Second Life: Avatar Render Cost

This is a subject that comes around every so often. I tend to look beyond the drama and actual issue to see who is arguing and how they are arguing. Tells me a lot about them. Even more when I later learn more about them.

Avatar Render Cost Comparison - 2015

Avatar Render Cost Comparison – 2015

One of the interesting things about Avatar Render Cost (ARC) is the numeric value. Have you thought about that number? What is it? Inches, meters, light-years, weight of electrons used in the render process?

It is a nonsensical number. The Lindens used some equation to calculate an arbitrary value that is useful for comparison only. More is bad, less is better. They color the number is based on a coloring scheme that reflects there idea of good, heavy, and bad… green, yellow, and red. You can find the equation (sort of) here: Second Life Render/Draw WeightContinue reading

Second Life: Weekly Fitmesh Finds!

iHeartsSL,com has an article from the site Mesh Body Addicts and their weekly articles on Fitted Mesh Finds. The point of the article is to report on fitted mesh items found in the past week. The contact for the site is Lil Daria (LilDaria Resident).

What's new: Slink Physique fashion

What’s new: Slink Physique fashion by LilDaria Resident, on Flickr

The Addicts can be found on Facebook and Flickr.

I think this is a great idea. I see very little fitted mesh on the grid. There is lots of standard size stuff. But, that stuff doesn’t fit me well.  Continue reading

Second Life: MayaStar News – Week 15

A week or two back I covered MayaStar®, the addon for Maya® users developing Second Life™ content. I suppose many are aware of the similar product AvaStar for Blender. These are different products made by different people. They are not competitors as they serve different audiences.

Even if you are a Blender/AvaStar user there is still a bit of information here that may help you in  your design work. I’ve sot of added the work flow Cathy is building into MayaStar into my AvaStar work flow.

The video is 30 minutes long.  Continue reading

Second Life: Fantasy Faire 2015

The SL Blogosphere is abuzz with word that the Fantasy Faire organizers are taking applications from bloggers… I wonder if my readers are  mostly other bloggers. Looking at my stats, no… not possible. There are not anywhere near as many SL bloggers as I have daily readers… I eliminate the fashion and porn bloggers in my thinking because I am pretty sure I don’t have enough of their favorite fare here. So, that eliminates lots of SL bloggers from my counting.

Ginger Snaps - Do you Wanna see the Girl who Lives behind the AURA?

Ginger Snaps – Do you Wanna see the Girl who Lives behind the AURA? by Ginger Krokus, on Flickr

Fantasy Faire will be open to the public from April 23 to May 3. This is the 7th annual faire. It supports Relay for Life. It is also a fun time with some exceptional builds and places to explore.  Continue reading

Second Life: Skin Fair 2015 Review

I finally made it in Sunday Morning about 4 AM. There are some pronounced changes since the 2014 fair. For one, Appliers are much more prominent.

Skin Fair 2015 - Appliers

Skin Fair 2015 – Appliers

Makeup is changing too. Brows, lipstick, eye shadow… they are all more likely to come separate, which I like.

Tattoos are changing. Better, more detailed, and more tats targeted at various body parts. Appliers let us target various parts of the body. They also let us vary how they display via HUD. It is a new world of tats.  Continue reading

Skin Fair 2015

Opening March 13, Skin Fair 2015. Visit here: Skin Fair 1 & Skin Fair 2. There is no staging area so you have no choice but to teleport into one of the regions. The population limit is 45 per region. I haven’t yet been able to get in.

Mystic Canvass @ Skin Fair 2014 (starts March 14th!)

Mystic Canvass @ Skin Fair 2014 by Christiana Xevion, the slwonder, on Flickr

There is a strictly enforced script limit. 50 scripts max. That seems like a lot. I normally keep mine under 20.

Second Life: Clothing Parameters?

An idea for having clothes have parameters that are persistent was put forward. The person suggesting the idea was having problems with setting up feet and shoes for an outfit then changing the feet and shoes for another outfit and messing up the first.

I doubt that feature request is going anywhere because of the system changes that would be needed. But, it would be kind of nice.

There is an easy work-around, which is why I don’t see this feature being implemented. I think the problem solution I have is best illustrated with an example:

My Shoe Inventory Arrangement

My Shoe Inventory Arrangement

In inventory I have my shoes and within this pair of N-core shoes folder I have Scripted and Wear folders. In the Wear folder I have my skins. YS&YS is my newer skin. I’ve adjusted the foot to match my skin in each of the shoe color folders to that skin and set the shoe color. I have one Stocking folder in Mocha Skin. I had to adjust the skin color to match the stocking I liked, which was not in the shoe’s included stockings. Kind of a pain.

By doing this the outfit that wears a shoe/foot combination always has the same skin/shoe color. When I need new colors or I change skins, I make a new foot-shoe combination from the shoes/feet in the Scripted folder. Then I don’t mess up my outfits.

I haven’t started buying mesh shoes for the Slink feet I have. But, I will. It looks to be much simpler and require fewer foot-show combinations because I can reuse the feet. And stockings… with mesh feet it looks to be so much easier to wear stockings, especially with patterns.

Slink Updated Update

Today I got a new update to my recent update. This brings my Slink Hands to version 2.1. When you wear the hands you get an update shipped to you. It lands in the OBJECTS folder. You need to unpack it.

♫

♫ by Lana Quicksand, on Flickr

The hands, Utilities HUD v2, and the OmniHUD v6.1 update. I think the alpha layer remained the same. I can’t see a difference. I have noticed that the hands don’t fit the same as the previous version, at least with my shape. I’ll have to tweak my shape again. Or it may be SL acting up again. I’ll give it a day, may be two, before I start changing my shape.  Continue reading