HUDs, Hats and a Tuna

I've been working on a secret project recently with a new friend, Tuna Oddfellow. For those of you that don't know him, he's a magician. No, really - he's a RL magician. And he also does magic in the virtual world, too.



Tuna performs the most amazing visual shows I've ever witnessed in SL, and he does them twice a week at his studio in Research Center. The shows take place on Sunday at 11AM SLT and again later on Monday at 7PM SLT. Each show is different - and by that I mean unique and also totally mind blowing. There are lights, particles, textures used in ways never seen before! Everything is moving, colorful and astonishing.



Here we see Tuna's "Beautiful Assistant" Shava Suntzu, who also assists his magic shows in RL.



Robwag Soothsayer dances away with Pooky Amsterdam as the scene changes yet again. Tuna controls everything you see via a complex system of HUDs and you never see the same things for more than a minute during the entire two hour show.



What was the secret project? A major theme of Tuna's show is the top hat - every magician's favorite wardrobe item. In the studio he's long used a giant top hat as the centerpiece, but he had an idea for something quite interesting. He wanted to be able to hand out hats to attendees and then make the hats change texture or emit unusual particle effects on command. Eventually he showed up on my doorstop and I worked out precisely what he wanted. Here's a picture of PetLove Petshop wearing the hat!



So I built a special script and HUD that provides Tuna with buttons to do exactly that - and lets him use whatever textures he needs to use in his amazing show. The HUD controls particles and textures on all the hats worn in the vicinity and it turned out quite well. Each week Tuna intends on adding more effects and textures to the hat so it can only get better.


Pooky Amsterdam is exploding! Actually, she's using my Nova Blue wearable particle effect; it fit in very well at Tuna's.

If you have any thought of blowing your mind (and graphics card) please come out to Tuna's show. You won't regret it!