SL Photography | Murku Comics Creator Hud

Whether you consider Murku to be a gimicky gadget or not, it must be admitted that it is fun to play around with in-world. The Murku Comic Hud, available currently for free, allows you to build a comic strip scene in Second Life, complete with speech bubbles and frames.

Murku’s current version 1.45, is available for free from the SLurl below. There is a website which provides some tutorials in usage, but there are some standard steps missing (discussed below).

First off, Murku consists of 5 hud attachments which you need to wear -

1. comix core (worn on top)
2. screencapture guide (worn on center 2) but this is optional, it’s just there to help you get a good balance between text size and frame size (so that the text is big and easy to read).
3. comix menu (worn on top right)
4. section labels (worn on center)
5. behavior palette (worn on bottom right)

When I first put these all on, I was presented with a solid centre with a labrador puppy texture on it. It took me a good while to work out that this was a border, or I could get to a blank centre to see my avatar through by clicking a black button at the bottom centre. There appear no instructions for this. There is a also a display problem with some of the functions moving over onscreen. These will need to be edited and moved into the label frames, else your screenshots panel will have some overflow of screen elements.

Placing speech bubbles and then text went much quicker. The text itself can be more readily moved around in position, but once placed on that layer, I did experience problems in re-selecting the underneath speech or thought bubbles to resize or re-position these according to how much space my text was found to take up.

There are a selection of speech and border styles. The inner screencapture guide allows you to view the frame around your avatar and set up positions well. A large bonus of the Comics Creator system is the Behaviour panel. This allows you to select various emotes for your face, or gestures / animations such as jumping or shrugging for your avatar body.

Because these are huds, you can not use the snapshot features in-world, so you must rely on a screenshot captor to take the full screen. The Murku wiki and notecards in-world suggest some free ones to use which operate with one click. It is also suggested that you would need to use a photo editor to set out your individual comic panels into a full strip. Setting up a one panel shot takes time, also – and if you’re using other avatars, they will need to be patient in posing for you. Avatars tend to move around also, so to freeze them where you want them will take some good management of tools and buttons, particularly if you have hot-keys set up for the actual screenshot. And if you are going with this method, as I did initially, pay attention to your group chat coming in – when it’s working that is – because long scrolls of chatter on your screen will obviously be picked up by the screen-capture also. As will blue messages from groups.

Another thing worth attending to is the actual planning of your comic panel or strip. This brought out both sides of me in-world – the writer and the playful photographer. Scene composition is important – from how much text you are putting onto the screen, to where it’s going to sit, and how will the idea be portrayed in a single frame. Backgrounds, lighting, and facial / body expressions – how will those work?

Given the need to use image editors to crop out the surrounding huds and environment from around your screenshots, and to create the comic strips, it might appear to be more valuable to create your comics completely out-world, perhaps using the snapshot feature, and a photo editor or professional application for comic strip making.

This defies the fun value of having the Murku SL Comics Creator in-world, of course, and of the helpful and plentiful Behaviours functions. There are also numerous speech bubble options, sound effect graphcs, and borders which shouldn’t be shrugged at, especially considering the current version is free to use.

Although capturing your frames live may take time, you can use a different method, by taking normal snapshots in-world and laying these onto something which can then have the Murku huds set out around it to use the graphic and text elements tools. This may involve you uploading – for L$10 each time – your snapshots from disc, or alternatively, the Murku package comes with a display board. You can upload your saved-to-disc snapshots onto a picture sharing site such as flickr, and then add the Urls to these onto a notecard which sits in a Murku displayboard. Rez this board onto your land, and you will have access to the URLs without having to upload each to your photos / textures file in-world.

The Murku online wiki includes some brief tutorials and some good video tutorials which offer up some quick techniques for getting going.

It’s (currently) free and fun. And now  I know where some of those second life comics I’ve seen over the web have come from also. Try out the Murku (TM) SL Comics Creator from the links given below.

Landmarks and Websites:

Website : Murku (TM) SL Comics Creator – wiki
SLurl : Murku vendor – get your free copy of the current version here.

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