Weblin Exports Second Life Avatars To Web Pages (Join Me Here On New World Notes?)

Starting today, you can often find Hamlet Au not just in Second Life, but right here on this blog.  That's thanks to Weblin, a fairly cool widget that adds avatars not in a virtual world, but on the web itself.  Normally you'd choose an avatar from the program, but last week, the developers made it possible for Second Life users to export their avatar from within SL.  To do that, you first download and install the widget, then log into SL, and travel to the small Weblin office located in New Berlin.  (Direct SLURL teleport at this link.)  There, a bot photographer with a guitar and a giant 'fro will take screenshots of your avatar in a series of poses, then upload those images to a Weblin server, where your avatar is recreated for the web.  (This whole automated process is impressive in its own right.)

When the images are uploaded, you're given a link to your Weblin profile, to complete the process.  Once finished, your SL avatar is available to interact via chat and gestures with any other Weblin avatar on the same website.  I've always wanted to link the actual Second Life experience with the community on my Second Life blog, and with enough interest, this might be the best way.  If I see a decent number of other SL avatars regularly puttering around on the bottom of this web page, I'll definitely keep it going.

Comments

[Darien Mason]

Is there a cost to getting your picture taken?

[Vint Falken]

Awesome. Although I grew rather attached to my 'sticky man' and 'bouncy ball'. :D (visible here, but you need to log into weblin: http://www.weblin.com/shop.php?cmd=BE4b72917E&sid=3301&room=en2 )

Definitely going to try out getting my SL avie this way. :)

[Hamlet Au]

Darien, you have to pay a cash register at the entrance, but I believe it's just L$1.

[Doreen Garrigus]

I did this a couple of days ago. You pay them $L1 and they pay you back. It's like providing a credit card number for a no-charge service, I think. They are trying to confirm you as a real (virtual?) person.

The animations they chose for the avatars are not too bad and the rendering is good, excepting the white line around the av, but everyone has that. The only real weirdness is scale. My little av is half a head taller than almost everyone else. That's a strange experience for me.

[Hamlet Au]

Hah. Doreen, I just saw you on NWN and tried to say, but you seemed to disappear. I'm also not sure what happens if you're browsing with tabs, my lil Weblin Hamlet follows me to every page, which seems a bit weird.

[Sigmund Leominster]

This is trivial coolness at its best. You can be sure that before the day is out, my blogs will have Mini-Me's dancing around for no reason other than I want it!

Now, what to wear... what to wear...?

[Gary Hayes]

Great that you covered this Hamlet, I have been tracking Weblin, Rocketon and others in this space on personalizemedia for some time. I call them layered virtual worlds in a couple of quite detailed posts - here and here.
You should also do a hats off to Torrid Luna and others at German company primforge for doing the impressive capture and back-end coding for this. One key take-away from them is that they help those entrenched in 2D social networks understand the potential of embodied interaction more easily. There again it could put many off :) !

[alexandravelten]

I was impressed with the whole automated procedure too-and my mini me looks cute-I only have to fight the urge to zoom in or try to change clothing...

Alyx Sands

[MK]

Sigh. "You can only sign in if you are a registered weblin user and have downloaded the free client," which is not available to Mac users. For all functioning and participational purposes, Weblin is basically Windows only. In a word: bastards.

[Negko deVinna]

Hamlet, you should consider enabling the weblin service for non registered users, with the script command they give, aka weblin lite. It also allows mac users to have a weblin avatar.
And BTW, early merry Xmas!

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

Clicked on download, and sure enough, something.exe. Anyone know whether it works under WINE? The weblin web site has no info on system requirments.

[Miriam Woyseck]

It has happily rendered me complete with semi-passable antlers and virtual pets, and my flexi skirt doesn't even look terrible. I quite like seeing tiny lonely me at the bottom of empty pages, though, which may be a bit missing the point.

[Sigmund Leominster]

@Miriam
I feel the loneliness but am quite pleased at how my cute little avatar turned out. And in answer to my own question of "what to wear," Mini-Me is clad in a V-neck sweater from Valiant, beige striped trousers from Muism, and my favorite light casual loafers from Redgrave. My Britebling watch is, unfortunately, too small to see.

Meanwhile, like some mythical immortal, I will continue to skip around the web until I meet another Weblin avatar on my travels.

[Tuna Oddfellow]

Wow Hamlet,

Merry Festivas!

I marked this as something I had to do as soon as I got home today. I love feed reader on my iPhone.

I rushed home and within a half hour of my photo shoot I have a tiny animated Tuna Oddfellow. I sure hope we can get lots of SLers to play with this one.

[Kazuhiro Aridian]

huh, does this work for creature avatars? or is it rigged for humanoid only?

[Fenoe]

I tried to create a weblin of my avatar but i get an errormessage everytime i try.... Photo Stage: An error occured: Failed to publish image idle1

and...in the preview window i can see a SL notice about logins being disabled :D

[Torrid Luna]

Hi guys!

Thanks for the nice article, Hamlet, and for mentioning our work on this, Gary! *winks*

Personally, I think that weblin is a practical extension of Our Good Olde Second Life (and then some more^^). The implications of expanding your Virtual Identity to the web out there are endless: I've seen bloggers and VW enthusiasts like Mal Burns using the lite api to give the participants a temporary avatars for certain online meetings, I use it to meet and greet visitors on primforge.com, and it's just amazing to recognize this parallel cosmos happening. Of course all these online gatherings are even cooler when you are present as YourSelf2.0... ;-)

@MK: The guys from Weblin told me, that they are working on a Mac/Linux version, I'm waiting for that too (/me: Linux).
@Fenoe: Weblin Paule is online, taking orders again. (There is but one thing we cannot suppress clogging Paule's screen: Linden Lab's blue god mode messages.^^)

More to follow,
Torrid

[Adz Childs]

Too bad Windows Only

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

I hope that they don't consider "Weblin Lite" sufficient to count as a "Mac/Linux version."