Zii

Sorry if it's been mentioned, a quick search didn't bring anything up.
I haven't been in BM since its earliest public beta, but keep hearing it's not quite ready for the masses, so this seems like an interesting thing to happen...

Spotted on CGTalk. Link goes to BLUE MARS 3D Social Worlds - Play, Chat, Create



The colour scheme reminds me of SL ads, to be honest. xD

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Coyote Momiji

Jesus, SL-themed and how. Even the "Learn More" pings "SL" to me.

Tsukasa Karuna

SL seems to go through phases for their front site. It was all dark bluish-grey ages ago (I remember the pic of the half-real-half-avatar woman on the front page.. it was there when I signed up), then it was all white again, now it's all dark again.

Definitely catching the early SL vibe from the Blue Mars pages as well.

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Walker

I'm sure there's a step missing. Doesn't an Avatar Reality headmistress type have to approve it before you can share it?

DanielRavenNest

The interesting thing to note is the CGTalk site is the forums for the Society of Digital Artists. So they are not advertising for masses of players, they are advertising for content creators. Which they do need lots more of. And as someone who owns two "cities" and a clothing shop on Mars, I agree, it's not ready for the masses yet.

@ Walker - Not necessarily. Individual items like clothing go through QA, and cities as a whole get checked for technical errors, but "blocks" (land parcels), within a city don't get checked in detail. I could, as a block tenant, buy a furniture item from a third party as files (.cgf or .dae model geometry, .mtl material & shader settings, and .dds or .tif textures). The third party furniture maker don't even need any kind of Blue Mars account, just to supply the correct type of files. I would drop those into my block, which gets packed up with the rest of the city and uploaded. That item would get reviewed only if it generates an error.

So for the CG artists this ad is being directed at, it's another place to possibly sell their stuff, or to express their artistic ideas. I hope they are advertising someplace for LUA/game programmers, cause Mars actually needs script writers even more than they need artists right now. The timing is interesting, since they are supposed to activate the cloud render servers this month and bring in an online games provider, which combined will widen the audience for BM by a lot.

DanielRavenNest

Here is their ad in context. I had to click about 50 times for it to come up, amongst all the other ads for 3d software, training videos, etc:

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Zii

Sorry for suggesting CGTalk is 'the masses', I'm well aware the ad is directed towards 3D artists ^^;

Walker

Was Second Life ever considered "not ready for the masses" at any point after it became publicly available?

Even though in the beginning it was missing SO much of the functionality we take for granted, all accounts I've heard from late 2002 & 2003 suggest it was a pretty fun and productive place to hang out.

Kabalyero

Share it? As in FREE!

Or does it mean, Sell it?

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DanielRavenNest

That's up to the content creator. I give away a set of prims and textures to help new builders get started:

Blue Mars Builders Kit - index

You can of course sell your items via the item vendors in-world, or sell the models & textures by whatever method you choose. One of my clothing items I have made the UV template available for anyone that wants to do custom textures for it. I will combine my model with their textures to make the finished item. Then they can get a copy for personal use, or we can sell it and split the income:

HalterMini.jpg