YOUR TUBE, YOUR IMAGINATION

Tonight, Suzanne Vega performs live in Second Life, in avatar form.  (Show details here.)  The guitar her alter ego will be playing, so to speak, was built by instrument craftsman Robbie Dingo-- who also created a great time-lapse YouTube machinima showing the step-by-step process, from unvarnished cube to the guitar's most intricate details, like the shiny tuning keys and the metallic fret clip.  Since it depicts the construction user interface in operation, "Suzanne's Guitar" also happens to be the best video demo of SL building I've ever seen.  See it now, see it here.

Comments

[Talon Lardner]

Very well orchestrated video... Makes me want to get into building again.

[Biscuit Carroll]

ABSOLUTELY SUPERB!! Congratulations Robbie on a landmark in machinima. You rule.

[Skip Jenkins]

This is exactly the kind of thing that drew me from static 3D modelers to SL. This is kind of a newb question, but is the guitar skin applied an alpha channel texture? I've tried to export a targa file, but cant seem to get it exported with the alpha challed intact. Is there any other file format you can do that with, or is Targa the only option?

[Hamlet Au]

I'll ask the expert himself to comment...

[Rez Menoptra]

(I'm not the expert, but...)

The targa needs to be 32 bit for the alpha channel to appear upon upload. Each channel is 8 bits, therefore, r+g+b = 24 bit. When you want the extra information an alpha channel contains, you need the extra 8 bits, thus the 32 bit tga file.

Hope that helps.

[Rez Menoptra]

Oh AND -- incredible video, and modeling, and musical choice. Stunning.

[Robbie D]

Thank you everyone for the kind comments above, although I think expert is stretching it! Skip, Rez Menoptra has explained this better than I ever could, yes, when you export the file, you need to select tga 32 bit.