Attend Xeniversity in-world and learn Maya

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

On Saturday, artist and creator Hern Worsley logged into Second Life® and joined 7 others for an in-world class on Autodesk Maya that he deemed “really excellent.” It was to be the first of three sessions for which he paid a total of $L16,200.

Maya is a powerful and expensive ($4,995 US dollars for the Unlimited version) and - by most accounts – intimidating software package given its robust and multi-layered/complex nature. It is considered by most creators I know to be the rockstar program for creating and exporting sculpted objects.

Importantly, the courses are focused on developing content for Second Life. “It was my first real experience with education in SL and it is exactly what I needed,” explained Hern. “The prices are not terribly expensive but reassuringly not cheap, if you know what I mean,” he added.

The courses are provided by Xenius Revere who worked with metaverse developer Electric Sheep for 1 ½ years as their resident Maya expert and also taught Maya for 3 ½ years at the University of Buffalo, NY.


Xenius, photographed by Xenius

Xenius has founded Xeniversity (teleport directly to their headquarters from here).


A tree at Xeniversity

At this point, Xeniversity offers two courses: Maya 101- An introduction to Maya modelling for Second Life at $L5,400 per two-hour session and $L16,200 for the full course; and Maya 102 – An intro to Maya texturing for Second Life at $L10,800 per two-hour session and $L32,400 for the full course.

Xenius shared that he built a business model that supports his costs plus allows for expansion. Also in development, a course on scripting for Second Life artists. “If you pro-rate out the cost of taking a class in a state university, versus Xeniversity, you are getting an incredible deal. Plus, all sessions are geared directly for Second Life content creation,” he said and added, “Second Life is a messy aggregation of a whole bunch of tools.”

“I think it does help if you’ve had some experience already with Maya. It is about technique and seeing someone doing it makes everything much easier. It is so obvious when you see it done, but you’d never get there so quickly by trial and error, and it’s like getting access to all the secrets,” continued Hern. “I’m very cautious about new things. I kind of need my hand held.”

Classes are conducted in-world, in voice and via the 2.0 web.

Cubist Scarborough and The Manual: Second Life edition

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

I hope you have a little spare time, dear readers, because I am about to lead you down a rabbit hole, a veritable treasure-trove of ideas so rich and varied that I have not yet been able to unearth them all myself.

As personal blogs go, Ian Truelove’s (Cubist Scarborough in Second Life®) is almost buoyant with optimism and analysis of all the inherent possibilities and joys of virtual worlds, and that’s very good news, because he’s an educator and he’s teaching 100+ students at a time, often introducing them to Second Life for the first time. He is Principal Lecturer (Technology Enhanced Learning) at the Leeds School of Contemporary Art and Graphic Design, in the Faculty of Arts & Society.


Cubist makes three-dimensional holograms of people's Real Life faces. Here is one of himself


Ian (Cubist in Second Life) is watching you everywhere on the Leeds Met sim

His blog reads like a private journal at times and is chock full of insights and deliberations he has with himself and has siphoned off onto the web in a way that we might all consider and possibly benefit from… simply one of the best uses of a blog I’ve run into in a very long time. Ian expounds on the dichotomy of dealing with people in public and private spaces, both in Real Life and in Second Life. He defines and deconstructs the virtual studio. It’s a fascinating stockpile of thoughtful documents pertaining to education, Second Life, OpenSim and a project between Oxford, Leeds Metropolitan and Kings College London called Open Habitat that took place earlier this year and set out to explore how Multi User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) can be used in Higher Education.


Ian's sculptures make it possible for you to get inside his head

Ian also designed the accompanying Open Habitat magazine that serves as a repository for vast quantities of data that the universities collected working with art and design and philosophy students, including surveys, blogposts and chatlogs.

But what I simply cannot wait to share with you is a document called The Manual: Second Life edition, a collection of micro-projects created by lecturers from the School of Contemporary Art & Graphic Design at Leeds Metropolitan University that Ian adapted for Second Life as part of the Open Habitat project. You’ll find different versions, including a cut-out one with instructions for folding it, a text version, and even an iPhone version here.


The Manual: Second Life edition, in Second Life

While Ian asks that we keep all 81 tasks together with the CC license text, he did allow me to share a few of them with you, just this once, to give you a taste:

# 5 Find some gesture animations and practice using them somewhere on your own. Work out a physical comedy routine and perform it to your friends.

# 6 Find a freebie stall on the mainland. Grab 12 small objects that have something in common. Arrange all of your objects into a sequence.

# 7 Build one or more of the following:
The beginning of the world
The end of the world
A self-portrait that includes your full body
Something that happened at breakfast
An image from a recent dream
Something that has yet to happen to you

# 8 Start a cult. Establish rituals. Create a meeting place. Meet.

If this isn’t a formula for discovery and enjoyment of one’s virtual life, I don’t know what is. I believe every single newbie in Second Life should be handed a copy.

You can visit the in-world version of this document and take the notecard form of it by teleporting directly from here.

Educators are looking into art and design in virtual worlds

Just happened upon this video of a presentation that the Dallas Museum of Art hosted for the University of Texas' as part of their Dallas Virtual Worlds event last spring.


One of the speakers stresses the importance of design around participatory experiences, saying that structures by themselves are not sufficient. I think this is a problem most virtual creators have to learn to cope with... but would suggest that keeping relevant in-world groups informed and blogging are two good ways to ensure that a work gets seen. The video was an eye-opener for me and a window on the process that artists and educators go through as they discover the possibilities in virtual spaces... but I kept wanting to shout out, "But wait! Have you considered X?"