Creating a Tree in Second Life

I have to admit that I was running behind on this project. Christmas holidays, summer school teaching and other sundry activities have left me chasing my tail.

I had a meeting with Tempest Nitely in SL about our collaborative activity and she suggested we go and have a look at some of the trees that had already been built. I admitted that I had not even thought about what I was going to do for this exercise and Tempest gave me a few tips for building a tree.

While she was there, Tempest encouraged me to start experimenting. I tried to emulate her excellent tree by putting a few relevant objects together. I decided that my tree would have a religion theme (maybe the idolatree) and so I pulled a few Buddhist Stupas from my inventory and tried to fit them together in a meaningul way. I then became concerned that I wasn't showing appropriate respect for the religious traditions whose objects I was using. So, I opted to rez a large jacaranda and place some sacred scriptures on the ground for people to read and a few cushions too. I tried to tizzy up the tree with some lanterns and so on.

Though it was good to make a start, I felt bad that I wasn't exactly fulfilling the brief of building a tree. I decided to start again.

I looked in my 'How to' Second Life books and looked on the internet about how to really build a tree. I looked on SL Exchange (or whatever it's called now) and looked vaguely for trees; hoping for inspiration. What I did find was a series of appropriate sculpties that I could put together myself. So, I bought the pack, went to my island and started looking through what I had bought. I started putting a tree together, lining things up, rotating them, resizing them so I had something resembling a tree. I couldn't help but think that really it was looking like a tree from Hell. Ah, so that was to be my theme!

So, I needed a suitably devilish texture for my tree. I looked at various bark textures and then I thought, what would really make a tree creepy would be snake skin. I uploaded a snakeskin texture and applied it to my tree. Even though you can't really see it's snakeskin, it does look suitably creepy.

What would a tree from Hell be without fire, so I found a fire texture and set my tree aflame. Around this time, I was IMed by my grad student who asked what I was up to and came over to see my tree. By this time I was feeling good about what I'd done so I set to to add some more hellish features such as a lava pool and a bubbling cauldron. I had a few fasle starts along the way: I obtained a lava rezzer that so enthusiastically spewed out lava that everything else was obscured. I braved the flames and deleted it.



It didn't look overly realistic sitting on green grass (or the graph texture of MUVEnation Island) so I made a more appropriate base. Talking to my grad student, Thaiis, I decided that it would be good to have an evil laugh to give the whole scene more atmosphere. Thaiis showed me how to modify a script so as to make this possible. Thaiis is amazing. I introduced her to Second Life and now she's switched her thesis topic to oe about Second Life and it seems there is no SL skill she hasn't mastered: puts me to shame.



And of course, a tree from Hell is not complete without a Devil!



Off to MUVEnation Ilsand I went, my tree from Hell safely in my inventory. My first attempt was unceremoniously deleted and I put the new tree out. I tweaked a few things here and there, and delighted myself endlessly by activating the evil laugh!

Collaborating in Second Life

This activity was tricky for me; I was busy shopping for Christmas, visiting relatives and doing all those things you do at Christmastime but still the MUVEnation activities kept going. Imagine my relief when we were given some extra time!

I chose 'assessment' as the topic for this exercise and there was just one other person who chose this topic in SL, Tempest Nitely. It was a great relief to find that Tempest and I shared a timezone (just about). I emailed Tempest and she emailed back straightaway saying she was willing to collaborate.

We arranged to meet on my island and we used voice to discuss which tools we would use. We had lots to choose from. We divided up the work (an easy process with just two of us to organise) and then TPed to MUVEnation island to decide what our display was to include and to check out what the others had already done. We decided to start on our display right then and there. But it was not to be! We could hardly set anything up before it would be returned to us. So, we kept our build low prim and low tech and hoped that it would work. Alas no, all of the items were returned to my inventory shortly afterwards, ruining several hours work.

I decided to concentrate on the things that we were placing on my island for now. I put out the tool (or the ones Tempest had left), set them up, made a sign into a notecard giver that talked about the tool and where we got it from. Also, how to use it.

The tools we chose were:

1. The Quiz Master
2. The Jeopardy Panel
3. The Pollster Set
4. The Teacher Gamers, and
5. The Grammar Quiz.

'Assessment, Feedback, and Training' was the full title of the topic and I guess most of the tools we chose really fell into the 'Feedback' section. Most of the tools required an instructor to be present and consisted either of questions being asked and marked correct or incorrect. So, it gave the participants feedback on whether or not they had mastered a particular topic or gave the instructor feedback on how well the students had mastered the topic that may mean the instructor alter subsequent activities. Only the Grammar Quiz didn't require an instructor to be present.

Tempest rebuilt our display on MUVEnation Island after talking to Steve about the problems we'd been having. Unfortunately, all of our work had been lost and Tempest had to start from scratch.

Because I was so busy over this period (and still am) I don't feel I put in as much work as I would have liked to. Tempest was similarly busy (with a young family). Even though we decided in broad terms what we were going to do, we still were fairly autonomous and only met inworld once (though that was for an extended period). There have been no real problems or misunderstandings - just lack of time.

I would like to thank Tempest for her help on this activity. It's also great to meet someone else going through the same things as you are and being able to talk about those things! Very helpful!