• Blender - Haleakaloha - Open Sim - Second Life

    Bowler Madness and OpenSim Sadness

    March 5, 2018 - By 

    Amazingly, I have been working on something in Blender and actually have something to show for it.               I’ve been obsessing about Blender lately, but not actually working in Blender. But I needed to get my head and hand back in the game, so here’s what I have so far. It will be a simple thing with a ribbon hatband, and possibly flexi-feathers on the side. I was thinking about doing one, and then saw a local production of the musical “Ragtime,” and was struck by the sight of many wondrous hats (gent’s bowlers,…

  • Blender - Chameleonic Possessions - Second Life

    Rework

    February 10, 2018 - By 

    Based on what I’ve been reading at the Creation/Mesh forum lately, I could really improve this. Using the excellent new mesh information tab on the Firestorm viewer, I can see that it has only 12 triangles (which is ridiculously low) but is not very well optimized, because it’s still 2LI. It only has the first two LOD levels (same file) and then I was lazy and left the last 2 LOD levels to the uploader to construct, so it degrades at distance. I think when I made this it was some sort of array arrangement. I did unwrap it, badly,…

  • Blender - Chameleonic Possessions - Second Life

    First Life Challenges and #SecondLife Obstacles

    February 10, 2018 - By 

    I should have a category just for “Is this thing still on?” posts. My First Life has been taking precedence lately; I’ve been “keeping time” mostly in Second Life and have several projects on hold or stalled, partly from my own self-created obstacles, but also partly due to time constraints. A former member of my extended family has been very ill for a long time, and it’s been a very hard time for her and her family indeed. Although we were never close, she’s facing the end of her life. The only thing I’ve been able to do for her…

  • Blender user checking mesh for errors
    Building - Second Life

    In Development: Possible Firestorm Local Mesh Feature

    January 9, 2018 - By 

    Firestorm may have a “local mesh” preview option, but developer Beq Janus notes it ain’t easy. “I have a TODO item on my personal project list for build tool improvements, to add local mesh support to Firestorm (and ultimately contributing back to the lab so everyone gets it). It is, however, a lot of work.” Via SL Community Forum: https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/416679-local-mesh-capability-in-some-viewer/

  • Blender - Building - Photography - Second Life - SecondLife - St John

    Long After Last Call

    December 31, 2017 - By 

    I am bummed, because Kitty picked up most of his wonderfully eclectic junk from his bar in the Bayou, before I had a chance to take more pictures. Meanwhile Janus Rhiadra’s general store across the way is gorgeous, stocked with gacha stuff. Makes my old Dry Goods store look so 2007. So today I tinkered with a long-stale project in Blender, got frustrated several times, will keep trying and will review the basics. Again. Because I forget them from long disuse, again. I also chucked out some old products from the Second Life Marketplace and my vendors. I visited a…

  • Create - Second Life

    Sansar Marketplace – 60 Day Marvelous Designer Free Trial Announced

    December 23, 2017 - By 

    Sansar has come a long way since we first caught wind of the project. In 2015, Linden Lab, the company behind the wildly successful Second Life virtual life simulator, saw the potential of virtual reality and set out to develop a successor to Second Life that would take advantage of modern graphics technology. Word is getting out to surprising places – Tom’s Hardware, sellers of high end graphics cards – stands to sell some upgrades to Sansar users. http://www.tomshardware.com/news/sansar-user-created-clothing-market,36138.html I got the email from Linden Labs announcing the extended free trial of Marvelous Designer for Sansar users. The new virtual…

  • Building - Second Life

    Carrying On

    October 5, 2017 - By 

    It’s been a somewhat frustrating week. But I made progress on a couple of fronts. New hat – not really that new, I’ve been wearing it for a year, but only recently got serious about choosing the final set of textures (yes, it’s another texture change) and realizing something fundamentally dumb about how I’ve been doing things. The new hat is called “Flutterby” and it’s got the same (old) base top hat with a texture change band and body. I really like the steampunk textures, of course, and there are some other ideas for other hats, but with a different…

  • Blender - SecondLife

    Some Meshy Progress in Blender

    January 19, 2016 - By 

    I’ve spent the weekend working on stuff, making headway and then hitting the wall (and occasionally screaming in frustration). Over the weekend, I worked for a long time on a “shell” shirt based on the Avastar addon, using an imported shape from my Open Sim standalone. Don’t be too impressed. This is the “triangulated” version, I still have a version kept back that’s got regular quads and a mirror modifier. This is the “retopo” I did over the top of the rigged shell T-shirt, which is just a skintight version of the Avastar character model. It was a lot of…

  • Blender - Gimp - Haleakaloha

    What A Maroon: A Narrative of Blender Blundering

    January 1, 2016 - By 

    Here begins my tale – I’ve somehow become marooned on a desert island (actually, an archipelago) and my only hope of survival is to make or build or salvage or scrounge whatever I can. It was a dark and stormy night, etc. etc., and here I am on the beach of a lovely but desolate island, with a random assortment of crates. I fell off a container ship, along with several containers, boxes, and barrels. We were in shallow waters and struck ground, and I went over the side. Unfortunately, the crew didn’t see me or hear my screams for…