GACHA: *DAWN* Beehive 000, Beehive 002, Honey Shed

Posted on by February 10, 2018
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Do people blog their gacha listings on the Marketplace? I have no idea!

HoneyFarmGachaSet_001
I set up my beekeeping enterprise out behind the shop in Steelhead Bay.

I went to the Gacha Garden event with a specific goal – find a set of things that looked like they belonged in the dry goods store, not just for sale, but as part of the roleplay or ambiance, kind of like the funky “second-hand” shops my friend Kitty Vinje and others are doing over in SLURL: Bayou Chat Noir.

I went out a novice gacha player, I came back a beekeeper, with pretty much the full set of “Honey Farm” by *DAWN*. It looks pretty cute – I added an old saucer to catch the messy “honey dipper” stuff.

The extras are different versions of beehives, and I somehow ended up with extra copies of the shed. This was from the February Gacha Garden event, with the “Seeds of Inspiration” extra gift for 20 pulls. In this case, the SOI gift is a funky little framed plaque. I haven’t unboxed it yet, as I don’t know if I’ll keep it.

I read up on a few listings and how-tos on putting gacha items on the Marketplace; it seems easier than going the Caspervend route since I can resuse the template I’ve made. Gacha items will look different than my own products on the Marketplace and will be clearly listed as “second-hand.”

Limited quantities available on the Marketplace:

Gacha Beehive 000*DAWN* Beehive 000 (boxed) Honey Farm

GachaBeehive002-1*DAWN* Beehive 002 (boxed)

GachaHoneyShedRARE *DAWN* Honey Shed

Rework

Posted on by February 10, 2018
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Based on what I’ve been reading at the Creation/Mesh forum lately, I could really improve this.

Mesh Bridge 2LI LOD2_001

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, and made an AO map but didn’t use that in my final texture (which was a total botch).

WalkwayEtude1

So from my surprisingly organized note in the corner, this was an “etude” to study how to replace a sculpt in one of the OAR files I was playing around with back in 2015. I made more progress after that but then didn’t break through the Blender block, and found other things to do in real life (that were fun and healthier than sitting at a computer all day).

From what I can tell, I could re-do this item as a sort of pallet, re-model it completely, and maybe use this low-tri object as one of the lower LOD levels, and do them properly. The unwrap needs to be redone, the AO map should be redone, and used in the texture stack in GIMP. I have a better idea now on how to mark seams, how to unwrap for better texture usage, and even possibly bake textures.

DON’T get me started on why I’m in Blender Internal Render. THAT is why I got blocked in the first place; someone I respect very much in “Second Life Mesh Help” communities will only discuss texturing in Cycles render, with nodes. And no. I just cannot stand the thought of yet another learning curve beyond the one I’ve been stuck on for years.

But does anyone in SL need a crappy looking pallet? that is a legitimate question.

Meantime, I’ve been fretting for weeks over re-doing an actual mesh product I have up on the Marketplace, that I think could be better, but I keep avoiding. People actually seem to want to buy that item, but is good quality? I fear not.

And here it is, afternoon on a Saturday, one of the rare days when I can spend the day fiddling around doing everything but what I ought to be doing.

So of course I fiddled in Blender for a bit, checked out Bayou Chat Noir, and went to Gacha Garden. As you would.

And now I’m a beekeeper, apparently, but if I want to make honeypots I’ll have to learn how in Blender.

HoneyFarmGachaSet_001

First Life Challenges and #SecondLife Obstacles

Posted on by February 10, 2018
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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.

RFL Kiosk_001

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 was to host one of her adult children one night, send her a bit of homemade soup (made by my dear Rock Fall) and offer warm greetings. We hadn’t spoken in years (she had burned many bridges), but no one deserves to leave this world with nothing but suffering.

I can’t go into details, but here is a recent news story that stands out in my mind in contrast:

In February 2017, Fagan was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. As her condition worsened, Fagan found herself surrounded by friends from every part of her life, providing support.

“So many people reached out to her in the end. It’s because we all felt like we had gotten something from her because she was so giving,” Howard said.
Chicago Tribune: Mary Frances Fagan

Read the whole story; it’s human, personal, heart-warming, yet sad. This woman died surrounded by friends (and family). It has odd parallels to the story now playing out on the far side of my family’s shirt-tails, but except for the dying in hospice part, it has a totally different outcome.

My former relative is surrounded by family and a few friends, but her so-called husband can’t be arsed.

There’s far more, but it’s just so petty, mean, cowardly, and sordid. A full recounting would just highlight how stupid and awful and junior-high drama league it has been for a couple of weeks now.

So watching all that at several removes has been pretty all-consuming; and then I had a very brief health issue this week myself (nothing serious, bad food). There hasn’t been a lot of time for my Second Life hobbies other than keeping an eye on my news feeds.

My obstacles? A stubborn inability to get stuff done because I think it won’t be good enough, and what I think of as “Blender Syndrome.” It’s that deer-in-the-headlights glassy look you get when you’ve watched too many tutorial videos, read too many Second Life Creation/Mesh forum posts, Googled too many old blog posts from 5 years ago (and many Blender versions ago).

However, SL offers a distraction from RL problems – not as an unhealthy place to hide out from them, but as a refuge from the trickle of sad updates that I get now and then via text. At any moment, she could be gone, and all the scattered family members who gathered for the first crisis 2 weeks ago will come back. Or it could be weeks from now, as she literally hangs in the balance.

At some point, her name or initials will be posted in glowing letters on a SL Relay for Life track luminaria. She wouldn’t understand and would roll her eyes at the thought, but it has meaning in my world, if not hers.

So, onward.

In Development: Possible Firestorm Local Mesh Feature

Posted on by January 9, 2018
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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/

St John Shop Closes 23JAN

Posted on by January 7, 2018
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As you may know, the St John estates are closing. My shop in St John Parish is open until 23JAN:

When is St John going to close?

Here is the St John estate closing schedule. Residents must clear their parcels when their tier expires or by 12:00pm SLT on the dates listed, whichever comes first.

Friday January 5 – Bayou St John

Sunday, January 14 – St John Woods

Tuesday, January 16 – Lake St John

Tuesday, January 23 – St John Parish

Tuesday, January 23 – St John Maurepas

I’ll be pulling furniture and things off my parcel, and have left a “Moving Gift” crate.

The building and vendors can stay up for a bit longer but it’s sadly apparent that builds (and sims) are disappearing fast. One friend pulled her nightclub/bar out the day after the announcement, right across the street.

I went for a walk last night after a productive day spent reorganizing the shared workspace in Tweddle.

The Tweddle outlet will remain as a joint holding with Dhughan, and we’ve been pruning prims there. It’s a 1500m2 lot so it’s roomy enough, but our workshops (and workflows) needed to be streamlined. We’re quite happy with the result, as it is similar to the old workspace in Steelhead St Helens years ago, in more productive times.

I have several projects and updates in mind but also need to reconnect with friends. So it’s hard to settle on priorities.

Dhughan has been quiet lately as he has been fretting over his texturing issues with a kit, but I expect he’ll have something new to announce soon. He, too, is pondering mesh.

Also we both plan to work with the Avastar Bento capabilities (especially for hand and finger attachments). I had missed the announcement but the Avastar Avamesh project, especially the quad topology mesh, has got me thinking about reasonably simple cut-out rigged clothing items.

Apparently it still uses the default maps for texturing, so I will be trying to make headway in Blender, Avastar, and Bento. Pretty daunting!

On a more social notes, I attended 4 events yesterday and enjoyed dancing, music, comedy, and friends. I regret there are no pictures!

The Snowflake Ball was hosted in Rosehaven by Eva Bellambi, music by Gabrielle Riel. This was a formal event with a free dance card hud. I change outfits so rarely that I had to rush but it was a nice break after pixel-pushing chores, and I actually couple-danced. Good thing I wore mah glitchie-pants, the first dance was a Lindy hop!

After a break to explore Europa Wulfenbach, owned by my old acquaintance the Baron, I started work on a texture HUD for one of my older hats. I got it done, next will be updating Marketplace and vendors.

Then I heard from another old friend, Holocluck Henly It was time for Swing Moon, his First Saturday electro-swing event.

And after that, a fun gathering with old friends from Cafe Wellstone at the Lonely Yak. This required yet another outfit change to bust out a flexi-gown. There are a lot of fun toys to click on and a dance bubble machine.

And I’m kicking myself that there are no pictures! But I’ve needed the reconnection. One of the gifts I put in the moving box is a picture switcher with some St John snapshots. This led me to walk in the old cemetery, after my costume change, in a quite mournful black and burgundy theme. The Bayou is cleared except for one big build that’s likely being repacked, the Woods and Lake are there but feeling melancholy.

I’ll have to take more pictures (feed, snapshots, and Flickr) in the future, but I didn’t have the heart then to document dying sims (again).

But perhaps I’ll feel like documenting living ones, like Rosehaven, Europa Wulfenbach, and others.

Releasing Into The Wild: Plain Silk Top Hat

Posted on by January 1, 2018
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New on the Second Life Marketplace – a mesh project that I finally finished, for once!

A simple black top hat, which reveals a moire’ satin texture when using Advanced Lighting (see viewer preferences under graphics, must be enabled depending on your hardware). Any biggie, Tiny, Dinkie, or Furry avatar can wear this hat with pride! Note, the interior does NOT have invisible or deleted faces, so it could be placed upside-down on a table to display a pair of gloves, etc.

  • Materials – requires Advanced Lighting to see effect
  • Is a matte silk fabric hat on low settings
  • Unrigged – resize/stretch in any dimension

Source: Second Life Marketplace – @LC@ Top Hat – Plain Black Silk

Second Life Marketplace – Chameleonic Possessions Sale Prices

Posted on by January 1, 2018
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With the coming closure of the St John Estate, my main shop will now be at the mainland location in Tweddle, sharing space with my business partner, Dhughan Froobert.

SLURL: Chameleonic Possessions and Frooberts Further West

I’m undecided about whether I’ll open another secondary shop again. I am quite tempted by 2 locations, both run/managed by old friends. Both are either in the Steampunk genre, which I’ve missed, or in the “early Americana” style, which has a comfortable vibe for me.

Almost all of my older products will be priced at about 50% off. I’ve deleted a few really old ones that nobody wanted (and with good reason)!

I’m actually looking forward to changes. What use is being Chameleonic without it?

Source: Second Life Marketplace – Chameleonic Possessions by Lelani Carver

Long After Last Call

Posted on by December 31, 2017
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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.

Long After Last Call at Kitty Vinje's Love Shack_001

Meanwhile Janus Rhiadra’s general store across the way is gorgeous, stocked with gacha stuff. Makes my old Dry Goods store look so 2007.

JanusGeneralStore_001

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 friend’s little town in SL and found a beautifully made stained glass lamp, with wrought iron and frickin light bulbs, and it’s ONE PRIM. Dhughan is feeling quite depressed as his old-fashioned products just are not up to snuff. Not. Up. To. Snuff.

It’s either bootstraps, or kits. Prims and sculpts are just not happening.

Onward into the future! Time marches on! Education is liberation!

Oh, and Happy New Year.

First Life First, Second Life After

Posted on by December 30, 2017
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Gabrielle Riel, owner of the St John Estate where I currently live and have a shop, has come to a hard decision:

I believe this. I always told everyone that if they needed to cut back their time in the virtual world that I would fully support their decision, because as much as I love and respect the platform that I turned into two businesses, I believe in Real Life First. Always.

With all my belief in “Real Life First”, there was one person to whom I never gave compassion or the ability to choose real life first.

Me. And it’s time for that to change. There are serious things that I need to attend to in my real life.

Ladies and gentlemen, friends and residents, I am closing the St John estate and I am semi-retiring from Second Life.

This was the scene last night at Kitty Vinje’s place in St John Bayou, next to his bar, the Love Shack:

Kitty's Box

Free Kitten

I went along on an expedition with Kitty and other Bayou denizens to check out a land sale at one of those sim-rental/sale places. There was a lot of discussion of what to name it but there may need to be more discussion of how many people would be committed to going in on a shared sim rental, with one person designated as the owner to collect rents. They have a lot of thinking and organizing and number-crunching to do, I can’t even imagine. It’s a talented group but what they want to do is re-create their beloved bayou, and that takes work and passion.

Meanwhile, I have to get ready to pack up the shop in St John Parish, change all the landmarks in the Marketplace, change all the landmarks in all my boxed products, and make a fresh start.

I started by going to the beach.

LifesABeach_001

I bought a simple cheap parcel, on the sim edge looking east, just a 512 with a little beach shack I found on the Marketplace called “Life’s A Beach.” I can put out a few things and call it done; last night the others were talking about the prims they need to put out by the thousands. I just need a place to be and listen to ocean waves and maybe a little music.

I spent the afternoon yesterday thinking about what Kitty will do with his wonderful “Love Shack” bar, which has such a wonderfully eclectic collection of stuff. He really does need to find a place with swampy ambiance for it; it won’t do to simply plop it down in the middle of generic grassland. He doesn’t know anything about terraforming or sim management; my dabbling with Open Sim gives me some dim idea of what’s involved with RAW files, terrains, terraforming, prim budgeting, and water levels. I hope he lands on his wee black paws. There aren’t many other places with a bayou vibe, and of those, I don’t know if they have a spot for a tough little black cat in a bowler hat and a set of brass knuckles.

Pussyhats Galore_002

Kitty’s Love Shack Bar, St John Bayou

I’ve had a lot of fun in St John but have to admit I’m not as shocked, surprised, and grieved as I was over the closure of Steelhead. In the former case, it was a very unfair situation – the estate owner got in some dispute with Linden Lab and was locked out, unable to pay tier and unable to resolve. In this case, Gabrielle had given some very clear signs that things in her personal life were needing to take precedence. Also, although she had plans for Christmas decorations, I missed any announcements after her first notecard; something went wonky with my ims-to-email and I wasn’t getting inworld messages. I feel like I let Gabi down on my general lack of presence, but my own First Life got busier 2 years ago and there was less time for Second Life.

I just wish we could have had one more Mardi Gras. I missed the last one with my own hiatus, and regret that.

I have some admin stuff to do too, and also I have some simple Blender projects in mind, which this little beach hut will benefit from. The “beach” is a sculpt prim and I’m pretty sure I can improve on it. And as the hut is prim based, it can be edited. There was another hut I liked that had a small deck for lower LI, so I may try that later. I was thinking of making a simple mesh deck and maybe an ice cooler. My needs are simple (and so are my skills).

For now, I will just try to be present, reconnect with friends, and get stuff done that I enjoy doing (along with less enjoyable chores).

Sansar Marketplace – 60 Day Marvelous Designer Free Trial Announced

Posted on by December 23, 2017
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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 world project by LL has an integrated version of MD for clothing tweaks (which is needed due to poke-through problems).

It seems likely that some bigger designers will migrate or branch into Sansar, and also likely that fashionistas will migrate to Sansar to play with tweaking their own clothes.

But many have a lot invested in mesh bodies and heads, too. Not sure how it will work out. If the fashion bloggers and customers who power much of the SL economy decide to abandon the older platform for the New Pretty, the mesh builders and designers may feel the pull.

I don’t have any interest in exploring or marketing in Sansar. I need less fragmentation in my virtual selves, not more. I doubt my simple fedoras or top hats will get much play there, and I’m no fashion designer.

I wonder how others feel about it.