Do you have any interest in trying your hand at creating 3D content? If you do, now is a great time to do so without breaking the bank or leaving a major dent in your pocketbook!

For over a decade now, Bryce has been the software package of choice by artists of all mediums for 3D modeling and animation. Bryce is used to create breathtakingly realistic imagery and models. DAZ has recently released a major upgrade to this software package, which is called Bryce 6. In an attempt to get this package into the hands of every single artist and every individual that has any desire to create 3D content, DAZ is making the full package available for a limited time for only $6.00.

Just take a moment to look at the amazing images that were created with Bryce in the Bryce Galleries at DAZ3D to see some of the stunning and breathtaking scenes that you can create with Bryce 6.

DAZ hasn't stopped there, they also have several offerings to help you out. Whether you are just getting started in 3D, or an avid 3D artist and enthusiast, DAZ has you covered! The first item is DAZ Studio - a simple 3D studio suite comperable to Poser, but without the cost. But what good is DAZ Studio without any models? So DAZ offers you a starter content package to help get you started and everything is available free of charge. Now you can not go wrong with that!

DAZ also makes available several ground-breaking 3D characters for your use. These are highly detailed, skinable, and poseable/animatable life-like male & female figures known as Michael 3.0 & Victoria 3.0(known as M3 & V3 respectively). These figures are some of the most widely supported products in the 3D & VR community, so you can easily find several accessories and props to create whatever you can imagine!

For those who may have an interest in creating anime, manga, or hentai, DAZ offers Aiko 3.0(known as A3), which is a character that was created specifically with anime and manga in mind. A3 is easy to use and you can quickly learn how to dress and pose her. Aiko 3.0 is very well supported by the community, so there is a plethora of items for her.

There are several areas that these items can be used for. Besides creating static realistic 3D scenes for posters, greeting cards, or just for personal enjoyment, you can develop a skill set that can be used in the movie or gaming worlds. In the movie industry, they use 3D artists & content creators to create special affects, digital models, animations, and almost every step along the path of creating films, from the inception of the idea to the marketing of the completed project. The realm of video gaming, the demands for 3D artists is even greater. With the increase of the use of multimedia in television, marketing, an the web, opportunities abound for those who have the desire. Now is the prime time for you take the time to develop your interests in 3D development for only $6.00 and begin to align yourself for the fantastic opportuniities ahead. So why don't you check out DAZ today and start your foray into the fascinating world of 3D!

Please stay tuned for reviews on the products that I mentioned in this article. I shall also be providing articles on several other software packages, resources for 3D content creators, sample images & animated clips, and plenty of tutorials.

Get 3D Models, 3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!

Well it seems that big business is starting to make a move into the metaverse in order to reach more consumers. After all this does make sense, because with SL currently at 1.39 million residents and steadily growing, the metaverse is where people are gathering.

On Tuesday, Dell formally kicked off it's foray into Second Life with the unveiling of Dell Island as their in-world location. It seems that Dell plans upon selling residents virtual PCs. Residents can use LSL - the in-world scripting language to configure the virtual Dell PCs to perform a number of simple tasks, such as alerting them when one of their friends are nearby.  But for the most part, the virtual PCs are just to accessorize your virtual life.

However, Dell does have a valid business plan behind their SL presence. Dell plans to push the company's high-end XPS line of PCs within SL. These systems come with more powerful components and flashier exteriors than Dell's regular PCs. Currently the XPS 1710 gaming notebook is available for order within Dell's Second Life island.

Dell Island simply features a factory room, where residents can configure their real and/or virtual PCs, as well as a walk through model of a Dell XPS 710 PC and a mock up of Michael Dell's University of Texas at Austin dorm room, where the company was founded.

I hear on the grapevine that other commercial entities, including Toyota and Nissan, are quickly setting up shop within the SL metaverse. So are a few technology companies such as Sun Microsystems and IBM, a move that will place them in direct competition with residents who have set up their own shops that sell virtual hip cars or the latest PCs. Are you prepared to compete with the big boys?

PR firm Edelman and the Electric Sheep Company are running a business contest:


To enter the contest and read the details visit here. The grand prize include L$ and private island to implement the business plan and some free hours from Edelman to help promote the business.

Out of curiosity, I've recently tried my hand at some of the Linden Scripting Language. I started with the LSL tutorial LSL101 in the LSL Scripting Wiki.

While reading through the Official Linden Blog I came across a post comment referencing a few offline LSL scripting tools. Thanks to a comment by Destiny Niles.

She points to these pages of offline LSL tools:
LSL-Editor
lslint
shill

Because I'm quite new to this I haven't given it a go yet. Does anyone have experience or opinions about using these "tools" ?

We split the revenue earned from this blog based on the number of posts/activity from the various VTOR authors and all monies are paid in the Linden dollar. The following are the figures compiled for September 2006.

Based on a total of 13 posts, the VTOR blog earned in October 2006: $0.85 USD (exchanged at L$274 per $1USD) for a total of: L$233

# of posts - VTOR Author
October 2006
9 - TD Goodliffe = 69% = L$161
4 - JohnnyRS .....= 31% = L$72 + *L$500 bonus (Halloween post coverage, see below)
=================
13 total posts ................. = L$233 + L$500 bonus = L$733

*Special thanks to JohnnyRS for three excellent timely posts [part 1, 2, 3] on Halloween. He was paid an extra L$500 this month because of the detailed work spent on those timely posts.

If you'd like to become a VTOR author contact TD Goodliffe inside Second Life for details.

A new resident of Second Life stopped by my TD Scripts store to ask me how he could make money without spending more money. There are a number of ways, I told him and then realized I should just write a blog post so I can point to other new residents that ask me. I've been an SL resident since December 31, 2005 and have not spent any more money since paying for two SL avatar accounts. I've owned a $25/month tier of land for over six months and have paid that off with money earned inside SL.

Here are some ways to make money:

- Create items and sell them. These can be everything from clothes that avatars wear to sounds, videos, buildings, vehicles, games and more. With Halloween just around the corner, you could make a bunch of scary sound clips -- in 10 second max clips -- and then sell them as a package. I've been thinking about this myself. If you have a Soundblaster sound card, you likely have the "evil" voice modulator which could be used for all sorts of 10 second clips. Scripters who make games especially need sounds they can use so there could be business to business sales too.

- Get a job. Just like in RL, there are numerous job opportunities in SL. Many higher paying jobs are adult-oriented like being an escort or casino host, but there are jobs doing non-adult activities like minding a store or hosting non-gambling games. It's better to have a human being providing customer service at a store and talking about products and services than a bot. To find job listings, search the classifieds section for "hiring" and if you are interested in adult-oriented work make sure to check the "mature content" checkbox.

- money trees. There are trees with free L$ on them and many are focused toward new residents. Do a search for "money trees" in the places category.

- Camping. This is controversial with some residents but other land and business owners will literally pay you in Lindens to put your avatar in a chair or other object on their land. There used to be a financial incentive called dwell that was earned for the land owner, but now they want dwell to drive up their listing position in the search engine or have the hope that you'll gamble or spend money in other places.

Some camping chairs have idle timers where your avatar will be ejected and you'll need to resit. A few, although they are rare, don't have any idle timers. A common rate is L$2-3 per 10 minutes of idling, so you could make L$12 per hour or L$288 per 24 hour period.

- weekly stipend for pay members. Become full time member and earn L$500 per week. While this stipend is being reduced to L$300 soon, there is still a little time to get in on this. I realize this one does technically cost you money but if you pay annually then you can get a break on the price and it's possible at L$500 per week x 52 weeks to actually make money if you saved and used it to pay future renewals. Here's the math:

L$26,000 which converts at L$275 per $1USD = $94.94 USD
An annual membership when paid in full is $72 ... which means you would actually make $22 USD profit (or L$6,050 which could be used to buy other objects). If you pay monthly, it doesn't work out, but if you can afford the extra $72 up front, this deal works in member's favor.

Also a benefit of being a full member is the ability to own your own 512m space of land for no additional tier fee. This means you could then have a business location to build and sell objects. You can build without being a pay member in a sandbox area, but owning land is similar to having your own web domain name.

Do you have other good ideas for how to earn Lindens in Second Life? Feel free to leave your comments/tips/tricks below.

Setting up a private island sim used to cost $1,295 setup fee and $195/month USD. The existing mainland tier rates are being left alone "for now" in this post on the Linden offical blog:


Would be nice to see HTML on a prim at some point in the near future. Will these increased fees get this added by year end? It's seems like the maintaining part of SL is taking up more money than the research side, but that's coming from a resident, not from somebody in the know.

Eric Rice seems disappointed, but not discouraged over the increase:


Would an open source SL client mean more attacks or less? We'll have to wait and see.

In my previous post, Halloween Fun, I described how I found good places for my Halloween costume. This time I would like to post about a haunted house walk though location. It's called Haunted Mansion [ Mullein (157, 32, 401) ] and when you begin you should have the sun setting of second life to midnight. Go through the doors in front of you while watching and listening to the scary scenes! There are some places where it's very hard to find the right path to go because it's so dark. There are two spots exactly that I got lost but finally found the path after a couple of minutes. When you get to the section in the forest you might think you are trapped but there is an exit to this room. Just have to keep looking around! I love the scenery and the sounds of this place. It reminds me of walking through a real Halloween maze without all the people around you.

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I also found another Halloween ride, Spook House Ride [ Noyo (72, 149, 25) ]. This one is a real ride that you sit in and watch the scenery go by. Read the directions and be sure to go full screen so you can see everything. It costs $1L but that shouldn't be a problem. This was more like the fun houses in a carnival that I remember. I also saw an article about this particular ride from Second Life Herald here.

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There are a lot more Halloween stuff I have found but will post it a bit later so I can get all my thoughts out without skipping any good details.

Halloween season is my favorite time of the year because I love being scared! I watch scary movies and go to some Halloween mazes with my friend as you can read about it on my personal blog here. But I wanted to post about my Halloween time in second life. Yes there are many places and events to visit during this season in second life. I have found haunted houses, haunted rides and Halloween costumes. Lot of places to explore and not enough time or space to write about all of them in detail.
The first thing I wanted to do was find something cheap to wear for Halloween. I found some freebie shirts and other items to wear. Nothing that really was shocking. So I decided I would have to pay for a good costume. Once I started to look I found a lot but the majority of stuff was for women. Sometimes it gets frustrating to find anything to wear for guys in SL. Well I had to do more searching and visited this one store which had some great looking clothes and avatars. I wasn't looking for an avatar. I wanted something to wear that looked bloody. I found a couple of great places for some good priced costumes.
Here is a part of my costume that I found:

Here are some slurl's to the costume places I found:

Sinistyle Design [ Hydes (248, 205, 181) ] - Nice gory costumes the way I like them. I bought mine from here.
Costume Superstore [ Clearwing (43, 226, 29) ] - Very good store with lots of stuff to check out. Bought my spooky eyes here.
Addi's House of Halloween Horrors [ Nirvana (151, 59, 26) ] - some fun items for Halloween.
City of the DEAD [ Vampire Empire (126, 114, 26) ] - many stores around the area including a big giant gothic store.
Dark Decorum [ Tussock (38, 131, 128) ] - Many fun Halloween items.
Twistted Dreams [ Palm Sands Resort (122, 151, 22) ] - Some more fun Halloween items.
Neverwhere Halloween store [ Neverwhere (91, 91, 26) ] - Some more decorations and costumes.

If you know of any other places to get Halloween costumes then feel free to leave a comment! I'm going to keep searching for some good deals and other scary stuff in second life!

Yo Brewster from SLprofiles has released a free SL Gadget that will let you bookmark your teleport locations by name (scripting in area must be allowed for full functionality), track usage stats and much more. Here's a list of features and how to use them:

• Teleport bookmark, the coolest feature when scripting is enabled in an area
  add new TP location bookmark: /1 tp add [NAME]
  delete TP location bookmark: /1 tp delete [NAME]
  list all TP location bookmarks: /1 tp list
  
• SL usage stats
  visit your slprofiles.com profile to view and/or make this data private
  
• Scan avatars in area
  turn on: /1 scan on
  turn off: /1 scan off
  status: /1 scan status
• Send mini blog comments to slprofiles.com and secondlifetalk.com
  blog it: /1 blog [comments to blog]
• Camping idler
• Launch avatar into orbit (a feature that otherwise would have been better left off because it could get users banned)
  

For a free gadget this is pretty nice. To use just put drag onto yourself and it will operate as an invisible HUD. When you visit the slprofiles area to grab the gadget it puts in a folder Get SL Gadget by default which might throw some folks. Just rename.

After signing up for SLprofiles you can grab the free SL Gadget [SLurl]. Thanks Second Life Insider.

The new Second Life login screen is sharp available with today's download. The grid is still down for scheduled maintenance until noon, but the download is available. Linden Labs has integrated the titles of the official blog into the login scren.  They've also added in the upper right corner a grid status showing SL time, total residents, users logged in within the last 60 days (441,350) and online now (18 Linden Labs employees in picture above).

For a mere L$250 (SLurl: Pyeonghwa 87,246,42 pictured below)  - Where I bought Rudolph in Second Life, you can ride on the back of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.


Still a couple months away from Christmas, but this is definitely a better ride than a car. Take that, Jeff with your cool hovercraft!

Wired has published their list of 10+ must have objects in Second Life, which include a few objects we've covered here before like BlogHud. The Complete Storm System looks intriguing at L$1,655.

What are your must have items in SL? Maybe our VTOR group should compile a list of objects we're all using in SL and share back through the blog here or in a wiki maybe.

I likely won't be paying $100 setup fee and $50/year for a new last name in Second Life, will you? I can see where this would be attractive for newer residents and perhaps some businesses, but will there really be a mad dash to buy a different name? I've spent the last 10 months building my presence in SL and on our sites with the surname of "Goodliffe" so switching to something else would need to be logical. Also, my name is TDavid and there won't be an option for me to choose only having one name, will there?

There is one surname I might be willing to buy that's related to one of our businesses. I'm not seeing this be a huge cash cow for Linden Labs, but maybe I'll be wrong. What do you think?

Spam problems as the result of an object permission issue caused another grid shutdown. I was telling a friend yesterday that it now seems like Second Life is down for maintenance an average of twice per week.