The Last Vid & Testament of Botgirl Questi

It's time to take a break from actively blogging and creating content as Botgirl Questi...at least for the foreseeable future. This video provides a glimpse into how I've been feeling trying to keep all of my atomic and virtual balls in the air. I will continue to post once in a while and also pop inworld from time to time.

We interrupt this sharing thread for Ted Talks video of "Understanding Comics" author Scott McCloud

Studio Artist Software Opens New Dimensions for Second Life Photography and Machinima Making

Studio Artist is an amazing software program that can generate a vast range of paint, vector and image processing effects on stills, video files and even live video streams. The image below shows detail of an original and auto-rotoscoped frame from the video I posted yesterday.

The Macintosh-only software can create effects unlike any other program I've run across, including resolution-independent simulations of painting styles, time-based processing and multiple key-frame effects chains.

I'll share more of its features over the coming months as I apply them in Second Life projects. For now, here's a pretty detailed review of the software from Mac Animation Pro.



I'll

My first shot at rotoscoping video created in Second Life

For best viewing, download the 1280 X 720 Quicktime file here by right-clicking and saving to your hard drive.

More Games Our Brains Play

Here's another video from Ted Talks related to the mental construction of reality. This one is a lecture by Philosopher Philosopher Dan Dennett. It starts off a bit slow, but eventually presents some compelling evidence that "not only don't we understand our own consciousness, but that half the time our brains are actively fooling us."

Why Seeing Shouldn't Be Believing

Yesterday's images crudely demonstrated how just a little resolution enhancement can ruin one's enjoyment of erotica. Magnification can break down our typical experience of a virtual world by revealing the underlying absence of detail and complexity. Magnification can cut through our normal perception of the physical world by revealing almost infinite levels of detail and complexity.

This fun video by neuroscientist Al Seckel demonstrates some of the ways the mind interprets and misinterprets visual imagery.

Q. What Does Hi-Def Video Teach About Porn and Second Life?

A. Too much detail can ruin a fantasy.

And the HD Hosting Winner is Blip.tv

The last post linked to versions of an HD test video uploaded to YouTube and Vimeo. Video hosting services don't stream your original video, but re-encode to fit their particular display formats. So quality can vary quite bit depending upon the specifications of the original video you upload and the particular way a service renders into their final format.

Vimeo produced the best image of the two services I tried yesterday and was the least picky about image format. Today, I uploaded to blip.tv, and in my opinion it's the all around best choice. The image quality is as good as Vimeo, plus it's the only option that supports embeddable HD video (although I don't have the width available here for the full resolution.)

My First HD Video: Persona

I put a very short video together to test YouTube's new HD capability. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to export a format that works well. The video either doesn't register as HD or the encoding is very choppy.

YouTube HD is working now and can be viewed here. The settings that finally worked were:

• .mp4
• H.264
• 5000 kps data rate
• 30 fps
  
• optimized for streaming
• 1466 byte maximum packet size

The embedded Vimeo clip below is low res. Here's the link to the vimeo HD version.


Persona from Botgirl Questi on Vimeo.

La Jetee' - Incredible Sci-Fi Short From 1962

Found via Immersion Blog and Amy Stein Photography. I posted this to my Tumblog, but it was so good I thought it deserved the wider viewership here.

Dale and Dale

I'm still working on Dale's comic page. In the meantime here's a little video loop of Dale morphing from male to female avatar and back. And back again.

Now for something completely different: Avatars in Love video

Avatars In Love - Episode 1: Three's a Crowd from Botgirl Questi on Vimeo.

Production stills from upcoming video: Avatars in Love

Here are some location stills from my upcoming video "Avatars in Love."

Botgirl speaks and moves her lips in new Metaverse TV show

I had the great pleasure of making an appearance on the first episode of Metaverse TV's Second Living show. It has kind of a Public Access TV feel. It just posted on their site.

Photo from music video set

I've been recording video most of the day. Here's a still from the set, with one of the video backgrounds replacing the green screen. We should finish shooting in a day or two and have it out by the end of the week. At least that's the plan.

"Camping In Second Life" video

Paying avatars to loiter: Cool earning opportunity or greedy business practice that hurts the community?

Higher resolution version available for download here



Full song "Camping Incognito" by Just Plan Bill available here.

Enough philosophy. Here's the very first botgirlq dance video.

Dancing at 200m