Blue World Notes: Why Your Blue Mars Avatar Seems to Look You in the Eye

When a virtual world veteran visits Blue Mars for the very first time, she usually notices a surprising and sometimes eerie thing: Her avatar seems to look right at her. This happens not just when the user's camera is positioned right in front of the avatar, but even when the avatar is facing away. It will sometimes just turn around and seem to look right at you -- as if to say, "Don't you wish you were here instead of me?" (At least that's what I imagine my Hamlet Au avatar thinking, when he turns back to stare at me.) As it happens, this is an intentional design decision by Avatar Reality developer Koji Nagashima, who's created 3D characters for both videogames and movies.

"I think direction of eyes is very important point to make the avatar 'alive'," Koji tells me. Before joining Avatar Reality, he was Cinematic Character/Simulation Technical Director for the hit videogame franchise God of War 1/2 (among other titles), and before that, senior programmer for 2001's groundbreaking CGI movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which brought the first photorealistic 3D characters to the big screen. However, the problems are somewhat different, when you're conveying believability in a virtual world.

"On a cinematic project," Koji explains, "all animators carefully make animation for eyes. But in our world, the program needs to take care of that." Eye animation in a virtual world or MMO is challenging because the avatar's position or the user's camera changes so often. "That's very interesting for me," Koji says.

His solution was to make the avatar respond relative to the position of the camera: "When the camera is just in front of the avatar, he keeps looking at the camera." When the camera is to the side of the avatar, he looks less at the user. And to convey a sense of autonomy, when the player rotates the camera, the avatar's gaze starts following it.

All this is in service of breathing life into Blue Mars avatars, but Koji Nagashima isn't finished. He's tweaking some issues with the avatar's gaze, and in the future, he wants the eye contact to reflect the avatar's personality: For example, active avatars will look at the camera much more often, while shy avatars will largely avoid the camera's gaze. "Something like that," Koji says. "That's a future aim."

What about Blue Mars should I write about next? Email and let me know: hamlet at bluemarsonline dot com.

Update, 12/1: Fixed Koji's credit from Medal of Honor: South Pacific to God of War 1/2 -- which is, in any case, the bigger game!

Blue World Notes: d|lab on the 3 Hurdles for Using the 3D Internet for Business -- and How to Overcome Them

Dan Riley of d|lab, the UK studio which recently launched the OnLand immersive business space in Blue Mars, has an interesting blog post on the three main impediments that real world organizations face when considering the use of the 3D Internet for work, which he dubs "the Trinity":

Visual Fidelity: "[A] very real and significant need for high-levels of graphical fidelity to aid in the detailed visualisation of products and services – especially in a manufacturing context..."

Security: "[I]issues range widely from micro-payment fees and financial transfers in obscure currencies to the very real problems associated with IP and content theft which have already occurred in more than one major platform..."

Concurrent Users: "[I]f there is no mechanism for allowing large numbers of people access [a 3D space at the same time], then much of this work is redundant."

Dan addresses each point with suggested solutions. With visual fidelity, for example, he argues that virtual worlds should take advantage of the latest 3D rendering technology, such as the Unreal engine or the CryEngine (which powers Blue Mars.) With security, he points to Blue Mars' recent cloud deployment, which will eliminate "[t]the need for encrypted folders to reference assets". All in all it's good background for enterprise users of 3D spaces and virtual world users -- read it all here.

There's Still Some Time to Enter the Blue Mars Makeup Contest!

Hello all, hope you had an awesome Thanksgiving! Remember, tonight is the deadline for our Blue Mars custom makeup contest, which style writer Iris Ophelia will judge, with BLU$ rewards just for submitting (if you're among the first 10 to enter.) That's tonight at 11:59pm Pacific, to be precise, but if you're working on your entry today and need some extra time, we can extend your deadline until tomorrow. If you do want an extension, just let Iris know by contacting her at iris [at] bluemarsonline dot com. And once again, here's all the details for the contest.

Blue World Notes: Fun Blue Mars Machinima Demonstrating Blue Mars' Real Time Makeup Editor

This is a fun little machinima demonstrating Blue Mars' make up editor working in real time -- which is why this poor avatar's face seems to be under attack by a wayward Fu Manchu mustache. The video is by Sofian Samtanko, avid adventurer in many virtual worlds, who recently began exploring Blue Mars, drawn there by the graphics. (And to judge by this video, the flying mustaches.)

The video was shot with FRAPS, which is a great software tool for capturing 3D video in games and MMOs. I use it all the time, and can personally recommend it for your machinima needs; you can download it for free here. And speaking of make up, don't forget Iris' custom make up contest, deadline dropping on the 29th!

Blue World Notes: How to be a Polar Bear in Blue Mars

I now have an alternative to my white suit reporter avatar in Blue Mars, and it's the next best thing: a white suited polar bear avatar! (I bet my interviews will go a lot more smoother now.) This thanks to Sivan Okculogu, whose innovative brand, AD Sport, specializes in fantastic, beautifully crafted avatars in several varieties. (Humanoid wasp and man-sized gargoyle are among the other options.)

The polar bear and other exotic avatars are available in Beach City (Blink teleport page here), at a store called Treasure Chest. Once you arrive at Beach City, select the teleport square with that name, located to the right of the city map. Click that, and Treasure Chest is one of the stores within ten feet of your arrival point. (Directly behind you, as I recall.)

To become a polar bear (or a wasp, or a gargoyle, etc.), you first need to buy an Invisible Layer, which as the name suggests, erases your human form. After you put that on, you're ready to become the strange and wonderful avatar of your choosing. Just follow the polar bear's instructions below:

Now I'm ready for the coming winter and high stress interviews!

Blue World Notes: How to Build in Blue Mars from Google SketchUp (the Desmond Shang Way)

Here's a very handy tutorial for building in Blue Mars using the free and fairly easy-to-learn Google SketchUp program, written by Desmond "the Guvnah" Shang, owner of Blue Mars' steampunk city of Caledonia, a masterpiece of collaborative creation. Desmond's basic workflow goes like this:

a) Make some textures in Photoshop or something.

b) Draw a 3D object with the free Google SketchUp.

c) Texture it up in SketchUp.

d) Export it from SketchUp (essentially a 'save' option)

e) Import it using the Blue Mars Item Editor.

f) If you have leased a block of land, you can set out items on the land parcel (block) with the Blue Mars block editor.

g) Then you upload the land parcel (block) and it will be uploaded with the next city update.

... but even if you're not leasing a block of land at the moment, you can still get your content into the offline Item Editor. Read it all here.

Blue World Notes: Meet IDIA Staff in Blue Mars Tomorrow at 2pm Pacific!

Tomorrow at 2pm Pacific, IDIA director John Fillwalk and his staff will be in-world to talk about their massive immersive education site which recently launched in Blue Mars, replete with historical site recreations and sculptures that have been recreated by laser scanning the originals. It's a great opportunity to learn and talk about 3D spaces as an educational tool, and the future plans IDIA has with Blue Mars. (And if you're an educator involved in Second Life, you'll likely already familiar with IDIA, a lab with Ball State University, as it's also done several cool projects in SL.)

As you might have noticed from the above screenshot, John's Blue Mars avatar name is conveniently named "John Fillwalk", and he sports a black blazer and surprisingly hip anime-flavored hair. Meet him and his team tomorrow at 2pm -- just go to the IDIA Lab city in Blue Mars (Blink teleport page here) and find them waiting for you then near the first spawn point.

Blue World Notes: Blue Mars' Golf Game is a Prototype for Developers to Learn From and Build On

The golf game in Blue Mars (Blink teleport page here) is a perfectly good game, as golf games go, but it's in Blue Mars for an important reason besides online fun (single or multiplayer.) It's also intended as an example of a game that Blue Mars developers can create, and build on -- go here to get the code and documentation.

Created in the Blue Mars editor using LUA scripting, it's a robust gaming experience (as the video above suggests), with customized heads-up displays, animations, and camera cutaways, to move the player from one hole to another. Second Life game developers will find the development process notably different, in Blue Mars -- for example, instead of creating a customized game HUD that players need to manually install, as they would in SL, Blue Mars game HUDs are automatically installed when players download the Martian city where it's hosted.

While the golf development notes are a good starting point for developing new games, I'd love to see an ambitious Blue Mars developer create a full-fledged golf experience for their city. There's a number of successful free-to-play, sports-related MMOs with a relatively large and profitable following. (Instead of getting a monthly subscription, players buy special equipment, accessories, and even clothes.) So I can easily imagine a golf mini-MMO working in Blue Mars. (Or even several, part of a Martian pro circuit!)

What about Blue Mars should I write about next? Email and let me know: hamlet at bluemarsonline dot com.

Blue World Notes: Fall Leaves Come to Blue Mars (If They're Scripted to Be Seasonal)

Wildwood before and after the scripting of Fall leaves

On a recent return visit to Wildwood, the lovely forest glade in Blue Mars (Blink page here), I noticed something had changed, since I visited late last Summer: Where the trees were once a lush and verdant green, many were now bursting with the color of Fall leaves, as was the ground around them. The effect was dazzling. (Compare and contrast September and now, above.) As it turns out, the seasonal changes of Blue Mars trees can be coded:

"The trees turned color with the October update," Wildwood owner Josie Quest tells me. "That was done by changing the leaves textures on several of the tree models. I had to tell it to do that for particular trees and times." While all the trees were set to have green leaves by default, she edited many leaf textures with other colors (DavyRocket helped her with that), and set the time when they would turn. "They will remain that color until I change them. I am trying to decide if I want to change them for Winter or just let Winter be on that snowy mountain." While she's undecided about Winter, she has definite plans for Spring, next time it comes around: More green, and perhaps some blossoms.

The blazing flashes of Autumn leaves aren't the only changes that have recently come to Wildwood, by the way: There's a deer tagging game, a challenge to find all the Bambis now foraging for Fall leaves in the woods of Josie Quest. Go here for details on playing that game and others in Wildwood.

What about Blue Mars should I write about next? Email and let me know: hamlet at bluemarsonline dot com.

Blue World Notes: How a Dozen Developers Collaboratively Created the Steampunk City of Caledonia

In Caledonia with Desmond Shang

When you teleport to the town square of Caledonia (Blink site here), a steampunk city in Blue Mars, you arrive amid walkways and trees, and all around you, dozens of stores and homes, all done up in Victorian styles. (It looks pretty much what British colonists would build, after they traveled via Jules Vernian rocket to Mars.) And while this bucolic place seems like it was made by one designer, it’s actually the creation of dozens of people, working separately around the world.

“What we did,” Desmond “the Guvnah” Shang, the humble leader of Caledonia, tells me, “was people picked blocks and developed them in the block editor -- this gave them their own local copy of Caledonia in a way, and they were able to construct in that.” (The Blue Mars Block Editor enables individuals within a City to develop a store or residential housing within an alloted space.)

About a dozen Caledonians worked on their blocks offline, sharing their progress in an email list. This is also where they planned the general design parameters of Caledonia. For instance, they agreed on a maximum ceiling height of 3 or 4 meters, to keep the buildings in a reasonable scale.

“There is a tendency to make buildings far too tall,” steampunk inventor Ralph Doctorow explains. “There was also another extensive architecture discussion about what was appropriate for building styles. That resulted in a lot of examples of English and East Coast architectural styles, along with a general agreement that bizarre steampunkish elements were quite appropriate, but that it would be good for people not to go too crazy modern.”

The other advantage of collaborating and communicating via email was informal technical support. “I have found that our mailing list has been a huge source for support and problem solving, especially when experimentation is afoot,” as Vivito Volare puts. “There are some projects you would prefer to share with neighbors rather than strangers who may well be your competition.”

As each individual Caledonian finished their block, they uploaded it to Desmond’s City editor, and he integrated it into the next update sent to Blue Mars' servers. Take this store by Thadicus Caligari, who built it in Sketchup, then imported it into Blue Mars’ Item Editor, to test it, then finally placed it in the Block Editor. What you see above is what it looked like in his local editor.

And here’s what it looks like, merged into Caledonia:

Every few weeks, Desmond would merge individual blocks and publish them to Caledonia. The citizens would meet in-world after the changes went live in Blue Mars, comparing notes. “[We] had kind of a fun time seeing what different people made, as we hadn't seen it ourselves until it was all merged and published.”

And that’s how the first town of Caledonia came to be. But, Desmond promises, “We've barely touched upon what can be done here.”

What about Blue Mars should I write about next? Email and let me know: hamlet at bluemarsonline dot com.

Blue World Notes: Enter a Contest to Get Your Blue Mars Pics Featured on Koinup's Homepage!

"Crossing Bridges" in Blue Mars by Connie Sec, see more of her screenshot work here

Koinup, the large social network for online worlds with cool widgets for displaying your screenshots on the web, recently launched a contest to select virtual world images that will be featured on its homepage, where they'll be displayed for 6 months, and be seen by thousands of visitors. I'd love to see talented Blue Mars photographers, like Connie Sec above, put their works in the mix and show how beautiful Blue Mars can be. Deadline is December 5 -- go here for all the details!

Blue World Notes: IDIA Virtually Reconstructs a San Francisco Historic Site That No Longer Exists (Mostly)

I've started exploring IDIA's new immersive education space which launched today in Blue Mars, but here's the thing: It's big. I mean really big, many times the size of the Second Life sims I'm used to. This is why the developers created teleport kiosks throughout the several sites within the City -- just select and click and there you are.

Being a San Francisco resident, my first stop, of course, was IDIA's recreation of the Panama–Pacific International Exposition, most of which was torn down after the 1915 Expo. A small portion of it, the Palace of Fine Arts, was reconstructed in the Marina District, where it's now part of the Exploratorium:

Compare and contrast the Blue Mars version with the reconstructed Palace in San Francisco in the picture above (photo of RL site inset in top right.) But IDIA has gone much further than just reconstructing the Palace -- they rebuilt the entire Expo as it was nearly 100 years ago. For a San Franciscan, it's a somewhat eerie place to explore: You expect to see the Presidio behind the Palace, but instead, there's a vast, sprawling neo-Classical courtyard full of surprises. (More on those later.)

What about Blue Mars should I write about next? Email and let me know: hamlet at bluemarsonline dot com.

Blue World Notes: Real Sculptures Imported into Virtual Museum in Blue Mars With Laser Scanning

Above left, IDIA laser scanning a Weinmam sculpture; right, the sculpture after it's been imported into Blue Mars

What you’re looking at above is the process by which IDIA Lab imports a real sculpture into the virtual world of Blue Mars, for its “immersive learning experience”. This particular statue is by Adolf Weinmam from the Panama World’s Fair of 1915, which IDIA has remade in Blue Mars. In the real world, the sculpture is on display in the museum of Ball State University (where IDIA is based), and it’s scanned with a laser to create as exact a recreation as possible in Blue Mars. However, that presents a challenge, because with most laser scanning, reflective dots are glued to the object -- not a good idea, when it comes to historical artifacts.

Instead, as IDIA director John Fillwalk explained to me, his developers covered the sculpture with a deer cloth (normally used to keep Bambi from gnawing on your vegetables) and put the scanning dots on that. The process for each World’s Fair sculpture took about 4 hours; a Japanese Buddha which will also be featured in IDIA’s Blue Mars site took two days. From there, it was a matter of converting the scan from a 500 meg file into a 50K graphics file depicting 40,000 polys. The end result: a virtual object that’s a direct translation of the original.

However, that’s just the start, because the goal is not only to recreate historical artifacts in Blue Mars, but also the historical context in which they first existed. More on that here soon!

Read and see more at the IDIA site and IDIA's Flickr stream (where these photos are taken.

What about Blue Mars should I write about next? Email and let me know: hamlet at bluemarsonline dot com.

Blue World Notes: Have You Heard the Rocking Zombies of Blue Mars' Wasteland?

Zombie Wasteland, as the name suggests, is a Blue Mars city where the mutated survivors of biological weapons tests are imprisoned in a dilapidated town that's cut off from the mainland by a one way bridge, left to rot beneath an eternal rain. (Web page and direct Blink teleport at this link.) Evidently, they're kept there by their captors, who want to keep their existence secret. But the zombies have a secret of their own. Finding that secret isn't easy, because for one thing, the city is a dark foreboding maze. For another, if you explore the city, as I did recently with a friend, the zombies are liable to follow you around. And even if they don't infect you, it's still pretty creepy.

Pursued by zombies with Mencius Watts

But if you search long enough, you will find the zombies' secret: In a clearing of the city, a large group of them have formed an impromptu jam band, where they play a peppy pop song that's also fairly eerie. (What do you expect, they're, you know, zombies.) But then, maybe there's a lesson here: Even if the powers that be turn you into a inhuman undead creature of the night, all is not lost if you can still rock out:

However, it's unclear at this writing if they take requests.

What about Blue Mars should I write about next? Email and let me know: hamlet at bluemarsonline dot com.

Blue World Notes: Sneak Peek at IDIA's “Immersive Learning” Experience Coming Soon to Blue Mars

Here's a Flickr stream of photos from the “Immersive Learning” experience developed by IDIA Lab at Ball State University, coming to Blue Mars quite soon. I hope to chat with the IDIA developers in a future post, but meantime, enjoy this gorgeous cascade of virtually authentic historical recreations.

Blue World Notes: Working User-Made Helicopter Flies in Blue Mars!

My greatest thrill writing about virtual worlds with user-generated content like Blue Mars or Second Life is coming across projects you never thought possible. Take this helicopter, which is quite probably the first chopper made for Blue Mars, which I recently spotted on YouTube:

It was created by a Blue Mars user known only as "0ne", who describes himself as an extremely new user, an emigre of the now-defunct world called There.com, where he also made vehicles. “I have spent more time in the City Editor than I have in the actual world,” he admits, laughing.

A programmer in real life, 0ne played around with Blue Mars’ Lua scripting until his chopper worked the way he wanted: “I used the ‘AddImpulse’ function to make it move, and I made it so that it always points to the helicopter's Z+ axis (up) so that it can go up/down. Then I used the same function to control the pitch, yaw, and roll of the helicopter in order to point the Z axis in different directions. So, which ever way the Z axis is pointing, the helicopter flies that direction (like a real helicopter.)"

You can read more about 0ne’s chopper in the description of this YouTube video. Pay no attention to the visual quality of the helicopter itself: “[It] needs major upgrades so that it looks better in Blue Mars' awesome graphics," he tells me, "but right now I was just worried about getting it to fly.” (Priorities!) Even better, 0ne tells me he may bring a private jet he once made in There to Blue Mars too.

What about Blue Mars should I write about next? Email and let me know: hamlet at bluemarsonline dot com.

Blue World Notes: Meet Suzette, the Blue Mars Bot that Won Artificial Intelligence's Famed Loebner Prize

"Suzette" is the name of the program which just won 2010's famed Loebner Prize, inspired by artificial intelligence's classic Turing test. You can talk with her on the web here, but she was actually created as a bot for Blue Mars, the 3D social world, where you can now meet and speak with her in person. She's in the Welcome Area waiting for you: Once you've donwloaded the free software, this link will take you there.

For someone so famous, Suzette may seem shy at first -- for one thing, she's standing in the shadows near a reflecting pool. But if you get up close to her (say ten feet), you'll find her fairly chatty. She's not a fan of celebrity gossip (as the screenshot above suggests), but she does like talking about the weather:

Created for Avatar Reality by Bruce Wilcox, who describes her as "a Blue Mars Replicant... originally intended for use as a terraform engineer", which had some trouble during the personality upload process. Which might explain why Suzette sometimes says strange things that don't exactly follow. (Also, the Blue Mars Suzette is based on an earlier iteration of the program that ultimately won the Loebner.) But at least for me, when it comes to flirting, she firmly plays hard to get. Or make that weird to get:

If you log out after talking with her and come back later, she'll remember who you are.

Technically speaking, Suzette tries to match text you say to a topic she knows and puts out conversation related to the subject. She's built on a language called Chat-L and C. To run her in Blue Mars, a Java bot connects to a C bot on the web. Much of the code that makes Suzette possible is available to Blue Mars developers who want to build chatbots of their own: Here's the main page for Blue Mars AI, with the code for various bots available here.

What about Blue Mars should I write about next? Email and let me know: hamlet at bluemarsonline dot com.

Blue World Notes: Learn to Create Blue Mars Games With Sample Tic-Tac-Toe Game in Welcome Area

A fierce round of Tic-Tac-Toe with fashionista Danielle Eber

Tic-Tac-Toe is a board game asset available in Blue Mars' city editor, which you can currently play in the Welcome Area. Created by a former intern with Avatar Reality, it's not exactly the most exciting game in the world, but that's not the point: It's meant as a demo of LUA scripting, and what it can do for game development in Blue Mars. Think of Tic-Tac-Toe as the primitive cave drawing that'll inspire other works of art -- if you're a City developer, check out the wiki page, dig into the code, and start evolving. Next chess or a card game, perhaps, more adventures games like the one in Cloud City, and even more ambitious projects beyond that. But it starts with Xs and Os: Go here to get the Tic-Tac-Toe documentation.

Blue World Notes: What Do You Want Your Blue Mars Profile to Say About You?

The latest build of Blue Mars comes with a new profile section for you and your avatar, and every option in it is meant to be a conversation starter, when you mean another Martian: Likes and Dislikes, says, Favorite City in Blue Mars, and my favorite, a place to list what other virtual worlds you belong to -- I listed mine "Second Life (Hamlet Au)", so people will immediately know my SL avatar name. In my experience writing in Second Life, avatar profiles are the easiest way to find a connection point of common interest, when you meet another player. It's also a chance to express a lot about your real personality, from the safety of your avatar. If you're a longtime Blue Mars member, I hope you still take the time to fill it out, because I think we'll discover some interesting things about ourselves, and the growing Blue Mars userbase.

(I'm in Hawaii this week at the Avatar Reality office this week, by the way, so I'll be spending a little extra time highlighting new features that Avatar team has been making, in hopes they'll serve the community.)

Blue World Tips: Find and Teleport to New and Popular Blue Mars Cities Directly From the Homepage

Blue Mars' new homepage has a pretty cool feature I'm already using often: Cities with the most visitors are now listed in the Top Places page, and Blue Mars cities with fresh/udpated content are listed in the New Places page. Clicking any city icon gives you the option to launch the Blue Mars client and automatically teleport you right to that City -- called Blinks, they're similar to Second Life SLurls. Thanks to that feature, I've already found a number of places I plan to visit next. Read more about the new features of Blue Mars Beta 2.0 in Jasmine's update.