SL Gacha Things I Didn’t Know

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There is a Gacha Garden event and two regions of Gacha Garden Shops. You peeps probably already know all this. But, it is new to me. I’m not a Gacha fan. But, I am curious about free market innovations. So, I am poking around and learning.

The Designer [ JUSTICE ] has boots I REALLY LIKE. I went looking to buy them and found they were an exclusive offering at the January Gacha Garden (LM) event (group). These are boots I would expect to go for L$300 or so per color or L$800-1200 or more for a fat pack. At the event, you can try your luck for L$75 a try.

Gacha Garden Event – Feb 2018

Of course, the gold color I want is a rare, rare. At L$75 I figure I can make 4 tries at getting the color I want. Or if I want them all, 10 to 16 tries. After the 10th or 16th try gacha-gambling is costing me more than just buying boots would.

I really wanted them. So, I made 4 tries. I got the Silver rare, 2 ok colors, and one duplicate color. The Silver rare is pretty neat and provides a range from white silver to near black silver. Five colors if I remember correctly. I am happy. The 2 colors are ok but not my colors. What do I do with the duplicate? I’ll get to that.

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Second Life News 2018 w06

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Servers

There was no Server and Scripting UG meeting today.

There is a Deploys post up for this week. No roll to the main channel or any of the RC channels. So, version #18.01.17.511913 is running on all channels.

Netherwood
Netherwood

Viewers

The main viewer is version 5.1.0.511732. Updated last in week #2.

Second Life Maintenance Viewer version 5.1.1.512226 – Updated! The previous update was version 5.1.1.511871 in week #4.

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Proportional Shapes in Second Life

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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.

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Photoshop Version: 19.1.0 20180116.r.238 2018/01/16

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This is the newest version of Photoshop as of today. A few days ago I pointed you to the video showing the new Select Subject feature. That makes selecting some things WAY easier. That is nice but the surprising part is the apparent improvement in Decontaminate Colors.

The Select Subject tool drops you into the Select and Mask… tool, where you find Decontaminate Colors. I use the feature often when clipping out part of an image. (example) I don’t know that it has changed, but it certainly seems to work better.

New Select Subject Tool January 2018

Clipping me out of the green screen in the above image was very quick and easy. May a couple of minutes.

Notice the hair along the left side and where it overlaps the right arm. I would usually have to spend some time working on those areas. Not this time.

If you have the new Photoshop, check it out.

Second Life News Bits 2018 w06

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Saturday was the annual Mole Day. Inara has an article on Mole Day with all the details.

SL Moles are the guys that build all the SL Governor’s public works things. We hear little about them, but they are a key part of Second Life™.

Mysterious girl.

The Machinimatrix Blog got hacked. It is fixed and all is well again. (Ref) The Machinimatrix people did not recommend changing passwords. But, it is probably a good idea.

NiranV the author of the Black Dragon Viewer has an article up on Projector Lights. Part of the information is about setting up Preferences in the BD Viewer. Then Niran gets into setting up the projector lights.

Projector lights are way neat and greatly improve the appearance of a scene. They make night and club scenes much more dramatic.

Catznip Viewer is releasing a beta, they describe it this way:

Catznip R12.1 (beta1) has been posted for patrons (64bit only). We’re testing dramatically faster texture rezzing (new, Catznip unique OpenJpeg). Prejump & landings animations optionally disabled and a slew of crash fixes.

Texture rendering speed was the obstacle to my use of this viewer.

Kitty Barnett, the author of Catznip, is looking for some financial support. So, this beta is only available to those that contribute through Patreon.

This is the 8th anniversary of Myst Online: Uru Live. Get details on the Myst Online website, Anniversary. Events through to February 7th.

Gacha Garden has a new event in progress. There are dozens of free gifts spread around the garden. There is a shopping guide here.

I’m not much of a gacha fan. I tend to only go when there is an exclusive item from a designer I like only available as a gacha. But, Gacha Garden is fun. Join the group. Lots of trading happens there. If you have an item you want to sell, this is a good place to start.