Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Above: Jolhoeft's Burning Man installation in Second Life and (inset) at Burning Man

I just wrote about how Second Life was inspired by both the Metaverse of Snow Crash and Burning Man of orgiastic arts festival fame, and the SL20B exhibit has a cool installation that demonstrates both: A giant butterfly and flower created in Second Life – that was then exported as a design and built in real life at Burning Man!

"The butterfly and the flower were all built out of prims," Jolhoeft explains, "and I would continue to model in-world with prims until I started building it out of wood."

Here's more about his process, and some behind the scenes:

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"A lot of the initial work still took place in SL.. I used Firestorm to export the wings as mesh, and Blender to make a 2-D projection. That gave me a template I could print out and trace onto a sheet of plywood, which I then cut with a jig saw.

"The wings I exported to Collada, then into Blender to make an orthographic projection, which I exported to SVG and printed out as templates to trace onto plywood, then cut out with a jig saw. Most of the other other parts I was able to just take measurements from the final SL design."

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[Go here to visit it in Second Life this weekend] before the SLB20 exhibit closes down. If you miss it there, however, good news: Jolhoeft's planning to bring back to the Butterfly to Burning Man 2023.

Update, July 7: Speaking of Burning Man, Jolhoeft adds this about the real world installation: "Everyone involved was someone I met in Second Life. My partners Lyric and Magii of course. And a number of experienced Burners who helped us with so many details."