[sldev] Mouse on 3D object

[Lawson English]

Carlo Wood wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 02:40:51PM +0000, Aimee Trescothick wrote:
>   
>> The easiest and most versatile way to do this is almost certainly to use the
>> existing Webkit plugin, by providing the application as a web service that you
>> could place on a prim like any other webpage, with synchronisation being
>> handled by the web server in the same way as things like http://etherpad.com/  
>> As a generic web service you are then not limited to using it only in-world,
>> you could open the same webpage on your iPhone or whatever and have what you
>> draw appear directly on the prim in SL. Once you've finished, save the image
>> and upload it to SL for permanent use.
>>     
>
> It's not that straight forward if you want to be able to draw on the prim.
> The most interesting application of this is drawing clothes and skins
> directly onto the avatar. That will require *new* code to convert mouse position
> and direction into pixel coordinates and intensity of the underlaying
> texture(s).
>
>   
Which goes back to questions of user-interface and feedback.

It would be relatively straightforward (in comparison at least) to place 
a proxy of your avi in a complicated 3D painting/modeling app, and work 
on it in the regular GUI of the 3D app. The changes are just echoed on 
the avatar "in-world" (as displayed locally by your client). Ideally, 
the interface should actually be part of the client's interface, as it 
is for the SL building tools, but that's going to require a lot of 
thought. Its theoretically doable, as the puppeteering code shows, but 
creating a robust 3D widget toolkit for the client that can be 
manipulated by a plugin is going to be an interesting task.


Lawson