3. Documenting Virtual Worlds
• Objects you build exist only in your inventory
or in the VW environment if pulled out
• No other way to back up your work in-world
– Except maybe give copies to another avatar
• Other VW programs may let you import/export
objects, but generally not in SecondLife
4. What if we want to re-create it?
Intricate Builds Modified over time
Similar Experiences & Events
7. Capturing Your Work
Books about Tudor Architecture Book that can be thumbed through
Artifacts related to the Tudor Era A Machinima documenting the Renaissance
Faire
8. Machinima, Photography, & Machinima of
Photography
• Default Mode: Take pictures using your in-
world camera where ever you go and save
them to your hard drive.
– In-world events
– Field trips
– Your own builds
– Other people’s builds
– Your environment
– Whatever you might want to keep a record of.
9. Machinima, Photography, & Machinima of Photography
• Use a video screen-capture program to record events
real-time
– Not very easy if you have to interact heavily
• Especially the free-version of Fraps where you
have to hit F9 every 30 seconds.
– Can freeze your system and you won’t be able to
move easily in-world
– Try very hard to get the back of your head out of the
picture – learn how to use mouse-view and your
keyboard to move the camera around
10. Machinima, Photography, & Machinima of Photography
• Things I learned the hard way:
– Forgetting to turn off button clicks and ambient sound in
preferences.
– Getting rid of unnecessary windows (like mini-map,
minimized inventory)
– Turning off notifications (“A hot new outfit has been
released by….”)
– Turning off tags when there are a lot of avatars in the
picture.
– Pan around to keep it interesting, it becomes boring if you
use the same angle and focus for the whole shoot.
• Remember
– You probably won’t use all the footage you take
• BUT…you can’t add back what you don’t have
11. Machinima, Photography, & Machinima of
Photography
• Editing
– Get a good video editing program so you can cut your
head out of the picture in the event it shows up.
– Put photos, into an order that makes sense, such as the
correct sequence of an event…tell a story
– Mix it up – try interspersing photos with video.
– ADD Titles – it helps the viewer figure out what they are
looking at
– Get an audio recording/editing program (like Audacity)
– Give everyone credit
• If you use royalty free music, make sure to give the artist
credit and add the URL so viewers can find it for
themselves.
12. A final message
–Videos and photos can be kept outside of
the VW environment
• YouTube, Vimeo, Picassa, Facebook,
other Social networks
• But… no guarantee your favorite social
network will still exist in 3-5 years
• So…keep copies of your photos and
videos backed up on your own computer
&/or storage devices