Metaverse Tutorials

Step 01: Creating your NGrid avatar

2011-08-15T04:12:00.000-07:00

Please go to this URL: http://ngrid.org/blog/?q=node/3

This will take you to a page with three start up avatars, a furry, a male and a female. Since NGrid is a virtual world which emphasizes a difference the start-up avatars too are different - they are all white! You will be able to completely change your appearance and gender once you are in-world, so basically you can click on either one.

From here you will go to a new screen where you will be asked to enter your user information. In other words this screen is where you decide upon the name of your avatar and your password with which you login to NGrid. So, give your avatar a first name, a last name, a password and then enter the email address where you wish to receive the validation email and click the blue "submit and validate" button at the bottom. And choose wisely since the avatar's name cannot be changed later!

OK! All set to go! Now go to your email and click on the validation link and then you are ready to enter NGrid, the sophisticated metaverse!
;-)

Step 02: Setting up your viewer

2011-08-13T05:19:00.000-07:00

The recommended viewer for the open metaverse is the Imprudence Viewer and therefore this is the one that you too should definitely use. To download the viewer go to this URL:
http://wiki.kokuaviewer.org/wiki/Imprudence:Downloads.

Before you decide upon which version of Imprudence to use you may also wish to check whether your PC (Windows only) can run an SSE2 optimized viewer, and if so you can use that version also since it is reputed to be slightly faster than the standard release.

The downloads page on the official NGrid blog also gives you a list of minimum system requirements, so you may want to check these out before you proceed also: http://ngrid.org/blog-NEW/?q=node/4

And now we need to look at how you set up NGrid as a new grid on your viewer: The 3 screenshots below will guide you through the process step by step. The all important info which you need is the login URI which is http://login.ngrid.org:8002/. You will see where this will be needed in image three, during step 02 as is shown on that image.

When you start up the viewer, on the bottom you will see the above entry fields. In all likelihood the grid will be set to OSgrid, but do not worry about this, we will be changing this to our own grid very shortly. Enter your avatar's first and last name and password and then click on Grid Manager.

Once you open the Grid Manager you will see what is in the image above. Enter the word ngrid for the Grid name (which is unique and cannot be changed later). Then copy paste the following line http://login.ngrid.org:8002/ into the Login URI field shown in step 03 in the image above. Next click the button which says Get Grid Info (step 04) and all of the entry fields below it will fill automatically. Then click Apply and OK. The Grid manager will close and you should have ngrid in the pull down menu on the login screen at the bottom where it used to say OSgrid or whatever. If not simply change it to that, and reenter your avatar name and password if needed... So - now go ahead and login!
;-)

Step 03: All important! Your preferences!

2011-08-11T08:50:00.000-07:00

I am sure you have seen all these presentations with screenshots of Second Life and have wondered as to why anyone in their right senses could possibly want to spend time in a world which looks like as if it is made out of very bad quality cardboard! The reason is very simple: For the most part novices do not know how to figure out their preferences or simply do not care to spend the few minutes that it takes to fix this very basic issue.

So, before you even login for the very first time, look on the top left hand corner of the viewer where you will see a small menu. Click on Edit and then preferences.

I will start out with what I think are the most important ones, which are your graphics settings, and then further down I will also show you some other ones which you may need as well.

True, the level of your graphics settings will depend upon you hardware, more specifically your graphics card. However, if your machine is less than 3 years old you should be able to get a decent display. The very first thing to do is to set your native screen resolution to as high as it will go - as an example, mine is 1920 x 1080. Once you have taken care of this, go back to the viewer, to Edit and Preferences and then Graphics and check the Advanced options box which you will see there. Then follow the instructions on the lower image above as closely as you can. What you should not sacrifice above all else are the shaders. Make sure that all 4 are checked.

Where you can compromise are the draw distance number and the particle count and the non-imposters. The water reflections should ideally show "all avatars and objects" but if that proves to be too much you can also select all static objects from the pulldown menu. Enabling the shaders is what will make the world three dimensional as nothing else will. I will talk more about the atmospheric shaders later but in addition to the 3D feeling these will also give you different skies, lights and atmospheric conditions and "mood". In short, the graphics settings are the difference between a flat drab world and one that holds light!

And a word of advice from wonderful Snoopy Pfeffer, our valiant service provider: If your machine is older than 3 years make sure that your hardware is up to the task of displaying everything in the way in which I have described above. A good way of figuring out if you are doing OK is by occasionally checking out what the Statistics Bar (found under the View menu - please look at screenshot here >>>) is telling you through your framerate. Ideally this value should not go below 30 fps, and 15 fps is the absolute lowest acceptable minimum. So, if you are falling below that you may yet need to compromise with the above values. :-\

And now, onto the other ones:

The General tab is fairly self explanatory. The only thing to be mindful of with this one is to keep the GoAway/AFK box unchecked so that your avatar can always stay in-world fully alert.

The important thing to know about the network tab is the Clear Disk Cache button, which you may need to press on occasion and then log off and relog so that your cache can get cleared. This will improve performance and stability.

With the Audio tab, please remember to check the wind generator box. This will create an ambient sound effect which is similar to wind. Research in this area gives substantial evidence that what immerses us in virtual environments is sound. Not music - but simply a sound which simulates the spatial sound of the physical world. So, having this active will indeed make you feel more "there" in the world in which you are immersed. Another thing is to set the interface sounds as low as you can get them to be, without sacrificing message alerts, since the click clack sounds of the interface are very loud and annoying indeed.

On the camera tab it is important to check the two boxes which disable camera constraints. And then the camera angle you can experiment with to move closer in or out of the back of the avatar and also to decide upon transition time and smoothing. I tend to keep both of these last two very low since heightened values tend to make me somewhat seasick. But if this doesn't affect you the higher values will actually give you rather nice motion effects.

And finally skins: Given that the world itself is already very colorful I prefer skins which do not add to the color but stick to the dark, grayscale ones. But obviously this is a matter of preference. So, I am putting this shot in here just to let you know that you do have the choice. (Note: I am noticing that in the newest release of Imprudence they are back to the two basic skins, which are top ones - so currently you do not have these extra choices - ouch!. I am still keeping this image however, since you never know, and they could easily go back to more choices in upcoming releases ;-)

Step 04: Arriving at NGrid

2011-08-09T05:28:00.000-07:00

The above screenshot shows you what you will see upon your first step into NGrid - the dramatic concourse of the virtual world's reception hub, which is located in a region called Ubik. But stand right there and hold your horses! Before you can do much else you will have to get some kind of familiarity with the viewer's software and its interface. And this is the subject matter of the next set of tutorials which will show you everything step by step.

For now - your keyboard arrows will make you move. The Up Arrow moves you forward, Down backwards, Right lets you turn right while you are standing, and Left lets you turn left, again in standing position. Page Up lets you fly up, and Page Down lets you fly down.

Now, further down the concourse, slightly to your right, there are a pile of black boxes, which I have outlined in orange and marked up as 01. These hold all kinds of goodies with which you can "create" your personal avatar: Everything from skins, shapes, eyes, and hair to clothes. So, walk towards these boxes using your keyboard arrows. And once there, go onto the next set of tutorials where you will learn all about what to do next, how this whole thing actually works.
;-)

Note: Your lighting and sky will look different from what you see in this screenshot since you will login with the default lighting whereas I have a custom sky and light setting. No worries, you will soon learn how to fix all of that!

Step 05: Learning the software - a quick tour with exploded interface shots

2011-08-07T12:48:00.000-07:00

The metaverse viewer is no different than any other computer application: You have to know your way around it before you can get any sort of mileage out of it. And the better you know it, the more you will enjoy your sojourn in virtual 3D. I personally think that one of the reasons for the rather large fallout rate of virtual worlds is that their novice users seldom bother to learn the software. And lack of knowledge, in my estimation, certainly accounts for all those dreadful screenshots that one sees of an environment where everything looks like as if it was cut out with a blunt pair of scissors, populated with badly dressed avatars, sporting dreadful hair and skin, all perched on their clumsy prim chairs - sitting like as if they have bad cases of indigestion - and all facing away from the camera at all times!

The funny thing however is that learning the interface actually doesn't take that long since it is all logically designed and fairly self-explanatory. So, please do take the couple of hours needed: Log in, and then using the screenshots below check out where everything is. I have opened up all of the menus and palettes and then created composite screenshots as to how all these things look, with explanations regarding their usage below them. So, actually a good idea may be to print these images and have them next to your computer so that it is all right in front of you.

Basically the metaverse viewer has two menus, a top one and a bottom one, which are narrowly lined up along the interface. While the top one is more of a standard type of menu, like you would expect to see in most computer applications, the bottom one works with pop-ups which let you do all sorts of stuff. From the top menu you will mostly check/uncheck various commands which are generalized and will work at all times, whereas the bottom one will let you do things intuitively through its floating palettes.

Needless to say, this is only a highly condensed overview and things (especially some of the stuff the happens through the bottom menu) will be covered in more detail in following tutorials. However - please remember: No tutorial will teach you stuff unless you get curious and really sniff around and start investigating on your own account. And as I said above, the metaverse viewer is actually very intuitive. So, please please do!

Worst thing that can happen? You crash... And then you simply relog and no harm done! And also, please have fun! At least for me, that is precisely where creativity starts - and nowhere more so than in a builder's world :-D

Step 06: Learning the interface - the pie menu

2011-08-05T15:13:00.000-07:00

You will very quickly learn to appreciate the pie menu, with which you can take care of many tasks as well as get a lot of info in a very quick and efficient manner. In fact, most metaverse pros will use the pie menu far more often than all the others, especially when it comes to building and avatar interactions.

Above you will find the basic commands which are available just by right clicking on the things around you. The pie menu has deeper levels which I am not showing here, so please continue to explore by yourself. To repeat, it is all highly self-explanatory and you will get the hang of it in no time at all...

Step 07: About communication and notifications

2011-08-03T05:21:00.000-07:00

The above screenshot shows you the basic ways in which the system or other avatars will get in touch with you or how you go about finding them. What you need to do, is pay attention to the bottom left corner for incoming messages from other avatars; the top right corner for offers which they may make you, such as friendship offers, teleport offers or things from their inventory. Another thing which will show up here are group notifications of groups that you belong to. The bottom right corner on the other hand is all about notifications which the system sends you, mostly about the online/offline status of your friends.

Although your friends are all listed under the Communicate button on the bottom left, there may still be a need to find people that you are not friends with and that you still need to talk to. In this case you will click on Search, go to the people tab, type in the name of the avatar and then proceed from there.

Step 08: A very important one - your inventory

2011-08-01T07:21:00.000-07:00

Your inventory can be opened up from the furthest right button on the bottom menu and this is one button that you will be using a lot! Basically, your inventory contains all of your avatar's worldly goods. You will put on your body parts from there, get dressed from there, you will keep all the objects which you build in there and all the textures and scripts and animations which you will need to build will be in there as well! So, this place really is your virtual lifeline and you should get to know it, and how it works inside and out.

I will be showing you how you create things from within the inventory in a separate post later on. However, for starters I think it is important just to learn how to use the inventory itself, especially when it comes to putting stuff on the avatar. This works with a right click system in that you access the objects and utilize them by right clicking on them and attaching them either to the avatar or to the screen. And then body parts (shapes, skin, eyes, system hair) and also garments which get worn by the avatar directly (such as pants, shirts etc) are also all here. Again, these you also access by right clicking on them and just "wearing" them (as opposed to 3D objects such as shoes and so on, which you "attach").

Your open metaverse inventory will initially be somewhat meager in terms of such goodies, but not to worry, one of the very next posts will show you how to make such acquisitions and how to get them inside your inventory and onto your avatar. ;-)

Step 09: The 3D camera, aka. your avatar's mirror...

2011-07-30T14:30:00.000-07:00

Wanna see your avatar's face? Sure you do!

1) Holding down the alt key whilst you click upon an object (including your own avatar) will lock the software’s camera onto this object and center it. From here you can play by turning and also zooming in and out of the object. The camera will stay in the locked position until you hit Esc.

2) Holding down both ctrl + alt, will let you rotate the camera around the object in any direction that you want. Again you can zoom in and out, and again you can release the camera by pressing Esc.

3) And then of course there is the little Camera palette, which you can get from the View menu (top bar) by checking the line which says Camera Controls. This will let you pan and rotate the view that you are looking at. However, this motion will not be object focused but rather rotate the entire field of view, instead of turning around a specific object.

Step 10: Getting goodies out of boxes...

2011-07-29T11:34:00.000-07:00

OK folks, we are now heading for some of the fun stuff which you can do in a metaverse: Dress-up games! And here is the very first step towards learning how to do that, which is getting stuff out of boxes.

Unlike Second Life, where most of the nice stuff is for sale, in the open metaverse we do not yet have a money based economy and + we are generous folk :-), so all of this is free. Remember a few posts ago when you first arrived at Ubik and I said walk towards the boxes? Hope you are there now! This is a wall of stuff all held in boxes, from animations to shoes pretty much, which you can just take away with you and enjoy. A lot of the clothing items are from my SL shop alpha.tribe which is quite a well known place over there, so (even if I say so myself) what I have put here is rather nice stuff, no shoddy cast offs or anything like that. ;-) OK, so here we go:

The image above shows you the full wall of goodies at Ubik. I will show you how to get stuff out of three of these boxes. The first one is actually the subject matter of Step 11, which is the next post down on this blog and it involves Animation Overriders. The second box involves getting things out of a box which directly gives you a folder. And the third box involves getting a copy of the actual object and then “rezzing” it to get its contents

Click on the box (1) (the cursor will turn into a little hand by the way, which for some reason my screen capture software won't capture). Within a few seconds of doing so you will see a notification on the top right corner which tells you that the owner of the box is trying to give you a folder (2). Press Keep (obviously ;-). The folder will land in your inventory, below your Trash (3). Open this folder, and you will see a list of items. Right click on any one of them and say wear (4). And now use the 3D camera (as explained in step 09) to rotate around your avatar's body, then zoom in and admire your pretty new skin! ;-)

But sometimes a box will not give you a folder, instead it will let you take a copy of itself, which you can open up later and get the contents out of:

If there is no little hand when you hover over the box, then it may well be the case that the object can be copied: Right click on the box to get the pie menu, go to More (1), and then at 12 o'clock you should see Take Copy (2) - if the object has in fact been set for copy, that is. Go there and click, and the box will land inside your inventory. However, since this is actually a 3D object, it will not go below your trash (only folders do that) but end up in the Objects folder where it rightfully belongs (3 and 4).

From where you need to take it back out in order to get it's contents:

In order to do this, first off make sure that you are on land where you have build permissions. In other words the build button on the bottom menu has to be active. Then, simply go to the box (which as you remember is in the objects folder inside your inventory), and click and drag the box anywhere onto the ground in front of you - just as it shows you to do in the image above. Just click and drag folks - that easy! And YAYY! You have just "rezzed" an object!

Next, right click on the box, and you will see Open at 3 o'clock. Click there and a window will pop up, which says Copy to Inventory (Ignore the other button, it is useless). So, click on Copy to Inventory and the contents of the box will show up in a folder underneath your trashcan - which as you will remember, is where all imported folders go. And then, just right click, wear, etc, as per usual...

Step 11: The all important Animation Overrider (AO) - so that you don't walk like a duck... ;-)

2011-07-26T10:51:00.000-07:00

1) The box standing all the way on the left by itself at the Ubik goodies wall holds the Animation Overriders. Click on the box to get the folder, for which the notification will appear on the top right hand corner of the screen.

2) Attach the Simple Walk Animation Overrider inside the folder to HUD > Bottom Right. The AO will appear on the right bottom corner, as seen in step 3.

3/3a) Press on menu. This will bring out a menu on the top right corner. Press Load.

4) Since this is just a simple walk AO, there is only one notecard (which holds the data for one female, 2 male and one unisex walk). So, click on notecard, so that you can select one of them in the next step.

5) Now watch the bottom left corner of your screen and you will see some yellow text which informs you that the notecard is loading. When you see the memory line (as shown above), you are ready to select your walk (6).

And yes, you can also disable the AO while you are wearing it. (You would not really bother to do so with a simple walk AO, however anything which also has seating animations in it may need to get disabled from time to time). The shot on the left shows you how things look when the AO is active, and the one on the right when it is disabled. To disable/enable click on the letters AO to make them turn black or white.

Step 12: Editing your appearance

2011-07-24T06:34:00.000-07:00

1) Right clicking on yourself will show you the Appearance button at 8 o’clock on the pie menu. Click here and the appearance palette will open up (3).

2) At the same time your cursor will turn into a 3D camera so that you can rotate your avatar to see your results while you are working. And of course you will also have the Camera Controls which you get from the View menu up top also.

3) The rest is fairly self-explanatory. I am going to advise you to stick to modifying your shape only, which is quite a lot of fun in and of itself and you can come up with some wonderfully bizarre creatures just by tweaking all the values in the various tabs. You can either create a completely new shape from the Create tab on the top of the inventory, or you can use one of mine, which you can get out of one of the shape box at Ubik.

One important thing to remember with the leg values of the shape are the size of your feet, which have to be set to zero, so that 3D object shoes can actually fit on them.

Once you are done be absolutely sure to click save, before you continue. This is important since one rather unpleasant open metaverse bug is that if you do not save (before the system reminds you, that is), you are very likely to crash and all your good efforts will have been wasted.

Note: Creating clothes and skin is pretty advanced stuff, which involves a lot of custom texturing and shading in external image editors, for which you use custom avatar clothing templates. So, until you become an experienced builder/texturer this is a task best left alone, I would suggest... :-\

Again, eyes will need a lot of work in an external image editor before they look right. And as for hair - the system hair which you can create from the appearance palette is sort of the hallmark of a novice user, who hasn't yet figured out that good hair is always attached to the avatar as a separate 3D object. So, I wouldn't attempt to make hair through here either. You will need system hair in order to render, however for that we use the famous bald head, which you will find in the hair boxes at Ubik: There is actually quite a selection of 3D object hair for both men and women over there. And very soon there will also be a post on how to adjust 3D objects (such as hair) after you have attached them.

4) Always remember to make a copy of any item which you are editing and then paste it into the same folder. If you are not sure where the item is, then type worn into the search bar of the inventory and you will soon find it.

Step 13: Adjusting / positioning / resizing your attachments

2011-07-22T08:40:00.000-07:00

When you put on an attachment for the very first time chances are that it will not be positioned exactly correctly. It may be off to one side or dropping lower than it should or even be facing in a wrong direction altogether. And then also your avatar may be bigger or smaller than the creator of the object who, in all likelihood, would have fitted it to their own size. You can very easily fix all that and once you have done so the system will recognize your new values and will always attach the item in the way in which you placed it last.

Attach the item to its logical position and follow the steps below:

Before you can start playing around with your attachments so that they fit you exactly right you will need to find a posestand upon which you need to place the avatar in a fixed position. The boxes at Ubik do have a posestand in them, however Ubik is group land and you cannot put anything on the ground unless you belong to the group Core Team. However, no worries, Max has already placed a posestand for people to work on, so just follow the direction of the arrow in the above shot to get to it.

Once there, right click and you will see Stand at 10 o'clock on the pie menu, just click and stand!

Use the 3D camera to get a really good, slightly from the top, 3/4 view of the object which you wish to adjust and then right click and press Edit at 4 o'clock on the pie menu. This will bring forth the Edit palette, where on the top you will see the radio buttons for Position, Rotate and Scale. These three are the ones you use. Grab the arrows and pull for Position, and the circles to Rotate. When you rotate also make sure that you are seeing the circle from the top (in 3D in other words), otherwise your rotation may easily get out of control and slip. When using Scale you will use the little white boxes which you pull outwards or push inwards. And be sure to have Stretch Both Sides checked, so that your attachment scales up symmetrically.

What applies to hair applies to any other garment or body part also. Simply use the Position, Rotate and Stretch radio buttons on the edit palette to get the item to sit exactly as you wish it to do.

Very Important Note: As with all things which you are editing - do not forget to make a copy of it inside your inventory before you attach it to yourself. The metaverse has only one undo! So, if you make mistakes which are tough to fix you cannot revert to a former state!

The cloud avatar syndrome / or what to do when parts of your avatar are not showing correctly

2011-07-20T10:29:00.000-07:00

Ouch! Unfortunately this is something which does to tend to happen in the whole metaverse, including Second Life: At times your avatar will remain as a cloud and not materialize at all. And then at other times, some parts of you will be visible while others will remain transparent.

This kit seems to help and so I have put it in a special box at Ubik. Grab it and follow the instructions in the included notecard carefully. The Rebake or Refresh Apperance command mentioned on line 13 of the notecard can be found under Edit in the top menu.

How to see the transparent objects around you

2011-07-18T10:59:00.000-07:00

Although you will not be aware of them, there will still be quite a few of these wherever you go, and from time to time you may wish to know where and what they are. Nothing easier: Press ctrl+alt+T on your keyboard and they will all materialize as transparent red shapes. Press ctrl+alt+T again, and they will all disappear...

Step 14: Getting around - through the login page, the map and teleporters

2011-07-16T13:02:00.000-07:00

You can decide upon your location even as you login, as the image below will show you:

Currently there are 11 regions at Ngrid and you may wish to look at images of them before you decide which ones you would like to visit:
http://newgenresgrid.blogspot.com/
The world is basically divided into two distinct archipelagos and then we have one standalone island which belongs to a Czech University.

The Northern Archipelago:
Ubik (Entry point of NGrid, goodies wall, etc, also visit upper levels using teleporter)
Klein (MosMax Hax, Peter Scharmüller's kleinbau architecture)
zerodimension (Peter Scharmüller's sim)
HyperSim (MosMax Hax's wonderful play sim)
Max (Max's museum sim)
Ouvroir (Chris Marker museum @ NGrid)

The Southern Archipelago:
LEA ISEA (The ISEA2011 conference location)
LPDT2 (seat of LPDT2: http://lpdt2.blogspot.com/)
ShapeShifter (FeliX Ringtail's island)
Alpha Sea (Open sea)

Standalone:
VIAKISK (Czech University sim)

The second way of getting around is the world map, which can be found on the bottom menu (1).

1) When you open the map it will show you your current location. I was at Ubik when I did this, so it says Ubik in the search entry field (1a).

2) Type in the name of the location to which you want to go and it will show up in the big white space below, and at the same time the map will swing very quickly to the location which you searched.

3) Go to the bottom of the map and click on Teleport. The system will transport you to your desired destination.

At Ngrid there is a lot of building up in the sky, sometimes as high up as 5000 virtual meters, and usually on many different levels, all stacked above one another. You will especially encounter them at Ubik, Hypersim and LPDT2, but at other places also. These places (which are examples of the very best of metaverse building by the way - and no, I am definitely not the one who built them ;-) you can only access through teleporters, so keep an eye out for the blue and red prisms which are scattered all over NGrid. The above image shows you their usage.

Step 15: Creating skies, water, atmosphere and climate

2011-07-14T14:52:00.000-07:00

What you see on the left in the upper image is how a lot of people see the metaverse: No shaders! (As I was already saying here earlier). And then on the right hand we have the shaders enabled with default lighting. Well, some improvement anyway, you think, right? Wait!

What we see above is the same view with 4 different sky presets. But wait just a second longer - it gets even better!

Still the same view: On the left we have a sky preset, nice one too, however no water preset. But then on the right we also have a water preset in place...

How to get these? The image above will show you how. You can also make new presets of your own, either starting from scratch or through modifying existent ones. The thing to do is to play with all the sliders in all of the tabs and when you like something, just press New and save your preset under a new name.

Unfortunately the Imprudence viewer does not give its users a big selection of sky presets. I have therefore zipped up my favorite ones and put them here:
http://www.alphaauer.com/metaverse-tutorials/metaverse-skies.rar
Download and unzip the file and then place the contents into the directory shown in the screenshot above. Or:
C:\Program Files\Imprudence\app_settings\windlight\skies
I am not a Mac user, however I am sure that those of you who are will know where this is all supposed to go over there as well.