Breaking: Slink Update

There is a Slink update out. I started seeing people talking about it in the Slink, Classy gear for classy babes group.

Slink Versions – It is hard to stay current unless you refer to this page: Slink Versions. It provides the version numbers for the latest versions of hands, feet, body, heads, and HUD’s.

As of late 3/6 or early 3/7, depending…, there is a new ALMOST release from Slink: Petite Augment Pack. The ‘almost’ means info has leaked, but the item is not yet in the Slink store. As of 3/7 @ 3PM SLT/PT.

New Slink Item – Petite Augment Pack

I suppose this is an enhancement for itty-bitty-titties… Is this a new trend or is Siddean Munro just swimming upstream? I don’t know. But, I’m not a fan of blimp size breasts. I think B and C cups are best. So, I think this is pretty neat.  Continue reading

News Bits III 2018 w09

Skin Fair 2018

This is always an interesting fair. It runs from March 9 to 25. For a list of participants look here Website. The location of the fair is not yet accessible. Event organizer.

Skin Fair 2018

You can advertise there, on a billboard (PG only), by purchasing board space starting March 1 for L$3,000. Ad Office.

Blogger applications for early access are here.

Fashion Bloggers

I’m not that much into fashion review. My GA.EG Jennifer mesh head article provides the type of information that interests me. That article is like 1,500 words. I don’t see that in most fashion reviews. The amount of information normally provided by the hundreds of fashion sites popping up on iHeartSL is a picture and a list of stuff worn. It is sort of customary to include a link to where an item can be purchased, but not always. Continue reading

What’s in My Head…

I’ve been looking for a mesh head for a long time. When it comes to my avatar’s appearance I get picky. My first skin was free and came from a strip club. I then spent months finding the just right skin. I finally decided on a Nomine WL Mocha skin by Munchflower Zaius, an artist that gave up creating because of copyboting (still in Marketplace). It was my first ever big purchase. Paid for from dancing-stripping, camping, and money trees in 2008.

Classic to Bento – Distant

I tend to spend months playing with demos and talking with people when I buy my first body anything. So, feet then hands, then body and now head. Also, I had hoped Slink would come out with a Bento head. But…

I like my classic head. So, I wanted a head that would allow me to have a very similar face. That was harder than I thought. I went through a lot of heads and spent days making shapes. I decided I would never get the look I wanted with some popular heads.

I decided on GA.EG’s Jennifer head. Very quickly I got near the shape/look I wanted. Plus, an included skin matched my favorite YS&YS’ Viola skin. That greatly simplified the addition. I had been planning on having to buy a new skin. My YS&YS to too old to have appliers for Omega and does not have any head applier. Still, I may get a skin with an applier for this new head. Continue reading

Proportional Shapes in Second Life

Recently there have been a number of articles about the shape and size of avatars and things related. Penny Patton has been on about how camera position affects our perception of size in SL for years. Now the Lab is preparing to support her altered camera position settings. Plus, she has written articles on avatar size and the effect it has on everything else in Second Life™.

This image is the work of Luc Viatour – https://Lucnix.be

I’ve written a number of articles on the same and similar subjects. Several pointing to Penny’s articles and expanding on the subjects. Continue reading

Second Life – Content Creation UG Meeting 2017 w27

The crowd at the Content Creation UG meeting is growing. I think that is mostly due to Medhue live-streaming the meetings.

These meetings are somewhat just small updates on the week-to-week progress the Lindens are making on Server-Side Baking and animated mesh objects, animesh. While there isn’t much new, we are learning more about animesh.

Vir Linden and crew are figuring out how to make animesh work. Group participants are thinking more about how they would like it to work. So, on both sides, the plan is getting more sophisticated. The meetings are interesting.

This week’s video runs about 1hr 8 minutes. I couldn’t hang out after the meeting. But the post-meeting can last an hour. It might go longer, but the Server Beta meeting starts and hour after, so several people leave to make that meeting. Continue reading

Second Life – Content Creation UG Meeting 2017 w26

I missed the first 10 minutes of the meeting as RL was intruding. There are Two interesting parts. Toward the end of the meeting a discussion of copybot issues starts. That section and an hour long post-meeting is in another video. When I get it uploaded, I’ll link to it from this article.

I’ve used bold text to highlight subjects in the outline summary of the meeting. You may remember, I use these videos to learn about video editing for RL work. Premiere, in general, or maybe just on my computer, is broken. So, I cannot currently use titles or text from within Premiere. So, this video is mostly about audio for me. In that area, because I used Firestorm (FS) I had to learn more about audio cleanup. Maybe if I knew more about FS, it would be less of a problem.

Medhue caught the entire hour-long meeting on video (HERE). My video picks up about 10 minutes in (1:10 PM SLT). Medhue skipped streaming the post-meeting. He was there for most of it. Inara has not posted her summary of the meeting. So, I don’t know if she’ll touch on it or dive in. I’ll dive in.

In the 10-minutes prior to my video starting, Vir Linden was following up on a question about whether animating attachment points is (will be) allowed and whether meshes can weight/rig to attachment points. The Linden viewer currently blocks animations and meshes that do. The servers, however, will allow it. So, for now things are a bit inconsistent. Continue reading

Second Life – How to Lower ACI – A Script

One of the complications in 3D rendering is working out how to blend the objects with transparent parts. Think of windows and SL hair. Designers can reduce the complication by how they use alpha layers and blending. I’m not going to try to explain how to set stuff up because I have yet to get it figured out. But, I came across a handy workaround for things we already have.

I buy hair, dresses, and other things that use blending modes. Most are no-mod. But, the script below can be used to modify them.

In the beginning of the video, I am wearing Magika’s Dreamy as purchased. This is hair that in the Linden viewer has an ACI of 4,699. Using the script reduces the ACI by 702. That is a saving of 15±%. This is my first try, so I have no idea if this is typical, minimal, or a max. You may find that high ACI items benefit more.

There is some degradation in the appearance. When zoomed out, it is barely noticeable. Only when zoomed in can you see the difference. Personally, the 702 ACI saving is not worth the loss of appearance. Continue reading

Second Life Bits 2017 w18: Shopping

30 Linden Saturdays

Obviously this is for the shoppers, L$30 Saturdays is a Discount Sales Event. Seraphim puts the event on. The event is a set of merchants that place a product on sale for L$30 every Saturday. Prices are dropped for 24 hours then return to normal. You can visit Seraphim’s web site each week to get a SLURL to the first shop in the day’s participants. Plus, Seraphim has a load of hunts and sales listed.

GTS Weapons

This week the sale starts at GTS Weapons… they are offering 3 melee and 3 ranged weapons you can pick up for free. GTS features bows: cross, compound, and medieval, when you walk in the door.  They offer some spears and swords. As you wonder the store you find most weapons types, chainsaw, lasers, old west guns, present day military, steampunk, black powder, explosive, futuristic, a tank, cannons, poison plants… pretty much everything a combat RP’er could want. Generally, in the L$600+ range. These are mesh objects. The scripts use Raycast tech in appropriate weapons, the newer tech for SL weapons.

The region is GTS Weapons. GTS has other stores there and offers other products from clothes to tools needed to run an RP game.

The L$30 Sale Item is over at WHATZ (Fashion and Props), across from the landing point. There are 4 sale items, one of which I couldn’t resist. A cute camisole but, it fit so poorly I tossed it. 🙁  Continue reading