New World Notes

Sinespace Expands to Launch Breakroom, 3D Social Hub for Remote Teams

Breakroom is a new product for PC, Mac, Android tablets, and tethered VR headsets from sponsoring media partner Sinespace -- excerpt from the official announcement:

Sine Wave Entertainment today announced the launch of Breakroom, the 3D social hub for remote teams who want an online, immersive space to meet, team build, organize events, and host meetings.

With more and more teams working from home -- most recently in response to the Coronavirus -- major organizations are turning to online services that can replace brick and mortar office functionality. 

But standard conferencing and collaboration tools are not built to meet the social and wellness needs. Breakroom provides the video conferencing and media sharing tools you would expect from any collaboration platform, and combines it with colorful, welcoming online world filled with team-building exercises, brainstorming sessions, casual games, competitions, live events, office parties, breaktime meetups and everyday staff chitchat.

Watch the teaser video above. Breakroom is an enterprise spinoff of Sinespace for companies and non-profit organizations, and free for schools to use.

Sinespace the virtual world for everyone is still expanding, and will roll out some new features for users and creators soon. I asked Sinespace co-founder Adam Frisby about the project and how it affects the existing world:

Today in Sinespace at 9am PST: Developer Q&A With Senior Engineer Joshua "Karsten Rutledge" May - Watch Stream Here!

Update: Streaming running on YouTube now, watch above, or on Sinespace's Twitch here.

Starting today in the Assembly region at around 9am PST, lead Sinespace engineer Joshua May (AKA Karsten Rutledge, creator of Greedy Greedy and other hit games in Second Life) will be answering any and all technical questions about developing and selling content in the Unity-based virtual world (and proud sponsoring partner to this blog). If you can't join in-game, I'll be posting the video stream when it's live. And if you have follow-up questions to anything discussed at the Q&A, please post in Comments below and I'll nudge Joshua to answer when he has time. (And yes, he's this excellent wolf avatar for the event.)

 

Joshua, by the way, wrote this interesting guest essay for Hypergrid Business last year on developing content in Second Life and what interested him in expanding to Sinespace:

How SL Creators Won Sinespace's $5000 Out of This World Contest

Slime Falls, a new region-sized template, is a cool new item for sale in the shop of Sinespace (a proud NWN partner). Full of strange, interactive creators and foliage (watch the teaser above) it's a great starter experience for Sinspacers just getting acclimated to the virtual world. As it happens, it's also the top winner of Sinespace's recent $5000 Out of This World development contest, taking the $3000 grand prize.

 

Created by Punkerella and Booradley, a husband and wife development team, they sell their Sinespace content on a shop called Chimeric Arts & Fashions. As it happens, they also sell content to avatars in Second Life under the banner Chimeric Arts & Fashions. (SLurl to their store here.)

 

Here's how they created Slime Falls, and their advance to other creators like them getting started in Sinespace:

Watch: How to Convert Second Life Content for Use & Sale in Sinespace

Longtime SL content creator Kub created this handy video tutorial for converting your Second Life creations (a bed from his SL store, in this case) into Sinespace -- both in the world itself and the in-game shop. (His own Sinespace shop page is here.)

 

Kub's overall advice for other Second Life creators interested in experimenting with Sinespace:

 

"Try. I think that Second Life is a very specific kind of workflow that we have all gotten used to and it's made things feel more difficult than they are. I can't speak to clothing or rigging at all for bringing that into Sinespace, as I don't make those kinds of things, but for buildings and furniture and objects -- just a little bit of faith in yourself and you can learn Unity and start transferring over everything you've ever made with ease."

 

Kub is a veteran explorer of many virtual worlds, and sees potential in the Unity-based platform:

Celebrate Valentine's in Sinespace This Weekend With Parties, Music & Prizes

It's Romance Week in Sinespace! From today and throughout this coming weekend, the proud NWN partner is hosting 10 events with a love and Valentine's theme: Sing a love song for 100 Gold, wear your best lovely costume in a contest for a chance to win 3500 in Gold prizes, and much, much more. All the details are here on Sinespace's official blog.

 

And don't forget to visit the Welcome Centre to take a romantic pic with a special someone in the kissing booth -- and win a Valentine's-themed deely bopper!

 

Speaking of fun things to do together, don't forget Sinespace's referral program is still open:

This Sunday in Sinespace: Welcome, Orientation & Avatar Makeover Party for New Users & Creators!

Update, 2/7: The event will be streamed on Sinespace's Twitch here.

This Sunday (February 9) at Noon PST/3pm EST in the Assembly region (above, find by clicking Explore), the staff of Sinespace (a sponsoring media partner of New World Notes) are hosting a welcome party, orientation, and avatar makeover session for people who've recently joined the virtual world as a user, creator, or both!

IMPORTANT NOTE: For the best experience at this event, download Sinespace's 1B49 preview viewer at this page. 

The Sinespace team will be there live to answer all your questions about getting the most fun and creativity out of Sinespace's many features and creative tools, including the shop. With a special free 1 month subscription giveaway (with 600 gold total in four weekly stipends) and avatar makeover party where everyone can show off their favorite looks and their customization tips!

Speaking of orientation, there's a new Sinespace avatar customization guide available in .pdf -- click here to download. Download Sinespace Avatar Customization Guide

Win $500 in Sinespace's Free Home Region Customization Contest!

Sinespace has a new home region customization contest that starts tomorrow, with the winner (or winners, if you work with a group) getting a cash prize of $500 from the NWN media partner.

 

Every Sinespace user starts out with a free home region, which can then be completely modified by region templates that instantly turn it into a futuristic nightclub, floating city, etc. From there you can further customize your home region by uploading your own furnishings, or buy them from the shop.

 

Here's all the details, and don't forget to share pics and video of your submission on Twitter, Instagram, or Flickr, and tag @sinewavespace. By the way, to help get you started shopping, New World Notes still has some exclusive redemption codes for 500 Gold in Sinespace -- details below:

SL Fashionista Blogger's Tips for Customizing Sinespace Avatars

On her blog Honeyjunkies, famed virtual world blogger/YouTuber Daeberethwen Arbenlow has some impressive sneak preview pics of the Shyla avatar from DAZ 3D, a new developer for NWN partner Sinespace. (Read about it on Forbes here.) Daeberethwen has some starting tips for avatar fashion fans:

 

"Starting with the default shape and then tweaking it was the easiest way to modify the shape to look decent," she tells me, "but also it is important to have a general idea of facial anatomy ratios."

 

Here's the extremely handy reference guide she uses for those ratios:

Daz 3D’s Hyper-Realistic Avatars & Accessories Now Available in Sinespace

Screenshot taken in Sinespace with no post-processing - click for detail!

As Forbes just reported, Daz 3D, the world’s largest 3D character and outfit library, has become a developer and content vendor on the platform of NWN media partner Sinespace. (Shop page for Daz Originals here.) Used in the making of movies like Captain America and Iron Man, you may have seen Daz 3D-based character models in “Is she real or digital” viral social media posts. 

This is the first time Daz characters are accessible to consumers outside the rendering software and in a virtual world as playable, customizable avatars. (Watch the video above.) 

Daz 3D’s high poly count models (with millions of polygons) are optimized for use in a multiplayer game space. The Sinespace team tells me all clothing in Sinespace is compatible with these avatars, as they are using the world’s morph feature, which can be further customized -- also they will soon enable the Daz models’ original 4K resolution for maximum realism for screenshots, etc.  

Just for the holidays, Sinespace is offering a special 500 Gold giveaway to twenty New World Notes readers who want to buy Daz items and other cool content in the shop, such as discount items during Sinespace’s Winter Sale -- details below:

Building Bearimals: How a Prize-Winning Sinespace Mesh Creator Made the Transition from Second Life

What you’re watching above are the zanily adorable Bearimal Gokarts, from Martin of Secret Weapon Productions, winner of the recent Wicked Witchcraft Challenge from sponsoring media NWN partner Sinespace, a virtual world built on Unity. They’re now available in the shop for 400 Gold (i.e. about $4 USD) for your all your Bearimal go kart racing needs, with the wacky animations featured in the video triggered when the racers get close to each other.

Martin, as it turns out, is also a developer for Second Life, where he creates and sells custom mesh content as Malakina Gummibaum under the Girl Life brand. He tells me it wasn’t too difficult to jump from creating mesh content in SL to doing so in Sinespace: