Dawn

I happened to be inworld at the right time to experience dawn today. (It was coincidentally at the same time as dawn for me in Real Life [RL™]. Days are much shorter in SL than in RL—like about 3 or 4 to RL’s every 1, if I remember right.)

There’s a lovely moon setting just as the sun rises…

(In a previous post I lamented that my next door neighbor had disappeared, taking his house and leaving a big hole. Someone else bought that parcel, enlarged the hole, and added boats. Aside from that, ignore the boats and look at the beautiful sunrise.)

After the sunrise I went for a walk around the sim I where I rent land, called Tuscany Island. One of my neighbors has created an outdoor amphitheater, which is lovely.

I have another neighbor—the one that also owns the parcel next to me with the big hole and the boats—that has built a castle?…mansion?…BIG HOUSE on the far corner of the sim.

It’s still fairly empty on the inside and I look forward to seeing what he’s going to do with it.

Then there’s this other neighbor that has me rather bemused. He owns a couple of parcels—a fair sum of money each month in tier payments—and yet has not developed the land at all.

Just rolling hills…and a land description that reads: Asian rope bondage dungeon escorts submissives slaves dominants Mistress dancers strippers sluts gorean gor cum porn rubber fem.

Hmmmmm.

No More Bare Midriffs!

Okay, there is something highly annoying about the avatar’s mesh in Second Life that creates this unavoidable gap between where the shirt ends and the pants begin. This is fine if you want to go clubbing and partying all the time, but sometimes you just want to make more of a professional impression (and not that profession).

Some of this is rectified by creating shirts on the jacket layer (which will overlap your pants or skirt), but this doesn’t work if you want to wear your favorite shirt tucked-in, or want to wear a shirt and a jacket.

Thankfully some clothes designers are now paying attention to this problem. Yay! Within the past couple of weeks I’ve found a few shops selling midriff-covering tops so I’m going to advertise them here WITH GLEE.

Women’s pin-striped black shirt by Style Starts Here.

Preppy jacket and shirt by Kitchy Boutique.

Wraith top by PixelDolls.

YadNi’s Junkyard

OMG. Junkyard fits—there is some organization, but stuff is pell-mell everywhere. And the size? I am awed at the sheer quantity of stuff.

Here’s one whole wall several stories high with boxes organized by month and year.

Let’s just look at October ‘04. The boxes for that month contain: 15 Free Weapons; 16 Free Doors and Windows; 16 Free Buildings; 21 Free Records (audio); 23 Free Vehicles; 31 Free Lamps; 98 Free Sounds; 53 Free Gadgets; 79 Free Home Furnishings; 104 Free Clothes; 153 Free Poses; 20 Free Animations; 70 Free Decorations; 27 Free Jewels; 4 Free Avatars; and 17 Free Animals.

And that’s just October ‘04.

Textures, scripts, furniture, clothes, animations, attachments, decorations, you-name-it and it’s probably here somewhere. Granted, this isn’t going to all be top-of-the-line merchandise, but if you’re a serious shopper and love hunting for a bargain, or you’re a newbie just starting out—hey, this is your nirvana.

There’s also a Freebie of the Month area (anybody want a penguin?) where I found two useful boxes for my upcoming building adventures: Wayfinder’s Builder’s Tools and YadNi’s Junkyard Builder’s Toolbox (filled with fun things like prim and color charts, measuring tape, protractor, particle system tool, rezzer script, and much more).

.

Be sure to look for the pic of the Grid, taken June 2007.

YadNi’s mission statement: NEW FREEBIES ADDED ALL THE TIME FOR YOU TO PLAY WITH AND LEARN—A NEWBIE’S PARADISE SINCE APRIL 5TH 2004.

Wow. What a great service.

YadNi’s Junkyard: Leda 210/28/54

You Wouldn’t See This in Real Life

I check out a number of SL fashion designer’s blogs regularly to see what’s new. A few of my favorite places to shop are in the Japanese sims—the clothes are cute in a young, schoolgirl sort-of-way, and the prices are very reasonable.

I saw this today at BP*:

I made new eyeball.
its FREE!
It is in the paper bag in the basement of BP*main shop. .
Please get it

Here Be Dragons

The Landscape of the Month for this upcoming issue of Prim Perfect is the collection of ten sims called the Isle of Wyrms. As the name implies, avatars here can be dragons. Wanting a few more snapshots for the article, I went there myself.

The first resident I met was Skylarian Isachenko, a gold dragon who approached me after I teleported into the sim Limbo. Apparently I looked like a visitor. (Heh. Perhaps me standing there and staring around in wonder had something to do with it.)

Skylarian was wonderfully informative, giving me a number of documents about the Isle of Wyrms and dragons in general. (A perk to being an inquisitive visitor is that you might be offered a ride on dragonback…)

Very fun! I felt like I was in the middle of an Anne McCaffrey novel.

After talking with Skylarian, I decided to check out the adjacent sim to the north called Cathedral. Here you can find dragon eggs on display.

I’m a little fuzzy whether or not these eggs are for sale. If I understand things correctly, you can buy a hatchling or wyrmling (young dragon) avatar at any time, but not sure if from these particular eggs. (The adult dragons—wryms—are only for sale at special times of the year and only in limited quantities.)

In Cathedral I met Houkou Ninetails, another adult wyrm.

Houkou patiently answered my numerous questions and posed for a few snapshots, along with another dragon, Keiko Katscher.

With me in the foreground, you can get an idea how big these adults wyrms are.

Houkou presented me with a hatchling avatar of my very own as a gift from the Isle of Wyrms (an aquatic fire hatchling, which seemed to me like a contradiction in terms, but I certainly wasn’t complaining!).

It was a lot of fun to scramble and waddle around in this shape.

Houkou offered to show me around and I took him up on it. (I think it was a him but I’m not sure—gender never came up.) He transformed into a beautiful white wolf to play tour guide and I fell in love with his wolf’s prim hair.

I stayed a hatchling for the tour, partly because it was fun and novel, but also because I didn’t have a quick way of changing back into my human form without flashing Houkou first, which seemed like bad form, considering he’d been so helpful and polite to me.

Of Skyboxes and Sculpted Prims

Christmas is over now and my life is slowly resettling into its former schedule. Which means quality time in Second Life, yay!

I’ve become painfully aware lately of the limitations of my computer when it comes to such a graphics-intensive program as SL. Under the View | Statistics option you can view your Frames Per Second (Anything around 20–30 is great. My MacBook Pro, about a year old with an Intel GMA 950 graphics chip, can manage around 15 FPS if there’s not a lot going on.) There are things you can do to decrease the load, but the best I’ve been able to manage is 17 FPS. Until, that is, I discovered skyboxes.

Create a box. Sit on it. Edit the box so the z-coordinate for its position is +500 meters. Flatten out the box so it’s 10 meters square. Stand up. Voila! You’re 500 meters up in the air in your newly made skybox. What is a skybox? Pretty much anything from a platform to a house in the air. Why bother? Well, up here there’s very little to render and I noticed my FPS immediately jumped up to 30. Could be handy if you’re building. Why 500? Not sure, but I do know that an avatar can’t fly over 200 meters (unless aided by a device) so there’s some measure of privacy. Also, you’re so far up you can’t be seen from the ground so you’re not spoiling the view.

It’s inconvenient though to fall off the edge…

…so I may put up some rails. Anyway…

I’d found earlier in my Library a folder of sculpted prim shapes and textures and I thought this would be a great time to try them out. Sculpted prims are not created in SL. Instead they’re created in 3-D rendering applications, such as Maya, and imported. (Maya comes with a $7,000 price tag, so not getting it anytime soon. Fortunately there are other alternatives, like Wings 3D, which I understand is free. Hopefully it will work on a Mac!) This means that there are more sophisticated options for shapes available than just the 7 basic prim shapes offered in SL. W00t! (This is also how that lovely lamp was created that I lamented about in a previous post.)

So how exactly does this work? From How to Do Everything with Second Life by Richard Mansfield (2008): Technically, prim sculpting opens up to SL the ability to manipulate the surface of prims based on normals maps—texture files that use color values to define the relative direction and position of faces on a prim. It appears that these maps are based on polar coordinates, which can be a little limiting, but it is far better than no sculpting ability whatsoever. In an RGB image mode, an RGB normals map image becomes a 3-D object inside SL, where for every pixel R=X G=Y B=Z.

Ooooo. Shiny. The graphic designer in me approves wholeheartedly, not just in the newfound freedom of expression, but in the execution and the use of color to define a surface.

So…onto testing these puppies out….

I created a box. I then went to Edit | Object and chose Sculpted under Building Block Type, choosing an apple. Next I applied an apple texture (also in my Library).

In the image above you can see the color map that defines the apple’s shape. Pretty. And here’s the finished shape, just one prim big.

I’m excited about the possibilities. I’m already thinking of ways to use sculpted prims in creating a Tuscan villa, which is the next project I’m considering. But that’s a topic for another post.

My Own Little Patch of Winter…

…through the wonder of textures. I discovered not long ago that in my inventory I have a library. And within that library folder are a number of pre-defined textures from Linden Labs. And within those textures are several for snow.

So I created a snowman. Not a hard build at all, really—at least the basics. And easy enough that I could build and drink a cup of coffee at the same time, which I did.

I was perplexed when it came to his arms, though. I wanted branches but didn’t know how to create them, nor even how to create the pseudo-branches found on the snowmen in my previous post. So he ended up with arms that look more like broom handles, poor thing, but the addition of a wreath (bought) helps him to look festive and draw attention away from the arms.

I’ll figure this all out eventually.

In other news, one of my next door neighbors is gone, along with his sizeable house. Just a hole in the ground is left. Hunh.

Post-Issue #6

Prim Perfect Issue #6 is now done and available. Whew! (I note that today Prim Perfect’s blog is rated #11 on Sweet Second Life’s website. We’re usually floating up in the low-20s, so I suspect the extra traffic is due to the new issue. Regardless, w00t!)

Having just a bit of free time on my hands post-Issue #6 and pre-Christmas chaos, I decided to go inworld and try out those free skates. Logging in, I discovered that Linden had released a new version of Windlight and I needed to wait for that to download first. After finishing that I typed in the region I wanted to visit—Caledon Wellsian—and while trying to connect was promptly dumped elsewhere with the error message that the region I wanted to visit was not available. Strange. So instead I followed up on a random link to a furniture store called The Rustica, located in Grouse (slurl).

Nice place. There’s a wide variety of styles, from gothic to modern, spanning several levels. One of my favorite things to do in stores is try out the pose balls, which I did on this gorgeous red couch.

Tents were for sale on the top level of the store. Here I am posing in one. Nice cushions. The interior swirls around clockwise—pretty hypnotic.

I really needed to be in silks with a “come hither” look, though—some of the effect is lost otherwise. I was amused to find that the pose/animation here is identical to the one on the couch in my house.

Ah, still no ice skating.

I tried again later, this time using a SLURL instead of just typing in the region (which I could do with the previous version of Windlight), and this time it worked! Very excited, I found myself back in Caledon Wellsian.

I had my choice of a leisurely single skate or a couple’s skate animation. I wish there’d been someone else nearby that I could talk into skating with me, for I was curious about the couple’s skate. (I’m going to have to work on my husband some more. He’s near the cracking point, I judge, and with just a little more persuasion will be creating his own avatar and getting excited by the eye candy and scripts and all the possibilities. He’s already agreed to come inworld and accompany me to a New Year’s Ball.)

It’s a beautiful little skating animation and location. Pretty trees and snowmen to look at, no advertisements and blinking lights, and I didn’t fall down once. (It would’ve been neat to have a spin or two in there, but it was very nice the way it was—hey, it’s free!) And speaking of snowmen, someone had way too much fun building the ones there.

After skating at Wellsian for awhile, I decided to try skating in Caledon Cay (a skating park at some place in Cay called Forrester’s Estate popped up in a search). I never did find the skating park, but I did pick up some free hot chestnuts to munch on and also came across a place selling horses. The horse stable had demos, so I picked up a sorrel quarterhorse and took it home. Off came the skates, on went the horse (you wear it), and I had a lovely time tromping around the countryside at Tuscany Island.

I was pleased to see that there was no dorky DEMO sign on me anywhere. Instead I can ride the horse a limited number of times (5) which is much more appealing to me. The horse can apparently jump, but I didn’t figure out how to make him go faster than a walk. I can also fly with the horse, which I bet looks really interesting from the ground.

And that’s all the time I have. Now back to my regularly scheduled RL.

Building Woes

Prim Perfect is interviewing some very talented designers this December issue. Heck, what am I saying? Prim Perfect interviews talented designers every issue. I’m very new to SL—less than a month, so I have newbie written all over me—and I look at what these designers have created and built and I am awed. And I want to DO IT TOO.

Necessity is the mother of invention, they say. Well, having no Lindens is the mother of design. Wanting a ceiling lamp for my new home and not having the money to buy one, I decided to build my own.

Not bad for an early attempt at building something using SL’s rather obtuse building tools, I don’t think. But how do you get from my very basic lamp to stuff like this?

There’s a jump in design of what appear to be an order of magnitude or so, and I’m stymied how to get from one to the other. I have lots of ideas in my head bursting to come out, but I need to figure out the learning curve first.

And I’m impatient. (/me sighs)

Adventures in Caledon

Well, I’m in the midst of design for the upcoming issue of Prim Perfect magazine featuring the Caledon sims, due out at the end of this week on 12/15. My editor, Saffia Widdershins, IM’d me last night to let me know that she thought she’d found the perfect cover: a little park in Caledon Wellsian dedicated to Clement Clarke Moore, who wrote the immortal “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”

So I immediately dropped what I was doing and went inworld to go see this marvel. I didn’t have a landmark, but Saffia told me it was “across from the library.” That couldn’t be too hard to find, could it?

I teleported into the sim and ended up near a skating pond. Free skates were available and I took a pair, but didn’t have the opportunity to test them out. I’ll have to make a note to self to go back again just to go skating…

A couple was talking nearby (Amber Palowakski and ZenMondo Wormser, both residents of Caledon) as I scanned the local area for anything that looked like a library and greeted me in that friendly fashion I’ve found exists throughout the Caledon sims. I asked for directions and they offered to take me there themselves—very polite and helpful.

The park is even more beautiful in person than I gathered through the snapshots Saffia took. Snow falls gently around the pavillion where Santa sits, and I love the little lights on the ash trees.

It’s a very lovely park—even has reindeer grazing under the trees. No doubt resting up for their Big Night in a few weeks.

I agree with Saffia that this location will make a striking cover. I took a few more snapshots for good measure and thanked my couple who had led me there. Amber offered to show me a few more places in Caledon Moors where she lives and I instantly took her up on the offer. Yeah, I should’ve been in bed an hour ago, but…!

Amber, or more formally known as Amber Lady Palowakski, Baroness of Bauerhoff de Caledon, OWR, next showed me her fortune-telling shop. It’s just northeast of the telehub in Caledon Moors. I love the ever-present fog in the sim—I kept expecting to meet a vampire in the shadows.

Amber performed a tarot reading for me in her shop upon my request while Zen watched on.

After the reading, Amber offered to show me a not-well-known site to see in the Moors—the Cavorite Mines (walk north from the telehub along the railroad tracks and you’ll see the Mines on your left). From the sign outside: Discovered in 19884 by Dr Cavor during the Caledonian Survey Mineralogical Expedition, this outcropping of the Caledon Moors contained a wealth of the rare earth ore cavorite, a unique mineral that repels the force of gravity. (Caledon’s theme is Victorian steampunk, so you know where the cavorite comes in…)

In the bottom of the mine is an unusual cavern. Strange writings are carved into the walls.

(Amber is in the background and that’s me in the red Victorian dress in the foreground—I decided to go native when I visited.)

Amber is standing in front of an early representation of the Caledon Sims. We weren’t sure what all this below in the cavern meant—a mystery!—and it was a lot of fun to look at and speculate.

I look forward to exploring more in Caledon. And I still have those ice skates to try out…