In a surprising and unexpected move, Linden Lab has just announced that they are going back to become a 3D content provider as before — after an almost two-year-long hiatus of zero content production.But… there is a twist! This time, under the name of “The Linden Department of Public Works”, Jack Linden encourages crowdsourcing again — getting a cartload of volunteers with a lot of spare time, spread them across the grid and… well, as he claims:

What will we work on? Good question; basically, we will consider anything and everything that we feel will make the mainland more attractive, fun, engaging and interesting for new or existing residents.

So what does this mean? Linden Lab is back with a zero-cost team of talented developers, eager to work 16-hours-a-day for a pat in the back, and are remodelling the mainland — again? Why? What for?What dramas will unfold, as residents-overseen-by-Lindens become grid-famous and start outsourcing their work to Big Corps? Will these people be hand-picked by Linden Lab? Is the Linden Lab Approved Builder Certification being beta-tested with this new effort? Will the Metaverse Development Companies cry foul, as Linden Lab steps back into the content creation business? Or is Linden Lab just getting ready to beautify the mainland, parcel it off, and send it off to the land barons to manage? Or, well, are they listening to the comments made back in 2003-5 when so many residents had volunteered to do exactly that, and, seeing how things worked with the Volunteer Teams (Mentors et al), they felt it was time to expand the model on the mainland with different sets of people?Oh, and perhaps you should attend the Linden Department of Public Works’ Office Hours soon. They promise to be… interesting.

Thanks to Rad Hand for having demonstrated Vlad Bjornson’s fantastic animated, morphed scupties. How does this work? It’s very clever: you send a QuickTime stream that has several sculpties in sequence. These, in turn, will make the sculptie’s texture be changed as the QT stream enters your computer. As sculpties are generated on your computer — and not on the server — this happens automatically and quite fast.

The results? Pure art using SL!

I started building my first home the hard way: aligning objects one on top of the other. It took ages just to get the various parts of a wall fitting correctly around the windows. And when I was finished, ah well, the house was too small to let two people inside…

Worse thing was, I was taking so many primitives that I soon filled up my share! What was wrong? this house was a simple lodge, nothing fancy, and with one single room…

Well, the trick about building is simple: use “partial” primitives and lots of textures. Partial primitives is what you get when tampering with the primitives and create “holes” in them. Say you want a window inside a wall. Instead of building it the traditional way - 4 primitives for the wall around the window - you can get away with a cube with a “hole” in the middle (a square section). So you reduce the number of primitives to just one! The same applies to doors and other stuff.

If you need very detailed things - like a veranda’s grille, or several windows supported by a grid in iron or PVC - the best way to do is to use a texture. Use Photoshop or a similar program to get your overall image in the best detail you want. As you’re working with a texture and not with primitives you can get amazing detail. Then create a simple, thin cube and do it transparent. Now the trick is to apply the texture twice - on the “outside” and “inside” of the object. The easiest way to do this is simply to open your inventory and drag & drop a texture on top of the face. You can also do it from the object modeller (just select the radio button which says “Select Individual”).

Now you can get a very complex home with windows of all sizes and detailed texturing with just… one primitive! Draw a giant cube and don’t close it completely, you’ll need a door. Then in Photoshop create several textures, for the inside and outside, leaving a “transparent background” for the windows. If you do it right - aligning textures properly is not so easy and requires some skill - you could build a one-primitive house (well with another one for the door) just like that! Cool, huh?

In my case I gave it up and just bought a prefab home from Dominion’s Sam Portocarrero has lots of clever designs with very nice texturing, and special types for mountainous terrain, or with a more modern look instead of a conventional one. Look him up on the map and get your new home for as low as L$150…