• Marketplace - Second Life

    Texture Change Low-Crown Hat – Humans and Kitties Deserve Fine Hats!

    September 16, 2013 - By 

    This was listed at the Marketplace a while back – as I thought, it took about as long to create the marketing textures as it did to create the original hat, although I spent a lot of time tweaking this one. And then publicizing and social-mediaizing it took even longer… In the meantime, I discovered that it fits my Dinkies Kitty avatar with a little rotating (no size adjustment necessary). Hurray, kitties in hats! 14 hat and 6 hatband textures, dozens of combinations Brown blocked wool with gamboling Art Nouveau wild animals Redonkulously cute on Dinkies Kitty avatars, too Change…

  • Second Life - SecondLife - Steelhead - Steelhead Shanghai

    At Home in Steelhead: Shanghai is no more, but St Helens Rocks (with bonus MESH KITTY CUTE)

    September 14, 2013 - By 

    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,…

  • Second Life

    Dinkies Kitty Avatars Are Redonkulously Cute And I Want To Make Stuffs For Them

    September 14, 2013 - By 

    These are redonkulously cute, as I blogged earlier at my main site. The maker is Etheria Parrott, and they’re available on the Marketplace as Dinkies Kitty Avatars. She provides simple templates for making squee li’l outfits for them. Makes me want to dust off my workshop and make hats and stuffs. There are some extremely cute outfits for them made by Kamasa Kutanaga  at the Marketplace.

  • Building - Second Life

    Second Life Endowment for the Arts Goes To Crap (And Other Fine Builders Besides)

    August 5, 2013 - By 

    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…

  • Second Life - Virtually Anything

    More Or Less Back Inworld, Sort Of Kinda Maybe. Firestorm Si, Kokua No

    July 1, 2013 - By 

    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……

  • Building - Second Life

    GIMP: Texture Normal Map Tutorials – Specular Spectacular

    May 26, 2013 - By 

    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…

  • Second Life

    InsaneBump GIMP Plugin Would Be Great For #SLMaterials If Only It Worked

    May 24, 2013 - By 

    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…

  • Second Life

    Penny Patton: New “Building a Better #SecondLife” Post in Community Forum

    May 22, 2013 - By 

    First things first, if you’re in SL just to have fun, do that! Not everyone is building interactive environments for RP sims. Not everyone considers themselves a “professional” content creator, making a living selling avatar accessories on the marketplace. A lot of people just want to have fun slapping prims together and seeing what they can do. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. By all means read this post. If you learn something useful, fantastic! But don’t fret if my recommendations are outside your abilities. This is primarily aimed at content creators,…