sᴘᴇᴄɪᴀʟ ɢᴜᴇsᴛ: ᴍᴇᴇᴊᴀʏ ʙɪɴᴀʀʏʜᴇᴀʀᴛs - Ep.10

Today's NSLS special guest is a very talented and complete SL designer.

I met him on my very first days on SL when everything on this little magical world was still unknown and kinda mysterious to me. He became soon a dear friend of mine, a trustworthy guide, a funny and nice neighbor and my SL brother.

His creations go from clothes, to accessories for the avatar, from decorations to buildings to furniture and everything is always made with the best design and quality.

Ladies and gentlemen, directly from BinaryHearts City , it's a big pleasure to introduce you to the incredible: Mr. Meejay BinaryHearts !

 

Cla: Hi bro! How are you? I'm very happy to have you here and grill you a little. First of all I want to thank you for hosting this NSLS episode in your beautiful BinaryHearts City!

Meejay: Hey sis, I'm fine even if i'm about to be Grilled by my own sis! You have all my gratitude for this as I love the concept a lot and welcome to BinaryHearts City to all the NSLS audience!

 

C.: You officially started your Second Life in 2010, but I know you have been around even before. What was SL like back those days? How did you like to spend your time there?

M.: Yes, you are right, I've been around since 2006. I was on SL with all my real life Family back then, Mother, Sister and Father.

My very first avatar is dead to day because one day I stole my mother a lot of L$ to buy a primy boat, I was not even having a sim to rez it but I liked it too much and I was a stupid young kid...

They got refunded but the boat's creator asked Linden to delete my account just to be sure I was not having any copy of the boat in my inventory.

So one year later, I created a new avatar and started building my own boat made of prims, because I really wanted a boat so much!

I've never stopped building things until this time, but in the past I was building for myself, to furnish my little house, to create my space station, etc, so my Second Life was mainly building things.

Then one day my sister made me discover clubbing in SL, live mix and party, and because I was starting to play with my birthday gift, a Hercules DJ Console RMX, but without an audience, I started mixing in SL clubs.

 

C.: At some point, you took the plunge and you started your own brand, to make your beautiful creations for all the SL people (like the top I'm wearing, the cute cat on the desk, the mask on your head, they all are made by you) and you opened your BinaryHearts store ( maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/BinaryHearts/128/124/35 ). Tell us better how this project was born and how you developed it, what was your first creation?

M.: At some point I wanted more than building primy things and djing in clubs. I started roleplaying, it was at that time I created my Space Station (The Tic Tac Station) and I met a girl named Aiko who made me discover new things as well. With her we've created an Airline company on the Second Norway sim in the Blake Sea.

That was cool for a while, but playing with aircrafts everyone else had, was starting to be boring. We wanted something more unique than just our liveries on our airplane's shell!

And so she started to build on SL a 747, real sized.

And I started to learn scripting for real, to make this baby fly

Working alone on a big baby like a real sized 747 when you are not a pro is time consuming, and each little default was making Aiko crazy, so I tried to learn 3D as well to help her on the construction of that big baby, using the same tool she was using (3DS Max), and I felt like I would love to use 3D Software to do mesh, the potential was unlimited, though that software was not made for me, its concept was really not my cup of tea.

But since we started to build the 747 we had to finish it, so I searched for a 3D Software I could like and discovered Maya. This software is really different from Max because it's like an evidence for me, and I started to learn how it works, I spent a lot of time, days & nights on learning it. At the same time I was starting a new job in Real Life, so I kinda abandoned Aiko and we lost contact for a while.

Some time after all that, I got in a real life relationship with Shinkura, and because 3D was now a passion for me, I showed her how it works and what we can do with 3D software. Shinkura had about Maya the same feeling I had about Max some years before.

She loved the possibilities but it was not the right software for her.

She found her own software by herself, ZBrush, and she started to do 3D like I did.

That's how BinaryHearts saw the daylight, because we had to put a name on the products made out of our passion.

At StClement, my aunt sim, we used to build things for the sim and we were having a dedicated sandbox for our own creations.

My first product was the Lake Port Meshkit, made for StClement, a lake city sim.

But that was not my first 3D model

I actually started with a boat www.flickr.com/photos/145256455@N08/32555999221/in/datepo...

It always starts with a boat.

 

C.: Hehe seems so! You mentioned your partner Shinkura Sasaki, who is also the other half of BinaryHearts. How do you share the tasks between you two?

M.: Chaos!

C.: Lol

M.: That's how we share the tasks :D

So, basically, 3D is made of 2 things, soft and hard mesh. Soft mesh is organical things, clothes, sheets... Hard mesh is furniture, vehicles, houses...

Usually, Shinkura does the soft mesh. I do the hard mesh, my software is stronger for Hard mesh and her software is stronger for soft mesh.

But sometimes she does the hard mesh and I do the soft mesh.

All in all what else to do, when you want to do something like a stone cat and you only use Zbrush... You just do what you want and make the stone cat! And when I wanted to add a sail on my little lake house, I learned how nCloth works on Maya and I just did my sail :)

About our creations, I do the texturing part, the rigging process (needed for clothes) and the UV (needed for the textures) because it has to be done on Maya.

And because Shinku is not comfortable enough with our texturing tool.

Last but not least, I do the scripting part, never used someone else scripts, I do everything especially for our products so they are optimized for the use they are made for.

 

C.: Talking about scripts, I know you are a very good scripter, can you explain us what does a scripter do?

M.: Nice transition sis! :)

Well, when you build a house on SL, you also have to make the doors... and when the doors are made, you can hit your avatar on them for a long time hoping they will open by magic, but with a script it works better.

A scripter makes the scripts, basically he will make scripts that will answer a need like "My door should be able to rotate on one of it's hinge, to be opened, when someone click on it or when an avatar hit the door"

I'm not just a scripter because i do more than just scripts, i'm a programmer since i'm making softwares.

When I need to make scripts for a house, I will make interconnected scripts that will interact together, one of them will manage all the doors of the house, another will manage the security like the permissions of who is allowed to click on the door, who can be in the house... And all those scripts will make a bigger system, a software made for the house itself.

 

C.: Is there some other SL creator you like or you'd like to collaborate with?

M.: I'm collaborating with Neurolab Inc., OnO Zinner (Neurolab's owner) is a long time friend and he needed a programmer for his new projects. We already made some cool things together like the Ganzer Gun, with its own combat meter and fun anims, we did the Manta and the Razorback as well, a kart and a quad, with our own engine, and we did a racing track HUD that allow you to do the track you want, or click on a preset you like and see the track being builded in front of you by itself, like you could see in racing games with track editor.

He prefers to work for a long time on his creations, in order to release something perfect rather than releasing a sloppy product per week, that's a nice thing because on my side I can continue my own projects with Shinkura and when OnO is about to work on something new, we can do a little pause and I join him to complete his project with my scripts.

 

C.: Sounds cool! And is there something on SL you would have liked to create?

M.: Ow... Well... A lot of things...

Basically when I want to create something, I create it.

But sometimes, some projects are taking way too long, so we pause it and start something else that could be released quicker.

Our goal is one product a month, sometimes we are able to do it, sometimes we are not, but I prefer to release something well finished than something poorly done each month.

That's how my Edelweiss Kitchen was cancelled some years ago.

But you know how it is, I have a real life job that takes most of my time so I cannot give all my time to my passion, but maybe one day we will be able to work at BinaryHearts as our real life job as well.

 

C.: I wish that for you, bro! How much are bloggers important for your work?

M.: Making the best product is something, letting people know you did the best product and that's available "right here" is something else.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm making the best products, I'm just making the best products I can and I put all my heart in them from conception to realisation, but what's true in my previous sentence is that even if I make THE best product ALL SecondLife would want, if nobody knows it exists and where to find it, it's like it does not exist at all.

That's why bloggers are important to me, they are the main lighthouse that could enlighten our creations!

We are giving them materials to express their art, they are giving us visibility and nice pictures that we are displaying in our store with pleasure.

 

C.: And I know you have a great bloggers team! Bro, what is missing on SL, in your opinion?

M.: A real 3D engine that could make our creations be exactly like they are in our 3D Texturing Softwares.

More features in LSL (Some good ones are coming soon, starting with LinksetData that will be a little revolution!).

Less limits, I know limits are needed, but when you know that 64Kb is the maximum memory a LSL Script can handle, and we have to create 2, 3, 4 scripts that will be consuming 20Kb of memory each just for the data exchange is a bummer!

That's a bummer because those limits are not working with today standards, creators will just find every possible way to achieve what they need, and it will be using more resources as we need to store the metadata of each texture instead of one 2K or 4K, like we need to use 20Kb of memory to exchange the data between multiples scripts...

If it's about not having 4 times bigger textures on their asset servers because it's 4 times more memory used on their disks, why not just increasing the cost of textures if they are bigger than 1024x1024 (like 40L$ for 2K textures) it would be more optimised for everyone and everyone will be winning from that. People that do not need big textures will use smaller ones because they will be cheaper, and people that need to do big structures with Ambient Occlusion, who cannot use repetition because of that, will not have to do a heavier mesh with faces above faces to display their AO separated from the repeated texture, they will just be able to import their 2K textures. That would be beautiful.

*pointing at the camera* I hope you'll hear that, Lindens. This one is for you guys!:)

 

C.: Haha... oh my gah, this is called a very direct message! Okay bro, as you know, I end my interviews asking my guests to ask themselves a question and give themselves an answer. Would you like to?

M.: Okay sis, lemme ask me something and answer to myself

- Hey Meejay, was the interview great ?

- Yeah Meejay, indeed it was!

- Splendid Meejay! Nice to hear that!

 

Thank you so much Meejay, for your time and for entertaining us with this witty interview, letting us know better about yourself and your precious work that makes our second lives more enjoyable thanks to the awesome products you can create for us!

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See you all in two weeks times for a new episode of NSLS

 

Cla's outfit by BinaryHearts

Hair by Amitomo (edited)

Done