Category Archives: Fashion

Indie Teepee – How Designers Do It

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Indie Teepee is new to me. I find it is an annual music, arts and shopping festival, held from the 10th to the 24th of July. The event will feature music, live performances, a drive-in machinima screening, original mesh designers and art installations. Sounds interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okog1BQ65KM

But, in, I guess, a spin off there is a podcaster covering Second Life™ in a series named Indie Teepee. Oddly enough I ran into all this on Facebook while following up on the SLUniverse article asking designers to stop using Firestorm, which I still think is an odd way to go about fixing a lag issue in SL. Continue reading →

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Second Life: Firestorm a Designer’s Problem?

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We still have a debate ongoing in Second Life™ over on SLUniverse in the discussion started by Adeon Writer, Dear Mesh Content Creators: Please stop making your content on Firestorm, continues. I provided my thoughts in Second Life LoD Problems – Is Firestorm to Blame. In that article you’ll see I think designer and consumer ignorance are to blame. I also see plenty of fascist rule makers out proposing their solutions.

I prefer freedom and free market solutions over rules.

SlackGirl - Sue

SlackGirl – Sue by Rehana Seljan, on Flickr

One of the solutions proposed in:

BUG-6243 – Provide an informative warning when creating sculpts or mesh that may render improperly for others.

That places everything on the designer and provides no incentive for the designer to comply. I prefer something to provide information to everyone about what everything is doing to our render efficiency. That is why I filed:  Continue reading →

Hair Fair 2015 Coming

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This is one of my favorite events in Second Life™. With mesh hair it is possible to have a much lower Avatar Render Cost (ARC) or Draw Weight, which it is called depends on which viewer you are using. Whatever it is labeled in your viewer it costs you performance. So, I am replacing my high ARC sculpty do’s with new mesh do’s for that reason.

Luna Jubilee

Luna Jubilee by Kaelyn Alecto, on Flickr

The fair opens July 11 and runs to July 18. This is the 10th university of this event, or so I am told. Continue reading →

Second Life: EBody Review

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Looks like we have another mesh body out, EBody by ABAR. The Mesh Addicts blog has a review of the body. See: New Mesh Body Review – EBody by ABAR. The actual review is on another page, I’m not sure why they did that, unless it is the nude avatar…

EBody 2015 ARC

EBody 2015 ARC

They show the nude body, HUD, and list compatibilities. But, they include no ARC comparison, which is a shame. I got the demo so I could look to see how dense the polygon mesh of the body is.

I started with my nude base avatar with hair, ear rings, Slink hands and feet. It has an ARC of 54,127. Adding the EBody and alpha layer the ARC jumps to 131,391. In my article Second Life: Mesh Body Revolution I used a bas avatar with an ARC of 44,571 (9,556 less than the current base). A Slink body pushed that to 59,251. Maitreya’s mesh body pushed the ARC to 94,381. On this 44k avatar EBODY would come in at 121,835. So, EBody is the highest ARC of the four.

Next Generation Platform-SL2: The Avatars

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Everyone is curious about what the avatars in the Next Generation Platform (NGP), or SL2, will be like and what we can do with them. Now we have some clues. High Fidelity is working on their avatars and has just release a set of improvements. See: Creating and rigging an avatar with Blendshapes in Makehuman. The information is somewhat compatible with the current Second Life™ and I suspect a hint of what is coming for SL2 or the Next Generation Platform.

This is a great video for designers. You’ll find references to a number software tools I have not heard mentioned in relation to Second Life. Some of those look to be handy for SL. Continue reading →

Second Life: Mesh Body Revolution

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Strawberry Singh has a meme called What’s Your Digits? It is about shape and mesh bodies. So, what can I add to that?

My Digits 4/2015

My Digits 4/2015

If your new to Second Life™ you may not know the viewer’s appearance editor reports the wrong height for avatars. You can check this yourself by rezzing a cube and stretching it to whatever height you think you are. Make it phantom and walk into it. Continue reading →

Second Life: The Jelly Babies Are Coming

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I went to the Open Source UG Meeting this morning. Not something I usually do. I had some questions and this UG is a good place to get certain questions answered.

So… what is a jelly baby? The picture explains it better than words.

Render Muting Effect

Render Muting Effect

The solid color avatars in the image are what we call jelly babies. I first heard Whirly Fizzle use the term. I like it. I’ve also heard avatars rendered this way called Gumby or Gummies. I talked about this in: Second Life Performance: Render Muting.  Continue reading →