O Tannen Bomb, O Tannen Bomb... A friendly Christmas assault

Merry Christmas, y'all! - Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Jopsy Pendragon cannot resist the impulse to create, and he's had many irons on the fire lately, especially since he expanded the Particle Laboratory and put his ingenious Porgon 1800 (the Particle Organ) on the market.

When it comes to Jopsy, I've come to expect vivid, brilliant particles dancing in the air to music, or self-guided tutorials on how to make them as well as the best particle textures on the grid. But he's not above having a little fun with us!



The Tannen Bomb is a bit of merriment Jopsy started to make on a lark three years ago, and finally got around to finishing on Wednesday. It's a short-lived build, so make your way over there in the next few days, and take advantage of the temporary lift on forced teleports at Teal, too, (teleport directly from here).

In a nutshell... well, nah, I'm not going to tell you exactly what happens. Just go with friends, launch the Tannen Bomb... and let it surprise you.




In this shot, I'm wearing American resident Eshi Otawara's Christmas Edition Smokey Tux dress, and soror Nishi's splendid mistletoe antlers

I am still plagued by that snapshot bug, so I appreciate Jopsy's help with pics.

Jaymin Carthage's fast-propagating "Branch" - Scripting in the service of bodacious virtual nature

Not so long ago, there was a freakish bit of "News of the Weird" about a tree that tried to eat cows... and then there's the Royal Empress tree that can grow up to 25 feet in three years... but nothing in Real Life can compare with Jaymin Carthage's "Branch."

Acting on Tezcatlipoca Bisiani's hot tip, I wrote to Jaymin - an IBM software architect and active Second Lifer - to learn more about his "Branch."

I was at my home in Chakryn Forest on Friday evening, conversing with Morris Vig, founder and owner of Second Life's much-esteemed Oyster Bay Gallery, and learning the sad news that he is closing its doors, when Jaymin sent me a "Branch" of my own. Not thinking, I rezzed the one-prim-wonder in front of me and continued chatting with Morris.

In under five minutes - and much to our astonishment - the branch had gone bananas (actually, in this case apples) and was growing this way and that, spewing apples and particle effects and what not, until finally it stopped when it had filled the parcel's remaining allotment of just over 500 prims.



Jaymin explains that his supernatural self-growing fractal tree is "(very) loosely based on the description I heard of a tree at Burning Man made of welded brass tubing that shot out flames at night and a cooling mist by day."

Instructions for the organic plant-and-grow system are simple but think twice where you do this! Rez the root branch and click on it once.


To give you a demonstration, I textured the root branch and touched it, and within one minute it had already become a strong little sapling.

According to Jaymin, "It will then start to grow taller, sprout branches, and eventually spout flame or mist and drop apples. After about an hour it will be full size and consume, roughly 1000 prims at default setting."


Within 15 minutes, the tree had outgrown the black shadow box I had rezzed it in for photographic ease.

While the "Branch" is freeware, and you can copy, modify, and even resell it, Jaymin asks that - if you are so inclined to compensate him for it - you make a contribution to Heifer International via AM Radio's celebrated wheat field, "The Far Away," which is currently running a creative writing and photography competition.

Furthermore, you can "prune" the growing branches, turn the whole shebang off by touching the root prim once again, and when you move the trunk, the rest of the tree will slowly follow.


Twenty five minutes after rezzing the root prim, or "branch," my tree is fully grown.

In the accompanying notecard, Jaymin explains how it works:

"As a fractal, branch works through self replication. Real trees work similarly, and that's why there is a resemblance. Other than fruit, there is only one prim, and one script. Each branch or limb is a repeat of the same thing. It rezzes a copy of itself as each limb that grows.

When a child branch is created, it is passed a generation number through the start parameter. This is used, at a base level, for scoping, so that it does not grow indefinitely. By default it is restricted to 8 generations.

Each child is also passed the identity of the parent that it came from. This is important for positioning. A child takes its position cues from the parent. So as the parent grows, the child adjusts itself. This makes the whole tree grow organically.

Lastly the child prim gets passed a sort of "serial number". The root has a serial number of "T". Each of its limbs has a number of "T0", "T1", "T2", etc. "T0"'s children are "T00", "T01", "T02", etc. This is used to facilitate preferential killing. Essentially when you prune a limb, it announces this with its serial number. Any limb that also begins with the same serial number, suicides.

The tones used for the collision sounds on the branches and fruit are cello plucks taken from a mediawiki site. Taking inspiration from the orchestral crescendo of "A Day in the Life" by the Beatles, they are all steps in the chord of A major. Each higher order branch is tuned to a note further up the arpeggio... so when they sound together it is melodious and not discordant."

It's bloomin' sculpties at Seifert Surface's "xyz" sim

This is Seifert Surface's new tree. In fact, he exclaimed just one word as I arrived: "tree!" And so it is! All 273 sculpty prims of it (with 4096 ends at the top).

It thrills me to see someone as cerebral as Seifert - a postdoctoral mathematician - take such pleasure in creating new, and often dazzlingly beautiful things. He just took possession of his new sim "xyz," and is still unpacking stuff, but the sculpture garden and the tesseract house are already in place.

He's still waiting on the sculpty implementation to get fixed. "This one with the tree seems stable-ish, but there are other, more complex ones (he has planned) that don't work reliably... the texture doesn't download properly all the time," he added.

He rezzed a poster-type board and asked me to tell him what it said. This item... I mean all of it, is just one prim. The letters are distinctly different from the base board. Etched, raised, finely sculpted, shadowed.



Seifert then asked me to zoom my camera away and tell him what the same poster said. "It tells you what your LOD (level of detail) is. It changes based on your distance from it," he explained. Ha!


Click to see large.

Teleport directly from here.

Happy Holidays to you - Now, deck the halls with boughs of holly!

You guys having fun yet? Happy Holidays everyone!!!

Seems that Miki Gymnast has been at it again! Now she's gone and created this gorgeous, GIANT, space-age Christmas tree. Miki always views her creations at Mars Rezzable as sandbox fun, but we invariably latch onto them, and like them too much. :P

Meanwhile, that cute little Greenie, Verde Raymaker, is inviting one and all to take part in the fun and make ornaments to decorate it, presents to place under it, and snowmen to surround it. The theme is "Peace and Love." Furthermore, he promises $25,000L in prizes for his fave pieces.



First thing you gotta do is get yourself over there to check out the tree:

+ Set light to midnite
+ Teleport directly from here
+ Put your music on!
+ Rez
+ Put on your skates or surfboard and weeeeeeeeee down the tree

Next, make your contributions and send them to Beatrix Newt.

Technical details:
Max for any item is 50 prims! Objects for the tree should be about the size of an avatar. No scripts or particles, except for simple animating scripts please!! Set the object to "sell contents for 10L". Object should be tagged to Mars group. Contents should be set "no trans, copy, and mod is up to you, but mod is more fun!"