Making Elephants

The best thing I like about SL as a programmer is that it allows people to be as creative as they can be AND SEE THE TANGIBLE RESULTS OF THEIR LABOR.

This is definitely not the case a lot of times in RL, where I dabble in server side programming, and where the apps I create all reside as hidden denizens of web app servers, which themselves are locked down in cooled refrigerated vaults, the better to protect the valuable data contained within.

Take for example, a new beautifully crafted elephant that my pet Sky had artfully built, and into which I imbued the ability to walk and move, acting like some modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

We had developed it for a new sim that we are working on called The Elephant Sanctuary. My Sky adores elephants and this is our own little monument to these fascinating and intelligent beasts.

When completed, visitors can learn about them, ride gigantic full-sized pachyderms, try to get some free gifts in elephant lucky chairs, and other fun activities.

To animate the elephant, you could buy a puppeteer script for 2000L in the marketplace, but the concept itself is fairly simple and it did not take long for us to create our own puppeteer engine. After adding in a few additional features, such as multi-sit poses and elephant roaring sounds, the final animated elephant was complete and ready to roam around the sim, not to mention placed in a new Elephant Sanctuary Store in the Marketplace.

To visit the small sanctuary, which is still incomplete, use this SLURL:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Kalmeere%20Paradise/120/250/23