Not long ago in Second Life, an artful Frenchman named Sextan Shepherd created an underwater steampunk city that paid tribute to Jules Verne, with more opulent detail than I'd ever think possible. Not happy with just doing that, Mr. Shepherd went on to make a reflecting mirror in Second Life, something that's supposed to be flat out impossible full stop. But boom, baby, voilà:
"Mirrors are fun," Sextan said, "aren't they?" Why yes they are, especially when they're supposed to be impossible to make in Second Life. And then Sextan Shepherd proceeded to tell me how he did it:
"Well you know that's it's impossible to have mirrors in SL so I had to cheat to get this result. In fact," Sextan went on, "it's a mix of synchronised rotations with some animated textures taken from the environment surrounding the mirrors. I've added some specularity light on the mirrors textures and TADAAAAAAAA!" He's building them for "Nemo III", an add-on to his Verne steampunk project. More on that soon, but here's a hint for now in two words: flying city.
Hat tip: Thorn Witrial.
By gum, he's a clever chap and no mistake!
Posted by: HBA | Thursday, July 08, 2010 at 01:00 PM
Out of the box thinking! Love it! :)
Posted by: Foobar Merlin | Thursday, July 08, 2010 at 01:08 PM
excellent effect
Posted by: Metacam Oh | Thursday, July 08, 2010 at 08:31 PM
My god Sextant has no reflection in the mirror... he is a vampire !
My god, it's the same for me !
... us avatar are all vampire !
(please tell it to Twillight, Moonlight, True Blood, Buffy & Angel, Ann Rice and even old style Bram Stoke fan, we need more people in SL)
More seriously, incredible texture work from Sextant, wich plays with the limitation of his art, as all artist have done in the past.
Posted by: DD Ra | Friday, July 09, 2010 at 01:36 AM
Neat work. What I'd love to see in SL are funhouse mirrors.
Posted by: Melissa Yeuxdoux | Friday, July 09, 2010 at 02:38 AM
It's antics like this that make me wonder why Linden Lab didn't partner with, oh, id Software or someone like that. Shaders and all that you know.
Posted by: Martien Pontecorvo | Friday, July 09, 2010 at 04:42 AM
Mirrors, impossible? On the current viewer, perhaps. But even a true mirror in SL would be purely client side. I'm sad to see that one hasn't yet been added to the pipeline, even if it would be super intensive graphically.
The power of reflections, especially mirrors, shouldn't be underestimated in a virtual worlds.
Posted by: Adeon Writer | Friday, July 09, 2010 at 08:25 PM
It used to be possible in 2007: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmGzH3GZ5Jo
Sadly, the bit of code that did this magic was removed from SL's renderer a long, long time ago...
Posted by: Gwyneth Llewelyn | Saturday, July 10, 2010 at 03:45 AM
He is not the only one building a flying city. I know of one that has been in the works now for 3 months bit by bit. It sexy related though and I don't think it wil be pg, or even mature for that matter. I don't see how it could be.
Posted by: Brandon | Saturday, July 10, 2010 at 10:12 AM
As far as a mirror goes just use media on a prim intelligently. It could be done.
Posted by: Brandon | Saturday, July 10, 2010 at 10:13 AM
As far as a mirror goes just use media on a prim intelligently. It could be done.
Posted by: Brandon | Saturday, July 10, 2010 at 10:13 AM
This blog post shows what was possible, back in early 2007.
http://secondslog.blogspot.com/2007/01/first-look-into-mirror.html
Posted by: Frans Charming | Saturday, July 10, 2010 at 11:40 PM
Nothing new under the sun...
Short of implementing dynamic reflections in the viewer itself, true mirrors *are* impossible to do in SL, and the media on a prim won't elegantly and practically solve this either since then you'd need to stream the rendered viewpoint from a second viewer on the mirror surface, making it extremely heavy and slow a solution (with a noticeable delay between what happens around and its reflection in the mirror).
Nice trick, but just a trick.
Posted by: Henri Beauchamp | Sunday, July 11, 2010 at 02:06 AM