It’s been a satisfying weekend getting back into the swing of things. I’ve worked on several variations of hats, getting them loaded with textures. These 2 batches are texture change, one based on “acid burnt chiffon velvet” textures, and one based on some jewel-tone wools and crushed velvets from a different texture purchase. Both hats will have texture change hatbands, and slightly different cockade decorations. Some of the hatband textures are Art Nouveau fragments that I was playing with last spring, and some are some basic suede or exotic leather-like ones. What had partly bogged me down was how to…
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The typist was on vacation the last two weeks of August, bumbling around the real-life Pacific Northwest on foot, by bike, by car, and by ferry. Oh, and by air, in that weird, awkward, and slightly intrusive way they fly in “real life.” So she missed the excellent “Exploring Second Life” meme started by Strawberry Singh. On her return, she was prompted to approve (or re-approve after an update, maybe) this old trackback about Steelhead by Inara Pey, which referenced this post about Steelhead Shanghai. Steelhead itself is the commercial centre for the community. here you’ll find the train station,…
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My SL acquaintance Mr. Crap Mariner is going all artistic-like, along with other builders and creators, in the latest LEA (Linden Endowment for the Arts) round. I expect great Crap art, and lots of creative Crap as well. His builds for the last few SL Birthday celebrations have generally centered around the literary and spoken-word performance genres, but who knows what Crap we’ll see with an entire region to play with. He certainly gives away loads of Crap to members of his announcement groups for readings and such, mostly fun scripted attachments or things you can display that are reminders…
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I’ve been absent from friends’ events and missed most of SL10B, though keeping up on blog posts and Twitter – it’s literally been a pain lately as I’ve been trying to deal with a case of Mouse Elbow, or Avatar’s Not-So-Funny-Bone, or whatever. I have a work computer that’s set up to be pretty ergonomic – finally. For the first 6 months that I was working from home, I was NOT using the mouse in an ergonomically correct position, and I’ve been paying for it for the rest of the year. It came on slowly, but then started peaking about……
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03-Jun 09-Jun
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20-May 26-May
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So, you want to learn more about how materials – that’s normal maps and specularity maps in addition to the regular textures, which will now be called “diffuse,” will work when Second Life enables the new features. Well, they’re a way to add eye-popping detail, if you do it right. When the shiny part happens, it’s pretty spectacular. The tutorial from TheGameCreators.com was my original starting point for a Second Life-specific tut on how to create the extra textures using GIMP that can be used to add depth and shine to objects inworld once the new Materials Project viewer is…
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UPDATE: I’ve found slightly less opaque instructions and gotten the InsaneBump plugin working for GIMP (and also the fully InsaneBump program working, but it’s really old). I’ll start a new post because I’ve since found yet another tool for quickly generating different kinds of maps for texturing, Knald. This might be worth installing the Materials Viewer to test in a SSB-enabled region. I’m usually well behind the curve on changes with Second Life updates and enhancements – see recent posts about trying to learn Blender years after sculpts (and later mesh) were introduced. But the Materials project, which I’ve been…
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(cross posted from my WordPress.com blog*, creatively titled “Chameleonic Possession) Here I am, on my standalone grid Haleakaloha, which isn’t very interesting and isn’t open for visitors, and up until yesterday, it wasn’t working very well because of a texture-reloading bug. Also, I’ve been struggling with Blender again, trying to learn it and not get discouraged. Yesterday, SUCCESS, after getting some help, I installed an update that fixed my Open Sim grid. Today, SUCCESS, I made a blob. You may not think this is a big deal, and it’s a badly textured blob, but I made it, and I figured…
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13-May 19-May