I’ve resisted the temptation to mention where I’ve spent much of my time over the last couple of months but now that it has been publicly released, I think it’s safe to bring light to it here also. “It” is the introductory video for Trina’s “Returning To Oneself” effort.
My contribution was simply recording the footage taken in Secondlife and of course, helping to bring her back up to speed in SL since so much has changed since she was last there. The story, all of the real life video, the video editing and production and of course, the inspiration are all Trina’s. I am very excited for her and hope to continue working with her as this develops.
For my part, this has been a great way to become more familiar with OBS Studio and the 3D Connexion Space Mouse that I purchased shortly before learning that we would be working on this together. Of course, there is no better way of learning what you don’t know than to try to share what you think you know with someone else. This really has been a great experience and I’m looking forward to learning more.
In fact, learning more is already in process. Since this first video is now behind us and we have a myriad of proposed projects to choose from, we settled on one and have begun putting things together. Everyday is a learning experience. I don’t know that SL can every get old when most anything is possible – if you but know how to do it.
Currently my major effort is in creating poses and animations for our scenes. After many starts at Blender – some more successful than others – I have come back to it with the Avastar plugin. In previous images, I relied on in world tools such as Anypose along with body and head animations available. Sometimes they were too constraining and the Black Dragon Poser was a lifesaver. With Avastar, I now have another tool that I believe will play a larger and larger part as I learn my way around that.
..and returning to Blender creates so many other possibilities too.
This isn’t “returning to myself” but it is the re-opening of a half-closed door.
On the subject of “opening doors”, do yourself a favor and visit Trina’s site, Returning to Oneself.