What do you buy, and have to edit in Second Life?

[Marianne Little]

I must modify light sources. Almost all light sources.

Candles, lamps, fireplaces, string lights... all items that I expect to give off light.

Why do so many have only glow and/or full bright? How many customers comes back to the shop and complains: "I bought this lamp, but I did NOT want it to give off light".

Even a very renowned shop like F.... D.... has candles without light.

And an on/off script that turns on the flame, but no light. Why? The scripts in lamps are almost always no modify, so I delete them.

And what's almost worse, the default light setting of pure white, strength 1000 and radius 10 m. Or primary yellow color, maybe the strongest orange, with a strength of 1000 and radius 10 m.

The yellow color is sickly and the white is like a lab light.

I always change it to a more pale peach color for fireplaces and candle lights, and grey for general light.

I must zoom in, derender and blacklist lights like this when neighbors have them.

[Ceka Cianci]

I hate full bright, Especially on clothes.. They may have a turn off  bright option in the hud, but it doesn't help much if they were really bright from the start..

I just can't wear anything that feels like it's stealing the show.. All my skins are mid to dark tones anyways, so that might have a little to help things be so bright.. But some things are really bright bright..  hehehe

Edited April 28, 2022 by Ceka Cianci

[Ayashe Ninetails]

I mostly edit furniture and decor items - tinting, sizing, and recoloring. Occasionally, I'll dismantle couches and chairs to add in my own pillows and decorations.

I also edit food when I'm able to - I'll usually take it apart to make my own dishes/platters when decorating and to add individual foods to the folders where I keep things for building my custom antlers.

On occasion, I'll edit my photo booths/scenes to add or remove elements, mix and match between booths, add or change lighting, and match added furniture/items when staging a shot.

[Psyche Starling]

Jewelry! Unless it's rigged to the body it's always wonky. I have a folder I dump new jewelry into until I have the time and inclination to edit it to fit me.

Hats too, though I tend to edit those each time I wear them, to accommodate whatever hair I'm wearing with them.

[Tary Allen]

 

Furniture, mostly recoloring and resizing (beds and sofas are always too big so I resize them and also save some prims).

Ligthts, always delete the scripts and put one that I have for ages (I think it is by Robin Sojourner), it has on/off and auto (some lights, like exterior ones I like to be set to auto) also it is editable so I can choose color, radius and strengh, I like soft lights, and not have the house looking like a lighthouse . And yes, I always derender strong lights in the neighborhood.

[Coffee Pancake]

Everything, almost all the time.

Decorating a space, with stuff from a variety of creators, the base color or  "off white"  tones will never match or even be close. A little tinting can go a long way to get everything looking perfect rather than a hodge podge mess.

Same for clothing. 

Same for shoes.

Lights are ALWAYS wrong, without exception.

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Probably the only things I don't generally modify via edit are hair and clothing -- although there are certainly instances where I modify those (when possible), as for instance removing bits of hair to make a style fit under a hat.

Everything else I routinely modify. Buildings, vehicles, furniture, etc., almost always need to be resized to properly fit my avatar, so I almost never buy these items if they are not mod.

I'm constantly building my own photo backdrops, so I rip apart commercial structures, backdrops, furnishings, and other items to cannibalize them for other uses. I have folders, for instance, of doors ripped from commercial structures that I can reuse in new contexts for this reason. I also invest in building components -- doors, walls, flooring, wall paneling, and so for this purpose, and add them to commercial builds to customize the look. For photos, I rarely use unmodified commercial backdrops or structures.

[Silent Mistwalker]

5 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Probably the only things I don't generally modify via edit are hair and clothing -- although there are certainly instances where I modify those (when possible), as for instance removing bits of hair to make a style fit under a hat.

Everything else I routinely modify. Buildings, vehicles, furniture, etc., almost always need to be resized to properly fit my avatar, so I almost never buy these items if they are not mod.

I'm constantly building my own photo backdrops, so I rip apart commercial structures, backdrops, furnishings, and other items to cannibalize them for other uses. I have folders, for instance, of doors ripped from commercial structures that I can reuse in new contexts for this reason. I also invest in building components -- doors, walls, flooring, wall paneling, and so for this purpose, and add them to commercial builds to customize the look. For photos, I rarely use unmodified commercial backdrops or structures.

This.

Although my intent isn't aimed at photo backdrops, I do try to make things of photographable quality.

[So Whimsy]

Plants, whether its a house plant, a flower bush or a tree. That's the first thing that comes to mind. Changing the size, pottery, tint and whatever about them. Other than that, I edit furniture and decor almost as often.

[Bree Giffen]

Furniture. I tend to buy full perm furniture in order to make things fit the design of the house. I usually just make my own lamps. I used to edit clothing and hair but can't do much now. However, you can still add things like tossing on a hair clip or mixing and matching different clothing brands.

[Cali Souther]

I usually end up trying to edit anything that will let me 🤣     I'm a forever noob in experimental mode.

[Codex Alpha]

7 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

I must modify light sources. Almost all light sources.

Candles, lamps, fireplaces, string lights... all items that I expect to give off light.

Why do so many have only glow and/or full bright? How many customers comes back to the shop and complains: "I bought this lamp, but I did NOT want it to give off light".

Even a very renowned shop like F.... D.... has candles without light.

And an on/off script that turns on the flame, but no light. Why? The scripts in lamps are almost always no modify, so I delete them.

And what's almost worse, the default light setting of pure white, strength 1000 and radius 10 m. Or primary yellow color, maybe the strongest orange, with a strength of 1000 and radius 10 m.

The yellow color is sickly and the white is like a lab light.

I always change it to a more pale peach color for fireplaces and candle lights, and grey for general light.

I must zoom in, derender and blacklist lights like this when neighbors have them.

To be fair, it is almost impossible to determine the end use of a customer, as the light sources rely so much on range, point lights emanate from center so extra prims need to be added sometimes to make it more accurate..

Spotlights will only work if users have Advanced Lighting and Projectors on, etc.

Light sources are also the HIGHEST AMOUNT OF COMPLAINTS about, and understandably, because it depends on the customer to be able to edit linked objects, place and use proper lighting themselves or whatever.

Plenty of complaints "Light doesn't work", "Light isn't bright", "Light isn't bright enough", etc.

I've also had a product that had conflicting 'reviews' or contact inworld. "The light is too bright", "The light isn't bright", so I can only do so much about that and that's it.

All one can do is their best, that's it.

I find a good balance is radius 3m depending on the object, or 1m on a table top usage. I sit an avatar down and go through the default light settings, and if light is striking the face, (like sitting around a poker table) that's a good range to use.

And if you include advanced features (for extra punishment)  like light dimming, color change it just opens you up to more misunderstanding and complaints.

Now I made a nice pendant lamp, but now I'm afraid it's going to get complaints too - because the lights seem to work best at end use - and trying to guess if the customer has a 5m ceiling, 4m ceiling, is hanging from a standard bar height, etc - they work at those ranges but they wont work the same if someone hangs it from their 10m high warehouse.

 

Do I modify items? Yes if available, but I don't think I ever bought anything thinking "Oh I like this couch and will change the fabric", etc as I buy a product as it is presented. Modify is  not a win/lose for me - nice to have but not a prerequisite

Edited April 28, 2022 by entity0x

[Persephone Emerald]

It's not so much that I have to edit, but that I like being able to edit stuff. Sometimes being able to edit keeps me from having to toss something out. 

I had some old hair from EscalateD , with their discontinued recolor via HUD scripts. As far as I can tell all their hair is Editable though, so I had the brilliant idea to replace the old scripts with their new ones. Since in most cases the old and new hair use the same designations for parts of the hair, simply deleting the old scripts from Contents and replacing them with ones I'd pulled out of one of the new hairs makes the old ones now usable with their newer Universal recoloring HUDs.

Then I noticed that while some hair uses the convention of coloring each side of the hair separately and some uses the convention of coloring the base hair and the highlights separately, for the most part they use the same designations in the Description window of the pieces to define those pieces as version 1 or version 2 for recoloring. Aha! Now I can change a hair that was recoloring each side separately to one that colors the base hair and the highlights separately. All I needed to do was to change the Descriptions for the pieces.

Long story short, I got a couple decent-looking older hairs converted so they can use the Universal recoloring HUDs, I tossed out one that was too much work to change from a Duo (separate sides) to a Streak (base and highlights), but I also felt clever for being able to reconfigure some older hairs for free rather than buying new versions of them. 

p.s.

I *have* to be able to edit the tint of furniture. White or light grey, means it can be whatever color I want it to be. Pale tones mean I can  probably make pieces in a room match and come together nicely. - And I have to be able to shrink furniture to fit my more realistically sized avatar.

Edited April 28, 2022 by Persephone Emerald
to add p.s.

[Lewis Luminos]

Furniture, always. At the very least, I'll be tinting something. I like to be able to retexture parts of it, especially cushions and blankets etc. Most furniture will need shrinking to scale, I also sometimes take off the shadow prims to save LI.  Also linking mesh pieces together to save LI, which you can't do with no-mod.

Houses - always need to modify something, take a wall out or shrink it slightly so it (a) fits on my weirdly shaped parcel and (b) looks right in scale with my short avatar.

Anything full-bright - to turn it off.

For plants/trees I often have to switch it from alpha-blend to masked, in order to prevent glitching. 

I don't mod clothing as often these days but if I can, I will. Especially for my girl alts. I buy fullperm clothing templates and make my own textures for them because it's way cheaper than buying a fatpack from a store. 

 

 

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

Light's a tricky thing in SL. I always take a few extra steps when I create a lamp: two texture sets, one set for when the lights are off and one set for when the lights are on. Baked, lit textures on surfaces surrounding the actual light source provide an extra glow that the actual glow feature does not. It also cancels the shadows that can be present on unlit lamps. The glass settings change most profoundly. When it's off, it's glassy and shiny and non-full bright. When it's on, I turn the texture to almost completely  opaque, full bright and glowy. (See picture below.) I have no fixed procedure for this, though - it varies with each type of lamp. For instance, kerosene lights give off a much more moderate light, and I keep the glass surrounding the flame somewhat transparent so the flame itself remains visible.

Rule of thumb, when making lamps for me is always: it has to look decent from both close by and far off.

The standard glow feature also has a weird, unnatural drop-off over a distance. (Prim spheres in picture below.)

The biggest challenge is to cater for people who have either Advanced Lighting (ALM) off (about 1/3rd of all SL residents) or on (2/3rds). Lighting and lights differ dramatically between the two groups, especially when projection lights are used. Projector lights look really nice with ALM, but the same lights can potentially look like a supernova explosion for those with no ALM.

Another challenge is environmental settings. People using different settings, may perceive the lamps as either pleasant or unpleasant.

From from the last two perspectives, I totally get why people have to edit light to suit their own needs. Lately, for this exact reason, I've even been providing lights and candles like these with scripts that are full-perm.

[Update] The example below demonstrates how dedicated textures for the on state make translucent glassy lamp shades more believable:

Edited April 29, 2022 by Arduenn Schwartzman

[Conifer Dada]

I tend to buy full-perms clothing so I can make my own textures for them using the templates provided.

In our club I did all the lighting myself from scratch and it's not perfect but I can live with it for now.

[Sid Nagy]

I'm always editing something. Be it my own creations or that of others. Sometimes just because I can.
Exception: Body and clothing. I spent very little time on those.

Reminds me, I should change my outfit again.
Sometime in the future.

Edited April 29, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Marianne Little]

3 hours ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Light's a tricky thing in SL. I always take a few extra steps when I create a lamp: two texture sets, one set for when the lights are off and one set for when the lights are on. Baked, lit textures on surfaces surrounding the actual light source provide an extra glow that the actual glow feature does not. It also cancels the shadows that can be present on unlit lamps. The glass settings change most profoundly. When it's off, it's glassy and shiny and non-full bright. When it's on, I turn the texture to almost completely  opaque, full bright and glowy. (See picture below.) I have no fixed procedure for this, though - it varies with each type of lamp. For instance, kerosene lights give off a much more moderate light, and I keep the glass surrounding the flame somewhat transparent so the flame itself remains visible.

Rule of thumb, when making lamps for me is always: it has to look decent from both close by and far off.

The standard glow feature also has a weird, unnatural drop-off over a distance. (Prim spheres in picture below.)

The biggest challenge is to cater for people who have either Advanced Lighting (ALM) off (about 1/3rd of all SL residents) or on (2/3rds). Lighting and lights differ dramatically between the two groups, especially when projection lights are used. Projector lights look really nice with ALM, but the same lights can potentially look like a supernova explosion for those with no ALM.

Another challenge is environmental settings. People using different settings, may perceive the lamps as either pleasant or unpleasant.

From from the last two perspectives, I totally get why people have to edit light to suit their own needs. Lately, for this exact reason, I've even been providing lights and candles like these with scripts that are full-perm.

[Update] The example below demonstrates how dedicated textures for the on state make translucent glassy lamp shades more believable:

Damn, that looks good! 🥰

I take off shadows and sun/moon/projectors when I'm just out and around, but turn on the goodies when I take pictures.

I edit other things too, but I never thought about it. That is lots of fun, buying a group of plants, pick them apart and use them other ways.

When I live in a Linden Home, I sometimes edit off and delete shadows on separate prims. Every li counts when I link stuff. I especially do this on decor that stand on a shelf high up and also when items stand on a very dark floor. I have to edit the shadows that is a part of the furniture or decor, make it transparent or else it looks strange, one flower pot with a shadow and the other without.

Stuff like this is fun, but I thought about lights especially when I had to edit a lot of candles. I forgot to take back a copy of the edited candle to inventory and delete the one without light. So I had to do it over again when I moved to a new place. It is often tricky to move the camera in behind the glass in a lantern so I can get to the flame.

And then I started to think about why it is no light in lights, and made a thread.

It makes more sense now.

[Sukubia Scarmon]

I pretty much edit everything. Sometimes it's just as simple as adjusting the materials or give it a light tint, sometimes I retexture parts for special effects (like making a starry overlay for hair, for example), and sometimes I completely mangle and mash things together, and repurpose them.

[Lyric Demina]

Great question and count me in for the "everything" answer.  I find that scale is the biggest challenge, trying to get everything to scale properly so that magazines are the right size against bowls of apples which are the right size against a telephone which is the right size against a notebook with pencils which is the right size against a desk-frame photograph................... they can all be so wildly out of proportion.  Editing for scale is a never-ending job.

[Codex Alpha]

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Edited April 30, 2022 by entity0x

[Codex Alpha]

So what I'm really seeing here, and historically anytime a mod/copy topic comes up - is people who want to pay single-asset prices for fat-pack benefits.

For example if a home is built out of modular parts in SL, and the creator spent time doing it - some people think they should have mod/copy for such items, which effectively gives them a "Modular Parts Building Set" for the price of a single asset.

So the problem is, the end use of a product should dictate it's price. So if a home or machine or gadget or any product is meant to be used as a whole, then the price can be much lower as the end use is just 'to drive the car around and look cool'.

That's different from "I'm using all the parts from this farm building with fence to decorate my entire sim with unlimited pieces"

So effectively what mod/copy does in reality, and we see many posters on the forums say so - they may use those parts to build other items, structures and such - as a modular building set of sorts.

Sometimes those pieces will be used to create entire sims and such which many make money from. Mod/copy for many means 'unlimited building pieces', and I understand how this is fun and how people will use it - but then a product should be priced much higher or ALL mod/copy products should be priced at fat-pack/modular building set prices.

Edited April 30, 2022 by entity0x

[Sukubia Scarmon]

Hrm, that's a good point. 
Generally, I'd be okay to pay more for modrights. But I'm not going to buy a fatpack of a not that modular dress for 2,500L to have modrights just because I happen to like one or two colours, and the only thing I'd change would be to lessen/uppen the materials, or to tint the gold a bit more yellow so it fits the gold of the jewellry I want to wear with it. However, this is subjective, as others might want to adjust more, and other less. Would be kinda cool to have a scale in some form, that'd allow to give some mod rights, like adjusting settings or swapping textures. So if people only want to make light adjust, they don't have to pay as much as someone who would like to get much more use out of it. 

Technically, the light adjusting could be done with scripts, but I rarely saw items with scripts that let me adjust all of the material settings in detail. (Colour, environment%, shine%)
Come to think of, only my body has that.

[Silent Mistwalker]

I don't think that will go over too well considering there are all kinds of "fatpacks" out there.

Second Life Marketplace - ZimberLab by Doctor Zimberman

Second Life Marketplace - www.studio-skye.com by Alex Bader

Not counting texture packs, furniture packs and all kinds of things. And all for your own personal use.

[Codex Alpha]

Wrong topic

Edited April 30, 2022 by entity0x