Thank you for your interest in the TIS .
The first mesh in Second Life which allows you to upload midi files of any song, and animates your avatar realistically. This is undoubtedly the best in Second Life! We have taken our time to make sure that the product is as realistic as possible. Painstakingly created with 100% mesh and carefully textured to make sure you have the best of the best of the best in your venue!
Build
- Individually animated 88 key piano
- Plays converted MIDI files of any length - Download practically any song from the internet, or compose your own.
- Correctly animates the playing avatar so it appears you are pressing the keys.
- Holds unlimited songs in unlimited menu categories
- Comes preloaded with 153 songs to choose from
- Will play autonomously, if you just wish to listen
- Multivoice - Piano, Electric Piano, Organ, Steel Guitar, Strings, Brass, Synth Bass, and Choir
- Based on real-life equipment, each component's detailing has been tailored to be as realistic as possible.
- Highly detailed 100% mesh design.
- Multiple Levels Of Detail (LOD) ensure your product looks perfect no matter what distance it is viewed from.
- Realistic texturing to every component.
- Scripting has been rigorously optimized to reduce sim overhead.
- Requires 5 prims for the unit and 6 for the sound generators - 11 Prims
- Fully copyable - set out as many as you need.
Control
- TIS iControl Professional included, quickly and remotely play, obtain menu and create a new midi for the product.
- Access notecard to allow selected others or your group to control the product.
Current version of the is v.
Release date of the current version is . To check what version you are running please see the Version section. Please also see the Troubleshooting tab if you are having any other issues to see if your query is answered there before contacting support.
On purchase you will be delivered a folder containing a box for your and a box for the TIS iControl Professional which controls all our products compatible with the iControl.
First drag the to the ground where it will automatically unpack and give you a folder containing your product. Accept this folder and it will appear in the top level of your inventory. You can now delete the product box (a copy is still in your inventory). Then drag the TIS iControl Professional box to the ground which will unpack and give you another folder containing the iControl. You need only to use one iControl to control multiple products.
In your inventory, locate the folder called TIS
.
In this folder you will find the following items:
- TIS
- This is the unit. It is copyable so you can use as many as your venue requires.
- TIS Female Shape
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Contained within this box is the Female shape for use with the product. Inside this box you will find the following:
- TIS Skin Female
- Female skin to be worn
- TIS Shape Female
- Female shape to be worn. This shape correctly sized to look like hands are in correct place
- TIS Alpha Female
- Female alpha to be worn to hide SL body
- TIS Eyes Female
- Female eyes to be worn
- TIS Hair Base Female
- Female Hair base to be worn
- TIS Female Shape
- Naked mesh shape that you can dress yourself (or play naked!)
- TIS Female Shape (for clothing)
- Mesh shape for use with the clothing
- TIS Female Dress
- Mesh Dress
- TIS Female Shoe Left
- Left Shoe
- TIS Female Show Right
- Right Shoe
- TIS Female Hair
- Mesh Hair
- TIS Male Shape
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Contained within this box is the Male shape for use with the product. Inside this box you will find the following:
- TIS Skin Male
- Male skin to be worn
- TIS Shape Male
- Male shape to be worn. This shape correctly sized to look like hands are in correct place
- TIS Alpha Male
- Male alpha to be worn to hide SL body
- TIS Eyes Male
- Male eyes to be worn
- TIS Hairbase Male
- Male Hair base to be worn
- TIS Hair Base Male
- Male Hair base to be worn
- TIS Male Shape
- Naked mesh shape that you can dress yourself (or play naked!)
- TIS Male Shape (for clothing)
- Mesh shape for use with the clothing
- TIS Male Tuxedo
- Mesh Tuxedo
- TIS Male Shoe Left
- Left Shoe
- TIS Male Show Right
- Right Shoe
- TIS Male Hair
- Mesh Hair
In your inventory, locate the folder called TIS iControl Professional
In this folder you will find the following items:
- TIS iControl Professional
- The TIS iControl Professional is the controller for this product. You will be able to use this controller to change various functions for the product. For more information about basic functionality of the iControl Professional, please see here.
First locate the TIS
in your folder and drag it out to the ground in world.
Now position your where you wish it to be in your venue before switching it on.
In order to play notes, your piano will need to rez 6 invisible prims. When you first place the piano out, it will run a check to ensure it has land permissions to rez these prims. If not, a message will appear in chat detailing the steps you need to take in order for the piano to be able to rez.
These prims will be rezzed when the piano is switched on, and deleted when it is switched off.
If you wish to delete the piano, it is good practice to switch it off first, as this will delete the invisible prims; however they will self-delete at some point within the hour if you forget to do so.
Product functionality can also be controlled by the iControl Professional. Please see the Using the iControl section for full details on how to use your product.
You will also find a notecard in the contents of the unit which allows you to adjust certain aspects of the product. Please see the Settings section for more information how to adjust these.
Drag out the iControl Professional from your inventory to the ground in world or right click and select wear from your inventory to wear the controller as a HUD. If you require other people i.e. staff or managers to be able to control the product a controller must be out on the parcel that your product is located on. For more detailed instructions on how to use the iControl Professional, please see the TIS iControl Professional web page.
When first worn or dragged to the ground the iControl Professional will quickly establish connection to any devices available. The products communication channel is set to 0 by default. More information regarding communication channels and why you would ever want to use them can be found in the information page of the TIS iControl Professional. Information on how to change the channels can be found in the section Multiple Units using different settings.
Once the iControl Professional has established connection to the product you will see an icon appear representing the product at the bottom of the controller in the Product Selection panel.
Click the icon for TIS and you will be presented with this screen:
On pressing this button , the configuration drop down will appear which will give you the options for the product. If you have multiple 's out the configuration button will control all lights on that channel, not just the one it states on the drop down.
Confirm On
On pressing this button will allow the product to notify in chat confirmations of button presses. This is especially useful so the owner or admin can know what settings have been changed when they click any of the buttons. The default setting is off.
Black
This changes the colour of the piano to black.
White
This changes the colour of the piano to White.
Hide Music/Show Music
This shows or hides the sheet music on the piano.
To switch on the piano, press the On button on the iControl, or sit on the seat. To switch off, press the off button!
Note when you un-sit from the piano, it will return to the power state it was in when you initially sat down. I.e. if the piano was off when you sat, it will switch itself off when you un-sit; if it was on, it will remain on.
This slider allows you to adjust the volume of the piano. The default setting is full volume (top of slider).
When you turn on the piano, or sit on the seat, or click the above button you will be provided with a drop down menu listing the categories/names of each song in the piano contents. Simply select a song, or press the play button to begin playing. There are 152 songs already preloaded to choose from!
Use this button to upload your own MIDI song. Full details can be found in the section MIDI
These are the media buttons to control the songs playing. Once a song is complete the piano will respond depending on the chosen Play Mode as follows:
- Skip to start of current song
- Stop current song playing
- Play songs
- Skip to end of current song
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- Play Once - No further songs will be played - Select one manually from the menu to restart playing
- Repeat All - The next song in the current menu will be played. Play will loop continuously through the current play menu*.
- Shuffle - A Random song from the current menu will be played. Play will shuffle randomly through the songs in the current play menu*.
-
- Repeat 1 - The song will repeat indefinitely
The play mode can be selected either on the iControl or by selecting the lower left button on the drop down Main Menu.
* If your menu has subcategories, Repeat All and Shuffle modes will play songs in the current play menu, that is the subcategory from which the first song was selected. You can browse the other sub menus without changing the current play menu. To loop or shuffle through songs from all sub menus, press the Play button (▶) on the main menu. Note that the Play button on the iControl will play songs from the last shown drop down menu.
Use this button to select the different voices to use in the piano. Clicking each button will automatically change the played voice on the piano.
This section is for more advanced user settings. You can use the product directly out of the box using the iControl Professional, but if you wish to have multiple units out on your sim with different settings you need to change channel communications.
To have more than one unit out, all you need to do is drag another from your inventory to the ground in world. If you require both units to be controlled with the same settings etc., then you need not do anything further with either unit, just use channel 0, which is the default channel number, on your controller to start, stop and adjust the other settings as usual.
Once you have placed the number of units you wish to have out you will then need to Restore
the units, by going to the Configuration via the iControl Professional. This will reset the values to factory state
. This is very useful if you are dragging out multiple units as if you have changed the colour to multi colour the newly dragged out unit will still only have the factory default settings. If you drag out two units pressing this Restore button will make sure that both units are displaying the same settings.
If you have more than one unit rezzed on the same sim and set to the same channel, one will become the master
. This master will perform all the script work to calculate colours/effects and then send the result to the other unit's, enabling all of them to synchronize their displays. As a result the Settings for the master will be used for all unit's. The master
will be chosen at random so you should ensure that this notecard is duplicated in all your unit's set to the same channel in order to achieve a consistent effect.
If you wish to have multiple units customized in different ways on the same sim, this can be done easily by setting one of your units to have a different channel to your first unit. To do this you will need to set the channel number for each additional unit.
To do this simply amend the description field of one the units as follows:
- Right click and select edit on one of the units.
-
In the general tab of the edit dialogue box locate the description field this will already have text in there like this:
Channel : 0
-
Set the new channel by editing this text so for example
Channel : 3
would set the channel to be 3. - If you are using Firestorm viewer go to the Content tab of the edit dialogue box and click the "Reset Scripts" button. If you are using the Second Life Viewer, you will need to go to the client tool bar (at the top of your screen) and click Build --> Scripts and then select "Reset Scripts". Any other viewer, you may need to refer to the viewers knowledge-base.
- On clicking Reset Scripts a dialogue box may pop up if you have never done this before asking you whether you wish to modify scripts in selected object - Just click yes - if no box asking that pops up, then the Reset Progress box will only appear and start going through each script in the unit and set them to running as in this example:
- When the dialogue box states done, press close.
- The unit that you changed will run through its setup.
You can now go to your main Control Channel page and in the Channel Selection panel select the new channel you set to now control the unit on that channel.
Do the above for any units that you wish to have on any other channel. You have in total 20 channels that you can use if you so wish.
If you edit your product and go to the contents tab, you will notice an Access notecard specific to the product.
Here you can stipulate who can access the piano function to play it.
When any changes are made to the notecard, press save and wait for the confirmation:
TIS :
Loading Access Notecard - Please wait
TIS :
Load of Access notecard complete.
Once you have received the confirmation, turn off your product to enable the product to take these settings then switch back on.
This web page is accessed via the iControl or when pressing the above button. This allows you to convert a MIDI file you have downloaded into a readable file for the piano to use.
The MIDI song format (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI) is the industry standard for storing instrument based music. There are millions of MIDI songs freely available on the internet, meaning your piano is capable of playing any song ever written!
These are some of the best websites for obtaining songs/MIDI:
- https://musescore.com/
- A great resource with a large active community. Songs in the public domain are free to download, or there is a subscription should you wish to download licensed tracks.
- https://www.kunstderfuge.com/
- A comprehensive resource of freely downloadable classical music
- https://bitmidi.com/
- A huge MIDI database for songs from all genres
- https://www.midiworld.com
- Thousands of free MIDI tracks in all genres
- https://freemidi.org/
- Another great resource for free MIDI tracks
If you have a MIDI enabled instrument, you can record your own MIDI files. Alternatively there are a number of free online MIDI synthesizers for creating MIDIs - for example https://signal.vercel.app/
To start, you must download a MIDI file. We have used
Converting MIDI tracks
Once you have downloaded or created a MIDI file, you will need to convert it into the notecard format that the piano can read. This is done via the TIS MIDItoSL webpage:
Click on "Upload MIDI file"
then browse to and select the MIDI file on your computer.
When you have loaded the MIDI file you will be presented with a page similar to this (we are using a file as an example)
Here you can select the following:
- Preview As:
- Select an instrument to hear the midi track converted into just that instrument, or select 'Original' to hear the track normally.
- Ignore leading silence
- Select to eliminate any silence at the start of the track.
- Channels:
- This section displays the instruments playing on the track. Check an instrument to include it in the preview and the converted output. This is useful to eliminate instruments that would otherwise clutter the finished track on the Piano.
- Convert
- Click this to convert your selection to code the Piano understands. Follow the instructions to copy the contents to a Second Life notecard in the Piano's contents. You will be presented with this:
Name the notecard as per the section Song Notecards
** Important **
In order for your avatar to correctly play the piano, you should wear the mesh avatar and shape provided in your product box. Due to the differences in arm lengths, heights of other avatars, and the animation system used by SL, this is the only way to ensure keys are correctly pressed. Note - you can attach your own head to the avatar, and also dress yourself as you see fit.
When wearing the correct body and shape, your avatar will press the highest note with the left and right hand. Again due to limitations with SL animation system only one note can be played with each hand simultaneously although in practice multiple notes will still appear to be played by your avatar.
Access for persons using the iControl requires the access notecard inside the iControl itself to be amended. For details on how to set access for the iControl only, please see the instructions for the TIS iControl Professional.
Current version of the is v. Release date of the current version is .
To check the version of this product you are running please follow these steps:
- On the iControl, click the icon at the bottom for the , on the page press the configuration button in the top right hand corner
- In the dialog box that drops down the version number for the product you have can be found here where it states "Your Version: Version". Version is the version number of your current product.
If you are running an out of date version, please obtain a redelivery of the product package from our redelivery board in our store, Click here to go there!
Listed here are the most common FAQ's for this product. Before contacting support, make sure your query is not answered here.
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- Initial Release