Nearly a year ago, I posted on a possible way to get Sketchup models into Second Life. Today I received a note alerting me to ‘SketchLife’, a plugin you can start using right away for this very thing (thanks for the heads-up, Anthony!).

From the SketchLife website:

What is Sketchlife?

Sketchlife is a system which allows you to model for Second Life using SketchUp.

Most 3D modelling tools use meshes (vertices connected by edges which define faces), whereas Second Life has adopted solids, referred to as primitives, to be their indivisible building blocks. This guarantees that there won’t be any stray polygons flying around, but it also prevents mesh models from being imported automatically.

The in-world modelling tools in Second Life are quite good, but they are stone age compared to the 3D modelling power tool that is SketchUp. SketchUp is free. (Thank you Google.)

Therefore, if we can’t bring SketchUp to Second Life, we’ll bring Second Life to SketchUp.

Colleen, this might be v. useful for all of your projects…!

There’s a video on the site, and a screen shot of a build, made with Sketchlife:

Archaeologically, I can see how this tool will make life a whole lot easier for recreating sites, excavations, reconstructions… if I only had a better net connection, I’d be in there right now…