The all-in-one Home Furnishings Topic!

[Chic Aeon]

There is a new event called eBento Weekend and is a short term  deal - like TODAY.   I went over to THOR and found the item there but it wasn't on sale so I wrote since I thought I might just be confused. It is now on sale -- the whole set for 75.  The pillows are really great and I often use grunge stuff so happy to have the other.

 

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Nyn/140/234/3207

 

Adding a prettier picture. Two palette seats are in the set, one Low LOD and one High so be sure and get out the one you need :D.  There is also a nice bike but it is LOD4 ish. Good for photos though.   

 

Edited February 20, 2021 by Chic Aeon
forgot SLURL and later added a "beauty shot"

[Laurelrose Anthony]

3 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

There is a new event called eBento Weekend and is a short term  deal - like TODAY.   I went over to THOR and found the item there but it wasn't on sale so I wrote since I thought I might just be confused. It is now on sale -- the whole set for 75.  The pillows are really great and I often use grunge stuff so happy to have the other.

 

 

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Nyn/140/234/3207

Love that hair.  May I ask where it is from?  I may already have it in my inventory but you can make it easier to find. 😉

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, Laurelrose Anthony said:

Love that hair.  May I ask where it is from?  I may already have it in my inventory but you can make it easier to find. 😉

TRUTH VIP Forever  - VIP gifts are on a wall after they get replaced by a new one and can be purchased. 

[Chic Aeon]

Here is my second and third pick of the weekend sales.  I think the bed may have been on  sale before judging from something LittleMe said awhile ago.

 

 

Bed at WRONG and Lamp (with chord and in six metal colors all with and without light feature) at Pitaya. 

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 hour ago, Chic Aeon said:

Here is my second and third pick of the weekend sales.  I think the bed may have been on  sale before judging from something LittleMe said awhile ago.

 

Bed at WRONG and Lamp (with chord and in six metal colors all with and without light feature) at Pitaya. 

 

 

Yeah, different colors/patterns of that bed have been on sale before.  It is one of my favorite beds, due to the low LI and good LODs.  The pillows and bedspread retexture pretty easily, but the rest of it doesn't (though tinting the light wood works well).  Thus the weekend sales are a great way to pick up multiple bedding options for that style - it seems to be in the sales every month or so.

 

 

Edited February 20, 2021 by LittleMe Jewell

[Leora Greenwood]

15 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

Here is my second and third pick of the weekend sales.  I think the bed may have been on  sale before judging from something LittleMe said awhile ago.

 

 

Bed at WRONG and Lamp (with chord and in six metal colors all with and without light feature) at Pitaya. 

Thank you, I needed a bed for an alt and now I have it!  The sales at Pitaya are especially amazing:

 

[Marianne Little]

I just bought this, and I think the LOD is good enough. The set is in a huge room, and I set LOD to 1750 and zoomed far out. The thin rattan twigs in the table became hard to see, but the chair pillows and sides was clear. It was easy for me to see what it was at a distance.

https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Orchard Heights/234/44/3001

[Chic Aeon]

New free group gift at Careless. Three metal colors to choose from. Free group.  http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Careless/185/69/3983

[Yuumo Ichibara]

Discovered a new brand via IG: IXO Home

This bed is being sold for $499 in-world while the entire set is L$1299

They also have a room set for babies. At the moment the crib is deco-only but I was able to have a chat with the creator while I was there and she said she is working on the animations so Toddleedoo/Bebe kids can use it too.

In-world: https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/lovers islands/212/27/23

Marketplace: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/ja-JP/stores/236809

[Chic Aeon]

For anyone oohing and aahing and wondering  -- very pret-ty. 

[Chic Aeon]

25 Tuesday - 3 li 20K tris   Really lovely Muniick   http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Port Lux/173/63/3401

[Malayaa Morningstar]

There is a really cute Peacock Chair rattan set at Cosmopolitan, 2 LI for each chair including the pillow and other items are 1 LI, comes as a set.  I looked at the triangles and LOD but am not knowledgeable enough yet to provide an opinion...

[LittleMe Jewell]

24 minutes ago, Malayaa said:

There is a really cute Peacock Chair rattan set at Cosmopolitan, 2 LI for each chair including the pillow and other items are 1 LI, comes as a set.  I looked at the triangles and LOD but am not knowledgeable enough yet to provide an opinion...

The triangle count on these actually is fine - only a bit over 11,000 per chair.  At an LOD setting of 2, they held up to a distance of about 100 meters and then they pretty much disappeared - which I actually prefer as opposed to turning choppy.  Better for those far away to not see anything than to see some odd malformed chair - at least, IMO. 

The number and size of textures used seems a bit high to me -- though I am definitely not super knowledgeable in that area.  Each chair has 23 textures using about 73k of TMem.  For the entire set (both chairs, table, drinks) it is using 68 textures for roughly 215k of Tmem. 

I obviously don't fully understand texture use on Mesh objects though because I can't quite figure out how you use 23 textures on an object that only has 9 faces:

[Chic Aeon]

2 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

I obviously don't fully understand texture use on Mesh objects though because I can't quite figure out how you use 23 textures on an object that only has 9 faces:

 

Each 1024 texture is 3072.

The chair had 8 materials (in the chart these are the faces).

The chair uses 1024 textures for the normal maps and the specular maps

So 3 x 8 =24.

The shadow has no normal or specular map. 

The pillow has only one material but again all three textures. 

 

Here is where those go in the edit menu:

Whether it is mesh or prim, it doesn't matter so far as the texture count. 

EDIT:   For the math to work out on this, the shadow also needs to have one (not two) other materials. I am not sure why anyone would put those maps on a shadow though). Hence my faulty thinking -- but hopefully you get the idea.

 

This is the primary reason that I have seldom used materials on my objects :D. It was a choice. In Sansar I use normal and specular maps on most things. Rules were different there. 

 

ADDING ON TO THIS:  

I took the last thing I made (a low rock bench) and made normal and specular maps for it. I used the default program settings.  I went through a LOT of Windlights and I couldn't see any difference at all really. I am sure that there are some high contrast Windlight settings that would be more obvious but this is one of my normal "shopping" settings used here.   

 

The bench on the left has one 1024 texture - BAKED inside Blender. The other also has both normal and specular maps at 1024.   You could of course make the normal and specular maps smaller and lose some detail. Folks that love using these maps tend to shy away from that however and want that "crisp detail".  

I uploaded this as a png file so not to lose too much in the upload. 

 

Hope that helps. 

Edited February 23, 2021 by Chic Aeon
adding info

[Marianne Little]

Isn't "materials" mostly a marketing tool?

"It has MATERIALS (ooh and aah) so it must be top quality".

[Chic Aeon]

4 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

Isn't "materials" mostly a marketing tool?

"It has MATERIALS (ooh and aah) so it must be top quality".

Well it certainly was when materials came out long ago -- looks like over seven years ago now. The new Blogger will search but doesn't let you get to the actual article with a date to see, but happily I mentioned SL10B in the same blog post :D. 

 

I made at least one big item with materials when they first came out -- a barn. I also included a no materials version  even though the barn was mod and people could remove the materials if they wanted.  

 

Aside from the texture download cost -- which I didn't even understand back then, my big problem with materials is that they often looked VERY different depending on the Windlight setting. And sometimes very different meant truly horrible.  

Then when Cycles was introduced in Blender I definitely moved over to that camp and had a lot of creative arguments on Google Plus when I was working in Opensim about the good and bad of materials.   

 

It is a personal creative choice --- as well as perhaps still a bit of a marketing tool. I did  a test with the peacock chair when I was at Cosmo and there was definitely a difference using Advanced Lighting Model turned on in the viewer. It does look "better" with materials -- to me anyway.

 

The question I had as a creator when I made the choice on using materials was did it improve the look enough relative to the cost.  I found that with some improved baking I could get close to the "materials" look I wanted without tripling the texture download cost. 

Back when normal and specular maps were added to the viewer there were plenty of people who couldn't see them anyway -- their computers weren't hefty enough to run ALM, much like the shadow thing. Now I believe a lot more people can see ALM but still there are those that cannot. So my decussuib was to try and make things looks good for the middle ground (something leftover from my web designing days for sure).   

 

I could, if I wanted make things heavy in both triangles and textures -- and yes, they would look more slick and "high quality", but then they would also have that inbuilt LAG feature that some of us are trying to avoid.  I also try and avoid a lot of baked in cast shadows which I personally hate because I always have shadows on in the viewer and there is often a conflict. Those baked in shadows can  also  conflict with items from other creators -- making it difficult to use pieces from one set with another set. 

 

I have been making things for myself since I retired and I am using a bit more texture memory in some things, but not all that much.  It is all about a personal creative choice -- and happily we each have the ability to make our own. 

[LittleMe Jewell]

2 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

I did  a test with the peacock chair when I was at Cosmo and there was definitely a difference using Advanced Lighting Model turned on in the viewer. It does look "better" with materials -- to me anyway.

I will sometimes turn ALM off at events that are crowded, just to cut down a bit more on the load on my computer.  After you posted about the Materials texture, which I had totally forgotten about (Materials, that is), I went back and made sure I had ALM on.  I then switched to a few of the different Windlight settings that I typically use (still using Windlight stuff - I've not switched over to EEP yet).  The chair looked great in some settings and not so great in others --- which is what my usual "Materials" experience is.

 

2 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

I also try and avoid a lot of baked in cast shadows which I personally hate

I hate most of the baked in shadows, as well as the floor shadow prims that come with some items.  The only time the baked on shadows make sense to me is something like a shadow in the back corner of a shelf (since that will be present under almost all lighting conditions) - and even then, I want it very light and subtle.  Floor shadows only make sense if the light is always coming from a specific angle, which of course is never true if there is any natural lighting from a window casting into a room.  Hence, why I remove almost all floor shadow prims. 

 

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

The only time the baked on shadows make sense to me is something like a shadow in the back corner of a shelf (since that will be present under almost all lighting conditions) - and even then, I want it very light and subtle.

Yes, there are two kinds of shadows (in art anyway) --- AMBIENT shadows cast by the general light in the room (not from windows or light fixtures) and CAST shadows -- those that DO come from the sun through windows and trees as well as those from DIRECTIONAL LIGHT FIXTURES.   

 

So for example there are general shadows by way of a torchiere light fixture that casts light up to the ceiling that then bounces down SOFTLY into the environment and others that would show up if you had track lighting.   

 

For those that may not know these terms (I sold lights for awhile in my youth LOL -- one of my oh so many jobs.

I even got offered a job in lighting at Home Depot in San Francisco when I was helping a friend buy some lighting and the manager heard me explaining things to her. :D. Hadn't thought of that in years. 

 

Torchiere

Directional "task" lighting (this isn't actually a track lighting system but a ceiling fixture -- real track lighting let's you move the individual fixtures around). 

 

So I try to include the ambient shadows without getting too much of the cast shadow look.  There are times when this doesn't work as well as I would like, but technically it is all about how you set your lighting up in the 3D program.  So in the bench example there would be almost NO occasion when there would NOT be soft shadows on the underside of the seat area. 

[Frigga Freidman]

These chairs from What Next for FLF take me right back to the endless summers of my suburban childhood! 50L$, 1 LI, multiple color options. (Even better: a *wearable* version is included!)

Edited February 26, 2021 by Frigga Freidman

[Chic Aeon]

Really nice artist set with great LODs and low tri count. At BALACLAVA on Manly Weekend.  

 

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/chopsticks/77/40/29

on with my shopping. 

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

2 hours ago, Frigga Freidman said:

These chairs from What Next for FLF take me right back to the endless summers of my suburban childhood! 50L$, 1 LI, multiple color options. (Even better: a *wearable* version is included!)

Thank you for sharing this! I have some old lawn chairs from What Next that I really love. Time to upgrade!

[Vana Gears]

4 hours ago, Frigga Freidman said:

These chairs from What Next for FLF take me right back to the endless summers of my suburban childhood! 50L$, 1 LI, multiple color options. (Even better: a *wearable* version is included!)

I love these. The color choices are great! The camper cooler (also 50L) next to it goes really well with it and with other stuff. It resized nicely with no extra LI. I love that they always put their FLF stuff on the marketplace.

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

24 minutes ago, Vana Gears said:

I love these. The color choices are great! The camper cooler (also 50L) next to it goes really well with it and with other stuff. It resized nicely with no extra LI. I love that they always put their FLF stuff on the marketplace.

I didn't know they did that! How cool.  

[Chic Aeon]

If you like TEAL you might want to check out the new group gift at Careless (free group)

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Careless/209/63/3982

 

 

[Sylvia Tamalyn]