A cross posting from JustVirtual but there has been lots of excitement about Second Life becoming a more ‘evocative’ engine (visually speaking) for at least 18 months with lots of posts and short demo videos. Recently the Illclan’ers posted an item suggesting we are quite close to having an official Linden Lab release here, Dynamic Lighting and Shadow Engine Coming to Second Life. They like me are also very interested in the ‘controlled’ lighting effects using artificial (isn’t it all?!) light sources vs the ambient ‘sun’. But for starters here is a quick ambient test video…

A quick exploration of some of my old builds which may not be there much longer! Using the Space Navigator and running Windlight in Day cycle mode (the sun and moon take a minute or two to do a full rotation)  to produce lots of moving shadows across the landscapes, people and builds. Rather than just show shadows I was keen to tie some ‘psych trance’ music into fast moving space navigator footage hence the constant movement – all shots took into account the timing with the shadows too.

The whole process was about 1 hour of capture, 1.5 hour edit and 2 hours on music track. Music was composed on Logic Pro mostly using Spectrasonics Omnisphere plug-in software ‘processor-eating’ synth.

I had access to a top end NVidia GTX280 high spec graphics card and quad processor machin so I put all SL graphics settings at max for once! The video was captured at PAL resolution using Fraps and the raw files edited using Adobe Premiere.

To have a go at this yourself make sure you have a top flight graphics card from NVidia or ATI and then download the Shadow Viewer client from Kirsten here or I believe a more recent one (that I used) from Boy Lane here. I am not sure of the widespread use of shadows given the grunt your computer needs to handle this, windlight, voice on top of all the usual networking issues – but for those with computer horsepower it definitely brings the place to life.

Published & created under creative commons – attribution, non-commercial, non-derivative, 23 May 2009 in Sydney, Australia

My Second Life sim builds included: Esperance (AFTRS), ABC Island, Melbourne Laneways, Thursdays Fictions, Deakin, The Pond and others. (I would have loved to show some more commercial & arty builds but non-disclosure and all that!)

The video below is quick & cheerful, one-take, ‘Space Navigator’ Machinima and Music by Gary and the whole work was very similar in style and form to Thursday’s Fictions in Second Life, a MUVEDesigned project two years ago. Full credits for the Macbeth project below.

Macbeth in Second Life Credits
Guide & credits here

SLURL – http://slurl.com/secondlife/Macbeth/44/54/54

A collaboration by Angela Thomas, Kate Richards and Kerreen Ely-Harper, from an original idea by Kerreen Ely-Harper.
Producer: Kate RIchards (Nini Dubrovna)
Director: Kereen Ely-Harper (Dorothy Porta)
Virtual World Content Designer: Angela Thomas (Anya Ixchel)
SL Design Consultant: Adam Nash (Adam Ramona)

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. Initial stages of this project were mentored and developed through the Laboratory for Advanced Media Production (LAMP) at Australian Film TV and Radio School (AFTRS). This project has been funded and built by the New Media Consortium

NMC Team:
Larry Johnson (Larry Pixel)
Alan Levine (CDB Barkley)
Rachel Smith (Ninmah Ash)
NMC Second Life Building Team:
Chris Holden (CJ Carnot)
Beth Satchjen (Stella Costello)

Voiceover Actors:
Maggie Blinco
Boris Brkic
Christopher Morris
Ophelia Of The Spirits
Alice Parkinson
Evelyn Parsonage
Recorded at Megaphone Studios
Engineer: Shane Fahey

Additional thanks to:
Larry Johnson
Therese Fingelton
Gary Hayes
Jeff Wegener
Ian Waddely
Nick Noakes

Filmed and edited by Gary Hayes of MUVEDesign. Note: This film does not demonstrate the many interactive elements, social intentions or literary integration. Please visit the island to see those first ‘virtual’ hand. A medium resolution (98MB MP4) download is available here