Hi all

Banana asked that I drop a quick blog entry on one of the ways that I have been using Second Life for our clients that makes beach clothing. They are getting ready for the 2009 product line photo shoot and wanted to be very precise in the types of photos they need.

Beach Concept - Meta Magic Studio

So when I saw the “Tahiti” concept build done, I took a few hundred photos (yes that many!) of the type of pictures and feelings that the client could choose from.

I asked Banana for some waves and long beaches and he was able to give it to me in less than one hour. Then using windlight and working with draw distance and environmental settings, I was able to do sunset and sunrise pictures very quickly.

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Meta Magic Studio staff

The next two days will be review days of sim builds that Meta Magic Studio has (hopefully) developed to customer satisfaction. One of them is a final check off phase, where basically we turn over the “keys.” The second project is in next to last phase review which means the client goes through the sim to give us our final punch list. And the third one is in a middle phase, where we begin the actual work of content layout.

The first two projects are under strict NDA and are not even built under the “Banana Stein” creator name, nor with any Meta Magic Studio bragging rights. Such is life. Now I am very proud of my builds, but sometimes clients want “their” name as the project creator, so for a (hefty) fee, we will accommodate them. (We charge 2x more than standard fee for such a set-up.)

The third project - which has my name all over it - is exciting, but I wish it would be moving faster. But sometimes the clients do not move as fast as we would like.

So keep your fingers crossed for luck for us!

Concept build - Meta Magic Studio

Over on Meta Magic Studio sim, you can see a prototype build we did of a “Tahiti” style resort for a client. It will be up for a few weeks as they do some testing.  (SLURL)

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A little long winded entry - but hopefully some one gets something out of this…. Banana

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Cisco Live Pavilion

In light of the recent news posted in The Avastar of the closing of the Geek Squad sim, and the subsequent lazy media fall out that will happen, and Gartner’s new report, Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2008, which states the Virtual Worlds are in the “Trough of Disillusionment,” one wonders about the health of corporate prescence in worlds like Second Life, Google’s Lively and all of the other virtual worlds.

Corporations leaving Second Life is nothing new and should be expected. The vast majority of companies that arrived in Second Life in 2007 came in soley for the marketing hype value. Sure many of them gave lip service to community development and the other key phrases such as immersive and interactive worlds. Yet their actions indicated that they had no clue what they were doing and where they could go. And far to many of them did not take the time or put the resources to learn how to do it, falsely believing in “if the just built it, the community would come.”

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Dedric Mauraic - Genius Scripter - is putting the finishing touches to a collaborative game that will be used for Cisco Live!. I am not going to give the details away but let me tell you that in our testing at the Meta Magic Studio, we were laughing and having a great time with the game.

I am always impressed when some one is able to execute a non-violent game. And able to execute it in Second Life® with all of its inherent limitations. Stay tuned for more on this….

Photos from our morning testing. That is Cheerie and Dot with me.

Collaborative Game Testing - Meta Magic Studio