Building – Nalates’ Things & Stuff

Slink Leaves Second Life

2023/01/03 by Nalates Urriah

As of January 1, 2023, the Slink brand of bodies and clothes is closed. Short notice. Siddean Munro announced the closure January 1 effective immediately. For many of us this is a big deal. I am a Slink fan girl. I love my Redux Original body. AKA the Physique body. It is my everyday body. … Read more

Blender Install 2022

2022/05/28 by Nalates Urriah

Years ago (2012) I wrote a tutorial on installing Blender and setting up for making clothes in Second Life ™. It is titled: Second Life Mesh Clothes Blender 2.6 Setup 2012 Tutorial. It has all the gory details a person with OCD would need. A couple of years later I wrote: Fitted Mesh Base Avatar Files, about which mesh models to use for making clothes. The articles have good information but we have learned and advanced since then. So, we can simplify things.

This article will hopefully take some of the pain out of your entry into clothes making for Second Life.

Blender Install

There are two ways to install Blender™. You can install it as one does any Windows program using the provided install program. This is simple and quick. If you are just curious and in the process of exploring, this is your option.

However, if you are serious and committed to making clothes then there is a better option.

Blender is in what I consider rapid development and updates often. Some of the updates make changes in the core parts of Blender. These changes force third-party add-on makers to update their add-ons. If you are dependent on an add-on you’ll run into times when a Blender update will break your model and/or your add-ons and you are left waiting for a third-party update.

State of Second Life Clothes Making 2022

2022/05/21 by Nalates Urriah

The fashion industry in Second Life™ is massive and profitable. Ten years ago, I was writing tutorials for making SL clothes. Since then, I made the stuff I wanted and just coasted along. Then playing with friends inside SL I stopped making mesh anything. There are a couple of things I now want to make. … Read more

EEP Tutorial – Second Life

2021/03/29 by Nalates Urriah

Penny Patton has a new written EEP tutorial out about how to use the Enhanced Environment Project, the Windlight update, on your land. She uses the Black Dragon viewer in her tutorial for the source of the illustrations. Most viewers have the exact same panels for setting up the environment. So, the only problem for Firestorm and other viewer users is getting the initial About Land panel open. About Land allows you to edit the parcel’s environment settings. Otherwise, you are editing your personal view of the environment.

At ground level in Firestorm, you can right-click the ground and select About Land. You can then edit the environment at the parcel or region level. Easy.

In Firestorm, the World->Region Details or Alt+R and then the Environment tab opens the same environment panel but, for Estate Managers until you right-click the ground you are editing your personal settings. And if you click on anything else you snap out of the parcel environment edit mode.

Also, if you teleport up to a high altitude you will likely lose the link to the parcel and can’t edit the environment.

SL’s Big EEP Fear

2019/04/01 by Nalates Urriah

It is April 1… but I’m not putting you on.

In week 13 there was a third-party viewer UG meeting. A significant part of the meeting was spent discussing the EEP – Enhanced Environment Project (EEP).

The EEP Viewer is in RC and has been for several days. It is the big push in the viewer pipeline. Vir Linen thinks the Love Me Render viewer is the likely next candidate to be promoted. But, EEP should be ready to release in 2 to 3 weeks… Firestorm thinks they will be 2 to 3 weeks behind that. I think 5 or 6 weeks behind, but I’ll be happy to be wrong.

As soon as EEP releases the Lab will move on to EEP2. Some of the things people want in EEP are being put into EEP2 to allow EEP to release sooner.

EEP is causing the current black stars and changes in the appearance of some Windlight (WL) environments. So, lots of complaining going on. I’ve turned off ‘Use Region Default’ on my Firestorm viewer. You do that in Preferences->Firestorm->Windlight->Automatically change environments… (uncheck). I can still control whether WL is using the region-default WL or not with the Photo Tools controls.

Second Life – How to get better image quality…

2019/02/18 by Nalates Urriah

There is an ongoing quest, for those of us texturing clothes and things in Second Life™, to upload better quality images. So, here is some new information on making better textures or aka diffuse layers. See Compression Depression.

Beq Janus, is one of the people working with the Firestorm team and has tweaked the mesh uploader and other parts of the viewer, been involved in tracking down bugs, and figuring out workarounds for various problems. Now she is on about a discovery made with the help of Whirly Fizzle, all starting with one of Hamlet Au’s New World Notes posts about Frenchbloke Vanmoer… who?

Whoever, down in the Debug Settings it is said there is some magic. Unfortunately, it isn’t there, often as is the case with magic. The magic appears surprising to some as they do not understand the trick and think the wand, hand waving, and abracadabras actually do something magical.

However, there is a lesson to be learned and another step in the quest for better SL image uploads.