you extracted the deb files and issue the following command in a terminal:

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

**LibMini**

The Mini library source code can be downloaded here http://stereofx.org/download. I also included this in the vtp4lucid tools. It's very easy to build and install. You will need tcsh for this one.

1. Open a terminal (it would be bash)
2. type tcsh (you're now in tcsh)
3. cd to the mini source code folder
4. issue the following command

sudo ./build.sh install

It will install the following:

/usr/local/lib/libMini.a
/usr/local/include/mini  folder
/usr/share/mini folder

5. type exit and you will be back in bash

**VTP4Lucid tools**

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/file/enb4ioqdgnxq6dc/vtp4lucid.tar.gz (2.76 MB)

Download the modified makefiles and other needed files including mini and squish at . Extract in your vtp folder. It should replace Make.defs in the root of the vtp folder and Makefiles in the TerrainApps folder. It will also put Data/Culture and Data/WorldMap folders in TerrainApps. These are needed by VTBuilder but not included in the source code.

The Makefiles were modified by changing lgdal to lgdal1.6.0 because it could not find the gdal library in Lucid. The Make.defs file library paths were modified for Lucid.

**Building VTP**

A. Compiling TerrainSDK

1. open a terminal and issue the following commands

export GDAL_DATA=/usr/share/gdal16
export PROJ_LIB=/usr/share/proj

2. cd to TerrainSDK folder
3. type

sudo make install

it will install libraries and header files in /usr/local/lib and /usr/local/include respectively

4. after it successfully compiled issue the following commands in the terminal

sudo export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:/home/dilis/OPT/vtp/TerrainSDK/vtdata:/home/dilis/OPT/vtp/TerrainSDK/vtlib/vtosg:/home/dilis/OPT/vtp/TerrainSDK/xmlhelper:/home/dilis/OPT/vtp/TerrainSDK/vtui:/home/dilis/OPT/vtp/TerrainSDK/unzip:/home/dilis/OPT/vtp/TerrainSDK/minidata

Make sure to replace the path of TerrainSDK above with your setup. There is a need to make the environment variables persistent but I forgot how :-( while doing this build. This may help https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EnvironmentVariables#System-wide%20environment%20variables.

B. Building VTBuilder

You may build VTBuilder alone or the entire VTP suite. I don't know what Enviro and CManager is for. VTBuilder and Enviro worked but CManager did not. When I ran it, it spew out the following error:

Warning: winsize 0 0
Error: OpenGL version test failed, requires valid graphics context.
The program 'CManager' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'GLXBadDrawable'.
(Details: serial 816 error_code 130 request_code 128 minor_code 11)
(Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

1. VTBuilder

a. cd to TerrainApps folder
b. issue the following command in a terminal

sudo make VTBuilder

c. cd to the VTBuilder folder
d. run VTBuilder with

./VTBuilder

2. VTP

To build the VTP suite

a. cd to TerrainApps folder
b. issue the following command in a terminal

sudo make

c. cd to the Cmake, Enviro, and VTBuilder folder
d. run the apps in the same manner as above

Update: SETTING ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES SYSTEM WIDE

1. Put this in /etc/environment file after PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games"

GDAL_DATA="/usr/share/gdal16"
PROJ_LIB="/usr/share/proj"

2. LD_LIBRARY_PATH

a) create /etc/ld.so.conf.d/*.conf e.g.

sudo touch /etc/ld.so.conf.d/*.conf

b) open *.conf in gedit

sudo gedit /etc/ld.so.conf.d/*.conf

c) enter the following in *.conf

/home/dilis/OPT/vtp/TerrainSDK/vtdata
/home/dilis/OPT/vtp/TerrainSDK/vtlib/vtosg
/home/dilis/OPT/vtp/TerrainSDK/xmlhelper
/home/dilis/OPT/vtp/TerrainSDK/vtui
/home/dilis/OPT/vtp/TerrainSDK/unzip
/home/dilis/OPT/vtp/TerrainSDK/minidata

d) run

ldconfig -v

in a terminal

that's all there is to it. Now you can double click on VTBuilder and it will open.

Have fun,

Roel Cantada
http://matangdilis.blogspot.com

update: April 1, 2011, Enviro screenshots. Enviro is looking for a terrain, but I don't know what it is. As you can see the earth view shows only a blank sphere.

How to visualize Philippine GIS data in OpenSim

2010-10-15T07:17:00.098+08:00

Here is how I was able to terraform the OpenSim server using elevation data for the Philippines. I will document the procedure here.

**Software needed**

1. VTBuilder http://www.vterrain.org/Doc/VTBuilder/overview.html (Windows)
http://vterrain.org/dist/VTBuilder_090826.exe
(Note: The vtbuilder listed here only works with Windows. But the VTP software suite can be compiled in Linux. I'll post on that later on.)

2. L3DT Standard Edition http://www.bundysoft.com/L3DT/downloads/standard.php
(Note: L3DT can run on Wine in Ubuntu)

3. The Gimp
4. Opensim Server
5. Hippo Opensim viewer or Imprudence viewer
6. Gimp Terrain http://dominodesigns.info/project/gimpterrain
7. Blank SL raw terrain file - available with terrainerizer script http://stringofbits.net/terrainerizer/

**Elevation data**

1. DTED Philippines GIS Data Depot http://data.geocomm.com/catalog/RP/datalist.html
2. ETOPO1 Global Relief Model www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/global/global.html

**Procedure**

//Preparing geospatial data for 3D visualization//

DTED data in VTBuilder

Import elevation data in VTBuilder
Use the Area Tool to select the Philippines
In the Area Tool menu open the Match Area and Tiling to Layer dialog
Set Tile LOD0 Size: to 256
Now open the Area Tool->Merge and Resample Elevation dialog
Select To file and fill in the path to filename of .bt file
Click ok to write the .bt file
Close VTBuilder

ETOPO data in VTBuilder

//Preparing the PNG heightfield map//

L3DT Screenshot

Open L3DT and import the .bt file
Calculate the other maps (I found the water map useful for masking sea level elevation)
Clip unknown data via Operations→Heightfield→Clip heightfield. Set to Clip below and To height to something like -100. Unknown data will result into an abyss in OpenSim where the avatar may fall endlessly until it is regenerated in the home position.
Export heightfield map, and for the DTED elevation data, export the water map as .png files. These maps should have a size of 2048x2048 pixels.
Close L3DT

//Preparing the SL raw files//

//Additional image editing for DTED files//

The DTED elevation data had sea level as the lowest elevation. This results in the entire region being dry land and no ocean. I needed to lower the sea level so that there will be oceans in OpenSim. To do this I turned the water map into a mask in the Gimp.

Open the water map .png file in the Gimp.
Color select ocean.
Create new layer with alpha.
Copy and paste color selected ocean.
Bucket fill with black (html notation 000000)
Delete the original water map layer
Open the heightfield map
Copy and past the mask over the heightfield map
Save as .png file

//Tiling the image (The pro version of L3DT can do this automatically)//

Set Edit->Preferences->Default Grid->Spacing to 256 pixels height and width
You'll need to restart Gimp for the change to take effect
Open the heightfield .png image in Gimp.
Enable the following
View->Show Grid
View->Show Guides
View->Snap to Guides
View->Snap to Grid

The 256x256 grid should be displayed. There will be 8x8 tiles. Pull out guidelines from the ruler and match them exactly to the gridlines.

Then Image->Transform->Guillotine. Gimp will open 64 windows of each tile. You'll have to save each file. The produced DTED tiles for my sample is shown below:

//Creating the SL raw files//

Install the Gimp Terrain plugin by copying the file_slraw.py file to your Gimp plug-ins directory.
Open the blank.raw file that comes with terrainerizer.

   1. Open your blank terrain file (blank.raw) and the heightmap in the Gimp.
   2. Using the Rectangle Select tool, select a 256×256 pixel section of the heightmap, starting in the upper-left corner.
   3. Click Edit -> Copy
   4. Select the terrain file and make sure the Height layer is selected.

   5. Click Edit -> Paste. You should see the section of the heightmap you copied appear as a floating layer.
   6. Click Layer -> Anchor Layer. The Height layer should now look like the copied portion of the heightmap.
   7. Click File -> Save As and save this file as a new file with the .raw extension.

Now, repeat this process for every 256×256 pixel section in your original heightmap."

Close The Gimp.

//Preparing the adjacent multiple region in OpenSim//

In the OpenSim server console issue these commands for every region

create region RegionName

It will ask for some information, the following are important.

location
port address
master avatar firstname, lastname and password

The map above list the location (in red) and port numbers (in blue) for each Etopo tile:

It grows eastward and northward, as the reference increases. e.g.

x, y
1000, 1000 - origin region
1000, 1001 - north
1001, 1000 - east

//Uploading the raw terrain files to OpenSim//

Issue the following commands in the OpenSim server console

change region RegionName
terrain load /path/to/xxx.raw
terrain multiply 0.2
terrain elevate 18.75
terrain bake
terrain save xxx.raw

0.2 and 18.75 are numbers for the DTED data. The ETOPO data required terrain lower 164.5 and there was no need to multiply it.
Saving the terrain makes sure all the modifications are in the raw files.

//Editing terrain in OpenSim//

This is not a 2d drawing in OpenSim but the generated Philippine map based on the data.

Run the Hippo Openmetaverse viewer (or Imprudence viewer).
View the terrain. Fly around.
I've noticed a problem with sea level land like Central Luzon and Manila which are flooded. (How do they keep these places dry? dikes?). There are also problems with inland lakes like Taal lake and Lake Lanao. These are above sea level and will appear dry. I would probably need prim water for these lakes.

Comparison of ETOPO and DTED data visualization in OpenSim

DTED Laguna

ETOPO Laguna

DTED Corregidor Island

ETOPO Corregidor Island

In my opinion the DTED data is best for land above water, while the ETOPO data is best for undersea land. Rivers are not seen in the ETOPO data.
The DTED data is very rough compared to the Etopo data.

To edit the terrain, click on Build and then Terrain (Bulldozer icon). Lower, raise smooth whatever needs editing. Remember you can always reload the raw data in the server if things get too ugly.

OpenSim as a visualization tool for GIS data will not only be useful for teaching geography at a distance but may also be useful for GIS training and geology.

**References**

Amante, C. and B. W. Eakins, ETOPO1 1 Arc-Minute Global Relief Model: Procedures, Data Sources and Analysis. NOAA Technical Memorandum NESDIS NGDC-24, 19 pp, March 2009. Available at http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/global/global.html

Are these data and images copyrighted?
No, all of our data and images are in the public domain, unless specifically marked otherwise - with the notable exception of trademarks, logos, and trade names such as the NOAA emblem and the Department of Commerce seal which are the property of the U.S. Government and are trademarks of the Commerce Department and require permission for use. All other images, and data, are available for your use. We would appreciate a link/credit/byline, as appropriate. For example:

"Computerized digital images and associated databases are available from the National Geophysical Data Center, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/."

We also ask that you please cite the original data contributors and sources of funding when you use data from NGDC. As required by 17 U.S.C. 403, third parties producing copyrighted works consisting predominantly of the material produced by U.S. government agencies must provide notice with such work(s) identifying the U.S. Government material incorporated and stating that such material is not subject to copyright protection.

For more information, please see the NGDC disclaimer and copyright notice. http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/ngdcinfo/privacy.html#disclaimer

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/faq.html

GIS Data Depot http://data.geocomm.com/catalog/RP/datalist.html
All of the data available via the GIS Data Depot is free of a copyright.

L3DT Standard Edition
L3DT Standard is the freely available general-use version of L3DT.

VTBuilder
This software is entirely free to use and redistribute, with this license. http://www.vterrain.org/Doc/VTBuilder/license.txt

Balthazar. Large 3D Terrain. In B's World [Blog]. http://balthazarsin.blogspot.com/2007/09/large-3d-terrain.html.

Balthazar. Digital Terrain Elevation Data. In B's World [Blog]. http://balthazarsin.blogspot.com/2007/09/digital-terrain-elevation-data.html

Using L3DT. In OpenSim wiki. http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Using_L3DT

Wiggins, P. (2009, September 8). Tutorial: Creating OpenSim terrain with Blender. In A Random String of Bits [Blog]. http://stringofbits.net/2009/09/tutorial-creating-opensim-terrain-with-blender/

Marama, D. (2009, July 28). Second Life Terrain Import and Export for The Gimp. http://dominodesigns.info/project/gimpterrain

Philippine terrain in OpenSim

2010-10-14T07:13:00.000+08:00

I had to drop this from my project as it involve 64 sims. GIS data was used to create the terrain. I'm going to post the documentation on how I did it later. This proves that OpenSim is not just a toy, it can be used for teaching GIS, geography and geology at a distance.

Some screenshots of the islands...

North Luzon

South Luzon

Central Visayas

Samar-Leyte

Mindanao-Zamboanga Peninsula

Mindanao-Davao

How to create animated sculpties for OpenSim in Blender part 2

2010-10-10T09:25:00.011+08:00

In part 1 we have created the sculpty maps for an animated sculpty with Blender/Primstar. Now we will rez the animated sculpty in OpenSim.

I assume you have a running OpenSim server and know how to use a viewer like Imprudence or Hippo.

Prepare the Primstar box for rezzing the sculpty

     1. Build a box and name it "Primstar". Make sure the first letter P is capitalized.
     2. Take this box into your inventory.
     3. Build another box, we will call Box-X.
     4. Edit the Box-X and in the contents, drop the Primstar box into it.
     5. Upload all your sculpt maps from the previous tutorial.
     6. Drop the sculpt maps in Box-X contents.
     7. Create a new script inside Box-X.
     8. Open the lsl script exported by Primstar in an editor outside your OpenSim viewer e.g. gedit or notepad.
     9. Select all and copy.
   10. Paste the contents in the new script in Box-X in OpenSim and save.
   11. Close the OpenSimn editor.
   12. Box-X will ask for the permission to link objects. Answer “yes”.
   13. Click Box-X to generate your sculpty.

For additional information on creating multi-sculpties in Primstar please check out this tutorial: http://blog.machinimatrix.org/2010/04/02/sculpted-prims-part-iii/

Edit the sculpty. Delete extra appendages.

   14. You can now take Box-X to your inventory as we will no longer need it.
   15. In the horse example in this tutorial there will be a lot of legs. One sculpty prim for each leg.
   16. Unlink all the extra legs and delete. We only need the original. If you want you could've taken care of this during the baking of the sculpty in Blender/Primstar. Select only the original mesh and bake a new SL lsl file. Do not overwrite your animated sculpty lsl directory! You can use this second lsl file to generate the sculpty so you don't have to erase legs.
   17. Drop all of the leg sculpt maps in the horse.
   18. Create a new script in the contents of the horse.
   19. Copy and paste this trot lsl script I've written.

//Trot sculpty animation script. 
//Copyright (C) 2010 Roel Cantada.
// This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
// it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
// the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
// (at your option) any later version.
//
// This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
// but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
// MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
// GNU General Public License for more details.
//
// You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
// along with this program.  If not, see .
//


string flegLrest="flegL"; //legs at rest or standing position
string flegRrest="flegR";
string hlegRrest="hlegR";
string hlegLrest="hlegL";


string flegLmap;
string flegRmap;
string hlegRmap;
string hlegLmap;


//make sure number of sculptmaps for all list are the same! Put all maps in the prim with the script.
list flegLsculpts=["flegL2", "fleg4", "flegL6", "flegL8"]; //left front leg frames
list flegRsculpts=["flegR2", "flegR4", "flegR6", "flegR8"]; //right front leg frames
list hlegRsculpts=["hlegL2", "hlegL4", "hlegL6", "hlegL8"]; //right hind leg  frames
list hlegLsculpts=["hlegR2", "hlegR4", "hlegR6", "hlegR8"]; //left hind leg  frames

integer count;
float speed=0.2; //speed of frame change in seconds
integer framelen = 4; //number of sculpt maps per leg


default
     {
     state_entry()
          {
          llSetTimerEvent(0);

//make sure the link number of the child prim is correct, 1 is the root prim and the rest are child prims.
//the last prim to be linked will be 2.
          llSetLinkPrimitiveParams(8,[PRIM_TYPE, PRIM_TYPE_SCULPT, flegLrest, PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_CYLINDER]);
          llSetLinkPrimitiveParams(7,[PRIM_TYPE, PRIM_TYPE_SCULPT, flegRrest, PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_CYLINDER]);
          llSetLinkPrimitiveParams(6,[PRIM_TYPE, PRIM_TYPE_SCULPT, hlegRrest, PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_CYLINDER]);
          llSetLinkPrimitiveParams(5,[PRIM_TYPE, PRIM_TYPE_SCULPT, hlegLrest, PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_CYLINDER]);
          }

     touch_start(integer num)
          {
          state walk; //switch to walk state
          }     
     }
     
state walk
     {
     state_entry()
         {
         llSetTimerEvent(speed);  //start trot
         }
    
     touch_start( integer num )        //stop trot
         {
         state default;
         }

     timer()
         {
         if (count == framelen) 
             {
             count=0;
             }
         flegLmap=llList2String(flegLsculpts, count);
         flegRmap=llList2String(flegRsculpts, count);
         hlegRmap=llList2String(hlegRsculpts, count);
         hlegLmap=llList2String(hlegLsculpts, count);

//make sure the link number of the child prim is correct, 1 is the root prim and the rest are child prims.
//the last prim to be linked will be 2.

          llSetLinkPrimitiveParams(8,[PRIM_TYPE, PRIM_TYPE_SCULPT, flegLmap, PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_CYLINDER]);
          llSetLinkPrimitiveParams(7,[PRIM_TYPE, PRIM_TYPE_SCULPT, flegRmap, PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_CYLINDER]);
          llSetLinkPrimitiveParams(6,[PRIM_TYPE, PRIM_TYPE_SCULPT, hlegRmap, PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_CYLINDER]);
          llSetLinkPrimitiveParams(5,[PRIM_TYPE, PRIM_TYPE_SCULPT, hlegLmap, PRIM_SCULPT_TYPE_CYLINDER]);
         ++count;
         }

     }

20. Make sure that the child prims' link numbers are in order. 1 is for root prim, 2 for the last prim to be linked etc.
21. Click on the horse and watch it run. Click on it again to stop.

The trot script makes the horse run in place. There is still a need to probably merge this script with a drive script to make the thing run around OpenSim.

Have fun!

Downloads:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/iq5k1njwa5o0nby/animkabayo.iar (172.9 KB ) licenese under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Philippines . Copyright (C) Roel Cantada 2010.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/8rrwq5u76aq1v2k/trot.lsl.zip (1.18 KB) licensed under GNU GPLv3.0. Copyright (C) Roel Cantada 2010.

How to create animated sculpties for OpenSim in Blender part 1

2010-10-09T09:10:00.002+08:00

Prerequisites: This tutorial assumes you know how to use Blender 2.49b with the Primstar plugin and OpenSim.

I found very little information on how to create animated sculpties in Blender in the Internet. What we need are sculpty maps for every frame of animation and an lsl script to change those maps in a loop. In this part of this tutorial we will create the sculpty maps in Blender with the Primstar plugin.

I will not teach you how to model or rig meshes. I assume you already have a fully rigged sculpty mesh.

Create the sculpty in Blender/Primstar

     1. Select the object you wish to animate and copy (shift-d) in Blender Object mode.
     2. Move the copy to another layer
     3. Go to Blender pose mode and pose the copy
     4. Apply the armature modifier. The armature modifier is in the editing buttons group, modifier panel.

5. Clear your transformations to reset the original. Blender pose mode Menu-Pose-Clear-Clear User Transform.

Notice that we did not use frames. The animated frames are separate object copies of the original sculptie mesh.

Warning: Do not move/transform the copy in Blender Object mode or the center will change. Change it only in Blender Pose Mode or Edit mode.

The copy will have the original UV image assigned to it. We will need to create new UV images for each copy.

     6. Select each new object
     7. Go to Blender Edit mode
     8. Select all vertices of the copy
     9. In the Blender UV/Image editor click Image-New. Create a 64x64 image and save.

Unfortunately this will be a labor intensive endevour if you use a lot of frames. It will also be prone to error. I hope someone could come up with an automatic way to do this.

Check your sculpty

Make sure the following requirements for baking multi-prim sculpties are followed:

     10. Go to Blender Object mode
     11. Select all objects
     12. Menu-Clear/Apply-Apply Scale/Rotation to ObData
     13. Check if you parented the original and copies to the root mesh. You can check this in the Blender Outliner window. There should only be the root mesh listed at the highest node of the tree.
     14. If you mirrored any of the parts then mirror the UV as well in the Blender UV/Image. Otherwise your sculpty will be inside out in OpenSim.
          a. Select the object mesh
          b. Select all vertices so that the UVs menu item will appear in the UV/Image editor
          c. Go to the UV/Image editor and select all the UV vertices. Your UV grid should be colored yellow.
          d. Click UV/Image editor-UVs-Mirror-X Axis (or Y Axis depending on how you mirrored the object mesh)

Bake the Sculpt Meshes

     1. Go to Blender Object mode
     2. Select all objects (including static parts)
     3. Blender top menu-Render-Bake Sculpt Meshes

4. Check "Keep Center"

5. Bake

Save the sculpty as an SL LSL file

1. Click on Blender top menu-File-Export-Second Life LSL (to dir)

You should have an lsl file and the sculpt maps.

Note that I did not included the textures of the sculpty. For information on texturing sculpty meshes in Primstar see http://blog.machinimatrix.org/2010/03/10/sculpted-prims-ii-blenderjass2/.

Part two will deal with rezzing the animated sculpty in OpenSim.

Downloads:

The example here uses the Alex horse rig by Wayne Dixon which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/au/ and can be downloaded at http://www.blendswap.com/3D-models/animals/alex-2-5-2/.

Horse mesh by Roel Cantada copyright 2010.
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Philippines

http://www.mediafire.com/file/2jdvjrtwlczjtvq/animsculptkabayo.blend.zip (1.1 MB)

Prim kariton and kalabaw

2010-10-06T14:36:00.000+08:00

This kalabaw needs a bath. I was in a hurry to do the textures.

Downloads

http://www.mediafire.com/file/2c76upuue1vyb76/kariton.iar (643.25 KB)
http://www.mediafire.com/file/fqwj4r2th4iin3s/kariton_xml.zip (644.49 KB)

Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0 Philippines.

Garrote prim object

2010-10-05T11:12:00.000+08:00

The garrote is a humane execution machine, at least in the same sense as a guillotine. Humane here is measured in terms of speed of death rather than justice. Contrary to popular belief it is not meant to slowly strangle the victim but to sever the spinal cord with a spike or metal blade attached to the screw. Unfortunately if the executioner do not know how to operate it, it may take a few more tries.

This is a good example of using Virtual Worlds for NPIRL historical situations. One application is to "garrote" your students when they fail your tests ;-).

In the downloads below I used a basic sit script by Mo Hax posted here http://www.osgrid.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=91&start=0. You can replace that with your own sit script.

Downloads

http://www.mediafire.com/file/cobpah7vdlrn8b1/garrote.iar (202.18 KB )

http://www.mediafire.com/file/bn1b6sfo178bz6j/garrote_xml.zip (198.5 KB )

Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0 Philippines.

Puente de España en Manila

2010-10-04T14:31:00.001+08:00

Prim object of the Puente de España in Manila. It was built in 1875 to replace the Puente Grande that was damaged by the 1863 earthquake. Currently the Jones Bridge stands in its place.

My Indio Look

Downloads

http://www.mediafire.com/file/l3ctqqocst3oyxc/puente_de_espana.iar (2.18 MB)

http://www.mediafire.com/file/1lw7ucfjtzu341u/puente_de_espana_xml.zip (1.18 MB)

Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0 Philippines.

Prim train station

2010-10-02T07:02:00.000+08:00

This is supposed to be modelled after the Tutuban Station in Tondo Manila, but I did not have any photo reference of the interior or the back. So only the facade is represented. The rest is imaginary. The arches of the second floor is also more curved here due to the need to conserve prims. In terms of teaching, this would be a good starting point for research on the history of architecture in the Philippines. Oh, incidentally, the pagoda like facade appears to have been around the American era due to the addition of the roof above the windows of the second floor. There are historical photos showing the station without it.

I am unable to provide as much detail as the prim count for this station had already balooned to 500 prims. I had to abandon the decorations of the first floor, even the doors. The second floor is mostly texture. But I found out that the best way to create textures is to start with a multiprim object and then take a snapshot of that object. The snapshot is then used as the base texture and edited in the Gimp.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/dyf5o8sqq9y651j/tren_istasyon.iar (719.58 KB )

http://www.mediafire.com/file/w38dmkr6l3aqh93/tren_istasyon_xml.zip (789.54 KB )

Copyright Roel Cantada 2010
Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0 Philippines.

Prim train cars

2010-09-28T06:46:00.001+08:00

Downloads:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/t8pd69tvp9dd3jt/tren_car.iar (524.11 KB)

http://www.mediafire.com/file/xw9v0otz62mt499/tren_car_xml.zip (427.41 KB)

http://www.mediafire.com/file/zyn4y986waa69ky/tren_carend_xml.zip (486.77 KB)

Copyright Roel Cantada 2010
Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0 Philippines.

Train engine animation test in OpenSim

2010-09-27T11:53:00.002+08:00

Test of a train engine in OpenSim. Using Nebadon's train script (http://osgrid.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=726&view=previous), Ama Omega's smoke script (http://www.free-lsl-scripts.com//freescripts.plx?ID=1381) for the black smoke, and Keknehv Psaltery's smoke script (http://lslwiki.net/lslwiki/wakka.php?wakka=ParticleLibrarySmoke) for steam.

Smoke and steam

2010-09-26T06:20:00.000+08:00

Testing smoke and steam scripts.

train engine update

2010-09-24T06:29:00.001+08:00

This is my impression of a train cab. It's not accurate as I do not have the time to check out the train at the PNR. I simply put gauges, valves, pipes and a firebox together. A more historically accurate train engine can be built later.

Downloads:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/0jwgo49sg1vhc07/tren1.1.iar (215.95 KB)

http://www.mediafire.com/file/vamj5pd25lu8oi2/train1.1_xml.zip (226.29 KB)

Copyright Roel Cantada 2010
Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0 Philippines.

Manila Railways train engine

2010-09-23T10:27:00.001+08:00

This is a prim object of a Manila Railways (currently PNR) train engine. I have yet to finish the interior because I forgot what the furnace looks like.

Downloads:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/lpff13x1oyang8v/tren1.iar (110.35 KB)

http://www.mediafire.com/file/imfbxn74x4c4762/tren1_xml.zip (117.51 KB)

Copyright Roel Cantada 2010
Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0 Philippines.

Prim object trambiya

2010-09-22T13:06:00.000+08:00

This is a horse drawn tranvia, also called a horsecar or tram.

Downloads:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/o6kfdy9byfn0scj/trambiya_final.iar (555.65 KB)

http://www.mediafire.com/file/o6kfdy9byfn0scj/trambiya_final.iar (555.65 KB)

Copyright Roel Cantada 2010
Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0 Philippines.

The seat textures are not so good for this build.

Kalesa prim object for Opensim

2010-09-21T06:23:00.001+08:00

This is a the common kalesa. It's a two passenger horse draw cart.

Downloads:

Updated because I missed a suspension in the earlier posted files:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/y8n9ydbdz1nxdam/kalesa2.iar (382.25 KB)

http://www.mediafire.com/file/1jnp4rixi0vjr5r/kalesa2_xml.zip (387.38 KB)

Copyright Roel Cantada 2010
Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0 Philippines.

karitela for OpenSim

2010-09-20T12:35:00.000+08:00

This karitela or kalesa from the 1800s is less well known. It's a four passenger cart with the door at the back. Seems to be the precursor of the jeepney. It interestingly has an axle bent at 90 degree angles. The prim had been exaggerated in size to accomodate avatars.

Downloads:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/mvuqmtgqisq9f7a/karitela_xml.zip (313.07 kb)

http://www.mediafire.com/file/uzqq83c5o6anny8/karitela.iar (317.35 kb)

Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0 Philippines.

Prim horse version 0.1

2010-09-19T09:40:00.000+08:00

Here are the imprudence xml, iar and blend files of my sculptie prim horse. All files are released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Philippines license. To attribute you may use the following:

Cantada, Roel. (2010). Sculptie prim kabayo. Licensed under CC-by-SA 3.0 Philippines. Available at http://matangdilis.blogspot.com.

Downloads:

kabayo.iar (129.9 kb) - To upload this file to OpenSim, issue the following command in the OpenSim console:

save iar    kabayo.iar

kabayo_xml.zip (130.79 kb) - Unzip then import the xml file into OpenSim with the Imprudence viewer.

horse.blend.zip (295.42 kb) - this blend file requires the primstar plugin to be installed in Blender. You may want this if you wish to generate sculpt maps in different resolution, modify the mesh and make it better, or create a different texture.

I must warn you that the prim mesh is my first try at sculpties. The head in particular needs improvement because I failed to take into consideration the geometry of the eyes and nose.

Have fun :-)!

Prim horse's mesh is complete.

2010-09-18T06:16:00.001+08:00

Next I would need to texture it.

Prim horse's head

2010-09-16T09:15:00.000+08:00

I'm currently making assets for my project Philippine history game. An island environment is set in the 1800s and I would require horses for kalesas. So I started making a sculptie horse and here is a screenshot of my first head with test texture.

I used blender with the primstar plugin. Then the sculptie map was uploaded in a local OpenSim server in my PC. I found working with prims really difficult as I am constrained to work with exactly 1024 faces. I can't add or subtract vertices, so this head took a couple of tries before I found an approach.

I'll share the sculpt maps when the horse is finished. Next project are body and legs.

Genius G-pen 560 for Ubuntu Lucid

2010-09-13T12:58:00.002+08:00

The configuration of the Genius G-pen 560 had changed for Ubuntu Lucid. The G-pen 560 is an aiptek pen tablet and requires the xserver-xorg-input-aiptek driver. Install it with Synaptic. then download my configuration files here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/u9z55zgiz1l9p88/gpen560conf.zip

unzip the file
copy 69-xserver-xorg-input-aiptek.rules to /lib/udev/rules.d directory
copy 10-aiptek.conf to /usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d directory

You must be root to copy these files. You can use the following commands:

sudo cp 69-xserver-xorg-input-aiptek.rules /lib/udev/rules.d
sudo cp 10-aiptek.conf /usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d

There is NO need to issue xinput set-button-map Aiptek 1 3 2 4 5 unless you want remap buttons, i.e. swap the middle and right mouse buttons equivalent on the side of the pen.

Reference:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AiptekTablet?highlight=%28%28AiptekTablet%29%29

Blender's new uv texture button is a bad interface design.

2010-08-23T12:03:00.004+08:00

I really find the uv texture new button badly designed. When you're in object mode it copies an active uv texture but when you're in edit mode it creates a new uv texture. Why not just put a copy uv texture button so we don't have to remember if were in edit mode or object mode before we hit new uv texture?

There should be one function for one button, this has two. Very frustrating at times especially when you're engrossed in the work.

Blender 2.5 animation with shape keys

2010-08-02T11:02:00.002+08:00

I'm trying to familiarize myself with the Blender 2.5 beta UI. I think it is better than the older UI, it just needs some getting used to. Here is an animation of the default cube using shape keys.

How to create a launcher for programs that require a terminal command in Ubuntu

2010-07-10T12:48:00.000+08:00

Have you ever encountered a zipped program for Ubuntu that requires a command to be entered in a terminal? And when you create a launcher with that command it never start. Then here's a tutorial for you.

Right click Applications menu bar ->Edit Menus
The Main Menu dialog box should open

In the Menus panel select the folder of the application
Click on the any item in the Items panel
Click the +New Item button
The Launcher Properties dialog box should appear

Type the Name of the application
Then in the Command text box enter the following:

gnome-terminal --working-directory=[directory] -e [command]

Examples:

OpenSim

gnome-terminal gnome-terminal --working-directory=/home/matangdilis/programs/opensim/opensim-0.6.9-binaries/bin -e 'mono /home/matangdilis/programs/opensim/opensim-0.6.9-binaries/bin/OpenSim.exe'

eAdventure

game editor

gnome-terminal --working-directory=/home/matangdilis/programs/eAdventure-v1.0-RC1-Multiplatform-English/ -e /home/matangdilis/programs/eAdventure-v1.0-RC1-Multiplatform-English/run-eAdventure-editor.sh

game engine

gnome-terminal --working-directory=/home/matangdilis/programs/eAdventure-v1.0-RC1-Multiplatform-English/ -e '/home/matangdilis/programs/eAdventure-v1.0-RC1-Multiplatform-English/run-eAdventure-engine.sh'

Close the dialog boxes and click on your new menu item to run your application. Enjoy.

Globe Tattoo on Ubuntu Karmic

2010-05-09T06:45:00.002+08:00

I retried globe tatoo on Ubuntu today. One of the things that I was unable to do before was use the SMS to check my balance. Poisonjin's instructions worked for me, you can read it here http://poisonjin.livejournal.com/37314.html.

The instructions which I modified is as follows:

Install the linux-backports-modules-generic package and gnome-phone-manager (for sending and receiving SMS).
Plug in your Tattoo Huawai USB modem.
Right click NetworkManage, select Edit Connections.
At the "Mobile Broadband" tab, select Add. The wizard to set up a mobile broadband connection appears.

An alternative to 3 and 4 is left click on the network icon and select new gsm broadband etc (assuming you have no previous globe telecom internet listed ). A wizard will appear allowing you to select Philippines then Globe. You will still need to follow 3 and 4 to change the following things two things: change the APN from "internet.globe.com.ph" to "http.globe.com.ph". And I would have to add to poisonjin's instructions is to check the box that says make the available to all users or something. I was not able to connect to the Internet when that was disabled, eventhough I was connected to globe.

The Phone Manager can be found in Applications-->System Tools. Don't expect a dialog box to appear. Instead an icon in the menu bar should appear. It would probably have a red zero with slash, which means it is unable to connect to the phone. Right click on the icon and select Preferences. A dialogue box will appear, Click on the "Connection" tab. Select "Other port" and cycle through any one of the following that will work:

/dev/ttyUSB0
/dev/ttyUSB1
/dev/ttyUSB2

If everything is set up correctly you should see a phone icon near the globe network connection icon in your menu bar.

To send SMS click on the phone icon, ex. type 222 in Recipient and BAL in the Message text box to query your balance.

A problem with Phone Manager is that it does not seem to have any access to the phone address.

A more serious problem that I have noticed is that when you have an existing mobile broadband setting (e.g. Globe Telecome Internet) and the usb modem is unplugged, xserver seems to become unstable. There are random artifacts of black rectangles appearing on my screen (usually on top of the menu bar) and I am randomly logged out of the xserver. I'm using Ubuntu amd64, gnome, and an nvidia graphics card. Deleting the mobile broadband connection setting restabilize the system. I'm still studying this but I have not reported a bug yet, if you've experienced the same please confirm and report it.

Direct rendering for NVidia binary driver in Ubuntu Karmic

2010-01-21T21:38:00.001+08:00

My desktop's display was sluggish like opening dialogue boxes (as in ctrl-s (control save) in firefox). It was very slow playing 3D games and Celestia in my Ubuntu Karmic AMD64 box.

I have a GeForce 7300 video card and it should not be that slow. I am using the Nvidia accelerated graphics driver version 185. It was only while I was fiddling with OpenSim that I discovered what the problem was. Initially I though it was the OpenSim server, then I suspected the Hippo OpenSim Viewer, so I installed the Open Metaverse Viewer. I was really disappointed that the OpenSim + Hippo was running fast in WinXP but was slow in Ubuntu. I was thinking that the developers didn't care for Ubuntu AMD64 users but later I realized I spoke too soon.

The problem was actually simpler than I thought. My video driver is not using direct rendering. When I opened a terminal box and ran glxinfo it says "direct rendering: No", also in the System Menu->Administration->NVIDIA X Server Settings->OpenGL/GLX Information. But when I opened a root terminal and ran glxinfo direct rendering is enabled. I also checked the xserver log and confirmed that DRI and DRI2 modules are loaded. What happening here?

The problem is that my (NOT-root) user account does not have permission to the video group.

So I simply opened System Menu->Administration->Users and Groups.
I selected my account and clicked the key button to make changes.
Clicked on Properties. Then Use Priveleges tab
Then I checked "Use video devices"
I logged out and logged in back again. Or restarted the system.

Sure enough when I looked at /etc/group I was listed in the video group i.e.

video:x:44:username

I rechecked glxinfo and the NVIDIA X Server Settings and both says:

"direct rendering: Yes"

Now my 3D applications are running way faster. Including OpenSim on Hippo and the Open Metaverse viewers.

This is just one of those things that no one tells us ordinary Ubuntu users, I hope this helps others experiencing this problem.

How to enable the Genius Gpen 560 pen tablet in Ubuntu

2009-09-26T19:58:00.002+08:00

Getting a Gpen 560 to work in Ubuntu Intrepid and Jaunty is easy. It is recognized as an Aiptek tablet. So get the aiptek driver by opening a terminal (or using synaptic) and typing:

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-aiptek

Open a text editor and create a file and save it as 10-aiptek.fdi .

You'll need to type the following code in the file, but don't copy and paste the code below because you might copy html codes needed to display it in Blogger. Instead download the 10-aiptek.fdi.zip file (0.38 kb) and extract it somewhere.


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!-- -*- SGML -*- -->

<deviceinfo version="0.2">
<device>
<match key="info.product" contains="Aiptek">
<merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">aiptek </merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.SendCoreEvents" type="string">true </merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.Type" type="string">stylus </merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.Mode" type="string">absolute </merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.zMin" type="string">0</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.zMax" type="string">1024</merge>
</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>

cd to where you downloaded the file 10-aiptek.fdi and change the owner of the file by typing, then copy it to /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/20thirdparty:

sudo chown root:root 10-aiptek.fdi

sudo cp 10-aiptek.fdi /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/20thirdparty

plug in the gpen tablet.

Making the tablet work in Gimp

Open Gimp. Click Edit->Preferences.
Select Input Devices in the left panel of the Preferences dialog box.
Click on Configure Extended Input Devices...

In the Configure Input Devices dialog box, click the Device: dropdown menu. Aiptek should appear in the list. Select that and in Mode: select Screen. Hit Save and have fun.

In Blender it works like a charm. All buttons work.

For further information see this page: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AiptekTablet

Stopmotion animation with a webcam in UbuntuStudio

2009-09-06T20:40:00.006+08:00

The Stopmotion software for stop motion animation is included in the distribution of UbuntuStudio. The demo here was done with UbuntuStudio 8.04 based on Intrepid.

I used an A4Tech web cam which is v4l2. Stopmotion has a problem with these kind of web cameras so you'll need to follow Aearenda's solution here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=931208 . I do hope they've already solved this in Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04.

Create an mplayer video import device in Stopmotion

Start Stopmotion and in the menu find settings->configure stopmotion or ctrl-P.

Click add button.

Resize the dialog box to see the start deamon & stop deamon text boxes.

Click video import tab.

In the start deamon text box enter the following (change the ~/RENDER/stopmotion/ folder with your preference):

~/RENDER/stopmotion/startmplayer $VIDEODEVICE $IMAGEFILE 2 0.25s .tempjpgs &

In the stop deamon text box enter this code:

killall startmplayer && killall mplayer

Download my startmplayer file from: http://www.mediafire.com/file/zm2ytmnqa2j/startmplayer.zip.

Extract this startmplayer file in the ~/RENDER/stopmotion/ folder, you can change this folder.

Then follow this demo:

Finished product (a bit crude):

Taking a break on proyektong halo-halo.

2009-09-04T15:52:00.003+08:00

I currently taking a break on this project because of my research assignments for my courses in Masters of Distance Education. I will try to catch up later.

Monkey's head

2009-06-24T11:17:00.002+08:00

Monkey's face

2009-06-22T12:58:00.000+08:00

I am beginning the mesh of matsing.

Some more daga renders

2009-06-09T12:25:00.004+08:00

It also appears that lighting have a lot to do with the appearance of the fur. These were done with the default lamp:

Compare with these done with 2 hemis, top and bottom:

And these with 2 hemis top and bottom, plus 1 spot:

Daga blend file release 1.0

2009-06-09T12:08:00.007+08:00

Download link:

daga01.zip (2.69 MB)

I am not particularly happy with this release but I have to suspend my tweaking of this model to move on to the last main character. This is a dirty rat, licensed under licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Please document any modifications in the text info file.

Includes footroll.py from http://graphicall.org/bbb/chars/pyconstraints/footroll.py which is
copyright Blender Foundation|www.bigbuckbunny.org | http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/index.php/about/. footroll.py python script is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).

Problems that I could not solve at the moment includes:
1. The bone driver for blinking doesn't work.
2. The tail flattens when in a particular position like so:

3. The shoulders have ugly deformations in some positions:

Rest position

Deformed position, thankfully the fur hides some of it:

On the positive side is that I did manage to implement footroll, I just don't know if this is correct:

I also made use of a normal map for the details of the ears. The normal map was made using the procedure in Ken Bayer's tutorial "Baking normal maps from a high poly model" in BlenderArt magazine 20 (www.blenderart.org).

Rat fur

2009-06-05T15:09:00.003+08:00

I still need a few tweaks. But something odd happened to my cameras. I can no longer render with more than one camera. When I ctrl-0 another camera, it still renders the view of the last camera. I wonder if this was caused by mesh deform or I accidentally enabled/disabled something.

Test pose for dirty rat.

2009-05-29T14:26:00.003+08:00

Working with the mesh deform modifier is difficult because it cause some unwanted deformations. In this model, I had to exclude the arms from the mesh deformer because it was flattening out the arms. Perhaps this is the reason why the Big Buck Bunny characters had a python script for keeping the volume of the arms.

Mesh deformer of daga

2009-05-27T11:08:00.002+08:00

This is the first time I'll be using the mesh deform modifier. Here is the cage of the dirty rat.

Final mesh for Daga

2009-05-25T11:34:00.004+08:00

This first render was done in gelato.

The rest are blender internal render.

Dirty Rat Character mesh

2009-05-22T11:19:00.001+08:00

Node material setting of Pagong's body and render

2009-05-17T10:53:00.002+08:00

Pagong blend file, minor upgrade to 1.1

2009-05-17T10:46:00.002+08:00

Minor upgrade to Pagong (turtle). I forgot to parent the blinker bones to the head, so it's now corrected. I also tried to reduce the specularity of the shell.

Download link: Pagong 1.1 (7.67 MB)

License info

Pagong's mesh, rig, and textures are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Please document any modifications in the text info file.

Includes footroll.py from http://graphicall.org/bbb/chars/pyconstraints/footroll.py which is
copyright Blender Foundation|www.bigbuckbunny.org | http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/index.php/about/. footroll.py python script is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).

Pagong blend file release 1.0

2009-05-15T17:40:00.002+08:00

Announcing my first release of Pagong (turtle). Mesh, rig, and textures are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Please document any modifications in the text info file.

Includes footroll.py from http://graphicall.org/bbb/chars/pyconstraints/footroll.py which is
copyright Blender Foundation|www.bigbuckbunny.org | http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/index.php/about/. footroll.py python script is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).

This turtle is a character in my halo-halo project animation. It makes use of multiple materials that are vertex assigned and node materials. You can even consider it a walking demo for blender 2.48 materials and textures.

Download link

Pagong 1.0 (7.67 MB)

Enjoy :-)

Test pose for Pagong: Tucked position

2009-05-14T10:36:00.002+08:00

Test poses for Pagong: Standing

2009-05-14T10:30:00.003+08:00

How to create a normal map in Gimp for Blender 2.48a, Part III

2009-05-13T15:49:00.009+08:00

Step 3. Using the normal map in Blender

3.1 Go back to blender or reopen your previous blend file.

3.2 Hit F5-key or Shading button. Then click on materials button.

3.3 Add a new material to your mesh. I renamed mine "normapMAT"

3.4 Hit F6-key or Texture button. Add a new texture.

3.5 Under texture type select "Image"

3.6 In the image buttons group, click on the load button. One of the blender windows will turn into a File browser. Select your normal map e.g. UVnormap1.tga. It's a good practice to turn on "Relative paths". Click the "Select image" button.

3.7 In the "Map Image" buttons group. Enable "Normal Map", then select "Tangent". I also enabled "Extend" and under "Image buttons" "Premul".

3.8 Go back to the materials buttons (hit the button with red sphere). Click on the "Map To" near the Texture tab. Disable "col" and enable "nor" (Text will turn white if enabled and black disabled, yellow if inverse)

That's it. Hit F12 and render your results. Make sure you have a camera and lights.

Rendered result

Blend File

http://www.mediafire.com/file/1340t0mtvvd/normaptest.blend.zip (263.23 kb)

Links

Cocidius' info on the normal map plugin

How to create a normal map in Gimp for Blender 2.48a, Part II

2009-05-13T15:38:00.006+08:00

Step 2. Creating a normal map in Gimp

2.1 Open the UVnormap file in Gimp. Btw. Blender will append the name of the mesh object to the name of the uv map so mine is named UVnormap_Plane.tga.

2.2 Create a new layer where we will draw the texture.

2.3 Draw textures. I did mine with black, white and grayscale. But you can use color, I'm just not sure how the normal map plugin will interpret it. You can actually use photo textures.

2.4 To study the effect of using different gray tones I drew solid lines on half the plane using Circle brush 19 (21x21). And on the other half, fuzzy lines with Circle fuzzy brush 19 (21x21).

2.5 After you've drawn you're texture click on menu->Filters->Map->Normalmap.

2.6 A dialog box will appear. For my turtle texture I've set Filter: Sobel 5x5. And set Alpha channel to "Set to 1", although this might not have any effect. Supposedly it uses the value of a grayscale image (but my image is RGB since the normalmap plugin will not work on grayscale mode).

2.7 You can preview the effect of the normalmap by clicking "3D Preview" button. A window will appear which you can toggle to fullscreen. You can grab and turn around the preview to look at the effect by right clicking and dragging the image. You can changed settings and the preview will reflect the changes. When your happy with the effect click "OK". Your drawn image should turn blue.

2.8 So you can edit your map again save as an .xcf file first. Then click File->Save A copy... . Give your normal map image a .tga extension. Mine is named UVnormap1.tga

Note: Remember that you can also change the height of the bump or depression in Blender, and you can even invert it later on, so you don't really have to tweak too much here.

That's the end of step 2. We now have a normal map, we can use in Blender.

How to create a normal map in Gimp for Blender 2.48a, Part I

2009-05-13T15:18:00.009+08:00

Step 1. Create a UV map in Blender

1.1 Split your window into a 3d view window and a UV/image editor window

1.2 Create a new image

a. With your cursor in the UV/image editor hit Alt-N or select Image*->New.

b. A dialog box will appear with settings. Usual settings are 512, 1024, 2048. The larger the image the more memory will be used by Blender.

c. You may need to select your new image by clicking on the up/down arrow and selecting "Untitled".

d. You may rename your untitled image by clicking on the text box and when it turns red or whatever color your theme is set to, just type in a new name. I renamed mine "UVnormap".

1.3. Unwrap your UV

a. In the 3d view window select your mesh (I have here a plane scaled up and subdivided twice)and go into edit mode by hitting tab-key if you are in object mode or select from the menu.

b. Press a-key to select all vertices/line/faces (the lines should turn yellow, and the faces pink).

c. Hit U-key or select Mesh->UV Unwrap in the 3d view menu. I just selected "Unwrap". The UV mapping will appear in the UV/Image editor window.

1.4 Export your UV

a. Move your cursor on the UV/Image editor window and click on UVs->Scripts->Save UV Face Layout... in the menu.

b. A dialog box will appear and you may need to change size. Here I used 1024 pixels. Then hit OK.

c. One of the windows will turn into a File browser window. Select your folder to save the targa file. Type the name of your file e.g. UVnormap. Then click Save UV (tga). You can also save it as SVG if you selected that in UV export dialog box.

That's the end of Step one. We will now temporarily leave blender and open Gimp to work on the UV map.

Armature of Pagong

2009-05-13T15:11:00.002+08:00

Final texture tweak of Pagong

2009-05-12T15:13:00.002+08:00

Rendered the following with raytraced lighting