Interview with Connie Sec - Second Life, Blue Mars and more

Today we bring you an interview with noted 3d fashionista, Connie Sec.

Connie's virtual photography and art are well known on Second Life and throughout the wider metaverse, so I'm happy she took the time out of her schedule.  In this interview she shares her thoughts on virtual art, Second Life, Blue Mars and hot industry topics...

 Connie Sec

Q - So tell us a little about yourself and your virtual world interests

I began in Second Life (SL) in April 07, expecting some sort of 3D web experience. Before that, I had no experience in 3d worlds, not played any MMO’s such as Warcraft and not used I.M. So I was a total “Noob”. Being in my 1st year at university gave me the time to learn and I realised that I could do things in SL that were fairly impossible for me to achieve in “Real Life” (RL). I found an increasing interest in virtual photography and art that had lain dormant since my school days. As my RL career is in Science, SL provides a welcome break from that side.

I have fun with fashion, but also enjoy the chance to express myself with humor, pathos and the occasional airing of my various neuroses ☺. As time went by, I really did have a second life, fairly separate from my RL. Aside from the social aspects, I love to build a little, and have a sim that I rent prims to some close friends to help pay tier. I have full control over the direction and style of the sim and have basically built my “Dream” home and lived a “Dream” life. Any opinions I have regarding SL or other virtual worlds are colored by my interests, and so, what may be important to me may not be an issue to many others.

Q - You're well known for your stunning fashion shots.  Take us through your process, how does the magic happen?

The process can be different depending upon what the fashion shot is for.

If it’s a shot for a designer, who wants to perhaps use it in their blog or store, this places emphasis upon being able to see their creation. I will either have scouted a location already, or I will build a “set” at my studio or perhaps simply use a RL pic as a texture on a prim in the background. I will then go through hair, shoes and accessories that I feel compliment what I am trying to achieve. I then go through my poses, looking for something that works in the shot. I think I have around 300 useful poses in my 2 pose stands and a few more in my inventory for activation in Sims that don’t allow me to rezz anything. Once I have the general shot worked out I then log into Shadowdraft viewer for actual pic taking. This provides further challenges and need for some tweaking. For example, that viewer handles transparencies a little differently to the “normal” viewer, so it usually requires that I mod transparencies on prims and sculpts to that they look as they would in the normal viewer. As the Shadow viewer is a private project by Kirsten that has its own glitches and frustrations, there are other things I may have to do, that I won’t go into, to achieve anything usable.

Connie's homage to Dior and Galliano collections

I then work on the environmental controls. As that viewer can throw real time shadows in response to sun position, I use it to match lighting direction that may be apparent in any RL background I may use, or even throw shadow onto the background. Approximately half the time to completion is taken actually getting the shot with colour, light direction looking realistic. I may even take 2 shots of the same scene with different lighting directions to later meld together in post to simulate 2 light sources.

Post work is firstly perhaps cropping the pic and melding of shots together. I use an old program called Photodraw 2000 to do the simple things that newer programs make overly complex. I then go onto fixing avatar glitches that may be apparent. I mainly use the brush and Iwarp tool in Gimp. I then turn to Mystical tone and colour using a brush tool to increase apparent resolution and sharpness within parts of the image. I find the max resolution of 1024 x 1024 applied to textures in SL a major drawback to getting detail into images, especially as my pics in a square aspect ratio are at 3000 x 3000. I may apply other post effects such as gradient tinting. This all depends upon if I judge a pic would benefit from other post work. I feel post should enhance what I already have rather than be a distraction or a way to cover up a bad shot. That is a very short description of some of what I may do to get a shot, more detail would require 2 A4 pages of text in Word ☺ On the whole I am very lucky to have designers that allow me free reign to try new ways of doing things. That is the way I feel I have improved.

Q - SL is your main home, what do think of the new capabilities in the Version 2 viewer?

New Second Life Beta Viewer 2

 I’m not a fan of the Beta U.I 2.0. While the aim of making SL easier to come to grips with is laudable, in my opinion, they have failed. Most people I speak to, feel it is even more confusing than the old UI and I agree with them. On a more philosophical note, SL is NOT a web page, and the idea of making the UI more browser like is flawed because of this. Some love to say Virtual worlds are the future of the Web and the UI for Viewer 2.0 is an illogical extension of that thinking. SL is more akin to a game than web pages (in functionality) and virtual worlds will be a subset of the web, not usurp it. SL is much like your computer, it does many jobs, from chatting in IM to pulling up a program to do something disparate. The SL UI should take its cue from operating system interface conventions rather than Firefox.

 While the new features such as an extra layer/ face tattoo and web on a prim is some enhancement and is welcome, I feel it is tinkering at the edges and does very little to drive SL in a direction that virtual worlds will inevitably have to go, and that is greater graphical fidelity. SL will have to break a lot of eggs (content) to move on, such as, improving the avatar mesh, make the AV UV map better and have a more powerful graphical engine to return greater fidelity to the user. The longer they put that off, perhaps, licensing the unreal engine or Cryengine 2, the more pain they will cause the user base and the more chance there will be for someone else to move ahead.

Q - You're a user of open source viewers for SL, which is your favorite and why?

 

Emerald Viewer

For everyday use, I use the Emerald viewer - it offers greater options than the LL viewer. Some of these include, double the attachment points, a worn tab in Inventory, quicker access to commonly used controls, built in radar, avatar identification and sorting of that information. This is not a complete list of functions that Emerald offers beyond that of the “Official” viewer. It also seems more stable than the official viewer. However I may be wrong as I have not downloaded the official viewer for a year or so now.

For photographic work, I use various versions of the Kirstens “Shadowdraft “ viewer

Non fashion virtual photography by Connie Sec

I've used a shadow viewer in some form for almost every pic since Jan 09. To me they give better results than the traditional viewer. All lights cast a shadow and to me, use of local lighting with no shadows cast by them, even if subtly, is unrealistic and cartoon like. Some try to simulate this in post with a shadow on the wall or floor, however they forget that hair too will cast onto the face, or the nose, depending on light direction, will cast onto your cheek.

Q - Probably the most ambitious high fidelity world to come along recently is Blue Mars.  Tell us about your activities and thoughts there?

Blue Mars photography by Connie Sec

I signed up for a developer account in July 09 with the aim of making shapes and skins. Avatar Reality has just released the body/ skin importer. Unfortunately the shape editor is severely crippled, in my view, with the inability to do anything meaningful as far as improving the stock BM AV. Right now in BM you cannot make changes to the AV mesh without severely deforming the animations. They promise improvements are coming. The skin UV templates have been kindly provided by an outside developer. Of course they match no other template in any other program, be it Poser, Daz or even SL. There are opensource programs such as Makehuman, and UV mapping schemes that would make it simpler to create an Avatar. Why must people constantly reinvent the wheel?

My problem now is time. I have a full time job after graduating and have a SL to lead as well, so my time is so constrained that my work on those templates is sporadic. While I congratulate Avatar Reality for attempting to bring a higher fidelity Virtual World into existence, the learning curve in BM for developers / Content creators is so steep that it makes learning to create for SL look like child’s play. This may be its downfall. I will go out on a limb and say it will take BM till the end of the year to get their DEV tools up to a point where Avatar customisation is as wide ranging as SL. A corollary of this is that they cannot go out of beta until the tools are better understood and the bugs and limitations are addressed.

Already there are those that pop in from SL into BM and write it off because of lack of functionality and laugh at the use of chat bubbles (oh so late 80’s), without understanding that it is still in Beta.

Q - Some industry folks are making the argument that virtual worlds are being supplanted or subsumed by casual gaming such as in Facebook with applications like Yoville?  What do you think?

Comparing Virtual Worlds to Facebook type-sites is like comparing Twitter to Blogs. While they have similarities, blogs supply a “richer” experience than Twitter. So too virtual worlds provide a “richer” experience than social networking. SL for example has a “social networking” element, however it provides more than any social networking site. To be metaphysical about it, virtual worlds like SL allow you to build your dreams and share them with likeminded souls. Facebook and twitter allow you to share that you like leftover pizza in the morning ☺

Youville?..cute..I would probably play if I was 8 years old. ☺

Q - What's your personal opinion on browser based 3d virtual worlds?

Browser based virtual worlds can be a good starting point for those new to Virtual Worlds.

 An example of a in-browser 3d world

It will also constrict, at the moment, what you can achieve as far as graphical power and fidelity is concerned. However, if cloud computing takes off, the game will change where anything can be served up into a “browser”. If someone, in my demographic, is using a browser in, perhaps, a mobile device and wants to play a virtual world and has the choice between a cartoon and photorealism, I feel they will choose photorealism. I point to games as an example. With this in mind, I feel the idea of SL using a browser like interface is a retrograde step in this regard. Why have a browser within a browser?

To expand, there will always be a niche for simple virtual worlds. All media is now fragmented into niches, and virtual worlds are not immune. People now gravitate to where their ideas and prejudices are shared, be it the news service they watch, the blog they read or the communities they join within a virtual world. Virtual worlds have to either target a certain niche, or be expansive, and open minded enough, to be able to host disparate communities. In the end it will be “bums on seats” that will determine if a virtual world survives.

Q - Finally, with all that you do online, how do you juggle the hours in your day?

I sleep grudgingly ☺.

To be serious, I had a lot more time for SL and even BM when I was a student, however, now with a full time job, I have to organise my 2 lives much more. Sometimes all I do is log in, shop, perhaps take a commission from a designer and take pics and log off to do post work. My social life in SL has definitely gone on the backburner, which is a sadness for me. My social life in SL has always been a strong influence upon my photography. So too other peoples work, whether it be photos in flickr, C.G. from Poser and others, fashion sites, photography and art. Finding the time to be inspired, learn and to create is certainly difficult.

Thanks for taking the time Connie!

Thoughts on There.com closing

The same week Linden Labs unveiled a huge improvement to their Second Life service, another service, There.com announced its shutdown, a very sad day for all.

 

ArianeBrodie in MTV Laguna Central

Lots of differing views on virtual worlds in the blogosphere at the moment.  Raph is down on virtual worlds as a whole, Hamlet Au takes a more positive stance.

My take?  The whole argument that virtual worlds are doomed, is I think invalid.

Virtual world features and attributes are being more widely adopted than ever, both in pure social environments as well as gameplay worlds.

At the end of the day, it's fun and will always be fun to escape into a fantasy environment where you can roleplay, party, hangout, be creative, meet new people and do whatever you want.

That won't change, and bodes well for virtual environments, especially as the 3d hardware continues to spread throughout the user population

However, several things have changed in the years since There.com was first developed. Expectations are higher:

1/ people want to jump in the action straight away from anywhere, barriers need to be low
2/ they expect their 3d games now to look great
3/ people are spending more time in facebook and in the browser (and so, less time out of them)
4/ people want to see diversity, new things, a sense of aliveness (the "stream" of new content)

Looking at it through this lens, There.com struggling is understandable:

1/ a large download, then learning many functions takes patience(!) (which users now don't have)
2/ avatars looked dated compared with other platforms like IMVU that continued to innovate
3/ can't tap into where people are ie- on facebook and in browser (fundamental limitation of clients)
4/ UGC works best when there are less limits, just look at the amazing catalog in Second Life


Personally, I think the future belongs to those 3d games and worlds platforms that can get new users into the action in seconds, be exposed to diversity and give them the desire to engage more (and spend money!) 

Everyone needs to lift their game (our own world included), and that's a great thing for users and the industry as a whole...

Thoughts on Metaplace - One world shuts, another opens up...

I have to admit, it was a shock to me to hear the news of web world Metaplace.com closing.

Browser based avatar world, Metaplace

Whilst I didn't spend too much time there personally Metaplace always struck me as a pioneering service, in many ways well ahead of its time.

On paper it seemed to have virtually every "tick list" item for a modern MMO/game:
- Flash based
- All in the browser
- Embeddable to other sites
- 3D importing and UGC
- Scripting and support for game designers
- Marketplace
- Level system
- Missions
- Able to build your own worlds
- Facebook connect support
- Live streaming support, highly concurrent spaces
- Designed by famed MMO creator Raph Koster
- Lots of buzz!

Yet with all of that going for it, it failed to gain traction and the decision made to close the site down (the company itself is continuing, perhaps building its own game based on its technical platform - my guess, no inside info)

With so much seemingly going for it, the key question is why?  

Pondering on my own experience on the site and chatting with some Metaplace users and observers there are a few issues that I think were at play...


1/ Avatars didn't seem to "match" the 3d isometric environments

One thing that struck me on Metaplace was the beautiful backgrounds and environments, in lovely isometric view of 3d (pre-rendered) models.  Looking like something out of a wonderful picture book, yet the avatars themselves seemed very simplistic and 2d sprite looking.  This has a bit of a jarring effect, which seemed the avatars were just stuck on top of the lush backgrounds, and this could have made it difficult to connect emotionally with the avatars perhaps

2/ Avatar customizations?

One thing I've learned in my own experience running an avatar community over the past year is the importance users put on self expression and customization.  Everyone wants to wear the style they want, whether emo, punk, futuristic or sexy. Style is important! Actually Metaplace had quite a bit of diversity in looks but perhaps not as much as needed, and it didn't appear the UGC component was applied to helping out in this regard (we have 1000s of user created fashion items in many styles, but still we get users telling us they can't find what they are looking for!).  Some have suggested it was the avatar itself being too small, but Habbo and Gaia disprove that theory for many millions of users. For those though used to 3d avatars in other higher poly worlds such as SL, clearly they couldn't accept the MP avatars.

3/ Built for the builders, but not for the mainstream users


This one is a bit clearer, there was a great amount of feature support and tools added for world builders, but less tools or attractions for your average every day user.  It seemed like a classic chicken and egg situation - not enough users for attracting game devs, and not enough games/content to attract users?  The existing games on the site were ok but not up to the same level as many great flash games now, and the social elements and avatar stickiness perhaps wasn't up to many average users expect.  Perhaps MP should have jumpstarted some high quality gaming with internal development and showcase, and in parallel giving users something to get hooked on...


4/ Who was the audience?

This is an interesting one.  When I spent some time on the site I was struck how there seemed to be two distinct groups of users.  Those older, technically proficient game dev types who loved being able to tinker and create world.  And then a very young tween/young teen female set with "HoT ChiCs" clubs and looking for 14yo boyfriends.  It almost seemed to confirm the 2d avatars suited the young female crowd and the game APIs suited the game devs. 

But there didn't seem to be the missing middle audience, and the older "mainstream" users that you would see on sites like Gaia. I can't say this definitely as I wasn't online that much, but it did seem hard to understand who was the target user for this

Applying lessons?

All of this is very timely as we've just launched our own 3d web world in Frenzoo, funnily enough the same week of Metaplace closing.  The shutdown really brought to light a few things that I we're well positioned on, or areas we have to strengthen up and fast...

1/ Matching background with avatar - we've had this problem for some time, having great 3d avatars but only flat 2d backgrounds.  This was frankly hurting us for retention and a big driver for jumping to full 3d environments which we've done with this launch - now it just seems to look right.

3d avatar and scene in the new Frenzoo beta

2/ Having strong character and outfit customizations so people can identify with and express themselves through their avatar (a lot easier in a higher poly 3d environment thankfully, although much room to improve around body shapes etc)

3/ Balance content creation and social tools
This is not easy, we've tried early up like Metaplace to have a lot of content importing tools (although not as far as scripting support etc) which has helped a lot build an initial set of content, but in doing so we have lagged a bit in social features (eg parties, hangouts etc), which we're now rounding back to rapidly.  Our own experience bears out that this is crucial for average users having a good experience and wanting to return.

4/ Audience... ah the challenge of knowing who you should target, go broader and aim for wider penetration, or go nicher and aim for higher monetization etc  It's something we're still figuring out but getting better at understanding how we make those decisions.  Usability testing and focus groups are great avenues to do that.  We have now realized we need to raise the average age and make the site more mainsteam friendly, which it a road we're heading down at quite a rate of knots...

Final thoughts on Metaplace

All that said, I still think Metaplace had so much going for it and would have been able to be successful over time with more iteration and community building.  After all it took Second Life quite a while to get early critical mass.  Sadly it appeared they didn't have that luxury or decided to steer the boat to a different direction.   Metaplace had many features that were perhaps ahead of its time, and no doubt will be incorporated into other virtual worlds.


PS - It's always sad to see a virtual world end, I joined the final concert in the lead up towards midnight on 1st of Jan and the spirit of those staying to the end was admirable.  I give it to the Metaplace folks for handling the shutdown announcements and closing professionally and with a lot of respect for their fans and users. Wish them all the best with the new project, with a lot of learning behind them I have a feeling it will be a success.

Online worlds & Facebook

Hang on to your hats, this is going to get interesting...

 

Meez avatar busting some moves

They are two of the biggest trends on the net right now.  In one corner, online worlds & virtual chat.  These products continue their ascent picking up millions of new users, more content and more revenue.  They are places where people love escaping their daily lives into a rich online fantasy world and a countless virtual chat messages are being sent out every day.

And in the other corner, Facebook.  We have seen the stratospheric rise of the all conquering blue and white website, with its goal to dominate the planets free time, and a large chunk of its working time too with its endless status updates and army of cute farming mini games.

Hungry to gain more users at low cost, online worlds are hungrily eying Facebook with its hundreds of millions of users as a way to expand their presence. 

What's going to happen?

Well to answer this question we can look at what is already happening.

There a number of online worlds with avatars that have made some forays into Facebook, in some cases dipping their toes in the water through to all out jumping right in.  The different approaches have varied widely in their level of success in these early days, and no doubt there will be a lot of re-adjusting and scrambling to make the most out of the platform in months and years to come.

But first things first, it's important to define the, broadly speaking, two different types of online worlds out there today, because they both have radically different options when it comes to Facebook.

Download client worlds

Second Life, one of the largest download client worlds

You know, the type that you download and install, show up in your start menus and run standalone from your internet browser.

This has long been the defacto standard for 3d virtual worlds, and the two largest 3d online worlds, IMVU and SecondLife both use this approach as well as many others such as There.com

Web browser worlds

These are the 3d worlds that are websites that you access and experience by using Internet Explorer, Firefox or (insert your favorite browser here).

They are not run separately and most use Flash or perhaps a browser plugin to enable the 3d graphics.  Some examples include Smallworlds, Frenzoo and Meez.  Traditionally they have been less graphically demanding than their download client worlds, although increasingly that gap is starting to close.

So what's possible?

Now we have the definitions sewn up, let's take a look at what's technically possible for integration into Facebook:

The "Link Elsewhere" approach 

Let's look at a couple of examples, IMVU, a client download world has a Facebook application that allows you to show and share your snapshots from the game world, view outfit challenges etc but doesn't let you 3d chat or dress up etc.  For that you link to IMVU.com to download the client and then run it separate from your browser and facebook.

Given the huge user base on IMVU and the success of the platform, the number of people using the application is small, likely due to the limited utility it offers within the app. In fact there are far more people who have commented on the fan page on Facebook than user the app. All the action is within their download client.

A similar story with the There.com with their app, "Here and There" that similarly allows you to share your profile / pictures and other limited information. At only 44 monthly active users of the app yet in the millions of accounts on their worlds, it shows the limited appeal of simply a "share your profile" type app:

Self contained experience

One example of a web world who offers a full experience within a Facebook app is Smallworlds.  You can join, play, chat and have all the features on the Smallworlds website without ever leaving Facebook.  It makes for a richer and more user friendly experience:

At over 100,000 active monthly users and growing, this is an example of an app that is working well.

So what's the conclusion?

Pretty obvious from the above, right?

The level of engagement appears orders of magnitude on the self contained apps on Facebook,  proving people in Facebook apps prefer to stay there (simple enough). Forcing people to leave the site to do some or most of the functions translates to a fairly lackluster engagement with the app, so the numbers speak.


Online world operators, take note!
 
Asides and sundry


1 - What about Facebook connect?

You're right, apart from integrating an online world into Facebook, the reverse is possible - enabling Facebook within the world to help make registration and sharing to friends easier.  This does work, and increasingly it's becoming more prevelant, especially amongst the newer websites (for an example, check out Metaplace)

2 - You didn't mention anything about Facebook casual games or apps like Buddypoke?

You're right again, more and more we're seeing cute avatar apps and games that started on Facebook branch out into more sophisticated offerings within the platform, with features and functions akin to some web virtual worlds.  The lines are already blurring and in a couple of years they will disappear, in this authors humble opinion.

3 - What about a product (fan) or group page on Facebook?

Yeah, but that doesn't really count - there is no integration between the world and a Facebook fan page, it's just another channel to publish information and interact with users, but no practical linkages between the two.

4 - Online worlds and games?

What works in online worlds doesn't necessarily work in Facebook apps.  Pure chat apps on facebook haven't been that successful, the ones that have been usually adapt or incorporate gameplay elements.  People like to play games on Facebook, meeting new avatar friends is somewhat secondary.

Pre Christmas Speed Dating Event on Frenzoo

Frenzoo is again organizing a speed dating event in 3d avatars, Christmas themed. The place, date and time will be Sunday 14 December 9:00 pm - 11:00 pm (EST. Time) in Frenzoo's 3d chat.

In these two hours, people online are to be chatting to as many users of the opposed gender. Also, according to the event's description there will be a surprise effect. Wonder what it could be..

Speed dating event in Frenzoo

Frenzoo, the online world will held a speed dating event this Sunday, from 9 to 11 pm EST time. This is the first time this type of speed dating chat session has been held. I'm really excited!

Image from www.ehow.com

Between 9 - 11 pm, when you random chat you'll be setup with someone of the opposite gender.  I've heard there will also be a special 3d effect happening at that time. The effects are already made and look great. Who knows, you might meet the person to share your virtual life with?

3d fantasy & art in virtual worlds

Entry in Koinup 3d fantasy art contest

They are realities not bound in reality...  fantasies are at the core of dreaming.

As a genre, "fantasy" is loaded with magic, mysteries and supernatural powers.  It's easy to lose yourself within a well crafted novel or movie.


Thanks to recent technology advancements, free-form online worlds are now a perfect platforms to actually live out a fantasy experience - they are open platforms where the only real limitations are in the mind, not in the pixels.

Second Life's powerful 3d creation tools and savvy userbase has led to some stunning fantasy sims where members roleplay and interact both in and out of character.

Other platforms such as IMVU have various groups and 3d rooms devoted to fantasy roleplaying (see one of the many Harry Potter fangroups) and on Frenzoo people can mod sims and make their own fantasy fashion and environments.

Fantasy art on Koinup

Some of the best fantasy art is now on show at Koinup, a cross world community for artists and non-artists alike.

A group has been setup and contest currently live to showcase the best of the best, from all the virtual worlds and also games such as The Sims.  It's well worth the visit to help spark your imaginations..