Cel Edman's blog

Sorry for the shameless self promotion, but blogging a bit what i`m doing at the moment.

Released sculptypaint v.09 sunday 5 august 2007
http://www.xs4all.nl/~elout/sculptpaint/
(opensource; free to download for windows, linux or macosx)

Sculptypaint at the moment is created for a fast, easy and fun generation of certain types of 3D sculpted objects, you can import into Second life, or like google-sketchup, blender etc. It started as a simple sculptviewer on may 25 2007 this year when sculpties were introduced to the SL grid; and evolved into a more complex 3D modeling tool/experiment the last 2 months.

This package I created first for myself, exploring sculpties, and to be honest wrote it, since I hated to painfull model 'slowly' by hand, with the current 3D tools available. Somehow this experiment grew out of hand the last 2 months, but got great feedback, from people playing with it, it seems most 3D packackage around are too complicated/overpowered for a lot of ´normal´ people. And to be honest, sculpties in second life, is almost pixelpainting in 3D at the moment.

People told me, they came late for work 3+hours, since they played whole night with sculptypaint. And was really happy as well Torley Linden recent discovered it as well, and blogged about it, and meeting him 3D face to face in SL, popping up at my secret hideout in SL.

Next, I´m working on ideas, roadmap and coding/plans on the next generation of sculptypaint. Since I feel there is a mass market and demand for easy to create 3D modeling tools in the near future. For Second Life users, google sketchup, since the web seems to move from 2D to 3D in the near future.

For me discovering second life, will be a bookmark in my personal new-media history; discovering gopher and irc in 1993. the Mosaic webbrowser in early 1994. (vrml, the palace, quake online/capture the flag, world of warcraft etc.)

(not my) Headache; Dutch Tax stuff:
Called the Dutch Tax system today, about selling stuff I created in SL; Donations etc, 10+ different phone re-connections, talked to 7+ experts on dutch tax system that still didnt have any clue, mouthfull or unanswered questions etc. Should I pay tax on products I sell in Second life, well this depends if its a (europian) individual, a usa citizen or a (europe / us) company buying my product in SL etc.

But to be honest, its almost impossible to keep track, the person that buys my stuff in second life... 'From wich country'. is this an individual. track his or her real name, is it a company that buy`s my stuff? Almost impossible to track down atm. There advice was send a letter to my local tax-inspector, and let him/her figure it out. (Well glad it's there problem now)

Anyway the dutch Tax system seem to be rather clueless at them moment, and too be honest, the individuals worldwide every month making enough money to support there monthly income every month from Virtual worlds is rather small atm, but growing. I think soon or later we will see different Goverments tax systems around the world, that will hit the VR-online worlds with a tax based of system.

Wondering how other other countries would handle/working on tax rules in or about virtual worlds.

last edit/update: 9 august 2007

Dr Dobb's SL 20 Event

Sculptypaint v.09 stuff and major headache