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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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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It’s hard to find a nice, antique-looking blog theme, whether to use on your own self-hosted blog, or on a hosted site like WordPress.com. I’ve cobbled together a few bits over the years, but needed something better to adapt in GIMP as a text-separator. I ended up modifying one I had, and overlaying a nicer one on top of it from Old Book Illustrations. There are some wonderful antique ornaments there, and they even have a meme generator: This site is dedicated to providing our visitors with a wide range of illustrations scanned from old books. Most of these vintage…
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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 out what I wasn’t doing right that made it turn…
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Oh, hey, I made a thing here. Actually, two things. Thing One is a pinky purpley mesh blocky thing. After reading through some really helpful TEXT and STILL PICTURE tutorials from Tufts University last night, I sat down and made a random shape via extrusions at lunch, in about 15 minutes start to finish. Woo. And then I assigned a material to it and uploaded to my standalone grid, using Kokua because Firestorm-OS crashed to desktop. And hey, IT WORKED. What a bumblefrack it was, though. Sorry that it’s disturblingly blocky and unnatural, yet evocative of a certain much-mocked object…
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Thanks to Thaddeus Nadeau, I’ll be participating in the Antique Grid Show Spring Hunt, beginning April 6. I’m excited to be in that hunt, as I had passed on being in STEAM 8. For this one, the scope is limited to “antique” items – but that can mean anything from the 16th century onward, including the Edwardian and Victorian eras. It’s one where the hunt items cost $L10 to buy, but they’re really worth it.
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This is so cool – I read about a new product at SLUniverse – a builder’s kit for making folding mesh screens that can be scripted to open and close. All you have to do is add your own textures, and WA-LA: This image is based on a photo I took years ago at a geisha (actually an oiran) event. The dancers had a fog effect going and so I took lots of pictures. Now, years later on the better machine, I’ve used some GIMP tricks to make the image look like an artistic landscape sketch, with some gold splashes…
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Announcing: "The Dragonlord!" This simple but elegant cane will soon be released.
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O HAI! Bug is here! I maded a dress today. Akshully, I made the skirt a while ago, but decided to start building a whole dress, AND I managed to make my own fabric for it. This is what it looks like so far. I made gingham (on a pixelated LOOM and everything) and added a border with dandy lions on it. It’s very summery because winter is BORING and grey. I have to learn how to do sleeves, these ones don’t move right. They’d be okay for shoulder straps or cap sleeves, though. I safety-pinned everything and went to…
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I will probably never need this, but someone might find it useful