Some thoughts about vehicles in Second Life vol.1

  At first ,I'm a game nerd.I love open world games like GTA,mercenaries,saint row.They allows you walk around in the world,they has a lot kinds of vehicles.I don't know why but motorcycles in those games has very good handling,I like to just take a ride in the city for whole day.Accelerate, steer,brake...everything just in my control.

  So,that's probably the reason why I join second life.I join second life in 2007,and after I rezzed myself ,I saw an ATV and ride on it ! ......and it sucks.In 2007 second life doesn't has good physic engine like Havok4.So almost every vehicles you see in the world sucks.You press W slightly then out of sim .It was the rocket age.

  Also there were only very few sculpted prims used in second life before.All cars and bikes looks like toys.Except a freebie benz.I admire it,but its control is still not very well.I'm not a benz fan in RL so I just take a look and drive for a few hours.

  The first "good vehicle"I ve seen is M.H Galla52 in 2008.M.H was the biggest car maker before.They make cars like a boss because they can use sculpted prims.And Galla52 was the best one in their products line.Handling still good but kinda laggy.

  We all knows there were many real life vehicles maker joined this virtual world before.I had all YAMAHA's bikes.They let some professional cg artist to make those bikes-----really professional ,That's the first time I realized you can render the shadow to the texture, to make bikes looks more realistic.They made a plugin for MAYA and I even wanted to save money and buy it ,but way too expensive like 2,500USD.

  Then Shack Dougall made an incredible plugin for 3DsMAX called Prim Composer.It makes my dream comes true.I can even use V-ray to render shadows for sculpted prim parts.If someone knows me before,I make guns and vehicles--I made the 1st total full perm sculpted glock17,Ak74 and M4a1 in second life, which glock17 bought me a lot of trouble.And first AH-1 Cobra and A-10 in the world.Well some professional guys saw I got some success so they made sculpted guns and an A-10 too.I realized I have to make something that high-tec,unique,and good scripts.

  I can't do scripts at all so I'm not able to develop my own vehicles system.I tried almost all full perm script on the marketplace/XstreetSL.Finally I found KCP ACS, an awesome script system from Karyn Vaher.I think I don't need to explain why it's awesome.Just check my bikes----They are KCP scripted.All works for me just adjust some numbers,add animations and sounds.

  There are 1400+ KCP bike makers in SL now.That's a huge number ,so let's talk about how to make a good bike,and market.

  Somebody likes second life basic shinny and glows and somebody prefer rendered textures.I prefer rendered textures.I do drawing and sculpts in real life too so I think it's very important to make "balance" for my stuffs.Second life has many many visual styles.But basically fits the openGL rendering.If you make your stuffs too realistic it will not fits the environment of second life.  Some professional artists comes and didn't get success.I think that's why.But to some new bike makers in SL ,my suggest is just "Do your best".Improve products are always not a bad idea.

  So there's another thing,many people uses free internet models as their own products.Some of them are ripped from games.All I can say is "good luck".But at least they learnt how to separate wheels from models to make it rotate.


  Ok thanks for reading ,and sorry for my poor english,and happy holiday ,happy everyone , Christmas 's coming ,and have a nice day:)