Strawberry Meme & Liquid Mesh

I read the memes that Strawberry comes up with each Monday. I’ve never taken the time to do one. The post Strawberry wrote to start this week’s meme is one of the better articles on Liquid Mesh. Her position is intelligent and rational. I decided to provide more of the background on my thinking about Liquid Mesh. Rereading my articles I think I the last one was overly negative. See: Inventory Meme & Liquid Mesh.

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And consider.

Liquid Mesh items are being sold across the grid. Not all are labeled Liquid Mesh, but the advertising term is gaining popularity. As word of the possible destruction of Liquid Mesh spreads we may see more items sold under other promotional names. All will convey the idea that a mesh item can be changed to fit your shape. There is no official Linden supported way to do that that supports a change when the Leg Muscles setting in the Appearance editor is changed.

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Second Life Avatar UVMaps Quirks

When the current avatar was made the Lindens were optimizing for performance. This meant they took some crafty shortcuts to save download and CPU time. One of those crafty design features creates some strange behavior with the Second Life™ avatar’s UVMap and how the viewer handles it.

Gaia Clary of Machinimatrix.org has figured out what is going on and how to compensate for it.

To understand the problem and how to work around it check out the video that Gaia made.

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The problem is complex. Solving it allows one to make better looking skins and system clothes. Understanding what is happening allows one to make better mesh clothes.

Drop by the SL Forum and thank Gaia for this video and figuring out how the UVMap is being maniplulated. Improve UVs for SL compatible meshes.

Obviously making mesh clothes is complex. As time has passed we have learned how complex it is. That makes for a very steep learning curve. Perhaps while the Lindens are talking about Liquid Mesh they could say a word or two about how to make things easier for new clothes makers.

 

Second Life Quick Standard Size Modeling

I came across Sidden Munro’s video on her work flow for making the various standard sizes. Her process save slots of work. This is a 9 minute video that will save you huge amounts of time making standard sized clothes.

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Starting at the 07:00 minute mark she starts showing how to export the different sizes.

She did the 5 sizes in the video in under ten minutes. I expect people can get the process down to 5 minutes or less.

Matching Skin Color – Second Life

This tutorial is intended for those people using RedPoly kits. But, anyone can learn some basic ideas on how to match skin color. Like starting with changing Windlight to eliminate extraneous color and shadows. (7:40 min)

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I usually run my viewers on DEFAULT Windlight or local region settings. So, I haven’t needed to change my Windlight for some time. I had forgotten how few Windlight settings come with the new viewers: 36. The CalWL setting was not in my current viewer.

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