Another year is almost over 😌

A third of last year I was running around with no clothes on — what was I even doing…

■ Reflecting on This Year

I didn’t really understand Second Life’s conventions or what was possible in-world, so it was a year of feeling my way through it all. But by sticking with one thing for a whole year, I’ve come to understand many of the constraints, and I feel like I’m standing on much steadier ground.

It started with “I want to be able to move my body freely” — and from there, Hitoshina Pose came together. I set up a shop, started selling, received feedback on features and usability, incorporated what aligned with the vision, gained a clearer picture of the various limitations, and finally shaped what could be achieved within those limits into v2.0. It took a long time… but I finally realized that original goal of “wanting to move my body freely” 😭

There’s a limit to what one person can come up with on their own, so without all the feedback, suggestions, and advice from everyone, it would have taken much longer. Thank you so much 🙇‍♀️

■ Goals for Next Year

My original goal has been achieved, but there are still unresolved challenges and requests, so I’d like to continue addressing them in line with Hitoshina’s philosophy of “contributing to a better SL life.”

The challenges are as follows:

1. Too few facial expression types

2. Too few hand pose types

3. Difficulty mirroring arm and leg poses left-to-right

4. Limit on the number of simultaneously running animations

5. Limit on the number of simultaneously attachable items

6. Promoting broader use

And the requests:

1. Exporting pose codes as BVH files (for selling poses embedded in furniture, etc.)

Challenges 1–3 have no particular obstacles — it’s simply a matter of building them, so I think they’ll be fine.

Challenges 4–5 and request 1 are connected. By outputting poses as animation files like BVH and importing them in-world, challenges 4 and 5 can be resolved, and request 1 would also be satisfied.

This could be achieved by setting up a web server outside of SL — you paste the pose code into a web app, click a convert button, and the BVH file downloads to your PC, which you then upload to SL.

That said, I personally want to keep as much as possible contained within the in-world experience. If I were to die in an accident or illness, or quit SL and stop maintaining the web server, that feature would become unusable.

I want the items to keep living inside SL long after I’m gone — to be usable until better technology and items come along and they become obsolete. So I’m thinking about making in-world BVH conversion possible, and that’s why I started developing a programming language to make it easier to code.

For challenge 6, I want to think of ways to help people who bought Pose but don’t know how to make poses or how to make use of it — so they can feel like the purchase was worth it.

I’m not sure yet how much I’ll be able to accomplish next year, but I want to keep steadily building, one step at a time.

This got long, but I look forward to your continued support next year too ☀️

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