Lively puts Google in the metaverse arena but many things it’s not – it’s not a world, it’s not a gaming platform, and it’s not a mash-up with Google Earth. You can’t script, there’s no commerce, and worst of all for users who cut their teeth on the user-generated worlds of Second Life, or even making clothes for their Sims….you can’t make anything.
But Google is renowned for launching and then fixing, adding, and sometimes trashing – and Lively is headed in the same direction.
Over on Game Artist, a link to one content developer’s Lively room (enter below) is meant as a sneak peek of what he’s created using Google’s content creation tools:
“I’m helping beta test the custom content tools for Google’s Lively. I thought I’d try making a portfolio of some of my other projects and putting them into a room. Check it out and let me know what you think of the idea and the work in there. You can leave comments in the room too.”
Well – hard to say if the results are, well, because of the tools or because of the artist. What’s clear, is they’re mesh based and look kind of sloppy sculpts – not unlike Plopp, actually, an application that exports sculpts to Second Life that come out looking like semi-deflated balloons.
Gwyn had noted that Google developers talked about an import tool from 3DS:
Some SL residents managed to talk to the Google Developers, and these said that there was a 3D Max plugin to allow the creation of content into Lively. The plugin works 90% of the time but it can only improve. There is no idea or plan or announcement on if that plugin will be released to the public
The models in this example don’t look much like 3DS. Again, they’re more Plopp than Maya.
While this particular artist’s portfolio isn’t going to leave the content creators on other platform clamoring for the Lively building tools, what’s clear is that they seem to be planning for them. And like the early days of Second Life – the prims might not be pretty, but they’re you’re own.
I think Lively has a future, however it can take time, especially with their competition. What makes them unique, for now, is that you can embed your chat rooms in a website. But their lack of a reason to use Lively, except to just “chat,” does hurt at the moment, but because it’s new, many people are trying it.
[...] noter sur le blog de Dusan un lien vers cette salle de démo d’un graphiste qui a pu travailler les outils de [...]
It’s a good sign that at least some content seems to be able to be uploadable to Google. I can only wonder when this will be allowed.
Lively might still have a chance to compete with, well, whatever… we’ll have to wait and see. Yes, ugly avatars/content on very slow and heavy platform are just the marks of something new and bright that has just been launched — we SL residents are all used to it!
In fact, I believe that the early adopters of Lively will mostly be SL residents. We’re the only ones in the market that are used to subquality content, slow development time, waiting years for features, and still enjoy developing content — in SL. However, if Google is positioning itself to attract just the type of users with a very low expectancy, they’ll only be able to attract SL residents… and for that, Lively has to become a real alternative to SL, which it isn’t, and even with 200 developers at Lively (many of which content creators!), it’ll take a few years to be at that stage.
(And obviously SL will not stagnate during those years)
So it’s another race against time?… Well, Google has a huge advantage over Linden Lab: infinite resources, and no pressure to make Lively a profitable product. Almost none of Google’s products are profitable (except for AdSense/AdWords, and possibly Checkout). So they can afford to wait 2 or 3 years until Lively becomes a serious player in the VW market. Linden Lab cannot afford that — they have to continue to be profitable.
We’ll see. But the images you show are definitely interesting!
The competition in the 3D chat space keeps heating up. Look at the new XBox – avatars. Sony’s Home – avatars. Small World. IMVU. And Raph is approaching beta for Metaplace after delays and frustrations. (OK, it’s way more than chat but still, small worlds). We still haven’t seen a true “world” yet – although I keep wondering when Google earth will add avatars – see their 3D cities, at least it’s a shift towards a mirror world (though with that, I see a mirror world as quite different from an immersive one, but time will tell).
Linden needs to accelerate HTML on a prim. The ability to watch movies, surf the Web and perhaps even play games from within a world adds a richer social dimension. Not that we all want to sit at home watching TV of course. For collaboration and building branded environments, for embedding games and whatnot, and for not needing to worry about all that smut and stuff that Lively is trying to clean out (hey, we dealt with mature content long ago, it’s Lively’s turn) – HTML would go a long way to allowing both richer media in world but also importing legacy content.
Race against time, sure – but it always will be, I suppose. Lively and all those mini spaces are training wheels. Second Life is still the high-powered hog (yeah) on the block.
Gwyneth, it is increasingly apparent to me that I’ve been missing out by not reading your blog. You are wise.
Here is my take on Lively and its users (of course, I may change my mind as soon as this afternoon): It is a cute animated interface that will replace text messaging and swallow up the SMS crowd.
Period.
We at Koinup are looking with really great interest at the Lively development……
Obviosly our approach is based on user generated contents, photography and machinima…….
So, we read with a few excitements your post about the Beta of Lively Contents Tools…..
as Gwineth we are wondering which is the exact target of the Lively project…..which is the main aim of the Google Virtual World…..
While waiting for more precise answers, we have launched a channel on the website for sharing rooms, snapshots and avatars from Lively
( http://www.koinup.com/in-lively/ )
Joe Miller promised that we will have web integration before the end of this year. I cannot point to the article, I forgot. I think I read it in Business week.
“Well – hard to say if the results are, well, because of the tools or because of the artist. What’s clear, is they’re mesh based and look kind of sloppy sculpts… The models in this example don’t look much like 3DS. Again, they’re more Plopp than Maya.”
Welcome to the wonderful world of low-polygon modelling! Judging by the screenshots, the models are actually quite good work; the artist definitely has some skill.
It’s difficult to create a complex object from only a few hundred polygons. I’d be surprised if the purple lady had more than 200 polys, or the mech more than 300 polys. For reference, the SL avatar mesh has about 4000 polys at its highest detail level.
Sure, they look pretty crude next to the 15,000-poly characters on your Xbox360, but a more fair comparison would be with some of the games of yester-year, like American McGee’s Alice (http://tinyurl.com/6qx6xc) or MechWarrior IV (http://tinyurl.com/66pzcf)
As a 3D artist (one of the many hats I wear), it’s pretty interesting that you could import arbitrary meshes into Lively. Sculpties just can’t compare to the efficiency of a well-crafted low-poly model. (Not that most models we would see in SL would be either well-crafted *or* low-poly…)
[...] creation tools are already undergoing a private beta test and you can see some of the results here: http://dusanwriter.com/?p=724. Based on the images of the initial results, Lively has a long way to go before attaining the level [...]
[...] peek at some user generated content was posted recently, and although it’s nothing astonishing, that was alpha phase [...]
Hey, if I were currently immersed in writing a book explaining set theory, it would have sounded like that to me too, I’m sure.