Second Life

Things about SL

Blender and Shrink Wrap for Second Life

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If that title makes no sense to you and you make sculpties then pay attention. There are some great 3D models spread around the Internet. The problem with using them in SL is there is no easy way to get them into SL. The only meshes we can bring in, for now, are Sculpties (4/09).

Sculpties have strict limits on the number of vertices a mesh can have and the number of rows and columns of vertices. You can bring in almost any arrangement of vertices. The problem is it may look like vertex vomit (I heard that somewhere). One must get the numbers right for it to look good in Second Life. Shrink wrapping is a way to turn those models into sculpties. One can take a premade sculpty mesh and shrink wrap it over another model. Presto easy conforming mesh.

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FREE TEXTURE ORGANIZER

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OMG! This is so great! I just stumbled across it. Someone was using it in the IBM Sandbox. This organizer was made by Liandra Ceawlin. It is free and you can get it at her place. She has a few scripts she is giving away for free. They are worth having.

Liandra Ceawlins Chessboard
Liandra Ceawlin's Chessboard

She also made a huge chessboard/game. You can play chess.

She offers custom programming for SL.

The ECR&D (Explorer’s Community Research & Development – a Myst-Uru fan thing). Is studying textures in SL. They have Monday meetings. Contact me for more information.

HALL of WONDERS

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Tower from Hall of Wonders
Tower from Hall of Wonders

New World Notes (NWN) tipped me off to an IBM build that Bettina Tizzy found. The NWN post has an image of it that is very Escher looking. Reading her story Hall of Wonders I found that she discovered it in a sandbox, the IBM sandbox, which is unique in its own right. As of Sunday, the tower was still in the sandbox. (IBM 6) I did not find the stairs shown in Bettina’s photo.

IBMs Interesting Stuff
IBM's Interesting Stuff

Interesting Places… thse sandboxes… did you ever think of sandboxes as places to explore? I know one can find lots of amazing things in sandboxes. I often am looking for a sandbox with some room for me to work or just fleeing a persistent griefer and visit several before settling on one. There are often amazing things in them. Everything from newbies trying to figure out how to complete their anatomy to the cutting edge new toys can be found in a sandbox.

Land of NoR Town Hall Meeting

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New information and interesting questions were features of Saturday’s town hall meeting for SL’ers play LoN (Land of NoR – SLURL). Luxa Budan and Mystyka Gray were the moderators speaking for LoN. For those interested in RPG’s and what makes the successful ones tick, this reveals some of the thinking going on inside.

The Massive Dark RPG - Land of NoR
The Massive Dark RPG - Land of NoR

Luxa said, “Now there is a poll up on Land of NoR Forum to see what kind of future you would like to see for the sim configurations. Merge the continents or no. If you haven’t yet, take the time to vote.” Suggesting that they are planning on joining or in some other way changing the configuration of NoR’s continents. The poll is in progress be sure to vote. So far the idea of separate but joined by a land bridge is the most popular by about 2 to 1. They also say NoR is on a sim freeze mostly because of the LL devaluation of sims. So, no new sims are planned for anytime soon.

Free LoN Groups to End

Luxa said, “Also to regulate the people spamming the chats and to cut down on general asshatery we are going to make the groups fee based to join. The lindens will be supplied back to the community through SL’s distribution system for groups. Certain members of staff will have the ability to invite legitimate people into the groups. Naturally if you are already in the group you will not have to pay to join.”

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SL Photography – Places – Blogs

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Photographers need interesting places to photograph. SL has loads of them. I use NWN and now  Ysé Sliffeuse et Gloodeuse along with others to find interesting places. However, you may notice some of those cool photos don’t look like the place you see when you get there. It is not Photoshop that makes the difference. It can but, it is Windlight that makes a big difference.So if you have not explored Windlight, do so before your next photographic mission. And then there is the appearance and quality of images placed on one’s blog…

WordPress Upload via Word - JPG

I started noticing that some of my images looking sharp on my workstation look blurry on my blog. Eck! SO, whasup with that? Well here is a bit of an experiment. This first image is a JPG file pasted into Word and so nicely uploaded without any effort from me. Way easy. Good Word. Good WordPress.

Upload via direct WordPress upload
Upload via direct WordPress upload

Next I used WordPress to upload an image and place it in my blog. This is a bit more work but I have to edit the image display anyway, so not that much more.

Yse PNG Test - Via WordPress direct upload
Yse PNG Test - Via WordPress direct upload

I also wondered if it was a JPG thing. So, I used a PNG image. If you don’t know what JPG’s and PNG’s are… you must be new to digital photography. So, go read about them at Atalasoft.

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Dress Making and Color Matching

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Showing Prim and Clothes Color Mismatch

There are lots of tutorials on dress making. Yet, one of the things most have left out is color matching between prim clothes and … I guess AV clothes, the clothes one sees in the appearance menu. The image from Meara D shows the problem. Getting the two to match and blend together since Windlight has been a problem. While this may be old news to some of you, I just found it. What The Fug has a tutorial on just this problem. Also known as ‘WeHateWhatYourWearing’ blog. Snarky but fun.

I have loads of tight miniskirts (you know the ones) with a prim panel that does not match. Other prim skirts have the same problem. There is a fix. Even better there is a tutorial See Tinting Prims for Windlight.

There are lots of broken images on the page, at least for me. They are there, they just may not display. You can click most to see the larger image.